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That's fine. Participating someplace where a significant minority of the community care about nothing but digging through old grievances every time I post gets old very, very fast, and there's not really a point to beating around the bush on that. Once, this forum meant a great deal to me, and many of the individuals on it still mean a lot to me, but the space as a whole lost the mandate of heaven long ago despite your own good work and the good work of the other mods.
In the past couple of months, I've met more than a dozen motte users I read avidly, respect, and have fond memories of in real life, at several events tied to this broader community. Almost none of them post here anymore. The Motte had a good run and contains a lot of good memories, but for all practical purposes, I think its run is over. Here’s to a glorious diaspora.
I encourage those of you who enjoy what I have to say to join me on Twitter or elsewhere. At this point, the conversations there are richer, the community there healthier, and participation there is more meaningful than it is here, and I have very little to gain from kicking around someplace where some 1/4 of the userbase want it to be crystal clear that they loathe me every time I post. There was a time this was the best discussion space online, but that time has passed and it's time for relics like me to move on.
All the best.
It’s alright Tracey we’ll always have rDrama :marseyevilgrin:
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Where have these ex/motte posters moved to? Twitter, rdrama.net, or somewhere else?
I'm mainly just a lurker, but I've been on this site from the start; and from here, I went on to start using Data Secrets Lox, X, Rdrama.net, and especially Substack. Subjectively, outside of here I enjoy the content and discussions on Substack the most. There are a lot of Discords, but I don't really like using Discord to talk to anons very much.
The Motte and its predecessors have been my favorite parts of the Internet since I discovered SSC around 2013 or 2014. Somehow I still feel the sense of shared heritage and mindset, but I know that it's all fragmenting. I have tried to resist that happening, because I don't think I can build the same feeling of community as a Peachy Keenan fan or Yuri Bezmenov Comrade or whatever. I just came to those things too late. My next "community" will actually probably be the Old Men Eating Lunch group at my church.
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Mostly Twitter, some into EA circles or away from online commentary and into irl stuff, some Discord, a few rdrama, some more than one of them. Twitter is the only one that fulfills a truly similar role.
Sorry for snagging on a single word like this but scenes like vaguely gestures around this one very vividly remind me how absolutely ruinous the advent of Discord has been for niche communities like this one and others I considered myself a part of. It is evaporative cooling personified (software-ified?), seamless and convenient and easier then ever before. Why put up with the constant bile from the rabble on some Mongolian basket-weaving forum when you can always take shelter in some nice Discord server with people who share your perceptions and beliefs? (I am only partly facetious, this question occurs to all of us on different times.) Surely this does not run the risk of creating ever more
hugboxesnice fenced-off areas around the wasteland that is the modern-day internet.At the risk of coming off as hostile (which believe me I am very much not, I'm just a random rube but the piece has been amazing reading and I value your contributions greatly), I'll try to gently posit that this tendency - to solve any intra-community friction that occurs by bouncing out into the wild frontiers of Xitter or into a different subcommunity - is very much part of the problem of why the Motte has quote-unquote "lost the Mandate of Heaven" nowadays [citation needed]. As the saying goes, you're not stuck in traffic. You are not merely seeing it lose the Mandate of Heaven - you and everyone who leaves for greener pastures personally rip out another little shred of it along the way, justified or not, whether you want to or not, as sad and inevitable as that sounds. Especially when you actively advocate for people to join you.
I don't advocate shooting rootless cosmopolitans or something, and sticking together through thick and thin is not always the strictly superior option (although it does historically have its perks!), especially on places that naturally foster disagreement like the Motte - the empire long united must divide, etc. - but I think this endless splintering and constant bound-less motion is incredibly destructive to communities long-term. Getting along is hard, enduring bait is unpleasant, janitor work is thankless, but without any of this a community does not survive. Silly metaphor: you do not generally solve the problem of a dirty, cluttered house by just moving out to a new one every time. (If you do, share advice on finding decent
housescommunities in thiseconomyculture.)I don't understand why various schisms of this kind are so prevalent nowadays, either. Perhaps because Discord (the archetypal example) is popular and the invite system is simple and seamless to use, removing or reducing the trivial inconveniences often associated with building new communities online. Perhaps it's because thick skin does not at all actually seem to be a requirement for the modern internet, although whether that's the cause or effect of the schismogenesis in the water supply seems unclear. Perhaps this is simply cope and even a modicum of seethe on my part. But it's such a fucking shame. We can finally have the communities we want - and the commons we deserve.
I've seen at least one forum get eaten by a Discord channel, and have suspicions it may have happened to a couple more. As someone who has a "no accounts on large platforms" rule (and would likely get banned from Discord for heresy anyway), it's really fucking annoying.
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It's cope and seethe, but it's beautiful cope and seethe that comes from a place of love, and that's noble in its own right. Forums like this are the same as Discord servers. Ones that build healthy local cultures retain people, ones that build unhealthy local cultures slowly drive people away. So it has ever been. Hugboxes are fine and good. People should be coordinating with others who share their interests and their goals. You can build beautiful things alongside your friends, and people should. Spaces with disagreement are great, too, when they can manage it in constructive ways (rdrama, oddly enough, does a healthy job at that), but everyone should have a couple of nice fenced-off hugboxes alongside their PvP zones. I just met up with a dozen people from one of my hugboxes and spent the better part of a week hanging out with a handful of motte lads from another. That is well and good. People should pursue that sort of community.
