wemptronics
2d ago
Here's the link to Yarvin in NYT.
Wouldn't that make him a public performer rather than an intellectual? Around topics like these, at least. His insights are quite good as long as they don't touch upon specific things.
Kinda, yeah. My read is Scott's courage is limited, though I don't consider him a coward. He remains capable of surprising his audience. He values some things before speaking Truth To Power. Mine is a purely parasocial assessment. I don't know if I have an accurate read of his character from his writing and limited appearances.
I don't know what you mean by "beat the allegations"?
It would be unnatural if the the rodeo didn't include clowns. I wasn't being very serious. I've seen this entire dynamic play out what feels like 1000 times. It's up there next to Holocaust discussions.
In terms of persuasion, then there's utility to mealy mouthed, soft arguments. They complement the courageous explorers that proudly plant their offensive pole in the snow on top of Mt. Overton. The brave can plant the pole and the soft cowards can find ways to nicely herd people towards it. Maybe Scott is an exceptional, though not exceptionally, soft coward-- not a brave explorer. He is part writer, after all.
The type of people who get emotional and angry
Many people get emotional and angry when they see stuff they don't like. Some of them are stupid, sure, many of them are not. Of those, some proportion are ideologues or people with hard values that are going to be mad and troll no matter what. There's still significant number of people worth convincing. If true, that could make shibboleths, caution, and niceties worthwhile.
Scott is someone who wants truth to help solve problems. He doesn't want truth to make the world a worse place by his own estimation. He believes in the genetic role of intelligence, but doesn't want to see pogroms. This makes him cautious and, apparently, quiet. Lots of people don't want to see pogroms, and they associate these ideas with pogrom-related events. I think a normalization and nothing happens (hopefully magic pills in 50 years) is more likely when reality eventually breaks through, but it's worth considering. If it's not worth considering then lots of people still consider it. Seems to be changing!
So intellectually disabled people might have more severe issues like low working memory, while Malawians and 'healthy' naturally-low-IQ people are dragged down by other factors like poor abstract reasoning. I think education is much less important than most people believe. I could explain why, but my reply is already rather long.
How do you reason the Flynn effect and what it means? For intelligence in general and IQ testing. Strictly nutritional and stuff like less lead?
It feels like he made up his argument wanted to soften the conclusion.... I don't think anyone really thinks otherwise.
Scott is familiar with how this discourse goes down. He's knows if he doesn't say "not 100% genetic" out loud along with other I'm Not A Racist-ism's, then that will be the first item in a laundry list for angry skeptics to angry type angry sneers. There are at least a dozen other items on the list and he doesn't cover those. Some make an appearance on the SSC thread. Whether it's worthwhile to fight the losing battle-- I don't know. If you're aiming to persuade someone it's a good idea. Can't win'em all.
I'm Not A Racist And This Isn't Racist-isms are a wasted if you don't consider them necessary. P He softens and hedges when dealing with this (or any controversial) topic. I'm actually surprised he didn't put more effort into softening words. This is not his most comprehensive post. It engages with a narrow slice in the intelligence pie. At a paltry 1300 words it might as well be his literal list of laundry.
Personally, I don't think anyone should be allowed to successfully beat the allegations. Sounds downright unnatural. I'd concede that if anyone can achieve this feat it may be Scott Alexander.
He also understates the consequences of having 60 IQ, claiming that they will be confused if you talk about anything complex.
What should we expect a person with 60 IQ be capable of? What should we expect a nation with an average of 60 IQ to be capable of? Are individuals with a measured IQ of 60 in our society less cognitively capable than poorer, less educated individuals measured at 60 IQ across the ocean? Why would that be?
These are practical questions worth answering. In a way that uneducated brutes can understand. Which means it is something I've had questions about. I appreciated the follow-up post and consider this reasonable enough:
For the second effect mentioned in the post - the one where Malawians are obviously smarter than intellectually disabled people - you could attribute it to any of:
- Lynn’s data and analysis were bad.
- Lynn’s data and analysis were fine as far as they go, but the tests he based his work off of were trivially culturally biased - for example, they asked about English vocabulary in non-English speaking countries, or math problems to people who had never learned math.
- The tests weren’t trivially biased, but the concept of IQ itself breaks down once you try to extend it to extremely under-educated populations, and it no longer predicts things as well as you would expect.
