OliveTapenade
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User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
21hr ago
I think it will depend on where you are in Australia, but there are places where that's already close to the case. I work in one of the most heavily Asian regions of Melbourne and it... well, doesn't quite look like Hong Kong, but it's in the ballpark. My workplace is over 50% East Asian, with the rest including some South Asians, a small coterie of Anglo-Australians (incl. myself), and a handful of others. The clients we serve are around 50% European and 50% East Asian. My particular field may be skewed a bit, because it's mostly medical staff and we import a lot of doctors and nurses from Asia, so take this as the most extreme case, but it does happen.
There are lots of places, particularly in regional Australia, where it's basically 100% white, but there are others where I think we are visibly a hybrid Western European/East Asian country.
And, well... I'm actually pretty okay with that? I've developed a lot of affection for East Asian countries over the years - China, Korea, Japan. If the old White Australia is going to be hybridised with another culture, I'm glad it's them.
We actually still get a large number of British migrants as well. In 2023-24, the top five countries of origin were India, China, Australia (i.e. returning migration), the UK, and New Zealand. It's still relatively common for British people who want to move to consider Australia.
OliveTapenade
21hr ago
We have strict maritime borders and a skills-based immigration system that prioritises qualified workers. Unlike most Western nations, our immigration, though high, is also selective.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
I've actually seen this more with female/female couples in the media - I'll see them reported as talking about "our child" or "having a child with [my female partner]" and so on, and every time I wonder to myself, "That's not actually possible. I wonder who the actual parents are?" A child, after all, is not something willed into existence by a couple, but something that comes into being through a very particular bodily action.
What are the long-term consequences of separating out our claims of identification or relationship with children from the bodily, material context of those children? Are we cleaving matter from spirit more than we should?
OliveTapenade
14d ago
My first question about that tweet, actually, is who wrote it.
Perhaps this is just guessing too much based on a vibe, but it doesn't look like Trump. That isn't how Trump expresses himself. He's not that laconic, and it doesn't have any of the obvious signs of Trump, like the capitalised words, the hyperbole, or even the insults.
Is this Trump, or is this some executive staffer with access to his Twitter? Whose thought is this? This sounds like the conclusion of someone dwelling on political philosophy - it's roughly the same thought as "the constitution is not a suicide pact", which I've heard from every side of politics before. This kind of reflection on the meaning of politics and the legitimate exercise of political power is not something I've really seen from Trump himself before either.
What makes you think Victoria wasn't really Prince Edward's daughter?
OliveTapenade
20d ago
Yep, that's what I was going for. It's possible I've expressed myself poorly, but the point I wanted to make was to separate out the FAA issue itself from one's judgement of its author.
OliveTapenade
20d ago
EDIT: according to @ahobata, he wasn't even the first to report on this, and one the Internet's infamous noticers beat him to it by a month. So can you explain to me, why is this case supposed to be so embarrassing to the anti-woke?
I don't believe I said anything about the anti-woke as a general category? Honestly, I think that if you're Chris Rufo or James Lindsay, the best response to TW's FAA story is to just applaud. Just say, "Yes, this is what we're talking about."
That's nice, but tell, if more people listened to him during the elections, would there be anything being done against the DEI issue?
I am sure that if Kamala Harris were president right now, there would still be lots of people doing anti-DEI advocacy, and TW would no doubt be among them. I do not believe that he would have changed his mind about or refused to engage in the FAA reporting if Harris were president.
I disagree, he very clearly is a partisan in the sense that he'll argue to vote for the Democrats over a Republican that's actually active on the culture war front, regardless of how much he will chastise the Democrats for not doing what he wants.
That just sounds to me like you think it's partisan to cast a vote at all. Yes, he voted for a candidate that he hated but considered on balance less bad than the other one. But that's what most people do. I would say that a 'partisan' for a particular party or candidate is someone who spends significant time or effort boosting that party or candidate - and since TW has spent much more criticising the Democrats or Harris than boosting them, I don't consider him a partisan for them. I think he just made the decision that, in a presidential election, which is ultimately a binary choice, he found them less bad than the alternative.
