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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
User ID: 896


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

					4 followers  

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 896


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You can do purity spirals in a 2D framework as well. There was a presentation at a Libertarian Party event (I think by David Brin) that spoofed this by showing a mockup of the WSPQ version of the Nolan Chart (unlike Political Compass, Nolan oriented the chart like a diamond with libertarians at the top) with a tiny triangle labelled "Libertarian" in the top corner and the rest of the chart market "dirty fucking commie" - this accurately describes a certain tendency within libertarianism.


It goes without saying that you can do pragmatic big-tent coalition politics in a 1D framework as well. RINOs, DINOs, Blairites etc. earn a good living doing so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What economic-left policies does Caplan support? Let alone ones that would put him in the "far corner".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Taking money from the enemy crosses a line that stanning them for free does not. Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw are the key precedents.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is particularly silly given "Trump ironically asked Iran to blow up San Diego and the MAGA crowd cheered rather than laughing" also works as a base-mobilisation message for the Democrats, and may even be true.


So does "Trump is so senile that he accidentally asked Iran to blow up San Diego on live TV and nobody in Red America seems to think there is anything wrong with this."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The organisational "bullshit" is what maintains a causal connection between what the end user wants and what your code does. The big idea of the Torvalds/Raymond side of the open source movement is that when hackers work for themselves or each other they can cut 90% of it out. That gets you Linux. Cutting 100% of it out gets you GNU Hurd, so be careful.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If he has violated sanctions, you have grounds to toss him based on laws passed by Congress even without a declaration of war. I would assume that doing a paid endorsement for a sanctioned entity would be a crime, but I'm not an expert on technical sanctions law.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If someone told be Solanas was a Baathist, I would believe them. I do not think she would have called her work of Baathist apologia the SCUD Manifesto though. From the point of a Western useful idiot, that would be a phallogocentric take on what Baathism was really about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In hard patriarchal societies like ancient Greece or modern India, there isn't one because women are never considered full adults. In soft patriarchal societies like ancient Rome or medieval Europe, when her first husband dies - the only women who enjoyed what men would consider full adult freedom were widows.


That said, peasant class women in premodern societies enjoyed far more rights de facto than they were supposed to do de jure because their work (i.e. textiles) was just as essential as men's.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Do you know what fraction of converts are single, or what the gender ratio is? If you are losing young single men and attracting larger numbers of converts by converting whole families (this is what the LDS Church's propaganda suggests), or a female-skewed group of singles (as the early Mormons did, hence the polygamy), it doesn't affect my argument about gender ratios.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


He completely failed at imparting his ideology on his own son,




Commodus was the first of the Nerva-Antonine emperors to succeed his biological father. Up to that point the emperors managed succession by adopting known-suitable heirs. I don't think "raise any son to be a potential Good Emperor" was possible, or widely believed to be possible at the time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Multiple sources are saying that the index case was a worker at a lab known to have stocks of plague bacteria. So as close to smoking gun evidence of a lab leak as you are going to get in an authoritarian country.


Pneumonic plague is a rare natural variant of bubonic plague caused by the same Y pestis bacterium - I see no evidence that the variant we are seeing has been the subject of gain of function research (or that it wasn't, but a leak of unmodified plague is more likely even if some of the work being done at the Irkutsk lab was GoF). Weaponisation research on plague could include aerosolising (non-GoFed) plague bacteria in a way which would consistently generate the (more deadly and more transmissible) pneumonic form - a lab leak outbreak where the index case was pneumonic would be strong circumstantial evidence that this was happening.


To do weaponisation research on GoFed Y pestis (as opposed to doing the GoF work and the weaponisation work separately) would be an act of such monumental stupidity that I don't expect even the Russians to do it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was joking a bit about Thatcher - I think that counts as a non-literal usage. But I think expressions like "be a man", "man up", "turning boys into men" etc. and compounds including "manly" and "manliness" are using sense 2 literally.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There was also the alternative definition of a gentleman, namely a man with sufficient wealth from acceptable sources (primarily land and government bonds) that he could enjoy an upper-middle-class standard of living without working or being actively involved in the management of a nonfarm business. In Tudor through to early Victorian England, demonstrating that you possessed this level of wealth would (eventually) lead to you being recognised as a gentleman and your children as being born into a gentry family. The old gentry families never really succeeded in pushing back on this (did they even try? - I'm not sure) and "gentry are armigerous" didn't help because the heralds needed money and would happily sell a coat of arms to anyone vaguely suitable who could afford one. Burke's landed gentry used land and office holding as inclusion criteria, not antiquity.


A key difference between the British class system and the pre-French Revolution continental European class system, was that the British considered the gentry to be a non-noble class, so we tended to adopt the wealth-based definition. Whereas the analogous class in continental Europe was the untitled nobility, and was supposed to be a closed-blood class, or at least one where entry required spectacular battlefield achievement recognised by the Crown and could not be bought. A gentilhomme had to be a legal noble, although not necessarily rich (younger sons inherited noble status and privileges, but not the family estates).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Or even simpler, man.


The word man has, since time immemorial, had three meanings, with "adult human male" the least salient. And now it technically has a fourth trans-inclusive meaning.