As for bile and rabble, I spend most of my public online time these days on places famous for bile-filled rabble. I was attracted to Twitter in specific because I noticed that the rationalist-adjacent culture there is healthy. They have leftists, they have right-wing dadposters who would be at home in themotte. People interact with the slice of the community they can handle, and the whole community remains cohesive enough to have meetups and build alongside each other and do beautiful things. By posting there, I increase my incidental exposure to people who really, truly disagree with me from all angles, because each post there might break containment and reveal me to people who share none of my background and none of my ideals. Every day, I engage with more people who truly disagree with me than I ever could here, and watch some of them call me a fascist, others a degen furfag, and still others listen. All of that is well and good.
The above post is an example! I penned a harsh criticism of one of my local sphere's longest-standing malicious critics. He and his friends are discussing it and digging up dirt on me, people in my Twitter circles are discussing it, I'm bantering and bickering back-and-forth with Eliezer Yudkowsky about it. People stay in places that fulfill needs for them and leave places that don't. For people who lack a crowd who want to turn every conversation into a referendum with their past grievances that I've acquired, and who broadly align with the local ideological frame, the Motte remains a pleasant enough place, and they're welcome to keep enjoying it. But I have a whole internet to engage with people who disagree with me, and no reason to share a community with those who live for dredging up historic grievances and others who shrug and make their excuses for others who do so, when I can't give that course of action the response it deserves.
You're right, though. Leaving is part of the problem, and that's why I've clung on for years here after falling out of love with this space. But the pastures really are greener elsewhere these days, in a way they were not in the past, and parts of that "elsewhere" remain very much part of the same meta-community as this.
I've given my advice on finding decent communities in this culture. The Twitter postrat scene is a dozen times healthier than the Motte at this point, and much more rewarding for high-quality posters. Substack as well. People can and do participate both here and there. Quality rises over there, and the upside there is tremendous. It's a place where you talk to public figures and not just about them, a place where you wind up chatting with and following as many people who disagree with you as you and they can handle, a place where usually you chat peacefully with your friends and occasionally the world gazes on. It's not for everyone, but they succeeded at culture-building in a way that matters. And it's more the commons than this place! It's a commons that is actually common.
I appreciate your thoughts and your passion here, and those who don't have my idiosyncratic reasons to leave have plenty of cause to stay and try to build in this place. Your sense of duty towards community speaks well of you.
To clarify I am not unbiased here either, I've seen a certain "community" of mine become borderline unusable over a year-plus-something of incessant baitposting, social jockeying and all the other joys of anonymous imageboards. Fewer and fewer sane people remained every day, until one day I woke up and the sun rose in the east and nearly every single person worth engaging with has vacated the premises or sequestered themselves in some kind of comfy Discord, playing games and interacting
parasocially with each other while the thread became a smoking wasteland. Hell, there's even been a literal schism, splitting the subject matter to two different boards (entirely organic from what I could tell, too). Far be it from me to hold their choice against them - but that, too, is a choice they made. Hide X threads, ignore X posts, do not reply to X posters, etc. Everyone misses the old internet, but apparently no one wants to carry on its spirit.It's been some months but the main "community" does not show signs of recovery, because evaporative cooling is not your friend. Still, some people endure and attempt to interact in good faith, because the sense of community matters more to them than their individual experience. Goes without saying that it's just not the same anymore.
In other words since I may have overdone hiding my power level, I will rephrase more bluntly - you leaving is a conscious choice you make. You were not unfairly forced out by a shadowy cabal. You took the bait, and could not tear from the hook in time. It happens to the best of us, god knows I longposted at people who simply hurled one-liners back at me with glee, but saving face with the smoke of a burning bridge is not the way. Especially not while actively advertising to try and pull people along while publicly claiming to care about the community's longevity.
Furthermore, I will admit I really did expect someone that does investigative work of your caliber to have thicker skin. Blowing up like this on a 1) drive-by bait post 2) made by an obvious troll/alt 3) which got near-instantly shot down by jannies is just, I don't know... undignified, besides giving the shitpoaster exactly what they wanted. I couldn't imagine a bigger trolling W than this and I've seen quite a lot of trolling.
Also, I hope this doesn't come off as smug but the amount of goodbyes someone says while leaving is directly proportional to the likelihood of them returning in the future (my reliable source is that I made it the fuck up). This is not anything worth judgement and I personally will be glad to have you back, but you can at the very least refrain from performatively burning bridges which only ensures the green bastards get to feast immediately in the event of your return.
Hold on, let's be clear.
I'm not blowing up on a bait post by an obvious drive-by troll. I ignored that. I'm responding to people like WhiningCoil and Dean who have been in this community for years, have hated me for years, and who actively want to push me out of this space. I am responding publicly, and clearly, in a way that emphasizes that they are in this space and people I like are leaving it, and that I, too, am leaving it.
The amount of people surprised at my thin skin should give those same people pause about its thinness. I went my whole time here without a single warning; I spend my time online hanging out on Twitter and rdrama and poking the bears of tech centimillionaires and rationalist grantmakers and government agencies and Wikipedia obsessives who spend decades etching their grudges into the public record. When I don't want to react harshly, I don't. In this case, I am, after some thought, telling people who have antagonized me for years precisely what I think of them in a public enough way that uninvolved people can understand exactly what's going on and why.
I don't care about the community's longevity at this point. People who do are welcome to it, but I think it had a great run for many years and stopped being what I loved in it years ago. I've had one foot out the door here for years, and it's time to step out properly. My burning of bridges is not performative--I have too many spaces full of good people for me to possibly keep up with, and dropping one that has many good people and a few miserable ones with altogether too much local-cultural sway is sad only because of history.
You're absolutely right: my leaving is a conscious choice I am making. I was not forced out. Every top-level post I make here, it's clear that plenty of people here appreciate what I have to say. I appreciate their interest, and I appreciate what this community was to me in the past, but I don't think this is a space where I personally should contribute time, energy, or passion any more.