- The concept of IQ is fine, but you are personally miscalibrated about what low IQ means because the only very-low-IQ people in your training set had developmental disorders.
I think these probably explain 5%, 5%, 40%, and 50% of the effect respectively, and I should have been more careful to emphasize (3), which I think explains 40% of the effect.
It wasn't even explained in detail, and it certainly wasn't intended as a handout or something to be taught to middle school kids as part of the curriculum.....
No, it's not considered as a handout to children. It's a teacher's module created for teachers to learn to instruct on maths.
It wasn't even explained in detail
What am I missing here? White supremacy is a central focus of this introductory module. That's why it is defined and given ample space. Pages 4-7, 8-12, etc. It's mentioned 54 times. This is explicit in its aims.
Some of it is mild injection of ideas couched in the gobblygook. Which I may have accepted with an eye roll if it existed by itself. Other parts I find insidious. I will vehemently disagree that children (or educators) should be taught to model the world in such a manner. I don't think it's necessary or good. It's ideological.
I will be school shopping soon! But have not personally been in one in awhile. Kids, I know. Parents, I know. Teachers, I know. I have been friends with a liberal teacher in a city school for well over a decade until she left the profession in 2023. She is a kind and thoughtful person. She is a true blue believer. I could never envision her with intent to maliciously implant an ideology in children. I also can't imagine she was very careful around sharing ideas she feels are justified by: "reality has a liberal bias", "just being a good person", or that white people X. I can easily imagine her teaching Equitable Math's program in 2018.
My impression, rather than a denial, is that much of this is the flavor of public education propaganda. Celebrate Maya Angelou instead of George Washington. To escape that one needs to spend a lot of money on private school. In my city, at least. There are still good public schools. I know kids attending them. To the extent these schools have a Woke Mind Virus it's fairly mild. What's easier and less expensive is to choose to raise smart children that can identify bullshit. Not everyone is blessed enough to raise such children.
You make a judgment call that all the not-math noise and concepts in my chosen example is unimportant, but I think it's very important. If we replaced the "white supremacy" concepts and definitions with a white supremacy one-- the '14 words', 88, etc -- would you so readily wave off "excess verbiage"? I wouldn't!
A training module for teachers created and endorsed by a number of educators, partnered with numerous California systems, and distributed in Oregon. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive review that I can to the measure the impact of CRT and woke-adjacent concepts in public education. I briefly looked, but mostly found research looking at state-governments legislating away CRT stuff. Education is local, and your experience in NYC will be different than mine in Topeka.
I was hoping that picking, what I consider, an egregious example of teaching materials (err, instructor materials), in use in more than one place would help work out the details, but I think we fundamentally have different tolerance for this type of propaganda. The creators of this programming have very clear ideas of what a child's indoctrination should be.
The "excess verbiage" in our example could have been any number of concepts-- relevant to education or otherwise-- but it's not. It is what it is. Is it everywhere? No, thankfully. However, related ideas contained within it became fairly common in other aspects of life and industry. What am I to surmise?
The entire point of my post is that, for all the discussion of various woke concepts, precious little of it has made it into actual policy. The fact that people are citing to documents that are long on bullshit and short on actual substance is only further evidence of that. If I really had to I could probably justify the entire Trump policy platform using woke CRT language, but it wouldn't really say anything about the underlying policies. All the use of this excess verbiage does is provide evidence of the thought-process of the people writing the documents, but I'm not arguing that there aren't important people who think this way; I'm arguing that this kind of thought hasn't been pervasive enough to result in objectionable policies.
I believe if you look with regards to education you'll find a number of objectionable curriculum and policy changes in major school districts. They may or may not have an effect on your state and local systems and curriculums. I'm of the mind that the years of 2010-2022 we saw major cultural changes in American society. It's why I'm here. Many cases of policy changes in industry, academia, and K-12 education have been brought to this very forums. I do not believe education was immune to the changes.
Is it worse to NOT actually do a quid pro quo when using your status to get women to sleep with you for favors?
Yes, but only in this limited aspect. Weinstein was convicted of other crimes, such as rape. Which is much worse than the non-crime of lying to women to get laid.
For women that leverage sex for career advancement it is definitely worse. For everyone else it's good that the risk of getting scammed exists. Sure, it sucks to get the raw end of an underhanded deal, but that risk is baked into under-the-table dealings. Is a drug dealer that stiffs, then robs, a customer worse than an honest, yet 1000x more vicious, cartel kingpin?
