vorpa-glavo
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User ID: 674
vorpa-glavo
1d ago
I agree. The question was meant to highlight the problems with Originalism and similar positions. The Founding Fathers were wise, but in setting up a government of limited powers, they failed to account for a very obvious case like acquiring new territory. Thomas Jefferson was only the 3rd president of the United States - it didn't take long for the cracks to show.
The Founding Generation were all alive to see how inadequate the Constitution of limited powers they had crafted was. It didn't take long for people like Alexander Hamilton to try to craft a national bank, or for presidents to hide the fact that they were engaging in clandestine naval warfare without congressional approval or oversight, or for the Supreme Court to seize the right of judicial review, or for Jefferson to decide the treaty power includes the ability to acquire more territory. I'm sympathetic to Originalism, and I think in an ideal world it would be how the law was actually interpreted, but the ink had hardly dried on the Constitution when the first violations of its framework happened.
Do you think the Louisiana purchase was a legal act under the Constitution, given that there is no explicit enumerated power for Congress to acquire territory from other countries?
I get wanting to be something like an Originalist, but I think that a lot of people that hold the position do so as a kind of cop out. It is much easier to say, "We can't debate foreign aid, the Constitution doesn't explicitly allow it", than to say, "I am opposed to my tax dollars being spent on foreign aid for reasons X, Y, and Z." But the problem is, sometimes the Constitution does actually seem to allow the thing (and not in a nonsense "Living Constitution" way.)
I think if you're creative, most of the limitations are hardly limitations at all. The Federal government was able to end hotel segregation by using the Interstate Commerce clause to regulate hotels that host people from other states. That seems like a much more justifiable use of the Interstate Commerce clause than that one outrageous case of regulating how much corn a man is allowed to grow on his own property, and which would never cross state lines.
(EDIT: Looking it up, at least one kind of foreign medical aid is done "by the book" in exactly the way I describe. The US Department of Defense will send the military in to foreign disaster areas to set up field hospitals and military medical teams. So, we can ask the object level question - should US tax dollars be spent on such foreign aid? I don't think the "but the Constitution" dodge is really possible here.)
vorpa-glavo
1d ago
It probably doesn't apply in this case, but would Congress have the ability to make treaties with foreign nations and give them medical aid under those enumerated powers? Or could Congress make use of enumerated powers related to raising armies, and provision the military with extra medical personnel and supplies, and then (with permission of affected countries) send military doctors in to provide substantially similar medical aid to that currently being given?
Like, I'm all for the idea of doing things "the right way" within the legal framework we have, but surely Congress just giving medical aid to foreign nations isn't far off from things they could do with enumerated powers under the Constitution?
vorpa-glavo
1d ago
The other stuff he can take or leave, although he’s personally relatively socially liberal, areligious and doesn’t have a huge issue with gays, abortion or trans people compared to many on the right.
I agree he doesn't personally have much investment in the issues surrounding gay people, abortion and trans people, but he's happy to throw the right a bone on these issues, and if he's doing that it really doesn't make a difference what he personally believes.
"Kindness" isn't a virtue.
I mean, if you've read Cicero's On Duties it is. According to Cicero (following the Stoic philosopher Panaetius), kindness/beneficence is a component of the cardinal virtue of justice. It is in this mode that the subordinate virtue of generosity is thought to fall under justice.
Now, Cicero's idea of generosity is limited, and he thinks that we should always keep enough to fulfill our obligations to our friends and families, and he also draws the analogy of your obligation to strangers being at about the level of helping a stranger with directions, or lighting someone else's torch when you already have a fire going (e.g. acts that don't require much from you in terms of time or resources.) A person with enough resources can, of course, go above and beyond what is morally required of them, and that is virtuous and good if they do.
vorpa-glavo
2d ago
If we're talking about ancient political philosophy, I tend to prefer Aristotle's politeia to Plato's aristokratia. A mixed constitution with all the best aspects of aristocracy, monarchy and democracy and with checks and balances to reign in the weaknesses of each of those systems seems like a better way to constitute a society than by trying to cultivate a truly virtuous and wise ruling class. I also feel like Aristotle's methodology (researching the constitutions of 158 Greek city states to see what makes them tick, and then distilling his findings into a book on politics) is more likely to arrive at viable, real world conclusions than Plato's comparatively more limited exposure to different constitutions. (There's also the fact that Plato's efforts to make Syracruse into his ideal republic ended in disaster, and resulted in his later political work "The Laws" being much less ambitious and utopian as a result.)