It's possible that well down the line I'll pop back for a bit--never count anything out--but I wouldn't count on it.
The blowup qualifier is imho still accurate but you're right, I mixed up the chain order, my bad.
That... does not sound as reassuring as you seem to think it does. Disagreement and/or even rivalry is entirely fine, but the optimal amount of public meltdowns is definitely zero. It's a "fuck one goat" kind of deal, people either can't get under your skin or they can't - evidently, now they can.
In any case I've said my piece and wish to avoid inadvertently baiting you further, so I suppose I can only show my respectful disagreement and wish you luck in future endeavors on and off the Motte.
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I don't hate you at all. I feel nothing at all about you. When I'm not reading your words on a screen I largely forget you exist. I wasn't even sure I was remembering the right person! But I do have a mostly still functioning long term memory, and perhaps a slightly Kantian sense of honesty which you've offended.
The fact that you can explode with so much narcissistic rage at a guy who struggles to remember you going "Wait, aren't you that guy who did X?" with "YOU'VE BEEN MY MOST DEDICATED HATER FOR YEARS! FUCK YOU! YOU RUINED THIS PLACE!" is astounding.
Methinks you and Trace are both a little guilty of performatively shouting I DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE SO HARD CAN YOU SEE HOW MUCH I DON'T CARE MOFO?!
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Man, this reminds me of a community I used to be a part of for something like 15 years, from my childhood through my early 30's. Started off as a bunch of nerdy kids who liked a thing and created their own space to talk about it. Then we grew up, and politics got more and more involved. Then it became almost entirely about arguing politics and trolling one another's trigger points. We had a benevolent autistic overlord who owned the space and maintained strict neutrality, as most of the old internet used to. Then one user launched a coup, stole the domain name, redirected it to his own servers, and banned everyone he disagreed with. Shortly after he shut the place down entirely because banning us wasn't enough, he wanted there to be no public record of him ever having associated with us what so ever, he considered us so politically untouchable.
Canadians, eh?
Eventually most of us that got banned coalesced around a private discord group one of us set up. But it's just no the same, and many of us still grieve the loss of that community.
That is the part spoken quietly, I think that Discord's simple framework and the very detailed permissions system for server channels has made naked shilling and aggressive status jockeying in this vein much easier and more viable. Especially for culture warriors and clout-chasing
highschoolerssociopaths who are good at (and enjoy) stuff like this but would normally get filtered by the technicalities of setting up their own domain. Discord groomers/kittens are memes for a reason.Man, tell me about it. The discord I'm on is literally just a private space for old internet friends who've known each other for 20+ years to shoot the shit and stay in touch. Share pictures of our kids without using facebook. Crap like that.
Every other Discord I've been on, despite ostensibly being about a video game, manga, tv show, youtube channel, etc still has like 20% of the conversation dominated by adults talking about the divergent gender identity, their polycules, etc and god damned children in the same discord participating inquisitively and with a mixture of yearning and conformance.
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Eh, you're a gay furry ex-Mormon (which is like a triple strike against you in my book) but I still like you well enough. I think the Libs of TikTok thing could have been handled better but I don't think it was an inherently wrong thing to do.
You do you, but I think you're missing out if you leave this place behind permanently.
I've always enjoyed your company as well, but I have gotten almost nothing out of this place since it moved to the new site and my experiences elsewhere are becoming better and better. The one thing I am missing out on by leaving this place is the presence of the people I respect here who have not yet built presences elsewhere, and at this point, the only thing keeping me coming back around here has been nostalgia for what once was.
I'm a fossil around here these days. It's time to pull the plug.
See you on the other side, someday.
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Trace, our time posting here has hardly overlapped, but I do like what I have seen of you, and would prefer you stick around. Different perspectives can be enlightening, for one, and you generally (though not a few posts prior) seem to glow with civility.
I do think this particular piece was unusually likely to bring up the Libs of TikTok complaint—you write about someone misrepresenting things in order to hurt someone; you did the same. You are of course by no means the same as Gerard (for one, are far more open, and far more civil), and I have no reason to doubt that your motivation in doing so was earnest, but I see why people mention it. I also think that was unwise, and understand why that would make people trust you less. I mention this both to indicate that I do genuinely think that may have been a bad thing to do, not merely due to having the wrong target, but also to emphasize that I do not think that that would be the response to your every comment, and so you don't need to take this as the typical reaction.
At the very least, think carefully before doing things like that again. And consider that the reaction in this instance may have been worse than in others; I do not think that you will always be met the same way. But this was a good piece.
Anyway, I am sorry to see you go, and hope you someday return.
There are places I will litigate the events of that time. This is not one of those places, and while you seem like a good chap, I'd encourage you to think about what it's like to have people looking, with every post you make, for excuses to bring up their old grudges rather than trying to litigate and rationalize the specifics of those grudges. See you on the other side someday, perhaps.
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I still think a place like this serves a very valuable purpose---if only that whenever you get too upset about some DEI overreach like the whole SF algebra saga you can find some very pointed reminders that the American right is somehow even worse on issues of meritocracy.
How is this place worse on issues of meritocracy? (If I read you rightly?)
My sense was that people here are usually fairly pro-meritocracy.
I mean, there are semi-normal calls on this website, with basically zero real pushback calling for moderate to severe limitations on the ability of 50% of the population to be equal to the other 50% of the population when it comes to educational opportunities and general place in society.
So, maybe there's a "well, IQ shows that actually, I'm OK with some African-American and Hispanic's in prominent positions if they prove themselves worthy" arguments thats pro-merit but basically making it as tough as possible for women to go to college or access birth control is cutting off half the population because they seem to want more babies.
