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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28003 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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Harris released an "Opportunity Agenda for Black Men." Highlights include:

"(1) Providing 1 million loans that are fully forgivable to Black entrepreneurs and others to start a business.

(2) Championing education, training, and mentorship programs that help Black men get good-paying jobs in high-demand industries and lead their communities, including pathways to become teachers.

(3) Supporting a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and other digital assets so Black men who invest in and own these assets are protected.

(4) Launching a National Health Equity Initiative focused on Black Men that addresses sickle cell disease, diabetes, mental health, prostate cancer, and other health challenges that disproportionately impact them.

(5) Legalizing recreational marijuana and creating opportunities for Black Americans to succeed in this new industry."

There feels like no kind of focus-grouping on what Black men actually would like to see. It also feels like it was released without any kind of cost-benefit analysis on how literally any other group would respond to these proposals, which seem blatantly terrible even if unfeasible. We already tried (1) with the PPP, which went kind of off the rails. None of this would survive strict scrutiny before the courts, and it's a bad look to the majority of voters. What was the perceived benefit in releasing this? How did this get approved?

Wrong thread? We've got a new week.

It's kinda a grab-bag of weird. One is either so broad as to be meaningless (if 'others' includes every small business) or going to get caught up in the courts for a years at best, two is almost a good idea until it hits 'become teachers' and then it's a joke, three even the crypto people aren't that gullible, four has been standing policy for decades, and five is... uh, gonna be funny when Trump tries it and is called a racist for it?

Not the only recent bizarrely incompetent result from Dem-leaning campaigns recently. Most of the recent social media focus has been on a particularly embarrassing set that could have just been some wacky enthusiast (or outright troll, it's so bad) generally unrelated to the campaigns, but see Walz trying to emasculate himself with a Beretta on a pheasant hunting trip, President Obama's "speaking to men directly"' , and Witmer's... uh, charitably, porn reference for the CHIPs Act (and at least it doesn't involve a milk jug)?

It's be convenient if this was a result of the complete exclusion of politically moderate Red Tribers (but I can readily point to heavily Dem-favouring trans furries who consider sharing Snap-Ons past a red line!) or the last minute candidate swap leaving a lot of conventional expertise out in the cold (but a lot of people were bending over backwards for Biden) or enough Connected people pissed (both Israel/Palestine, and tech capital gains fears), but I'm not that optimistic. Probably just downstream of a particularly empty campaign, or just random noise swinging together.

SpaceX just caught the booster of the Starship rocket, launching a new age of man made space exploration.

Despite this getting relatively little news in the mainstream media, I am convinced this development marks the beginning of an entire paradigm of space. The cost of kg to orbit should now go down about an order of magnitude within the next decade or two.

This win has massive implications for the culture war, especially given that Elon Musk has recently flipped sides to support the right. Degrowth and environmental arguments will not be able to hold against the sheer awesomeness and vibrancy of space travel, I believe.

We'll have to see if the FAA or other government agencies move to block Elon from continuing this work. If Kamala gets elected, I worry her administration will attack him and his companies even more aggressively. This successful launch, more than anything else in this election cycle, is making me consider vote for Trump.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with my assessment?

NOTE: I'm going to repost this tomorrow. If I forget, somebody pls steal it and repost for me.

It's hard to say. I was skeptical that falcon rockets would work, but they did, and now Space-X is totally dominating the market for unmanned satellites. Starship could potentially increase that, but how far can it go? At a certain point, just don't see the use case in being able to lift vast chunks of mass into orbit with current technology. Maybe increase the growth of Starlink, but they're already doing that.

I'm deeply skeptical that they'll ever go to mars, at least not for more than just sending a few rovers. I'm... concerned that the real use case for this is military, particularly something like the rods from god which are dangerously close to being a tactical nuke.

You don't need to be able to catch boosters, or anything reusable at all, to do rods from god. As for the yield, it appears the concept is an 11,000 kg rod hitting at 10x the speed of sound, which releases about 31 tons TNT, considerably smaller than a typical tac nuke at a few kilotons. No radiation either. It's about 5 times more powerful than the MOAB daisy-cutter, but it's ground-penetrating rather than an airburst, so different uses.

(Reusability doesn't bring down cost much for "rods from god" because the reason they're expensive is that the payload is heavy, not because you're wasting a rocket every time you launch them)

You need to think about this more deeply, not just reduce it to a single number like a highschool physics problem.

Why are small tactical nukes banned by treaty, while large strategic nukes are allowed? Why is a 1kT nuke more dangerous than a megaton? Because the smaller ones would get used. At least with the larger ones, we have a chance at achieving a balance of terror and never using them. But it's a dangerous, slippery slope to start messing around with the bottom edge of that scale. And like you mentioned "ground-penetrating rather than an airburst" so it's a lot more dangerous than a nuke of the same yield would be.

Think about this from the Russian perspective.

"Marshall, we have a big problem."

"What is it, comrade?"

"Radar shows a huge incoming wave of American missiles coming from outer space! They'll arrive in 10 minutes!"

"What!? Are they nuking us?"

"There's no way to tell! It looks like ICBMs! But they Americans say it's just a conventional weapon."

"Where are they headed?"

"It appears to be targeting all of our underground missile silos."

"Fuck. That's a first strike. ... How long do we have remaining?"

"Five minutes."

"fuck fuck fuck. um. launch."

Why are small tactical nukes banned by treaty, while large strategic nukes are allowed?

Tactical nukes are not banned by treaty.

There is plenty of use for space with current technology. A moon base is already in the works for NASA.

The more infrastructure we get in space, the cheaper it gets. The economics are fully viable.

We'll have to see if the FAA or other government agencies move to block Elon from continuing this work. If Kamala gets elected, I worry her administration will attack him and his companies even more aggressively. This successful launch, more than anything else in this election cycle, is making me consider vote for Trump.

Reminder that the only reason they are going after Elon is “mean tweets”

That’s it. That’s the whole crime they’re upset about

They're upset at Elon because they think he doesn't know his place. Aerospace and Car Manufacturing are two big powerful industries in the US. Don't forget about the recent Boeing whistleblower "suicides" where the FBI just shrugged.

He's embarrassed a lot of powerful people and they are trying to teach him to be properly deferential to his betters.

I mean, that's technically true, but somewhat misleading; it's less that he's making "mean tweets" himself and more that he abolished Twitter's censorship bureau to allow other people to make "mean tweets".

That’s the same thing in my eyes

Equivocating autocratic control over one of the most potent mass-media apparatuses ever creating with "mean tweets" is disingenuous and you know it. I won't pretend leftists care for any high-minded free-speech related reasons, but frankly it's perfectly reasonable to fear and despite anyone with the kind of power elon musk has regardless of their ideology.

it's perfectly reasonable to fear and despite...

Sure, then you treat people you fear and despise with respect, impartiality, and professionalism when you are representing the government. I'm not judging the officials for thoughtcrime here.

Sure, then you treat people you fear and despise with respect, impartiality, and professionalism

What actual evidence do you have of a government official doing otherwise to elon musk? What actual evidence do you have that they did so because of "mean tweets." What actual evidence do you have that their behavior is either common to the point of ubiquity or present at the highest levels of government? (I don't care what some random state senator or city councilmember said unless there are a lot of likeminded people saying the same thing.)

And-- why do you think elon musk is somehow especially and irrationally persecuted?

Commissioner Brendan Carr of the FCC provided a good writeup here (p14 of the "Order on Review", or the "Carr Statement") of why he believes that his committee's decision was driven by anti-Musk sentiment. (I also recommend reading the Simington statement: "...the majority today lays bare just how thoroughly and lawlessly arbitrary [this decision] was.").

Key quotes:

President Biden stood at a podium adorned with the official seal of the President of the United States, and expressed his view that Elon Musk “is worth being looked at.”

...

Two months ago, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote that “the volume of government investigations into his businesses makes us wonder if the Biden Administration is targeting him for regulatory harassment.”

...

Indeed, the Commission’s decision today...cannot be explained by any objective application of law, facts, or policy.

Here is a story of the White House denouncing him after he "endorsed a post on X".

And-- why do you think elon musk is somehow especially and irrationally persecuted?

I don't think either of those things. It's bog-standard waging the culture war, which is instrumentally rational for the perpetrators.

I think it's bad.

Thank you for these informative and interesting links. I'd wager that the starlink decision specifically has more to do with elon musk's behavior re: threatening to cut service to ukraine (and other related ukranian-russian war shenanigans) but will otherwise concede the point.

I found a much clearer example this morning: California officials cite Elon Musk’s politics in rejecting SpaceX launches (via here):

The California Coastal Commission on Thursday rejected the Air Force’s plan to give SpaceX permission to launch up to 50 rockets a year from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County.

“Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet,” Commissioner Gretchen Newsom said at the meeting in San Diego.

I'm not saying personal antipathy didn't play a role, but that same news article provides a list of other arguments. "Mean tweets" is just the attention-grabbing headline-- the meat of the dispute is a bog-standard environmental/bureaucratic power struggle.

“I do believe that the Space Force has failed to establish that SpaceX is a part of the federal government, part of our defense,” said Commissioner Dayna Bochco.

Things came to a head in August when commissioners unloaded on DOD for resisting their recommendations for reducing the impacts of the launches — which disturb wildlife like threatened snowy plovers as well as people, who often have to evacuate nearby Jalama Beach.

Commissioner Justin Cummings voted to approve the plan but said he was still uncomfortable about a lack of data on the effects of launches and that he shared concerns about SpaceX’s classification as a military contractor.

No one hated Jack Dorsey or Zuckerberg the same way they hate Elon. No one’s sued him or called for his arrest. Sorry, no, it’s the fact the tweets are too “mean” now. Our elites simply cannot abide it.

Sorry, no, it’s the fact the tweets are too “mean” now. Our elites simply cannot abide it.

This is an uncharitable strawman. Actually, it's two uncharitable strawmen. First, of the people who hate Elon musk, you're defining the Elites as only tthe people who hate him because of stuff he's done on twitter. Secondly, you're asserting that they are most motivated by-- what-- a purely emotional reaction to the content he propagates? I'm honestly having trouble not strawmanning your argument because you refuse to clearly state what you think these people are complaining about and why it's bad. You're using the negative connotations of "scare quotes" to avoid actually having to state your claim.

And anyways-- people absolutely hated and continue to hate Zuckerberg. And he's definitely been the subject of a lot of lawsuits. The difference in the quantity of hate is merely proportional to,

  • The greater ideological difference between Elon and his userbase vs. Zuck and his userbase
  • The more visible and proactive measures Elon has taken to promote his ideology (see: being not only a CEO of twitter, but also a very prominent right-wing influencer on it)

So it's not mean tweets, it's just owning Twitter/X at all?

Basically. Hating powerful people that promote an ideology you don't like is common (and rational) cross-culturally. See also: republicans hating the soros brothers, reddit right-wingers hating Ellen Pao, everyone hating on Zuckerburg at various points for various reasons, etc.

Despite not really being a fan, Elon's relationship with the government (and perhaps more of his life generally) seems to me oddly similar to what I know of late-in-life Howard Hughes. He came across to the public as the eccentric-turned-crazy with riches from early business ventures, but my understanding is that the craziness became part of the public image, which made the manganese nodule mining cover story for Project Azorian all the more effective. I could imagine some of Elon's projects being cover stories (probably not recovering sunken Soviet submarines, though) or generally in the direction of creating things the government wants (high-bandwidth, difficult to deny satellite networking?) without tying themselves to it up front.

But it isn't a perfect comparison: Elon isn't much of a recluse. I'd be curious if anyone old enough to recall Hughes being in the news has thoughts on the comparison.

The US has been building up it's space warfare capabilities significantly for decades, though most of it is heavily classified. There's an entire branch of the US military devoted to space warfare. SpaceX takes military contracts for satellite launches and who knows what else; they effectively are the non-missile orbital launch capacity of the US government.

