ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
To the person who originally felt that there may be actors trying to manipulate public discourse, affirmation that there are actors trying to manipulate public discourse.
I'm not sure what to tell that person other than "welcome to the Internet". There have been actors trying to manipulate public discourse since forever. Maybe you mean "state actors"? That is an interesting development, as far as history goes, but it's not even a recent one.
Except that not all psy-opps run in the Russian style
Ok, so there is a reason to single-out Russia. I'll even agree with it. Unlike when they're trying to affect countries in their orbit (say, for example, Russia trying to push Ukrainians to vote for a pro-Russian party), Americas rivals probably have greater incentive just to cause chaos to weaken America, rather than back any particular faction, so their cyber-warfare operations will look particularly twisted.
And while this might be an interesting conversation if we were discussion psy-ops in themselves, I still feel like my earlier "what's the content here" question still has merit. Because Russians have an incentive to cause chaos and have westerners at each-others throats, you can't even tell what narrative they're promoting. It could be "FEMA IS PREVENTING VOLUNTEERS FROM DELIVERING AID" or it could be "RUSSIAN BOTS AND CONSPIRACY THEORIST ARE CLAIMING FEMA IS PREVENTING VOLUNTEERS FROM DELIVERING AID". It could even be both. It just doesn't seem to bring that much into a discussion on whether it's true that FEMA is blocking aid.
Is there a credible reason to believe a disproportionately refugee population from a state with endemic contemporary food insecurity is not disproportionately more likely to partake in non-traditional dining?
I'm actually on team "Haitians eat cats" for this very reason, it was just an example. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure the analogy even fits that well, but my point was just that if you single a group out you should show how that group is different from the other groups.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Inflation is classically redistributive because if you create $1000 and give it to someone, he'll be able to buy $1000 worth of stuff before the prices adjust to the new money supply. Even if the adjustment was instantaneous, the distribution of money would be skewed of in favor of the guy who got the money. The only way this doesn't happen is if you increase the supply of money without affecting it's distribution, i.e. "helicopter money".
The effects you describe are among the last to come about as result of inflation, and the redistribution doesn't even have to go the way you described. It can just as easily go the opposite way: fresh money being sunk into the stonk and real-estate markets, favoring the boomers at the expense of the young.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Inflation is only strongly redistributive if it either happens alongside or immediately after a large scale collapse in asset values.
Inflation is only not distributive if it's spread equally among money-holders. IIRC it's how economists believe it should be done, and how they assume it is being done to make the models simpler (see "helicopter money"), but it's actually never done that way.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Yes. The point is raising an uncontroversial example demonstrating the claim that there are motivated actors who will try and shift a public discourse regardless of context, and whether or not that involves lying or truth.
It's still not clear to me what is the meaningful content here. What information is it bringing that wasn't already being taken into account?
Writing about a whole bunch of groups seemed unnecessary. Is it?
- Jews steal!
- Everybody steals!
- Well yeah, but we were talking about Jews.
What can I say, I disagree. If you wanted to make the point that we are all being psy-opped by cyber-warfare divisions of every major world power, the point would have been better made as a general statement. If you single out one particular power, it will look like you think there's something different about them in particular.
It's a bit like that thing about cat-eating Haitians. The claim is not particularly interesting if it was a freak occurrence, and raising it only makes sense if Haitians are disproportionately more likely to do it.
Would boosting PunchANazi, BLM, MeToo, Trans Women Are Women and whatnot count as helping or hurting Republicans?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
and I can't really visualize what "increase discord" looks like on the other end. "Here's some rubles, go stir the shit on twitter"?
If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
No, seriously. I think you mis-read what was claimed, and projected previous / other experiences onto it. The hypothesis is not that 'the coverage is the result of Russian trolls.' The hypothesis is 'no matter what happens, there will be Russian trolls trying to make it worse.'
I have two questions:
- Does the hypothesis carry any meaningful content then? If
$controversyis spreading, what's the point of bringing Russians into it, if you're not going to make a claim on the spread being a result of their interference? - Why the particular focus on Russia? It's not like the US doesn't have a whole bunch of "Cyberspace Wings" and "Test Groups" that spend a suspicious amount of time on social media.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
The person you responded to is filtered.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
I really like both of you guys, why can't we all just get along? (cry emoji)
Are you from Saudi Arabia or something? Every authority in vicinity not only doesn't violently represses being gay, it actively promotes it.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
I don't know if I'm missing something, but I occasionally harp about how even in an opyimistic scenario, comparative advantage is not looking like Rats expect it to pan out. It's not going to be automating away the drudgery so we can devote ourselves to artistic and intellectual pursuits, if anything it's shaping up to be automating away artistic and intellectual pursuits, so we can artisinally mine quartz for the Quartz God.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
No, because those deliberate efforts are aimed at the third world. Only a handful of political radicals- disproportionately the kind of environmentalists that don’t get invited to cool parties- want to reduce middle class first world birthrates.
