Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
"So rowed they till day broke, and a light wind sprang up fresh and keen. Juss waked, and stood up to scan the gray glassy surface of the sea spread to vast distances where sky and water faded into one. Astern, great clouds bridged the gates of day, boiling upwards into crags of wine-dark vapour and burning plumes of sunrise. In the stainless spaces of the sky above these sailed the horned moon, frail and wan as a white foam-flower blown from the waves."
User ID: 83
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I don't know anything about the specific rationalist in question here, I speak in abstracts, but rationalists have huge blind spots, preferably near their own sacred cows. A rationalist can gain esteem enough by writing on topics other than those.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
Yeah, if nobody they had no reason to mistrust previously informed them that the emperor wore invisible clothes.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
wouldn't being autistic make it less likely you'd have the requisite cognitive machinery in place necessary to delude yourself about the state of the world for the purposes of social signalling?
In my unprofessional opinion: Autists accept the signal at face value and then boost it because the original signal comes from a trusted source. No delusion required; it's genuine belief.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
· Edited 1d ago
The comparison to Weimar is apt, IMO. Back then democracy showed a failure mode in being young and not having the people's trust so that power players could just run roughshod over it; now it shows another by being old and all the players knowing how to exploit its loopholes while the people have become so accustomed the status quo that the liberal order is taken for granted.
I think the endpoint will probably be constitutional reform that further enshrines progressivism, to such a point that any significantly right-wing platform becomes legally untenable. We can see the first attempts at this in the recent inclusion of "Climate Neutrality By 2045" in the constitution - if that works, then similarly ideologically-charged items can follow, until it becomes impossible to campaign for materially right-wing goals without first campaigning for simply undoing those changes, which wouldn't be attractive to voters.
Whether the road there is cleared by weimarian violence or just another long march probably depends on how rapidly, if at all, the right grows from here on out.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
· Edited 1d ago
I'd predict that it will turn into a change of strategy. So far the way of it was to contain the AfD through social engineering to dissuade the electorate from backing them, and political firewalling to prevent them from affecting the running of the country. The social part isn't effective enough, and the political part will cease to work if they should grow any further.
So I expect that the fever will heat up more yet. We may see increasing sabotage, honeypots, agent provocateurs, political violence and other more proactive measures to prevent the AfD from functioning as an organization and to discredit it as not just evil but incompetent. Key actors within the party might be bought off, imprisoned on flimsy evidence, or personally assaulted on a broader scale and with more decisive violence. Perhaps a party meeting will be bombed. Maybe trustworthy intelligence agencies will discover incontrovertible proof that the entire party leadership is a bunch of pedophiles, or something similarly odious that not even right-wingers would tolerate.
This might be further facilitated by funnelling more money into "pro-democracy" NGOs that serve to coordinate activists and provide them with financial and legal support.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
We recently had our federal elections in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the winners, the CDU and their sister-party CSU, are currently organizing their coalition with the SPD.
The CSU got to pick the future minister of agriculture, and they chose Günther Felßner für the job.
Felßner has now cancelled this plan, because animal rights activists broke into his farm-home to protest against some form of animal abuse or another. Supposedly his wife feared for her life, and he considers his family's safety more important than high political office.
The protest has been condemned by the future government parties, but overall not much is made of it.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
· Edited 1d ago
Not sure about that. I'd say it has been worse.
- The tone of cancel culture has shifted from "he's a nazi who obstructs the progressive transformation of society, we must ostracize him forever and ever" to "he's a russian puppet, we must ostracize him until he repents". It's more temporary and limited in scope.
- People around me are generally a lot more openly critical of the progressive project, and much less openly supportive of it than they used to be. I hear more broadly pro-free-speech positions and fewer calls for censorship than I used to.
