erwgv3g34
My Quality Contributions:
User ID: 240
erwgv3g34
22hr ago
Couldn't you just avoid that by, you know, not drinking? I'm a pretty big fan of that. Alcohol just makes people act like idiots, and being a teetotaler seems to me like a much smaller imposition than never being alone with a woman who is not your girlfriend/wife/family.
erwgv3g34
22hr ago
Anyway, this idea seemed pretty close to something Alan Moore did in V for Vendetta, so I happened to catch what seemed like intentional subtext.
What these panels (source) tell me is that Alan Moore does not understand the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Theologians are not stupid; of course they noticed centuries ago that the wine and bread do not literally turn into blood and flesh. So what the actual teaching says is that the accidents of the host remain the same, while the substance of the host turns into flesh. Or, in other words, in every single way that we can observe and measure, the bread remains bread, but in some deeper, fundamental, ontologically basic sense, the bread turns into the meat of Jesus.
It's a not even wrong doctrine that can never be proven false, very similar to trinitarianism (both are based on Aristotelian metaphysics).
Yes; the usual way to attract female costumers into a male IP is to toss in a romance subplot, such as Han/Leia in Star Wars. Putting a chick in it and making her gay and lame attracts nobody, as has been empirically proven. The reason they keep doing it is because modern games and movies are made by people who hate the IP, and hate its fans.
erwgv3g34
1d ago
Have seen only the first avatar movie as a kid.
How old are you? That movie came out in 2009. Which was only... 16 years ago?!
erwgv3g34
3d ago
If you look at the way people actually use smartphones, they spend several hours texting, watching videos, and playing games for every hour they spend talking. These are all activities that benefit from a larger screen, so phones have evolved to become as large as possible while still (barely) fitting inside a pocket or purse.
erwgv3g34
5d ago
If Sisko was white, it would not make the show any worse.
Ummmm, ackshually, this is demonstrably untrue for at least the episode Q-Less. Q was accustomed to pasty ass Starfleet officers like Picard. He was not prepared for fisticuffs with a real one.
Kirk would have totally punched Q, too. It's not a race thing, it's a Picard thing; he is insufficiently aggressive for a military officer (in the show, anyway; movie!Picard is almost a completely different character).
I backed it up on archive.org and archive.is before posting; I'll edit the link after it expires.
erwgv3g34
7d ago
I posted on 4chan earlier today, and I noticed that the CAPTCHAs have basically turned into IQ tests, requiring the user to select which abstract image from a group of five does not belong. I was amused, and I understand that it is necessary to create tougher filters to screen LLM-assisted bots, but I wonder what the long term impact of such gatekeeping will be? At this rate, I will not be surprised in a few months when sites start requiring users to solve Raven's Progressive Matrices!
The problem with making older men whole on their social security contributions is that
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That money is gone, long since spent on whatever stupid shit the government does (by this point, social security is old enough that the money has chiefly been spent paying out social security benefits to even older men, who are now dead).
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Social security always promised more out in benefits than was paid it. It was structured like a pyramid scheme, and inherently reliant on forcing every new member of an exponentially increasing population to enroll at gunpoint. So when fertility collapsed...
The only ways to keep giving old people their promised benefits is one of:
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Keep borrowing money until nobody is willing to lend anymore. We already owe Lord Tywin three million gold; what's another 80,000?
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Keep printing money to inflate away the entitlements. Sufficiently high inflation is indistinguishable from a default.
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Keep importing immigrants to pay for the benefits, replacing your people to kick the can down the road a few more years. Except, a lot of those immigrants are going on welfare and making the problem worse. Hispanics and H1-Bs are productive; Sub-Saharan Africans, MENAs, and Haitian refugees are not.
erwgv3g34
9d ago
The Haredi are parasites; they support themselves by stealing from others through the welfare state. We need to find a sustainable, productive population with positive TFR and emulate it. I was hoping the Mormons would be it, but apparently their fertility has collapsed as well?
erwgv3g34
9d ago
Better to be a second-class citizen of a first world country than a first-class citizen of a third world country.
erwgv3g34
10d ago
This is classic apex fallacy. You are looking at the tiny slice of men who were some combination of rich, powerful, and charming enough to sow their wild oats, and completely ignoring the huge mass of men for whom marriage was their only chance at getting regular sex.
erwgv3g34
11d ago
leak nuclear secrets to the communists because they sympathize with communism (Goldbergs)
You mean the Rosenbergs? I remember reading about them in a social studies textbook in school. It used true facts to portray them as victims of the red scare and antisemitism, and conveniently left out the part where they were, you know, guilty.