SpaceX is effectively the non-missile orbital launch capacity of most governments in the world, with something like 85% of all upmass movement in 2023. It's not that the Americans bought all that mass lift, as much as it is that other countries spend buy the space for their needs rather than very expensive rocket programs themselves.

If they manage to grapple the booster consistently, then we can talk about “inaugurating a new era of space”. But one lucky catch does not an industry renaissance create. And tbh I’m not even convinced that catching the booster is actually that reusable. Sure, it LOOKS more reusable than a smouldering crater on the landing pad or a rusting wreck on the seabed, but is it really? Given how anal the FAA is about testing each sprocket and screw a trillion times, I’m dubious as to whether the inevitable damage caused by just the Working As Designed rocketry stuff of having 15 tonnes of liquid methane lit on fire inside it will allow (physically or legally) a booster to consistently fly for a second time.

I really want my consumer moon vacations, but I’ve been burned so many times before by spess hype that I’m kind of a doomer at this point.

SpaceX already routinely lands and relaunches rockets. The difference is that this one is much larger. SpaceX has a ton of experience with this.

I think it's wrong to call that a "lucky" catch, but at the same time - so where is the new era of space exploration? Wasn't Falcon 9 already supposed be rapidly reusable? You're not worried that they haven't bothered putting even dummy cargo on the upper stage? Or the fact that they were supposed to be half way to the moon by now?

How much did it cost to put 1 ton of cargo in orbit in 2005 and how much does it cost now?

I don't know how to compare these, when the books for one are public, and for the other are not.

And if it's so much cheaper, where is the new era of space exploration? Weren't we supposed to be well on our way back to the Moon by now? Do you think we'll get there any time soon?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-launched-into-outer-space

It seems you are perhaps some combination of uninformed and unreasonably impatient.

Artemis 3 is due to put people back on the moon next year scratch that, it's a shit show, next couple years.

next year scratch that, it's a shit show, next couple years.

I appreciated the laugh, thank you.

unreasonably impatient.

Maybe, but I'm not the one that set the deadlines. You said yourself, we were scheduled for next year to go to the moon, and I won't even mention Elon's private Mars ambitions.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-launched-into-outer-space

Admittedly that's a tough number for me to debate. I will notice that this is the number of launches, and not their cost, but I am aware of the implication that such a number would not be sustainable if the costs weren't appropriately low. That said, I would one day like to see an independently audited cost breakdown of these launches, because I do actually think what we're seeing is unsustainable, at least as far as the public-facing part of the company goes. For all I know SpaceX is a front for launching Black-Ops satellites without raising too much suspicion, and is appropriately awash with money.

You are seeing what the early part of an era of exploration or expansion looks like.

Commercially-driven exploration starts by trying to focus on the most profitable quickest returns, which are often closer, to further expand the new technology. When the Europeans began to build ships capable of traversing the world, they did not, in fact, immediately use most of those ships to traverse the world- they used them primarily for more profitable ventures closer to home. However, it was the capacity to go further which enabled the outlier minority to do the things that got famous.

Technological era innovations have similar examples. Yes, the telegraph enabled long-distance communications... but most investments were within or between cities already relatively close together. Yes, electrification has massive implications for making rural regions more efficient and profitable, but most electrical wiring started and focused in the cities. Yes, the American automobile revolutionized how people viewed distance and the ability to move across state and even continental scale, but things like the Interstate System trailed far behind. It didn't make the technologies less revolutionary.

What is currently going on with SpaceX and the reusable rocket technologies is that it is still scaling to meet the latent demand for low-earth investments that were previously priced out of application. There is still considerable profit, and market share, to be made, and currently SpaceX is about the only one making it. SpaceX is in turn using those profits to both expand capacity and develop new capabilities. The Falcon series is what prototyped the technologies for the Falcon Heavy, and the Falcon Heavy for the Starship.

Starship, in turn, is the new emerging and still experimental technology combination that- if it can be made to work, which yesterday was a significant step towards- will unlock a significant amount of lift capacity potential for beyond LEO activities.

The lift capacity gate is what limits what you probably think of as exploration, because the ability to lift fuel and resources is what increases range into deeper space. If you want deep-space transit, you want to lift material into space, where it is cheaper / easier / more technologically feasible to package it up and start pushing from a space gathering point than to lift all pieces at once from earth. That means cost-efficiency of lifting stuff, not just the capacity of stuff you can lift.

For example, the Saturn 5 rocket of the Apollo program to the moon had a LEO lift capacity of 118 tons, and about $5.5k per kg. The Starship is expected to have a LEO lift capacity of 100-150 tons, with a forecasted cost of around $1.6k per kg... possibly falling to $0.15kg ($150/kg) over time due to to reusability reduce the cost per flight as you don't have to keep re-making the whole thing.

Not only is Starship offering capacity on par or better than some of the heaviest lift rockets in history, but with a cost profile that is -70%of the Saturn 5 on the near-term side to -98% less expensive per launch over time, while offering more launches because the components can be reused rather than having to be built per launch. If you built 5 saturn-5 rockets a year, you could only have 5 saturn-5 missions a year to move stuff into space. If you build 5 Spaceships a year, you can have 5 + [Sum of all still-mission capable rockets from all previous years] missions a year, which is to say a heck of a lot more missions over time.

More missions means more opportunities to get stuff into space, including eventually deeper range mission preparation material.

To bring this all back to the age of exploration comparison- imagine if Caravels had the characteristic of having to be sunk the first time they landed on any foreign shore. Now imagine what exploration looks like if Caravels can land, restock, and go out again. This is the technological implication difference of SpaceX's reusable rocket technology.

In turn, the first caravels were in the 13th century. Magellan wouldn't circumnavigate the world until the 1500s. The carracks that Columbus used to reach the Americas were developed more than a century prior.

So when you ask-

Do you think we'll get there any time soon?

Then given that we are literally on the 5th test flight ever of a new degree of capability, historically speaking 50 years from now would be very soon, let alone 15 or 5.

You are seeing what the early part of an era of exploration or expansion looks like.

(...)

Then given that we are literally on the 5th test flight ever of a new degree of capability, historically speaking 50 years from now would be very soon, let alone 15 or 5.

That's all fine, but shouldn't we then leave declaring new eras of exploration to historians? With everything you've written, it sounds like something that won't become apparent for quite a while.

For example, the Saturn 5 rocket of the Apollo program to the moon had a LEO lift capacity of 118 tons, and about $5.5k per kg. The Starship is expected to have a LEO lift capacity of 100-150 tons, with a forecasted cost of around $1.6k per kg... possibly falling to $0.15kg ($150/kg) over time due to to reusability reduce the cost per flight as you don't have to keep re-making the whole thing.

There's a few issues here. One is - wasn't Saturn 5 optimized for the flight to the moon? It could deliver 50 tons to the moon in a single shot. Starship might have good (forecasted) performance to LEO, but it simply cannot make it to the moon, and even according to best case scenario projections will need a dozen or so refueling launches to reach the moon.

The second problem I have is the "falling over time do tue reusability", why hasn't this happened with Falcon 9? I consider it's announced costs to be a bit sus in themselves, but even taking them at face value, you don't see them dropping over time.

Finally, the third problem is that it's a forecasted cost. Musk's entire MO is announcing some product promising insane performance, falling way short, but acting like he delivered because you can buy something that looks vaguely like the announced product. Wasn't self-driving supposed to be safer than a human driver 7 years ago? Wasn't the Cybertruck supposed to be nearly indestructible and cost as low as $40K? Wasn't the Roadster supposed to be in production in 2019, and offer some insane range like 600 miles? Wasn't the Semi supposed to beat Diesel trucks in terms of costs, be competitive with rail, and be guaranteed to not break for a million miles? Wasn't the Boring Company supposed to cut tunnel costs to a fraction of what they were? What makes you so sure he'll deliver on Starship any better than he did on any of those?

It is quite obviously way cheaper. The only thing is that there's not too much left to explore in Earth orbit and there's little economic reason to go beyond.

You also shouldn't blame SpaceX for Artemis being completely regarded, it's just good old fashioned pork. Industry has no reason to go to the moon and government has no reason to go there cheaply or effectively.

We're going to be back to the moon in the next 3 years. I'll bet you on that.

Yay, I love bets! $50?

And just to be clear we're talking "back to the moon on Starship", or at the very least one of SpaceX' rockets, right?

Also: this will either need to be a" donate to charoty " type bet, or we'll need to find a convenient way to send money anonymously.

Sure let's do $50 for SpaceX to the moon in 3 years.

We also have another SpaceX bet running but I forgot lol. Are you keeping track of these?

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Today is the one year anniversary of Australia’s Voice to Parliament referendum. It received a good deal of discussion on the Motte at the time, so I thought it might be worth looking back at what’s happened since then.

As a brief reminder, the referendum was about amending the constitution to require a body called the ‘Voice to Parliament’. The Voice would have been a committee of Aboriginal leaders with the power to advise and make submissions to the elected parliament, but not to do any legislation itself. Despite early signs of support, that support decreased as referendum day approached, and the proposal was soundly defeated, with roughly 60% nationwide voting against it.

On the political side of it: on the federal level, the Labor party seems to have responded to the defeat by determinedly resolving never to speak about it again. The defeat of one of their major election promises reflects badly on them, so it’s understandable that they seem to want to memory-hole it. What’s more, the defeat of the referendum seems to have warned Labor away from either more Aboriginal-related reform, or from any future referenda on other matters. They’ve silently backed away from a commitment to a Makarrata commission, which would have been a government-funded body focused on ‘reconciliation’ and ‘truth-telling’, and they’ve also, in a reshuffle, quietly dropped the post of ‘assistant minister for the republic’, widely seen as a prelude to a referendum on ending the monarchy and becoming a republic. Labor seem to have lost their taste for big symbolic reforms, and are pivoting to the centre.

Meanwhile the Coalition seem to have been happy to accept this – they haven’t continued to make hay over the Voice, even though a failed referendum might seem like a good target to attack Labor on. Possibly they’re just happy to take their win, rather than risk losing sympathy by being perceived as attacking Aboriginal people.

On the state level, the result has been for Aboriginal issues to fade somewhat from prominence, but there has been little pause or interruption to state-level work on those issues. Despite a few voices suggesting that state processes should be ended or altered, notably in South Australia, not much has happened, and processes like Victorian treaty negotiations have moved ahead without much reflection from the Voice result.

To Aboriginal campaigners themselves…

For the last few days, Megan Davis, one of the major voices behind the Voice, has been saying that she considered abandoning the referendum once polls started to turn against it. Charitably, that might be true – you wouldn’t publicly reveal doubts during the campaign itself, after all. Uncharitably, and I think more plausibly, it’s an attempt to pass the buck, and she means to shift blame to politicians, such as prime minister Anthony Albanese, who was indeed extremely deferential to the wishes of Aboriginal leaders during the Voice referendum. It’s hard not to see this as perhaps a little disingenuous (notably in 2017, Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull had knocked back the idea of a Voice referendum on the basis that he didn’t think it would pass, and at the time he was heavily criticised by campaigners; does anyone really think Albanese would have been praised for his leadership if he had said the same thing?), but at any rate, the point is more that it seems like knives are out among Aboriginal leaders for why it failed.

The wider narrative that I’ve seen, particularly among the media, has generally been that the failure was due to misinformation, and due to Peter Dutton and the Coalition opposing the Voice. Some commentators have suggested that it’s just that Australia is irredeemably racist, but that seems like a minority to me. The main, accepted line, it seems to me, is that it failed because the country’s centre-right party opposed it, and because misinformation and lies tainted the process. The result is a doubling-down on the idea of ‘truth-telling’ as a solution, although as noted government specifically does not seem to have much enthusiasm for that right now.

