assman
1yr ago
I think part of the reason (which you seem to understand) that people immediately resort to extremely sketchy thinking in culture war debates is that often the debate is really more about inherently unfalsifiable, aesthetic, ethical or metaphysical claims that aren’t arrived at through logic or reason. But trying to argue my personal aesthetic or ethical preferences are the best is very unconvincing to anyone, so these debates turn into the battle of who has more studies they can toss out there to prove their preferences are objectively better for everyone.
Often this turns out to a tennis match of who’s studies are more methodologically flawed or faked or whatever. But I think another part of the problem with Data and Studies is that most people have certain opinions where they think they know what’s good for other people, better than those other people know for themselves. And I think in those cases, how can you possibly use data to change someone’s mind?
You could come up with the most methodologically sound study in the world which proves that everyone is happier when they do XYZ. But if my belief is that, sure, I think those people think they are happier when they do XYZ, but it actually makes everything worse in some difficult to quantify way, then there’s basically no amount of data showing that people are subjectively better off doing XYZ that can convince you otherwise. And I don’t think that’s an irrational position to hold, or the same thing as assuming the conclusion and arguing backwards from there. I think most people feel something close to this about drugs or junk food. But it’s very difficult to argue this convincingly to anyone who doesn’t already agree in some sense, especially in a short debate format and on a topic where it’s near impossible to quantitatively prove the causality for XYZ being a net harm.
assman
1yr ago
Great post. I’d go further and say that even in the Big City the general attitudes and worldview of the tradcon can be applied to daily life, there’s enough self-sorting that within your “Dunbar number” you can mostly interact with great, kind people who are enjoyable to be around regardless of their racial, religious, whatever identity. It’s not necessary to know or care about the average IQ or murder rate of different groups of people at all. But when you are talking about governments they are by necessity only dealing in population-level abstractions when they do anything. The “dissident right” (DR) view is that when you are dealing in population-level abstractions, there are natural differences in the way groups of people who are not genetically similar will behave and perform, ON AVERAGE. So depending on what your society is optimizing for, different groups will have different outcomes on average, and there’s almost nothing that can be done to change this.
So in response to this the government can do what Hylnka and FC and other trad-cons would like, which is pretty much nothing. Don’t discriminate based on immutable characteristics, arrest people if they commit crimes, have a pure meritocracy without thumbs on the scales like affirmative action, and don’t worry about how the race/gender/etc. distributions of doctors or prisoners may end up. Encourage and incentivize strong family values to everyone to give them the best possible chance to give a good life. This is the idealized view of the 90s to a certain extent. I think everyone in the DR would view this as a massive improvement to what we have now.
The problem is in the DR view that this is inherently unstable. People notice how different groups act on average, this creates collateral damage against good people who come from lower-performing groups. People form natural ingroups based not only on shared culture but on shared “superficial” identities like skin color. So, in a democracy, this creates coalitions of people who will advocate for their group’s interests, which by necessity takes the form of legal discrimination, framed negatively as Jim Crow, or framed positively as civil rights laws or affirmative action. I ask the Hylnka’s of the world, what can be done about this? In the progressive view there are all sorts of social engineering projects that aim to fix these problems. I think Hylnka would agree they have only made everything worse. So if you could be handed the keys to a country as multi-cultural as the US is, with a similar form of government and completely race/sex/ethnicity-blind policies, what would you do to prevent it becoming exactly what we have now?
assman
1yr ago
I think they were back then and they are now. The idea is that in the absence of any discrimination at all, and the incredible living standards for even the most poor people, you need to search even lower on the totem pole to find the same kind of resentful people to form the most loyal members of the party.
assman
1yr ago
Are you familiar with Steve Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism?
“The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter looking”
There’s also Spandrell’s Bioleninism thesis which is that basically all of politics boils down to jockeying for status. So socialism is particularly attractive to High-IQ people who are ill-suited to a capitalist society (intellectuals, journalists, other wordcels, etc.). These people can then recruit various types of resentful underclass people (addicts, generally stupid or lazy people, ethnic and sexual minorities, weirdos of all kinds) who, since they have nothing to lose, are much more loyal and politically active than the people who are content with the system as it is. What makes his thesis “Bio”leninism is that in the 19th-20th century, society was less egalitarian and there were people being oppressed who would have otherwise been successful without these barriers which made socialism/communism attractive to a wider group of people than In current year, when all de jure discrimination is gone. Leftists then have to reach further and further into the dregs of society for loyal enforcers to the point where they draw from people who are biologically incapable of succeeding for genetic/HBD or mental illness reasons.
