I would like to cross post this excerpt about the mathematician Imre Lakatos, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
In Nagyvárad Lakatos restarted his Marxist group. The co-leader was his then-girlfriend and subsequent wife, Éva Révész. In May, the group was joined by Éva Izsák, a 19-year-old Jewish antifascist activist who needed lodgings with a non-Jewish family. Lakatos decided that there was a risk that she would be captured and forced to betray them, hence her duty, both to the group and to the cause, was to commit suicide. A member of the group took her across country to Debrecen and gave her cyanide (Congden 1997, Long 2002, Bandy 2009, ch. 5). To lovers of Russian literature, the episode recalls Dostoevsky’s The Possessed/Demons (based in part on the real-life Nechaev affair). In Dostoevsky’s novel the anti-Tsarist revolutionary, Pyotr Verkhovensky, posing as the representative of a large revolutionary organization, tries to solidify the provincial cell of which he is the chief by getting the rest of group to share in the murder of a dissident member who supposedly poses a threat to the group. (It does not work for the fictional Pytor Verkhovensky and it did work for the real-life Sergei Nechaev.) Hence the title of Congden’s 1997 exposé: “Possessed: Imre Lakatos’s Road to 1956”. But to communists or former communists of Lakatos’s generation, it recalled a different book: Chocolate, by the Bolshevik writer Aleksandr Tarasov-Rodianov. This is a stirring tale of revolutionary self-sacrifice in which the hero is the chief of the local Cheka (the forerunner of the KGB). Popular in Hungary, it encouraged a romantic cult of revolutionary ruthlessness and sacrifice in its (mostly) youthful readers. As one of Lakatos’s contemporaries, György Magosh put it,
How that book inspired us. How we longed to be professional revolutionaries who could be hanged several times a day in the interest of the working class and of the great Soviet Union (Bandy 2009: 31).
It was in that spirit, that the ardent young Marxist, Éva Izsák, could be persuaded that it was her duty to kill herself for the sake of the cause.
Though his research program is interesting and in spite of previously defending art by question artists, I now fear such ideas as memetic viruses cast evil people. How can we verify a communist correctly described the sky as blue, might it not be grey or beautiful and pink? I marvel at just how much we should throw out.
veqq
5d ago
the great man model
For context, 18th century enlightenment universalism focused on "socioeconomic factors" and described people as interchangeable stereotypes. Romanticism/counter-enlightenment pushed back with worship of genius (elevated by Eduard Young in 1759) and great men's ability to overcome fate. Carlyle praised hero-worship for teaching the necessary lessons of heroic leadership men need to stand up when the occasion arises to be great. While our lifetimes have seen the prior model reign again overall, in business the concept of heroic leader survived even the managerial revolution.
failure to reason through 9th grade math
Famously, the Third-Pound burger failed horribly, for the same price as McDonald's Quarter-Pounder. In focus groups investigating what went wrong, A&W discovered most people thought 1/3 is smaller than 1/4 and were thus getting less meat for the same price...
veqq
6d ago
Everyone's focused on rare-earths themselves, but the issue's that this restriction applies to any product with them like motors and batteries - which China truly leads in price and capability.
veqq
6d ago
Yes. But I bought a 14 room place for $20k. There's a central courtyard ringed by various rooms, one side's dilapidated but the others are ok. I put garage doors on the street facing rooms and rent them out to small businesses.
veqq
6d ago
El Salvador uses US money, specifically a cartoonish amount of interesting US 1 dollar coins: https://imgur.com/a/6wcXnGi
An average meal costs $1.50-2.50 (although little Caesars is still $5), a milkshake perhaps 50 cents. 3 amazing tamales for $1. A furnished bedroom with private bathroom for 2 in a central location $5-7.
What part of this is confusing?
I don't believe hardworking Christians represent a civilizational threat. So clearly the current administration aren't Christian nationalists like the supporters I know and see. But I don't know what they actually are or what the purpose of such measures are.
I'm also confused by the legalism (caring if they are legal or not) mixed with antilegalism (why bother trying to change the laws).
veqq
8d ago
My own opinion is that they should openly state their position and attempt to modify the laws to fit it (or at least draft laws they would like). I see no reason why they couldn't act at the same time. (Really, what incompetence would limit the entire administration to only doing 1 thing at a time?) If all civilization is truly at stake, I don't see why they should restrict themselves to laws beholden to their enemies. So again, why are they attacking Christians first?
veqq
8d ago
why is all effort directed towards more pious coreligionists instead of Muslims or Hindus etc.?
Everyone throws oil into the fire and kicks mud around. From one perspective:
- the great majority of entrances are legal (illegal entry is a criminal offense, the first offense a misdemeanor punishable by up to 6 months in prison and/or a fine)
- unlawful presence is only a civil violation (not punishable by jail) (illegal reentry is a felony)
The government is deploying the military because of civil violations. Other types of civil violations involve running a red light, building a deck without a permit, accidentally spilling a small amount of pollutants, filing your taxes late (this is closest), letting your dog roam unleashed. If they are merely enforcing the current law, why in this manner? Does or should the military repel down helicopters to clear entire buildings and check everyone's tax documents on the presumption of guilt? Why is it doing differently here? If the law is wrong, why are they not changing regulations etc.?
