atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
No bio...
User ID: 2162
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
12d ago
There are entire books on how to study for the LSAT. I presume that would be a place to start, though it might be good to hear from someone who actually took the test.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
12d ago
Talk to some lawyers and see if you still think the LSAT weeds out bad-faith political arguments
Right, part of the reason I'm posting this is that I don't really talk to that many lawyers and that I think they're a few here that might be able to give a more informed view. Is it correct to extend what you're saying bit to that the bad-faith arguments can be arbitrarily subtle and training people to catch more obvious bad faith also trains them to hide their own bad faith better?
There is no way it would stay neutral
Oops, I guess I forgot this other very important anti-poll test argument that they're way too easy to corrupt. Embarrassingly enough, it's actually probably the textbook one too through various Jim Crow examples. Thanks for making it.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
12d ago
Someone recently showed me some LSAT practice questions and I cannot get over how amazing of a test it is. If you're like I was and not familiar with the style, I encourage you to look some up---either some quick internet search or do some short test-prep site quiz like this.
I have never before seen something that I more wished the general population was better at. Can you imagine a world in where significantly more people had the reading comprehension and understanding of arguments to answer these accurately? It feels like 90% of what's annoying about politics and political discussion would just disappear---all the obnoxious bad-faith argumentative games wouldn't work anymore because everyone would see through them, we'll actually be able to have national discussions about substance instead of the nonsense that happens now, etc. Why is studying LSAT-style questions not part of the mandatory school curriculum? Wouldn't pushing for this be one of the best ways to "raise the sanity waterline"?
Now for the controversial point---I've also never been so tempted by the idea of a poll test. I know the two main reasons why disenfranchising a large group is bad: first, democracy isn't about making the best decision, but about making sure that every group feels heard by the system so that they don't violently rebel when it decides against them. Second, it's important to give the rulers of a country incentives to keep everyone happy so that institutions stay inclusive for all the standard Why Nations Fail reasons. However, I never thought I would see a test that so perfectly measures the skills needed to accurately judge political arguments! Maybe if we're in the world where practicing the questions is part of everyone's years of mandatory schooling and the LSAT-score threshold is low enough that almost anyone could cross it if they took that part of school seriously?
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
13d ago
Yup, it's really a testament to the strength and dynamism of the economy in Texas. You have to condemn the grid mismanagement that led to the blackout, but it's really amazing to have a place that can just eat a cost like that as if it were nothing. I feel similarly about Hurricane Harvey on this second point.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
14d ago
Second, we had a moderate disaster back in 2021
Wikipedia claims >$195 billion in property damage. As a comparison, Hurricane Harvey is listed as $125 billion and the 2011 Japan earthquake as $360 billion, though in 2011 dollars.
If these numbers are correct(?), this is closer to "one of the most expensive natural disasters in human history" than "a moderate disaster".
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
3mo ago
it's pretty clear that emotional predispositions (openness, authoritarianism, neuroticism, etc.) are at least partially genetic
There's a standard counterargument here: even accepting this, ancestry is at most weak proxy for values---the distributions always have significant overlap. Using the weak proxy instead of more direct measures of values is silly. I bet even English proficiency and being able to pass a civics test gives more information on acceptance of the current American values than ancestry. I'm not going to complain if this picks out different proportions of different ancestry groups---just don't prejudge anyone based on very weak correlates when there's a better way!
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
3mo ago
So what are the things you love about Trump so much that would make you a die-hard supporter, if his (or the Republicans') stance on immigration wasn't an issue?
It's more that I agree with you that the Democrat's stance on American identity isn't ideal. I would become a die hard supporter despite everything else I don't like because then the Republican party and Trump would be the best instruments to make the stance on identity I like dominant---I'm basically a single-issue voter on this issue of identity.
Democrat's constant abuse of the very notion of meritocracy.
Despite also being bad on this issue, the Democrats at least have a wing that supports meritocracy. This wing can actually win primaries/elections in very left-leaning areas; for example, they are going to be running San Francisco as of the recent election. On the other hand, the anti-hereditarian meritocrats on the Republican party, like Ramaswamy, seem to get slaughtered in primaries. Whatever Trump actually believes, meritocracy is something he's very willing to sacrifice when it comes to actual policy decisions. Stephen Miller is still going to be the most influential immigration policy advisor!
no one said how high the skills have to be to count as "skilled"
I'll give a line: better for the country than the median citizen in some measure combining ability to assimilate and ability to contribute. Given how dominant US culture and values are globally, it shouldn't be very hard to find a huge number of people making this cut.
