Bartender_Venator
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User ID: 2349
Bartender_Venator
1d ago
Hoping to catch an edgelord grasping the nettle? Aristotle discusses this in his writing on slavery - he distinguishes "slaves by nature", i.e. people whose nature is such that they are incapable of maintaining their freedom, and "slaves by convention", i.e. those who are actually legal slaves. He was not a fan of the fact that not all those who are slaves by convention are slaves by nature (Plato himself did some time in chains), and he does not endorse the mass enslavement of natural slaves who are legally free (they are already enslaved, but enslaved to vices, to menial employment, to patrons, etc., such that enslaving them legally would be superfluous. In fact, some of those natural slaves are otherwise wealthy, strong men who would be practically impossible to enslave except through capture in war).
Furthermore, the actual legal institutions required to deal with the fact of natural slavishness are contingent, and there's no reason that a more prosperous society would need to use Greek-style slavery. One way to put it in a modern context would be that those who are dependent on the state to survive are de facto property of the state, and that modern states have largely chosen to bind themselves to take care of their human property, but this is likewise just an historical contingency. There is nothing, besides the choice of voters, stopping the US from repealing some constitutional amendments and making fentanyl addicts pick cotton (to pick the most extreme case of natural slavery in the modern day. The capacity for freedom of a drug addict would not change if we were legally to enslave him, except that he might luck into a kinder master). So, from an Aristotelian perspective, in the modern age, we can pick out a couple categories:
- Those who are for all intents and purposes the property of others, or the state, protected by some legal rights and more importantly a culture of kindness towards the vulnerable (the severely disabled, although transfers of legal guardianship are limited)
- Those who are for all intents and purposes the property of others, but who are protected by strong legal safeguards and to some extent can advocate for themselves (children, some mental illnesses necessitating legal guardianship)
- Those who are naturally slavish to an extent they're incapable of the most basic demands of freedom, and are legally free except when their behaviour inevitably violates the law (drug addicts, lowlife criminals)
- Those who are naturally slavish to an extent they cannot live without depending on others in a one-sided relationship, who are legally free but practically unfree, and are protected by an attitude of kindness the public has adopted (the hopelessly welfare-dependent)
- Those who are naturally slavish but capable of fulfilling the basic demands of life by developing two-way economic relationships with others in a free market (people working shitty jobs with messed-up lives, but still functioning. This is the point where I would call someone practically free, if one wants to introduce a middle category. They will be effectively somebody/something's property in some parts of their lives, such as their boss's, their partner's, or their liquor's, but they have spheres of real choice even if they choose not to take them.)
- Those who are naturally slavish, but who are enslaved to vices they can successfully fulfil by predating on others, and so remain practically free unless they're caught violating the law (successful criminals, blue and white collar)
- Those who are naturally slavish, but whose nature enslaves them to compulsions which are rewarded by society, including with greater freedom of action even though they remain internally unfree (e.g. a miser obsessed with money-making. Many celebrities.)
- Those who are naturally slavish, but whose nature is ordered such that it makes them genuinely happy (e.g. someone who feels compelled to enter a 24/7 BDSM relationship, and deeply enjoys it)
- The naturally free, who are able to choose and prefer through rational consideration, and moderate their appetites according to reason. In the modern Western world, these people no longer need or want slaves as property.
Incidentally, in an American context, that last "choose and prefer" is crucial. Natural rights of the type the Constitution enshrines are based on very simple human capacities, in particular the capacity to choose and prefer. The rationality or quality of that ability to choose doesn't enter into it. Hence why we have a system that is able to assign legal rights without reference to more complex aspects of the individual's nature, including inner slavishness/freedom. This certainly causes problems over time, as people forget that they need other methods to deal with the naturally slavish, like occasionally throwing a chamberpot at the town drunk, but is better-adapted to modern norms and technologies than Classical slavery. Even if some people are born to be property, that does not imply that legal slavery is the solution. Instead, let a free market and healthy social norms deal with them (I'll leave to the reader the question of whether achieving a free market and healthy social norms today would be easier or harder than reinstating slavery).
Bartender_Venator
1d ago
I don't mean to call small towns dysfunctional, just that one assumes people in smaller communities hear more of what the folks around are getting up to.
Bartender_Venator
2d ago
I suspect a lot of people here are a third case: they don't pay a ton of attention to the private lives of other people outside of a small circle of family and friends. I could tell 5-10 stories of this type (of varying degrees, not literal jail) just from college, and plenty more from being involved in an art scene with lots of gossip. Suspect that small towns can be similar, but I'd have to hear from a ruralposter on that one.
Bartender_Venator
2d ago
This does have a converse effect, in that most liberals arguing politics on the internet are completely marinated in liberal-aligned or more often liberal-only spaces, and that shapes their ability to discuss things. OP's use of "libtards" is telling - lib"tards" are not welcomed here, just as rightards or libertardians are not welcomed, because they're unable to follow the rules or live up to the standards of the space. And the process of marinating in homogenous spaces does turn an awfully large percentage of online liberals into "libtards" in that sense, people who don't know how to debate outside of the context of a front-page subreddit, college classroom, or similarly low-quality space. One reason why the few high-quality and highly-emotionally-regulated liberal posters have, for the most part, been greatly valued here.
