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Chrisprattalpharaptr

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Chrisprattalpharaptr


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Arranged marriage white edition: the ugliest white dude gets headhunted by a controlling Asian woman who keeps him on a leash. He is overjoyed to find his fetish match. Happy ending.




I've been laughing at this for the last 10 minutes. WMAF couples are by far the dominant demographic in my immediate social circle.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You should:


    

  1. 

    Yes. Safe space. I think we all know the failure mode of this one.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Double down on your commitment to free speech. Let the Jewposters have their say, and treat them like anyone else. If they're polite and they bring receipts, who are we to judge their speech any more than judge those who hate democrats or think that mandatory schooling is the greatest injustice of all time? You'd win my respect, although we probably also all know the failure mode of this option too.
    

    3. 

  3. 

    Give me the satisfaction of admitting to ourselves that we're basically reddit with a rightward slant and that free speech maximalism is dumb. Moderation (heh) in all things.
    

    4. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The Jewish conspiracy angle leaves a lot of unanswered questions. I do not actually accept the reasoning that Jewish people want to undermine the UK any more than I accept the reasoning that the American left wants to undermine America. I think that the thing you most need to justify when making that argument is the premise. Any time anyone posits a Jewish conspiracy, they never explain the alleged motivation of the alleged Jewish conspiracy. I believe that the American left wants to close military bases, because it makes sense according to their goals (spend less on military and more on welfare). I do not believe that British Jews want to 'undermine the UK’s geopolitical power when the nation is weak and vulnerable' out of sheer evil Jewishness, because that is not a real motivation.




Au contraire, I can promise you that we have some very elaborate explanations for the motivations of the Jewish conspiracies.


Paging @SecureSignals - What do you think?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Saying that groups are conspiring to do the thing that the group would describe themselves as doing




I had said:




'Perhaps there's a simple reason for this anti-America deal. Two of the key players you mentioned, Alice and Bob are both radical leftists. You even mentioned that Bob harbors anti-America sentiment. Subversive radical leftists are trying to undermine America's power when the nation is weak and vulnerable. Biden, though not a radical leftist (I know, I know), fits the role of senile idiot here.




Radical leftists is usually a stand in for anyone who voted blue in the last election cycle, and I doubt that any significant number of democrats would describe themselves as being anti-Americans trying to undermine America's power.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Unless this is someone's alt, doesn't look like they're a regular Jewposter.


Anyways, object level aside since obviously I don't like the people obsessed with Jews either, this is just a much less lofty expression of free speech ideals for a community to follow. What @self_made_human articulated was more or less reddit with a right-shifted Overton window, but not far right enough (yet) to tolerate regular Jewposting. What's the difference between 'we treat anti-semites more harshly because our userbase finds their opinions inflammatory' and 'we moderate conservative opinions much more harshly because they're just sealioning single-issue posters?' There's plenty of garbage posts here with nary a fact in them and packed chock-full of opinions I find plenty inflammatory (and even articulated in a much cruder and more inflammatory way than the Jewposter!), and the only difference between them is the opinions of the majority.


Sure, if the mods make enough unpopular decisions the community dies. Sure, nobody can reach some platonic ideal of objectivity or impartiality. But abandoning the pretense so easily is a bit of a letdown.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You're breaking so many damn rules in one comment I'm mildly impressed.




'Perhaps there's a simple reason for this anti-America deal. Two of the key players you mentioned, Alice and Bob are both radical leftists. You even mentioned that Bob harbors anti-America sentiment. Subversive radical leftists are trying to undermine America's power when the nation is weak and vulnerable. Biden, though not a radical leftist (I know, I know), fits the role of senile idiot here.


Since you're looking for possible explanations for this seemingly irrational behavior, I thought I would supply an explanation.'


Surely the above would just be Tuesday at the Motte rather than a banworthy post, no? I'm fairly confident I can find a number of comments like the above with minimal effort. Posts without any evidence to suggest a conspiracy, things that are inflammatory and boo-outgroup, etc.


The Jew-haters' brigade is right, tbh. Their comments mostly aren't treated the same. I just happen to think that's a good thing and think you should just ban anything that crosses the line to clear anti-semitism, while they don't.


Tongue-in-cheek suggestion: Replace janitorial duty with an AI that flips the political valency of a given comment before someone is asked to judge it. Bonus points if you can train the AI to learn a given user's ideology. If we manage to abstract reality enough, it's the first step towards black mirror!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think you're wrong here. I predict DOGE will put a significant dent in the deficit.