Plato was undoubtedly a genius, and his systematic approach to philosophy meant that he is often a great starting point, but I definitely don't think he should be taken as the last word on anything. He had a tendency to be lost in the airy heights, and I think a more grounded pragmatic approach can often outdo him.
vorpa-glavo
12d ago
Maybe we'll get a quick case clarifying the legal question of whether states can legally revoke ratification, and whether Congress is legally allowed to impose ratification deadlines. I think it would be sensible for the Supreme Court to rule that states can revoke ratification before an amendment has been passed (but not after), and that Congress can impose deadlines for ratification.
But it's kind of a pointless battle anyways, isn't it? Under current case law the 14th and 19th amendment already do most of what the ERA would do, and despite people like Hananiah pushing for it, I seriously doubt the majority of Federal statutes that prevent discrimination against women are going anywhere. And even if they did disappear, 23 states already have state constitutional provisions protecting the equality of men and women under law.
vorpa-glavo
13d ago
The intelligence-worship falls apart, because even the most intelligent are slaves to political conflict. You can't ignore it or pretend you are above participation or taking sides and only care about IQ, evidence, and reason.
I think you're kind of assuming too much.
I think it is perfectly consistent for Scott to chose to sacrifice any gains in the HBD space, for all of the other gains he could get everywhere else in the Overton window. That kind of pragmatism isn't a repudiation of mistake theory, it is an example of living it out.
If a position is truly poison for those who profess it in the public sphere, then it makes sense to me that a good mistake theorist will plod along in the background, working on fixing the policy issues they can openly and safely speak about without risk of reputational damage.
The reputational damage is caused by opponents engaging in conflict theory, but nothing says you have to stoop to their level.
vorpa-glavo
13d ago
I'm kind of curious about your response here, so I'm hoping you'd be willing to make it more concrete. Can you pick out the top one to three posts from Scott that you think are contradicted by his current position on HBD?
I'm not sure if I follow on the connection between HBD and Mistake Theory vs. Conflict Theory. Surely, the following can both be true: 1) IQ differences between groups are real and explained in part by genetic differences, and this affects the kinds of societal institutions that can be successful, and 2) it is better to treat policy disputes as debates where facts and evidence could theoretically make everyone converge to the correct prescriptions for society (mistake theory), rather than treating them as a war (conflict theory.)
Heck, going back through Scott's original Conflict vs. Mistake article, I find:
Mistake theorists think you can save the world by increasing intelligence. You make technocrats smart enough to determine the best policy. You make politicians smart enough to choose the right technocrats and implement their advice effectively. And you make voters smart enough to recognize the smartest politicians and sweep them into office.
Most of that, except maybe the part about voters seems completely compatible with HBD. Even taking the voters into account, through a combination of voluntary eugenics, and public education you could theoretically raise the societal IQ and show that mistake theory is a possible path to a successful society.
vorpa-glavo
20d ago
I mostly agree with you that January 6th was not that big of a deal. From the moment it happened, I had the 1954 United States capitol shooting in the back of my mind, which I always felt was pretty justified: Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States, the people who make all the big decisions about Puerto Rico are bureaucrats in DC, Puerto Rican nationalists go to the bureaucrats which decide their status and shoot the people responsible for their subjugated status. Notably, Puerto Ricans would not get the chance to vote on their status until 1967, so I think it is fair to say that the Puerto Rican nationalists were using one of the few avenues available to them, since there was no peaceful political process available to them to push for the result they wanted.
While I have pushed back against this elsewhere in the thread, I similarly think that if the January 6th rioters truly believed that the election was stolen, then their actions are somewhat justified. That said, because I don't believe the election was stolen, and don't believe that the evidence was particularly good that the election was stolen, I still think January 6th is a little worrying as an example of what epistemically misguided people can be manipulated into doing.
But I also acknowledge that January 6th posed only the tiniest threat to American stability. Taking over a single building, even if that building is congress, doesn't give you the keys of power, and we have processes in place for replacing congress members who are killed. The most likely scenario if congress members started getting lynched was that the military moves in, takes back the capitol and then after a few special elections we're back to business as usual. No big deal.
vorpa-glavo
20d ago
If you believe the election is stolen, then seize power dammit.
I mean, if you believe witches really exist, and that they really curdle milk and make people sick, then we should totally burn all witches at the stake.
On the day of the 2024 election, I was at the house of an elderly conservative man, and he was going on about how "the fix was already in", and he was talking about stories he was already seeing online about suspicious activity around voting in Pennsylvania or whatever. He was clearly mentally preparing for a Kamala victory, especially after our state was called early in the night and went towards Kamala.
