In the past I have made video essay content about SSC/ACX articles. My most popular remains my summary of the concept of Moloch.
Today I've made something a little different. It is a video summarizing the arguments surrounding voting for the "lesser evil". If this interests you, give it a watch and let me know if I missed anything or if you agree/disagree.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=46gi-ODAjF0
Note that I do not make any money off this or other videos. I also apologize if I have broken a rule I didn't see by posting this.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
For much of my life, people who hear bits and pieces of my biography would say “You should write a book!”. So perhaps finally, I begin to.
Here's the elevator pitch:
I'm an American who came of age outside America, a soldier from a pacifist family, an atheist from a faith-healing cult in Indiana. An intellectually pretentious infantry sergeant. A middle-class dilettante among rough soldiers, a semi-retired middle-aged house-husband with a phone full of cat pictures. A pot-smoking gamer and master-class pistol shot. Hunter, fisherman, amateur home cook. Good with kids and animals, bad with women.
As a short and non-inclusive list: I've been a missionary, translator, manual laborer, martial artist, drug mule, camp counselor, soldier, punk guitarist, research assistant, firearms trainer.
Debated theologians, imams and feminists, drank and sauna'd with Russians, smoked weed and chicken with Kurds, hunted deer and trouble with native Americans. Built orphanages in Ukraine and blew them up in Iraq. I speak bits and parts of ten or so languages, been on every continent but Australia and Antarctica (Africa and South America are technicalities, but those count), and all forty-eight contiguous states.
At the same time, I'm a skinny nerd who grew up on the internet, cut his teeth in the chans and treats online politics like bros treat fantasy football. Had an erratic but broad education, presented professional research at APA conferences, published history monographs and main-tanked a guild through BWL. Can calculate bullet drop, p-value and THACO.
I've performed musically in front of thousands of people, academically to hundreds and athletically for dozens. Conducted military funerals, psychological research and church worship teams. Attended the foundings of PAX, the first non-orthodox church in Novocheboksarsk, MOPH 180, Sniper Platoon 2/11, and the Michigan branch of the Proud Boys. I've sat behind a sniper rifle in the ruins of what was once Babylon, behind a Telecaster on the stage of a megachurch, and behind a conference table in the main hall of Palmer House.
For food, eaten everything from live dragonfly larvae to scrambled pig's brains. I've had pizza with mayo for sauce, kittie kabobs and roasted horse, twenty-year-old MREs and raw deer heart, straight out the ribcage. Drunk everything from prison wine to Romanian ration vodka, HofBrau Oktoberfest to Busch Lite, McCallan 25 to Dr. McGillicutty's Cherry Schnapps. Kefir, Kvass, Tiger.
For work I've trained green-broke mustangs and worse-broke cops, power-washed semi-trucks, sold legal guns and illegal hooch, shingled roofs, tied steel, smuggled dope into an embassy, fabricated windows and pallets with the Amish, driven diabetics to dialysis, and located underground utilities. Planted crops with illegal aliens, detasseled corn with midwest hicks, worked on climbing walls with hippies, washed shit off dairy cows. I don't put any of that on my CV.
Along the way, conflict was inevitable. Fought trailer park kids in Indiana, Gopkini in Moscow, Marines in Vegas, reform school kids on a soccer field, Mortar platoon in the quad, a cafeteria full of home-schoolers at Bob Jones University, drunks behind a bar in Flint Mi., the Al-Janabis in central Iraq.
Stranger perhaps were the ladies involved. Fighter not a lover, but they have their charms! Italo-hispanic painters, semi-pro russian hookers, a mohawk on long walks with amish girls, scrawny white boy at an all-black dance with a borderline little person, suicidal lesbians, a leather jacket with a married chick at an Ani DiFranco concert, and a guild-destroying hookup with main heals at a gaming convention. Just a selection of the awkwardness that has been romance.
My name is Sgt. Scott. I remember some of this shit and I'm writing it down. That's the pitch.
Ever since Covid, I've been writing through some of my past experiences. Much of this is half-baked digressions mostly to get memories down, but even so. Over the coming year I will be writing steadily on biographical stuff, and doing interviews with family members and old friends. I don't know if this will ever be a book, but it's a start. Be posting some of those projects here. Feedback is appreciated.
