cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
3d ago
As I think about it more some of the confusion with the warrior/soldier distinction might be that soldier is a legal term and warrior is not. And almost no one is careful with their language.
cjet79
3d ago
I was composing a response while you posted this, but I think its still relevant for your comment:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3564/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/413729?context=8#context
cjet79
3d ago
I had quite a few responses talking about the definition of soldier vs warrior. So I'm responding to @Shrike, but this is also relevant to nearly everyone that responded to me: @gog, @Mantergeistmann, @PokerPirate, @Grant_us_eyes, @coffee_enjoyer, and @MadMonzer
I think the distinction between warrior and soldiers in my mind is where their capacity for violence comes from.
For a soldier the capacity for violence comes from without. They are trained and drilled repeatedly to enact violence. They are trained to obey orders to a fault, and when the order comes to enact violence they will obey. They'll need an ideology that allows for their violence to be righteous and correct. They will also form tight social bonds with those around them, and protecting them will also allow them to enact violence. When the war ends and they go home their problem will be PTSD. They may be haunted by the violence they enacted, or the violent situations they were placed in. But they can also put the war and the fighting behind them and live normal lives.
PokerPirate quotes a US military thing that I think perfectly describes a soldier's ethos, despite it being called a warrior ethos.
The United States Military Academy at Westpoint has literally been training artillery men to have a "warrior ethos" since forever. They define it as
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
They will obey orders, regardless of how difficult, and they will maintain the group loyalty that allows an easy path to violence.
For a warrior the capacity for violence comes from within. Through either repeated exposure or personality compatibility they are fully capable of enacting interpersonal violence on others. When the war ends and they come home, their problem will be that they miss the excuse for violence. They will seek other excuses for violence. They will have trouble living normal lives, because the desire for interpersonal violence will spill out far more often.
I think within a modern military there is definitely a contingent of "warriors". You definitely want such men in special forces, or in any groups that see heavy close range combat repeatedly. But I still think that mainly what you want is men with a soldier's ethos. After all, a soldier's violence will always be pointed where you want it. A warrior's violence can be pointed anywhere they wish including up the command chain, or at civilians.
Too many warriors in a society is a bad thing. They end up as gang riddled or honor culture hell holes. Where young men are inculcated into violence and warriordom as soon as they get out of puberty. They'll fight each other for sure, but they'll also beat the snot out of all the women and kids around them as well.
I think these are useful and helpful definitions that point to clusters of ideas. It seems necessary to me to center the definitions around capacity for violence. Masculinity is its own thing, and women seem attracted to both soldiers and warriors. Being willing to enact change seems like the wrong definition for warrior, because I think its the tools that matter. The tool of a warrior is violence, the tools of a propagandist are ideas, both are willing to enact change but calling them both warriors seems to darken rather than enlighten.
PokerPirate's quote makes me think this is all just a semantic misunderstanding. If the US military and Pete Hegseth mean what I think of as "soldier" when they say they want a "warrior" ethos then I withdraw any objections. Words are important and I hate euphemism treadmills, but I've learned to stop arguing over such things.
cjet79
3d ago
I don't understand this focus on "warrior ethos" in the modern world, it seems badly misguided.
"Warrior" seems like a better description for gang members than professional soldiers.
Ever since WWI wars between governments have been all about long range capabilities, like aircraft and artillery (and ICBMs in the Cold war). You don't want your artillery man to have a warrior ethos. You want him to be a mix of gym bro, accountant, and auto mechanic.
When governments are fighting insurgencies, or just groups of people, the importance of artillery declines a lot. But I'm still not sure "warriors" are a good description of the type of soldier you need. You need a mix of police officer and diplomat. A "warrior" sounds like a soldier that will rile up the population even more with misdirected acts of violence.
Can anyone charitably explain this "warrior" obsession?
cjet79
3d ago
https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=89120&post_id=187622533
Anyone see Scott's latest post on crime stats and have a significant disagreement with it? It feels culture war worthy and I'd like to discuss it, but I don't feel like I know the counter viewpoints well.
cjet79
4d ago
Some real life examples:
I had my kid's daycare provider ask me who I voted for in the 2024 election. She is clearly hispanic, has an accent, and my kids come home learning spanish words. I've normally not voted or voted libertarian, but I happened to vote Trump in that election. And I responded without thinking "Trump". Her response was honest relief and "oh good, me too".
The neighborhood dads discuss politics with each other, there are a variety of political persuasions. I'd guess that it is close to an even split among conservatives and liberals among the dads. You can razz these guys a little about their beliefs, but ostracizing anyone or acting high and mighty would be a massive social faux paus. To the point that it would probably massively backfire.