I think overall people are just more insecure than they used to be. Trump getting reelected, right-wing parties gaining more support, war making a comeback in Europe, the whole goddamned pandemic episode, Überfremdung (increasing numbers of foreigners) becoming noticeable to normies - all of that shook people, one way or another. The instinctive desire to take the moral high ground and preach remains, but it seems that most of the regular people who would turn into opportunistic preachers are sufficiently unsure of the world right now that they're much subdued compared to a few years ago.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
Generally speaking however, I think you're slightly off the mark in your observations. The style of discouse you describe, in which a party is described as irredeemably evil due to an excessively right-wing position, is usually directed at third parties. You and your politically agreeable interlocutor paint someone who is not actually a participant in the discussion as an acceptable target and not part of polite society. It's not directed at a participant in the discussion, because you, a respectable progressive, would never have a discussion with a nazi in the first place! The whole exercise serves to strengthen in-group alignment on common friend/enemy distinctions. It's a rallying cry for allies, a measure to ensure uniformity, not an attempt to convince someone who might disagree with you - because outright disagreement is evil, beyond the pale, and marks such a one as unfit for discourse. The evil must be deplatformed, not given opportunity to voice their intolerable views.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
Citation of what exactly?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
Not sure if 1:1M. I buy it, really. It's not too far off from my own teenage experiences. All it takes is the right brain wiring to accept statements by authority at face value. "Men and women can be equally physically capable? Sure thing, I trust you mom/teacher/book.". Add a few examples of exceptionally physically capable girls/women (as were present around me at the time, though of course they were given extra spotlight and never put into direct competition against equally ambitious boys/men.) and it can seem quite credible. Especially when you yourself are a bookworm for whom taking a walk is peak physical activity, and those guys/girls running marathons seem like aliens and you have no interest in observing their activities at all, nevermind gender disparities.
I'm glad I grew out of it, but I suppose there's ways enough for similar teenagers to instead double down and become physically illiterate adults instad.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
Deplorable transparency. If only the state would hide its inner workings more thoroughly from its citizens!
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2d ago
Dipped a toe into animations, but it's still a foreign country to me. Keyframe animations sound like a simple concept, but actually wiring things up takes some getting into. Not sure how much I'll be doing with it, it's mostly idle curiosity driving me on that point. Going through some basic tutorials right now.
Other than that, not a lot. Work, parenting, and being very tired.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
One of them, which most closely fit this pattern, used the imagery of cutting beams and hewing rocks so that God may build a house for you.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
· Edited 3d ago
People may be "doing it" and that still doesn't give it any validity or cause to acknowledge it as anything other than utter insanity. It's like people claiming to be from Mars. Funny if it happens once, but we're long past that point. This isn't like religion, which in the West has politely withdrawn to areas so private it can no longer bother anyone, or like ideology, which can at least be put to the test and found wanting. This starts with a completely ludicrous premise and then tries to worm its way into society by denying the obvious and demanding the impossible. I can recognize epistemic gulfs between me and an ideological enemy, or me and a foreigner from parts unknown, but "trans" anything is just out of bounds of all reason. The people doing this aren't adults anymore; not unless you want that term to also become a meaningless category.
We can maybe call them harmless crazies, ignore them on libertarian grounds, live and let live, consider it beneath notice and leave it alone. But steelman it? What's there to steelman? Alright, so you are from Mars, nice thought experiment, can we please get back to reality? I can steelman a communist, a nazi, an islamist, an anachist, electric cars, accelerationism, anything based a difference of opinion on a complex topic that's difficult to make sense of. But gender and sex or whatever it's called in English is quite seriously one of the simplest topics in existence. The simple binary logic of it is in fact the bedrock of our existence. I know people who like dressing up as women or animals and getting fucked in the ass. Alright, whatever, I don't want to be anywhere near their bedroom but I can tolerate it. But when they tell me that they now "are" a woman or a dog, there can be only one response - No, you aren't, now please stop making a fool of yourself and don't ever again ask me or anyone else to seriously validate that kind of delusion.
I don't want to sound petty, but I am entirely serious on this point: Anyone claiming to be "trans" just plain isn't an adult for social purposes. You can maybe play along with that kind of make-believe, but at that point it really is all child's play. Again, funny if it happens once, but the joke has gotten old.
