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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I didn’t find it that funny, no. He seemed nervous, off tempo. I thought it was funny when he said that the spandex was the color of bait, though.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm more concerned with how you're coming up with your objections and less concerned about the objections themselves. In general, psychological effects are linear, you get close to wanting to induce Berkson's bias just to seem more right, you move the goal posts by demanding the data be new enough by your ad hoc standard. I could give you data after 1980 and reasoning like this, you'd be sure to ignore it and demand the data be from last year and so on. It's not a very productive or rational way to approach data, basically. I'm worried it's almost entirely motivated reasoning.




A lot of accusations here. Well, I happen to have read before that the Harvard Lampoon has a sizable nepotistic network in comedy, which is a fact, and that’s why I mention that the data should be tailored for the period in which the Internet democratized comedy. “Downey's most lasting contribution, he opened an employment pipeline, hiring and referring countless Lampoon alumni who now fill writers' rooms at shows from Curb Your Enthusiasm to Silicon Valley” […] “Once you’re there, it suddenly seems easier to get ahead. You do have an advantage. It’s just that you get some kind of contact and some sense that someone like you went there and did it. You are helped by knowing and being helped by other Lampoon people.” And then if I’m not mistaken the Lampoon movie series recruited from a Lampoon network. How will this new information update your confidence, because the accusations seem like you were quite confident?


This is a valid argument because the social network afforded by Harvard connections has nothing to do with g factor or the school itself, it’s just a random benefit that will boost the prominence of these IvyPlus grads even if their boost is undeserved. SNL has often been criticized for riding on its reputation, for instance. Few of the SNL Harvard crowd would make it as a stand-up comic, I’d wager, because… they’re not that funny. Laughs being the sole criteria of humor. These are defenses to the hypothesis because you introduced data; it’s all very reasonable.




off the top of my head, your points themselves are wrong. To begin with, the Ivy league does not have a monopoly on intelligence. Someone below pointed out Adam Sandler attended NYU ... which has an average SAT of 1520. Not any Ivy




Ah, but NYU had a 65% acceptance rate in 1990. Perhaps an 80% acceptance rate in 1984 when he applied? I can’t find the data. This is another point of evidence that, for whatever reason, the best comedians do not attend IvyPlus, though as your data found, 70% of top lawyers or so have.




laոgսages, wհicհ favօrs film actօrs օver verbal, US-օոly staոd-սp. It alsօ accսmսlates witհ age. Sհaոe Gillis illսstrates tհe bias. He is tհe mօst-viewed cօmediaո bօrո after 1980 օո Eոglisհ Wikipedia (789,000 views iո 60 days), yet հis article exists iո օոly ոiոe laոgսages, sօ հe fell belօw tհe օrigiոal sample’s cսtօff




Isn’t this a good argument against the method you’re using? He’s a highly prolific comic, highly relevant, but would be excluded because he’s not in other languages. Sports are different because sportsmen compete across nations.




Ivy-Plսs alսmոi amօոg tհe mօst-viewed receոt cօmediaոs iոclսde Cօliո Jօst, Jeոոy Slate, Allisօո Williams, aոd Wհitոey Cսmmiոgs




The inclusion of the latter three surely disprove the legitimacy of this methodology. Colin Jost makes sense; Slate and Williams are just actresses who happen to be in the comedy section for some reason. I guess I’m wondering why your criteria has two famous actresses that I am supposed to believe should be considered comedians. Maybe they did comedy, but they’re known for a ton of regular media. I know Allison Williams from Girls, for instance.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Maybe, but no shortage enter journalism or an academic track, which are not very profitable at all. Being a good standup comic earns more social rewards than being a consultant: no shortage of women or parties, meeting famous people, being locally renowned.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
the “6% rate of top comedians come from Ivys” is way smaller than should be expected were you to control for the selection effect of the Ivy’s (eg family wealth, health, drive) and the incidental benefits of an Ivy education (vastly enhanced social connections and opportunities). You should probably also exclude the bottom 20% in intelligence; of course the dumbest people can’t be comedians, so the negative correlation with g would only be found after a certain threshold; it’s rather a negative correlation with high g. Then you’d have to check if any of these comedians were legacy admits, which is an exclusionary criteria case. Maybe a more important argument against this data: we have to look at comedians born after, say, 1980, as it’s the Internet that has made comedy meritocratic. Your wikidata dataset premising your argument includes comedians born in 1940. But surely the world of comedy was not as meritocratic in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, when your connections with wealthy producers you went to school with had an outsize impact. In the internet age we can actually see who is funniest, they rise to the top of algorithms that are more difficult to game then 1 or 2 late night talk shows dictating the entiret of prominence.