Are you interested in attaching some numbers to your prediction? How much lower do you think the 2025 deficit will be relative to 2024?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And then, from what little I know about Nixon, he created the EPA and the endangered species/clean air acts. He cozied up to China and brought them into the fold. And some mix of foreign interventionism without boots on the ground? What does that even code as anymore?


My broader point is that it was so far in the past (at least to me) that I wasn't interested in making a partisan point, I was just trying to gesture towards a cultural touchstone I thought most people would recognize. I didn't realize it was such a sore point.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And you're talking about credibility because?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why would I look to bipartisan consensus?




Because if a narrative is broadly believed by both Democrats and Republics, to me it's definitionally not rabidly partisan.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ironically, claiming that Watergate was the CIA running a coup on Nixon probably has less bipartisan support than the consensus view that it...wasn't.


Not to mention Nixon was so far in the past that he doesn't even map as Republican or Democrat to me, I'm broadly unfamiliar with his policies and those of his contemporaries, and just used Watergate as the most salient presidential scandal of the last 50 years. If you have an approved nonpartisan example to replace it with, I'm all ears.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


First, I believe you have conflated the budget bill with the debt ceiling. Biden authorized a temporary budget through March 14th to avoid a government shutdown. The debt ceiling is untouched, and we are right up against it. We cannot spend money we don't have anymore.




No, I understand the difference. That's why I asked whether you thought Biden should have pushed congress to raise the debt limit in the last few months of a lame duck presidency.




Second, Biden pushed as much money out the door to the Democratic Patronage Network as he possibly could. I mean look at these headlines. $4 billion for World Bank, $100 billion for clean energy grants, $5.9 billion for Ukraine, as well as "forgiving" $4.7 billion in loans to Ukraine. Since after the election they've emptied the coffers as quickly as they could.




lol, Democratic Patronage Network. If nothing else, I admire your rabid partisanship.


Anyways, the $4 billion for the world bank you linked doesn't get paid until after Trump takes office (and presumably he can, and I presume will, cancel it). Your argument is that Biden went on a spending spree over the last few months - can you explain the timing of how you see that working? The 100 billion for clean energy came from the funds appropriated by congress for the inflation reduction act. Do you think you could also explain how that fits your narrative that Biden went on a 'spending spree' to bankrupt the federal government in his last few months in office? Did you read the articles that you linked?


Your examples don't seem to make your point very well. It's just not clear to me, legally speaking, how a president can go on a spending spree in their last few months in office and bankrupt the government when funding is appropriated by congress.




Now maybe you can frame this in a way where it's all smart politics. One persons "They put party above country" is another persons "The opposition party is entirely illegitimate and we must break off all the levers of power and leave the country crippled before they use the turnkey fascism we set up." Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.




No, I don't think I would ever argue that harming your own country for partisan gain is a good thing. And broadly speaking, Trump won an election, so let him govern as he sees fit (within the bounds of the constitution and short of Watergate-level offenses) and the voters will decide.




All the same, given the situation he finds himself in, why shouldn't Trump close every money spigot he possibly can, regardless of the letter of the law, because we've been left completely broke? When we hit the debt ceiling, we start defaulting on our obligations. That's what this looks like. Complaining about Trump making lemonaid out of lemons, since slashing the budget was part of his agenda anyways and he can spin it as a victory, is just spin.




I'm not complaining about Trump freezing all federal spending. I'm responding to a comment that you made and asking you to explain what you meant.


I'd be making different arguments for USAID or NIH/NSF/DoE or whatever other department.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The fact the the Biden spending spree in the last months of his administration left the government completely broke and at the debt ceiling.




Can you elaborate on what you mean by a Biden spending spree? My impression was that congress and Biden signed a continuing resolution bill to fund the government through March so that Trump could enact his priorities, and that Biden can only spend money appropriated by congress. Are you arguing that Biden increased spending in some way in the last few months of his presidency? And you think that Biden should have raised the debt ceiling in the last few months of a lame duck presidency?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No, it's for you. I'm confused what you see as sniping at Trump supporters. Make America great again, again?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The context of the Yarvin quote is that democracies are weak and feckless so we convert to a dictatorship, not that Trump is a particularly ineffectual president. My point was that presidential elections probably won't affect any of us all that much. I would, and have, made the same point about democratic administrations. Is that what you were referring to?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Here's to hoping that the next four years do indeed make America great again, again. And we manage to dredge some unity and goodwill out of our desiccated corpse.


