haroldbkny
2mo ago
I'm guessing you're being sarcastic, but truly, I have had so many experiences where I go to meet people on some conservative or libertarian meetup, and I'm excited to meet them, but then I find they're just extremely confrontational mindless drones who will jump on board any conspiracy theory, parrot anything they heard no matter how little sense it makes or how likely it is, or champion anyone who likewise wants to own the libs. Whatever it takes to convince themselves just a little more that leftists totally suck. That's not the sort of person I want to be or care to be around anymore.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
That's fair. But I don't personally think that's the case. Most anti-leftists I have known have no scruples or even much higher level thought other than an extreme hatred of the left, and an arguments-as-soldiers kind of approach. For whenever reason, I've become different from that over time (and I believe many people in the motte, and anti-leftists in the rationalist community as well are more like me than other anti-leftists). I am anti leftist because I care about the truth, not in spite of the truth. It's just hard to meet other anti-leftists like that. Rationalists are rare to meet (where I am), anti-leftists are rare to meet, anti-leftist rationalists are really rare to meet.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Thanks, you too.
It took me a few minutes to put together "MDS". It is another insidious and rapidly growing variant that may overtake and outlive the initial TDS strain.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Some of them. Some of them I haven't told, some may have forgotten, some may have assumed that I've moved back (and I have moved back to some degree, but probably not as much as they think), one accepts and understands our differences, and some maybe just don't care to bring it up with me.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Yes, that's my assessment based on my company. It's a big company, but I know that at least one other big company totally differs from mine in how hiring is done (it's more central, less team-owned). I don't know which is closer to the norm for others companies.
Despite all of my company's flaws, I've always been proud of the fact that I really don't know any diversity hires. The team owned and data driven process to assess candidate skills have been very effective at keeping DEI's influence on hiring almost non-existent.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Are these people potential Trump voters? Will they ever be allies? If not, then who cares?
Well, I mean I'm sure you and I have different values and end goals. Suffice it to say, whether someone is a Trump supporter is not what I care about in my life. I'd say that even filtering people on that isn't even an option for me. If I did try to break ties with every person I know who is a TDS leftist... I'm pretty sure I'd have almost no one left in my life.
I've made the friends I've made and have the family I was born with and for whatever reason, they almost universally think differently from me regarding politics. I've tried, but failed to make new friends. I've found that when I try to specifically find local people who are anti leftist like me, they end up going too far in the other direction, and get annoyingly complainy with lack of adherence to truth, nuance, and values I like (e.g. they've often been strong followers of Ben Shapiro and others I deem to be grifting pundits).
At some point, I've had to make peace with this to avoid driving myself crazy, and just move on with my life, with the people I organically have found to be my community, while just praying people don't talk about politics too much. So the stuff I hate the most, from either side, is the stuff that will cause people to start interjecting their political opinions into my everyday life.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Replying to @falling-star too
Well, I can say that's not the way it works in my company, which may not be quite the norm. In my company, individual teams drive the hiring process, including finding candidates. Recruitment does a call, but it's mostly to prep candidates in what comes next. If they narrowed out a candidate during an intense hiring period for reasons other then serious flags, there would be hell to pay. Managers have a difficult enough time getting candidates through the hiring pipeline as is.
Fifth (or kind of, since it's related to both 2 and 4), this is going to really rile up the other side, and for nothing. This will convince everyone that Trump's next step is to do <insert batshit thing people somehow think Trump will do> and that this is the chance he's been waiting for to tear down the world and rebuild it in his own image. I think I'm never gonna hear the end of this one from the people I know.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
HR doesn't make hiring decisions, do they? At least at my (tech) company, they, at best, facilitate hiring. Hiring is determined by the engineers and managers.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
I agree with you on all of that, but I also know that cops are crazy when it comes to ensuring people who threaten cops are put away. If there were people in J6 trying to harm cops at all, that could sway some of those police-loyal folks
haroldbkny
2mo ago
One angle I haven't seen anyone here bring up yet: someone from the ACX open thread brought up this question (granted in a snarky, annoying way) of whether this would hurt Trump's cred with the "Back the Blue" crowd. This is interesting. I don't expect it will, but I don't know why. At a high level, you'd think there's be a natural separation between populists, and people who enforce state-law, but I find at least where I am that police and their supporters are the most intense Trump supporters there are.