I’m not sure if I agree entirely, and I probably butchered the summary so it’s worth reading the actual blog. I think it does a good job of explaining why the people most loyal to the party (activist types) and enforcers (antifa types) seem to be fat, ugly, crazy, stupid, mentally ill, or some type of sexual minority.
To answer your question, I don’t think that something went wrong in these people’s development, I think most people’s politics are at least in part “taking a position that would benefit you personally, and then using whatever justification is available to explain why it’s necessary for society”, and the people who seem hilariously non self-aware about this are just in a bubble where nobody they respect has ever called them out on this. Didn’t some of the founding fathers have comically self-serving justifications for why slavery is good actually? I think pre-enlightenment societies had plenty of those type of people but most non-nobility had absolutely no ability to influence politics so probably didn’t worry about it too much, and no one with any power cared about the peasant’s political opinions. On a more local level, the scrawny wordcel who is resentful that he was born a peasant farmer’s only option was to become some kind of monk or something, where he can debate the number of angels dancing on a pin and scratch his itch for subversion (or become Martin Luther). What makes the “subversive” types dangerous now is that in a democracy these people as a whole have power, so harnessing their resentment becomes a viable political strategy.
assman
1yr ago
I agree with you that the poll results for the OK to be white thing are actually a pretty accurate reflection of reality, especially because I’ve never seen anything about “it’s okay to be white” outside of extremely online internet communities and maybe a Tucker Carlson segment so I don’t think the average black poll respondent is recognizing it as a meme/“dogwhistle”. But the normie conservative “all lives matter” is essentially the same thing as the vague jargon about dogwhistles and context that libs use to reject “it’s ok to be white”. The normie con correctly interprets the seemingly agreeable “black lives matter” as a Trojan horse for a much larger set of political demands. I would imagine if you polled republicans about Black Lives Matter they would respond unfavorably despite agreeing with the plain meaning of the phrase.
assman
1yr ago
I second your definition of theater kid, it didn’t just mean anyone who was in the school play but the clique of people who were extremely into it, and it carries the negative connotations you mentioned. The same way you probably wouldn’t call someone on the cross country team a jock even though they play a sport. It’s also definitely what people mean when they say things like “theater kid occupied government” even if you think theater kid just means someone who did theater.
assman
1yr ago
There is definitely something upstream of politics that makes someone a Theater Kid, but I think the particular political inclinations of the Theater Kid are path dependent. What separates a Theater Kid from Someone Who Likes Theater is that the desire for attention is the number one priority at the expense of everything else, so I think any sort of ideology the theater kids hold is merely what’s useful at the time for gaining attention. I have basically no knowledge of art history but the idea of art being dominated by the left seems like it started no earlier than the late 18th century and possibly much later, and is downstream of the political and intellectual movements in that time. I think the Theater Kid archetypes in medieval Italy would be loudly proclaiming their piety to anyone who would listen, or boasting about how great their local Duke was or whatever would get them approval.
This is also why it seems like different artistic mediums in the modern world have different political splits. I think the artistic types who are drawn to theater specifically are at the right tail of the bell curve for “desire for attention”, followed by movies/tv, music, visual art, and writing. The majority of popular work in all of these mediums is “left coded”, but it seems like there is still at least somewhat of a market for conservative-leaning movies/TV, music, and writing, whereas the idea of a conservative broadway musical is laughable. The tendency for the conservative-ish versions of popular art (network cop shows, Michael bay films, country music, etc.) to be low-brow, while the prestigious versions (classical music, hbo shows, opera, art galleries) are overwhelmingly left wing is probably just a result of the rural-urban divide. I would think ~70 years ago when rich urban PMC types were WASPy republicans, things like classical music performances and art galleries were right-coded.