Lying to get laid, while scummy, is common. Women and men lie on first dates. Sometimes they lie in big ways that waste everyone's time. That can be months or years. That doesn't seem any better than a tryst without receiving an expected return.
If a woman wants to curry favor through sex with a powerful -- in this context -- guy that may help her career, then she has to use her judgment of his character and cross her fingers. If she wants to curry favor with a powerful guy that is known to be a womanizer that should enter into her assessment. If she wants a binding agreement, then she should write up a contract.
EDIT: I'm reminded of listening to Dan Savage speak about the Older Gay Guy/Young & Dumb Sexy Twink age gap relationship phenomena a few years ago. He judges a relationship with a significant age gap as ethical if Older Gay Guy leaves the Young Sexy Twink no worse or, ideally, "better off" at the end of the relationship. If you use a younger, inexperienced person for young, sexy sex, then don't leave them homeless, friendless, and drug-addicted at the end of it.
Can't say I fully understand the dynamic above, but if we apply the same framework here, then if all that's lost is some sex without financial benefit, then it's not an exceptional problem. If Gaiman doesn't deliver a book deal and wrecks a marriage -- other than his own -- in the process, then we can call it extra bad and tell the Young Sexy Twinks to avoid such a person.
For example, you don't consider this image to be A) objectionable to teach to children B) reasonably deduced to have derived from the Critical Theory framework? If those are the definitions of bad stuffs, because you made your teaching unit have to define 'white supremacy', welp, you probably shouldn't be sanctioned by the state.
The Oregon Department of Education distributed this to math teachers as an opt-in program to use. To my recollection.
The media made it sound like students were going to be instructed in jive talk and given English tests based on different grammar, when the reality was that they wanted to do additional instruction relating formal English concepts to the vernacular the kids were already speaking.
Couched in language and vernaculur, and actual concepts, of a Critical Theory framework. You're really stuck on how the media reports on things. The media is dishonest all the time. I believe it would be possible to make teaching doctrines without teaching kids bad ideas, or ideas derived from bad ideas, such as those in the image.
I bet in 1990 the "give everyone extra attention" doctrine wouldn't be couched in such language or concepts. Thus, this is one piece of evidence, for one state, that teaching became more 'woke' in some (at least) marginal respect, no? Saying it's not as bad as it looks is not the same as saying it's not a real thing. We should limit the number of indoctrinations into, what I consider, goop.
To do so, I ask* the state not sanction such ideas be taught or be near the indoctrination pathways. At least not those funded by tax dollars. This is a reasonable position. It is not media hysterics. If you don't consider this inserting a certain political valence into education, then what does that look like to you? "Children must don their Ushankas and praise Stalin" on pg. 3?
*Again, apologies for derailing.
I know you put a lot more effort into the rest of your post, but..
worksheets, reading materials, etc. that is supposedly indoctrinating our children
Reading this paragraph knowing that you have been here for awhile is something else! I have questions. What do you think of Critical Theory and do you believe it has impacted K-12 curriculum in a significant way?
Second question, what do you think of this toolkit for teachers and would you accept it as evidence for the kind of "woke" people are talking about? There is an FAQ page so you don't have to download the materials. The first 'stride' has 30 mentions of 'praxis' and 41 mentions of 'critical'.
If you are interested in seeing what kind of crack pot lunatics contributed to this, you can find them in this PDF. In case you don't want to check that, then it is meant to demonstrate that this was developed, propagated, and adopted by real educators-- in addition to goof balls.
Equitable Math is not applied in every school across the country. It is (or was) applied in deep blue urban cities such as Seattle. Critical Theory has impacted K-12 curriculums across the country in a major way. As you've identified, it enters other areas of K-12 like tracking or student discipline.
I hear it from high school teachers and parents in several districts that administrators are loathe to discipline all but the most troublesome students, because the parents all think their own kids are angels and can't be inconvenienced by after-school detentions or suspension.
Parents hate it, teachers hate it, yet the trend toward more relaxed discipline just kept growing. I guess a policy like minimize suspensions at great cost could theoretically be implemented at the behest the 5% of parents with troublesome kids. They may have gained outsized influence on discipline policy at schools in the last 20 years. I'm not sure how. They didn't seem to have that large of an influence 20 years ago. Maybe such policies are justified with commonly accepted ideas like equity which are related to other ideas in education. I'm open to other theories.