For all that we complain, I always ask people: if not the United States, where would you go? And where would you invest? Whatever my family and friends say, they're still investing in American securities. They're mostly still working in the USA. The opportunity here in most fields is unrivaled.


And to paraphrase Curtis Yarvin, I'll bet you 50$ that if you look around your neighborhood, you'll notice 0 changes over the next 4 years attributable to Donald Trump.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I handle a lot of cases involving mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure and, though this is completely anecdotal, immunotherapy seems to be working wonders on that front. It seems like a few years ago meso was a death sentence, and now there are people who, while not exactly cured, seem to be living with it for years




I don't know mesothelioma because it's relatively rare, and I don't see patients - just lines on a graph. That being said, it seems like a pretty similar story with 2 year survival rates of 41% versus 27%. Don't get me wrong, if I get cancer I'll take the pembro, but we're laughably far from curing cancer or LEV.


If you get diagnosed with a solid tumor (i.e. not a leukemia), basically you're either lucky and we caught it early enough to remove it entirely by surgery or you're going to die from it with vanishingly rare exceptions.




One case involved a 60 year old woman who had a resection and subsequent immunotherapy after being symptomatic for over a year before doctors even figured out the correct diagnosis, and she was judged to be completely cancer free, which is something I thought impossible.




I imagine that's bad for your bottom line. Or she lived long enough for you to collect?




I honestly wonder for a guy his age who wasn't having any problems if the treatment is worse than just living with the disease until he needs palliative care, considering that he was otherwise active but was wiped out by the cancer treatments.




Yeah. That's the choice to be made. Hopefully he was of sound mind and deciding for himself.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's modest consensus around here that Vivek & Elon firing half of the government would be a good thing, and that most of those workers are largely vestigial parasites/culture warriors who don't productively contribute to society.


What would the practical effects be of Trump pulling a Xi and dropping the hammer of god on wall street and hedge funds, HFT outfits, etc.? Say you can keep venture capital and bank loans to businesses and all the other stuff, but the 'quants' who make a living with options, trading commodities and the like? I'll leave it to someone better versed in that world to carve out precisely what should or shouldn't be banned, or try to convince me that this is a mistake.


The friends I have in that space freely admit that they don't believe that they contribute meaningfully to society. They have advanced degrees in physics, math and CS; wouldn't society be better off pushing them towards engineering, manufacturing, company creation? And redistributing capital from the non-STEM people at these places who contribute nothing of value to society?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I mean even 15 years ago immunotherapy for cancer was not noteworthy enough to be included in a popular overview book “The Emperor of All Maladies” and now it’s a treatment that’s used all over the place, albeit with varying success rates.




Cancer immunotherapy is great, but it's not going to move the needle on deaths from cancer. You get maybe 30-40% cure rates in advanced melanoma (very difficult to give you exact numbers based on how you slice up your patient population), much lower cure rate in lung cancer and a statistically significant but depressingly small boost in survival for a bunch of other cancers. Typically those with high TMB. Then you have CARs which work wonders for two leukemias, but haven't been made to work in any meaningful way for solid tumors.


if you want to actually move the needle on cancer deaths, you need something with meaningful cure rates for lung cancer (vast majority is NSCLC), pancreatic cancer, prostate/breast cancer and colorectal cancer. Melanoma and ALL/multiple myeloma (leukemias that respond to CARs) don't even make the list.




Combining that with AI improvements it doesn’t seem so unreasonable to me that we could conceivably see some wild advances in the next 2-3 decades.




AI has been great for lit review and protein design but otherwise hasn't really impact bio research yet. Even if they build autonomous agents that can run experiments, I fear they'll be trained on the same dogshit qualitative cartoon literature and it will be largely impossible for them to make the kind of progress singularitarians imagine.




What do people think about the idea of longevity escape velocity happening in our lifetimes? (I’m 32)




Very bearish, for reasons I've outlined before and don't really have time to get into now. If you want the redux:


    

  1. 

    Look at Calico. Launched in 2013, raised 2.5 billion, and here's their pipeline. If you aren't used to looking at drug pipelines, theirs is pathetic for the age and funding of the company and...nothing is related to aging?
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Aubrey de Grey is a hack. The internal research program at his institute was absolute garbage, and whenever he claimed credit for a significant paper it was because they gave grants to some traditional academic labs.
    