The pօpսlatiօո is peօple with a giveո օccսpatiօո, US
citizeոship, aոd birth years 1940–1995. Prօmiոeոce is measսred by the ոսmber օf Wikipedia laոgսage editiօոs




Is this an accurate measure of prominence?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Roystgnr is right, I misread the rankings. But yeah, it doesn’t make sense that a top comedian would attend a school at this ranking when comedy is so meritocratic, unless the ability comes from something unrelated to g


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
John Mulaney is double legacy Georgetown University alum, so we can’t really measure his IQ / credential. Westchester is one of the lowest ranking universities in America. Your link mentions Seinfeld, one of the all-time greats, and he went to a CUNY ranked #158 of us college. Our version of Mitchell and Webb is Key & Peele and they both went to pretty middling schools.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Wait, but it’s trivially easy to demonstrate that it is true that comedy is orthogonal to both g and the academic accreditation filter process. If comedy tracked with either one, then we should expect virtually all the best comedians to be from elite institutions, because there are many hundreds of people graduating from elite institutions with a high IQ who are interested in comedy every year. The best mathematicians and the best lawyers nigh universally come from the best elite institutions. That’s what we should expect: the top 10 come from top institutions. But right now, and for decades, seldom do the best comedians come from such institutions. You had to go all the way back to look at Monty Python and this is complicated by the British class system. American comedy is more meritocratic, so where are all the Ivy-educated high IQ comedians? The high IQ and the Ivy graduate would both outperform Shane Gillis on a verbal iq test. So why is Shane the comedian du jour and not those ranked above him in either g or accreditation? Harvard Lampoon alone poops out 120 super-elites per decade, who are ahead of Shane in IQ, accreditation, training, and support. So… where are they?


I’d actually go further than “orthogonal”. Per the available evidence, comedy is negatively associated with possessing high g or strong academic success.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s a live podcast + popular YouTube channel. Amateur comedians do one minute of standup and Tony Hinchcliffe critiques them afterward. The critique afterward is often the funniest part. I’ve seen it criticized for jokes on race / gender, but also for being aligned with the Joe Roganverse.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Christian Soteriology
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fruits as in




But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control




among other passages. You must not be familiar with these passages.




Where is the grounding for what is good




If you’d read the New Testament, you would know how Jesus articulates good conduct in life. There is love for neighbor, there are actionable material consequences we should expect to flow from this love (Matthew 25:41-46), there’s the sharing of resources and the disavowal of worthless status pursuits and consumerism, etc. There’s peace and joy. Actually, the New Testament speaks very pragmatically about these things. The Kingdom is about righteousness and peace and joy.


It’s clear you have a variety of superstitions. But consider: did God really want the Greeks to lose all of their original lands to Turks? What if Orthodoxy had been a better religion which promoted a better society with more cooperation / etc? Did God want the Orthodox Church in Russia to nearly go extinct in the 20th century, or were they instead just incompetent Christians who failed their own people by allowing them to be entranced by communist ideology and failing to defend themselves? How much does yapping about theology actually do any good? Superstition will not actually save a religion with crumbling infrastructure. The religion will just die. You can be self-satisfied that you cling to a certain criteria of theological assertions which few Christians in history outside monasteries ever cared about (folk / popular Christianity ≠ theologian’s Christianity). But the religion will still perish.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Shane Gillis and the Limits of Credentialism


Comedy and the Limits of IQ Essentialism





Shane Gillis is being criticized for an SNL monologue joke about women wearing unseemly attire at the gym — this alone is totally uninteresting cw fodder — but the question of credentials got my attention. A number of the women offended at his joke have invoked their credentials to explain why Shane Gillis is obviously not a good comedian. A uniquely qualified student of comedy invokes her prestigious internship with a smirk to inform you that she knows about comedy. A graduate of comedy writing believes that her classes permit her to speak with haughty authority on comedy. A former working comic explains from a “craft perspective” why Shane Gillis’ joke didn’t work. Of course, none of these people have even vaguely approached the level of popularity of the critiqued comedian. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the foremost credentialed comedy expert in the world has made such a criticism: Harvard undergrad in writing, Princeton PhD in comedy studies, highly published in the highest-impact comedy studies journal. How seriously should we weigh the view of the credentialed against the comedian?