The “hostility” of the average red tribe person today towards art is also a result of the hostility that modern art has towards them. There’s definitely some sort of practical-mindedness more common to right leaning people as /u/hlynkacg mentioned that makes them appreciate art less, but I think in the past those types of people wouldn’t have been actively hostile towards art, but probably just apathetic or uninterested. The modern hostility of the average right winger towards art is from being told they are uncultured for not appreciating Jackson Pollock and piss Christ, being shown as villains in popular movies and tv, watching satanic themed live musical performances etc. Modern art as a whole is almost like a reactionary movement against the type of “objective beauty” that even more practical-minded people can appreciate. There isn’t an inherent distrust of art in right-wing thought, there’s just an inherent distrust towards art that is anti-right wing for obvious reasons, and as of now effectively all of the “important” art is anti-right wing.
assman
1yr ago
Why don’t US cities have pickpockets? I’ve always heard (in the US) that if you’re traveling to a major city in Europe to be on the lookout for pickpockets, and I’ve heard stories from a few people who have had wallets/passports/phones stolen there. But despite the US having more crime in general I’ve never heard of this happening in any US city. You hear that there are certain parts of US cities to avoid, and I’ve heard stories of muggings or bikes being stolen, but nothing about pickpockets. Does anyone have a theory about why this is?
FWIW Elon posted a statement this morning
It seems like he wants to make it so that users themselves have more control over what they see rather than top-down moderation. I also think he is okay with moderation of “hate speech” to a certain extent, but he will stop moderating “misinformation” like Twitter has done for covid, the 2020 election, hunter biden story, etc. in the past. My prediction is that moderation of slurs, calling for violence, etc. will be handled much the same way it has been, but that opinions which don’t use no-no words will be allowed. I think most people won’t notice a difference but all he really has to do is not ban for “misinformation” and 99% of the controversy about twitter’s moderation policy is gone. Most people won’t care that you still can’t use slurs or whatever and journalists will get over the “misinformation” thing when crying about it stops being a useful tactic.
assman
2yr ago
What exactly does it mean when people blame “capitalism” for something? I see this a lot on Reddit and I have never really understood what people mean by it. I see it most often in the context of people blaming capitalism for some sort of exploitative behavior by corporations or individuals, or that capitalism is the reason for all sorts of mental health issues and other struggles with modern life. But I don’t see how “capitalism” specifically can really be blamed for any issues. Anything related to exploitative behavior can easily be attributed to human nature and the inherent problems that result from competition for finite resources. And most of the distinctly modern problems of atomization and things of that nature seem to be a result of technological changes. Basically I find “moloch” to be the best explanation for what’s causing most people’s complaints about modern society but I’m wondering if there is something I’m missing when people attribute problems to capitalism itself
assman
2yr ago
I’m not sure why everyone is focused on the specific example I used. I basically agree with Hlynka that accusations of dogwhistling are more damning of the accuser than the speaker most of the time. I’m just saying that if you concede that dogwhistles are a real thing and that sometimes people use them to obfuscate the meaning of a statement, I’m not sure how it would be at all reflective of someone’s character/worldview/etc. for correctly identifying that. I guess my example wasn’t obvious enough, pretend I used the (((rootless cosmopolitan bankers))) instead. I don’t think the reader being aware of what the parentheses mean here is reflective of anything but his awareness that people use them to (not so subtly) refer to Jews without explicitly saying so
assman
2yr ago
What exactly is your point then? I agree I am a “dog” by whatever definition you’re using. Fair enough, but that was not your point. Your original point was that identifying a dogwhistle means you are the “dog”. You are on here enough that I assume you are at least passively familiar with various dogwhistles like “jogger” or the three parentheses thing. Because you understand that these are dogwhistles, does that mean that racism is an integral part of your worldview? Pick your favorite “real right winger” who doesn’t use the internet. If I told this person that certain people use the term “jogger” instead of black person, and then I show this person a 4chan post saying that joggers commit too much crime and should be sent back to Africa. Is he supposed to say “wow this guy really hates runners huh?” And if he doesn’t say that and correctly parses the 4chan post, does that mean that racism is an integral part of his worldview now?
assman
2yr ago
Are you fishing for someone to say your post about your client not understanding the non-binary woman with huge tits? Because that’s definitely my favorite
assman
2yr ago
Everything you said is wrong, I use that example because I am a terminally online right winger and browse racist Twitter/forums where people post about (((bankers))) all the time. My point is that if you are an otherwise upstanding anti-racist progressive citizen who finds their way into dissident-right Twitter or /pol/ you’re not a “dog” for recognizing what people mean when they bring up wooden doors or “joggers” or whatever vague phrase is being used to avoid getting banned from normie internet spaces. Perhaps the confusion is that you wouldn’t consider those examples to be “dogwhistles” because they are so obvious? I agree with you entirely that the term “dogwhistle” 99% of the time is used as a political smear to associate politicians the left doesn’t like with ebil nazis even when it has no basis in reality.