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I think the consensus view here is that people should be treated specially for the sole reason of being white instead of any personal qualifications. This is very anti-meritocratic. I recall though that we just had this discussion on this right? I guess your comments didn't get into this point specifically, but do you not think a moderator saying that "race-blind meritocracy" is a controversial, minority viewpoint in the Motte is sufficient evidence?
Otherwise, would you agree that the Motte's seeming consensus against even skilled immigration (well, I get dogpiled pretty hard whenever I try posting in support of it at least) is pretty anti-meritocratic? I have the impression that the median poster here would prefer their doctors, engineers, pilots, etc. to be white/have far-reaching ancestry in whatever country (depending on the exact poster) than being the most competent people that can be found.
This is just consensus building in reverse. No, these positions are not the consensus, no I'm not going to prove a negative that there is some other consensus. We don't have a consensus, we are a collection of individuals with wildly different beliefs.
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I'm not sure how one could conclude that there's even a seeming consensus of the sort here. Whether or not you get dogpiled over an opinion doesn't really tell us anything about consensus; merely what types of people tend to dogpile, as well as what types of posts you tend to perceive.
I'm not sure how one could come to this conclusion, as someone who spends more time on this forum than I ought to. I don't think there's anything such as a "consensus" here on this kind of stuff, but the closest thing to a consensus I could see here is the precise opposite of this, that almost everyone here believes in putting the most competent people that can be found into these positions. They simply believe that, for empirical reasons, that a world in which the most competent people fill these roles is also a world in which a majority of those people will belong to certain races. They may be mistaken, but the goal always seemed to me to maximize competence, and let the racial makeup fall where they may.
I put a longer reply here. Basically, I don't think this is at all consistent with the policies enacted by the US right---especially the US alt-right that is more in line with this forum.
I mean, maybe. But then you're talking about the US right and the US alt-right, not the "consensus" of this forum. US right and US alt-right are certainly popular in this forum, but to say that there's anything nearing a consensus that such political/ideological movements are Good is, in my view, absurd, just from my time reading the comments here. Furthermore, even if there were, the people here tend to be idiosyncratic enough that their support for broad political/ideological movements such as those tend to have tons of caveats and places of severe disagreements, often in very different areas depending on the person, even when they're ostensibly on the same "team" (this is present on the left as well as on the right here, in my view, where there are plenty of left-leaning users including myself and you, but our views on what the left is doing right and what it's doing wrong tend to be quite different from each other).
If you were to say that there are many people on this forum, especially ones who produce a disproportionate number of comments, that support the mirror image of DEI, then I would agree. If you want to say that the presence of such people who make lots of posts in this vein who don't get significant pushback (a description I disagree with, but I am willing to take for granted for the sake of argument) indicates that there's a consensus, then I couldn't disagree more. Again, I don't perceive there being any consensus on this (the closest thing to a consensus on this forum I can tell is that "wokeness/leftist idpol/SocJus/CRT is, on net, harmful to our society"), but I'd wager that the most common view here - not common enough that I'd call it a consensus, but I'd bet it's a plurality - is that society is better when it prioritizes individual competency when picking people to put into important critical roles, and as such that's what we ought to do. Some (many) people here believe that discriminating on the basis of race is one particularly effective method of accomplishing this (one might say this is the mirror of DEI - one core component of DEI is that society is better when it prioritizes Diversity* when picking people to put into important critical roles, and most of its proponents believe that discriminating on the basis of race is one particularly effective method of accomplishing this).
But, who knows, in a forum like this, determining if there's a consensus, much less what it is is both nearly impossible and highly subjective. It's not like we have some numerical criterion by which we can say, "Aha! So that reveals that the consensus of TheMotte is XYZ!" It's almost entirely based on vibes, at the end of the day. My vibes is that there's no shortage of leftist posters here, and probably even moreso centrist/heterodox posters. When weighted by post count, perhaps they're, put together, less voluminous than the rightists, but the amount clearly seems significant enough to deny any sort of rightist consensus (except, again, that anti-DEI thing).
* Diversity here has an idiosyncratic meaning of something like "more people from populations that we have judged to have been overtly oppressed in the past and thus still suffer from both the legacy of that and the existing structures that reinforce that today," rather than the generally understood meaning of "having a large variety of types" or the like.
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What did you think of this comment from that discussion?
As well as Amadan's below (a moderator).
There definitely are white nationalists here. There are also definitely a bunch of people here who are not white nationalists, and are against, say, a Jim Crow society, who still think that race can sometimes be of some evidentiary value. (And so might be against "race blindness," depending on how it is phrased.) I think there are more of the latter here.
I'll also note that you characterized the American right as being worse on this. But it is very much the norm on the American right to take an anti-DEI, anti-affirmative action stance precisely on the grounds that it is discriminatory and anti-meritocratic. I'm fairly confident that the American right is less racist and more meritocratic than the system of racial discrimination found throughout American society.
Insofar as it is more racist, I think that's in large part a product of the internet, and is worsening over time.
Well, I agree that if that were the prevailing view then my point about being worse on meritocracy would be much weaker. However, I do have a factual disagreement there---I think we all have a very strong cognitive bias to hyperfocus on racial differences over much more informative characteristics. For example, if you see another person walking on the street late at night in a somewhat sketchy area, I think the person's age, mannerisms, dress, etc. would give you much more information about whether you're in danger than if the person was white or black even though race is what everyone instinctually pays attention to first. If you don't correct for this bias---and maybe its so strong that you have to do something extreme like actively ignoring racial information all together---you won't get a very accurate picture of the world.
