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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   35147 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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it comes up quite a lot (1, 2, 3), and I don't know how you want to invoke his name without either implying authoritarian measures

I don't know if he's said it publicly, but you had it right here, Trace invokes LKY to imply authoritarian measures. You got most of the way to understanding it and I think this was because it was easy.

why he's in favor of executing drug dealers, but against lethal self-defense when faced with a lynch-mob?

I think you are strawmanning because I don't understand him to be against self-defense from people faced with a lynch-mob. If I'm mistaken about this you can provide a link to him saying so, but otherwise I'm comfortable assuming this to be another case of you imagining your political enemy to hold beliefs he does not actually hold.

I think you are strawmanning because I don't understand him to be against self-defense from people faced with a lynch-mob.

The argument I got in with him, that he has since pointed to as one of the bigger impetuses for creating the Schism, was specifically over whether it was appropriate for a law-abiding individual to use a gun to defend themselves from mob violence. I really do not want to misrepresent him, but his position very clearly seemed to be that it is better for the mob to be able to attack an unarmed person, than for an armed person to defend themselves from the mob with lethal force. He claimed (correctly) that since mob violence tends to be less lethal than gunfire, letting the mob brutalize helpless victims would result in fewer overall deaths. He claimed that the obvious best solution was for the authorities to crack down on the mobs in the first place, but when pressed with the then-current situation of the authorities ceding the streets to the mob, he stuck, as it were, to his guns.

I've seen a lot of morally-repugnant arguments here in my time. I'm quite sure I've seen many worse arguments than his. That one, though, is probably the widest spread between repugnance of argument and regard I had previously held for the arguer, ever. I've always respected Trace a great deal: I've spent enough time conversing with him over the years to know that he's a thoughtful, considerate, intelligent person. The lesson I drew from that conversation was that those qualities are insufficient for functional cooperation; it is, in the end, values which ultimately matter.

Here's the thread in question, read it for yourself. I'd be interested in your assessment of the arguments presented.

I would describe his overall argument as "Rittenhouse shouldn't have brought a gun to a skateboard fight precisely because something like that might happen." There seems to be a factual disagreement about how likely Rittenhouse was to die there with Trace thinking it was a 1-2% chance, and also a moral disagreement about what likelihood of death you need to be facing before you're allowed to use lethal self-defense, with Trace's answer at "more than 2%, less than 100%".

Granting Trace's facts, I'd say he supports lethal self-defense for people faced with a lynch-mob, and simply doesn't think Rittenhouse was facing a lynch mob. Granting some other set of facts I suppose you could frame it as "But it was a lynch-mob, and Trace opposed it, therefore he opposes self-defense from lynch-mobs in cases where he mistakenly believes them not to be lynch-mobs", but that seems like a boring semantic argument.

The obvious next step in Trace's argument and a sentiment I remember him expressing is that rather than letting himself get beaten, Rittenhouse shouldn't have been there at all. Suppose there's a maniac with an axe standing in the middle of nowhere shouting "If you walk near me I'll kill you", and you have a gun. The libertarian says you have every right to walk near him and then, when he tries to kill you with his axe, shoot him in self defense. Trace says killing is bad and you shouldn't pick a fight with that guy when you could just walk around him. I expect Trace would be a lot more sympathetic to Rittenhouse if he got mobbed while walking home from work, rather than having gone out of his way to show up at a riot.

I would describe his overall argument as "Rittenhouse shouldn't have brought a gun to a skateboard fight precisely because something like that might happen."

That is certainly how I understood his argument.

There seems to be a factual disagreement about how likely Rittenhouse was to die there with Trace thinking it was a 1-2% chance, and also a moral disagreement about what likelihood of death you need to be facing before you're allowed to use lethal self-defense, with Trace's answer at "more than 2%, less than 100%".

For my part, I think (and thought at the time) that his assessment of the chance of death is entirely reasonable. I can also readily agree that the label of "Lynch Mob" is questionable unless the clear intent of the mob is murder, with the proviso that I have absolutely zero expectation or belief that this distinction will be applied in a principled fashion anywhere, ever. I also agree that Trace's core argument is "Rittenhouse probably wasn't going to die, so self-defense is inappropriate".