Education has to be one of the most difficult positions to argue against the pervasiveness of woke. Educators are some of the bluest of the blue. Their counterparts in academia are sometimes so blue they're red. Your average teacher in South Carolina is a normal person who wants to learn kids and probably doesn't want to turn them gay. Still, much of school is indoctrination. The indoctrination many kids get today is more woke than it was in 1990. Usually not to excess, depending on tolerance, due to the normalness of average teachers. Directionally, without a doubt.
Nice.
I still see this is a serious conversation about an unserious scenario. I will update when we see what Trump actually does. Americans broadly don't harbor ill will or want to bully Canada. Does that matter? I think so. Americans don't really care about bullying Iraqis or Cubans. We probably can't escape the geopolitics of it all. Still, there are no irreconcilable differences between the two nations that suggest conflict is inevitable or desirable.
Our security policy has been to "phone the US" if we ever get in trouble.
the fact that we lost control and sovereignty over our portion of the Arctic will go down as a national embarrassment and historic tragedy
A mutually beneficial, if lopsided, security arrangement is fine and to be expected. Canada is not likely to keep complete sovereignty over all its territory, no. Poland, a nation of proud and jingoistic people, doesn't maintain complete sovereignty either. They invite America to violate their sovereignty with broad smiles and wide open arms. Isn't that the deal? What does a Canada not beholden to America look like? A Chinese satellite?
I don't know what the Pentagon or State Department is thinking in terms of long term strategy. Whether it has any influence on Trump's current rhetoric is another question. Canada's security capabilities and its willingness to maintain those are a real concern. There is a strategic deficit that Canada is well positioned to fill. Canada should be the Arctic guys on this side of the Atlantic. They probably are. Canada doesn't need a 400 ship navy to be a reliable and indispensable ally.
Seems like as the nice guy neighbor Canada should also be well positioned to have competent and useful intelligence agencies. A go-between that can offer to whisper sweet nothings into the super power's ears, thus gaining valuable access it can leverage. Why isn't that a thing? The Brits fill this role already?
I might feel the same way if I were a Canadian. As an American citizen I'd rather see Canada prosper than become a subservient territory. Rising tides and all that. Once the Canadian subreddit started speaking more candidly about immigration I began to have serious concerns. A United States of NAFTA would be kinda cool, but meh.
And, hey, at least you're not Mexico.
For example, this post from last week’s Culture War thread felt like the kind of low-effort strawman I am used to seeing on Twitter
It is a low effort post that could be dinged for consensus building, but is it really a strawman?
It's a skeptical (Motte-friendly) yet accurate description of what the article relays about environmentalism of the era. It is pretty much a bare link, but not every post needs 8 paragraphs. I would have appreciated a high effort counter-narrative posted here or elsewhere. The closest thing is an almost too charitable "that's how science works, stupid." This is Dr. Near, the same researcher in the article, quote tweeting. That seems to be a narrow interpretation when, in the article, opponents are quoted as saying:
“Whether he intends it or not, lumping is a great way to cut back on the Endangered Species Act,” Dr. Plater said of Dr. Near.
If you have a different or better idea for a top-level you can do that. It seems more typical to leave the lazy post up if it generates good enough discussion. Once the thread is scrolling it's hard to justify nuking everything when mods can't be sure if someone else will make the effort post to replace it. Put the effort post under the lazy one. The only reliable way to get ahead of this is for You to make the effort post.
Why would it?
Because minorities can probably adequately haul water to flames for 15/hr too.
Being a janitor is a job with shit wages. Do you have to go target minorities to take the position?
You don't have to, but many janitors do happen to be minorities.
In 2021 this Marin County Fire Dept. unit looks pretty white and male. Maybe they need communication operators and support staff. They think they can make quota by getting some girls. I don't know what goes into firefighting. Yes, yes, it could be the woke mind virus and probably is to some degree. I don't think Marin County Fire Dept's program is burning LA at the moment. This was my main objection to the framing in the parent.
Let's not slam down LibsofTikTok slop-bait as if it is authoritative.
wemptronics
11d ago
Claim: the majority of California, or even area, firefighters aren't recruited through organizations such as this one. Which is most likely an ineffectual, tax skimming grift via state grants. It could also be a genuine, if misguided, attempt to scoop bodies for the Marin County Fire Department as it claims.