Furthermore, I think there is a real problem of people covertly arguing for policies that satisfy their actually anti-meritocratic racial preferences by exaggerating the evidentiary value of race, actively manipulating people through this cognitive bias. Part of this admitted paranoia is from extreme right-wingers explicitly saying that this is a deliberate strategy. Part of it is also since I just don't see how actually believing what the quoted comment claims can be consistent with opposition to skilled immigration---for example, Steve Bannon's stated policy preferences, which would be extremely bad for making sure the most competent people get the job:
Again, I was under the impression that Bannon is a pretty well-thought of figure here. Even worse, all attempts of mine of trying to ask here for non-racial reasons to oppose skilled immigration (to this Steve-Bannon extent) that aren't economic nonsense have been unpleasant failures.
On the left, we have DEI excesses and "extreme" affirmative action---i.e. going beyond just attempting to correct for bias that undervalues the qualifications of people in marginalized groups to make sure that institutions actually choose the most qualified candidates. However, I think this sort of extreme DEI or extreme affirmative action is very unpopular and gets shut down whenever it affects actual policy too much---like even in California affirmative action loses in elections.
On the right, you have Bannon/Miller-style drastic reductions in skilled immigration (I'll link this Cato article again). These do not get nearly as much pushback---Stephen Miller is still going to be one of the main influences on immigration policy if Trump wins in 2024. Furthermore, the right in the US is extremely deferential to inherited wealth. For example, cutting estate taxes seems to be one of the most important priorities of the republican party and I'm pretty sure if they were offered a chance to cut the top income tax bracket at the cost of raising estate taxes equivalently, they wouldn't take it.
I think both matter. If you saw a man at night walking with a suit and briefcase, you'd be less concerned about him, regardless of race, I image. But I could see myself being affected by race in some settings a little.
I guess I don't really have a good sense of how much people's positions are insincere.
Personally, I'm way more open to immigration than most on this board. So I suppose, per you, I'm consistent, though others are not.
But some possible non-racial reasons for preferring less immigration might be:
Now, I'm not sure how much those align with people's motivations, but I think the first three, at least, play a factor often. I think it's also coherent to be meritocratic within a country, but view foreign relations sufficiently attached to one's national identity that one dislikes cross-border meritocracy. I'll note in particular that opposition to immigration isn't always racial; when hispanics care about border security (I know some who do) it's not due to hating other hispanics or something.
I personally found keyhole solutions a pretty compelling consideration, even if it would be hard to pass politically, especially in a way that isn't going to immediately slippery-slope itself. Maybe I should write up a post on that sometime; that might draw some downvotes, but whatever.
Thanks for the Cato article (even though the headline is slightly misleading), that was informative.
I think you're drastically underestimating how common this extreme DEI is. In use at all colleges, well, at least before the supreme court decision a year or two ago, and probably still, slightly more surreptitiously, afterward. Legally required for all government contractors (a quarter of the economy). Offering things like scholarships restricted to minorities is routine, and, I believe, illegal. Yes, it is quite unpopular among the electorate, but it is popular among those who set policy. Given who governs in this country, I think the kind of affirmative action you describe is basically never necessary.
I guess I haven't personally seen any opposition to estate taxes in particular, rather than being generically anti-tax.
I agree with you that support of restricting immigration as a whole isn't incompatible with valuing meritocracy. While I definitely support increasing all immigration, this depends on lets just say many much less certain moral and factual beliefs---it's not really something I'm prepared to defend on a forum like this.
My specific claim here is that as far as I can tell, opposition to specifically legal, skilled immigration is blatantly incompatible with valuing meritocracy to the point where I think people claiming to hold these contradictory beliefs either haven't thought very carefully or are being disingenuous---usually making bad-faith arguments in support of policies motivated by either hidden anti-meritocratic racialist values or anti-meritocratic selfishness to protect themselves from competition at the cost of the rest of the country. I don't think any of the 4 reasons you gave contradict this, right? 1 is the closest, but I think that unless your definition of "American culture" includes most people looking white (in which case you're back in the racist camp), it's pretty easy to include ability to assimilate in your definition of skilled.
I also consider opposition to cross-border meritocracy just as bad as opposition to within-country meritocracy. The main benefit of meritocracy is to make sure that the most competent possible people are doing important jobs and both versions get in the way of this. I guess Bannon is basically admitting to this justification so at least he's not being disingenuous. There are of course lots of reasons to not like meritocracy---someone recently pointed out to me idea of having non-meritocratic "reserves" to be super careful about avoiding homogenization and keeping ineffable, hard-to-measure values from being optimized do death. However, engines of progress like Boston, NYC, or SF should not be these reserves.
This is why I feel that Bannon/Miller-style anti-skilled immigration beliefs being represented at the highest levels of the federal government is much more of a threat to meritocracy than DEI. I do however, have to address the other side of the comparison---I've spent a lot of time at universities in extremely liberal parts of the country and even the most extreme DEI people I ran across were very purely motivated by factual claims that DEI policies would lead to more meritocracy instead of less by counterbalancing systemic discrimination. In particular, they could be convinced away from many damaging policies---anti-standardized testing, anti-math acceleration, "gentrification" justifications for NIMBY, elite-college "holistic" affirmative action, etc.---by arguing these factual claims. Despite stereotypes of "woke" closed-mindedness, these discussions were also far more pleasant and polite than anything here that wasn't buried deep in reply chains (though caveat, my time was all in math departments, and many people here have pointed out that the situation may not be so rosy in other situations).
Checking for yourself how much a threat something is seems like much stronger evidence than relying on dueling cherry-picked media reporting from both sides. The comparison between discussions in my departments and posting here made the "which is worse" judgement feel very clear.