assman
2yr ago
I guess when it’s so obvious that it can no longer be called a dog whistle it becomes a euphemism?
assman
2yr ago
I don’t disagree with you or Hylnka that innocuous statements are called dogwhistles all the time even when they are actually innocuous statements. I agree that when politicians/mainstream media figures are called out for using dogwhistles it’s bad-faith partisan bullshit 99% of the time. My point is just that simply recognizing an obvious dog whistle doesn’t mean you are “the dog” if the statement is in fact a dog whistle. As in if you go on 4chan and see someone refer to (((bankers))) you’re not anti-semitic for recognizing what they are referring to
assman
2yr ago
I get what you mean but isn’t this obviously not true? Maybe I’m misunderstanding what a dogwhistle is but if I wrote on here “the rootless cosmopolitan bankers are conspiring against white christians” everyone would understand it’s an antisemitic dogwhistle. If I said “no I’m just referring to the literal bankers guys, YOU’RE the antisemite for thinking bankers = jews!” nobody would/should believe that
assman
2yr ago
I think there’s a difference between being interested in the sport one degree removed from the object level (knowing players, following trades/injuries/coach changes etc.) and the reality TV/drama aspect. The former is similar to any media-consumption type of hobby, even more highbrow ones. You are [viewing art/listening to music/reading a book/watching a movie] and if you are really interested you might read about the [artist/musician/author/actor] and read reviews or analysis of the [book/song/movie]. I don’t know what you would call this but I wouldn’t exactly call it drama.
On the other hand, you are right that there is a reality tv aspect that has become a lot more popular in the Twitter era, particular among the NBA fandom. Discussing what players tweeted, or discussing what media figures said about the players tweets. things like that are 100% reality TV for men and I can’t stand it.
assman
2yr ago
I also support the promotion/relegation idea but it will definitely never happen. Regarding the playoff though, I think that ESPN does play an outsized role in deciding the future of the sport, particularly in regards to the conference realignment as of late. But I just don’t see evidence that they are influencing the playoff committee at all. Ohio State is probably the single biggest viewership draw and they have been left out more than once despite being one-loss conference champions. On the other hand Clemson is a smaller viewership draw compared to other giants of the sport and they have made it 6? times. There really haven’t been any controversial selections that would greatly increase viewership
assman
2yr ago
Regarding the serial killer part, I find it hard to believe there are 2000+ serial killers in the US. Does “serial killer” mean Ted Bundy types or like gang members who have been involved in a couple of drive bys?
assman
2yr ago
Is there any update about the Canadian teacher with the giant prosthetics breasts? I’ve seen a bunch of 4chan screenshots claiming that the teacher is actually a right-winger and was intentionally trying to cause a media storm, but those are just unsourced rumors. Wondering if there has been any updates
assman
2yr ago
TLDR: College football. 4 Team playoff good. NIL bad. Conference expansion bad and we need to get congress to fix it.
Viewership is still great AFAIK, but it seems like there are a lot of problems and complaints from the fans about the direction of College Football and I personally find it worrisome. Wondering what other people’s thoughts are and potential ideas for how they could be solved.
Playoffs. Basically, I think the playoffs are pretty much perfect the way they are. The allure of college football to me has always been how different it is from American pro sports. There are ~130 teams vying for a tiny postseason, and there are no artificial methods of creating parity like a salary cap or the draft. This makes the regular season extremely high stakes since you can only have one bad week and still hope to make the playoffs. Every major upset has a ripple effect throughout the sport for the remainder of the season. This makes it so that the regular season is the playoffs. Ohio State might have all 5 star recruits but they have one brutal loss to Purdue or Iowa and their playoff hopes are gone. This makes it so the championship winner is always the actual best team, as you have to be nearly perfect to make it, there are no situations like the 9-7 Giants winning the Super Bowl. A lot of people disagree with this and don’t like that there’s not a clear path to playoff but I think that’s what makes the sport so much fun. Every game matters, and expanding the playoffs will only dilute that. I don’t think the committee is actually biased, and the constant dickriding of G5 teams on Reddit is ridiculous. If they actually show on the field that they are a top 4 team they will make it as we saw with Cincinnati last year. I don’t think merely going undefeated against a shitty schedule should be a guaranteed playoff spot, the same people who beg for undefeated UCF with the 100th ranked schedule to make the playoff complain when Alabama plays one FCS team or Clemson makes it after going undefeated in the ACC. If Alabama could somehow play an AAC schedule where they’d go undefeated, winning every game by 40, the same G5 dickriders would say their schedule was too weak. The 4 team playoff has not produced any truly controversial winners and out of the 3 playoff games every year at least 2 are blowouts. There are almost never more than 3 teams who are legitimate contenders and expanding to 12 teams won’t change that.