To editorialise a bit, this frustrates me because I think the various port-mortems and reflections have generally failed to reflect upon the actual outcome of the referendum, which is that a significant majority of Australians genuinely don’t want this proposal. ‘Misinformation’ is a handy way of saying ‘the people were wrong without maximally blaming the people, and it feels to me like the solution is to just re-educate the electorate until they vote the correct way in the future. Of course, I wouldn’t expect die-hard Voice campaigners to change their mind on the issue, but practically speaking, the issue isn’t so much that people were misled – it’s that people didn’t like the proposal itself. I confess I also find this particularly frustrating because, it seemed to me, the Yes campaign was just as guilty of misinformation and distortion as the No campaign, and as magic9mushroom documented, many of their claims of ‘misinformation’ were either simply disagreements with statements of opinion, or themselves lies.

The whole referendum and its aftermath have been much like the earlier marriage plebiscite in 2017 in that they’ve really decreased my faith in the possibility of public conversation or deliberation – what ideally should be a good-faith debate over a political proposal usually comes down to just duelling propaganda, false narratives and misleading facts shouted over each other, again and again. The experience of the Voice referendum has definitely hardened my sense of opposition to any kind of formal ‘truth-telling’ process – my feelings on that might roughly be summarised as, “You didn’t tell the truth before, so why would I trust you to start now?”, albeit taking ‘tell the truth’ here as shorthand for a broad set of good epistemic and democratic practices, not merely avoiding technical falsehoods.

I’m glad it failed if for no reason that if it had succeeded, doubtless movements would have started for similar measures in my own country and other Anglophone former colonial states in the west. Its already bad enough here with the constant genuflecting and land acknowledgments

‘Misinformation’ is a handy way of saying ‘the people were wrong without maximally blaming the people, and it feels to me like the solution is to just re-educate the electorate until they vote the correct way in the future. Of course, I wouldn’t expect die-hard Voice campaigners to change their mind on the issue, but practically speaking, the issue isn’t so much that people were misled – it’s that people didn’t like the proposal itself.

This has become the default explanation for governments whenever an electorate supplies a vote they don't like. The Irish government did exactly the same thing when a proposed referendum was rejected in a landslide earlier this year, claiming that voters were "confused" about what the referendum really entailed.

This is an interesting post that should be dropped on Monday. (Real Monday. That's Monday EST. Not fake Australian Monday's.)

Blast, Australia-Monday has led me astray again!

I can repost it tomorrow! Perhaps I should have just waited, but the one year anniversary was too good to miss.

You can just repost it in a few hours and it will still be the 1 year anniversary in Australia right?

Yes, 'truth-telling' is even worse than 'we need to have a conversation about _____' IMO, it doesn't even pretend to be a democratic or two-way exchange.

The main, accepted line, it seems to me, is that it failed because the country’s centre-right party opposed it,

I've heard people argue that referendums don't pass in Australia without bipartisan support. It requires a majority of voters and a majority of states and voting is compulsory, so there's a certain level of innate conservatism as people who don't really care vote for the status quo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Australian_referendum_(Aviation)

This referendum was just about giving the commonwealth the power to regulate aviation, since it's obviously a federal matter, planes routinely flying inter-state. It failed!

That's not to say I think the Voice referendum was reasonable or desirable. What's the point of a constitutionally enshrined body to advise Parliament if it's non-binding? Formally non-binding is one thing, what would be the de facto outcome? It would be a powerful political tool towards a treaty (the ultimate goal of the 'sovereignty never ceded' aboriginal historical falsification movement) and yet more sabotage of national industries. We already have huge mining projects continually being blocked by lawfare and dodgy-sounding ancestral lands claims. We already have a huge national DEI push, better to keep it out of the functioning of the legislature.

Yes, a referendum has never passed without bipartisan support. In a sense it's correct that Dutton and the Coalition going against the Voice was what doomed it. I'm not sure if the Voice would have succeeded if it had been bipartisan, and if Dutton had supported it he would likely have faced revolt from his own supporters (the Nationals had already opposed it, for a start), not to mention the grassroots, but it would definitely have helped.

So I suppose you can say it was their fault, but of course, their argument would be that they were correct to oppose it, because the Liberal Party has particular values and principles, those values are, well, liberal, and thus opposed to privileging any group or demographic on the basis of race or heritage. If your proposal is contrary to the explicitly-stated values of one of the largest and most long-running political traditions in Australia, you probably shouldn't be surprised when the representatives of that tradition oppose it. You might make a more limited criticism of the Coalition for playing dirty politics (Dutton's obviously-insincere, swiftly-retracted, promise of a second referendum on constitutional recognition stands out as especially two-faced), but I really don't think Labor or the Yes campaign have a leg to stand on in that regard.

'Truth-telling' is a problematic phrase, all the more so, I think, because it rarely comes with clarification of exactly which truths need to be told. Reconciliation Australia describes it as "a range of activities that engage with a fuller account of Australia’s history and its ongoing impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples", which is roughly the same as the UNSW definition here. Here's a story from Deakin that says that 'truth-telling' involves discussion of colonial history, indigenous culture both pre- and post-colonisation, indigenous contributions to Australia as a whole, and a range of activities including festivals, memorials, public art, repatriation of ancestors, return of land, and renaming of locations. This is all starting to sound quite vague.

If the request is for more education and public knowledge about colonisation, well, that seems to be going quite well - I did some of the frontier wars in school in the 90s and early 00s, after all, and radio, TV, popular media, etc., are full of Aboriginal perspectives. There are already several nation-wide celebrations as well, which is relevant if 'truth-telling' includes acknowledgement of positive contributions as well. There's already NAIDOC Week, Reconciliation Week, National Sorry Day, Harmony Day, Australia Day (or Invasion Day or Survival Day if you prefer) is often used to discuss colonial history, and more. So it seems like 'truth-telling' in that general sense is already happening. What specifically is being proposed in addition?

Anatomy of squandering an argument: JD Vance talks to the NYT and somehow manages to take the very valid point about media censorship and piss is out the window

But you're repeating a slogan rather than engaging with what I'm saying, which is that when our own technology firms engage in industrial scale censorship, by the way, backed up by the federal government in a way that independent studies suggest affect the votes, I'm worried about Americans who feel like there were problems in 2020. I'm not worried about this slogan that people throw. Well, every court case went this way. I'm talking about something very discreet, a problem of censorship in this country that I do think affected things in 2020. And more importantly, that led to Kamala Harris's governance, which has screwed this country up in a big way.

Senator, would you have certified the election in 2020, yes or no?

I've said that I would have voted against certification because of the concern that I just raised. I think that when you have technology companies.

The answer is no.

When you have technology companies censoring Americans at a mass scale in a way that, again, independent studies have suggested affect the vote, I think that it's right to protest against that, to criticize that that. And that's a totally reasonable thing.

I'm really trying to emphasize that I'm saying this as someone that agrees with the premise, but this is the most retarded and ahistorical possible conclusion. Can you imagine Ben Franklin telling politicians they don't have to accept the result of a vote because the Pennsylvania Gazette wrote absurd lies about the candidates? Even if it was true, it's completely bonkers.

Worse than being ridiculous, it's a blunder to take the cause about media censorship and then piss it away on election certification. Sure in the abstract sense drawing untenable conclusions from an argument does not weaken the premises, but in actual popular consciousness those things are all woven together.

I had really hoped Vance was smarter than this. If he was baited into it he shouldn't have bitten and if it was intentional then he should have known better.

Honestly, it was a fine answer and nobody cares. If you are smart enough to realize the flaw in the argument the you are smart to realize that he has no choice but to say he wouldn’t have certified the election. Most people just zone out and don’t really remember what he is talking about, and vaguely agree that Big Tech censorship is bad. This is not going to move the needle at all.

Yeah it's obvious this is one of Trumps "red lines", and he struggles with the truth vs his boss

I think most people that vaguely agree that censorship is bad might not agree if the next words out of your mouth are "and therefore we don't have to accept the results of the election".

They don't have to agree. They just need to come away with minimal emotional valance. If Vance said "No, because the election was fake and gay and Biden is a fake Mickey Mouse president" it might affect normie's views. Instead he just said "no" to a question that normie doesn't really understand, then complained about Big Tech, who everyone hates. It's not a "gotcha" and it's not a "blunder."

Can you imagine Ben Franklin telling politicians they don't have to accept the result of a vote because the Pennsylvania Gazette wrote absurd lies about the candidates?

No, but I can imagine 2017 Democrats yelling “not my President” ad infinitum, and trying to impeach on tendentious grounds for an entire term.

Vance gave the right answer here. He should have refused to certify the election - not because he had just cause, but because he who does not fight fire with fire, specious lawfare with specious lawfare, is a sucker.

He should have refused to certify the election

Unless you actually and truly believe the election was stolen, and you can prove it (to the satisfaction of the voters, not the courts), that would have been a preposterously stupid plan. Remember: democracy is just a proxy for civil war. Parties prefer to use the proxy when things are close, even if they lose despite in theory posessing a military advantage. (See: republicans not declaring war despite the fact that they control a majority of fighting-age men, and democrats not declaring war despite controlling a majority of the total population.) But the instant you click that "defect" button, your opponents do too. Unless your evidence is so convincing the majority of the other party will tuck their tails between their legs and admit malfeasance, refusing to certify an election is exactly equivalent to starting a civil war. Which would be a truly stupid thing to do, unless you control such a proportion of the population that you can expect total victory.

Unless you actually and truly believe the election was stolen, and you can prove it (to the satisfaction of the voters, not the courts)

Who will count the votes of the voters who believe the election was stolen?

Unless your evidence is so convincing the majority of the other party will tuck their tails between their legs and admit malfeasance, refusing to certify an election is exactly equivalent to starting a civil war.

So if one party cheats brazenly, and equally brazenly refuses to admit it, the other party taking any action against them has started the civil war? That's an odd definition of "start".

You insist on viewing this from a moral perspective, but I'm speaking from a consequentialist one. "War" is a rational choice if and only if the expected value of starting a war is higher than the opportunity cost. And given the massive costs of war, the only way for your EV to be positive is if you are SURE you will win. War is the extension of politics through other means. And in that same vein, politics are an extension of war through other means. If you exist in an equilibrium where you can win a war if and only if you can win a political conflict, it only makes sense to start a war if you already have an overwhelming political advantage. And given the scenario in question here is Trump losing an election while he's already president, it's clear he lacks that overwhelming political advantage. Either his grasp on the levers of power is so weak as to allow a palace coup, or his grasp on the population is so weak as to guarantee a loss in a civil war, or both.

Refusing to certify an election is exactly isomorphic to claiming, "I'm going to stay in power because my faction would win a civil war." The specific details-- whether the election was actually stolen, whether you have convincing evidence of that, the actual vote totals, etc-- matter only insofar as they make your claim more or less believable to the other party. If your claim to power is sufficiently believable, you might get lucky with your opponents backing down. All the logic about the EV of starting a civil war applies to them too.

But self-evidently, Pence did not have convincing evidence of election theft, and did not have an expectation of winning a civil war. It would have been stupid for him to refuse to certify the election, and it would have been just as stupid for JD vance to refuse to certify the election.

Biden himself presided over that. Should he have voted not to certify the true count of electors in 2016 because of some retarded “not my president” wing?

I had really hoped Vance was smarter than this. If he was baited into it he shouldn't have bitten and if it was intentional then he should have known better.

Why do you think it's a blunder? This is the classic politician move, if you're asked about a losing issue, just deflect. It sounds bad, but it's less bad than actually addressing the question. There's a reason they all do it. It distracts, it muddies the waters a bit. My opponent's asking me this ridiculous question to distract from Border Czar Harris's invasion of migrant criminals and nation-destroying inflation et cetera.

Assuming he can't say "yes" because Trump won't let him, what else should he say?

The real blunder is that Trump won't just shut up about the election and let Vance say he'd certify. People who care about Trump saying the election is rigged are voting for him anyway. There's no harm in just lying here.* I have to imagine Trump and the people around him really believe it!

* obviously it's bad and corrosive but i'm taking the perspective of political strategy here, and they all lie (sorry, strategically take positions) anyway

That’s an acceptable interpretation.