    

  1. Person, assumed male because patriarchy but in theory inclusive of women. Latin homo. Usage includes "Rights of Man", "Peace and goodwill among men", compounds such as "mankind", "fireman", "chairman" etc.
    2. 

  2. Person displaying the classical masculine virtues (or sometimes by extension capable-of-displaying or expected-to-display). Latin vir. Usage includes "Margaret Thatcher was the last real man in Number 10 Downing Street". (Incidentally, a true statement when given its intended meaning)
    3. 

  3. Adult human male. Usage mostly restricted to toilet designation.
    4. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm not sure we can fairly attribute the SBF shenanigans to Yud.




Very much agreed. Will MacAskill recruited SBF as an EA back when SBF was an undergraduate, long before "EA" moved into AI safety as a cause area. That move was paid for with Dustin Moskovitz's money, not SBF's. And the subnetwork within EA that did FTX was built around Jane Street alumni in NYC, not "rationalists" in Bezerkely.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Remember that 63% betting odds is literally "too close to call" - if 37% of your calls were wrong, you would be bozo-binned for calling elections too early. It is far closer than a 63-37 poll lead.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you for the words "rort" and "wowser" which neither BrE nor AmE has a short synonym for.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Huh, looking him up he is the current president of MIRI




Which is a big deal. MIRI is the most prominent organisation that is explicitly about AI safety and was the original registered-with-the-secretary-of-state organisation in the rationalist ecosystem. The president of MIRI is the most legibly important leader in the "rationalist" and "AI safety" legs of the rat/EA/AI tripos, even if Yud remains the rightful caliph.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd prefer not to. Look up "math pets" if you must.


Seriously, Eliezer is one of the main people responsible for making ubiquitous normie-unfriendly sexuality a core value of the "rationalist" community, and thus indirectly of parts of "effective altruism" and "AI safety". In British English, "naughty boy" can refer either to a boy who is disobedient to adult authority figures (like Brian) or to a grown man caught in an act of sexual immorality (like Yud). I don't know if this is idiomatic in American English.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I read Twelve Rules for Life and found it mildly useful. In the political context of the UK at the time, it was possible to recommend it to mentees in a way that it wasn't with other based/red-pilled/right-coded lifestyle advice. Given that I was happily married and professionally successful at the time Peterson went mainstream, I wasn't in the market for a full-on lifestyle guru relationship. But for young people who are looking for a secularish lifestyle guru, Peterson was one of the better options out there.


Even if you don't think the drugs shot Peterson's credibility, they definitely shot his workrate. You have to be prolific to survive in the online lifestyle guru industry.


I think the world would be a mildly better place if Peterson had not got addicted to benzos.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Western European governments have been doing exactly the same things (i.e. too little, too late from a right-populist perspective) over roughly the same timescale. I'm most familiar with the UK, because I live there, and there isn't anyone with a megaphone and an incentive to shout about how small boat immigration is about 50% off the peak or that a brown muslim Labour home secretary has closed the loopholes and abuses that enabled the Boriswave, but I suspect we have made more progress on reducing unwanted immigration than Russia has.


If you accept the far-right paradigm that %white is a key figure of merit for European and Europe-derived societies (or %white British for the UK specifically), then this doesn't matter because that number is still going down and slightly reducing the negative first derivative doesn't change the big picture. And in any case neither the far right nor the centre-right would want to make a Labour government look good. And the pro-establishment centre-left is constitutionally incapable of pointing out good news on unwanted immigration because they are too afraid of being called racist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Jordan Peterson didn't lose relevancy because of the benzos,




From my personal perspective, Jordan Peterson absolutely did lose relevancy because of the benzos. The core of Petersonism as I understood it was "if you act with agency and responsibility in your personal life, honour your tribe's gods, and display slightly more classical masculine virtue than that is normal for your society, you will be the big lobster." Big lobsters do not get themselves addicted to benzos.


I assume I am not alone in this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I hope we can all agree that Eliezer Yudkowsky is not the Messiah; he's a very naughty boy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do not think "black people have lower IQ on average than white people" would land anyone in jail in the UK. In the unlikely event that the police took an interest, the normal life cycle of an "arrested for poasting offensive meme" case is that the police ask the poaster to make arrangements for them to be arrested, booked, and promptly bailed at a mutually convenient time, after which the end result is either charges dropped or a three-digit fine. The cases with multi-month jail sentences for social media posts involved posts which incited specific crimes at specific times and places.


In general, in countries with unfair dismissal protection in the workplace you can't be dismissed for committing a crime unless either the crime or the punishment (jail time, driving ban etc.) is relevant to your ability to do your job.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The basic point you are making is correct - the UK has very weak protections against criminal punishment of speech. But the "12,000 people arrested a year for tweets" statistic is misleading because the Malicious Communications Act covers threats, harassment, cyberstalking etc. as well as mere offensiveness. Based on online and published accounts of day-to-day police work by ex-cops, the vast majority of MCA arrests happen when chavs (or chavettes) make non-credible threats of violence against each other on social media and their parents demand a police response.


I agree with you that c.200 people arrested annually for merely offensive social media posts (which is closer to the real number) is not good and the appropriate number is zero.