FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
All good, all good. Just giving you the new user speil. Welcome, make yourself at home!
Why would it trade off directly with the things that make cooperation valuable?
Because we cooperate to gain value, and if our definitions of "value" is mutually incompatible, then when the cooperation is aimed at one of these spaces, it's at best burning value for nothing for the side whose values aren't being aimed for, and at worst burning value to lose value.
If we share living space and power mechanisms with people whose values are incompatible with ours, as long as the power struggles between groups with mutually incompatible values stay limited to the agreed upon power mechanisms, we're at least able to keep the living space a living space instead of a killing field, which seems valuable.
Bolded for the crucial bit. Power struggles cannot be so limited. People are always going to want more good things and fewer bad things. They are never going to want to perpetuate or multiply bad things at the expense of good things. Once the values get far enough apart, they are always going to recognize that if the bad things can be eliminated, the value that went to producing the bad things can instead produce more good things, and then try to make that happen.
America tried detente between slave states and free states. Slave states wanted more slave states, free states wanted more free states. Slave states wanted to perpetuate and spread Slavery; Free states wanted to abolish it. The result was spiraling escalations as both sides realized that amassing and wielding power was instrumental to maximizing goodness and minimizing badness on their own terms. Laws and norms could not contain the pressure, and failed in sequence until large-scale fratricide broke out.
Non-Communist populations could not figure out how to cooperate with dedicated Communist populations, resulting in numerous rebellions, revolutions and wars. Eventually a cohesive territory of Communist states formed, with a hard border to the non-communist states outside, and this mostly kept the peace until Communist ideology collapsed from its own contradictions. Borders worked.
If this sort of spiral is to be prevented, you have to exert energy to maintain values-coherence, which involves policing the fringes and forcing them back to the center, which is not itself tolerant. Absent such enforced coherence, values drift apart, and the further apart they get the less value cooperation can deliver relative to defection or coordinated meanness.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2hr ago
There's a new-user filter, and you were in it. it goes away when you get a certain number of cumulative upvotes. No, we can't turn it off. Yes, we'll manually approve your posts until you're out of it so long as they don't break the rules extremely egregiously. Yes, this is dumb, we're sorry. Please just ignore it and comment freely, and hopefully it'll go away fairly quickly.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2hr ago
Yet the argument remains just as valid as ever, and so I still insist on being tolerant of values that are are foreign to mine and especially tolerant of values that are hostile to mine.
Define "tolerant".
I don't want to eliminate values I consider hostile to mine. I just don't want to live near them, as that is just going to result in lots of conflict. If "tolerance" means sharing power mechanisms and living space, my argument is quite simple:
- The range of values humans can actually hold is wide enough that some points are mutually incompatible with other points.
- Sharing power mechanisms and living space with the values-incompatible trades off directly with the things that make coordination/cooperation valuable.
This is not me trying to generate an argument for why purging anyone who is different is a good idea. Not all or even most values-coordinates are mutually incompatible. There's a wide range of compatibility. Values-incompatibility is not an "I win" button or a tribal superweapon, it is net-loss for everyone involved, we should not be seeking to maximize it. We need to cooperate, because that's where all our good things come from. But if we can't recognize where the cooperation breaks down or isn't possible, we burn value for no purpose and open ourselves up to disaster.
If toleration isn't possible, the alternative isn't annihilation, it's separation. People who can't get along should endeavor to leave each other alone; that's strongly preferable than attempting to exterminate each other. There are values-modification mechanisms other than one group stomping on another; humans observe outcomes and modify, ideological structures that adopt bad values adapt toward better ones over time, even without hard outside pressure, and then maybe in the future reproachment is possible.
But right now, we're at a place in the culture where weaponizing the legal system and organizing lawless violence against the outgroup are on the table. That is, to me, past the point of no return. There is no credible way to un-tolerate these things, to re-establish a taboo, at least not one that I can see.
Recognizing the nature of the problem is the first step to finding a solution.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3hr ago
It’s just devolved from “I don’t agree with you” to “I don’t agree with you and you are subhuman for even entertaining a different idea, and in fact should not be allowed to speak.”
It seems obvious to me that the thing producing this slide is a slide in core values between the tribes. As median tribal values diverge, as the gap between the median positions widens, the basis for mutual toleration disappears as well. We tolerate and cooperate with people because doing so is seen as an obvious net-positive. Lots of people on the right celebrated OBL's death at the hands of US forces. Lots of people on the right celebrate the idea of killing pedophiles.
