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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3920 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 23, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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/r/TheMotte or even the CWR thread in /r/ssc was a very lightning in a bottle thing. People can claim it was THAT attribute or THAT SET of attributes, but I don't think anyone really knows what they were. So by extension, I think it's also going to be pretty hard to dissect why themotte isn't being like it used to be.

I personally don't use the motte as much as I used to because:

  • I don't learn as much as I used to. If I have a burning cultural question in my head, more often than not, I can for the most part come up with an explanation that will be >90% complete of the aggregated motte response. I feel that I have outgrown the level of commentary here. And yes I do take more than I give, that's just how it be sometimes.
  • Overly US centric. CW discussions were for the most part more abstract back then. We discussed issues and ideas. Now we discuss the makeup and actions of the SCOTUS, BORING. Or some niche thing that happened in some irrelevant county in bumfuck flyover state. Like okay buddy, I'm sure you feel REALLY PASSIONATE about this one thing, but the world shut itself down for 3 years and we are still coming out of that, whatever this is, isn't even crossing the baseline level of crazy or unprecendented we are all accustomed to. So probably some information satiation/fatigue going on. I also DONT CARE, I have to either remmember this stupid event that happened in your stupid neighborhood or some stupid edge cases about some cursed yaml file at work, at least the second one makes me money.
  • I've also accepted the CW is a waste of time. I don't live in the US. And I am powerless against the stuff that leaks over anyways. Humans are stupid enough to shut down the world for 3 years straight, NO AMOUNT of modelling them is going to do me any good when the stupid simple model of "people be retarded" has so much explaining power for almost any and all CW issues.

I still find myself going back to hacker news and less wrong because there is new, useful and original content in both those places. I think the motte would benefit (ME) if there were more abstracted discussion on things as opposed to just what's happening.

Now we discuss the makeup and actions of the SCOTUS, BORING.

Sorry.

Evidently not boring to me, but fair enough, it makes sense that it is to those outside the United States, as well as to most in the country as well.

For what it’s worth, I find those discussions very interesting.

Now we discuss the makeup and actions of the SCOTUS, BORING

Maybe it's that we've (not just TheMotte - the ratsphere, the 'dissident right', the internet at large) have picked all of the intellectual low-hanging fruit, and only more specific, complicated things are left? I find SCOTUS discussion interesting and read all of it, though I don't have much to contribute.

That might also contribute to the feeling of wasted time - all the discourse happened, and what changed?

That might also contribute to the feeling of wasted time - all the discourse happened, and what changed?

Unsure about the direction of causality, but Elon Musk was two handshakes away, and he bought Twitter.

The people who participated or observed the proceeings have been thinking of different thoughts than they would've if the trousers of time had bifurcated differently and we'd gone down the right leg. Or perhaps this is the right left leg?

It’s not that it’s complicated, it’s just mostly irrelevant to people outside the USA. For better or worse, my country essentially banned guns fifty years ago, so the back and forth on the Second Amendment doesn’t really hold much interest.

Incidentally the reduction to legal battles is both the strong and weak point of constitutional government IMO: it sublimates important questions into legal ones. The important work of convincing people ‘guns are important weapons against tyranny’ vs ‘guns aren’t worth the extra murders’ has nothing to do with textual debates about what exactly an ‘arm’ can refer to.

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