Again, I disagree. You can't beat me over the head with "TW was right" if he effectively wanted to convince people to have the issue continue.
I think the fact that he was actively and effectively working to expose and address the issue undermines your point here. You don't need to vote for Donald Trump to oppose DEI. It is possible to take the position, "DEI is bad, Harris' support for DEI is bad, but on balance Harris is less bad than Trump, so I will vote for Harris while continuing to advocate against DEI".
Trump voters can make the exact same move - such-and-such policy is bad, Trump supports the bad policy, but I think that on balance Trump is less bad than Harris, so I will vote for Trump and continue to advocate against the bad policy. You do not have to agree with a candidate on every single issue to judge that candidate preferable at the ballot box.
This was actually an example in Scott's 'Varieties of Argumentative Experience', under the 'Single Facts' heading.
If it's not about praising him, can you explain to me why the sentence "TracingWoodgrains was right" is so important to you?
What I'm saying is that in a context where so many responses to TW's FAA reporting and advocacy are attempts to deflect, to either minimise the issue or to ad hominem the man himself, it is worth the firm reminder that what he has said about the FAA's hiring procedures is true.
The top-level post that I was responding to was about liberals who try to minimise the story or attack TW for giving cover to the (ex hypothesi bad and fascist) Trump administration; and I was reading lots of comments here criticising TW for being a centrist Democrat who continues to believe that Trump is bad. I was saying that in the context of all these "who? whom?" arguments, it is worth allowing all of ourselves the sober reminder that what he said was both true and normatively right. That's the ball that we should keep our eyes on.
OliveTapenade
20d ago
Like I said, I'm not interested in making this a referendum on his character. You don't have to accept anything he says on any other subject. That's your own lookout. What I'm saying is that in a context where so many responses to TW's FAA reporting and advocacy are attempts to deflect, to either minimise the issue or to ad hominem the man himself, it is worth the firm reminder that what he has said about the FAA's hiring procedures is true.
OliveTapenade
20d ago
Presumably the difference would be that the state invests a lot of effort in disincentivising smoking, alcoholism, and obesity. All of those are understood to be important public health issues and the state does what it can to discourage them. There aren't anti-promiscuity campaigns on the same order as anti-smoking campaigns.
One might argue that there are state sexual health campaigns, so safe sex is analogous to moderate drinking, if that counts?
OliveTapenade
21d ago
As I said, it doesn't matter whether you like him or not. Nor do I care whether or not you praise him. The merits of TW as an individual are beside the point. The point is the issue itself.
I submit that TW is right about the issue, and that he has done a better job of bringing this particular issue to the public attention than anybody on the Motte, much less James Lindsay or Chris Rufo. Rufo has probably been more effective as an anti-woke activist in general, but on the FAA hirings scandal specifically - movement there is because of TW. He notes this himself.
And yes, he voted for Harris. He voted for Harris while publicly and passionately expressing his dissatisfaction with her, and after the election, he went on to continue to explain his problems with her, and what he thinks the Democrats ought to do, which means that I think this portrayal of him as some kind of bootlicking Democrat partisan is absurd. He made a judgement that, as much as he disliked Harris, he found her on balance the less-bad candidate that Donald Trump. If you want to blame him for literally everying that Harris or her political faction ever advocated for, then by the same logic we must blame every Trump voter for literally everything that Trump or his political faction ever advocated for. That is a lunatic standard to hold any voter to.
And even so, it is irrelevant, because whatever you think of TW's choice in the 2024 election, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the FAA hiring scandal or his activism thereabouts.
On the issue - he is right. You don't have to praise him. You don't have to like him. But he is right about the FAA.
OliveTapenade
21d ago
Well said. I might borrow 'the tyrannies of unreason' - that's an excellent phrase.
OliveTapenade
21d ago
I'm not sure I have a whole lot to say here beyond, "TracingWoodgrains is just right."
He's just right! There's no way to justify a norm like "never criticise bad things if my side is responsible". That's unironically the sort of logic that gets you the Great Leap Forward, where lower-ranking officials are afraid to report anything that goes against the narrative preferred by the higher-ups, and the result is always disastrous.
