georgioz
7d ago
If government simply nuked OnlyFans and Pornhub, then no, I wouldn't say it is damning to progress. On the other hand, if they started cracking down on VPNs, proxies, mirrors, torrents and all other less-easy ways to access wrongthink/wrongfun, that seems like it would negatively affect flourishing, through sheer friction introduced to the infoscape. Not to mention political resentment. I hear the recent riots in Nepal correlated with a crackdown on social media.
I don't think so. There is illegal porn content already, which is heavily prosecuted and punished by the government absent bans on VPNs or torrents. We can just expand that no problem. But for me this was just an example and a thought exercise for the test of logic. It definitely is possible to have RETVRN to some semblance of normalcy without sacrificing technology to some magic of absence of abstract liberty to coom.
Sure, let's move it from individual action - although even there I can have many arguments, such as that tech execs and innovators actually do not give smarthpones to their children and send them to schools that ban the technology and stick to older methods of education. But that is besides the point.
What if a conservative government just nuked OnlyFans and Pornhub and other similar websites from orbit tomorrow, similarly to how government recently acted against disinformation channels that they deemed as dangerous - such as Russia Today or what they did to TikTok citing nebulous national security reasons. In your eyes would it mean it represents a dangerous RETVRN ideology, a threat to progress and liberty and modernity and technology and all that, meaning we are now on a slippery slope toward energy blackouts and airplanes falling from the sky?
If you did not notice, we already went to the moon in an era where sodomy was a criminal offense, porn was almost nonexistent. Again, this is false choice - you can have technologically advanced society without "freedoms".
In fact, we live in such a society right now. Progressive puritans are the ones who promote their religious ideas such as the original sin also known as a privilege based on your race, sex or sexual orientation. We have blasphemy laws with their very own taboo words that cannot be spoken - such as a faggot or nigger or tranny and many more. They have their own structure of sins in their broad istophobic categories such as racist, sexist, homophobe and transphobe around which they have requirements for everybody. Is this not a threat to technological advancement, or is it just a protection of progress, liberty and modernity - or is it a RETVRN to religous dogma in a new skin?
georgioz
8d ago
Man is instinctively conservative in the sense that probably millions of years of experience have taught him that a stable environment is the best for peace of mind, present and future security, automatism of action, and a ready command of material and artificial circumstances. It is the repeated introduction of new instruments, new weapons, new methods, and needs for fresh adaptations, that makes automatism impossible. And it is the complication of life by novel contributions to life's interests and duties that makes a ready command of circumstances difficult.
The shortened version of this argument is that tradition is an experiment which has worked.
The traditionalist response (reaction, more properly) is simply to deny that modernity ever happened, to summon us back to a world where we believe “what the church teaches” (whatever church the given traditionalist may have decided to adhere to), where we simply accept late ancient (or medieval) metaphysics and morals and social structures, where we simply pretend that we can exist as a beseiged outpost of this kind of religious revanchism, a faithful remnant, and make a little world for ourselves.
I think this is a very shallow definition of what is going on. In fact at least since Rousseau it was modernists of various stripes who were preaching about the RETVRN - Rousseau was preaching how we should channel our prehistoric inner noble savage but in "modern world". Libertarians are basing their arguments on how tribal way of property is supposed to work absent government, looking with fondness at medieval Iceland or some such. Marx was calling for return of values of Primitive Communism, where humans lived as true social beings. Nationalists and romantics were literally romanticizing the past looking with fondness at era of medieval chivalry and heroism or maybe Roman republic.
This argument of yours reminds me of a discussion with my mother about Progressivism with her circular logic - progressivism is about progress and progress is what progressives achieve. If so called progressives fuck something up - like for instance tankies - then it was not a progress and thus by definition they were not progressives. Something like how modern progressives hate Woodrow Wilson for his racism and eugenics - despite the fact that he was a prominent progressive of the time. So since eugenics was fucked up, we can throw it into the trash and RETVRN to pre-eugenics era - it was not a true progress anyways. You do the same with conservatives - conservatives can only conserve or regress, otherwise they are not true conservatives. Who knows, maybe even Amish are no true conservatives, as even they improve on their baking or construction methods. Which is BTW exactly the gist of your next argument:
Ultimately if conservatives try to force a return to pre-modern times, not only may we lose technological advances, we also don't even have the living traditional to fall back to anymore.