Yes, I think this is a correct take. From Vance's own perspective, he did the right thing - deflect, avoid, pivot. The question he was given cannot be safely answered. He knows his opponents will try to pin him on it (Walz tried at the VP debate as well), and he's clearly got a couple of deflections memorised. The correct move is to try to distract, maybe go on the offensive if possible, and then just get past it and return to stronger terrain for himself.

The is a blunder here, but the blunder is not Vance's, but Trump's. I'm sure that Vance could take a much stronger line on elections, democracy, and fairness if he weren't handicapped by being Trump's running mate. Unfortunately, he is.

I think it's bad that we have a political class we can tell are lying because that's what they do, but yeah, he's a politician and his mouth is moving.

Assuming he can't say "yes" because Trump won't let him, what else should he say?

I'm actually vaguely curious why "Biden was appointed President on January 20th, 2021" isn't the goto approach. Maybe it polls badly, maybe there's some obvious counter I'm missing, maybe MAGA doesn't like it, maybe they just don't remember the appointed-not-elected chants of 2000 and 2004, but it seems kinda an obvious dodge that doesn't concede anything people care about, while 'answering'. Maybe Vance and company want the easy question to keep getting repeated?

Maybe I'm missing some context, but what is ahistorical here? Did Vance say "the Founders would agree with me?" Maybe partisan bias and Vance simpery has blinded me to something, but I don't see the error in what he's saying. Is it because he unequivocally said, "the answer is no," placing him directionally with the "they used fake ballots" crowd?

"They used fake ballots therefore the result isn't valid" would at least be an argument that, if you accept the premise, you could see the conclusion as tenable.

He didn't say that -- he specifically said "they censored people on Twitter therefore the result isn't valid". That is what I'm claiming is the bad take here.

Can you imagine Ben Franklin telling politicians they don't have to accept the result of a vote because the Pennsylvania Gazette wrote absurd lies about the candidates?

Regardless of the rest of your point, this is a really bad analogy, because it completely misses the salient point that hostile government actors and agencies were putting pressure on this kind of censorship.

Hostile government actors censoring the media is absolutely something the Founders would be intimately familiar with, on both sides of the coin...

Sure, I concede the analogy does not recreate all facets of the original.

Nobody's perfect, but Vance has been absolutely slaying hostile journalists the last few weeks.

Let's be real here. The other people in this race (Trump, Harris, and Walz) are dumb as bricks. On the other hand, Vance is everything the modal person on this forum would say they want. He's incredibly smart and also clued into the current meta.

But that's the thing about live interviews with hostile journalists. They are difficult. My guess is that a similar media tour would have the average Mottizen tying themselves in knots in a mush of self-contradiction. I know that for my own sake, I would not be able to maintain composure when faced by these prosecutors. But Vance does it effortlessly.

IMO, finding an example like this is kinda like criticizing Lebron for missing a shot in a game where he scored 50 points. Vance's ability to give off-the-cuff answers in these interviews is among the best I've ever seen for a politician. The guy can play. We'd be lucky to have him as President some day.

Trump, Harris, and Walz are all quite smart, as one would expect from people who've managed to get some of the most coveted positions in American politics. They're not particle physicists, but it's a strong selection effect. They sound dumb in public, just like Vance did in the OP, because the score they're optimizing for is the one from voters, and voters aren't smart and aren't noticing the things you are.

Vance is at least 1 standard deviation smarter than the others, probably more.

Kamala I'll concede does seem to be noticeably dumber than average, but Walz seems aggressively average and Trump clearly at least was smart-ish at one point, and he still doesn't come off as dumb.

Vance is smart, but he's also tied to Trump's jumble of inconsistencies and the 2020 election has been his weakpoint because of this- it was in the debate.

That is fair. He's certainly smarter than the other 3 by a whole league, which is why I found this error to be particularly galling.

It's more akin to Lebron missing a wide-open layup by tripping himself over his own feet.

Vance made an excellent point. I’ve made a similar point on this forum. There’s nothing bonkers about his argument.

(A) Democracy requires informed voters and free exchange of political ideas.

(B) It’s probable that 99% of all political idea exchange in America occurs on major social media companies. It may be as high as 99.99%.

(C) Default social media companies conspiring to hide essential political information in order to sway voters breaks the substance of democracy, which is related to [A] above.

(D) When one party breaks the substance of democracy, it’s a perfectly legitimate and moral reply to break it to your own advantage as well. This is mere self-defense.

Can you imagine Ben Franklin […]

Ben lived in a time where 99% of political idea exchange occurred in bars, coffee shops, and town halls. If he were prevented from talking politics in these places then he would have revolted. Nowadays that political activity occurs on a handful of websites. If Ben were alive today he would agree with Vance. He revolted for less significant reason in fact, involving representation and taxes, which was surely illegal according to the letter of the law (but not the spirit of liberty). Ben’s friends would agree with me on (A), in all of their writings on democracy they assume an informed populace.

There’s nothing bonkers about his argument.

There is indeed nothing bonkers about that argument.

That's just not Trump's argument about 2020, and neither is it what Vance was asked about. Vance was doing this - answering a different question, which he could answer credibly.

The question

Senator, would you have certified the election in 2020, yes or no?

was answered in his own unique away. Journalists aren’t some honorbound, virtue-trained caste of monks whose purehearted questioning must be answered like Job in the face of Jehovah. They would be a little bit below prostitutes in Dante’s inferno. They are disreputable and untrustworthy according to citizens. The American public is interested in “who is harming democracy”, and Vance answered that concern. Vance’s answer isn’t Trump’s, but Vance is clearly a more sophisticated thinker / propagandist than Trump.

I didn't say anythin about the character of journalists, so I don't see whythat's relevant. I am, however, going to have to accuse you of selective misquotation. The transcript of the interview is here. Here's the whole exchange (journalist in bold, Vance in normal script):

Last few questions. In the debate, you were asked to clarify if you believe Trump lost the 2020 election. Do you believe he lost the 2020 election? I think that Donald Trump and I have both raised a number of issues with the 2020 election, but we’re focused on the future. I think there’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020. I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020, which is a wide-open border, groceries that are unaffordable. And look, Lulu —

Senator, yes or no. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Let me ask you a question. Is it OK that big technology companies censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, which independent analysis have said cost Donald Trump millions of votes?

Senator Vance, I’m going to ask you again. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Did big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes? I think that’s the question.

Senator Vance, I’m going to ask you again. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? And I’ve answered your question with another question. You answer my question and I’ll answer yours.

I have asked this question repeatedly. It is something that is very important for the American people to know. There is no proof, legal or otherwise, that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election. But you’re repeating a slogan rather than engaging with what I’m saying, which is that when our own technology firms engage in industrial-scale censorship — by the way, backed up by the federal government — in a way that independent studies suggest affect the votes. I’m worried about Americans who feel like there were problems in 2020. I’m not worried about this slogan that people throw: Well, every court case went this way. I’m talking about something very discrete, a problem of censorship in this country that I do think affected things in 2020. And more importantly, that led to Kamala Harris’s governance, which has screwed this country up in a big way.

Senator, would you have certified the election in 2020? Yes or no? I’ve said that I would have voted against certification because of the concern that I just raised. I think that when you have technology companies —

The answer is no. When you have technology companies censoring Americans at a mass scale in a way that, again, independent studies have suggested affect the vote. I think that it’s right to protest against that, to criticize that, and that’s a totally reasonable thing.

So the answer is no.

Vance was asked four times, very explicitly, "did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?", and he evaded answering that question.

Is the statement that Vance actually made reasonable? Yes, I think so, and I've said that repeatedly. The argument that there isn't a fair or level playing field in terms of US elections, and that technology firms engaged in a kind of censorship such that, had it not been present, the results might have been different - that argument is fair enough.

But it is not what Vance was asked about.

It is a dodge, because, as I just said, Vance cannot safely answer that question. Either "yes" or "no" get him into trouble, so he avoids it.

If we are being pedantic, Vance answered a specific question about whether he would certify the vote. That’s not the same question as the related previous questions. He explained why he may not certify the vote, or why he would protest the certification of the vote. You can criticize him for the previous interview questions which were not the subject of the OP, though. But “neither is it what Vance was asked about” is incorrect.

It's all the one line of questioning - it's all the same dodge, it seems to me. The fifth question being slightly different doesn't erase the context of that answer, and I still object to "but big tech" being used as a motte to defend the bailey of "Trump didn't lose 2020".

And I'm trying to implore you that every time someone spergs out on (D), it's undermining the case for (A-C) by association and scaring the hoes normies. No one is ever going to accept "my opponent tricked the populace into voting for him, therefore I can disregard the will of the people manifest through the ballot".

And if at all this does somehow get accepted, it's 10x more likely to be deployed by the left and their TDS anyway. They've certainly parroted this 1000 times since 2016 about fascism and the end of democracy, maybe those brain worms have come home to roost.

disregard the will of the people manifest through the ballot".

Independent watchdog NGOs routinely declare elections flawed or invalid because of censorship. Even granting that the mechanics of ballots were fair, the insistance on only caring about it in an election is begging the question, if the people were prevented from informing themselves, their alleged "will" or consent is with defect. Like with a contract: if I deceived you, you may be able to render it void, even if you agree that the blue lines at the bottom are your signature with your own hand.

Independent watchdog NGOs routinely declare elections flawed or invalid because of censorship

Do you have an example? I don't really follow election watchdogs, so I never heard of one complaining about censorship, but it would be funny to compare and contrast with western elections.

"my opponent tricked the populace into voting for him, therefore I can disregard the will of the people manifest through the ballot"

And there were prominent calls for faithless electors in 2016. So this isn't even a hypothetical, it's practically the first thing some Democrats called for when faced with a Trump presidency.

And there were prominent calls for faithless electors in 2016. So this isn't even a hypothetical, it's practically the first thing some Democrats called for when faced with a Trump presidency.

And that's the crux of the issue isnt it? (pinging @Tiber727 and others)

To me most of the complaints about Trump's "norm shattering" behavior effectively boil down to Trump treating his opponents the way Clinton and Obama treated thier opponents. The norm being shattered here is that Republicans are supposed to be stoic patricician types who cooperate when thier opponents defect, and "turn the other cheek" instead of "getting in people's faces" and "punching back twice as hard".

That doesn't make him a good politician or mean that he is going to win the election, (in fact i am almost certain he wont) but i cant really judge him for it either. Afterall, turn about is fair play.

I recall criticizing that too :-)

I was darkly amused to see that moment, because it felt like a perfect example of something I'd just described.

Did technology companies and the overall media landscape skew public conversation and interest in a way that was generally to the benefit of one party, did this affect the election result, and was this bad? I'm inclined to answer yes, yes, and yes. I am in sympathy with Vance's point here.

But his point is also a dodge - he's retreating from a bailey ("Trump didn't lose the 2020 election") to a motte ("the 2020 election wasn't fair"). There's no rule or constitutional principle saying that elections don't count if newspapers are unfair, nor for if websites are unfair. Vance may be correct about tech firms, but that's beside the point.

I recognise that Vance is in an impossible position here - he can't say that Trump didn't lose without undermining all his efforts to appeal to moderates, and he can't say that Trump did lose without incurring his running mate's wrath, so he's got to deflect and distract. From his perspective, that's the correct strategic move. But I still feel rather sad for America that this is the situation they're in.

I've been reading up a bit on skeletal growth, and I wanted to make an observation about the discussion around skeletal growth that I see online.

I consistently see a negative attitude across mainstream sites like reddit towards anyone inquiring whether they have growth left, or asking about advice on how to grow more. I think this might play into Culture War because there's obviously a battle between the different "pills" on the role of male height in sexual attraction, and perhaps this battle has reached the general public. It seems commenters on these posts want to distance themselves from the "black pillers" who place extreme importance on height. They're so scared of being lumped in with the outgroup that they will avoid giving any practical advice.