Set aside what you think about him as a person. On the specific issue here, he is just unambiguously correct.
The fact that people whose brains have been eaten by partisanship and culture war are unable to see that, whether that be lefties who have to deny and distract and minimise the scandal because it's going to be a win for the right, or whether it be righties who cannot possibly grant that a hated outsider did a better job of identifying and advocating for an issue that should have been an easy win for them, is really their own problem.
TracingWoodgrains is right.
Everything else is distraction.
OliveTapenade
21d ago
It seems to me that support for a candidate can be more nuanced than either 100 or 0. If you're a right-wing Trump voter, a centrist Democrat like TW is clearly closer to you on many issues than a far-left socialist. Singling out the people who are most likely to listen to you or support you on some issues seems unproductive to me. In all ways other than the simple vote, which can only express one end of a binary, TW is working to drag the Democrats as far towards the centre as possible. I'd say the most productive thing to do is take Trump's win and try to use it as an opportunity to attract swayable centrists and increase the strength of the coalition.
OliveTapenade
21d ago
That's a very subjective call - I would say that RTwP was the central mechanical pillar of Baldur's Gate, so making a BG game without it feels like missing something essential. At any rate, I massively prefer RTwP to pure turn-based, and I feel RTwP better represents the flow of actual gameplay in tabletop D&D (where you do actually speed up, slow down, skip or rush at times, and then go moment by moment when it matters). It was therefore a design choice that both suggested to me firstly that BGIII isn't very interested in imitating its predecessors, and secondly that it not be to my tastes.
As to sex... certainly Ed Greenwood was a dirty old man, and always has been. (I have no idea what you're referencing with canon, though I would not be surprised if Greenwood has gone on to say free-love things on the internet. For however much you think that's worth.) However, Greenwood was never the only person who worked on Forgotten Realms, and in particular Baldur's Gate comes out of 90s, TSR-era AD&D, which had deliberately put more emphasis on narrative, worldbuilding, and indeed morality. That was the peak of the Paladins & Princesses era of D&D, and it showed.
OliveTapenade
21d ago
It's not even the presence of snark by itself - BG1 and BG2 contain plenty of jokes. There are also plenty of characters who use casual language. This page over-selects for comedy, but even so, there is a lot of casual silliness. Lines like, "For someone who supposedly has her soul tainted by the evil of a dead god, you remind me considerably of a chipmunk with a sugar high and a death wish" easily fit that kind of Reddit or Twitter-informed search for a perfect one-liner.
Even so, I think you can still tell that the writing culture of 1998 or 2000 was very different to that of 2023. I think for me a lot of it is worldbuilding as well? One of BG2's advantages was that it is substantially based on the 1997 boxed set Lands of Intrigue, and that set had quite good writing and a level of detail and verisimilitude that the game could make use of.
I also wonder if it was the intended audience as well? Not to go full GamerGate, but in 1998 and 2000, the hold of progressive ideology over the American video game industry was not yet complete, and I feel like there was at least the aspiration still to make games for a wide audience, and one less politically polarised than today.
OliveTapenade
21d ago
He voted for Harris while loudly and publicly expressing his dissatisfaction with Harris and trying with all his might to drag the Democrats towards the centre. Personally I find his denunciation of Harris considerably more brutal than that of most people on the right - there is a deep bitterness there.
I think that ought to contextualise any reading of TW as defender of woke politics or far-left Democrats.
OliveTapenade
21d ago
I've avoided BG3 myself, despite being a massive fan of BG1 and BG2. The shift from RTwP to pure turn-based is huge, and as far as I can tell BG3 is a 5e game, not an AD&D2e game - and I mean that in terms of atmosphere, themes, and writing style, not just mechanics.
And as far as I can tell, yep, BG3 is pretty woke. I remember when the jokes/memes about sex with a bear were going around, but beyond that, it strikes me as very much a post-Critical-Role type of D&D, focused on misfit characters and with a lot of snark. It just does not look like Baldur's Gate to me, in any way, and to be honest I rather resent the fact that it claims the title.