Vivek Ramaswamy gave an interesting talk at Yale's Buckley institute a few days after the election. What I specifically want to focus on is the part starting at 34:35, where he describes what he thinks is a divide in the Republican party between two different notions of American national identity. The first is that being American is about following a common set of values---meritocracy, free speech, self-governance, etc. The second (starting 39:12) is that being American is about having deep, ancestral ties to a particular piece of land---"blood and soil". He sees the coming years as an almost factional fight within the Republican party between these two notions of identity.
This topic is very close to my heart---I think the majority of my interaction with this forum has been very unsuccessfully arguing in favor of the ideals-based notion of identity. Ramaswamy fervently supports the same and I hope hearing his much better-argued case (from a much more authoritative source) is far more compelling than anything I've tried to say.
However, what I'm actually interested in is what people here think the outcome of the factional fight is going to be. What do you see in Trump's choices of appointees? Is Ramaswamy going to be pushed out or is he going to be an influential figure moving forward? Which side do you think various major figures in the Republican party land on?
Just to put my cards on the table, I personally think Ramaswamy is delusional that it's even a fight and that the Republican party is fully dominated by the blood-and-soil side. This is in fact the main reason I vote Democrat and if I believed the ideals side was going to win, I would immediately become a die-hard Trump supporter. I believe that if you actually hold the ideals-based notion of identity, then the Matt Yglesias/Noah Smith-wing of the Democratic party is the right political home for you. As for why I believe this, I always thought that support for legal, skilled immigration was the best litmus test for this divide---if you are on the ideals side, then it is a no-brainer win-win and if you're on the blood-and-soil side, then it is very dangerous. Both what happened in the last Trump administration and experience talking to right-wingers here seemed to very strongly demonstrate that US Republicans are very against skilled immigration.
Yeah, I would say that. When a stranger (like not a friend, family member, mentor, doctor---stranger means someone with no professional or personal reason to care significantly about specifically my welfare) is trying to convince me to do something (vote for someone, buy something from them, sign a contract), its just a default assumption that there's serious amounts of lying and manipulation involved.
Specifically for politicians, you might as well complain about a TV ad lying to you. And sure, I guess part of my gut judgement here is based on a personal bias that I find lawyerly lying way easier to see through, but I hope I presented enough arguments that don't rest on this bias.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
6mo ago
It seems to me like a lot of people care more about overall alignment than details.
I wasn't disagreeing that these (and the various feelings described in the original post) are the true feelings people have. I will however argue that people who care more about overall alignment than details are wrong to do so. We should therefore judge car-salesman lying as worse than lawyer lying.
The world is too complicated---caring about vibes and perceived alignment over details is one of the biggest sources of misguided policy today. Most liberal nonsense, for example, comes from this: restricting housing construction to keep people from being displaced by rising prices, making college admissions more "holistic" and less objective to help disadvantaged students, etc.
Ok....this is going in circles. Can you please clarify once and for all who you were talking about in these two sentences?
The events, allegedly in part as the result of some false reporting concerning Axel's identity, led to a number of protests, which led to a number of counterprotests.
Why would you counterprotest a protest against the knifing of schoolgirls? Well, apparently the original protests were racist. It's pretty important to not be racist.
You seem to be going back and forth on this in all the previous replies?
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
6mo ago
Why would you believe that? Do you have videos of other counterprotesters listening to Ricky's comments live, and not cheering?
Are you seriously saying that your default assumption is to assume that counterprotestors would cheer the comments if they heard them? That seems ridiculous---that's such a strange thing to believe a human would do without something marking them as really unusual (and no, being leftist and/or "woke is nowhere near enough except if you're hopelessly partisan)
How in the world is your prior this absurdly cynical? Is this the way you reason about all your ideological opponents?
This was a very enlightening comment, thanks.