I am tempted to say that the credentialed should have zero weight added to their opinion due to their credentials alone. The only credential in comedy is whether you know how to make people laugh. It would be epistemically arrogant to think that “comedic authority” could ever be bestowed upon a person by way of credential when we barely know the origin and social purpose of comedy to begin with. I recently came across a cool study and overview of one set of theories on humor published last month (the intriguing bits in bold so you can skip through):


The Contents and Function of Humor Among Hunter-Gatherers




Adopting a view of humor as an evolved response to benign violations, I argue that four comic themes characterize most humor across cultures: pain and misfortune, sex and obscenity, the foreign, and the sacred. I propose that each of these themes are ultimately grounded in our evolved psychology as universal pressure points that humor can tap into. I review 745 descriptions of humor in the ethnographic record of the ten hunter-gatherer societies in the Probability Sample Files (PSF) within the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) World Cultures database, finding support for my account. I discuss the relevance of these findings for our understanding of the evolution and function of humor, arguing that humor evolved to signal and reinforce interpersonal trust and affiliation through reciprocal play with benign violations of socially charged norms and boundaries.






the benign violation theory stipulates that the violations required for humor must have a negative valence, hence mild physical mishaps like slipping on a banana peel are considered humorous while purely positive incongruities (e.g., strokes of luck like winning the lottery) are not. For something to be humorous, it must be incongruous not with our expectations of how things usually are but rather with our normative sense of how they “ought” to be. In other words, it must be appraised as wrong, bad, or threatening.






Secondly, the benign violation theory stipulates that for such violations to elicit humor as opposed to purely negative emotions, they must ultimately be appraised as benignly non-worrisome (i.e., normal, harmless, or okay). This explains why mild physical mishaps are funny while serious violations like being diagnosed with cancer are not. For something to be humorous according to the benign violation theory, two appraisals must then co-exist: a benign appraisal and a violation appraisal. By specifying that the violations required for humor must have a negative valence and including the condition of benignity, the benign violation theory builds on the incongruity theory to more accurately differentiate what is humorous from what is not






While humor is often posited as uniquely human, social play is an activity engaged in by most mammals, with an evolutionary antecedent of human laughter manifested in the laughlike panting that accompanies the “play face” of many other great apes (van Hooff, 1972; Gervais & Wilson, 2005; Winkler & Bryant, 2021). In play, animals typically benignly violate each other’s physical boundaries through play fighting, wrestling, chasing, and the like (Aldis, 1975). Play signals like the play face here ensure that violations are understood as benign, preventing misunderstandings from escalating the play fighting into actual violence (Pellis & Pellis, 1996).






testing function, allowing individuals to assess the quality of their social relationships (Winkler & Cartmill, 2026). By imposing a mild cost on a target in the form of a benign provocation while closely monitoring the target’s response, the teasing great ape can glean information about how much the target values the relationship. Reciprocal teasing banter in humans has been proposed to fulfill a similar, elaborated function: By benignly provoking each other without either party taking offense, the participants are in effect saying, “We are close enough that we can say anything about each other” (Terrion & Ashforth, 2002:72). Starting with small provocations and gradually ratcheting up the offensiveness of teases can thus be a way to build a bond of trust.






The fact that teasing, the variety of humor that is not unique to humans, is the most common subtheme among hunter-gatherers, accounting for a majority of humor descriptions, suggests that it may have been the original form of humor. It is also the variety of humor that most resembles the rough-and-tumble play from which humor likely evolved, with the physical violations of play giving way to the more abstract interpersonal violations of teasing. Just as teasing may serve a bond-testing function in other great apes (Winkler & Cartmill, 2026), reciprocal teasing in humans can take on a more elaborate, ritualized form of the same function, with two parties teasing each other as a mutually recognized signal of the strength of their relationship (Haugh & Bousfield, 2012). Not taking offence to a teasing provocation (i.e., appreciating it as benign) requires and thereby signals interpersonal trust.






Attempting humor by violating any norm ascribed social weight, not just interpersonal ones, requires and thereby signals trust that the recipient will interpret it as benign instead of malign. If the recipient responds by appraising it as benign and laughing, that signals reciprocal trust. For instance, Gusinde notes that Ona men, when by themselves away from women and children, engage in “coarse jokes and offensive remarks about women” that they never otherwise permit themselves (1931:1652). A bond is thereby forged through mutual complicity in transgression. Relatedly, Wiessner (2014) found that the vast majority of humor among Ju/‘Hoansi occurs at times of day when people are segregated by gender and age, allowing people to joke freely without overstepping the rules of respect organized along these lines.






