SwordOfOccam
No bio...
User ID: 2777
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
Irrational belief systems did not get man to the moon, split the atom, or turn sand into a thinking machine.
Methodological naturalism, science, and engineering is a systematic way of learning and accomplishing new things.
Your metaphysics are stupid if they think word games supersede hard results. Any old superstition can be defended by the clever. “Formally extremely weak” — maybe your philosophical system is what is weak.
Positivism may be wrong, but religion tends to be “not even wrong” as an epistemology. Which is why there are so few positivists and so many religions.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
I’m questioning by what metrics or standards, absolute or relative, you label “US spooks” as “not very good at the moment.”
These things are hard to judge for insiders, let alone outsiders, and typically becomes evident only with the passage of time and significant declassification.
The points you make in A are sufficient to explain why it would almost never make sense for anyone to ever attempt it anyway.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
And that’s what makes the Motte special
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
Sorry didn’t mean to imply you were making Hlynka’s error
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
there’s reasons beyond IQ to explain black underperformance,
Come on man don’t just copy Hlynka here by straw manning the other side. Just because one side has a lot of blank slatism doesn’t mean the other side mirrors it by being strictly biodeterminist. Like height and many other traits, genes and environment matter.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
Saying clear facts outright, which may be controversial, negative, or inherently “disrespectful,” is a lot different than “boo outgroup” using inflammatory language.
For example, saying “there’s a racial achievement gap” used to be uncontroversial as an empirical fact, and it was only controversial to bring up certain forms of causation. In more recent years there have been cases where even mentioning the fact of, which is indisputable, got somebody fired. See also: Damore and differences between sexes.
All of this is to say that you have a lot of gall for criticizing those here who try to discuss distasteful facts with decorum, given how basically everywhere else on the internet works (either censorship or cesspool).
The mods forcing consistent decorum even for those where it’s thinly papering over antipathy is a pretty fucking important norm to preserve even for the actual Nazi defenders around here, among others.
So please don’t cry that you have to work a little to hold in your contempt for your outgroup(s) here because that’s how it is for most of us on any given issue. (I’ll grant that you are playing on hard mode relative to the average poster here.)
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
I enjoyed poking at his cognitive dissonance and the internal inconsistencies of his worldview.
He was wrong but in pretty unique ways.
I personally wasn’t overly offended by his rule breaking, but it does seem his response to my comment is what led to the ban.
Ironically, he was fairly justified in being peeved at me there for my demonstrated ignorance (though he’d be on firmer ground if he hadn’t been constantly avoiding questions and misrepresenting many of us).
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
I may be misreading him but I took this as pointing out Christian philosemitism is much larger than Christian antisemitism in modern times.
So it’s not really “bizarre” because he was matching the framing of the previous comment to say “shame most Christians disagree with your views.”
Though I guess it’s unavoidably culture warring in that responding in kind to a comment blatantly breaking the rules is still going to break the rules. But it didn’t strike me as over the top, so I would think this was more of a warning situation (unless you have other violations as a pattern).
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
People getting things wrong in good faith is one thing.
Blatantly disregarding clarification is an order.
There’s still enough diversify of thought here that any given stance is going to risk an inferential gap with someone, and consistently striving to pass an ITT is the best we can do.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
So a mistake I was making based on my exposure to the anti-woke sentiments I’ve read in the US is that the term “Identitarian” was specifically left-coded, which is apparently not the case, as the term originated to describes European right-wingers.
A lot of posters here in recent HBD arguments explicitly claimed to support race-blind individualism, which would not make them Identitarian, but I’m not sure what the breakdown is.
I am aware a group of posters here are implicitly or explicitly right-wing Identitarians, though I was not seeing that being particularly relevant to the arguments being made about the descriptive factuality of intellectual differences between populations having a genetic component.
Hlynka apparently caught a ban because I drove him to incivility, but his constant labeling of those who think there is truth to HBD/race realism/hereditarianism as Identitarian in arguments with those of us who reject that stance was annoying.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
Most of us HBD types here are not neo-Nazis as far as I can tell.
Moreover, the term “Identitarian” typically refers to left-coded ideas, even if we accept horseshoe theory is real. (Edit: seems I’m wrong about that actually in a global context.)
Brave of you to accuse me of being a troll here.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
I spent 15 years in the Deep State and I assure you that the US IC did a lot more in the Cold War than you’ve pointed out here. For HUMINT in particular, a lot of the evidence remains classified.
The Soviets were good, the West was a more permissive environment, and communist ideology motivated many. The penetration of the Manhattan Project is perhaps the most successful intelligence operation ever, given the stakes.
But HUMINT is not the only game in town.
Like you mention VENONA, but never any other agency than the CIA.
Overall I think you'd really struggle to make an argument that the US accomplished more of its intelligence goals than the USSR.
I mean the USSR is no more, the US and its allies clearly outclassed the Soviets in nearly every arena, and now Russia is a shadow of its former self in its ability to dominate its region, and people constantly theorize that the CIA turned Russia’s neighbors towards the West.
So I think you have it exactly backwards.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
I assure you that in the IC some significant screw ups, eg 9/11, Iraq WMDs, and Snowden, did lead to significant changes in my previous job. Some of them were good, even.
You can argue those changes were insufficient, bad, or counterproductive, but they happened, and they were substantial at least in the sense that they caused real changes in day-to-day operations.
I fully agree about diffused responsibility and that demonstrated incompetence is not sufficiently punished, which is a major reason I switched careers. But outright malfeasance is typically dealt with.
Leaders who are associated with screw ups tend to have their career progress cut off, but that’s an organizational politics situation.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
Religion is silly compared to positivism.