Well, isn't that because the efforts to crash non-third-world fertility rates have already been successful?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
I honestly do not understand how one can have this perspective while also having read, like, multiple wikipedia articles or a single book
Uh... which wikipedia article (interesting argument, by the way) conclusively proves central developments of history aren't deliberately implemented?
I don't get it.
Yeah, because you're used to not having to spell out the core assumptions of your arguments. I'd like you to actually do that.
Yeah real life isn't a movie where the villains are indicated to the audience with artistic foreshadowing.
Well, but speaking of listening of actual, historical, progressives, they did kinda sound like mustache-twirling villains.
This is the same bad logic as "the conservative reaction to concerns about structural racism proves they're actually racist nazis".
Step me through it. If I react negatively against, say, "let's make abortion easily accessible", I think it's reasonable to conclude that I am against making abortion easily accessible. When I react negatively to the concept of structural racism, it's reasonable to conclude I disagree with the validity of the concept of structural racism (or at least the way it's applied to the current society). When do racist Nazis enter into it? Likewise, when I react negatively to "hey, let's find a way to keep fertility rates from crashing", I think it's reasonable to conclude I don't want to keep fertility rates from crashing. I don't see any flaw in the logic of my argument, only in the example you gave.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Are you talking about specific people who have advocated for all that in their lifetime, or about "those people" as a set that spans 100+ years of discourse?
Yeah I am talking about specific people, all the way from Malthus to Ehrlich, and many, many, people in-between.
In my observation it's gonna be hard to find someone who both hates Nazis and approves eugenics nowadays.
As for Nazi dog whistles, when it appears that the ones most vocally concerned about fertility also have some kind of white ethnonationalist views, what is one supposed to believe?
By the same logic, I will answer your question: when it appears that the ones most vocally concerned about "women's liberation" are implementing policies that increase the fertility of the most rich, and drop that of others, what is one supposed to believe?
(when people are concerned about black/black-adjacent fertility it seems to be more along the lines of "they're more fertile than us")
Interesting crowd you're hanging out with. What I'm hearing is more to the tune of "abortion is literal black genocide". Would you be ok if I called your support for abortion a Nazi dog whistle?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
it's a central political/moral/philosophical development of modern history
And where do central developments of modern history come from, are they by any chance deliberately implemented?
and they're much more concerned about stuff like freeing women from domination than they are overpopulation.
I mean, it's only so long you can twirl mustaches and laughing like a me monocled villain, without people noticing. Also the reaction to fertility concern belies them supposedly not caring about it.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Only when people with these values have a history of advocating for eugenics and population control, never really repudiated those views, and see concern over fertility as some sort of Nazi dog whistle.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Grunting is for weaklings, personally I go with a victorious roar.
Especially since people clearly, uncritically have taken it at face value.
Someone even pointed out it's a self-report, and the author(?) goes "That's right!" and goes on without the faintest clue of the implications. I kind of wish you wouldn't show me this, it's been a while since my view of humanity has taken such a hit.
There was, of course, the overpopulation panic, but I think the impact of that was very small compared to the global trend of progressivism and technology!
I don't get it. That is my entire argument - this is exactly how the measures to reduce the population are being implemented to begin with! "Progressivism" is being introduced through deliberate centralized efforts, and "overpopulation panic" has been it's feature for over a hundred years. Why are we assuming that this is just some magical "global trend" appearing out of nowhere, rather than it being an expression of these deliberate efforts?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Governments that have put a lot of effort into trying to increase the population, such as modern Russia's government, have not seen much success, so I doubt that the low modern fertility rates have much to do with governments trying to lower fertility rates.
I don't see how it follows from there, that the resulting reduction in population growth was not deliberate.
I think that fertility rates are just something that governments, even relatively authoritarian governments,
True, it isn't just a matter of government policy, but that doesn't mean the reduction in fertility wasn't premeditated, and implemented from the top.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Many countries are now trying to reverse it and failing
How does one measure's failure disprove the other measure's success? Especially since the measure that worked is still in effect, and is still being promoted - it's not like "countries" have total control over what's going on inside them, and are free from outside (and inside) influences.
and countries that've tried to lower it in the past (china?) don't seem to be doing much worse than comparable ones that didn't (other east asians).
Same question, as above.
What specific such efforts do you think are relevant?
Getting women to join the workforce, attempting to close the wage gap when they have (even though it primarily comes from men picking more lucrative careers and devoting themselves to work relatively more), and the denigration of motherhood in mass media, and all status-granting institutions.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Nope, it's because we've developed a ton of advanced technology and it's doing a lot of weird things at the same time!
You don't think deliberate efforts to reduce the population entered into it?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Do you expect them to announce Trump, but make a switcheroo for Kamala at a later date?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Oh yeah, I heard about that one too, though that feels a bit more esoteric.
If at this point "studios don't care about making profit" is something that strikes you as ridiculous and conspiratorial, you're basically saying no amount of evidence will convince you. There is absolutely no way Hollywood looks the way it looks like right now, if their primary motivation is profit.
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