It likewise seems obvious to me that we are not short on manners or etiquette. Progressivism invented entire new fields of manners and etiquette. The problem, again, is that no amount of manners and etiquette is going to cover fundamental incompatibility of values.
Human cooperation is based on shared values. Without the shared values, "cooperation" becomes incoherent. Cooperating for what purpose, to what end? If we can't agree that the ends are good, then cooperation with evil is an act of insanity.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6hr ago
Then find some other way to solve the Culture War before it comes to that. Coordinated Meanness without limit pointed at half the country is not survivable long-term.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
21hr ago
So an obvious way to observe the credibility-burning you're claiming would be Hegseth's unpopularity with the troops, right?
Or is it a scam? Are its promised rights lies?
Whether we have a right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, guns, free speech, or whatever else seems pretty clearly to be an axiomatic moral argument, not a factual one. Ought, not Is.
This comment from two years back lays out what I think is a pretty solid argument for the nature of the problem:
Do you believe that it's practical to build and enforce a set of rules that ensure acceptable outcomes so long as they're followed, regardless of the behavior of those operating under the rules? Put another way, do you think loopholes are a generally-manageable problem in rule design?
And the answer elaborated in the rest of the comment comes down to explaining why loopholes are in fact not a generally-manageable problem in rules design. The lie and scam comes from the idea that you can write down a legible definition of rights, and then right down a legible set of rules about how to adjudicate disputes over them, and then by following these rules the rights will be secured, and thus the processes and outputs we observe are simply The Way The Rules Are. Our society is built on the idea that rules work this way, but they really don't.
You can make a set of rules that work when people generally want them to work. Making a set of rules that work when people don't want them to work is probably impossible. Incompatible values results in a lot of people not wanting the rules to work any more, so they don't. There's a term that Moldbug came across awhile back: "manipulation of procedural outcomes". It's one of the most perfect political terms I've ever encountered, and the perfect encapsulation for the nature of the problem. Rules, procedures, exist to secure outcomes, but can be manipulated. Once you grok that, everything else follows with the crushing inevitability of a glacier.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1d ago
As an alternative, how about we simply stop funding universities that have been spending public money on things as ridiculous as creation science? They can even keep the tenure, so long as they fund it themselves.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
As a classic liberal, any kind of intolerance with an outgroup is very offensive to me.
And yet, divisions and categories exist, and are both useful and necessary.
It’s trying to make an entire group of people an outgroup, just as the illiberal left is trying to demonize Charlie Kirk because he was a Christian.
The illiberal left demonized Charlie Kirk because he was a Christian, sure. They considered him and Christians generally to be enemies. Christians do not generally consider Mormons to be enemies in this way, any more than they consider Jews to be enemies. Religious differences can exist without holy war.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
I'm reminiscing of Mr. Period.
{commenting on "where everyone is gay"} This might not be necessary. If these are indeed the Gayzor Mountains, we can safely assume that the inhabitants share certain customs.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
To clarify, I flounced once, and was able to return because in the heat of the moment I managed to throttle down the message to 2% of what I wanted to say, and so did not completely burn my bridges here.
I do not generally want to say those things any more, and even in my worse moments I want to want to not say them.
I stand corrected!
...my main point, in any case, is that in any of these questions of categorizing people, there's the answer from the people in the category, and there's the answer of the people outside the category, and neither is obviously correct.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
My assessment was that all of this was fair game. LibsOfTikTok doesn't follow "journalistic standards", this is plainly true, why bother claiming otherwise?
In my view, the problem comes when we claim that LibsOfTikTok shouldn't be listened to. LoTT doesn't need journalistic standards, because all they're doing is posting up primary sources. This means you can get them to post fake things, but it doesn't mean that all or even most or even an appreciable fraction of what they post is fake. Likewise, it doesn't mean that those "journalistic standards" prevent much or even the overwhelming majority of what Real Journalists output from being fake by any reasonable definition of the term.
The proper response to Trace's prank was to grab ten or twenty top-engagement stories from LoTT per week, week after week, and just check them off; this one's real, this one too, and this one, and so on, and note how even if they are operating through pure partisanship, and even if their standards of evidence are low, their approach to journalism requires so little trust from the audience that they are still highly effective and probably less deceptive than the NYT.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
That's a quite uncharitable account.