However, I think there's a very good reason people think of used-car salesman lying as reflecting much more poorly on character than lawyer lying. The used-car salesman style demonstrates sloppiness with and disregard of details---this is a huge red flag if you want your leaders to have any sort of ability to understand technical or scientific questions. Conversely, being able to pull off lawyer-style, technically-true lying is a great demonstration of being good with details.
Lawyer-style lying is never going to lead to travesties like sharpiegate, which actually harmed the ability of the National Hurricane Center to function as a scientific organization. This sort of thing is very dangerous if you want government policy to accurately reflect reality.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
6mo ago
Do you think a different group of counterprotesters would not have cheered Ricky's bloodthirsty comments?
Of course? This is the entire issue---why do you implicitly believe that the videos and articles you shared are representative of all counterprotestors? Just to hammer this home
The video I shared was of counterprotesters cheering for more murder by knife.
The video you shared was of some counterprotestors cheering for more murder by knife.
That's what you apparently feel the need to defend. Is this because you agree with the bloodthirsty counterprotesters? Is this an "arguments are soldiers" thing where, because you share some of their politics, you feel the need to defend them and/or paint my criticism of them uncharitably?
...and I am completely baffled how you are at all reading that I'm defending this. Again, homogenizing your ideological opponents in this way is absurdly sloppy. Seriously, have you not considered that its as invalid to think of "counterprotestors" as one unified group as it is for the other examples you listed?
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
6mo ago
Your post had this:
The events, allegedly in part as the result of some false reporting concerning Axel's identity, led to a number of protests, which led to a number of counterprotests.
Immediately followed by this
Why would you counterprotest a protest against the knifing of schoolgirls?
This is an extremely sloppy way to write if you were just talking about the specific people in your video instead of representative counterprotestors. Furthermore, if you were just talking about the video evidence/Ricky Jones instead of representative counterprotestors, then you were just doing boo-outgroup nut-picking!
I didn't even mention this utterly absurd interpretation of how to think issues of causality with respect policy making since other commentators discussed it lower down:
I suppose, that people would rather talk about that, than about the dead schoolchildren who, but for recent immigration from Africa, would likely still be alive.
Think about the children indeed!
Why would you counterprotest a protest against the knifing of schoolgirls? Well, apparently the original protests were racist.
Really? You can't think of any other reason why the counterprotestors might have felt the need to counterprotest?
Saying that there were counterprotests against the knifing of schoolgirls is an extremely disingenuous interpretation of events. The counterprotests were against violence by far-right mobs. These groups pointed to a bad thing that happened, made some mostly vibes-based links to their pet issue, and then committed extreme acts violence about their pet issue claiming justification from the bad thing. Saying that opposing these group is supporting the bad thing is extremely sloppy. I think someone helping run a website with a goal of helping people move past shady thinking should hold themselves to a higher standard.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
6mo ago
My expectation for anyone who lives in western countries is to be grateful for that privilege, native or immigrant. As far as I am concerned, I am being egalitarian when I expect immigrants to feel grateful; I have the same expectations of them that I do for natives.
This is fair, as long as someone can reasonably earn the right to be treated the same as natives, I don't have any discomfort. For whatever reason, I was reading something different in the original post that on second thought might not have actually been there.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
6mo ago
my shining example of all that we could be is Victorian Britain circa 1850
I'm going to first go even more annoyingly meta: I'm not so happy with this sentence because it seems to be framed as just a personal preference that can't really be justified by more than "I personally like it". Everyone sort of has "inner values" based on such idiosyncratic preferences, but it always feels to me very morally wrong to try to argue with others by nakedly stating them (in harsher words, this is what I called "naked selfishness" before). Rather, you ought to find universal reasons that work for everyone---either extremely compelling "poetry" to convince others to have your same idiosyncratic preferences, or better, links to universal values like reducing suffering. Obviously you have a lot of these universal reasons which are explained more later in the post, so this is a nitpick. Also obviously, I have nakedly selfish reasons for preferring individualistic meritocracy since it gets close to my shining example of something like early 2010's San Francisco Bay Area (before housing availability/infrastructure issues really started kicking in). However, if I can't find universal reasons to support it, I should seriously question whether this preference is reasonable. At the very least, I should never expect them to be compelling to anyone else and keep them to myself.