NIL/Recruiting/Transfers. I found the constant guilt-tripping about the poor players not getting paid to be really annoying, and generally I think the players benefit much more from the school than the school does the players. At the same time, it seems unfair that players weren’t allowed to sell their own autographs or anything so NIL seems fair enough to me in theory. But as literally everyone could’ve predicted, it provides a way for boosters to openly pay players in a way that was under the table before, and players are surely getting paid much more now than when it was in secret. Many people complain about the positive feedback loop that is college football recruiting. Many schools have natural advantages in location, resources, history of success, etc. but recently the most successful teams just keep stockpiling more and more talent. People see NIL as a way to mitigate that, where schools with a lot of wealthy boosters can improve their teams recruiting by paying for recruits. But why is that good? I think the fact that success begets success in college football is a good thing, it’s unique in American sports at least and rewards you for running a successful program and hiring good coaches. If the other schools are mad that Nick Saban is getting all the recruits then hire your own Nick Saban. It’s not like it’s impossible to break into the elite of recruiting, Dabo Swinney did it very recently during the Saban era. I don’t see how rewarding teams for having rich boosters is better than rewarding teams for being successful and investing in the program. With the free transfers and NIL, college football success gets even further removed from the on-field results. Even for the lower tier teams a school like Cincinnati could have been able to capitalize on their success in the recruiting market, but that only becomes harder when worse programs with more resources can just throw money at the players. I don’t know how this can be fixed since I don’t think the NCAA would be able to regulate what is “real” NIL vs pay-for-play, but I think it’s really bad for the sport.
Conference Realignment. Nobody seems to support it but the incentives are what they are and it seems that some sort of consolidation into a super-league is inevitable. It seems like this is the least controversial issue in that everyone hates it. Nobody wants to see UCLA in the Big Ten. My only hope is that the consolidation leads to fragmentation again, when the conferences become so geographically nonviable that we can see a “Big Ten Pacific Division” or something that’s basically the old Pac 12. But my radical solution that will never happen and probably isn’t feasible is to get congress involved! This could be the bipartisan issue that unites the country around a common goal. The red team loves college football and tradition, and doesn’t want to see the once-great regional conferences marginalized. The blue team can say why are we spending all this money to fly college athletes across the country when we had perfectly good regional conferences, and we can’t expect the USC women’s volleyball team to fly to Rutgers for a Wednesday night match.
Wondering what everyone’s thoughts/ideas/solutions are about the future of college football?
You may be right in this case, and there are certainly plenty of cases where people work backwards from aesthetic or moral preferences and even the god of True Data presenting them with absolute proof that their opinion is wrong wouldn’t change their minds. But in real life culture war flashpoints where it’s extremely difficult to determine what’s Empirically Good, how do you tell the difference between this type of pure motivated reasoning, and a more considered opinion that due to Molochian forces (competition, coordination problems, preference cascades, defect-defect equilibria, negative feedback loops etc.) we are stuck in a local minima, where the data may show that X thing is better than not-X in our current circumstances, when if we changed other circumstances we’d see that not-X is actually much better. So in this sense I have a lot of opinions that I believe are empirically true even if they lack data or the data contradicts this belief, because I think we would need to run civilization-level RCTs to “empirically” prove them. I’m unsure how to tell even within myself whether this is just an elaborate cope I tell myself so that I can never be proven wrong “real communism hasn’t been tried!”, or if it is actually a principled and well reasoned belief.
I don’t want to argue the object level but just to give an example of the type of reasoning I’m referring to: I believe for many of the fuzzier mental illnesses that the data will show subjective improvement in response to therapy/drugs, but that completely banning psychiatric treatment for anything but schizophrenia, and a culture of mocking, shaming and overall not taking fuzzy mental illnesses seriously would result in much better outcomes as a whole. There’s not really any data showing that bullying increases depression or that destigmatizing mental illness decreases anxiety or whatever that could move me off of this position, because the idea of taking these conditions seriously at all is what I see as the primary cause of their existence. And unless we could coordinate all of society to not reward claims of mental illness with sympathy, each individual is better off “going to therapy” and punishing those who mock them.
Is this just regular motivated reasoning with extra steps?
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