I suppose you are correct that opposition to immigration is incompatible with meritocracy, if meritocracy is understood as an absolute, rather than as a general value that can be overcome when there are other interests at play. (Which, to be fair, it is often understood as exclusive.) That is, people can want things to be more meritocratic generally speaking, without being committed to meritocracy in every respect.
I don't think 1 needs to be racial. Say you're concerned about socialism, or some other political matter, for example. Having immigrants who have similar values to you will help with that, and the opposite will harm that. (Though, maybe that isn't the best example at the moment given just how bad economic knowledge is, at least online.) But sure, if you include that as part of your definition of skilled, that's includes it, but is an unusual way to do so.
There are also possible non-meritocratic non-racial values, like if people care about the American people (the current set of people) more than foreigners.
I'll reiterate that I think I mostly agree with you, most of the above is a "people could believe…"
Yeah, I would expect math departments to be better in that regard.
I don't think those are a good comparison. You are taking a set of people selected mainly along an axis that is not political (people in math departments, maybe also other life acquaintances), and comparing them to people selected mainly along an axis that is political (willingness to engage on a forum that permits and contains fairly right-wing political opinions.) If those had the same concentration of extreme views, it would be concerning.
Perhaps you are saying that the people holding one set of ideas are worse than the other. Sure, fair enough, though I'd perhaps argue that you should compare here to some portions of reddit, rather than your IRL acquaintances. But in terms of real world impact, I think it should be indisputable that racism on the left currently has a far greater impact than racism on the right.
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You admitted of discriminating against European Americans to such an extent, that even you noticed a decline in quality of students. You have 0 moral leg to stand on to condemn mere desire for discrimination.
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First of all, I think you are mistaking "A handful of people with very strongly held and loudly and frequently voiced views" with "consensus opinion." I do not agree that the consensus view of the Motte is white nationalism and extreme nativism, and I don't think even the average white nationalist would agree with you that they'd rather have a white doctor than a more competent non-white doctor. Far be for me to speak for wignats, but one of the few remaining valuable aspects of this place is actually understanding how people whose views I despise really think, rather than assuming a mustache-twirling caricature of how they think.
Like, this is what I've been trying to do from my first post on this forum 4 years ago. It's worked pretty well with some topics.
However, specifically on the topic of skilled immigration or racialism vs. meritocracy, I never seem to get any replies that don't confirm the mustache-twirling caricature---and this was actually not at all what I expected to happen! Furthermore, the mustache twirlers have been generally been extremely unpleasant to interact with---even right now, I'm getting replies with bizarre false claims and misquotes. The mustache twirlers also have very long history of making unmoderated personal attacks (see especially the linked and endorsed reddit post there).
I would be very happy to be proven wrong here---for example, do you have examples of anti-skilled immigration posts that aren't the caricature of "we want to do this because it's important to us that the US stays more white"?
I'm not one of those people who saves links of past posts to refer to in the future, but the topic of skilled immigration has come up before, and there have been people who are against it on the basis that it lowers the market value of skilled labor for citizens. Agree with this or not, it is not just about "keeping America more white."
Sorry, I should have taken more time with the reply and qualified what I was asking for more---specifically, an argument that is plausible enough to be the true reason for support for a significant number of people in this forum. Also it's not always just whiteness---many times it's just a preference for people with a deep ancestry in the country (which is just as bad for meritocracy!)
The competition argument is not plausible. It's naked selfishness asking that the rest of the country sacrifice to protect a well-off class from competition, not to mention very anti-meritocratic. Also, since the competition relevant to posters here is likely to be for tech jobs, it's almost certainly not even true given how many tech founders are immigrants. Probably Sergey Brin and Jensen Huang by themselves more than make up for any wage pressure in tech from skilled immigration.
If this is your standard for meritocracy, then approximately 0 countries in the entire history of the world have been meritocratic and approximately 0 ever will be.
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Do a from:user search for the word. He has a... Peculiar definition of it and uses it in every single post. It's how I instantly recognized he was this guy from reddit without remembering the 6d4 thing.
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No reason to burn this bridge. I enjoy the new freer X as well, but the ground has not even settled yet. That is a land ruled by a mad an capricious man that any day may change his stance and wipe us from existence. That and, while I understand why the current obsessives might sour your experience, there is still magic here. I think before this election is done we'll need to rely on it again.
There is every reason to burn this bridge. I'm not interested in politely ignoring the angry drunk ranting on the edges of my conversation every time I go to the local pub to chat with my friends. There are plenty of good people here, but at this point, most have either built accompanying presences elsewhere or can do so, and I think they should. I'm sure there is still magic here for others, but others don't have the angry drunk ranting on the edges of every conversation they have in the pub, and I have enough places without that that I no longer need to cling to what I once had here.
Well, if things change I'd welcome you back.
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I would encourage you to stay, but it’s your choice.
I've already been gone except to cross-post my articles here, more or less. I miss our conversations, but I don't miss them enough to have them in front of the loud, bitter minority here. Yassine and everyone before him had the right idea; on the scale of things, I've been hanging on much longer than most. It's time to amputate the limb.
You really think Twitter is better for friendly, long form discussion? People’s individual substack comment sections? Where else is there? I can’t really find anywhere to go.
I really do. Substack comment sections, Twitter with the character limit removed, starting a Substack and having Substack post to Substack post conversations like the guys around Walt Right have been doing, Discord, theschism.
I know Twitter has a bad reputation here but the rationalist-adjacent subculture there is massively healthier than the local one, and even though longposters are a bit of an invasive species, half a dozen high-quality motteposters with large accounts at least are keeping the longform spirit alive there. Happy to show the ropes to anyone who wants to dip their toes in over there.