This is argument from technology and false dichotomy. First, "conservatives" were on the forefront of technological advances for centuries. But this is also besides the point, the argument is stupid on its face - if you want to have modern technology such as tablets and videogames - then somehow it is inevitable to let your child chop his dick off, or at least let him coom on furry sex online, because that is progress and liberty and modernity and it is the basis of our technology? It does not make sense - you can have all the vaccines and airplanes and railroads, and you can land people on the moon even in highly religious societies. How do I know it? Because it already happened historically.
georgioz
8d ago
I obviously can't speak for everyone but peak woke to me has to be June 2020, and frankly I'm shocked that anyone feels differently.
Summer of George was a time when a woke got a lot of attention. Corporations poured billions into it financing DEI efforts folding to woke activists en- masse. Just as an example take Hollywood, where even now you have projects finishing that were introduced and proposed in 2020.
Nevertheless I do not believe in the whole "peak woke" terminology. This thing comes in cycles going way back at least into birthing of the New Left movement - if we do not want to go back to French Revolution or something like that. You had peak woke of 60ies in form of Days of Rage after which came Regans 80s marked with yuppie capitalism. You had rise of the Woke especially in Education up until 9/11 and wave of neocon patriotism and neverending wars. Then you had third revival especially during and after second Obama term up until the most recent peak woke ending probably with second term of Donald Trump, which demoralized the woke.
But I am sure that this trend will continue, there will be new resurgences and peaks.
georgioz
8d ago
Because Marcus Aurelius - the coward that he was - lacked the strenght to at least disinherit his useless son Commodus, or even better to strangle him in his crib? Baron is no Commodus.
georgioz
9d ago
This does not make sense to me. Deep down majority of businesses "act against customers" - they want to extract as much money from them for as little cost as they can get away with. One can definitely consider this stance as a highly political one, at minimum businesses are not supporting communism or similar political stances.
What do you mean exactly?
georgioz
9d ago
The truth--meaning the underlying, peremptory rational structure of the universe--will manifest itself. It just takes some time.
Where does this true underlying structure manifest itself? If anything, it is the law of the jungle that manifests constantly all around us for hundreds of millions of years. That it is why it is called the law of the jungle - each individual or a group of any given species only gets what they can keep from their peers or predators or what they can extract from their prey. You may point out to some groups - like hives of insects or packs of wolves or tribes of apes - but even they themselves are subject to inherent law of the jungle in competition with other groups and organizms.
So again - demonstrate how nonviolent voluntary cooperation is some underlying structure of the universe, some primordial social law. And no, the bitcoin example does not cut it. It would be on the level of an example where a cow eats grass and then shits to provide fertilizer as some "underlying structure" - and even then it is not clear if cows do not commit "violence" on grass which just accepted its fate to be regularly and violently culled, with some grass species developing abrasive properties to harm ruminants who in turn evolved more durable teeth and mouth to chew on it.
I just don't get this hippie talk of peaceful underlying structure of the universe.
georgioz
12d ago
Do you have any requirement for what constitutes as "government run business"? For instance a small restaurant is already subject to insane amount of government meddling - from zoning rules, food safety regulation, employee regulation or anti-discrimination laws etc. so it can be considered as largely government run business, as most of the decisions are mandated or heavily influenced by government.
Which leads me to my next question as your explanation provides an interesting dichotomy - the closer the government involves itself in a private business, the less "politicized" it should be? This is impossible, government involvement is already politicization of that business. Did you mean something else?
georgioz
12d ago
The natural principles are in one sense a result of natural selection, and in another sense, properties of abstract rationality itself. This is quite literally where social structure emerges from: groups that constantly kill each other by using physical force to resolve disputes are naturally out-competed by groups that preserve their members by resolving disputes in other ways.
How did you come up with this? The only true "natural" social law is the law of the jungle or might makes right. History is full of stories where peaceful and pacifist societies were wiped out by groups that cooperated exactly in order to gain strength to protect and impose their will. Like this one or this one or this one.
georgioz
13d ago
My libertarian leanings have me feeling certain ways about all this.
This is genuinely interesting to me as I think what these payment processors do is exactly in line with libertarian view. They are private companies and they may refuse business to anybody for any reason.
I do think that AI-generated propaganda helps the right more than the left in the current environment, if only because conservatives live in more of an inherently audio-visual culture compared to liberals.