erwgv3g34
11d ago
From "Stop Voting For Nincompoops" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:
In 2000, the comic Melonpool showed a character pondering, “Bush or Gore… Bush or Gore… it’s like flipping a two-headed coin.” Well, how were they supposed to know? In 2000, based on history, it seemed to me that the Republicans were generally less interventionist and therefore less harmful than the Democrats, so I pondered whether to vote for Bush to prevent Gore from getting in. Yet it seemed to me that the barriers to keep out third parties were a raw power grab, and that I was therefore obliged to vote for third parties wherever possible, to penalize the Republicrats for getting grabby. And so I voted Libertarian, though I don’t consider myself one (at least not with a big “L”). I’m glad I didn’t do the “sensible” thing. Less blood on my hands.
erwgv3g34
11d ago
You go to war with the generals you have, not with the generals you wish you had.
Yes, Nick Fuentes is most likely gay, practicing or otherwise. But he is also one of the most promising young leaders the alt-right has. As long as he keeps it on the down low, we can look the other way.
From "On Homosexuality And Uranus" by AntiDem:
Anime homosexuals are carefully portrayed as not representing a threat to the prevailing cisheteronormist order. Let us take consider an early example, Sailors Uranus and Neptune from Sailor Moon. Though obviously (and yet never quite explicitly) a lesbian couple, one of whom has some prominent transgender (or at least highly androgynous) qualities, they never really make any demands for accommodation on the world that surrounds them. Sailor Uranus does not wish to upend the society around her in order to gain the validation involved in having her lifestyle redefined as normal; she only desires to be left in peace to discreetly live as she wishes. She doesn’t want to change marriage laws, get you fired for saying that you don’t like her, or tear down the faith of the polis.
And it is because of this that she can safely be left alone by the larger society around her. She is not a threat, so she can be treated as a curiosity – liked by some, disliked by others, but simply not worth bothering with on a societal level. The implicit, unspoken bargain that she makes with the larger society is both reasonable and humane – she gains a strong measure of security through obscurity, and the mores of the society around her remain secure. That is largely how it is in Japan, and how it largely used to be in the West as well. Laws against homosexuality in the West existed, but were essentially a hedge against precisely what has happened now that they have been removed – open, politicized homosexuality becoming a serious threat to the existing order. As for the discreet, private practice of homosexuality, laws against it are and always were virtually unenforceable (for many reasons, including the general disinterest of Westerners in taking any great pains to enforce them against those who kept their proclivities private), and when they were on the books they remained virtually unenforced.
To mix fictional metaphors a bit, I am reminded of the Borg from the Star Trek franchise. In one episode of, I believe, The Next Generation, several members of the crew find that they can, if they are discreet and quiet, move unmolested through a Borg ship, though they are in plain view of numerous Borg drones. The Borg, it turns out, are interested in assimilation at a civilizational level, not an individual level. Thus, if an individual, or even a very small group, moves through their ship and seems to present no threat, they are ignored. Below a certain level of prominence, they are simply not worth doing anything about.
erwgv3g34
15d ago
I posted this on /r/SSC, but I wanted to repost here because I feel like it's a good summary of my commenting approach:
I also still enjoy themotte. I might, in some ways, be one of the crazed right-wingers that many don't like, but I at least hope I'm not -- when I write to describe my (admittedly right-wing) viewpoints on things, my goal isn't to wage the culture war or to be a dick, it's to ensure that a high-quality version of what I understand to be true is out there, especially in response to criticisms that I feel misrepresent my views. My goal isn't to convince, but to clarify, and indeed to help others and myself come to an understanding regarding where and why we disagree. I think that's the most important goal in discussion of any kind, and I had some very personal and enlightening conversations with philosophy professors in college who helped me come to that understanding of the value of intellectual debate.
One of the best things about culture war thread -- and I admit it was more common when it was on this sub than it is now -- are people steelmanning and going to bat for underrepresented views or views they themselves don't hold. I try to do that as often as I'm able.
There are definitely low-effort sneers and very silly comments full of uncharitable takes and extreme nonsense. I try to ignore those, but sometimes they do suck me in and I end up arguing for 3 hours over whether 6,000,000 +- 1,500,000 people dying in gas chambers and hard labor camps is still a genocide. It is.
However, I will also go on record saying that I do, regrettably or not, enjoy the ideological bent of the site in a way that more left-wing posters may not. I have been rather desperate for a place where, whether there are witches there or not, something close to the best and brightest of the American right are able to discuss their views without getting shouted down. I'm open to left-wing viewpoints (I am a dissident from the right on some issues, like healthcare) and I would rather the motte not be a total echo chamber, but the lean of the place, well, it's given me something I have wanted for a long time. I think (in Jonathan Haidt terms) the American right has something crucial to offer society, which is often drowned out by the nonsense that spews from its more populist talking heads (and I'm talking about some of who you might be thinking of, and some who you might not). So, I'm glad there's somewhere on the internet that at least tries to give right-wingers who can type in complete paragraphs a place to discuss their views with anyone and everyone who is willing to listen.