I wouldn't implement it. If they have a dearth in recruitment and need bodies they should either open parallel grifty grant programs for anyone likely to be qualified, or make one big one and take whoever qualifies as they apply.
I'd be open to the idea that, like the military, we see firefighter recruitment issues that may be worsened by poor propaganda or DEI preference. Which I don't consider a top 3 factor, but do consider a top 10 one. I would not require much evidence to update this way. Even a credible enough looking firefighting forum post could do it for me. I won't update off of Libsoftiktok bait though.
I mean they literally refuse to hire white male firefighters.
Are you sure there is a literal refusal to hire white male fighters? The small story from the LibsofTiktok outrage slop -- slop you chose to share -- reports on this organization which facilitates recruitment of minorities. If wildfire firefighters are primarily white, male, and have shit wages why would it not make sense to target other demographics to fill the ranks?
Maybe Californian disasters would be better managed and mitigated by voting Republican. Makes sense to me that competition has a better chance at breeding competence. They might have less damage from fires if they paid firefighters $30/hr instead of 15-20. I'm not sold it's because of bait from LibsofTikTok for one organization doing recruitment in one area targeting one demographic.
I'd have to go back and listen, but I didn't understand it as a "we won't talk until" precondition. He was laying out that for negotiations to be worth anything, for anything like a ceasefire to be entertained, then meaningful security guarantees must be met. Might be saying the same thing. I came away thinking he would consider (or said he would) conceding territory for something like NATO presence. He didn't say that directly, but that was my impression.
He contextualized it with the Budapest Memorandum. So he spoke at some length about the kind of "assurances" that would not be acceptable for any form of peace to occur. Maybe he's spoken like this for awhile, but that signal alone: a suggestion lines could be frozen and and concede territory was a new thing for me to hear from him.
If his aim is to get Trump involved and on board, then seen as willing to negotiate is a precondition for that to happen. We'll see.
My review: I also spent my Sunday afternoon listening to this. I rate my experience as a 4/10. If you're interested in listening to world leaders give a speech for 3 hours, go for it. Zelensky does share some novel anecdotes. The latter half becomes tiresome.
Lex Fridman's previous interviews (that I've seen) left a better impression. I think he takes most of the blame. Lex asks very similar questions. He "has a dream" that peace can happen if Trump, Putin, and Zelensky gets in a room. Okay, great. That's answered.
It also includes the same problems as Tucker's Putin interview. Though I would rate that one as a 7/10 for peculiarity. If a president wants to blabber, dodge, and stonewall you for 3 hour's, there's not much you can do. Unless you're a great interviewer. Then you find find a way to mine an interesting vein. For that I consider much of this interview as bloated or even wasteful.
Lex has sympathies, but he also wants to be open-minded, heterodox guy. Like Zelensky I found the "can you forgive him" phrasing juvenile and poorly designed. What was he expecting there?
For Zelensky's part, I was taken by just how direct he was in making this appearance a love letter to Trump. I would expect some flattery, but so much of his answers contained an appeal to US support-- and Trump himself. That was the goal no doubt. It was new for me to hear his (official?) position now includes the option to cede occupied territories for security guarantees for what Ukraine has left. Unless I misheard that part? Negotiations may happen in 2025. That'd be good.
Sir, this is a Bulgarian Turnip-farming Monastery Debate Club. You write as if you expected a sub-culture of nerds to be the harbinger of your precious race war. Maybe one day you'll get your wish granted, or perhaps it's just not meant to be and you'll go to an early grave with hypertension. Way of the road, bud.
... not because of a failure of charity or tolerance or curiousity or to ascribe good motive... but because of a failure to simply identify evil. To categorically and ruthlessly declare enemies and vow hatred.
I agree with this. Terrible failure and condemnation. Unforgivable in many ways.
Why is The Motte subject to your tantrum? Why this? Polite discussion is useful for many things. It's useful to have conversation around contentious topics on a hobbyist forum.
You are correct. Charity and discussion are not good for waging a crusade. We've talked about the UK rape gang thing for years. Not much about it was productive. Nothing about much is productive, maaaaan. Meet a girl, have sex, build a family. That's productive. I don't think doing so will bring about the end of everything. It doesn't usually result in a genocide. I think that's a bonus, you may disagree in some future fedpost. Make it interesting for us.
