Tree
13hr ago
The critique that the redpill turns men into emotionally annihilated performing monkeys to satisfy women’s dark urges isn’t new (there was some MRA vs PUA drama back in the day), but it’s well made.
Tree
17hr ago
The cost/benefit of those things is far higher, especially for women. Men don't care if women have no style, don't go to the gym, and are (slightly) overweight.
You’re typical minding when you say most people know this. People’s opinions bounce off random shit they hear (eg, lies by men reassuring their wives), they can’t cut through it with a sharp intellect like yours.
Tree
1d ago
It's fine, you can always annoy us. The lesson of ‘mansplaining’ is that women find correct information threatening.
something rather incongruent with the huge implant industry
Not huge enough, evidently. He probably thinks it should be near-universal, personal interest well considered, given that it’s like 3 points of attractiveness for little effort.
Tree
1d ago
I’m not sure it’s a paradox. You think rulers reforming is the sole cause of their downfall. I think changes in society (eg, wealth increase, weapons becoming more democratic (eg, guns vs cavalry)), reshuffling the underlying power relationships within society (ie, who would win a civil war), are largely causing both the reforms and the revolution. The ultimate cause of both is that the mugger gets a gun - first he extorts, then he shoots.
Tree
1d ago
When animals get out-competed by one another we don't seek to introduce these silly moralistic components, I don't see how this should be any different. Machiavelli's foundational contribution to sociology is precisely that these do not matter and what we ought to be concerned with is the world as it is.
I don't disagree. I think brutality can, and often does work, even though it's evil. I just don't think it's a silver bullet.
While a progressive has a tendency to say stuff like 'people revolt when they are too oppressed', as if the just world was punishing rulers for their immorality, the reactionary, as a .... reaction, trying to overcorrect the previous lies, will then say 'people only revolt when they are not oppressed enough', which is also false.
Tree
1d ago
Yes. Although I admit, the age gap argument is the easiest to make, the one where the centrist will most readily concede. But imo it is fully generalizable to most issues involving women having sex : prostitution, porn, workplace sexual harassment, ‘college party culture’/drunk consent. Here again, the centrist is torn. He says one thing (we must protect women), but can justify another (women have agency). Part of his confusion comes from the fact that, as you mention, feminists/progressives and reactionaries are on the same side (women have no agency), so his usual ideological points of reference are all over the place and useless.
Tree
1d ago
Your view of a hyperagentic ruling class relies on a one-sided interpretation: was a concession extorted through force, or freely given out of altruism/sentimentality? You see a man get mugged, and you interpret it as an act of charity because he did not fight to the death. He “enabled his nominal enemy.”
Tree
2d ago
If some 20-year-old throws herself at a 40 year old centrist, he will go for it. Yet if you ask him about someone else, he will spout some “it’s creepy, that poor women” conformist sludge. Yet he is also aware of the knock-down “consenting adults, no harm done, women have agency” liberal argument. So he is unable to justify his middle position either in practice or in theory. It just looks like he’s socially pressured by middle aged women into parroting a feeling he doesn’t share or agree with.
Tree
2d ago
We can speak here of the influence of physiocrats or his minister's desperate attempts to enact an agenda almost identical to that wanted by the bourgeois dictatorship that would follow.
The pressure to enact those reforms did not come from the ruling elites. They gave in (when they were not convinced) because the opponents (bourgeois and sans-culottes) had more power; more power, in any case, than they (Third Estate) officially had.
Some ruling elites were no doubt convinced by enlightenment ideas. If the government brutally repressed the movement (as you think the king could have), those people would have fought with their resources on the other side, as 'class traitors', greatly increasing the rebellion's chances (thereby changing the calculus of a pre-emptive compromise). It seems to me that by conflating the ruling class together as if they were a single person, you see 'weakness of character', where there is division.
My concern is really how well things are run on the ground, and how much freedom that affords the individual to live their lives outside of politics.
Sure. Theoretically, we’re not that far apart. I have an excellent friend who literally thinks we have solved the best system of government question for all time and western liberal democracy of these last 50 years is it. So naturally, he sees anti-democratic forces and discourse everywhere, even in what I view as good faith criticism. I have a far more pragmatic view, I don’t find e.g. a limited franchise, some monarchical powers, or the roman republic, to be obviously worse. As long as the government is not too oppressive, somewhat competent, and civil wars are avoided, it’s all good enough.
Practically, we probably disagree on the results, how well liberal democracies are governed. For example, if russia was a liberal democracy, I don’t think it would have launched such a war against Ukraine – a war the average russian is unlikely to benefit from, no matter the result. And the examples you cited, Oman belarus cuba morocco, seem worse-run than liberal democracies.