Bartender_Venator
2d ago
My conviction that it happened comes from ketamine's unique(?) ability to synthesize many different understandings together into a comprehensible whole. It all fits and I could see that in a way I never had before.
I can confirm this as a reasonably common effect of ketamine on smart people who have done a lot of reading. Something about the dissociative effect unlocks creative synthesis, and allows you to really "feel" it instead of just assenting intellectually. I've had multiple realizations of this type which have all been of great value. Of course this can also oneshot people who aren't smart enough or who have read the wrong books, since the ultimate value comes from the value of the material you're synthesizing. Caveat emptor!
Bartender_Venator
3d ago
This is why the whole Elite Human Capital thing has already flashed in the pan and gone as a memetic trend. There's no register used by its proponents other than shallow antagonism towards broad swathes of (usually caricatured) outgroupers. Beyond Hanania's mild advocacy of orthodox liberal/libertarian economics, it's incredibly rare to find any positive platform whatsoever buried in all the mud-slinging - as shown on this forum by the complete confusion of many posters as to what positive ideas you actually believe. Out of politeness, I'll refrain from speculating on the psychological motives or personality types involved. But I suspect there just isn't any positive platform because, when people are motivated by one, they're usually excited to win others over, to learn how to convert with argument and rhetoric. If that's what you're trying to do, rather than sling insults because they feel good, then I suggest revising your approach.
On the other hand, if you're looking to antagonize people, here is a guide on how to do it while being as polite as possible.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
Gwern has done the public service of archiving the old OKCupid data blog. Still the best resource online for how people actually use online dating, deleted for its honesty. You'll have to adapt that to swipe apps, of course, but a lot of food for thought.
Bartender_Venator
8d ago
Agree with you on the wider point, and that impressionist/abstract expressionist/etc. art needs to be viewed in person. The point I'd add is that paintings might be flat, but they're not 2D objects. You haven't experienced a painting, particularly an impressionist/abstract one, until you've been able to walk around it and see it in 3D space. Both Impressionists and Pollock, for instance, play fascinating tricks on the visual cortex as you walk from side to side, closer and farther. When I'm looking at, say, a Monet, the first thing I try to do is to stop staring at a flat image and to let my eyes relax into it, let the "3D" image appear, let the brain create depth and parallax as I move around it. Same thing with many abstract expressionists, and in some cases they're carried by such subtle features that you can only see them in person, such as Ad Reinhardt's black canvases.
Note that this is not a defence of "conceptual art" that's all concept and no art. The grouches here are largely right about that.
Bartender_Venator
10d ago
I would have preferred to keep him to make the whole "Elite Human Capital" thing ridiculous by his presence, but at this point it's something of a dead horse.
Bartender_Venator
15d ago
It's a funny barber-pole-of-status-signaling thing. I have never encountered someone on the internet who is actually upper-class for whom "lower-classness" is an object of vitriol rather than of disinterested study (for a motte example, I don't know Cim's background but she's acculturated into a desirable rung of the London class ladder very well).
For another instance, Richard Hanania is from Oak Lawn, a Chicago suburb which would provide plenty of experience in the dysfunction of the underclass (about 2-3 miles from Chicago's PvP zones) but zero opportunity to mingle with the kids of the tony 'burbs up North.
Bartender_Venator
24d ago
From an essay Richard Rorty wrote while he was dying:
I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends. Cultures with richer vocabularies are more fully human — farther removed from the beasts — than those with poorer ones; individual men and women are more fully human when their memories are amply stocked with verses.
Bartender_Venator
28d ago
Yeah, as serious advice - I didn't become a devout football fan until after I left England and started traveling. It's the world's sport, so one of the best ways to make quick friends wherever you go. I've had great nights out from Bulgaria to Bogota start by chatting with other fans at an Arsenal bar.
Bartender_Venator
28d ago
Excellent choice fellow gooner. You picked a good time to be an arsenal fan - the bad years are over, we have an exciting young team full of likeable characters, but we haven't won anything big yet despite finishing second three years in a row and whipping Real Madrid in the Champions League, so you're not a glory hound. If you want to learn more about the team, the subreddit is fine, there's also arseblog.com (best arsenal news/commentary site, they do reports and player ratings after each match which will give you a good sense of how to talk about it).
I'd be honest with people, say you haven't been watching for a long time, and you have a perfectly good excuse with the time difference and med school in India. And when the season starts at the end of the summer, would suggest, if you happen to be off work for a match day, going to a pub and watching the game. It's a great way to make friends. Just do expect a little banter from the Scots for supporting a posh London team...
PS - if you do get sucked into it, and you find yourself taking a trip down to London, DM me, I can most likely sort you a ticket.