Basically, it seems that commenters assume there's some motive around confidence or sexual attraction involved whenever a guy is asking about how to grow taller, and because of that assumption, they try to address the "deeper issue" instead of addressing the guy's practical concern around actually getting taller. People can have a multitude of reasons for wanting to increase not just height but frame size. Frame size governs the maximum amount of strength and muscle you'll be able to build. Average stature is probably the ideal for overall health. Then you have the idea that height can be useful (but not necessary of course) for business endeavors, etc. Commenters immediately assume that "growth/height" posts are the result of low confidence and some kind of issue with women, but overall stature (not just height) does seem to have benefits, and while nobody should beat themselves up for their stature, why not optimize it?

People consistently say that "it's mostly genetics", and while it may indeed be "mostly genetics" that explains deviations from normal height at a population level (?, because what about the theory of increasing height with current generations due to better nutrition), you have no way of knowing whether a particular person's deviation from normal height is explained mostly by genetics.

It could be that a particular individual's deviation from normal height is mostly explained by non-genetic factors. Things like low birth weight, malnutrition, hypothyroidism or other glandular conditions, and even childhood trauma can result in stunted growth. Now, these subsets of the population may not be very common, but they exist and it's not fair to tell them they wouldn't be able to significantly change their stature with the right medical treatment at the right time (perhaps involving HGH or other hormonal treatment to stimulate catch-up growth).

Also, even for people without some preexisting cause of short stature, do we really know that their parents achieved their genetic potential? What if the child has the potential for greater growth than they are experiencing? Couldn't there be a relatively safe way and time to take HGH to boost height in such a case? And aside from taking HGH, the things that optimize growth tend to be good for your overall health anyway: right sleeping habits, diet, active lifestyle, and maybe some protein supplementation. Yet most people don't even give these suggestions to people asking for help on reddit (to be charitable, a decent number of commenters on "growth" discussions do give these suggestions, but why would anyone not give these suggestions?)

Then you have all the people who say "your growth plates are closed at your age", sometimes to men who are freaking 18 years old. It does seem that many people (especially women) do not grow past 18, I certainly did not, but it doesn't seem responsible to make such a blanket statement. For most people, growth plates close at different times and often not completely until your early 20s. There's tons of research on this. Also, not that many people really "try" to get taller for a significant amount of time, at least not once they are 18. A lot of people seem to accept the "100% genetics" shtick. Do we really know what could be possible? Who are we to say that a well-timed calorie surplus and right sleeping habits/diet/exercise/stress management and relaxation in someone's late teens and early 20s, combined with some HGH and something to keep growth plates open, would not measurably change their final height, assuming the person was not optimizing these factors before? It may not always work, but who is to say it wouldn't have an effect for a given individual?

It shouldn't be taboo for someone to try to optimize their own body.

Then there's all the people who say they had crappy lifestyle habits and still grew tall, or had great lifestyle habits and had short stature. And to that I say, indeed genetics has a big role to play. Some people will be big and tall no matter almost anything, others could be small no matter what (although HGH might have some effect anyway if started at the right times?). My main point is that there's probably a subset of the population that is underachieving relative to their genetic potential, so why shouldn't those people try to reach their genetic limit? Why does that point elude so many people on mainstream sites? I have provided some reasons at the start of the post but perhaps there are others.

Now, I don't believe in giving people false expectations, so I understand if that's why people are often dismissive. But, while you should not "expect" height or other skeletal growth from any intervention, it's not right to entirely and often smugly dismiss it like so many commenters on these kinds of posts do. It really does not seem impossible. In so far as my common sense is accurate, there are things people can do to optimize growth and maybe make a difference, HGH being the most significant of those things but healthy lifestyle habits being not insignificant. Perhaps I am wrong about much of this, I am still forming my opinions on this matter but this post shows where I stand at this time.

Akin to what @Sloot said about women wanting naturals, I think that ties into a feminist wish for only the 'good' men to have children, selecting out the ones with bad genetics, while keeping as many women as possible on the sexual market. They want all women to be 'good enough' but far from all men. 'Cheating' through growth enhancement or steroids etc goes against that agenda.

I really appreciate your willingness to stick up for something like this. Haven't looked into skeletal growth personally but I know for a fact I've grown at least and inch just by working with my body and releasing stored tension.

I think the human body is capable of far more than modern scientific reductionism allowed for.

Agreed re: "I think the human body is capable of far more than modern scientific reductionism allowed for." And very interesting that you were able to grow by releasing stored tension.

You’ve at least partially answered your own question. Height is a sexually dimorphic trait, with men being taller than women and women caring more about male height than men caring more about female height. Thus, mainstream blue-pill spaces (such as Reddit) are averse to discussions on male height, for they take away from gender egalitarianism (except when men can be framed as shitty and women as victims).

Meanwhile, despite supposed body-positivity, blue-pillers are quite fond of height-shaming or height-downgrading when it comes to men they don’t like. DAE lift-wearing DeSantis is 5’8” and peak Trump was barely 6’0” at most?

Women further detest discussions on male height because reminders that women prefer male dominance traits like height (or strength, power, ability to inflict violence, etc.) make them feel more superficial, submissive, meme-like and less like the Wonderful, strong independent #GirlBosses that they of course are. Or discussions that feature men optimizing their way toward garnering more female attraction. Such discussions compromise the blue-pill, Disneyian notion that attraction is some magical, unpredictable, unquantifiable phenomenon that Just Happens.

Sometimes blue-pill women will begrudgingly concede the female preference for male height with enough studies or anecdotal, social-proofed evidence such as TikTok video after video of young women dunking on short men. Yet, they’ll still look to blame societal Conditioning and/or take the Harvard-on-Asians route in saying that in their Lived Experience, short men are ick-inducing not for their shortness—but rather the personalities of short men—the toxicity and insecurities of short men in being short.

Women don’t care about male height. If they do, the preference isn’t that widespread. If it is, it isn’t that drastic. And if it is, it’s not a big deal. Even if it is, it’s only due to Socialization, toxic masculinity, and male insecurities. And even if it isn’t, all you incels and manlets deserve it and should stop talking about it.

Women are often low-key (and sometimes high-key) hostile against male self-improvement, especially with regard to sexual market value (a concept of which is gross and icky in their eyes, and shouldn't exist). Part of it may be it’s a reminder of their own hypoagency and lack of accountability (see, for example, Ryan Long on Girl vs. Guy Motivation). Weight is a dimension by which many Western women could improve their lot, yet they loathe to admit as such much less do so.

Another part may be envy, as much of what makes women more attractive or unattractive for relationships involve cannot-put-the-toothpaste-back-in-the-tube situations like age, tattoos, past promiscuity, single motherhood. In contrast, thanks to preselection and female mate-choice copying, male promiscuity and out-of-wedlock children can make men more attractive.

A third component may be that women want naturals, not imposters who somehow cheated their rightfully deserved fate. Women are generally quite hostile against men doing things such as steroids, working out “too much”, social media optimization, wearing lifts, getting limb-lengthening surgeries, grinding approaches for experience and/or to play the numbers game. In this realm, men are generally quite supportive of other men, despite nominally increasing the competition.

I wonder what proportion of those in favor of gender affirmation therapies and surgeries for children and teenagers to transition would be in favor of dispensing HGH for boys and/or young men to grow taller. After all, what could be more gender-affirming for the average boy or young man than to be taller?

Re: Self improvement

My experience was that women in my social groups were supportive of male self improvement. They responded positively to guys trying to work out, dress better, have more girl friendly hobbies, learn2cook etc. Chicks see that as value they can capture in a relationship. They look more dimly on PUA stuff, even though it works on them. From their perspective, it's a form of trickery via false advertising.

Re: Limb lengthening:

I think that's directly analogous to facial plastic surgery on a chick. Even when reproduction isn't the conscious goal, that's what people are thinking of at a subconscious level. Your kids won't get that height or that nose.

Interesting thoughts, thanks for the response. To your last point, ironically, it was on gender affirmation subreddits that I found the most accurate information on possible ways to boost height, including mentions that growth plates don't generally close until the early 20s, and that it's partially from lower HGH levels that people don't grow much in their early 20s, or that sometimes postural and hormonal changes can indeed increase height a bit through cartilaginous growth, etc. And even discussion on future possibilities of growth plate implantation/restoration. It was only in those subreddits that the discussion was taken seriously and practical advice given.

This comment fails the gender turing test.

Not in the broader point- your main thrust is at least defensible. But everything about the psychoanalysis and framing is just bitter ranting akin to 'hurr durr conservatives are pro-life to have more white babies'.

make them feel more superficial, submissive, meme-like and less like the Wonderful, strong independent #GirlBosses that they of course are.

Nah. This kind of thinking about a globally-consistent view of how one is oriented towards the world is a prototypically male thing.

I know plenty of girlboss (and even feminist) types that embraced submissiveness (sometimes extremely), leaning into whichever role they wanted to pay in a given interaction. The ability to switch between those modes without feeling like either contradicts or diminishes the other is probably a female power that's worth more analysis here.

Interesting point, I've noticed this and would like to read/think more about why some women are better able to handle such seeming contradictions. I can't help thinking one style of thinking has got something mixed up and I'm not at all sure it's the female style.

I think questions about increasing ones height often have a whiff of an XY problem. Rarely do people want to increase their height as an end in itself, they want to increase their height as a means to advance some other end. The problem (my impression) is that the research on how to effectively increase one's height and how it causally impacts the outcome of interest are sufficiently unclear that it's efficiency in terms of accomplishing ones goals is questionable. That is, for almost any reason people care about their height (sexual success, job success, getting swole) there are almost certainly better things that could be doing with their time, in terms of ROI, than trying to increase their height. So when people ask about increasing their height other people try and infer their motivation for asking and guide them to more effective actions, given their imputed goals. Maybe you're someone whose on the 99.9th percentile of job/sexual/lifting success such that your height really is your limiting factor but I doubt that describes most people asking about it.

Good points, XY problem is exactly the term to describe what I'm talking about, I did not know about that term before. I agree the research is unclear, that's what I hope will change someday. Somewhat agree there are better things one could do with their time in most cases, well actually fully agree there are better things to do with ones time, but my point would be that height optimization doesn't have to exclude those other things necessarily.

I am arguing to build a pretty big umbrella and cover a bunch of cases, for me in particular I have definitely not maxxed out everything else in my life to the point where height is the only thing left to optimize. However, it is a pretty foundational thing, height and frame size that is, in that you can't lose it once you have it for the most part. It matters more for social success at the extremes of short stature. Also medically, larger frame size (by this I mean bone diameters, like wrist/ankle thickness) pays dividends into old age, promoting greater bone strength in a way that muscle gain alone does not. So it's a bit different from other things we can optimize, height/skeletal optimization would be a more secure investment if it pays off, although it might not pay at all. Although like you said, the research is kind of unclear on how to optimize height...my post discussed using common sense (and the few studies/info we do have) to optimize it, but yeah maybe that's not really enough to justify the effort for most people.

it seems that commenters assume there's some motive around confidence or sexual attraction involved whenever a guy is asking about how to grow taller

Because there is, in all but a handful of cases.

That's not a bad thing though. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make yourself more attractive to women. It's nothing to hide or be ashamed of.

overall stature (not just height) does seem to have benefits, and while nobody should beat themselves up for their stature, why not optimize it?

Because almost nobody "just optimizes" things for no reason. The fact that you took the time and effort to write this (lengthy) post in the first place, a post which demonstrates considerable familiarity with the details of the topic, indicates there's more going on here than just "yeah I thought that height would just be a cool thing to optimize because, y'know, why not?"

What you're asking for is a reprieve from politics. But interpersonal relations are inherently political, so no such reprieve can be granted. Your distinction between "harmless optimization" on the one hand and "confidence issues" on the other is your attempt to carve out an apolitical space in a domain that is intrinsically political (and on what basis do you draw this distinction? You say that height can be useful for "business endeavors", but how is this any different from height being useful for attracting women? Zero sum competition for money and opportunities, zero sum competition for access to women, it's all the same).