So now lets get into the universal reasons.
the decay of Britain / Europe / US
I don't have much personal experience with Britain/Europe, but I don't really see much decay in the US, not coincidentally, the country where individualistic meritocracy is the strongest. Particularly in technology, the US continues to produce world-changing breakthrough after breakthrough---AI systems, fracking, mRNA vaccines, etc. Though it's hard to feel this because of relative status effects and short memories, people in the US have more than they ever used to---bigger houses, better cars, more variety at the grocery store, better entertainment, etc. It's also not a coincidence that the technological breakthroughs in the US come from its most individualistic, diverse, and open areas like San Francisco or Cambridge, MA.
I would even say that the most compelling explanation for decay in Europe is actually this attitude, which is far more prevalent there:
only considering those within 100 miles is understandable most of the time, only considering those in your country is basically fine. 60 million is a big pool.
This promotes a sort of closed-mindedness and resistance to change. If you want scientific and technological progress, you need novel ideas. If you want novel ideas, you need to be tolerant of weirdos, immigrants, and outsiders. Conversely, if you close yourself off to the unusual socially, you're also going to lose the drive to create the new technologically---"why do we need more, our village is good as it is!".
Finally, 60 million is not a big pool at all. I'm in math, and the median best mathematician from a region of 60 million doesn't hold a candle to the world's best. Furthermore, agglomeration effects are really important for new ideas so it makes a big difference if one country can concentrate high-performers in one place. I guess if you're making this exception:
Say, those with IQ > 140 if you want something quantitative.
then it's not so bad (though 145 IQ is 3 standard deviations which is on the order of magnitude of 1/1000 people so there are around 10 million of them in the world. This is smartest kid in your year in your school district level, not world-changing genius).
I suspect the majority of people were mostly happier with more structured expectations and a somewhat more rigid social structure. (I would be interested to know how you think things will end up: do you envision a natural slackening of the rat race one day, or a continued and perpetual struggle? If the latter, the resultant technological progress and prosperity may not be worth the candle.)
I think this is the most compelling argument against my point. As far as naked selfishness goes, I much prefer the rat race since it pushes me to achieve much greater things than I would otherwise. At some level, you can justify it in this way: sacrifices we put up with currently to make the future better. However, I think a much better justification is that the people happy with the rigid social structure were those on top. For everyone else, being at the bottom is even worse if you're forever stuck there and there's nothing you can do about it. Having hope and agency over your life is really important for happiness, and if sacrificing the top 10% to stress is worth it to give this to the bottom 90%, then that's a worthwhile trade. I realize though I might just be typical-minding here---maybe as you say the chance to rise makes most people more stressed and unhappy than being stable in even a pretty low place.
Either way, once society is wealthy enough that everyone's non-status needs are met, I expect the rat race to eventually resolve itself by splitting into a million parallel races so that everyone can feel high-status by being in the top 1% of something---some niche video game, sport, academic field, etc.
As the final point:
I also have a strong sense of my people as a people, and I care about maintaining my homeland's culture
Do you have universal reasons why maintaining your homeland's culture (in more of a sense than various minority groups are able to maintain their cultures within US-style multiculturalism) is important? I think there's something around monocultures being bad---like you can argue that my vision of progress coming from all the new ideas from mixing cultures is sort of a dead end since it won't work anymore once everything is mixed and homogenized. Again, however, I think US-style multiculturalism resolves this issue pretty well.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
6mo ago
Look, clearly we aren’t going to agree, because our axioms are too different
Ok, let's try this if you're interested in discussing at an annoyingly meta level: I don't see this belief
that any group feeling on a larger scale than family can only be based on selfishness at best and bigotry at worst
as an axiom, but rather a necessary conclusion from deeper principles justifying morality. Specifically, I 100% agree with the very end of this article
I want to help other people in order to exalt and glorify civilization. I want to exalt and glorify civilization so it can make people happy. I want them to be happy so they can be strong. I want them to be strong so they can exalt and glorify civilization. I want to exalt and glorify civilization in order to help other people.