My cousin's wife is an artist/painter/political activist. My cousin has worked on political campaigns and is the local head of a teachers union, very left coded obviously. During my wedding in 2016 my best man joked about how he burned his ballot. My cousin's wife was horrified.
In the 20teens I worked at a tech company. Most people were liberal. Politics would come up in the breakroom. People knew I was a libertarian. I did get in a minor argument with one co-worker on facebook. He said something about libertarians being awful for not voting for Hillary, and letting Trump win. I said something about its the democrats fault for having such an awful candidate up for election. It was a few months later that I deactivated my facebook account.
I was on the dating scene and got a date with a girl off of OKCupid. Found out during the date that she worked at some women's oriented political organization in DC. I'd already sorta outed myself as libertarian. I figured the date and my chances were tanked. I stopped caring and talked more politics, when I was done and ready to go home I invited her back to my place. She surprised me by saying yes and we hooked up. I never heard from her again.
In general, I don't like hiding my politics. I have a bad poker face, and I'm too opinionated to shut up for long. My experience has been that the consequences of revealing your politics are not that bad. Its possible some people have talked shit about me at work behind my back and I lost some opportunities because of it, I think its unlikely though. Its also fully possible that friends or family have been annoyed with me before for expressing my opinions. If there is a reason for me to not express my politics in person its that the real world doesn't have to follow the rules on TheMotte. Politeness is not required. A lack of antagonism is not required. Low effort participation is encouraged. Enforcing consensus is the name of the game. etc.
My advice to you is that just about everyone hates the 'agnostics'. The ones with no opinions who try to stay out of it all. Politics is pure tribalism. Religious affiliation is tribalism. Sports team affiliation is tribalism. A yankees fan and red socks fan will really go at each other over baseball and their respective teams, but they both don't want to even talk with the person who doesn't care for baseball. So be honest and put your opinions out there. To politic is human.
cjet79
5d ago
The news is lying again!
Not directly of course. Indirectly, and ya I know it's not really a surprise. But I like Scott's approach to lying, "if it's worth your time to lie it's worth my time to correct you".
In this case, my newsfeed got clogged up with articles about the bad bunny halftime show because I was looking up reactions to it after some of the previous TheMotte discussions. One of the lines repeated in just about every article was that bad bunny was the most viewed half time show in all history. Which immediately struck me as disingenuous.
First of all none of them meant "most viewed at the time of airing". It's based on playback data after the fact. Usher and Kendrick Lamar both had more viewership during the performance. This is a bad metric for multiple reasons. Viewership generally goes up over time. Internet viewership of things has definitely gone up. None of the articles I saw gave relative numbers on this, so I don't even know how much of a success this should be. It would be like judging star wars movie success by how many people watched on the first week of the theater release, and not adjusting at all for more theaters/people/etc.
Second of all the in moment halftime show viewership is generally a function of how many people are watching the Superbowl. The halftime show does create a viewership bump as some people tune in for it specifically. I think this viewership bump is actually more important than total viewership of the halftime show. The viewership bump makes the Superbowl more of a cultural moment. The "cultural moment" is what makes the Superbowl such a commercial success.
The metric that I think we should judge halftime shows on is the relative viewership bump as a percentage and not absolute numbers. Since viewership has generally been going up year over year for the event.
The bulleted data below was put together by Gemini AI, using methodology I requested. Basically how much viewership was bumped by the halftime show:
Relative Viewership Bump (%)
- 2017 Lady Gaga +5.57%
- 2021 The Weeknd +5.57%
- 2023 Rihanna +5.13%
- 2025 Kendrick Lamar +4.54%
- 2024 Usher +4.53%
- 2022 Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, et al. +4.23%
- 2018 Justin Timberlake +3.09%
- 2026 Bad Bunny +2.64%
- 2019 Maroon 5 +2.55%
- 2020 Shakira & Jennifer Lopez +2.49%
By this metric I think bad bunny was a failure. In the 2010s a 1-3% bump was standard. Lady Gaga was an outlier during that era.
Third and final point is: stop trying to make fetch happen. I've lived most of my adult life in a media environment where they can just endlessly repeat something in order to make it true. I'm sick of it. I think most people are sick of it.
They want to manifest cultural items into success, and they use the fudgiest numbers and lying stats to make it part of the narrative.
They couldn't manifest the woke tv shows to success, and they aren't doing it here either.
cjet79
7d ago
I've spoken on this before, and been inside some of the non-profit institutions like this.