Hard disagree. Left uses audio-visual tools to push their agenda all the time. This photo of a drowned toddler did more for triggering mass immigration acceptance back in 2015, than any other rational argument at the time. Sam Alinsky's Rules for Radicals explicitly calls for tactics like this - such as using small provoaction in order to garner "disproportionate" attention that can be then captured and used for propaganda. If anything, the right is way behind this tactics mostly because it is leftists who are now in power and who are to large degree prone to this sort of asymmetrical warfare. Although even that is questionable as long as the left can keep pretense of them being the underdogs.
Yes, this is one of the arguments I have seen. You can posit yourself outside of any moral structure and define good something akin to "how to achieve one's goal most effectively". So for instance if a school shooter wants to kill as many students as possible, it is "good" for him to use guns as opposed to knives. You are not going to question the morality of the action, you just talk in terms of which actions are more effective in reaching any given goal that you are morally impartial to. I think this level of thinking is useless outside of highly specific and individual action, you even need to distance yourself from any other potential impact these actions have for that person and take their stated goals at their face value, otherwise you enter into moral argument territory rather quickly.
Plus I think it is also misleading to even use the words like good or bad for this concept, I wish there was a different vocabulary there. As soon as you are talking about concepts like what is "good" for country or people, you are losing the argument as country or people are not moral agents to whom you can give any advice.
georgioz
22d ago
Sometimes it is interesting to which depths this phenomenon runs, how self unaware people can be. Famously Marx extensively used the word ideology as a pejorative descriptor for ways ruling class keeps workers in the dark in the class conflict. Of course he piled all that criticism while keeping Marxism itself outside of such framework, as if it was implicitly true and correct stance and thus it could not be considered an ideology by definition.
It essentially implies the difference between the right wing and left wing argument about things are about morals and not about the effectiveness of policy or economic ideas for the good of our country and our citizens.
I have seen this argument before, where literally in the same sentence somebody can say that other people argue about morals, while he just wants what is good for people. You do realize, that moral philosophy on basic level talks about distinction between what is good and what is bad? As soon as you use the word good or bad, you are making a moral argument.
There seems to be certain myopia for many people, where they hold some moral positions without acknowledging them as such. They pretend that their morality is objective and rational, not even warranting defending it - as if they read it from facts of the universe, they gleaned it from the proton number of atom of carbon, or from trajectory of Jupiter or something like that. It is similar trick adjacent to Russel's conjugation in much of leftist thinking - our moral philosophy is true and fair and outside of critique, while your moral philosophy is just a hideous ideology.
georgioz
22d ago
Sure, there can be a weird twist when in let's say 50 years what constitutes an undesirable group can change quite radically. The unpredictability of lebanonization of a country.
georgioz
22d ago
Britain already has history of shipping various prisoners and undesirables to inhospitable places in name of expansion. Who knows, history could repeat itself.
There's a pretty decent number of women authors who just write male-focused or general fiction, especially for teen and young adult audiences.
I recently delved into LitRPG/Cultivation sphere, which I think is somwhat newish offhoot of scifi/fantasy genre and is at least adjacent to YA scene/audience. And to be frank, I start to think that female protagonists like in surprisingly interesting Azarinth Healer series may work better in that context. The male protagonists in many of these stories are some combination of weak whiners, being overshadowed and constantly scolded/humiliated by female side characters, having weird fetish/harem sidestories and more.
The pet theory of mine is that feminism is basically projection of male virtues/characteristics on females. Terrible girl-bossing is just projection of what feminists view as toxic masculinity on women: aggressive know-it-alls, emotionless or even cruel leaders etc. If the author can do modicum of work to reign that tic at least a little bit, they can actually end up with decent formerly male character only in skirt. With female protagonist you will not see her being literally hit on head if she says something "dumb", scolded for being a creep, being told that she is an idiot, humiliated or womensplained for not knowing something or any other type of terrible writing now so prevalent with male heroes. Or to me more precise even if they are addressed like that, they have a mature response to it.
It reminds me of the story how the character of Ellen Ripley from Alien was originally written for male actor and how it surprisingly worked well for female - especially in a world where only women are allowed to have oldschool male traits/virtues.
georgioz
1mo ago
So give me your sources. The AI gave me Gitnux and 2date4 love or Worldmetrics as sources. I don't want to research that stupid shit too deeply, if you have other numbers just send it. The point still stands, sex is relatively easy to purchase for almost any single male.