I don't think any of them have consistently higher-quality + higher-output conversations than the Motte at its peak, but it has not been at its peak for a very, very long time. These days, those are the spaces in which I have my longform conversations, and Twitter in specific is where the mandate of heaven has landed.
Substack always feels a bit elitist to me; far more so than here. Which, I suppose, isn't really a problem when you're one of the elites.
Twitter does seem like it could be good for some purposes, but I don't need the additional way to lose that much more time out of my life at this point in time. (Same reason I've never bothered interacting with theschism—I can probably exercise more self-control if I don't have a reddit account.) Maybe I'll take you up on your show-the-ropes offer someday.
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Yeah, I'm a noob of a few years here and I enjoyed the article on Gerard (not least because it was well-written and must have taken ages to compile) but when you start talking about the "mandate of heaven" I really think you might be taking things over-seriously.
The Motte has always had plenty of assholes. Sometimes they go away, sometimes they blow themselves up with their own egregious assholery. But there are many people worth reading and interacting with here, as well.
It’s tongue in cheek with a hint of seriousness. There were always better and worse discussion spots, interesting people will always gravitate towards some or others of them, and it’s worth noting where things are happening when. Other places are just a lot more exciting than here these days.
You’re right that there are many worth reading and interacting with here, but to be frank, there is precisely one place online where I have to play nice with people as unpleasant as the worst people here. Rdrama creates a more functional environment around this stuff, for heaven’s sake. Twitter creates a more functional environment around it.
These days, I have more reasonable and good people to interact with than I know what to do with. The ones here mean more to me than most places, because I’ve been around here a long while, but many of my favorite people have moved on, many driven off by the same malcontents who now try to enforce twisted purity tests here, and there is nowhere else among my regular haunts online that feels as dysfunctional and unfun as here. It’s very simply not worth it to put up with them any more, and this forum is no longer the only place I can fill the need that caused me to post here.
See you on the other side.
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Yeah this has the flavor of "ox goring is good, but now that my ox is gored I feel uncomfortable." That's normal. And feels shitty. But it happens, and then you get through it and keep going.
You don't flee. Fleeing makes the critics right.
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You just spent weeks digging through old grievances dating back a decade, and then made it a top-level post about it. On multiple websites, even.
Yes, I realize that you feel yours are important and valid and other peoples are beneath acknowledgement, but this is part of why you are getting pushback from people with longer memories of your past conduct.
How can it be a glorious diaspora if you keep coming back after denouncing it?
This isn't your first flounce. You came back after establishing the Schism, you came back after Liberals of TikTok, you came back after the site switch, and probably several more breaks I'm not recalling offhand. Between the recruitment attempts and the self-promotion efforts but also just to discuss emerging and contemporary news, you never stay away for terribly long. In much the same one that one is not stuck in traffic, but a part of the traffic, you are (still) a Mottizan.
You may leave for awhile, and all the longer for it being called out on it, but you'll return as you have multiple times before.
Until you come back again, and not just for the last words tonight or tomorrow.
I think it's misleading to call it "old grievances dating back a decade" when it's ongoing behavior that began a decade ago.
Just as it's misleading to dismiss criticisms Tracing's conduct during and since the LibOfTikTok affair as old grudge, given that a part of the bad behavior was the non-repentance, which is itself ongoing behavior.
This is a critique of argument structure, specifically why the defense of Tracing has to retreat from a motte-offense of categories of unacceptable behavior (the categories of bad behavior which is the subject of condemnation in the slam-pieces) to a bailey-defense of degrees and relativism (ongoing behavior is not a big deal because the other party is so much worse). The counter to a relativism-motte retreat is to reject the redefinition of standards and re-emphasize the original standards being used in the bailey-argument, which was itself categorical.
'My opponent is a [category = bad]' is not enough of an argument when one is also part of [category], and retreating later to 'My opponent is a [category=me=bad, but them > me]' after making the first argument is just a retreat to special pleading as to why the initial categorical argument isn't important after all. Similarly, defenses on a category level aren't really defenses if the category is also shared.
This is relevant to not only rhetorical arguments intended to convince people to feel something (such as that the target of a piece deserves opposition/resistance), but also to contemporary culture war politics. It's a significant factor as to why years of attempts to condemn Donald Trump on categorical accusations fall flats- Donald Trump is a serial liar/exaggerator, but so are his presidential opponents, and retreats to relativism and re-definition after the fact undercut the credibility of the opening. We've seen this in things like MeToo, when the movement was broadly signal-boosted by the Democratic Party when it was starting, but then not-so-slowly dropped when it became clear the standards were goring Democratic icons as much or more than the Republicans. And for the Republicans, this was a common failure state of those Republican politicians who would categorically condemn same-sex relationships, before they were found to be having a same-sex side-piece. It didn't matter whether they were having less gay sex than their political opponents- it mattered that, having made a categorical moral condemnation, they were doing it at all.
There are absolutely ways to condemn vices one also shares, but from a structural argument perspective, part of that requires not adopting overly-broad categorical moral condemnations (or defenses). You can do more tailored categories that build-in exonerating contexts (killing is bad, unless in self-defense), or start from a position of relativity (I'm bad, but this is worse), or even as position of human failure versus intent (I struggle and fail, but they don't even try). You can even strip the moral condemnation from the argument, so that more neutral framings let an audience come to a conclusion on their own rather than lead them to it by the nose via early and often use of pejoratives.
Okay, I'm not 100% sure what you're saying here, but none of it seems to have anything to do with what I said on the object level.