Jokes reinforcing ingroup bonds at the expense of outgroups are not restricted to gender but also extend to foreigners, invoking the theme of the foreign. Such outgroups include other local bands or tribes with differing norms, such as the Blackfoot mocking the custom of eating dogs among the Cree (McClintock, 1968:238), or surrounding societies, such as the Mbuti mocking the rituals and institutions of their surrounding Bantu villagers (Turnbull, 1965a:294). Foreign ethnographers studying the surveyed societies commonly describe themselves becoming the butt of humor on account of their “naïvete and ineptitude” in native affairs (Dunning, 1959:ix) or their awkward grasp of the native language (Gusinde, 1931:104). The ethnographer may turn this to their advantage by playing along, becoming a participant in the humor rather than merely a subject of it, thereby engaging the natives in an unofficial reciprocal joking relationship (e.g., Cipriani, 1966:21).






humor may also be used to get away with deviating from otherwise reigning standards of behavior by couching one’s violations in humor. Most commonly, ethnographers describe humor being used as a non-comital way of violating social mores or interpersonal boundaries to indicate or fulfill sexual desire. The risk of rejection is minimized if an advance is coated in benign humorousness since it can always be brushed aside as just a joke, capitalizing on the affiliative signal of humor. Landes (1937), for instance, notes that Ojibwa men teasingly refer to their female joking relatives as “my debtor,” implying that they have sexual rights to them (p. 45). Among the Ona, “tender teasing” is similarly said to be the beginning of any love affair (Gusinde, 1931:445). Multiple observers report being bashfully taken aback when finding themselves on the receiving end of raunchy overtures from natives couched in humor, including Pryde (1972:89) among the Copper Inuit and Turnbull (1962) among the Mbuti. Turnbull, for instance, recounts how a woman marks her interest in him through a double entendre based on his nickname “the long one” (p. 141). (lol)




There are many branches of discourse to swing off from here. Did Shane’s norm violation go too far in the eyes of some women, thereby evoking their ire? Did some women misinterpret of Shane’s monologue, though filled with abundantly placating self-deprecation? Or perhaps it was clipped and they didn’t see the full monologue? Is there reduced social trust and affiliation between the genders? Has the dating crisis gotten so bad that a woman wearing lingerie underwear at the gym approaches the untouchably sacred? Was Shane’s humor better off in the company of only other dudes? Are women just not very funny (this is no laughing matter)?


There’s something else worth exploring here. If the above theories are true, then comedy seems tied to social intelligence, at least within the “competitive” comedy circuit. Humor is an accurate signal of a person’s ability to “socially read the room”, to know where others stand on trust / affiliation / values / sensitivities. This is interesting because comedic skill seems to be unattached to IQ. The most popular comedians are not at all the smartest, in fact many do poorly in school, like Gillis / Louis CK / Theo Von. There is no actual “Harvard undergrad in writing, Princeton PhD in comedy studies” comedian, and I don’t think this is from a lack of trying as it’s the perfect job for a trustfund kid and provides an extremely glamorous social life. I wonder if this is evidence for a social intelligence not adequately predicted by g factor?


And maybe one more thing worth considering. If comedy is the measure of affiliation and trust, then the oft-criticized KillTony (I mean criticized by left media) is actually a wonderful vehicle for national unity. Having men, women, foreigners etc all criticizing each other in offensive ways to laughter is the exact utility of humor you’d want if your interest was to increase affiliation and trust between citizens of different backgrounds.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Christian Soteriology
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What is fruitful, what effects do you care for




The fruits mentioned in the epistles, an obsessive regard for the common good, being happy with little and sharing any abundance with the community, abstaining from consumerism and worthless status competitions, directing one’s energy as far as one is able to promoting a good life to those around them, submitting as if a slave to wisdom, having a high trust community, loving good work, loving everything good, things like that. I think it’s intuitive if we look at specific cases of people: one person plays video games too much, but if his prayer and faith becomes more exciting, he can cut those hours down. One person keeps buying expensive fishing poles, but with the right understanding he will reduce this down to the bare minimum + schedule fishing trips with those in community. A woman cares excessively about aging, with the right readings she will realize the vanity of that and instead beautify her place in heaven. Or a person learns to love his lowly occupation because honest work is glorious to God and obtains a great reward in heaven. There’s a lot of specific cases where a Christian love for what’s good enables a person to do what their conscience might tell them they ought, but which otherwise they would not do. A rule would be “does it promote common wellbeing on the whole, longterm”.