I think they should all just go back to building pyramids. The Egyptians had it right. Put your legacy and beliefs in stone. That way when your enemies scour it from history they'll be remembered as barbarians they are, rather than respectable think tank leaders.
cjet79
8d ago
Do you prefer apples or oranges?
I just really feel like these two things cannot be compared, but I'll try.
Apple in cold weather, Oranges in warm weather.
Apples for baking and cooking, Oranges for drink flavors/additions.
Apples for toddlers and teens, Oranges for babies and pre-teens.
Apples for solitary sports snacks, Oranges for team sport snacks.
Apples mashed for sauces, oranges (or preferably clementines) preserved in water.
cjet79
8d ago
Scott is allowing people to take a spin with a paid AI:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/ama-ask-machines-anything
I went and asked my own question, but didn't think the paid AI was significantly better than the free AI I'd also asked the same question to.
cjet79
9d ago
I was born in the early 90's, grew up in a semi rural area. I had about a 1-2 mile range where I'd explore and play.
I have young kids now. My oldest is 7, I'd be fine with her walking to a store a half mile away and buying something, but she doesn't seem comfortable with that. I have neighbors with homeschooled kids. I see their 9 year old outside all the time playing alone. They are my 'canary' family. I'm seeing how much they get away with to know the local limits of acceptable free range parenting.
cjet79
10d ago
I've dealt with mild depression for most of my teen and adult life.
Not suicidal. I just have vivid memories of sitting in my highschool parking lot and wondering why the fuck I was here. Contemplating filling up a tank of gas leaving town and driving as far as the car would take me. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of "what the hell would I do when I got far away?" Same old bullshit of course.
Same thing when I started working a job. Just wanting to stay at a bar and pound beers because wtf was the point of anything, and being drunk was slightly fun.
Social situations all felt stupid and fake. Working out to stay in shape seemed like a waste of time, as long as I didn't get too fat my life would be easy enough.
Life with kids just feels different. I've never contemplated leaving. A few days not around the kids and I miss them. Jobs to support them feel easier to go to. Staying in shape so I can live longer and have energy to be around them seems like a no brainer. Social situations that would have been painful without them have a lubricant of talking about the kids, and I find myself happy to build social connections that can help them.
It's not as dramatic as "kids saved my life". But it is as dramatic as "kids gave my life a purpose".
cjet79
11d ago
The beginning of your story absolutely horrifies me. I've always thought that "I dont want kids" is a pretty good reason for not having kids. And a difference in preferences for kids is a valid breakup reason at any time in a romantic relationship.
I have three kids myself. I think I've wanted kids for about as long as I've been sexually aware. Before that I just wanted to find out I'd had a secret twin all along that my parents hadn't told me about. I married someone that always wanted kids.
I'm glad you came around, for your sake and your kid's sake. The advice is great, I just can't imagine going into this without wanting it in the first place.
cjet79
11d ago
I had fun making fun of it with the people in the room. One of them was a fluent Spanish speaker and said he couldn't understand most of it. The show was competing with 6 screaming kids volume wise, so it might have been hard to understand English lyrics too.
I can sort of count in Spanish and know only a couple of other words. It was boring to listen to, and the screaming kids sounded better.
The dancing I found boring, because there is much better amateur stuff on YouTube. And the camera angles weren't really doing the dancing any favors, moving around way too much and way too quickly.
Overall it was good to have something other than AI commercials to make fun of. Next year they can save money and get a local mariachi band to perform.
cjet79
14d ago
I think one thing you didn't address in your original post, that heavily informed my opinion on this story is that:
Young men are animals. Cross border, cross race, cross culture, etc. As they say, testosterone is a hell of a drug. Ages 15-25 I don't trust the sexual judgement of 90% of young men. Most of those men find a productive or semi-productive outlet for their sexual desire. I think porn has helped blunt the edge of young horny men in modern society, but the blade is still there lying at the throat of society and young women. Some number of men slip through the productive cracks, and they target younger women. Even a 22 year olds loser with no job smoking weed all day can look cool to a 16 year old dumb girl.
Much of the time its the responsibility of fathers and older brothers to protect young women from these predations. The threat of getting your ass kicked is usually enough to deter the worst dirtbags. But in the absence of these protections there are occasionally going to be cases where the young women themselves take defense into their own hands.
The base story here of young 20's man hits on young teenage girls is absolutely not surprising to me. I'd guess there are stories like this in every location in the world with more than a few thousand people. A case where there are no men around to protect the young girls is not that strange, especially in a low class area where fathers might be absentee. A case where the girls take their defense into their own hands seems inevitable, humans have a basic need for security and protection. All of that would have been a total non-story.