I would highlight @FiveHourMarathon (I don't recall his reddit username) as a great representative of themotte's ability to attract intelligent right-wingers. We've had some strong disagreements, but I always appreciate his input. There are certainly ways he deviates from the conservative mainstream, but in most ways I think he's representative of who
In that sense, I rather resent the Fox News comparison; I don't think we're dealing with the normie conservatives but with rather smart ones. Even the witches are rather bright, as witchy and as vile as I may find them. While I do find some of their antics offensive, I try not to feed the trolls too much.
I would also add that, ultimately, if we ban Holocaust discussions I don't know if we can avoid the long and nebulous descent into banning other things, too. I have my own hobby-horses that I like to comment on which are unpopular, and I'd like to still be able to offer my opinion on them. I see tolerating the Holocaust discussions, which I think are more boring than anything, as the price to pay for a generally free discussion space.
Additionally, I'd argue that the motte has become less appealing to many because the culture was has heated up.
Several of the comments on the linked post went along the lines of, "well, I used to like commenting on the culture war thread, but now Republicans are Opposing Trans Rights and so I don't want to talk with conservatives." I think this shows, in a way that wasn't true back in 2014 when Scott wrote his CW masterpieces or later on when the CW thread was on SSC, that the right has woken (heh) up to the culture war being a big deal and is now actually trying to wage it. The left, in response, has amped up its culture war waging too, and people are being forced to take sides. "Free debate amongst dissenting people" became right-coded, and hence the motte did too.
I recall, once upon a time, when I felt like no side in the political sphere really represented me, because nobody wanted to go to bat for culture war issues I cared about. Who was talking about feminism's impact on young men or the obfuscation of language in social justice in 2014, other than Scott? So his blog made unlikely allies out of more traditional liberals who disliked some aspects of the social justice movement, and conservatives who felt like there was no one else offering good criticisms of their enemies. ("It's just a few kids on tumblr.")
Now, though, the mainstream right has adopted lots of CW aspects into its platform, especially in Florida. The culture war isn't just a discussion about what's going on on Tumblr or what's going on on college campuses; it's a real war, being fought by actual politicians, now. So blue tribers are retreating to their enclaves, and red tribers to theirs, while the grey folks (I love you, boo kiss) are rather being forced to pick a side. Scott Alexander, for all his criticisms of the left's approach to the culture war, is a polyamorous atheist living in the Bay Area; of course his allegiance is to the blue tribe, even if by their standards he's a heretic.
A few more liberal folks like Haidt are holding their ground in favor of free discussion with the opposition, but increasingly I feel like I myself have become more partisan, more ideological, less inclined to compromise than I was in, say, 2018, in part because I feel like my opposition has gotten more extreme, but also because I increasingly feel my own side is invested with Glorious Purpose. I'm not saying that's definitely true or anything, that's just how it feels. I think the same has probably happened to a lot of more left-wing people.
It's also used in chess. "X gave Y a knight handicap" means that X, being the stronger player, agreed to play against Y without a knight to even the odds.
Che Guevara was a medical student when he embarked on his famous motorcycle journey (in fact, the trip is what radicalized him), and completed his degree before he got involved with communist guerillas. He could have totally led the easy life of a doctor in Argentina, but he didn't.
erwgv3g34
16d ago
She was smoking hot in Taxi Driver, which is the movie that got John Hinckley Jr. obsessed with her.
erwgv3g34
16d ago
A 1972 case study suggests that it is possible to use a combination of wireheading and conditioning to treat homosexuality (h/t: The Occidental Observer), but that's probably not feasible for an individual.
erwgv3g34
20d ago
Yes, "quality adjustments" are how economists lie about inflation. It's what leads people to look at alternative, objective measures like gold or Big Macs.
erwgv3g34
21d ago
There are ways to get around this. For example, when I was in school, there was a difference between a Z (0%) given out for no work turned in and an F (50%) given out for shitty work. Likewise, when I was teaching, the head of my department told me that if he saw a student was trying he would give them a high F (e.g. 59%) so that it would only take a little bit more work to pass.
An edgy badboy ex-husband who is in prison and an affair with a wealthy older married man are plenty enough to create an alpha widow. In the real world, such a woman would resent Baxter for not being as dangerously exciting as the former nor as much of a potential provider as the latter (who is also pre-selected). Which is why it's so important to marry a virgin. #nohymenondiamond #poppedcherrydontmarry
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