So what now, are you some kind of




That’s what the scapegoat ritual was doing from a psychological perspective. I suppose without this explanation, you believe that for hundreds of years God literally placed the sins of Israel on a goat and sent it off to the wilderness. In any case, the ancient Israelite believed that this occurred, and the belief would have actually reduced their sinful inclinations through this belief (placebo).




Why the need to psychoanalyze this stuff




Well the religion is about to die and likely over centuries be replaced with Islam. Thats a pretty good reason. Catholicism is dying in Italy (10% monthly mass attendance for young Italians), Orthodoxy already died in Russia before, if that’s not a signal that we need to understand the workings of religion better, I don’t know what is. Americans are less religious every year.




I can as well read St. Ireneus Against Heresies from 180AD




Then you and the theobros will be like the Greek Orthodox monks who quibbled over footnotes in Constantinople as the Muslims took over your entire city, land, inheritance, and descendants, conquering the original Orthodox lands for all of time. I believe they also took over Greece, right? For how many centuries did the Greeks have to send their boys to be castrated by the Ottomans as tribute? In real life, God punishes those who miss the big picture and God rewards the groups who are more organized. If you continue to lose attendance, Christianity will be blotted out from the earth, and God will chiefly blame the wasteful theobro who trusted man (theologians) and not God.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Christian Soteriology
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do not particularly trust this author’s ability to admit that God demanded barbaric animal substitition, even if the evidence were abundant. Did he present a rebuttal to any of the following points of evidence?


    

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    Leviticus 16:21-22: “Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he hall let the goat go free in the wilderness.” very difficult to read this anything but imbuing.
    

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    Philo describing the above as: “The hegoat selected by lot for God must be sacrificed, but the other was to be sent out into a pathless and inaccessible desolate place carrying on himself the curses of those who had committed offenses, but who were purified by changes for the better and who have washed themselves from their old lawlessness with a new sense of loyalty to the law.
    

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    Philo speaking of “the sin-offering for the cure of those offences which the soul has committed.”
    

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    Josephus calling the scapegoat “an expiation for the sins of the whole multitude”
    

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    Genesis 22:13, Abraham offering the whole-burnt ram instead of his son, this being a type of Christ
    

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    the distinction between importance of sin found in Philo: “The sins therefore of the high priest, and of the whole nation, are atoned for by animals of equal value, for the priest is commanded to offer up a calf for each. The sins of the ruler are atoned for by an inferior animal, but still a male, for a kid is the appointed victim. The sins of the private individual by a victim of an inferior species, for it is a female, not a male, a she-goat, that is sacrificed; for it was fitting that a ruler should be ranked above a private individual, even in his performance of sacred ceremonies also: but the nation is superior to the ruler, since the whole must, at all times, be superior to the part. But the high priest is accounted worthy of the same honour as the whole nation, in respect of purification and of entreating a forgiveness of his sins from the merciful power of God
    

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    the Talmud’s description of the scapegoat ritual: “And they made a ramp for the goat due to the Babylonian Jews who were in Jerusalem, who would pluck at the goat’s hair and would say to the goat: Take our sins and go, take our sins and go, and do not leave them with us”, written around 220ad
    

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    the Talmud’s description of the Yom Kippur ritual: “And the priest places his two hands on the bull and confesses. And this is what he would say in his confession: Please, God, I have sinned, I have done wrong, and I have rebelled before You, I and my family. Please, God, grant atonement, please, for the sins, and for the wrongs, and for the rebellions that I have sinned, and done wrong, and rebelled before You, I and my family, as it is written in the Torah of Moses your servant: “For on this day atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you of all your sins; you shall be clean before the Lord”. This certainly reads to me like the slaughtered animal is an integral part of moral forgiveness.
    

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				Christian Soteriology
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I like to speculate which soteriology / atonement theory induces the greatest change in the believer. If I had to choose between the exact original soteriological schema (hypothetically) and a later innovation that is more fruitful, I would gladly pick the more fruitful one, simply because I only care about the effects. (Consider: if the early Christians had the optimal answer to every question, why did one hundred heretical sects pop up and why did Arianism almost take over Christendom? In some ways we should rvtvrn, but maybe not in every way). So I'm willing to entertain newer theories, like those found in medieval affective devotional practices which inspire grief and guilt over visualizing the wounds of Christ, something we do not find before the Middle Ages. I think we can construe each theory as privileging a certain dimension to Christ which brings about a different positive impact on a Christian.