OliveTapenade
23d ago
Okay, so you're a single issue voter on trans education for kids?
Um, well, then I guess I'd suggest that firstly you take the win you've just had, secondly avail yourself of the many options there are available in America to avoid any risk of trans education for kids (there are private schools, religious schools, home-schooling, etc.), and thirdly get involved civically to advocate for your views, like going to PTA meetings, running for school boards, and so on.
You will notice that none of that has anything whatsoever to do with TracingWoodgrains, and also that nothing TW has said or done prevents you from doing it. He's not collateral damage here. There's no need to single him out. The last I checked he was endorsing the Enlightened Centrist Manifesto on trans issues, and that manifesto is deliberately a fair distance away from the woke dogmatists you're criticising. But TW's work isn't even about trans. As he himself admits, he rarely talks about them. His big project for a while has been the FAA hiring scandal, and that sounds like an issue where you'd probably be on the same side. So why bother hating somebody who is more likely to be your ally?
Moreover, this whole discussion was about liberalism as a social order, and actually nothing you've said touches on that. You are wholly free to advocate against kids being exposed to anything trans, and to send your kids to wholly trans-free educational institutions. You have those rights under liberalism. You might not have them under an illiberal system. So it seems as if you've attacked the wrong target here.
You can be opposed to trans stuff around kids. I agree with that, actually! I wouldn't want my kids to see any of that! But I don't see how that gets you to either singling out TW, or attacking liberalism.
OliveTapenade
23d ago
It looks to me like you suggested that liberalism was just a "stalking horse" used to destroy society. Oats asked the question - if liberalism goes away, what happens to people like me, or TracingWoodgrains?
At that point you then replied with "I don't care what happens to a gay furry".
But the question was about what happens to people like Oats, or people like you. You can be apathetic towards TW, but he was never the central point. The point was your future. You want to work on a project of supporting your family's future? That's the point.
I mean, obviously TW's project or Oats' project isn't to destroy your family. I very much doubt they care. But the question about whether destroying liberalism will be better or worse for you and your family is a valid one, and no amount of yelling boo furries addresses that. Here's what Oats said:
This problem extends a lot farther than Trace, obviously. Do you think China fosters the type of environment that makes this type of forum possible? For how niche it is, for how many types of people post here, for how many ideas can be represented here, this website itself and everyone in it is a product of liberalism. Do you care what happens to it? Do you care what happens to everyone who uses it? Do you care what happens to yourself?
It's all very well and good to rant about liberalism, but it seems like many of the things you value, including your ability to express yourself right now, are products of liberalism. Remove liberalism, and maybe all that goes away. What's your alternative?
OliveTapenade
23d ago
Is this just 'gay furry' as thought-terminating cliché? Heck, why do you keep bringing him at all? Why does TracingWoodgrains live rent-free in your head? He was brought up by someone else a few posts up as an example of someone who, whether you like his hobbies or not, has a place in the body politic, and oats then clarified that his point is to do with oddballs and dissenters of all kinds.
The point is not about TracingWoodgrains specifically, or about homosexuality, or about people who like to wear silly fox costumes, and cannot be addressed by going "lol I hate that guy". Oats' point terminated in the question, "Do you care what happens to yourself?"
Maybe you hope for a world in which the hammer of state power comes down on TracingWoodgrains and not on yourself, but that sure sounds like an awfully precise hammer - the type that squishes one specific type of online oddball but not any other type. How sure are you that a world that crushes one guy who posts spicy takes on obscure online discussion forums isn't going to crush another guy who posts spicy takes on obscure online discussion forums?
This conversation started out being about liberalism, not empathy. Whether you like so-and-so isn't really the point. But you're using "screw the gay furry" as an evasion. The point is - okay, sure, you can reject liberalism. You can reject the social compact that allows everyone from you to furries to coexist and even have their own discussion spaces like this. But if you reject it you open the door to a lot of boots stomping on a lot of faces, and maybe you shouldn't be so confident that the boots aren't going to be stomping on you.