Tree
2d ago
But when you talk of the weakness of Nicholas II and Louis XVI, you speak of individuals too.
Anyway, if you're not going to disagree with my claims, I'll interpret our differing views thus: You're kind of a disappointed idealist, and you see the flaws of liberal democracies (disproportionate elite influence, messy politics) as disqualifying for that form of government. I don't.
Tree
2d ago
I mean James II is weak 'physically', his is the weaker party, militarily speaking. He did not give up out of "cowardice", he lost and would have kept losing, no matter how ruthless he got.
You concede then that they are not totalitarians? Or are you going to attempt to stretch the definition of total to include absence?
I don't think modern russia, belarus, or liberal democracies are totalitarian. Nazism, stalinism are. That is the mainstream view/usual definition of totalitarianism.
Tree
3d ago
If you want to discuss the axiomatic claim of elitism, we can certainly do that: I shall ask you to provide one (1) example of a government without an identifiable elite class.
I don’t dispute the claim that elites exist and have disproportionate power. I make the following claims:
A) The average, non-elite man, has some, non-zero amount of power
B) Ruling elites can lose power, and not only by “weakness of character, insufficient brutality”.
A is why liberal democracies, nazism, communism, care about and attempt to shape what he thinks. Russia or Belarus take a different knack, in that their propaganda seeks to keep the average man apathetic, but that model still recognizes his power.
Given the scale of the October revolution as a whole (around 10M dead)
Yeah, white elites fought and killed millions to hold on to their elite status, and lost.
You'll notice that despite a troublesome interregnum, this did not mark the end of the British absolutism which would eek out three more decades.
So the guy who lost his head somehow won? Classic unbeatable elite move.
The end is typically set to the Glorious Revolution and James II's acceptation of the Bill of Rights and escape to France, which I believe fit the motif of renonciation pretty well.
James II’s army disintegrated. They remembered the whooping his father had gotten in his civil wars and it wasn't going to get any easier with a catholic monarch. He tried again and was defeated at the battle of the boyne. This is not renonciation, it's capitulation of the weak.
Tree
3d ago
Not that pure. There’s three levels of deniability to soften the lie of ‘I disagree with’: ‘sort of’ , ‘in a way’(redundant), ‘creeps me out’ (focusing on his feelings to avoid admitting his thoughts).
Tree
3d ago
Nowhere have I ever claimed that War Communism or National Socialism aren't totalitarian ideologies.
So both lion regimes and fox regimes result in totalitarianism? Which is more totalitarian? Those two, or liberal democracy, or late soviet union?
Morocco, Belarus, Oman, Cuba
I see, the apathetic kind of shit government. What I’ve noticed is the people want to get out of there.
I'm not quite making up one of the most influential sociology works of all time but so what if it is?
It’s likely nonsense, that’s all. Freud wrote influential books around that time, too.
If there is a superior enemy then you are not the ruling class because you have already been circulated.
No true scotsman. Elites can never really lose, because if they’re beaten, you just mint new elites and call it circulation, say the old elites weren’t really elites, or imagine they could have fought harder. The circular logic of circulated elites theory.
Consider Louis XVI or Nicholas II, striking examples of this behavior.
Nicholas killed 15,000 in 1905, that was a bloodbath. Charles I fought two civil wars. I don’t think you can say he gave up a winning position because he was demotivated.
Tree
3d ago
Of course Hitlerism and Stalinism are lion regimes, and the late Soviet Union a fox regime. Your mistake is assuming that just because I'm providing a criticism of foxes, there aren't any of lions.
No, it just seemed even sillier to me to recategorize the founding examples of totalitarianism as not totalitarian. Plus I seem to remember some neoreactionary stuff about "demotism", which put those regimes in the same category as liberal democracy.
But okay, your choice. So in nazi germany, where every civil association was forcibly absorbed into a nazi church, a nazi youth group, a nazi union; where every film and radio was spewing pure nazi propaganda, that regime did not care about public opinion, and wasn't totalitarian?
However, it turns out that, much to the dismay of mediocre political analysts everywhere, politics is more complicated than good vs evil dualism.
That's lame. Politics is more complicated than "Politics is more complicated than good vs evil dualism".
You'll be able to get a good feeling for this by discussing with people who live in despotic nations.
What despotic nations are you talking about? Africans? I think even the dictators don't care about politics in africa. China? The rulers care what the people think.