So, will the more avid police-supporters think this is some type of betrayal? If not, then I'm curious to know why.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Although, I can see it now:
"Musk gives doublehanded Nazi salute, showing that he intends to be twice as evil as the Nazis ever were!"
The idea that regulation grows to meet state capacity should be taken a lot more seriously than it is here, and so is the idea that bureaucrats aren't all good faith actors.
That might not be incompatible with what Scott says. If read in a certain way (I'm not sure he's actually trying to say this), one could come to the conclusion that adding more bureaucrats will result in more red tape being unnecessarily made, but that once it's there, cutting bureaucrats won't get rid of it easily. The red tape is now in place and can be abused across bureaucracies. Once the legal bureaucracy is in place to sue over various things, then that can be used easily by remaining bureaucrats to be targeted in suing any other bureaucracies that don't have the resources to preemptively protect themselves.
Maybe on some level, we can think of this like the arguments that gun control won't work in the US, because guns are already too ubiquitous here. Trying to remove them all will just result in the people who don't comply having undue power.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
What I do not doubt though is that were there men’s online groups doing the same to women’s personal information, I’m 100% sure they would swiftly invite a huge media scandal, widespread condemnation, legal action and the attention of the authorities.
I very much agree with you on all of this, and this sort of feminist hypocrisy makes my blood boil. But I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second on one point, based on arguments my wife has had with me over these sort of issues.
As an example, my wife and I have argued about whether male-only spaces are okay. Feminists are clearly very in favor of female-only "safe" spaces, but have historically rallied against every possible male only space you can imagine, from trying to make colleges and frats co-ed, to historical wars against British coffeehouses. I personally believe that having male-only spaces is not only fair, if we are going to laud female spaces, but also very positive for men as a form of therapy, commraderie, social safety net, and many other good things.
However my wife (who loves to argue with me about this stuff, or is at least strongly compelled to because she's so damn stubborn) has talked about how the coffeehouses were harmful to women in a way that comparable female only spaces could never be, because the coffeehouses became a place where men would make and discuss policy decisions in a way that excluded women. She would say that the men held more powerful positions, and the coffeehouses and other such male spaces would never just stay as neutral academic or social spaces, the power from their positions would spill over into the once benign spaces. I myself am not so convinced of either the powerlessness of women, or even if that's true, the lack of value in male spaces even if what she says is true. But I wanted to present that viewpoint here.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
Imagination is dead, for men anyway. I don't really know if imagination was ever a consistent way for men to get off, or if people kept records on that, but it probably is less used today than ever before.
Also https://youtube.com/watch?v=fQTOAWCpe44?si=eDG7ebQXX_kDQunV
For women, I think imagination is still alive and well. It's all about thinking up scenarios for them. Although I could imagine it's possible to get hooked on erotica to stimulate your mind's eye, I've never heard of any cases.
Does that seem like a reliable narrator to you? Do you think they’ll accurately present what the Politico really said?
No, definitely not, and I dislike that style. But at least it makes it clear that the narrator is not to be trusted, and that they are not reputable. I kind of feel like the even more insidious style is when the narrator doesn't include little jibes like that, but basically comes just short of doing it. I think most modern, reputable news sources do this, and thus maintain a veneer of impartiality, while still managing to steer the readers' perceptions whichever way they want by being very selective about which facts they share, how they subtly prime the readers' view of those facts, and which quotes they include.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
But like I said, I don't think it's "justice" in any way to pardon him. I just think it's what a father would want to do, and maybe should do, because fathers should always protect their children in any way possible.