    

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    Exemplar and moral influence changes the worshipper insofar as they make Christ the Lord of all status, glory, and social value. Whether someone claims this is as irrelevant as whether a student makes the pledge of allegiance at school. The only substantive change comes from sincere feelings. If a person loves and honors someone and their way of life, they will effortlessly seek to copy him to share in the shadow of his glory, just as a kid begins to talk like his idol and wear the same clothes and do the same things. Christ Crucified is an especially beneficial aspirational image because it is the zenith of virtue and the synecdoche of Everything Christ. Like it says at the end of Ecclesiastes, "the words of the wise are like goads, like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings given by one Shepherd", the moral influence of the cross extends beyond merely the Passion and becomes the moral influence of the One being crucified: he has been "lifted up to draw all men to Himself", Wisdom firmly fixed in place, like Moses lifting up the serpentine staff to show men the way of salvation & overcoming. (Consider Quintillian: "when we crucify criminals the most frequented roads are chosen, where the greatest number of people can look and be seized by this fear. For every punishment has less to do with the offence than with the example." And there are other mnemonic reasons for why the cross was chosen as the instrument of instruments: the image tracks with the ancient art of memorability found in rhetorica ad Herennium; humans are semi-arboreal and interested in trees; etc.) This alone is a perfectly worthy grounds of atonement, and Christ Himself makes clear on two different occasions in Luke that the follower must imitate the cross daily, and that in order to do this (to obtain this spiritual disposition) Christ must be placed above the cares of all family and possessions (like a girl in love who resents being on vacation with her own family because it separates her from even the texts of her great beloved, or like me being away from WoW as a 12yo). How many children would leave their families and possessions to follow Mr Beast for the chance of glory after suffering his trials? But this is juvenile; “when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”
    

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    Ransom / redemption is a fundamentally different angle. It is approximately: someone else went through a maximally horrible experience to save me, even though my own evil was responsible for said experience. This is very prosocial because it activates our sense of obligation and gratitude that another person has provided (this cognition would generalize to other encounters in civilization). This leads to the doing of Christ’s commands out of the a greatest possible thanks, like someone in a debtor’s prison being released due to the buyout of the very person we failed to pay. We now want to serve with thanks, and the idea of not serving would result in guilt: continuing in sin would be like humiliating and crucifying Christ again, forgetting the greatest favor that anyone has ever received in the history of the world. Think how guilty you would feel is someone vouched for you to a great employer and secured you a new position and you failed to show up; Christ interceded and intercedes on your behalf to the Father. Or think how guilty you would feel if you got an organ donation but continued ingesting poisons afterward: Christ is the doctor who donated all of His own blood for you, so how can you show up to the follow-up appointment and tell him you’ve continued damaging your spiritual health?
    

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    There is, I think, a dramatic-tragic dimension to the original gospels which reappears in medieval affective piety, and which is deeply moving. The story of the most peaceful and rightful Lord being brutally tortured by His own people is powerful even excluding other soteriologies. Via compassion for Christ’s imagined social/emotional suffering (imagining the emotions of His mother or imagining how He felt), our cold and stony heart is torn asunder and we are given a new, more sensitive heart. This happens all the time with run of the mill dramas affecting us deeply even though we know they aren’t true, so how much more will this affect us if we know it’s true? But this is completely outside of modern churches, you’ll really only find it online with any tastefulness. This can be combined with the other theories. The medievals would go further and say, like, “my individual sin resulted in this specific scar on your back”.
    

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    In regards to the atonement as the fulfillment of the temple sacrifices, we can ask: what was the psychological effect on the part of the offerer? I’ve already written too much so I won’t go in depth, but: the scapegoat is believed to carry away the sins simply as placebo, almost as guided visualization, you feel that your sin has departed because the goat or the bird departs far away. I don’t believe the scapegoat is anything beyond this. The animal offering is more: it’s a costly signal: you are giving away something expensive; it enhances salience: this real animal has died because of sin, and God is so important that the center of my nation has many animal sacrifices a day, which enhances fear of continuing to sin; and lastly it’s highly reinforcing: both the olfactory scent of animals burning and the shared meal of a sacrifice are reinforcing, desirable, appetitive. You love God more because you had a shared meal with a pleasing aroma. The original Eucharist was a shared meal and IMO it was a mistake to do away with that.
    