You can't be half in the game and half out. Other people rightly see this as dishonesty. "Yes, I'm very interested in doing this thing that will make me more sexually attractive to women along an axis that is highly prized by them, but that's not why I'm doing it, don't be silly." (Or, to tie this into the broader culture war - the demands for "political neutrality" you see from certain rightists, especially "moderate" rightists, when it comes to school curricula, art and media, etc. They've been so browbeaten into submission by the left that they're afraid to acknowledge that they too have a legitimate political point of view, and this point of view should be represented and taken seriously. But the left is very correct on this point - political neutrality is an illusion.)

You can't hide from the political and ethical implications of your actions. Instead, you should embrace them. You too have a particular point of view, and interests, and desires, and you should assert them, regardless of what any redditors might say.

Interesting response, thanks. I agree it's not a bad thing and there's nothing wrong with wanting to make oneself more attractive to women, and that one doesn't need to hide that intention. I think that's a change I could make based on what you said, I could be more clear about my intentions not just in this matter but in all arguments I make. It's definitely one of my intentions, I don't just want to optimize for optimization sake, I want to optimize things I care about, attraction being one, overall strength potential being another, business being another, other health reasons and bone strength later in life being another, etc. Yet only one of those, the attraction one, would create tension if you voiced it in a place not as "free" as this one. I think you make a good point re: I am trying to depoliticize the matter of increasing height. That is true. Perhaps because I want more research or at least inquiry on this front, and when things get political in a way that goes against the mainstream, maybe the research won't get done. Also, I think it matters that there are multiple reasons that increased height and overall size is beneficial.

For example, enough people agree on the many benefits of weightlifting that if a guy is asking how to get stronger (even if he's asking for a reason that disagrees with someone's politics), nobody is going to withhold advice and all would speak freely. Most everyone recognizes the benefit of being stronger. So I suppose I'm trying to get at something like that but for height, although maybe the two are not ever going to be treated similarly. Height is indeed very valued by women, but short stature and frame size also increases cardiometabolic risks later in life, bone strength later in life, a bunch of things really. I started caring about height because of attraction, and caring about frame size for health reasons, but honestly I see so many benefits to both at this point (social benefits and health benefits) that the only reason it isn't treated like weightlifting is because it's really only something you can do if you're a kid, in your teens or in your early 20s, so it's not something most people who need to improve their health (who would likely be older) can do to improve their health, unless research into reopening/inserting natural growth plates comes around, unlike weightlifting which is something anyone can do effectively at any age. That and maybe side effects of HGH.

I don't think a scientific response is what you are looking for but....

It seems from animal models that growth hormone increases growth speed but not where you end up? Not sure why you hope this is a silver bullet. People are probably dismissive because it doesn't seem to be something that is currently possible. It is of course possible there is an unknown mechanism, but that wouldn't be helpful advice, either. Most men reach their peak height by 16. I certainly wouldn't suggest anyone on an internet forum follow a medical intervention (as you are suggesting with a combination of HGH plus "something to keep the growth plates open") if that medical intervention doesn't actually exist as a testable efficacious thing.

I don't think this is culture war related contempt, like you are implying, but rather just people thinking people are asking for something unreasonable. Like if I went on a similar forum and asked what I could do to turn my eyes purple. In the future, there might be a safe way to inject pigment into the iris or similar, but for now people would tell me to get over it.

There are also plenty of known relationships between adolescent nutrition and final height. IIRC there are some studies (and a bunch of aligning personal anecdotes) that kids that do weight class sports end up stunting their height by trying to stay under a certain weight. But that's not as much "advice for getting taller" as it is counter-advice for being shorter.

It seems from animal models that growth hormone increases growth speed but not where you end up? Not sure why you hope this is a silver bullet. People are probably dismissive because it doesn't seem to be something that is currently possible.

I never got around to reading up on it, but apparently you don't need to look at animal models, as trying to control human height with hormones is a thing that actually happened IRL. If you want a summary, and don't mind reading someone with an axe to grind, Mia Hughes wrote a chapter on it in the WPATH Files (it starts at the bottom of the page: "Engineering Children’s Height With Hormones").

Ideological Institutions

The other day I was explaining my understanding of think tanks to a younger friend. They had a reaction of "no way!? Is that really how they work". This is the most common reaction, followed by "yeah of course that's how they work, why are you telling me this like I'm stupid?"

The purpose of ideological Institutions is two-fold:

  1. To be a standing army of sorts for a particular ideology. That way anytime a new issue comes up in political discourse there is a ready and willing group of people willing to advocate for the ideology. I'd sum this up as "political coordination".
  2. To extract funds and resources from wealthy people of a particular ideology. I'd sum this up as "a tax on political beliefs".

These may sound like they are at cross purposes, but they are not. A successful think tank does both very well.

Some of you here might have the immediate complaint somewhat along the lines:

Universities can also be ideological Institutions but they don't have their people paying a tax on their beliefs. But this isn't true on two dimensions:

  1. Tuition costs for parents and students. Some of the most clearly ideological small liberal arts colleges are private and very expensive.
  2. Ideologically captured departments within universities also impose a cost on their graduates: 4 years of their life and a useless degree.

I think the existence of these ideological Institutions has had an overall negative effect on American politics. Similar to news organizations they benefit from ongoing political conflict.

But they are also a necessary set of institutions for balancing out democracy. They act as a way for people who care and hold strong beliefs to feel like they have more of an impact on politics than their single vote would normally allow.

Mark me down for reaction two.

Political coordinators are necessary in any political system. Otherwise, incumbent authorities exercise power by default. Political conflict has a cost, but so does a lack of political conflict. It's not just allowing motivated people to exercise more influence in politics; it's making it possible for people to concentrate their political power in a way that allows them to achieve goals. Think tanks are just one example of this, of course. Political parties serve similar role in different contexts, as do community organizers, church leaders, etc...

I'd also concur with Gillitrut re: think tanks in particular having a major role in operationalizing political beliefs.

There is another reason:

  1. To be able to deploy into government extremely-competent people whose market-clearing rate of compensation is far in excess of the pathetic sums we pay the civil service.

This works by ensuring that the people you want to be available to serve in government have a job waiting for them at think tanks or lobbying firms when they get out -- arranging the proverbial revolving door such that their total expected compensation over one full revolution is not too far below what they could earn

This is really not a joke -- if you are advocating in favor of and you want to advance it with moderately-competent people, you are are competing against a market clearing price for that competence. You can ignore that and get the kind of competence the Civil Service is gonna pay for and you're gonna get the amount of actual movement that entails.

And for the folks in the (2) of the above, this is a reasonable way to spend money. Want to get folks reporting to the Director of the FTC whose FMV compensation is more than $150K (lol, this is half a baby lawyer's salary at BigLaw or anyone doing any kind of strategy or execution at an F500 firm) -- pony up. Money well spent, a couple of cracked operators int he right spot can do more than armies of mediocrities.

I'd definitely include that in what I said above about "having a standing army" for a political ideology. Good elaboration on the point though.

To be able to deploy into government extremely-competent people whose market-clearing rate of compensation is far in excess of the pathetic sums we pay the civil service.

This is the way I have heard it described by think-tankers: Democratic shadow governments reside in universities, Republican shadow governments reside in think tanks (which are really just right-wing counter-institutions to the left-wing dominated universities in the first place).

Nah. Both of the shadow governments reside in K street where they work for a firm lobbying their former agency.

I think this is too cynical. The way I view most think tanks is doing the hard work of translating abstract ideological principles into actual policy. If I have a belief like "the criminal justice system treats wealthy people better than poor people to an unjust degree" I can't just go pass a law that says "the criminal justice system shall treat people more justly with respect to wealth disparities." Someone has to do the hard work of figuring out how my complaint actually manifests in the system (cash bail) and what policies could alleviate it (getting rid of cash bail). Viewed this way, the work of think tanks is necessary in our modern government. No legislator can be a domain expert on every area they are called to legislate on. Think tanks help that by synthesizing a legislators ideological commitments with domain expertise to produce palatable and effective policy.

I thought it was cynical too before I worked in a think tank. After working in one, and interacting with others in it. Their response is somewhere along the lines of "not cynical enough". Some of them don't even think of the first one as a point of think tanks. They just see think tanks purely as extractive entities from rich people that don't know what to do with their money.

What you describe is happening to some degree. I just think it is a minority of the resource spending and allocation. If it is more than 10% you have a rock solid institution. Average is closer to 1%. And bad ones are some negative percentage, in that they spend resources from their ideology only to actively hurt and confuse the cause they care about. PETA is an example of that.

They’re largely propaganda machines in my opinion. They exist to create consensus around an idea and to craft legislation to turn that consensus into law. The “ideological tax” you speak of is how those groups get the money to get the job done.

It seems to go in stages with the propaganda stage going first. Issue comes up. Think tanks find research to support the ideological agenda the think tank has. Then they issue white papers that summarize that research and debunk the opposition narrative. At the same time they issue the talking points that get injected into the media by aligned media outlets and politicians. At that point they start talking about legislation to fix the issue or blocking bad legislation.

I don’t think you can get rid of them entirely. They’re a big part of how the elites control culture. If you weaken or destroy that system another will be created or co-opted. Power is power.

I think you are espousing the normal take.

My main counter to that take is that they are just not effective. The good ones give the appearance of effectiveness because that is how you get more money and resources.

There is no need to get rid of them. Something can be negative, but the costs of dealing with it are far higher than just leaving it alone. I think that is the case with think tanks.

I think organs of consensus building are inherent to any group human activity much like a dominance hierarchy is. If you smash the current ones, you will find others taking their place. Think tanks are probably more effective than they look to us normal serfs on the outside of the power structure. Most of their work is laundered through the organs of consensus aimed at us — mostly media, political talking points, and influencers.

I don’t think you fight most of these things by destroying the think tanks that already exist. You do so, much like other institutions that build consensus, by building alternatives. The greatest enemy of the public schools are home schools as they effectively remove certain children from the early indoctrination curriculum that schooling is meant to provide. The greatest threat to universities are trade schools and children skipping college to go into trades. Current media and social media are best countered by alternatives. If I can watch media with a different perspective, or news slanted in a different direction, or listen to music that doesn’t line up with Consensus, then the Consensus loses control.

I don’t think you fight most of these things by destroying the think tanks that already exist.

But didn't he just say he wasn't interested in doing that in the parent comment?

The greatest enemy of the public schools are home schools as they effectively remove certain children from the early indoctrination curriculum that schooling is meant to provide.

Home schools aren't much of a threat because they're very limited in application. They allow small pockets of the less-indoctrinated (or otherwise-indoctrinated) but can't supplant the public schools. Vouchers and reasonably inexpensive private schools would be a real threat, but they keep getting killed or nerfed.

The greatest threat to universities are trade schools and children skipping college to go into trades.

Trades aren't a threat to universities. What would be is if employers stopped requiring degree for many high-status occupations, but they aren't going to... and if they tried, the governments would step in to require degrees, as they have for many licensed professions.

You’re right about the inherently small scaling. But small pockets of un-indoctrinated people can form nucleation points for larger groups. It’s a threat to them even if it’s never going to be a big thing.

A slightly less critical read could add the point:

They help politicians to design and pass actual policies that advance a given ideological agenda.

That is, if your think tank is focused in on immigration reform, and you've got some friendly politicians in office, and one of said politicians' staff calls you and says "Because of [event] immigration reform is now a major concern and we have a window to get some bills passed. Give us some moderate reform policies that we can present to the legislature."

Then the think tank pulls up its archives and can send over a 'package' of proposed legislation language, talking points, and research/studies they've conducted or collected in favor of the given policy, and can join in the campaign towards getting it passed.

This avoids the need for a politician to work too hard at becoming an expert on the topic at hand and designing bills from scratch.