** In case you need to hear it: be well and take care of yourself, dude.
wemptronics
1mo ago
See Scott's article on Kolmogorov complicity. Researching possible group difference in IQ is a third rail for the career in pretty much the same way as applying the scientific method to questions of religion was in 17th century Italy.
I had linked it as well, but axed that paragraph in an edit.
try to minimize harm to their bottom line instead of pushing for academic freedom
If they refund their prestige by, say, making all their prestigious domain editing expert volunteers leave they might also damage the bottom line. If the journal isn't financially viable they can try to turn it into a new kind of journal with a different mission. That would make sense.
However, since my post there has been a different assessment from two people that both have a history in intelligence research. Could be politics of other sorts that was sold as something else. Some clique angry one of them didn't get the job.
I perpetuated fake news. This raises more questions. Why the big hubbub quitting then? Typical organization silliness?
Doesn't look like they've been named. Charles Murray and Cremieux vouch for the new, unnamed editors.
Ah, I see they're named in Murray's reply to his post. Darn you twitter.
Still perpetuated fake news. Shame.
Did The Motte already speak about this small story surrounding some controversy at psychology/psychometrics journal Intelligence? One of the, if not the, top journals for intelligence research to find publication as I understand it. Anyone privy to academic journal gossip?
Aporia reports "Mass resignations at the journal Intelligence: Numerous members of the editorial board resign after publisher installs new editors-in-chief."
The gist:
Intelligence is one of the few scientific journals where it is possible to publish work on controversial topics such as national IQ.
At the end of November, members of the editorial board were notified that current editor-in-chief Richard Haier would be stepping down and would be replaced by two new editors-in-chief. While editorships changing hands is perfectly normal in academia, two elements made this handover rather unusual.
The dirt:
the current editors were excluded from the decision of whom to select as new editor-in-chief, which was instead made by the journal’s publisher, Elsevier. The second is that the two individuals who were selected do not appear to be well-suited for the role. I will not name them...
Neither is currently a member of the journal’s editorial board, and neither lists “intelligence” among their main research interests on their faculty page.
There is also reason to believe that at least one appointee may not share the journal’s stated commitment to academic freedom as regards controversial topics.
Haier scheduled (forced?) to leave as EIC, publisher puts out job listings, then picks candidates that are perceived as unsuited to the listing and the role according to a number of editors.
Since learning about the new editors-in-chief and the process by which they were appointed, most members of the editorial board have resigned in protest. Some are now making plans to start a new journal. There is a general feeling that Elsevier has acted improperly.
The reporting is brief. A whole 7 paragraphs. I might even say it's incomplete.
Missing from the reporting includes a reason why the current editor-in-chief, Richard Haeier, is stepping down. Perhaps he is retiring. Who knows? I assume he was well-respected within the journal if his departure leads to mass resignations. He did a too-long Lex Friedman podcast appearance a couple years ago. It's probably good to have one public facing representative for intelligence research. I couldn't recall any big hubbub from Haeier's appearance on Lex Fridman's show, so I looked for some. Despite the episode reaching 1.8 million views, Google only showed me one mention of it in a "news" search. It was crammed into Quillete's weekly Bare Link Repository
Also not mentioned in the reporting is the names of the two new editors Elsevier has chosen to take over the journal. "I will not name them here." One commenter (brief /r/SSC discussion) suggests it is because naming the editors would make it harder to reverse the decision, but it is reported as if resignations are already through. It's done. So this could be a professional courtesy?
If this is a pressure campaign from editors and academics that seek to save the integrity of the journal they've invested in, then why choose Aporia of all places to spread the word? Quillette and The FP might report on this. If the new EIC's are the types to destroy the integrity of your journal why be courteous to them? The publisher wanted to change course no matter which way. Maybe Things Are In The Works and we'll hear more in time.
If everything is done and the journal considered lost by its editors, then I do reckon there's not much use crying about spilled milk to "heterodox" journalists. If the reported angle is accurate Intelligence made it through 2016-2023 only to fall now. Talk about timing.