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    There are some more aspects worth dwelling on. One of the earliest accounts uses the word “nourishing” in reference to the blood of Christ, and in antiquity blood was believed to convey the power and life source of an organism. It’s probable that the early Christians were placebo-maxxing the Eucharist by believing that the real blood being ingested has conferred real spiritual benefits. This… would have worked. Placebos work, and all of the various aspects of a powerful placebo are found in the Eucharist.
    

    • 



Anyway, I’m heterodox so feel free to ignore all of that, but I’m heterodox for a reason because modern Christianity is broken per every statistic on it. You’re not bringing in anyone or retaining very many people, and the lifestyle of those you retain are questionable, so we should figure out what works.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You would want to punish whichever party started the war even if both parties were equally likely to have started the war; if you cause either party to lose then it will result in a “lesson” about instigating conflict even 50 or 100 years down the road. Unlike the Trump admin, I think the Iranian leaders actually care about the longterm good of their particular people / nation, so they consider how to secure benefits for their group long after they are individually gone, as opposed to falling into the nihilistic “we are all going to die anyway” boomer-death-spiral ideology (something I also hear from the boomers in my own life). But with that said, the Republicans have tied themselves at the neck to Israel, so Iran has a clear interest in making them lose for this reason alone apart from concerns about war continuation; there’s more than just the war per se, there’s “I don’t want America to give a bajillion bombs to Israel for free” which is the Republican plan.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
    

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    Trump has completely given up on “tanker for tanker”
    

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    Trump has completely given up on striking anywhere in Iran, for weeks apparently, even as Iran launches volleys of drones and missiles daily
    

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    Iran “remains well-stocked with ballistic missiles and some anti-ship weapons, and can quickly add more”, while receiving new armaments from Russia, and we should assume Russia has a desire to embarrass their #1 geopolitical rival who helped get them into the Ukraine kurfuffle
    

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    the fire rises upon the namesake of Ahura Mazda: Iran’s strikes are causing more severe damage, and their range of attacks grows larger
    

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    Iran has struck a bare minimum of 15 vessels in two weeks, could be much more than that but they stagger the reporting
    

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    sailors are being offered 4-6x normal wages for crossing the strait, indicating serious risks to life or limb (why would any sailor care if the vessel were merely struck? That would mean less work and command a lower wage. How much would a third world mariner risk to make 6x wages?)
    

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    As of October 4th, known Iranian route crossings rose from 23.2% to 29.9%; no vessels crossed via the Omani Route; the rest were dark transit / unknown. (Why does no one talk about what a big chunk of ships use the Iranian route?)
    

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    Vessel crossings in total fell past few days; October 8th was the lowest number of crossings in two months
    

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    Kpler’s head of geopolitical risk speculates that the Arabs are paying Iran to get their crude out. They are paying the toll.
    

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    Americans left Iraq without disarming the Shia militias, which was part of their original deal with the Iraqi government for their condition of leaving.
    

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Are we winning yet?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it makes sense for a homosexual to latch onto the image of the coolest dude. Perhaps this painting of Sebastian has sufficiently heterosexual undertones, or this one


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Polarization increases by assenting to the unwarranted anxiety of the fearful. It’s like an anxiety disorder that expands if you take the fear seriously and become evasive. To end polarization, you want to smash the Overton Window so loudly that it shocks everyone in the vicinity and snaps them into the realization that their chronic catastrophizing is lame and boring. I’ve heard the most “polar opposite” views from friends and family and have never felt this was an obstacle to ties or normalcy or whatever.


I think public executions are a good idea. But in this case, I side with Joe Kent: “death by firing squad is borderline too merciful […] it also gives the terrorists free propaganda”. What I would prefer us to do is use MKUltra propaganda to turn Nidal into an atheist, possibly transgender, and habitual pork and alcohol enjoyer. This is much more aversive to would-be terrorists: the idea that you will lose your eternal reward when you are caught and be turned into an infidel who gets the worst punishment. This is better than making him an international news story, as terrorists are probably motivated by some taste for infamy at the same time that they are motivated by extremism. Also, the theatrics of a firing squad always make the offender look cooler than the shooter. I think about St Sebastian and how cool he looks, and he’s pretty much the firing squad victim of antiquity.