Of course if the think tank ecosystem becomes too crowded, it probably makes it LESS likely for any legislation to get passed since every think tank is pushing their own favored issued or their own favored policy solution to a given issue, and politicians now are faced with deciding which ones they want to appease and which they want to anger, and are less likely to decide at all, I'd guess.

So think tanks are also probably constantly jockeying for status so they can get more funding and attention from pols so they can get more funding so they can get more attention... round and round it goes.

THAT is when they really become a grift, if you ask me. When they exist solely to convert money into public attention into more money (Hi there, Project 2025) without any real chance of getting a good policy agenda passed.

Not just the package, an actual set of personnel that can pass it without getting stuck or outmaneuvered.

I was recently thinking that many university departments are essentially left-wing think tanks. They have explicitly activist aims, produce low-quality research with conclusions that are at least directionally predetermined, and only hire people with certain ideologies. The main difference is that they're funded, or at least subsidized, by taxpayers.

Am I wrong in thinking that many think tanks, especially foreign policy ones, are also taxpayer-funded? I guess the Institute for the Study of War only lists a bunch of retired Pentagon folks as directors and donations from defense contractors (so maybe only slightly indirectly?). RAND and MITRE get some combination of public and private funds. Some of those aren't exactly known for being leftist peaceniks.

I'm not sure. I was thinking of the more ideological think tanks, like Heritage and the EPI.

Apparently Rand does get government funding, though I'm not sure whether it's contracting for specific research or open-ended grants.

The "tax" imposed by the think tanks is entirely voluntarily, and the wealthy people pay it because they support the goals and methods of the think tanks. The universities and other nominally-neutral but actually ideologically captured institutions are much more effective because they can obtain their funds either from governments (thus real live taxation) or from ideological neutrals and opponents as well as the aligned (in the case of universities gatekeeping careers, for instance, or professional organizations like the American Bar Association or American Medical Association)

I think the inside view for a lot of these people paying the tax is that it feels about as "voluntary" as actual taxes. Many of them have a sense that their political opponents pose a credible threat and danger to them and theirs.

I think ideologically capturing professions is short term gain for long term cost. These institutions will cost off their reputation for a time, and then everyone will learn to discount their value as neutral organizations. And their funding sources will start drying up.

I think ideologically capturing professions is short term gain for long term cost. These institutions will cost off their reputation for a time, and then everyone will learn to discount their value as neutral organizations. And their funding sources will start drying up.

We're in the long term, and this didn't happen. The strategy was to capture so many institutions that they can support each other's reputation. The media, the universities, the bureaucracy, the "scientific community", etc. It worked. There's no check against ground truth because that's too hard to do and too easy for the institutions to explain away.

I think they are starting to suffer. but I doubt you are satisfied with how much suffering and how fast it is happening.

A bunch of people did not trust the results of a major election in 2020. I'd say that is largely a trust issue brought about by the fact that many important institutions are clearly captured.

State legislatures have started banning DEI at universities. Next step is for them to give up entirely and start just cutting funding to them.

Many social sciences have reputations in the gutter because they spent too many years ideology focused rather than rigor focused. Psych, Sociology, etc.

Climate science is not trusted.

News orgs are hated.

Next step is for them to give up entirely and start just cutting funding to them.

The next step is actually to put political appointees in charge of everything at public universities and revoke tenure from everybody.

A bunch of people did not trust the results of a major election in 2020. I'd say that is largely a trust issue brought about by the fact that many important institutions are clearly captured.

And the captured institutions settled that argument decisively with the argumentum ad baculum.

State legislatures have started banning DEI at universities. Next step is for them to give up entirely and start just cutting funding to them.

We won't get there. The academic bureaucracy will resist by calling DEI something else and lying, while Federal bureaucracy works on correcting the problem by requiring DEI for Federal funding.

Many social sciences have reputations in the gutter because they spent too many years ideology focused rather than rigor focused. Psych, Sociology, etc.

People still believe their results. And they've been nonsense for even longer than they've been ideologically captured!

Climate science is not trusted.

Climate science is absolutely trusted. There are dissidents, but pushing decarbonization and that sort of thing is still a win for the Democrats because people trust climate science.

News orgs are hated.

Hated, yes. Utterly trusted, also yes. COVID proved that. And they're still considered (by normies) to be ideologically neutral even given their blatant editorializing in news stories.

I believe it is a race to the bottom type of situation. If the other side has ideological Institutions then you need their own to counter them. Wokeness came from ideological universities, and a bunch of orgs had to pop up to defend against it.

My point about these organizations being bad is that the woke fight might not have happened at all. There was a lack of things for leftist organizations to gather on. So they invented one.

To be clear, I wouldn't wish them away if it was an option. Something can be negative but the overall correct solution is to just do nothing about it.

within his executive right to fight the results of the 2020 election

Kind of depends what fight actually entails. There are things he could do and things he couldn't do, it can't be that literally any means he might have chosen are fine.

Indeed. And if he had, that would not have been within his rights and we'd be here saying "he did not have the right to fight the results of the 2020 election in that way"

I approved this, with misgivings, because it looks a lot like boo-outgroup trollbait. There is certainly an argument here and a point of view, and posting polemics about how only Trump will save us is allowed, but your user name and your "first" post under this new account has a familiar smell to it.

I am saying this so you are aware, we made a decision to approve your post, but we have doubts about your intentions. Usually people who want to create a new alt let us know about it and who they were previously if they want to convince us they are returning in good faith.

I'm gonna second 'troll'. There's definitely righties willing to make argument this bad, but they're not going to make this argument. In particular:

  • There are way too many better examples of biased output from media than the New Republic -- an openly leftist media org is nowhere near as demonstrative as a 'centrist-claiming' one -- and too many better examples of TNR bias exist than quoting something technically true. CNN had a dem talking head online saying Trump "would absolutely try to exterminate people". Cfe the recent ProPublica abortion piece NaraBurns highlighted. And for TNR, 'do you know who else played in Madison Square Garden' is literally on the front page now.
  • "the truth is that Trump, being president and having access to top secret information, knows things we don't" is... the sort of thing that looks like it got pulled from a discussion on the classified documents trials. It makes some approximation of sense there; it's too unrelated from even the often-schizophrenic theories for voter stuff, if only because it would paint Trump's post-J6 unwillingness to declassify whatever more transparently fake than the UFO stuff.
  • People who care enough about this to write at length aren't going to dismiss sketchy witnesses without naming them or some shape of what they're supposed to be lying about. I recognize I'm at the upper end of grudge-holding, here, but there's just been so many incredible claims that just shrugging about who or what makes for a weird bit.
  • A lot of the other terminology is way too hesitant to spell things out. "then the demographics of the next elections will favor the Democrats" is passive voice in the sort of way that ... uh, is a lot harder for Blue Tribers to not passive voice. "stuck with a notion of equality that is anything but" and "it's central to a nation that it defends its borders" are currently google-bombs pointing here today, while other framings of the same concept are well-established in other fields.
  • "my own mental health" isn't as much of a Blue Tribe shibboleth as 'for mental health reasons' or 'mental wellness reasons', but it's still weak evidence.
  • And, yes, the author's word choices and topics of focus don't match any of the right-wing long-term posters who had been present here and then deleted their accounts. This is not a Zontargs post.

It's probably worth letting it through anyway, but it's worth spelling out that it also should be collapsed and ignored unless someone pulls a silk purse from this sow's ear.

Do you think it's real though? "It comes down to who you trust, and I trust Trump to fight against the communism of the wokes." That seems like a joke to me, I would hypothesise it could be a liberal false flag post attempting to make republican supporters sound dumb(er).

This is obvious bullshit, I'm not sure why it got approved. The reference to Aurora seals it.

Some days I feel like my shadow's casting me Some days the sun don't shine Sometimes I wonder what tomorrow's gonna bring When I think about my dirty life and times One day I came to a fork in the road Folks, I just couldn't go where I was told Now they'll hunt me down and hang me for my crimes If I tell about my dirty life and times I had someone 'til she went out for a stroll Should have run after her It's hard to find a girl with a heart of gold When you're living in a four-letter world And if she won't love me then her sister will She's from Say-one-thing-and-mean-another's-ville And she can't seem to make up her mind When she hears about my dirty life and times

Banned for mangling Warren Zevon.

No, but seriously, even if you think someone is trolling, don't respond like this.

I'll eat a short ban and just be glad you recognized the lyrics.

A ban for 0.001 days seems appropriate.

To format a poetic stanza properly in Markdown, you need to type two spaces at the end of each line.

posting polemics about how only Trump will save us is allowed

I am pretty sure the point being made is the opposite, and the quotes and references are on-purpose bad just so they can point at this post and complain about how it's all dumb Trump supporters here.

That's possible. Is it TDS, BDS, or Poe's Law? So when we see a post like this, which could be sincere, or could be a troll, we have to make a judgment call. Usually we err on the side of allowing suspicious "new" accounts enough rope to hang themselves.

Why would we need that, considering for example that this far more overbearing paean by a fairly established account is sitting at +24 a bit further down? We are evidently in Poe's Law territory ether way.

That overbearing paean was at least a genuine, defendable pro-Trump case; it was a steelman of very strongly enthusiastic support. As opposed to OP here who made a post to see if people would even upvote a strawman if it was pro-Trump.

I don't think that this is what "steelman" usually means, unless you are actually trying to imply that statements "we were literally on the cusp of world peace" are the most defensible version of the case for Trump. That would mean the case for Trump is really rather indefensible, which lends credence to "all dumb Trump supporters".

It is no state secret that Harris has radically shifted numerous political positions in the last few months. She was for banning fracking and now she is for fracking. She wanted a mandatory gun buyback and now is touting her supposed Glock ownership. She wanted to ban private health insurance and now believes in it. She thought the wall was racist and wanted to ban ICE; now not so much.

What I found interesting was how she talked about why she changed (assuming for a second she actually changed). She said that as VP she has been traveling the country and listening to people. And she really wanted to form a consensus.

Of course, every presidential candidate wants to “unify.” But in explaining how Harris derives her views (assuming in earnest) she goes to consensus. I don’t think anyone has commented on this but this shows the difference between male decision making and female decision making. Male decision making often tries to figure out what he thinks is true whereas female decision making tries to figure out what belief is most popular. As a male I find the first great and shudder at the latter. Of course maybe there is some wisdom in the wisdom of crowds (though perhaps you need some of that male thinking for wisdom of crowds to work!)

It may in part explain the gender difference that is emerging in the polls. It isn’t that men hate women; they shudder at consensus decision making by a leader.

I don't think Kamala being a woman has much to do with it. There's plenty of male empty suits who pick their words badly. I think she's just an empty suit who picks her words badly.

This doesn't make her unique among politicians. It makes her unique among presidential candidates, sure, but there's plenty of old school politicians at lower levels who take whatever stand they believe they have to take to get elected and blatantly grasp for an explanation afterwards. And she's a presidential candidate this round because she was Joe Biden's veep, and that's mostly from being black, not from being a woman.

In every one of those situations she's moving away from her base.

My guess is that the word "consensus" tested well with the base as the thing to say to justify the change.

So yes, that base is women but otherwise "consensus" has nothing to do with the actual decision making process.

Male decision making often tries to figure out what he thinks is true whereas female decision making tries to figure out what belief is most popular.

[citation needed]

Flippant quip aside, I partly agree with your assertion. In my experience, women are more likely to seek consensus. That probably generalizes, since women are about half a standard deviation higher on the agreeableness scale than men, on average.

I disagree that the gender analogy (women : popular ideas) is (men : true ideas). Quite frankly, I see as much popular bullshit spewing from men as I do from women. What I agree to, however, is that (in general) when women discuss a subject they are likely to converge towards a consensus opinion without much overt argument, whereas (again, in general), men will overtly argue for their takes, and use the arguments as opportunity to jockey for position among their group.