And then Trump won that night. And miraculously, I never heard him say anything about election fraud during the 2024 election ever again, even though if what he was saying about election fraud in swing states was true, it would logically mean that Trump must have stolen the election.
Based on my experiences with him, I'm not sure if I actually believe that most Trump supporters believe that substantial, results-changing election fraud ever happened, either in 2016 or in 2024. It was always just a paper thin loyalty oath, with the justifications coming afterwards.
vorpa-glavo
23d ago
This interview has attracted a lot of controversy in the weeks leading up to it, as Fridman has said that he wanted to conduct the interview in Russian, which they both speak fluently. Zelensky did not want to conduct the interview in Russian for symbolic reasons that are probably quite easy to understand. In the lead up of the interview, Fridman has a 10 minute introduction in which he tries to justify why wanted to speak Russian, and then the first ten minutes of the real interview is him trying to convince Zelensky. His main argument is that if Zelensky speaks Russian, an interpreter would not be needed, and more of Zelensky's wit and dynamism would come through, and that there wouldn't be a 2-3 second delay in their communication.
While I'm sure the symbolic reasons are a consideration, isn't it possible that Zelensky just wanted the interview to be in English to maximize the odds that an English-speaking audience would see it? I'm sure there's a lot of casual followers of Fridman who might give an episode a skip if it was entirely in Russian with subtitles.
vorpa-glavo
26d ago
And in case you didn't feel like you were taking crazy pills a majority of people think that this is a better and more fair way to pay for medicine.
Well, yeah. Organized crime is easier to deal with than disorganized crime.
That said, I wouldn't be against some of the proposals in this thread for laws forcing price transparency, since as another poster pointed out, veterinarians are able to do this, so there should be no reason human doctors or surgeons can't.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
Sure, but doesn't Aeneas encounter a young Carthaginian huntress (who is actually his mom Aphrodite in disguise)?
His mother met him herself, among the trees, with the face
and appearance of a virgin, and a virgin’s weapons,
a Spartan girl, or such as Harpalyce of Thrace,
who wearies horses, and outdoes winged Hebrus in flight.
For she’d slung her bow from her shoulders, at the ready,
like a huntress, and loosed her hair for the wind to scatter,
her knees bare, and her flowing tunic gathered up in a knot.
And she cried first: ‘Hello, you young men, tell me,
if you’ve seen my sister wandering here by any chance,
wearing a quiver, and the hide of a dappled lynx,
or shouting, hot on the track of a slavering boar?’
And later
Then Venus said: ‘I don’t think myself worthy of such honours:
it’s the custom of Tyrian girls to carry a quiver,
and lace our calves high up, over red hunting boots.
While this could be a fantastical detail imagined by Virgil, I don't find it hard to believe at all that some places around the Mediterranean might have had a tradition of women hunting, and this potentially contributing to Artemis being a huntress.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
TERFs like to engage in a particular kind of revisionist history that claims that men in women's sports are yet another insidious ploy by the patriarchy to keep women down. When confronted with the argument that men in women's sports are simply the natural outcome of decades of feminist propaganda claiming that any and all biological differences that disfavour women are the product of a misogynistic culture and nothing else, they employ the usual gaslighting: Nobody thinks that, you are delusional, it didn't happen and if it did that's a good thing.
I don't necessarily think this is a good characterization of TERFs.
There is not just one "feminism" - it is a bunch of different ideologies with different starting premises, and different conclusions about what is to be done. While there's variety within so-called "TERFs", many of the people who get called TERFs that I'm familiar with online tend to be of the opinion that "the thing that makes you a woman is the combination of being a biological female in a world run by biological men, with all that entails." (AKA difference feminism as opposed to equality feminism.)
Now, I do acknowledge that TERFs themselves are a diverse group, and if I had to break down the TERF pie based on what I've read and seen, I would imagine that the grouping consists of some combination of the following:
- "Old school" difference feminists who were fighting for feminism in the 1960's through 1980's, and whose beliefs just haven't moved on since then. (Think Janice Raymond and her book The Transsexual Empire.) Some of these are the only actual "radical feminists" in the TERF camp.
- Modern difference feminists who often started as postmodern feminists or equality feminists, and who were "burned" in some way by those movements. (Either they had a string of blackpilling relationships with men that soured them on mainstream liberal feminism, or they were cancelled or ostracized and then ended up in a bubble that made their views more "radical" over time.)
- A small handful of social conservatives LARPing as feminists. Could be grifters, could be an example of horseshoe theory.