The way you can tell is that almost no on identifies as such after philosophers took a hammer to it for logical inconsistencies. And yet so many religions continue on, resolute in their beliefs that contradict what we know about reality.
Religion is way more wrong than logical positivism. Several orders of magnitude more wrong, both regarding the level of claim made relative to evidence, and the fact positivism was hoisted on its own petard and actually died off.
Religion gets a privileged position because it’s normal and people have strong emotional attachments to it. The evidence is laughably weak or nonexistent, and many religions practice a kind of epistemology that is directly opposed to reason and science. Apologists can’t prove skeptics (or competing religions) wrong by producing strong evidence, so they play philosophical special pleading games and hide their gods in the gaps and “non overlapping magisterial” as secular knowledge expands.
The fact that religions themselves can’t agree on core ideas and prove their case to other religions, let alone to militant atheists and fundamentalist skeptics, remains telling. The “there there” is humans on average prioritize emotion over reason and religions have developed to exploit that fact, while providing some adaptive (at least historically) benefits.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
The existence of mystery should not excuse holding beliefs without sufficient evidence, is a basic point of reason.
The most humble ontological view is perhaps one that assumes no deity, or anything else, without sufficient evidence.
So much of classical philosophy is simply special pleading and god of the gaps.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
but the pain teaches us, and God has also unjustly granted us countless joys to pad life out and outweigh even the worst of our pains.
Who is “us” here exactly?
Countless humans and sentient creatures have not been granted “countless joys” to outweigh their suffering. Your theology deals with this moral inequity by saying god will make up for it in the afterlife.
Only problem there is the lack of evidence for said afterlife.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
With what framework do you establish your deontological rules? How are you smart enough to establish them?
The optimal level of asshole leadership is very far from zero, but workers tend to only tolerate it willingly when there’s a cult of personality.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
Consequentialism does not demand ignoring intent, because intent is frequently important and not treating it as such would lead to bad consequences in many cases.
That’s the great thing about consequentialism, when it leads to bad consequences you can adjust it to lead to better ones.
Your own thought experiments bear this out. Moral uncertainty and the fundamental randomness and contingency of future events plague all systems.
Rule utilitarianism, or something like Cowen’s “economic growth plus human rights”, attempt to strike a balance between baseline rules and considering the effects of any given act. The US constitution sets forth rules, limitations, and rights in a framework of promoting the general welfare, directly in line with rule utilitarianism.
If your god inspired the US constitution, he’s clearly a fan of rule utilitarianism.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
You gotta admit it’s a hilarious arc for a forum spun off from an atheist blog spun off from another atheist and explicitly antitheist blog to become a safe haven for the devout.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
The rationalist project has failed because it refused to engage with human greed, selfishness, and delusion.
What on earth are you talking about? Have you even browsed the Sequences?
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
Many atheists are delusional.
“Atheism” is a weak label in that all it means is a lack of theistic belief. Plenty of people who lack theistic beliefs hold delusional beliefs.
Famously, Marxism was atheistic and antitheistic, and I think it is commonly believed here that Marxists were/are delusional about economics, among other things.
The atheists who supported injecting progressive politics into the movement to create “Atheism+” were delusional in my view, and many remain so in their beliefs that diverge from the actual science, say evolutionary psychology and gender differences (which is super ironic given how much we all love to criticize the religious for not accepting evolution).
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
Can you point to anyone on the Motte who is an Identitarian?
I’m not seeing anyone making Identitarian arguments regarding the HBD debate.
The reason HBD/race realists/hereditarians tend to bring up Ashkenazi Jews is because they are a clearly defined population with the highest recorded average IQ, and a massive track record of success in many fields, from science to business to Hollywood and more. Of course, that track record of high achievement began before standardized testing became prevalent in modern times.
It’s not a coincidence academia had to discriminate against Jews and East Asians in admissions.
This, naturally, puts HBD at odds with antisemitism and white supremacy, because it’s a non-conspiratorial explanation for why so many antisemites get fixated on Jews being so successful.
Of course, if you actually understood the arguments provided by posters here such that you could pass an ITT, you’d already know that and wouldn’t have to resort to lazy psychological theorizing where you try to pretend we are Identitarians.
You mark a lot of well-established scientific findings regarding IQ as questionable, in a way where we cannot even focus on a particular point of disagreement where you get off the ride. It’s a common technique to avoid clarity and precision when the evidence is against you, and you are also tying to obfuscate by constantly and inaccurately trying to lump Identitarians with hereditarians, when they tend to be utterly opposed on the 6 points above (again, regarding descriptive claims).
The ironic thing is that you’re the one making arguments that directly align with those of progressive left and Identitarians regarding IQ/genetics/race.
You have an incredibly idiosyncratic position here, which is not internally consistent, combined with an inability to directly engage with the points made against it and a tendency to project labels and positions onto your opponents they do not accept, and often directly oppose. This is pointed out by posters who don’t accept HBD.
It’s so incredible I almost believe you’re doing a bit.
For instance, I think I’m generally representative here and I’m a classic liberal strongly opposed to the progressive left’s war on meritocracy via blank slatism. I want a return to the generally race-blind individualism I was taught as a child. I’m extremely philosemetic, which is just one more thing that puts me at odds with today’s left.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
From an intelligence/security POV the US lost the Cold War.
What?
By what standard? According to whom?
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
The observation that fielding substandard troops results in outsized friendly casualties is not revelatory
What predicted the substandard performance?
Why did and does the US military use it as a predictor?
Uneducated Christians: “I don’t believe science when it conflicts with my biblical beliefs.”
Educated Christians: “I don’t believe science when it conflicts with my biblical beliefs as justified by elaborate philosophical arguments.”
More options
Context Copy link