"Woke" was always a kludge term to describe cringe leftists
Nitpick Nancy here. It was not always a kludge term. Woke was used as a self-identifying descriptor and signal among a significant number of people with ties to African American vernacular. It was enough people, with enough impact, and enough frequency to take off within progressive culture more broadly. Then, eventually, defined as a category of people to make fun of in the 2010s. The woke people -- as a group to make fun of -- may have always been used as a kludge to describe cringe progressives. This happened after the word gained popularity as a signal and identifier. Stay woke.
Konstantin does share some reasoning, but still reads like he wants to deploy "woke" as a synonym for bad. I don't think woke is a synonym for bad. It's a pejorative now, but that's not all that it is. There is (some) cultural significance, a bit of history, and meaning in its use that extends beyond a pejorative. Like Konstantin, I don't enjoy stuff like name calling, bullying centrists, or creating a culture of fear. However, woke right sounds down right grotesque to me. He must be stopped.
I don't think any of these are inherent to wokeness. If Konstantin wrote for Slate or the NYT he might feel less compelled to conjure up a new term for people he doesn't like, but interacts with frequently. He could call them far right and be done with it. He might even add in "extremist" at the end depending on how charitable he wanted to be with his framing. Lots of people call others far right. What's wrong with that? Twitter populists. Internet reactionaries. Contrarian right? Anti-Justice Warrior? Plenty of options.
Some of these fall more easily on my ears than 'woke right'. Doubt woke right catches on and enters common parlance. Remind me in 2 years.
It's time to coordinate some meanness against this tactic
Why not demonstrate they are wrong or mistaken? Is that mean enough? If there's specific concern trolls you are concerned with, then it'd be good to point them out to Mom--erators. People should be allowed to be wrong here. They should be allowed to make bad, misinformed arguments. They should be allowed to be duped and fall for the latest propaganda and regurgitate it with a fresh coat of polite paint on it here. They should be allowed to be embarrassed, apologize, or quietly slink away and come back with a new humility. You should be encouraged and motivated as you easily dispel provably false things. Easily dispelling provably false things is a major contribution and part of the immune system. Then for things that are not provably false you maybe can take it easy?
I don't make it around all the way through every thread, but I haven't seen an epidemic of DNC concern trolls here.
Okay, fair enough. Kudos to me for thinking of all the same examples as an MSN journalist. Eek. Bad of me to assume that should mean more. So sure, unprecedented in some ways, but it adheres to the spirit of the pardon in this case. For the good and bad reasons
It makes sense to be unprecedented. We don't see many mob bosses who require big blocks of time washed away receive pardons. That article led me to reporting on Bush 2. At the end of his second term in 2008 he issued then rescinded a pardon. All to avoid a look of impropriety. The concern? The recipient had donated to Republican candidates. How far we've come in 15 short years!
Another thing that article led me to was this 2020 paper from a bygone and never ending era. I skimmed. It's by a UConn professor that argues the presidential pardon has a "specificity requirement" based on the practices in English common law at the time of the American Founders. It doesn't seem like a great paper, but maybe I will finish it and report back.
Yes a lot of people believe pardon power is unfettered but what if SCOTUS ruled it wasn't and you had to specify crimes? What good would a pardon be if you couldn't get your son off the hook because he probably can't even remember all his crimes? I suppose it'd be fine if it was more like a guilty plea, so long as it still had broad power.
Is that typical?
I don't think it is atypical in cases that warrant it. In cases where crimes may have been committed over a period of time pardons will apply to a time frame in addition to specific crimes. Otherwise the pardon has potential to not feel very pardon-like in a few years. Who knows what kind of goofy antics Hunter was up to we don't know about? The draft dodgers pardons, general amnesty pardons, and a pardon like the one Nixon received apply to chunks of time rather than a pardon for only a specific crime.
As I understand, presidential pardons are basically magical spells. Make'em how you want. Biden wants his son safe from prosecution, so he casts a more powerful spell. Biden may know there is more dirt to find, fears or knows of Republican intentions to go digging, or simply doesn't trust his son with an ounce of mud to be honest about things. If you're going to pardon him properly, then it's best to pardon him for the time period he was a bad boy.
wemptronics
1mo ago
Oh, that would have been clever. Biden could even commute the sentences for the Jan 6 people rather than pardon them. That's a difference people can point at. This action indicates Biden doesn't seem worried about blowback on his party or the politics. I don't really blame him. Pardoning Trump as a deflection is a no brainer if you want a deflection, but if you're not concerned about the politics, why bother? Dark Brandon indeed.