If you read this far and want to help, LMK which of the above sound the most/least intriguing.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service.
Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Thu 2024-09-19 8:15PM New England Patriots @ New York Jets
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Chicago Bears @ Indianapolis Colts
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Denver Broncos @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Green Bay Packers @ Tennessee Titans
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Houston Texans @ Minnesota Vikings
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM New York Giants @ Cleveland Browns
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Philadelphia Eagles @ New Orleans Saints
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Los Angeles Chargers @ Pittsburgh Steelers
Sun 2024-09-22 4:05PM Carolina Panthers @ Las Vegas Raiders
Sun 2024-09-22 4:05PM Miami Dolphins @ Seattle Seahawks
Sun 2024-09-22 4:25PM Detroit Lions @ Arizona Cardinals
Sun 2024-09-22 4:25PM Baltimore Ravens @ Dallas Cowboys
Sun 2024-09-22 4:25PM San Francisco 49ers @ Los Angeles Rams
Sun 2024-09-22 8:20PM Kansas City Chiefs @ Atlanta Falcons
Mon 2024-09-23 7:30PM Jacksonville Jaguars @ Buffalo Bills
Mon 2024-09-23 8:15PM Washington Commanders @ Cincinnati Bengals
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
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Shaming.
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Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
I am not sure if its appropriate for The Motte main page, given the general topic of discussion. But I thought I'd share this anyway given that I think the story series might interest at least some of you here. As some of you may now I had kidney failure and then was subsequently on dialysis, then a transplant, now I am trying to come up with a solution to never be on dialysis again.
This particular chapter of this personal story covers the time period just before my kidneys failed. Its set in the high Alps, which adds a bit of something different.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Note: this post is about abstract and applied philosophy.
Value is that which people are drawn towards, and economically, which people are willing to trade other things of value for.
In Triessentialism, which I’ve described elsewhere, I’ve identified three four qualities of value, plus their opposites:
- Utility, which enables the pursuit of goals, and hassle, which impedes the pursuit of goals. Other writers attempting to quantify these have suggested measuring positive and negative “utils.”
- Enjoyment, the experience of having sensations and pseudo-sensations, and unpleasantness which is not enjoyed. Other writers attempting to quantify these have suggested measuring positive and negative “hedons”.
- Esteem, known in various cultures as status, honor, face, standing, etc., and disdain as a suggested general category for the negative. While some writers have lumped this in with hedons, I see esteem as something as different from experiences as magnetism is from gravity. Esteem, like magnetism, is polar; your esteem in your ingroup rises as it falls in your outgroup, and vice versa, someone beloved by your outgroup will be hated by your ingroup. This is obvious in the culture war, but less partisanly, with how punks and hippies reveled in being seen as weird or dangerous by upper and middle class society. I suggest measuring this in “estons.”
- Agency, the ability or authorization to cause or withhold action, and its opposite, constraint. People and mammals who do not feel their agency to choose will struggle against their constraints inversely to how inevitable or inescapable the constraint seems. I suggest measuring this in “freedons”.
I believe that the util/hedon dichotomy is an insufficient economic model of the world, and that Triessentialism’s util/hedon/eston/freedon model can rehabilitate the increasingly creaky Homo economicus idea.
As to their Triessentiality:
- Utility is the How, the Logical aspect of value
- Enjoyment is the What, the Physical aspect of value
- Esteem is the Why, the Emotional aspect of value
- Agency is the Moral aspect of value, at the center of the triple-circle Venn diagram of What, How, and Why.
These fundamental categories and the Venn nature of Triessentialism suggests three additional constructed categories of value as the junctions of What/How, How/Why, and Why/What.