I find it insurmountably difficult to believe Trace or anyone supporting him would accept members of their ingroup receiving a compulsory invitation to a "skateboard fight" that the police simply stand aside for. I find it insurmountably difficult to believe Trace or anyone supporting him would accept access to public spaces and the exercise of their constitutional rights being treated as consent to a "skateboard fight" that the police simply stand aside for.

I also do not believe that Trace is a liar, nor do I believe that he's too stupid to understand the obvious implications of his argument. I notice I am confused.

My conclusion is that Shiri's Scissor is in fact real.

You guys, who haven’t heard a really bad Scissor statement yet and don’t know what it’s like – it’s easy for you to say “don’t let it manipulate you” or “we need a hard and fast policy of not letting ourselves fight over Scissor statements”. But how do you know you’re not in the wrong? How do you know there’s not an issue out there where, if you knew it, you would agree it would be better to just nuke the world and let us start over again from the sewer mutants, rather than let the sort of people who would support it continue to pollute the world with their presence? How do you know that you’re not like the schoolkid who superciliously says “Nothing is bad enough to deserve a swear word” when the worst that’s ever happened to her is dropping her lollipop in the dirt. If that schoolkid gets kidnapped and tortured, does she change her mind? If she can’t describe the torture to her schoolmates, but just says “a really bad thing happened to me”, and they still insist nothing could be bad enough to justify using swear words, who do you side with? Then why are you still thinking I’m “damaged” when I tell you I’ve seen the Scissor statement, and charity and compassion and unity can fuck off and die? Some last remnant of outside-view morality keeps me from writing the whole list here and letting you all exterminate yourselves. Some remnant of how I would have thought about these things a month ago holds me back.

That passage is a reasonably accurate description of my subjective experience of that period generally and my argument with Trace in particular.

At the end of the day, the part that confuses me the most is how he can believe that his preferred strategy is actually going to work. I, personally, will never trust or cooperate with him ever again. I will never stop holding his position against him so long as he holds it, and I will use it as an example of why other people should not trust or cooperate with him or anyone like him ever again. More generally, he has joined Ozzy and Zunger as prime examples of why mistake theory dooms us in the long-term: even with the best intentions, even under the best possible conditions, values incoherence is simply unsurvivable.

There are many frustrating parts here, but one of the notable ones is that people seem to read the above as an expression of personal animosity; as in, I dislike Trace as a person, and so I am framing that dislike as opposition to his policy positions. In fact, it is the exact opposite; as with Kulak, I quite enjoy debating with him and respect his intellect a great deal. But also like Kulak, he advances policies incompatible with peaceful coexistence.

The difference, of course, is that Trace's proscriptions were actually implemented.

I mean, that just begs the question of why the rioters who showed up with Glocks get moral priority over their victims, which iirc he never even engaged with except to shrug and point to it being the Current Year of Our Floyd.

I don't know if he's said it publicly, but you had it right here, Trace invokes LKY to imply authoritarian measures. You got most of the way to understanding it and I think this was because it was easy.

In all his time posting here, he never expressed a sentiment close to anything like "execute drug dealers", whenever he mentions Lee Kuan Yew he talks about bland things like "excellence", and the centrist-liberal audience he's trying to gather would blow a gasket if you recommended such authoritarian measures. I dunno, maybe he's hiding his power level, but I hardly find that interpretation more charitable.

Since you (wisely) demand a link for my claim about his opinions, I hope you understand that I'll need more than your say-so on this one.

I think you are strawmanning because I don't understand him to be against self-defense from people faced with a lynch-mob.

Here you go

I asked Trace about executing drug dealers, his words:

to be clear it’s not like I’m rabidly in favor but like on balance if it was on the table and culturally palatable I’d favor it like, if I were dictator and the median person was like me? execute away

That oughta be good enough for you. Now, about that link I asked for? Because I checked his Twitter for Rittenhouse and the literal first result says

understanding rittenhouse as self-defense is accurate

You're 0 for 2 here.

That oughta be good enough for you.

Not really. A privately communicated "well not really my top priority, but quite possibly, if more people thought like me", is not exactly what I'd call a ringing endorsement.

Now, about that link I asked for?

It's right there, directly above your comment?

The words "Here you go" are a link to my own comment which is not helpful when I requested a link to Trace saying something.

Oh, I meant to link the same comment later linked by FCFromSSC.

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