- A small handful of postmodern feminists, who, as /u/RococoBasilica suggests, believe almost everything progressive gender-focused feminism believes, but who arrive at the conclusion that transwomen are another form of patriarchal male oppression.
I think this is a good example of the difference between the Goddess of Cancer and the Goddess of Everything Else.
Evolution had one chance to program our values, but it is imperfect and hackish. So instead of optimizing us for "make lots of babies with your own genetic code", it optimized us for the intermediary, "have sex with an attractive member of the opposite sex." For most of human history, those two notions were connected, but then we invented birth control and contraceptives, and we switched from the rule of the Goddess of Cancer (who says "KILL CONSUME MULTIPLY CONQUER") to the rule of the Goddess of Everything Else.
While hanging out in rationalist and pronatalist spaces has helped me to appreciate the appeal of Bloodtopia more, I think my heart is still in Ideastan. I just can't commit to calling childless people like Sir Isaac Newton or George Washington "failures" in some ultimate sense. I think in spite of the fact that they didn't have biological offspring, they altered the future trajectory of humanity so radically that the contribution of some random breeder just can't compare.
I would rather give in to the excitement and mystery of where the Goddess of Everything Else takes us, than stick to the tried and true, but stale world of Bloodtopia.
What do you want my response to be to "American conservatism just doesn’t appeal to me because I’m not scared of everything"? Can you write us a sample response to that claim, if it's not a waste of time?
I mean, I could try. Something like:
While an American liberal or progressive might feel like an American conservative is coming from a place of fear, this is a misleading impression. First, it is worth pointing out that wanting things like lower immigration, more barriers to trans care for children and fewer government hand outs doesn't have to come from a place of 'fear.' Just as liberals/progressives believe that their policies come from a high-minded place of concern for their fellow man, so too a conservative can genuinely believe that the best thing for all peoples is to adopt those policies.
In the case of immigration, a conservative might believe that brain-draining poor countries is bad for the stability and well-being of those cultures, and that migration might serve as a release valve for pressure that would rightfully lead to successful rebellions that might actually make those countries better off in the long run.
In the case of trans care, it doesn't have to be fear of the "other" at all, but a genuine conviction that the evidence in favor was actually substantially weaker than often claimed, that it originated in a different country with different background information that doesn't seem to apply to the anglo-sphere. Add in the replication crisis (which also affects medicine), and the evidence that the WPATH is an activist organization that seems to go beyond the remit of evidence, and you have a recipe to truly believe that trans healthcare for minors is a net negative for most children, and society as a whole. This is not about "fear", but a genuine disagreement on the merits of the evidence and an approach to epistemology.
Even aside from all of this, it is worth pointing out that liberals and progressives seem to be afraid of their own side's bugbears, in a way that is out of proportion with the statistics. They fear hate crimes, rape, and discrimination to a far greater degree than the statistics would seem to justify. It is wrong-headed to think that what makes conservatism unique is "fear", as opposed to the positive values they do espouse.
I wonder if any of you sometimes feel that someone of the outgroup just made a good move or just a good point (in other words, produced useful propaganda) in the culture war that takes you by surprise. A long time ago I noticed some liberals quoting a statement from a Christian pastor regarding abortion and I now decided to trace it back to the original source.
I mean, I certainly think people on the other side of the culture war make rhetorically strong points that are likely to resonate with other people, but I don't know if that ever "surprises" me.
More often, I find myself disappointed with the zingers people on "my side" are making, even if they make for good propaganda.
I'm slowly coming to the view that the only "legitimate" way to argue with another person is to engage with their "highest" human self as far as possible, and not to use cheap tricks. I heard about a friend trying to reach their anti-covid-vaccine parents, who had been talked into that position by Facebook video drivel, and that friend tried everything but found the most success in just sending pro-covid-vaccine Facebook video drivel. I suppose if all you care about is manipulating your parents to get a vaccine, because you genuinely think that it is best for them and for society, you might be able to justify that to yourself, but I felt a sense of discomfort with it.
I don't just want to find the right psychological levers to make other people believe what I want them to believe. I want to convince the human in them that what I believe is the case - or to similarly be convinced that I am wrong.
There is nothing inconsistent about being pro-life; this is simply a very progressive man dressing up his progressivism in the guise of Christian religion.
Not on its own, but few people are "pro-life" and nothing else. Very, very few people try to follow all of their beliefs to an "optimized" conclusion.
This is why no Catholic has ever decided to become a mass murderer and kill as many baptized infants as possible to maximize the number of people in Heaven. (Maybe the murderer is damning his own soul, but it's just one damned soul against hundreds or thousands of souls that might go astray and commit mortal sins if they're allowed to grow up. And in the end, if he can manage to truly be contrite about it, even he might end up in Heaven.)