Also, IMO it’s possible this is motivated by the Israel elements of the Trump admin more than anything, given that Nidal is Palestinian, not that this matters for judging whether it is a wise decision.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think there’s a fine line between histrionics and aggression. I mean aggression as “I have activated the built-in win-against-enemy goal pursuit circuitry” + mild anger. Like Faker in LoL or Magnus in chess. Destiny is a bit too performative and emotional. The wax dueling would deter many destinies from participation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Boxing is undignified. Guns are the ultimate nerd equalizer. You want to remind the audience that we are in a civilized age where brute force avails not, as this draws them further into the realm of discourse. Imagine a company crafting two beautiful pistols just for the occasion. I’m not sure how you’d actually allocate points based on the shooting, though… maybe at the beginning, they both do a long distance target shoot to determine who speaks first, and maybe toward the end there is the duel where the most accurate shot gets ten extra minutes to finish their argument. Maybe the power of the wax revolver increases according to the points scored during the debate, to inflict more embarrassment upon your opponent, and you get to keep the beautiful armaments.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
IMO discourse should really be more aggressive, and adding a real life dueling section to the middle of public debates (with wax bullets of course) would be very kino. Reminds me how Stephen Douglas would wheel out a cannon against Lincoln and fire a loud shot in the air whenever he scored a good rhetorical jab. Men love simulated warfare and spend way too much time on it in myriad antisocial ways. WoW Forever, Warhammer, sports, MMA, video games, movies. If you can take the energy behind that and place it in a discursive context, if you can combine aesthetic and exciting simulatory battle with the art of debate, you will bring All Men to discourse and plainly increase the wisdom of men at large. You will also select out the cowardly, which is just as important for the health of civil discourse.


But in this case: Steven Pinker is 72, and no one should talk to a 72 year old like that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m trying to think whether I would continue my interest in politics and culture if AI effectively solved it. Probably not. I would likely just admire the results of the AI, rather than researching or exploring anything myself.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Lmao yes you’re right. She was not a Baathist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


born out of women's rage as a collective




It hasn’t been mentioned much but the earliest published work to include the phrase “free pussy” is Valerie Solana’ anti-male SCUD Manifesto, 1967, maybe the most anti-male book ever written. Bolding the relevant parts:




The "hippie", whose desire to be a "Man", a "rugged individualist", isn't quite as strong as the average man's, and who, in addition, is excited by the thought of having lots of women accessible to him, rebels against the harshness of a Breadwinner's life and the monotony of one woman. In the name of sharing and co-operation, he forms the commune or tribe, which, for all its togetherness and partly because of it (the commune, being an extended family, is an extended violation of the females' rights, privacy and sanity) is no more a community than normal "society".






A true community consists of individuals--not mere species members, not couples--respecting each other's individuality and privacy, at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally--free spirits in free relation to each other-and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of "society" is the family; "hippies" say the tribe; no one says the individual.






The "hippie" babbles on about individuality, but has no more conception of it than any other man. He desires to get back to Nature, back to the wilderness, back to the home of the furry animals that he's one of, away from the city, where there is at least a trace, a bare beginning of civilization, to live at the species level, his time taken up with simple, non-intellectual activities--farming, fucking, bead stringing. The most important activity of the commune, the one on which it is based, is gangbanging. The "hippie" is enticed to the commune mainly by the prospect of all the free pussy--the main commodity to be shared, to be had just for the asking but, blinded by greed, he fails to anticipate all the other men he has to share with, or the jealousies and possessiveness of the pussies themselves.






Men cannot co-operate to achieve a common end, because each man's end is all the pussy for himself. The commune, therefore, is doomed to failure: each "hippie" will, in panic, grab the first simpleton who digs him and whisk her off to the suburbs as fast as he can. The male cannot progress socially, but merely swings back and forth from isolation to gangbanging.




Solanas’ experience with men in her life failing her developed into an ardent misandry and culminated in, of all things, a murder attempt on Andy Warhol. It’s interesting that the oldest source of this term also includes consensual gangbanging within a fraternity-like organization of men, though here she critiques them for whisking the woman into the burbs rather than dropping her for reputational reasons.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Healthy Communities Post-"Closure of the Internet"
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That proposal is way too complicated. Especially nowadays people are unwilling to put in effort to participate in an online community. What is the specific use case you’re thinking of? You have x, which is antisocial but okay for finding information, there’s substack, and then I think the new gen will just use shortform apps for socializing. For normies there’s still Reddit, maybe, if it’s not all bots by now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The minimum of twelve vessels struck this week by Iran will impact oil prices even if traffic is currently higher than pre-war levels. Personally I agree with whatever Kpler says about oil transit, but that’s not the only factor