Edit: I did not address the issue of this all affecting kids. I thought I had forgotten to, but in retrospect it's probably better off that way. My thoughts on pushing "trans" on teenagers, who suffer from enough idiocy all on their own, are unlikely to encode into anything motte-compliant.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
life in modern society as the other gender through medical treatment and social changes.
Why would I acknowledge this? It's absurd. It's not remotely possible. There can be a milllion people pretending or claiming to do this and yet that does not make it any more real.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
The ideal degree of lawfulness may be neither "not at all" nor "unconditionally".
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
Assuming one grants that a thing such as
trans adult
meaningfully exists.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
Context please.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
Please explain.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
4d ago
If it's like that you can just up the difficulty. It was getting like that for me on my first playthrough towards the end unless it was a boss fight.
The problem with that is that by upping the difficulty, you shift the balance so that instead of merely being able to break the game with cheesy overpowerd builds, you are required to do so.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
4d ago
I'd better stop here. I've been noticing misandry against men in Western culture for quite sometime, but now it looks like boys are targets too, which makes me a bit upset.
In addition to @DiscourseMagnus' reply, consider the following: What is an attack on men if not an attack on boys? For what else should boys aspire and expect to be?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
4d ago
A sufficiently well-practiced performance will be indistinguishable from genuine belief. TDS, from what I observe in Germany, is entirely performative if only because Germans have very little to fear from Trump yet still ape the same kind of condemnatory panic that leftist Americans adopt. Overstating the danger is a form of virtue signalling analogous to claiming that video games cause satanism, or similarly absurd claims. It's considered good form among humans to exaggerate the danger posed by one's enemies in order to rally around a common friend/enemy distinction.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
4d ago
· Edited 4d ago
I don't know what your wife or children or the general situation is like. Does she have a space she can go to and read a book or do something quietly? Do you? When do you have time to write on a message board?
On work-days my wife shares child care duties with her mother, and I sometimes drop in after work to take the kid out of depressed-couchbound-woman-land to hit the playground. When the child is in Kindergarten, my wife has half the day free to do as she please. And then she has pretty much the entire weekend off - seriously. Sometimes she does some light household work, but mostly she just cooks and then nothing. - , and from Friday evening to Sunday sleepytime it's dad time for as long as the kid is awake. She's pretty much like your older daughter: demanding of attention, always has her mind set on an activity or topic of conversation and tolerates no deviation from that, and can get very angry if she doesn't get her way. I guess that's how she keeps busy during weekdays, when everyone around her is trying as hard as they can to stare at their phones and forget their physical existence. On the weekends I make it very clear that it's dad-time. She gets attention all day long, no distractions, but she needs to play by Dad rules, which means no sweets, no screens, no screaming, being outdoors whenever possible and we get some chores done during the day. It works. We both have a good time, get things done, and for all that she gets to talk my ears off about volcanoes and the TV shows she watches with her mother and whatever imaginary game ruleset she just invented for the umptenth time in a day, but she has to do so while we get groceries, clean up the living room, or take a walk to check on what flowers are growing this time of the year, and sometimes those activities even break through and grab her attention and the topic of conversation shifts to what we're doing.
I have time to post on messageboards either after getting her to sleep, at which point I should be sleeping myself, or during work-days. Such as now.
I'll readily grant that our situations are not comparable. My observation is simply this: Trying to run and hide from the child to stare at a screen instead makes people miserable. Maybe alter the structure of your days or week to make a little room for yourself? Get your husband to take the kids for a while?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
4d ago
Hm. Germany is probably simply behind the curve, then. I'll grant that the identifiable latter-day hippies are almost all pretty damn old by now.
It is as @ArjinFerman says.
Die Grünen (and to a lesser extent die Linke) are married to the activists, which form the so-called APO (Außerparlamentarische Opposition / extra-parliamentary opposition). The two don't compete; they cooperate.
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