I think for all his children, but especially his youngest, it could take a big emotional toll to have a father in prison. I just don't really know how they feel about him, but I could see that it could cause anyone to have additional layers of self loathing and feelings of inadequacy to be told that they come from someone that is deemed as not worthy to participate in society.
Finally there's the point about Hunter providing for his children financially, to which my only response is a high trill of gay laughter. Whether Hunter had gone to prison or not, I think we all know that, either way, his children would have been financially provided for by their grandfather, not their father
Yeah, that's probably true. Though I don't know much specifics at all. It may be a drop in a bucket, though, but it is generally costly to a family to have a father in prison.
Hunter's children being elevated to being a point of material concern in whether or not he should serve jail time, and not the welfare of the children of all the other people who've been convicted under the same laws he's deemed to have violated?
Well, I'm definitely not saying it's fair, or the right or just thing to do, or that Hunter shouldn't serve jail time. I'm just saying what I would do as a father if I had the power to. But also that Biden may also wish to think about how such a move may have repercussions for his party or the political system.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
Yeah, I'm somewhat aware of that, though I didn't know all details. I still think that for all parties involved, having Hunter in prison would have far more detrimental effects, emotional, psychological, legacy-wise, and otherwise, than not.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
Well, I really don't know too much about the Biden family's situation, so I could be wrong. But my general assumption would be that it'd destroy his family if Hunter were in prison. It'd be detrimental to Hunter and his kids to have a father behind bars, creating emotional trauma and financial and logistical hardships that could last generations. As opposed to if he is pardoned, he could still be a father and go on to still achieve things.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
That's interesting. I kind of feel the same way, in that it is absolutely virtuous for a father to protect his son, and ensure his family has a future. But this also makes the future of his political party more difficult, along with worsening the state of partisan politics in the world, as it gives the other side both a bludgeon against his party and an excuse to do corrupt things like this themselves.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
Conservatives are dominating media. The MAGA narrative and style really are popular. Liberals will have to find or wait for a narrative and delivery that actually resonates
I think it's way too soon to say this. This forum just spent the last however many months lamenting that it would be impossible for Trump to get elected since leftists control all institutions. The election was a victory for conservatives, sure, but can we really say that they're dominating media? Maybe they're dominating media that works outside of traditional media formats, and paywalled media, but I don't even know if that's true.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
a modern take on Back to the Future featuring a Cybertruck
"The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with a complete lack of style?"
haroldbkny
4mo ago
This change is really weird to me, as someone from the heart of “you guys” territory. I had a lot of progressive friends in school who always said “you guys.” They didn’t think of it, it was just what people said, not something anyone needed to police.
Yeah, I don't think it's universally agreed upon. Some left-leaning people are okay with "you guys", and some think it's another example that is masculine-normative, that's excluding women. From what I've seen, I guess I see hardcore leftist-of-the-left radical feminists be most against it in terms of calling people out, followed by the older token progressives who are looking for a way to contribute and/or signal their allegiance and/or keep the eye off Sauron off themselves. Like, advocating against "you guys" is the sort of thing that I've seen corporate boards and their lackeys do and recommend. It's enough to scare me, though, so I end up being a lackey, too, in the interests of not letting anything get between me and my ability to provide for my family.
This is really interesting. I'm not pro-Trump and I'm not anti-Trump, but I am anti-anti-Trump. But I will say that this sort of thing unnerves me a little bit.
Trump is clearly used to wheelin' n' dealin' big business, callin' the shots, callin' the bluffs, making bluffs, making quick decisions based on gut instinct and an innate knowledge of human behavior and (company) politics. People just aren't used to this in the POTUS. For most politicians, everything needs to be carefully carefully considered, because the cost of a mistake could be not just that quarterly profits are down, but rather global catastrophe.
I admire that Trump is willing to try this out for the US, and maybe it's what we need in some ways to get us to prosperity, but I also fear this and the consequences of what happens when a nation who's more dangerous calls his bluffs and his tactics. He could be doing the right thing by trying these tactics, or it could be sheer insanity and the result of putting someone in a position they're not really the right person for. I guess we'll just have to see what happens.
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