I hold that legitimacy is a phenomenon that doesn't happen in the masses, but in the mind of the elite. Legitimacy is what we call the Ruling Class's ability to retain will to power and organization by telling itself a convincing enough story about how its power is legitimate.
Sounds like a made-up pseudo-freudian theory.
I believe this because the only examples of circulation of elites available in all of history involve the ruling elite willingly letting go of their power, or rather not having the will to cling onto it at the price of incredible bloodshed.
But if they thought they were going to lose to a superior enemy, wouldn't they "let go of their power willingly"?
Approximately 99% of defeated nations do not fight to the last man in war. Does that mean that they are in fact the stronger party, and only a weak will can make them lose?
Tree
3d ago
For instance, a common criticism of fox regimes is that they, by nature, have to be totalitarian.
I think a reality check is enough to disabuse people of that theory, if ‘totalitarian’ is to keep any meaning.
I take it you categorize the ur-totalitarian communist, and nazi regimes, as ‘light’, ‘fox regimes’? Even though they were opposed to debate, to voting, and made direct unrestrained force the order of the day?
The legitimacy they rest on relies on the illusion of public support, which means they have to control and shape public opinion as much as possible.
There’s a contradiction here. If the people are truly powerless, their support a mere ‘illusion’, why do the rulers need it, shape it? Your answer ‘Legitimacy’ is tautological. Why do the people in power need this ‘legitimacy’, what is legitimacy but the people’s acceptance of a ruler’s authority?
Tree
3d ago
Yeah, but that's the difference: Kolmogorov and Aaronson compromised themselves too much, and for me at least, ended up on the wrong side of the friend-enemy distinction, while Scott (very, very) mildly condemned giving that much succor to one's enemies.
Tree
3d ago
I understand one-man-one-gun-one-vote fine, I don't see why it should undermine debate or democracy.
You can't escape violence, you can only add abstractions on top of it.
If you want; then I am pro-abstraction. One man goes around shooting people - another talks to them, then counts their vote, and then, only if he has won, uses limited force. Do you think they are the same?
Tree
3d ago
So voting works
Sure, but that necessarily means that discussion doesn't.
Why? Is discussion incompatible with democracy?
A billionaire very likely changed the result of the election by buying a communications platform
According to the previous alt right theory, “‘the elites” were acting collectively, in a specifically “‘New York Times” direction, against the wishes of the masses, always successfully. It wasn't predicting an isolated eliteman taking a turn to the right with popular support.
Although maybe that’s a caricature of alt right thinking on my part. A caricature of my position would be that billionaires/elites are just as influential as normal people.
Tree
3d ago
Another way to look at it is the vote that happens after a debate to determine the winner.
But even from a perspective of the vote as representing force, the vote is less an instrument of conflict than a sublimation of it.
Tree
4d ago
So voting works, we’re definitely done with all the nonsense about elites controlling everything and democracy being a sham? Okay, next.
Why couldn't they just convince their opponents of the truth by making superior arguments?
They did. Some, like our progenitor, in a rather ‘conflict avoidant’ way. Not my style, but still. Or did HBD warriors use their fists beat up on their enemies until they gave up?
Tree
4d ago
Is voting conflict now? According to SS and his ridiculous euphemism "memetic political conflict", even discussion is conflict.
Tree
4d ago
It refutes the main far right talking points.
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Voting doesn’t matter : Trump’s election has loosened the tongues of intellectuals who can finally express “what the man on the street is really thinking”.
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Discussion is pointless/conflict theory: The Truth triumphs yet again against all attempts to censure it (including a brief attempt by our own mods) ; kept alive by the tireless arguing of myself and others, transferred to the public, voted in, correcting course, guiding & guarding us on our way to a better future.
Tree
4d ago
I have seen virtually identical frames priced more than $100 apart.
That’s not that bad. In France, they have a system where it’s obligatory for the employer to provide glasses insurance(1) . Then once a year the giddy employee can choose glasses with frames worth 600 dollars(2) “for free”.
(1) This costs him frequently around 100 dollars/month or more. There's some other random nonsense included in the insurance. A full set of glasses costs only like 50 dollars.
(2) They look exactly the same as frames worth 25 dollars. There’s a lot of ads for glasses in France.
We're talking about sexual attractiveness (or "maximizing hotness"), so yes, kind of. You want your wife to be healthy and active and balanced, which is understandable, but that has little relevance to attractiveness.
This behaviour strikes me as rare, for combining two seemingly incompatible elements: the traditionally male role of leading/commanding, and the traditionally female role of giving attention and care to aesthetic things.
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