note: I have edited this since posting. “Agency” replaces the earlier weaker word “choice”, and at the suggestion of Bing chat, “Enjoyment” replaces the clinical “experiences”. I have also reclassified the What and Why at the end.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Thu 8:15PM Buffalo Bills @ Miami Dolphins
Sun 1:00PM Cleveland Browns @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Sun 1:00PM Indianapolis Colts @ Green Bay Packers
Sun 1:00PM New Orleans Saints @ Dallas Cowboys
Sun 1:00PM New York Giants @ Washington Commanders
Sun 1:00PM New York Jets @ Tennessee Titans
Sun 1:00PM Las Vegas Raiders @ Baltimore Ravens
Sun 1:00PM Los Angeles Chargers @ Carolina Panthers
Sun 1:00PM Seattle Seahawks @ New England Patriots
Sun 1:00PM San Francisco 49ers @ Minnesota Vikings
Sun 1:00PM Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ Detroit Lions
Sun 4:05PM Los Angeles Rams @ Arizona Cardinals
Sun 4:25PM Cincinnati Bengals @ Kansas City Chiefs
Sun 4:25PM Pittsburgh Steelers @ Denver Broncos
Sun 8:20PM Chicago Bears @ Houston Texans
Mon 8:15PM Atlanta Falcons @ Philadelphia Eagles
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Thought this would be useful
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service.
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
Many of you probably may remember a great old alternative to this place known as /r/CultureWarRoundup on Reddit. Due to its superior (which is by no means to say perfect), more "hands-off" moderation philosophy, it peeled off a good portion of the most intelligent people from here at one point (some of whom like me have returned a bit at least for the moment, many of whom probably did not) and was quickly gaining momentum, peaking at around 500 - 700 (IIRC, writing off the top of my head about all of this) replies per week to its main CWR thread while this place (back when it was on Reddit) at least once fell below 1K (or at least close to it) replies (again, IIRC) to the same (less than the activity now for the most part, as the moderation here's somewhat toned down its scattershot executions since then, not enough and not half as much as at the beginning of this site when they were trying to attract people by pretending to have reformed more comprehensively, but still somewhat, since those dark days of Hlynka (though a certain Amadan seems to relish the idea of bringing them back at least in part)). The people were speaking, and it wasn't looking good for this place, with the tides firmly turning in CWR's favor, but unfortunately, as jannies often do, CWR's own jannies started making their own very dumb decisions.
As Reddit started cracking down harder on wrongthink, stiffening new account requirements, shadowbanning more accounts without even pretending to respond to appeals from users that they aren't spambots (since of course that's never been the actual only or even main purpose of shadowbanning anyway), and in general making the site more of a pain to use, resulting in many of CWR's regular users getting banned from Reddit as a whole frequently (mostly only if they posted outside of /r/CWR (which most people did sometimes of course), yet occasionally even if not, as /r/CWR itself did suffer a few Reddit admin removals despite being mostly too small of a fish to worry about), exhausting their alt accounts, and finding it harder to make new ones/use the site effectively at all, CWR's jannies still doubled down on sticking with the platform in general, even raising new account length/"karma" requirements to post on the sub (and refusing to waive them for the new accounts of obvious regulars, which I know because I asked multiple times), perhaps due to paranoia about /r/SneerClub type infiltrators intentionally posting vastly incendiary/ToS-violating things to try to get them banned from Reddit (a concern I don't think ever actually materialized, whereas cutting off the earnest posters who actually wanted to post there but literally couldn't did). The great momentum they'd shown in overtaking this place began to crater as their regular users of the sub like me simply disappeared, unable to post because of the restrictions they foolishly chose to enforce in tandem with the Reddit admins in the hopes of avoiding the subreddit ban guillotine (which they've succeeded at so far... at the cost of their actual life anyway).
Though an eventual half-move to Saidit (which suffered from confusion as the Reddit sub stayed open as well, splitting the community, a mistake I do have to credit the mods here for not repeating after) restored some activity, it couldn't reignite the flame. Now both the still open Reddit and Saidit subs are in zombie mode. There was also a Matrix chatroom at some point, but the invite link to it seems to be entirely dead now (and of course nobody sensible wanted to move to a chatroom anyway which is not even close to the same medium).
So does anybody know what happened to these people? Where's the current venue for the continuation of SSC's CWR threads but with less of the crappy overbearing moderation you'll find increasingly more here (much like /r/TheSchism is an alternative but with even worse, crappier/more overbearing moderation)? Where can actual men engage in unrestricted intellectual discussion in a truly properly masculine fashion without effeminate finger-wagging jannies from California all too frequently interfering to whine about "antagonism" (the very essence of the competition of ideas, and therefore impossible to ban from it) or whatever as they do here (again, not as bad as in the past, but still too much)? Any and all info is appreciated. Thank you in advance.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service.
Well, it seems this thread is still not doing too badly relative to the other regular threads, so let's stay on a weekly pace.