    3. 

  3. 

    The vast majority of the drugs right now are small molecules or biologics (mostly antibodies) inhibiting single genes. Maybe you'll find something that can modestly extend lifespan, but aging is complex and poorly understood so the odds of something significant coming out of this approach is unlikely. But it will nevertheless be where most of the money goes.
    

    4. 



Books like this seem more promising to me, but have plenty of problems of their own to overcome.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Indeed - we'll save our culture from the pajeets by subsuming ourselves to the American system. Which, going by the experience of Puerto Rico and DC, won't even give us representation in congress because Canadians would probably vote democrat. Not to mention Quebec would secede about 5 minutes after the plan was floated.


But I guess SF could hoover up talent from McMaster more easily.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No they won't.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm aware of the temporary workers. I don't think they return. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I doubt I will.




I have no idea what will happen, but is your position based on anything beyond vibes? Do you live in Canada, or spend a lot of time there? Why do you believe the things that you do?


This article claims that only one in three that have arrived since 2010 have received permanent residency. There seem to be a number of articles claiming that 1.2 million visas are set to expire in 2025; how many will actually leave versus try to claim refugee status or just stay illegally, I don't know.




And, yes, the trendline was there pre-Trudeau. As I mentioned, Conservatives went along for the ride because they too believed the myth that migration was good for the economy. I believed it too! They were wrong. I was wrong.




So...why is it Trudeau's legacy? Are you saying that it will be because people never bothered to put the least amount of effort into researching the topic, and will just say liberals bad? Are you saying he deserves it? But then, according to you, it's your legacy as well as the last 30-40 years of Canadian politicians as well? At that point, it seems nonsensical to pin this on the scapegoat du jour for continuing the status quo.


I don't follow Canadian politics in any meaningful way, and I don't have real contacts with anyone on the ground. From what I can tell, Trudeau wrecked his legacy with scandals, stupidity and bad luck. But come on, your initial take was absurd and poorly researched, no?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Trudeau's nearly 10 year reign witnessed the largest transformation in Canadian history since European settlement: the replacement of a largely European population with a multicultural blend of cultures from around the world.




Prior to Trudeau, Stephen Harper was Prime minister for 9 years. There's pretty much an unbroken trendline that started in the 90s between Chretien/Martin/Harper's time in office and Trudeau's in terms of the proportion of the population that are immigrants. Ditto for the fraction of 'visible minorities'. The graphs like this one, which I imagine gets spread in your circles, conflate temporary workers with immigrants. After COVID, the government panicked due to inflation and a labor shortage a brought in a bunch of temporary workers before clamping down on it late last year and announcing reductions in immigration over the next few years.


Am I missing something? Do you have any data showing that Trudeau was significantly different from Harper, Martin or any of his other predecessors in recent history?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And the flip side of this is that as soon as a worker is negative EV or whatever the appropriate metric is, they're liable to be laid off. This is just the equilibrium where neither party can trust the other and there is at will employment. I imagine economists like it and would say that the employee who moves and gets a raise or a company laying off unproductive workers is more efficient, and what do I know, maybe they're right.


I was chatting with a Japanese employee of a large company with offices in both Japan and the US. He says that rather than layoffs, they get put on 'career improvement plans.' In his case, it involved completely retraining his specialty and moving his family to the US, but he kept his job and stayed at the same company. We could probably have this situation if we wanted, but I'm unsure it's actually superior.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Neurological science is the better way to get at the human mind, not woo.




Hoo boy, do I have some bad news for you.


Molecular biology works fine for messing around with neurons in a tissue culture dish, but it provides remarkably little insight into a complex system like the brain. It's good for saying if I knock this gene out we lose action potentials, therefore this gene is at least required for that process (how it fits in with the 1000s of other genes involved in that process? Often much less clear).


Anytime you zoom out to a broader systems-level view, or anytime you disconnect your work from some ground truth we're inevitably left with woo. If it weren't for clinical trials enforcing some measure of 'woo' colliding with reality, probably the entirety of the life sciences wouldn't be that far off from phrenology-level fMRI experiments.


Anyways. Sure, the social sciences are a waste of time from a scientific standpoint. I'd argue they have other uses, but that's a bit beside my point - the majority of research in the life sciences as a whole is largely subjective bullshit. It's always a shock to fresh students coming in how arbitrary and ineffective a lot of what we do is when they're used to textbooks having all the answers and making science out to be some dispassionate, objective endeavor.