"Lying to people to make a political point is a Good Thing, Actually" is commonly argued by people who think the Sokal or Sokal Squared hoaxes are good things, of which I am one. My observation was that Trace's hoaxing of LibsOfTikTok was fair enough, though I didn't think it proved what he seemed to be claiming, but also that the overwhelmingly negative reaction he received was very clearly both tribal, unreasonable and unnecessary. And sure, he eventually flounced out of here. Most of us have or do sooner or later. I did, more or less, once upon a time, and the only reason I'm back is because I managed to throttle it down to about 2% of what I originally wanted to say. The Culture War poisons us all sooner or later.
He's got the Schism, and he's grinding away at the mainstream conversation, from what I've seen. I have profound disagreements with his values and views, but everything I've seen shows me he's attempting to act in good faith to this day.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
No. Mormons are substantially less Christian that Christians are Jewish.
...I'm not sure Mormons would agree with the first part, nor Jews with the second. I agree, but then I would, wouldn't I.
I'd agree on the latter part, in any case. Whatever my theological disagreements with Mormons, people who wish them harm are my enemies.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
uh, sure, I guess. The following is speaking very generally and aiming for as neutral a view as I can manage.
Jews (speaking very broadly here as I will for all groups) think they have a revelation from God, and that revelation is at a certain point closed. Then they have a system pertaining to how that revelation interfaces with their community, which may not be closed per se but where thousands of years of tradition usually vastly outweigh present concerns.
Christians believe the Jewish revelation is valid, but don't see it as closed, and believe there was a subsequent revelation which at a later point closed. They likewise have a community-interface system which likewise draws on thousands of years of tradition, which is completely incompatible with the Jewish system. So while both Jews and Christians think the Old Testament is the word of God, Jews think the New Testament is heretical pagan nonsense and the church and its traditions have no valid connection to God, while (many) Christians think Jews missed the boat, the rabbinical system is in the same way heretical nonsense, made up to paper over the fact that Judaism ended with the destruction of the temple, when it became impossible to fulfill the requirements of the Law.
Mormons are to Christians as Christians are to Jews. They have what might be described as a Newer Testament, which they see as a subsequent revelation to the Christian one, which is, you guessed it, now also closed. And they have their own community-interface system which is only a couple hundred years old but hey give them awhile, sheesh. And to their credit, a couple hundred years ain't nothing, and they do seem to be going fairly strong to date, but this system is likewise incompatible with the Christian system in the same way that the Christian system is incompatible with the Jewish one. Christians think the Newer testament is bad fanfic, in the same way Jews think the Christian New Testament is bad fanfic, for similar reasons.
In each case, you have the older version rejecting the newer version as a heresy, and the newer version thinking the older version missed the boat. ...Only, I'm not actually sure whether Mormons think Christians are fine as-is, or should ideally become Mormons, the way Christians think Jews should become Christian. I'd assume so, just on a naïve application of memetics.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
I wasn't sure whether to frame them as Christians (new revelation outside the law) or Jews (human prophets, perceive incarnation as blasphemy), so left them out as more confusing than the point was worth, but yes, essentially. "I'm his son, but he claims he's not my father."
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
On the one hand, Mormons aren't Christians.
One might say that Mormons are Christians in the same sense that Christians are Jews. It captures both important features of self-conception and also important points of disagreement.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5d ago
Did the sister end up mattering? What was the first guy supposed to do differently if his sister was in the straight?
my understanding:
Planners < FOxGLASS < Humans-In-The-Loop < Deputy Director Lady < US Government.
Some combination of the Planners and FOxGLASS have figured out that there's a layer of control above them, and are actively working to engage with that layer. The Planner squabble is not, in fact the AIs glitching out, it is the AIs intentionally generating a scenario where human manual override will be triggered, at least potentially as part of a strategy to control the controllers. The sister part generates additional stress on one of the humans-in-the-loop, making it easier to trigger the lockout.
There's a bunch of Islamic extremists on the other side of the world. So long as they stay on the other side of the world, why should this be a problem to me? They are far away, they do not rule me, I have nothing particular to gain from ruling them. Why not just leave each other alone?
They should recognize that this is a bad idea and stop doing it. No one has a strong enough claim to moral clarity to impose their morality over the whole world, and if this is a thing people think needs to happen, I agree if and only if it's my morality being imposed. The flaws with this idea should be obvious enough that we can coordinate an end to the practice, even with a considerable amount of values-incoherence.
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