I had little hope for a presidential pardon for Trump had he lost the election. Dems so fully committed to get him on legalities that I don't think POTUS declaring a time to heal would even have had the state prosecutions pack up shop. We passed the point of no return. I hope America hasn't seen its last overt act of graciousness in the service of moving forward peacefully. Hopefully post-Trump world sees some amount of useful grace return to politics. I do not have high hopes for it in now-Trump world. I would like to be surprised!
Well don't let the words of some guy on the internet get you down. I think it is technically possible to be too cynical when it comes to national politics. The reverse is the more common folly imo.
The theatrics are front and center, inside and out, on the front-end and in the back end. Insiders, pundits, campaign staffers, candidates and the political class at large gives a lot of attention and time to concepts like narrative, optics, and messaging. There is mandated finger wagging from some Klein/Yglesias Debbie Downer to say Policy is What Counts and, yeah, probably so. Policy ain't a campaign though.
It's optimized. Both parties distill turnout driving messaging all the way down to "most important election of our lifetime". I like candidates being more honest and direct about stuff than doing the politics, but I think we're in the minority. It wins more elections. Simple as.
I didn't vote for the guy either. Capturing authenticity in a market saturated with fakery, hackery, and theatrics? It's smart. It's not a one-in-a-million Trump strategy that can't be replicated. Walz was supposed to be authentic. I didn't really buy it. Vance was presented by the media as an inauthentic robot early on. I think people oversell his Normal Guy status, but he's not standing-awkwardly-in-a-donut-shop.jpg as presented.
Even in a staged McDonald's photo op, with obviously screened patrons Trump comes out looking authentic in a way that Kamala never could match. I saw (admittedly, low hanging internet comments) Dems screaming "but it's fake!" Yeah. It doesn't matter that it's all staged. Voters know it's staged. Voters know he loves McDonald's. They like watching him bullshit with a worker and pretend to cook fries. It resonates.
My guess is national/DC Dems have too many people that have drank the Kool-Aid. Trump will sometimes pull the curtain up, but the swamp remains undrained! This run on the podcast circuit (will see more of that) I heard him speak a few times about people he is meant to hate -- Chuck Schumer, for instance -- as normal colleagues playing a game. If he loses the election, then he might be going to jail at the behest of these people! That is a calming, confident response. Hate the man for his faults and failures, but that's a base leadership quality people recognize. Might be a product of the assassination attempts as I don't recall that kind of candid (comfortable?) speaking in 2016.
They fear what comes afterwards if their society adopts an idea like "black people are inferior." This is more often used as the strawman in the topic. With lots of hemming and hawing from the more congenial HBD people about properly identifying a problem in order to find solutions. Which is a good illustration for why someone like Scott Alexander has to hem and haw in a post such as this.
At the very least, so long as we still have manual labor then people with <85 IQ can be and are productive. They can do even more than that! That's a lot of people. That's much of the world if we accept Lynn's research. They seem to have survived alright and entered an age of abundance. Weak benefit from altruism? Sure. Dumb countries benefit from altruism? Meh. You subsidize them they subsidize the global wealthy. Smart guy invents the smart phone and I benefit. I didn't have to struggle for it.
Are we still talking about the justification for hemming and hawing in a post about intelligence or something else? We should accept our base desires (as school shooters must) stop subsidizing the weak, and initiate conflict with lessers? Euthanize all homeless, feed newborn gimps to the wolves, and stop caring for neighbors that can't even prevent themselves from getting robbed. What're we talking about here?
If we're talking of conflict more broadly, or it's a world of conflict you seek, I wouldn't be so confident intelligence is your superweapon. Intelligence has some great benefits for individuals and nations alike. Intelligent armies still lose wars, intelligent populations still get exterminated, and intelligence doesn't stop a bullet from entering the skull. Whoever can wield violence the best comes out on top in open conflict. Intelligence is a factor in that, but not necessarily a deciding one.
Conflict can provide growth for an individual. It can also be ugly, costly, destructive, nonsensical, and a great many other things. It can make things worse. Weak, dumb, and evil men have and continue to benefit from conflict. I don't believe it is a proven as a cure all. Though I'd concede the world of abundance isn't either.
If we're still talking about a cautious, iterative approach to questions of IQ, it seems to be making progress. If slowly.
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