So...? That's not a counterargument. Misleading comments or misleading articles don't justify misleading responses here. An ongoing problem is not an old grievance.
And Tracingwoodgrains's continual denial that they did anything morally or ethically wrong with the LibsOnTikTok is an ongoing problem is an ongoing problem, and one they and their defenders have tried to dismiss on the accusation that the issue is nothing more than an old grievance others are raising.
The point isn't that the subject of the slam piece is not an ongoing problem- the point is that it's not the only ongoing problem. Both actions can be wrong, and both can be ongoing, and both can have dated back years, but only one side has trying to dismiss criticism on the grounds of 'old grievance.'
This is special pleading. 'Old grievance' applies to both equally whether that's equally well or equally badly, and so either an ongoing problem cannot be dismissed as merely an old-grievance (which seems to be your perspective), in which case Tracing's defense argument is undercut, or ongoing problems can be dismissed on grounds of old-grievance, in which case Tracing's post can be dismissed on the same grounds.
So you agree that your comment is misleading...? Like, I'm not talking about Tracing here. I don't know why you are.
Either it is an old grievance or it is an ongoing problem. Whatever Tracing wrote has no impact on this.
Are you unfamiliar with the rhetorical technique of demonstrating the flaws in another's argument by using it against them?
Because you are replying to a post that was about Tracing, about an argument Tracing used, which was using Tracing's argument against them to demonstrate why Tracing's argument was a flawed.
If you are not talking about Tracing here, you are not talking about the topic.
What Trace wrote has a direct impact on this, because the line was specifically pulled from Tracing's own defense.
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Though he is getting pushback on something completely unrelated to the current post, purely because people are still holding grudges. I mean, this isn't the first time Trace has posted something since the whole LoTT affair, and while people sometimes bring it up (as people do - a lot of people here hold grudges against a lot of other posters), most people don't feel a need to snigger "Hey, what about that time you pranked LibsOfTikTok?" every time he posts.
@HRSCCK (an obvious alt spun up for such shit-stirring) started this with an unnecessary dig. When even @gattsuru tells you you're being petty, that's something.
Why do you believe Woodgrains pushback is based on things completely unrelated to the current post?
Tracingwoodgrains condemnations of Gerard include both explicit and implicit themes that Gerard is malicious, deceptive, dishonest, and taking exceptional effort in order to negatively shape others perceptions of his political opponents. The evidence of this goes back years, more than a decade ago. This is presented as to be contemptable, especially as he is unrepentant, a critic of this community, and doing this in obvious self-interest (in this case, ideological).
Tracingwoodgrain's LibsOfTikTok hoax was also malicious, deceptive, dishonest, and took exceptional effort in order to negatively shape others perceptions of his political opponent. The evidence of this goes back years, not even half a decade ago. Tracingwoodgrains is also unrepentent, a critic of this community, and doing this in obvious self-interest (in this case, self-publicity).
There is the surface-level subject of a post, and the meta-level subject of what a poster likes to talk about or return to. Woodgrain's thesis lacks sting or sincerity when its themes are things he is likewise guilty of (of kind if not degree), and noting this when he attempts to assert a moral high ground is not merely a matter of grudges, but of topling the meta-positioning of the argument.
And that pushback in turn revealed relevant context via the response- Tracing went from pejoratively opening his characterization with 'longtime malicious critic of this community' to a blistering 'screw you' burnout rant and posts about how bad this community had been for a long time. This is relevant information for the current post. It reveals not only information about the viewpoint biases of the author (by reminding otherwise-ignorant readers of narrator similarities with the subject of condemnation), but it revealed previously hidden information (the private views the writer has of his audience).
Bluntly, because who, whom? Trace made a fool of someone his detractors approve of because she mocks people they hate. And while I don't approve of what he did (and I said so at the time), let's be real here - pranking a noted Internet bombthrower whose entire schtick is nutpicking people on TikTok to point and laugh at (and try to get fired) is not the same as what David Gerard is accused of doing over the course of years. You act like this was some great moral failing instead of an ill-considered Opie & Anthony-level stunt.
As for being a critic of this community, yeah, and we get criticized from the opposite direction by the past denizens of that other great abandoned wasteland of Motte expats, CWR. Some of whom crawled back here and continue to lob the same whining complaints. This is not the first time Trace has criticized this community and talked about his complicated relationship with it, but I don't think what he's said is at all comparable to David Gerard's active hostility and malice.
I agree with you that Trace should stop flouncing, and grow a thicker skin.
You seem to be conflating my views on Woodgrains (which you almost certainly don't know) with the views of others (some of whom you certainly aren't accurately reflecting).
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Maybe to you. But to others it's relevant when someone writes a magnum opus about the immorality of the deception of a certain person, when they have also proudly engaged in deception.
If there is a fair criticism in there somewhere along the lines of "Who are you to be criticizing David Gerard when you do the same thing?" I haven't really seen it. All I am seeing it "Oh, nice story, by the way, fuck you for that time you pranked Libs of TikTok." I mean, speaking of who?whom?, you'd gushing all over this story except that you apparently hate Trace more than you hate David Gerard.
Then you must be trying not to. I don't know how it could be stated more clearly. It wasn't exactly my opener, but I got to it quickly.
Emphasis on fair. I see the attempts at equivalences. I don't find them convincing. He's certainly being accused of hypocrisy, but nothing he's done is akin to what David Gerard is accused of doing.
Well, luckily it's for each of us to determine fairness. And frankly, hiding behind "Hahah, I said nobody fairly compared Tracing to David" is some pretty pedantic Jiu Jitsu to pretend the things that were clearly and concisely expressed were not. It's a way of laundering you disagreement into a record of fact about what was or wasn't said.
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