From another perspective, sure, mass immigration is a threat against Western civilization and the other side hates patriots. But again, why are they not changing the laws to deal with this more thoroughly and why is all effort directed towards more pious coreligionists instead of Muslims or Hindus or Jews etc.?
From my own perspective, I have little idea what anyone's actually doing. It all seems like incompetence or self-sabotage, randomly flailing around with no coherence. I don't think anyone benefits besides China and goldbugs.
I’ve only heard one side of the story ... obvious ... innocent
You've been had.
the Nisour square incident
- bomb went off by a meeting
- the meeting was called off
- 4 Blackwater trucks got ready to secure an evac route
- they were ordered to standby in the Green Zone
- they disobeyed orders and went to Nisour square
- they disobeyed further orders to return to the Green Zone
- in Nisour square, they were ordered to halt traffic for another team leaving the area
- a civilian car approached
- they shot 40 people in response to 1 car with 2 people inside approaching ... because they freely shot into traffic and at police while driving back to base
- Paul Slough in particular shot most of these people, firing wildly into traffic, ignoring orders to cease fire, until a colleague pulled his gun on him
- this in fact blocked the evac route, so the convoy they were on standby to maybe help, waited 30 minutes, blocked by blown up cars
veqq
24d ago
only to backpeddle in the most pants-on-head, clown-world fashion once they came into office
It fascinated me to see some here start backpedaling before I heard the admin do so.
modern country
is often a continuation of hair metal: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tB4049jsY7U?si=eJOU4o5nJyC1OvwX but it's not too hard to find stuff truer to form: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9CZ5X-c8Lng?si=cMSqzbs4447DyCfc or https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ew43GEJaj3A?si=GOz3kVfo9eqDDXMa
Already in the 80s, power ballads made this move. Many Skid Row songs sound like bluegrass with distortion https://youtube.com/watch?v=2pkpsxEyi-k?si=C5ANtceRZXBWn1Nm or Poison and Cinderella playing "the blues" https://youtube.com/watch?v=D7wdLAM1yjc?si=7PsmZOLhKvbzShft
veqq
27d ago
I have 2 hypotheticals:
- Had Sanders won the 2016 primary, could he have beaten Trump?
- Had Sanders won the 2016 election, would woke have carried on the same way or not developed in the same way?
I ask because Sanders appealed very strongly to many Trump voters, doing great in e.g. West Virginia but lacking e.g. black support (which the democratic primaries overfocus on. Besides Wasserman-Schultz et al.'s machinations.) His approach was not based on identity politics etc. I'm curious how people think his "movement" or time in office would have turned out.
invested in your online persona, ... projecting your consciousness, your soul, out of your body
It happens with any and all identities. As an individual, you cede self-sovereignty to the identities you wear, subconsciously or consciously making decisions based on them and their caricatures. Teenagers' phases embracing one or more identities too strongly is a perfect example. (N.b. this is often explicit and isn't bad, e.g. Christianity trades your fallen self for salvation. Heaven's 2 steps away, on your ego and through the gate.)
veqq
1mo ago
Not at all. 200m is easily attainable your first time shooting. Accounting for wind, 500m's not hard either.
Anacyclosis and most (all?) other cyclical historiosophies hold that generational change leads to degeneration (n.b. almost all see a few generations in each step, not a single one like the "Hard times make..." meme, although nested models also work.) Like science, all human activity "progresses one funeral at a time". But what if you don't believe in progress? Although tyrants, in other situations ossifying at positive states could do wonders, decrease time preference and much more. A virtuous monarch at 150 years doubles his life span but increases the length of his reign far more, ditto for political members of flourishing aristocracies and energetic democracies.
The formula of an authentic anti-egalitarian politics is: "if not me, then somebody". ...
This is but a straw man. The enlightenment's mechanical, universalist worldview saw the zeitgeist/overton window/fates (socioeconomic factors) driving men forward, replaceable, but slaves to history. Thomas Carlyle rejected this and began a century of hero worship when individuals break past, yea rework the gears of fate into greater human vistas (doomed to succumb to the flaws of fallen men).
But to steel-man your straw man, what value's there granting the masses electronics and the last half-century of "progress" when they yearn for the stability of the 50s? Giving the masses guardrails and a golden path to follow into happiness relieves them of the burden and pain of free choice and demonic/capitalistic/other-pejoratives temptation into squalor. Just as a beast may gorge itself to death, so too do the anarchic masses.
veqq
1mo ago
"Master Race" which was never written nor part of popular propaganda
Interesting. Digging I only find stuff like:
Wir müssen deshalb ein Herrenvolk werden, und deshalb müssen wir unser Volk zum Herrenvolk erziehen.
Thank you, I broke out in laughter for about 2 minutes.
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