Bartender_Venator
29d ago
For what it's worth, back when I had a car it was a kitted-out, new-model Mercedes-Benz GLC. Some of the bells and whistles were nice, like the heated seats, and it had some serious zip in sport mode, but apart from that my main memory of it is what an incredible pain in the ass the computer was. You had to navigate with a cumbersome wheel instead of a touch screen or buttons, and it put up serious resistance to letting you use anything but the onboard GPS (even if you used google maps through the bluetooth, it would cut out for multiple seconds before or after each direction announcement, making podcasts unlistenable). Some of the greatest hits of this GPS involve instructing me to turn into an exit leading to an NSA building (getting me briefly detained), directing me to drive in circles around the Pentagon, and refusing to update streets being closed to cars for years after they were. Of course, given the examples, it could just be ze Germans playing the long game for the next war...
Bartender_Venator
29d ago
Oh, heat dissipation, ventilation, etc. is definitely a concern at 50m too, it's just more of an issue at 800m (note that mineshafts are generally cooler than outside air at the start, then heat up as you go down). More stuff to get blown up on the surface, more difficulty repairing it after a strike. If 100m protects you from US bunker busters, no need to keep digging.
I'm seeing claims that Israel "destroyed" the underground structures at Natanz, but from the pictures going around it looks more like the kind of surface strike you describe - smash up the aboveground buildings and tunnel entrances to set things back and make the site a pain to clean up, ideally contaminate the site with the radioactive materials already there.
Bartender_Venator
30d ago
I don't know exactly why the IAEA claims that Iran has facilities 800m down, but as far as I'm aware reliable estimates place the new Natanz underground complex at 40-50m down, with the old underground complex much shallower but with about 7.5m of concrete shielding. The new complex is still under development, which is one reason Israel may have decided to strike it now. Fordow is 80-100m down and that provides protection from even US bunker busters - by the time you get to 800m you're reaching mineshaft-level conditions which require serious ventilation and cooling facilities on the surface to do anything resembling nuclear manufacturing (to put it another way, you could cripple the site just by blowing up the aircon). There's just no reason for Iran to go that deep, but it seems to me that they claim far deeper facilities because a bigger number is more impressive in the third-worldist mind, and international inspections bodies are pretty gullible.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
I have heard credible testimony to the contrary from a guy who definitely knows one and claims to know the other, but no hard proof of the negative. They are, as you'd expect, pretty similar people.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
Bars/pubs with an older clientele tend to be regulars who mostly all know each other, instead of small groups of young people there to talk with their friends. Same thing in the US, at least in terms of being welcoming. I once dipped into Chicago neighbourhood dive to charge my phone, and an old lady came over with a shot and said "now, son, we don't like to see people sitting alone here, less they want to." Spent two hours yukking it up with the old-timers telling me about the good old union welding days.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
trans women in women's sports, endorsing childhood intervention or nearly any other culture war hot point
Yep that's the bailey. I'm not trying to speak for the other poster, and it's not my position, but it seems reasonable to me that people who believe the motte but not the bailey can still pick their side based on whether they think it's more important to avoid being caught out in the bailey, or whether defending the motte from people who are 100% anti-trans is still worth it.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
If I recall correctly, Mearsheimer's realist thesis is that Israel's influence over the US is long-term bad for Israel because it makes them structurally dependent and less rational as a state - relying on US support rather than doing whatever realist stuff they need to survive on their own. But Mearsheimer's an interesting writer, in that he will overstate his theses if he thinks that's a direction that policy discourse should be dragged in (in order to counterbalance the weight of "mainstream" discourse).
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
I think it's fair to say that any movement will have people who sincerely believe in the motte and do not believe in the bailey.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
From my limited reading on the Wars of the Roses, this was also a factor there - Henry IV's usurpation of the throne meant that all the various cadet branches of the Plantagenets felt they had some kind of a claim.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
every time the King of Castille dies there's a civil war for succession in this period.
It's kind of crazy how unstable the house of Trastamara was compared to the Jimenez and Ivrea dynasties. The previous dynasties had plenty of minor succession struggles and an unfortunate tendency to keep breaking apart and reuniting the kingdoms, but rarely anything that broke down the kingdom's ability to resist external threats. My theory is that Reconquista/Crusader kingdoms generally had far more flexible customs of succession (note how much more often you had queens ruling in Iberia/Jerusalem than in the older Western kingdoms) - a necessary adaptation to frontier rule, where you needed a monarch to fight off Muslim threats, but one that became very troublesome once you either ~finished the Reconquista and no longer had that threat compelling unity, or when things started to go badly in the frontier struggle as they did for Jerusalem.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
This is so easy a dunk as to not be worth posting, but do you honestly think people on the left believe that Darwinian evolution applies to the human brain? I'm not seeing any major political faction which meaningfully believes in evolution.
I notice a strong correlation between sleeve tattoos and any particularly high-octane occupation - military, police, fire, EMS, extreme sports, etc. Part macho, part masochism.
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