Its just that the young 20's man is an immigrant, and the young teenage girls are native. Which sparks the culture war aspect of this all. But those additional considerations seem inevitable in any situation where there are immigrants. Similar situations sparked off black race riots in the south (young black men hitting on young teenage white girls).
cjet79
14d ago
Anyone follow American Football 🏈?
I don't follow but I usually watch the Superbowl, and I'm interested in knowing the season backstory for both teams. Anyone want to rant about them, or just tell me they are both boring?
cjet79
15d ago
Speaking of poetry, there is an Australian Comedian, James Donald Forbes McCann, that writes books of poetry. And then advertises that he is the best selling poet in Australia. The joke being that he has basically zero competition for his poetry books.
cjet79
19d ago
Steadily decreasing price in housing would be awesome. And I say that as a homeowner.
I own at least two large depreciating assets called "cars". When I need to buy a new one or have mine fixed, it's better if everything around the asset is less expensive.
No I'm not going to be able to sell it and make a profit. Oh well, I'm getting use out of it.
Did some googling. Cars used to be about 80% of yearly income in the 1960s. And houses were about 2x yearly income.
In 2010 cars are about 40% of yearly income and houses are 5x yearly income.
Imagine if theyd followed the same trend of halving in relative price. You'd only need a year of income to afford a house rather than 5 years.
I paid 500k for my home. Whenever we sell it I'm sure I'll make a nice profit. But Id rather skip the profit and only have paid 100k. Since 100k was our down payment I could have outright bought the house without a loan. Markets are more consistent and I'd have far more comfortable margins for living expenses and worrying about work.
cjet79
19d ago
@daguerrean thanks for the good post on efficiency, allowed me to get some thoughts out and get an AAQC piggybacking off of yours.
cjet79
22d ago
It's freaky as hell. Either they are creepy as hell simulacrums of humans that have leaped over the uncanny valley. Or we just asked them to build skynet.
cjet79
23d ago
This is always the case in history. The agitators and revolutionaries or whatever you want to call them are not the most shelf-stable individuals.
Sam Adams was a perennial business fuckup. He could barely make money smuggling. Thomas Jefferson was terrible at running a plantation (he was more interested in rewriting the bible). Patrick Henry was a firery lawyer living on daddy's money. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Politics in general is not for people who have their life together. But also many people just routinely don't have their life together all that well. I've been lucky enough to say that my life has never been in shambles. But my father had his life in shambles for what sounds like a ten year stretch when I hear the stories.
As much as the people involved seem like fuckups I think it is still important to have good policy and procedures for handling situations. If only 5% of the population is career criminals and fuckups, the police will be spending most of their time dealing with that population, and they should know how to handle them as best as possible.
I said with the Good shooting that I don't think there was a policy that would have prevented her shooting. With the Pretti shooting I'm not so sure. I haven't watched the videos and evidence enough to be certain, but I feel like it was a communication failure on the part of the officers that led to the shooting. You'll see police officers sometimes calling out the situation to other officers as they restrain an individual, or giving commands to the individual that let other officers know where in the process of the arrest/restraining they are at. You'll also see police officers only have two or three officers close to a person they are restraining, and additional officers will stand back and keep other people at bay. But also keep an eye on the situation. I think either of these tactics employed with Pretti might have prevented him from being shot. Either they would have known he was restrained, or the officers standing back would have seen that he had not pulled a gun. Bad training on the part of the ICE agents involved, but I get that is not really their specialty area. So some of the responsibility loops back around to "why are they not getting backup from local law enforcement that does know how to handle these people".
I feel the need to be against any kind of policy that just casually wastes the lives of people who are fuckups. I owe my existence to someone who was a temporary fuckup. People can improve their lives. They can have kids that are better than them, etc.
cjet79
25d ago
Why discontinue an actively working service?
I ask this and I know the answer, but it still frustrates me.
Amazon just sent me a message that their "palm" services will stop working in June. It is just a palm scan print. Why is this hard to maintain?
Facebook portal used to be a go to easy video chat service and have other things that easily tied in like Spotify. They've discontinued it and Spotify is no longer a supported app. I dont even know how much longer the video chat portion will even work.
I'm looking for video replacement options if anyone knows of any good ones. The stuff I see on search is ass. Some of the senior service crap is more than the price of a cheap laptop for basically a webcam service.
The Superbowl is a big enough stage that it benefits artists to be on such a big platform. If I remember correctly the singers are not paid much for their performance. Their compensation is in exposure.
Your point basically reinforces that bad bunny was well compensated for the performance.
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