Hard disagree. Sex has to be really bad before I would prefer to just crank my hog.
Even in that case, you can easily satisfy yourself using hookers. According to quick AI search the prices ranges from $20 per hour for street hookers to around $150 for average escort to $300 plus for high end hooker in USA. For a price of your average car lease, any single male can have a different hooker every week, getting his body count to triple digits easily thus matching any redpilled macho. And we are not even talking about sex tourism, where you are a cheap flight away to some 3rd world country where you can enjoy orgies for really cheap.
The OP's point of course still stands - even if you satisfy your sexual desire, there is still the social aspect that many people fill parasocial relationships. Although even those are not the only options. There are hookers who act more like your lovers where you are something like a sugar daddy. They have stable clientele of multiple men with their own schedule, so you can visit regularly and get not only a sex but also massage or even homecooked meal.
To be frank I find this as highly distasteful and unsatisfying relationship but I used it only as an example. In the end there is not much more difference between people obsessed with sexual conquests or people who obsesses about masturbation or people who just chase hookers. The difference is only in degree.
"Do you feel emotions as physical sensations or intense thoughts?"
I'd say that most people feel emotions physically - e.g. you are so anxious before an important event so that you want to throw up. You are so angry that your hands tremble and maybe even contort into fists. You are so ashamed that you feel your face and ears turning red in wave of hotness.
In fact I think there was some post possibly back in reddit TheMotte days, where there was somebody promoting a theory of polytheism being born of these particular physical foci of emotion. I do not remember it that well, but the gist of it was something about the fact why you had god of war or lust and so forth with specific rituals and physicality - down to actual representation of that emotion in vocabulary: like the words heart, bile, spleen, gut, stomach etc being associated with courage, hatred, anger, anxiety, fear etc. The theory was that your actions were driven by that particular emotion associated with that part of you body related to a specific god who had domain over it. In order to be integrated you had to appeal to this multitudes integrated into you being. Monotheistic religions like Christianity integrated all these emotions into one person, putting reason/logos on top of all of it, as the ultimate ruling principle.
But I still think that rational thinking is a reflective stance, there is still a need to control the emotion on a physical level in order to analyze it. But the underlying physicality is still there - how could it not be. Stress or fear reaction are famously related to various levels of hormones with large impacts on physical state. Just because you have more experience controlling them does not mean they do not exist physically.
I even think that a good way of controlling/regulating your immediate emotions is to disassociate yourself from these physical effects - you posit your ego as an observer of physical impact of your emotion as if you are some curious anthropologist of yourself, not fighting or appeasing them directly from within the paradigm.
georgioz
1mo ago
I'd say that I am mostly with you here. I however have an additional position which can give animals moral worth - if they impact humans. This is I think Kantian position, where animal moral worth is derivative from humans. E.g. we give pets more moral worth compared to nonpets, because killing pets impacts their owners orders of magnitude more. Additionally animal cruelty by perpetrator may make them more cruel to people, so we may regulate that behavior somewhat. Of course this argument can be hijacked by somebody claiming any animal suffering causes them a lot of harm. So it is not a sure thing, but it is directionally correct for me so we can have some basic prescriptions when it comes to animal cruelty while not morally equating [some number of] animals to humans as some rationalists do.
I think this is underestimating his influence. In the aftermath of the shooting I could not find the actual articles and videos, but I watched some discussion of Democrat operatives who were actually praising how Charlie Kirk was actually an exceptionally shrewd operator for Republicans, especially in the space of young men the Democrats are now talking about in the aftermath of the last presidential election - and I am talking about day-to-day operations, how his activities actually translated into voter registrations or organizational movement toward concrete political action.
He was apparently more than just some right-wing talking head or influencer with clips and gotchas on social media. He was able to organize, lead and move things on the ground politically - he literally cofounded Turning Point USA in 2012 and worked in the same way since then. Think of him as a combination of let's say Andrew Wilson or Ben Shapiro with their debate skills, combined with organizer like Scott Presler. I think he was a prototype of the new type of politician, which is rather rare. Not all internet influencers can translate their audience into mainstream success. It is a shame that he is dead, he really had a bright career ahead of him.
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