It is also why no pro-life Catholic has tried to put together monetary funds to get hospice patients hooked up to as many machines to keep their body technically alive as long as possible. They're pro-life, but only up until a point. They have other values that trade off against their pro-life stance.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
The abortion case is only complicated by the question of whether or not destroying a fetus is "doing harm". If you agree that it is, then an abortion is clearly morally wrong as just about every ethical system agrees that "doing harm" is wrong.
I don't think that last part is true.
Virtually every ethical system allows for "doing harm" in a number of circumstances, whether it is a doctor cutting off an arm to save a person's life, a military killing enemy combatants, or killing animals to eat them.
In fact, the most famous philosophical thought experiment around abortion, Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist is specifically constructed to argue that even if abortion is doing harm to a human being, it would be morally permissible. (Personally, I think the thought experiment really only succeeds in arguing for abortion in the case of rape, but that's neither here nor there.)
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
Do you really think you can read a text that long in the space of a week or two, and come to a decision about the content of the bill? That’s not even doing much analysis on the effects of the provisions, just reading them.
I mean, I think that congressional staffers could theoretically divide up a 1500 page bill, and read all of the sections in a week or two.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
I've never understood the argument the US customary units are "human-centric".
I mean, I find it really easy to work with some units because I know their origins. It's much easier to know that a "league" is about as far a person can walk in an hour, and it is 3 miles, and then to work from that fact to how far my D&D party could walk with 8 hours of travel on flat terrain, than to do anything involving distance with metric units.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
I agree with some broad strokes about what you just said, but I would put it differently.
I think the most important thing about woke identity politics, is that it isn't fundamentally incompatible with the hierarchies of representative democracy and capitalism. Every group has its talented tenth, and letting a few of the people in charge be black, or women or trans people doesn't fundamentally, radically alter the power structures of capitalist, liberal democratic society.
This is the reason woke identity politics is allowed to exist in the United States. More dangerous or radical forms of identity politics or anti-hierarchical thinking are dismantled if they get too much steam. We know now that the FBI systematically dismantled black nationalist, white supremacist, feminist, environmentalist and other groups from the 1950's to the 1970's. I think that this created a selection pressure for decentralized, "headless" advocacy groups that were harder to dismantle, but which also struggled more to actually organize and make changes to society. Occupy Wall Street is probably the prototypical example of such a decentralized group that accomplishes nothing substantial, but BLM and other forms of woke advocacy certainly qualify.
There is no woke pope. There's no head to cut off. Sure, there are a handful of influential authors, but they could be thrown under the bus tomorrow and the movement would still continue because it is not dependent on a single head to function. It is a distributed entity, selected for by generations of federal infiltration of extremist groups, until it became something the government couldn't tame or control, but which the government also didn't need to tame or control, since its lack of organization leaves it fairly unable to permanently enact widespread legal changes. (Witness the cities that reduced funding to police in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd, and then quickly reversed course as soon as the public stopped paying attention.)
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
I mean, aren't there plenty of old stories about sluts getting away with it and becoming respected members of the community? The biblical prostitute Rahab got picked up as a model of "hospitality, mercy, faith, patience and repentance."
While helping the Israelites deal with their enemies is a good way to "earn" her redemption, that still sets a precedent that loose women can become part of the common fold.
How are you sure this is malicious compliance, and not just a combination of chilling effects and most people not knowing the limits of new, unfamiliar laws?
For your teacher example, I could easily see a situation where they genuinely don't know whether books in their classroom library violate some part of the law (because, say, LGBT content wasn't among the things they screened for when buying the books in the first place), and thus found it easier to nuke the classroom library than it would be to comb through all of them and make sure they don't run afoul of the law.
And in the case of the doctors and anti-abortion laws, it really feels like you're doing the thing so many people do where they assume they live in the "most convenient world" for their worldview. Like, how convenient that anti-abortion laws would never lead to any negative outcomes ever, if not for malicious compliance on the part of doctors.
Just as police officers are not lawyers, and they deserve a little bit of charity when they misinterpret or misapply a law, doctors are not lawyers and it is not at all surprising to me that a new set of laws whose limits haven't fully been tested in the courts is leading them to fail to treat patients even when it might technically be permissible under the law. I suspect that once the dust is settled and doctors are less spooked by the threat of being charged under the new law, fewer women will die this way, but I don't think chalking it up to a "tantrum" is the most likely reading of the cases that have been making headlines.
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