If nothing else, your views seem significantly more repulsive to random normies than those of gays or furries or, heaven forbid, gay furries. Maybe a little caution is called for.
OliveTapenade
24d ago
I'd argue that by the standards of 1914, Germany was a relatively liberal power.
I'm actually not all that convinced that the deck was as stacked as you think - it's a mistake to just look at a map and assume that the amount of colour on the map is directly proportional to military power. Germany didn't have a huge colonial empire, but it was a large, rapidly industrialising European power with a lot of human capital, which had also militarily embarrassed France relatively recently in the 1870s. I don't look at French West Africa and therefore assume that metropolitan France should have had an insurmountable military advantage over Germany, its larger and more populous neighbour, with access to the same technological base.
But at any rate, let's grant that Germany overperformed in WWI and WWII. Is that enough to conclude that liberal states militarily underperform? That seems like a lot to generalise fron a single example, particularly considering that WWI Germany arguably was a liberal state, and that illiberal states (Austria, Russia, the Ottomans) also put in noticeably poor showings. If we grant that Britain and France underperformed, that seems less like liberal states being weaker, and more like... well, everybody underperforming relative to Germany. Maybe Germany just had really good fundamentals, or lucked into a few military geniuses and associated reforms, or something else. My point is that the pattern doesn't seem to be "liberal weak, illiberal/autocratic strong". At best the pattern is "Germany strong".
That is, however, a single example, and I am wary of drawing strong conclusions from single examples. For instance, if we go back a century (plus a half, if you're counting from WWII), we find Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, which was undoubtedly the most liberal country in Europe by a massive margin, and their decades-long overperformance. If you were generalising from the period 1790-1810 or so, where France took on pretty much the entire rest of Europe and kicked them around one by one, you might be tempted to conclude that liberalism is a kind of cheat code to military supremacy.
I'm just not seeing a strong general correlation between a liberal constitution and military underperformance.
OliveTapenade
24d ago
Certainly Germany did very well in WWI, but Germany was also the most liberal of the Central Powers. Austria and the Ottomans both gave middling to poor performances, and on the Entente side, it was the most autocratic power, Russia, that performed worst. This strikes me as a data point against any reactionary theory that autocracies are more militarily capable than liberal states.
Depending on how you count them, you might also count the Russian Revolution and the Turkish war of independence - while neither set of revolutionaries were a liberal dream, both seemed to perform much better on the battlefield than the autocracies they overthrew.
OliveTapenade
24d ago
Trace may be moderate for a democrat but he is a naked partisan for his side, waging the culture war and openly promoting total democrat conquest over the other side. He just believes that the most extreme fringe of his party needs to be reformed in order to achieve this victory.
How is this distinguished from just advocating for his preferred policies and outcomes, exactly the same way as everybody else?
Is there anyone who isn't a partisan for their own side, or promoting total conquest of their own side?
This is broadly correct, yes. Depending on how you count Aboriginals are somewhere between 3 and 4% of the total population, but "how you count" is contentious because generally it's just self-declared, and because Aboriginals get affirmative action in some places, if you have any Aboriginal descent at all you're probably going to tick the box.
So what 'Aboriginal' means depends a lot on the region - there are remote communities that are almost entirely of Aboriginal descent, but Aboriginals you find in the larger cities are likely to be mixed race. There's a media tic you may notice where they will describe Aboriginals as "a proud, X, Y, and Z man/woman", listing all the Aboriginal cultures that person identifies with, and obviously it's just a sliver for each one. Here's one example - "I'm a proud Bardi, Miriwoong, Yamatji, Noongar man". This is the equivalent of me saying, "I'm a proud English, Irish, Scots, French, German, and Swedish man", on the basis that I have some sliver of descent from each of them.
Anyway, because the total number of Aboriginal people is relatively small, and because a large proportion of them are heavily mixed-race, I doubt that, even supposing that primarily-Aboriginal-descended people have 10 or 20 less IQ than others, they skew the figures that much. As far as I'm aware there is an IQ gap, and you may speculate as to the causes as much as you like, but I just don't think there are enough of them for it to be a major factor.
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