Scott Alexander of course always says things way more eloquently than I can. The (admittedly extreme) individualism you're calling out isn't an axiom, rather, at our current level of technological development, it's the best way to achieve all the good things---to exalt and glorify civilization, etc. See here and ymeskhout's broader point in the original post.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
6mo ago
Look, I'm operating under the assumption that you guys want more liberal posters here. I'm telling that you contrary to what you guys believe, the reason you don't have so many isn't that liberals don't like hearing views they think are toxic, but rather liberals get tired of the tide of obnoxious argumentation you get here when you either argue for liberal views or become known as a liberal---strawmanning, unjustified personal attacks, and random, derailing accusations of bad faith.
If you read carefully, this is the exact thing that TracingWoodgrains was complaining about. "Unappealing" does not mean "stating values that I find are toxic", it means "obnoxious argumentation that makes it draining to engage, particularly (in this case) the personal attacks and derailing accusations of bad faith".
Therefore, if you actually do want more liberal posters, maybe recalibrate your judgement of the costs and benefits of not moderating these more harshly.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
6mo ago
Sorry, should've explained this more: basically, you're asking for people to shoulder an additional burden for the sole reason of where they happened to be born, something that was completely out of their control. Furthermore, this burden isn't some temporary thing, but forever---the skilled immigrant always has a responsibility to feel grateful and not believe they deserve things natives do and nothing they do over their entire life can change this.
I don't like this unegalitarian implication.
you are following a familiar pattern that reaffirms my observations here and everywhere else
This is actually a great example of a phenomenon I think greatly contributes to moderation issues here. You're rounding me off to a pattern you've seen a lot before---"liberals don't really believe they should have to put up with people who express views that are noxious to them"---instead of noticing that my actual complaint is different: I'm only opposed to the way in which these "noxious" views are being argued. I've complained before that @naraburns is also pretty bad at rounding off recklessly in this way.
I'm perfectly happy discussing with people who's values I think are very opposed to mine as long as those people are actually responding to the points of what I'm saying instead of strawmanning or making unjustified personal attacks (Just to link some interactions with a particularly hostile poster who somehow never ever got moderated for these). Case in point: I'm not saying FC is one of the worst perpetrators because he may or may not be racist or accelerationist or whatever, but rather because he has one of the worst habits of rudely accusing those he's arguing against of saying a billion things they didn't actually say!
All I'm asking is that you actually apply your rules on tone and argument style consistently instead of judging based on rounding discussions off to preconceived notions from your previous experience on the internet.
Are you arguing that "obvious dishonesty" and "or does it just prove that your entire interest in the topic begins and ends with its utility toward bashing the outgroup?" are civil?
Idk, I get the impression that some of you are unhappy about the way this site is going---there have been enough discussions about echo chambers and things like that. Yet you keep refusing to listen to people who tell you the clear reasons why such things might be happing. Totally understandable if you don't take my word for it, but you guys should at least take something from the whole Tracingwoodgrains discussion earlier.
There's a political consensus here and many toxic arguments arguing in favor of the consensus are not moderated. Beyond this current example, I've pointed out before that racism violating "Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be" is very often ignored (though somehow the entire discussion where this last happened was memory holed. I can only see the comments in my inbox with all links to the actual thread broken). You even put one of the worst perpetrators on the mod team!
This makes the environment quite unpleasant for people arguing against the consensus so most just end up leaving.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
6mo ago
My brother arbitrarily happened to be born the same parents as me, but that fact plays a much stronger role in our relationship than any other achievements of his.
You continue to use this bad analogy equating interactions with small, <Dunbar number groups with countries of tens of millions, so lets go into more detail here. In your social life you can judge people by all kinds of arbitrary things that made them closer to you. However, you can't do that in professional settings where you're interacting with larger groups of people. For example, if you're organizing a party, it's ok to invite your brother over someone else just because they're your brother. If you're an HR person a big company, it's not ok to hire them for a job over someone else for just that reason.
This is a huge part of the western value of professionalism.
Isn't this because most of the rhetoric you hear from politicians is targeted at the general public? They're specifically playing for an audience without the expertise to see through the obnoxious, bad-faith games. I hope first, that they don't do the same when behind closed doors and second, that if the public got better at whatever the LSAT tests, their strategies for communicating with the public would also change.
More options
Context Copy link