Here's the thing: I am a mathematician, and I worked and argued with plenty of other women in math, tech and engineering, who tend to be more disagreeable (in terms of Big-5 personality traits) then women in general. The disagreeable women are no more likely to gently gravitate to consensus then the equally disagreeable men.

Meanwhile, when I worked with teachers (who tend to be more agreeable), I had employ extreme teaching techniques to encourage them to push back on another's asinine assertions, men as well as women.

On truth-seeking versus popular-ideas-seeking: engineers and techs are just as motivated to determine the truth, be they men or women, because in those fields, you test your ideas against reality, and reality doesn't care about the provenance of your ideas. Writers and philosophers are just as motivated to determine what will be popular (or better yet, viral), be they men or women, because in those fields, the test for your ideas is the potency of them as memes--how well your ideas compete for memetic space within your society (more importantly, the part of that society that determines your social status).

So I assert that the pattern you observe--that women tend to gravitate to popular opinions while men appear to seek the truth--is best explained by two factors:

  • Women are more agreeable then men, in general;

  • Men are more concentrated in fields where ideas are tested against reality, and women are more concentrated in fields where the value of ideas are in their memetic potency.

PS. This is also a response to @monoamine and @falling-star, giving an N = 1 sample for how a female Mottizen replies to the post.

Lizard brain moment.

Male communication among other males is (often physical) combative and jockeying until status hierarchy is established. Then once the hierarchy is established, there is peace. When status is gained from being right in this hierarchy, and the main method of jockeying is attacking their position for being wrong, then naturally this will align towards truth-seeking over time. A male will get drunk and attack the concept of gravity until someone (usually another guy) pushes him off a ledge.

Female communication among other females is memetic, status is not gained from being right but by being convincing. Women don't care about the concept of gravity, what matters is if they can get other people to agree with them that gravity exists/doesn't exist. They are not going to push anyone off the cliff to test that theory, because they (correctly) intuit that the fall will kill one of them.

When status is gained from being right in this hierarchy, and the main method of jockeying is attacking their position for being wrong, then naturally this will align towards truth-seeking over time.

I am trying to parse your argument, since it's in the "if A then B" form and you didn't explicitly claim that A is true (here: A = "male status is gained from being right").

If you were asserting that male status is gained from being right, then your entire argument would imply that no male-dominated society will have top-down beliefs that were contrary to reality. How I wish that were true, but history proves otherwise. (see most religions, or North Korea)

(case in point: every geek that got bullied by the popular jocks)

Rather, I assert that men as well as women gain status not from being right but by being convincing. Many men tend to do it in a more straightforward argumentative way, many women tend to do it by building coalitions and seeking consensus, I will give you that. (Always exceptions, I know enough agreeable men and disagreeable women to know that the generalization doesn't always hold.)

Half there, guys seek status in many ways and contexts. Being right is one. If there is more status to be gained by beating the other guy's head in with a rock, unga bunga applies. The point is, men attack each other to figure out where they stand. Conflict comes from not knowing where they stand and where others stand in relation to them. If you don't know how strong/tall/rich/smart that guy is, you're gonna try and find out.

How about:

Among men, men get status through demonstrating situational-appropriate competence. When the group already has a clearly established hierarchy of competence, men defer along the hierarchical lines. If hierarchy is not yet established, or new evidence suggests that the established hierarchy is no longer deserved, men jostle for status primarily in confrontational style that calls into question the level of competence of the one who slipped up as compared to the challenger.

Do you agree with this generalization? If not, what part would you change?

Don't agree with this statement. As mentioned, competence is not the only metric. It is the metric when competence is what is being measured.

If you're measuring strength, then the strongest man wins, no amount of bullshitting will stop the stronger man from being stronger.

In my observation, I have noticed that male conflict comes from not knowing who is to be master. Once they know where they stand in relation to other males, there is less conflict. This is why I consider the male conflict model better at aligning for truth-seeking, because they will fight each other until they figure out what wins (and what wins is usually rigorously tested by other men trying to attack or disprove it).

Female conflict is different. I have observed that female conflict comes from the struggle to identify and ostracize the outlier that might cause trouble to the group (pick your group, family, workgroup, sports team, social network circle). Therefore, the conflict model trends towards groupthink over acknowledgement and acceptance of any truth that might cause issues within the group.

Thanks for clarifying your perspective!

I think you've got cause and effect completely backwards on your second factor.

Yes, you are right. I agree that, because a field's goal is memetic potency, women are more likely to be drawn to it. Thanks for pointing that out.

On the other hand, there is a reinforcing factor at play, too. If someone falls ass-backwards into mathematics, one will still learn how to question assertions and demand proof. If someone gets steered into social studies, one will still learn how to test the waters with some friendlies--and to do it subtly, in I-came-across-this-thought kind of way--before publicizing it more broadly.

The reinforcing factor is more like a loop: E.g., because most mathematicians are disagreeable, the confrontational style of argumentation gets more highly prized in the field. E.g., because most social studies teachers are agreeable, consensus-building styles get more highly prized in the field.

I'd be curious to see what female Mottizens (do any exist?) would respond to this post with.

There's at least 4 I know of.

In a policy-oriented, non-tribal democracy, the "male" mode seems better for reflecting voter preference: everyone can vote for the candidate that agrees with their beliefs and values, with no worries that the rug will be pulled after the election as the candidate does a 180. In a tribalised or one-party democracy where elections are not decided on policy, what you call the "female" mode seems better: the majority policy preferences will at least be approximately realised at the "winning candidate does whatever is popular" stage.

In concrete terms, imagine if 90% of Americans were against open borders, but there are 53% of voters who will vote Democrats no matter what. Would you rather Democratic leadership does the masculine thing and stand on the principle of open borders because they determined this is correct, or they yield to what is popular?

Just to pick two recent examples, Starmer and Biden the two promised moderates acted in a rather far left manner. It isn't good odds to bet that Kamala, the most liberal senator which has taken quite extreme positions over the years, is genuinely moving to the center.

Much of the discourse about centrism, moderation is it self a far left psyop. How this works is they want a uniparty which includes the opposition party and themselves all sharing a far left agenda and excluding sensible agendas like opposing mass migration, illegal migration, and calling them selves moderate, opposition is labeled far right, disinformation promoters, etc, etc.

This agenda also includes in addition to the progressive stack, and delegitimizing the interests and demonizing those harmed by it that would oppose it, the obvious discrimination, but also authoritarianism against any dissent, including the right of freedom of speech. Which Kamala and her vice president have been rather open about how what they consider hate speech is not freedom of speech.

Anyway, it is the goal of the mainstream left to create a very rigid far left ideological hegemony and the appearance of wide bipartisan consensus.

However, it is true that women voters have proven to be more aligned with this agenda, at least in countries like the USA. They are also polled to be quite more against freedom of speech and pro progressive authoritarianism than men.

As for leftist politicians who are male vs female leftist, I don't think it matters that much. The average is at such, but once you have selected for a politician of this ideology and faction, you are going to get something similar.

Much simpler explanation is that she still wants to do those things but is lying about them because she knows that they are unpopular and she won't be able to do them if she doesn't get elected. This is not really a gendered phenomenon.

I noted that as a possibility. I was just trying to engage her rhetoric as if it was honest.

That seems like a silly thing to do. Politicians usually say what polls well, not what they will do.

Yeah. I guess the other point is I don’t think a male would explain policy changes as listening to consensus. So even if you think (and I would count myself in that group) that Harris is lying it is interesting how she lies.

Basing your conclusions as to gender differences on something so unlikely makes them pretty empty, is the thing.

She may reply. Even if she is lying (which I agree she probably is) how she lies is gendered.

Male decision making often tries to figure out what he thinks is true whereas female decision making tries to figure out what belief is most popular

Can you substantiate this? Because this really doesn't match my experience. Differences between men and women in terms of decision-making strike me as more about performing different virtues for different audiences. A "good" man is tough and decisive, so men making decisions try to look tough and decisive. A "good" woman is supportive and non-confrontational, so women making decisions try to seek consensus (or at least look like they have). Truth is a tertiary concern, or people already think they know what is true.

I would expect those to be hyperbeliefs anyway. If there is a fairly robust intersubjective agreement on what constitutes a "good man" or a "good woman", people are going to pursue it, causing the 'fiction' to leak more and more into reality. If people choose partners based on these definitions, they will leak into genetics generation by generation as well.

Not exactly the same but there are known differences

Agreeableness involves the tendency toward cooperation, maintenance of social harmony, and consideration of the concerns of others

Women score half a standard deviation higher in agreeableness than men. For reference male/female height is 1 SD

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

For reference male/female height is 1 SD

It's around 2 SD.

You're right. Calculating using Our world in data figures gives 1.87

shes a politician not a philosopher, its not her job to seek truth but to win votes and serve the people

you try to make it seem like because shes a woman she is less objective but trying to give voters what they want is the objectively right move in her position

Yes, just about every successful politician is like that. Ideally, you pick out your policies well in advance so that you don't have to do a 180 in public, but sometimes it can't be avoided. Often, you can just get by with deemphasizing something you used to talk a lot about instead of actively coming out in support of the other side.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, you still might want to change your opinions because the ones which allow you to rise in a party are different from the ones which win elections.

Having a leader who has principles and is willing to sacrifice their reelection to follow their principles is better than having an opportunistic leader who will do whatever the public wants only if their principles are good principles, followed sensibly.

I think that misunderstands a Republican democracy. The theory isn’t to have a leader that simply does what the public wants. The idea is for a leader who the public can believe in to make the right decisions. Simply delegating those decisions to consensus seems to my mind to be an abandonment of leadership but the question really is what is the better style of leadership.

I’m suggesting Harris has a different leadership style. Maybe some people prefer it. My point is that the difference is in part gendered.

The idea is for a leader who the public can believe in to make the right decisions.

Well, that's just it. The "right decision" is often a subject to with the people believe it is.

As Edmund Burke famously put it —

His unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. ... Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

I like this quote. I'm a (very minor) elected official myself, and I treated the campaign almost like a job interview. I was entirely honest about my opinions under the theory that I was going to be elected to lead and make decisions and the public should know what decisions I was likely to make. If I won the election, that meant that the public wanted people with my specific ideas in the office.

I am intensely frustrated by my fellow representatives who constantly want to circle back to public opinion when deciding issues -- they elected YOU, right? So what the public WANTS is you to make a decision in accordance with the values you ran on. If we're just going to punt on decisions every time then we're just stuffed shirts; there's no need for elected representatives at all, we'll just run Twitter polls every week and we can stay home.

I’ve often thought on areas where the representative does not have strong convictions or recognizes there is significant uncertainty, it makes sense to side with consensus.

But it makes zero sense to do so on important issues wherein the rep does have strong convictions.

You'd be a fool to think she cares about any of these issues and won't immediately make a hard left turn on guns and the border once she is elected.

Right now she needs consensus from the people.

Once in office, she will only need consensus from powerful people within her own party.

Do you honestly believe that Kamala will start mass deporting illegals because that's what the majority of people in the US want according to polls?

I think that many politicians rarely genuinely hold any position. They research and float various positions, hoping to find ones that resound with voters and then lean into those positions. Previously in her career, Harris did well with some of these more progressive positions, partly because she began in Cali, partly because Obama/Biden were claiming the middle, partly because of her starting diversity hand and partly because progressives were an ascendant influence. Now, she needs to move to the middle and is. Not every Dem national candidate is going to be a southern governor like Clinton, but probably all candidates are going to adapt like Clinton.

Every politician should be a mix between "leader" and "representative." It's up to the voters to choose exactly how they want their mix tuned.

Trump's populism has recently proven the current electoral effectiveness of being representative. Democrats have adapted to the meta.

I think gender differences have more to do with which groups each party and politician is better at representing than any preference for different styles. You could use gender essentialist framing to argue that women should prefer a "leader" because they're less able to lead themselves and be equivalently wrong because either way, it's a just-so story.

It probably is a just so story. I was just thinking the so called long house and then came across Harris’ statements. The two resonated.


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