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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   32165 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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The parsimonious explanation is that Musk is using his voice to mold opinion, not to plainly tell the truth. This is “immoral” in the sense that punching someone is immoral, when they have been punching you for years.

Hard disagree. If your opponent burns down the epistemic commons, and you respond in kind, you have just ceded the moral high ground. See Scott Alexander's Guided By The Beauty Of Our Weapons:

Logical debate has one advantage over narrative, rhetoric, and violence: it’s an asymmetric weapon. That is, it’s a weapon which is stronger in the hands of the good guys than in the hands of the bad guys. In ideal conditions (which may or may not ever happen in real life) – the kind of conditions where everyone is charitable and intelligent and wise – the good guys will be able to present stronger evidence, cite more experts, and invoke more compelling moral principles.

If you abandon Simulacrum Level 1, you might win or lose, but to a proponent of the truth it will not matter more than it would matter to an atheist which religion won the memetic competition and established a theocracy.

Also, Hanania argues that Musk is worse than the liberals:

The worst offense here is the deboosting of links. Under the old regime, liberals wanted you to only rely on what they considered credible sources of information. Musk doesn’t want you to read anything at all that is not in meme or tweet form.

The woke left has obviously not been a steadfast ally of the Truth. They certainly pick the studies they cite as cannon fodder for their side, and this has skewed all of the social 'sciences'. The embrace blank-slatism to a degree that they are unable to even engage with HBD on its merits. But to their credit, they at least believe that their world view is correct. This opens up the -- theoretical -- possibility to engage with them over the factual state of the world and convert them.

By contrast, Trump (the guy who Musk is backing and sucking up to) has had a total disregard for Level 1 through his entire political career: birtherism, qanon, election denial to the migrants eating cats and dogs. He is not so much lying (which would mean knowing the object level truth, than subverting it) as much as bullshitting and presumably, the median Trump voter knows this.

The "epistemic commons" have not been "burned down" because they never existed in the first place as a "commons" that excludes a plurality or more of the population is nothing of the sort.

What has been badly damaged is the Blue/Grey tribe's ability to dictate the rules of engagement and maintain the structural integrity of thier information bubbles.

There is no "sense making crisis" there is only a subset of people who are the intellectual equivalent of flightless birds on an isolated island who hadn't had to worry about predatory rodents until a bunch of jerks showed up in a boat and now its the fucking apocalypse.

If you abandon Simulacrum Level 1, you might win or lose, but to a proponent of the truth it will not matter more than it would matter to an atheist which religion won the memetic competition and established a theocracy.

In other words a whole lot, depending on how each religion feels about burning atheists at the stake.

He is not so much lying (which would mean knowing the object level truth, than subverting it) as much as bullshitting and presumably, the median Trump voter knows this.

I'm not sure the median Trump voter knows that so much as does not pay attention to politics?

The median voter does not necessarily engage in this kind of theorising. I suspect the median voter just votes straight R or straight D because that is what they have always done. I suspect that what the median Trump voter knows is more along the lines of - Trump's opponents constantly accuse him of lying, they are liars themselves, sure Trump can be a bit hyperbolic sometimes, but he's correct on the big picture. And then they probably don't think too much about specific details.

The worst offense here is the deboosting of links. Under the old regime, liberals wanted you to only rely on what they considered credible sources of information. Musk doesn’t want you to read anything at all that is not in meme or tweet form.

That’s quite a leap. The more likely explanation is they are optimizing for time spent on X.

When people leave the app they aren’t consuming your ads and might not resume using your app for many hours or days.

Elon found himself with an unprofitable company and took a lot of drastic steps to get to profitability.

This is also parsimonious with Elon’s own recommendation for putting links in a reply. They don’t want people bouncing directly from feed to another surface.

It's funny how so many people I read who are made at Musk are writers who don't have the ability to promote their Non-X writing platforms on X anymore. They find this to be a huge injustice and immoral, I find it mostly annoying because I have to read them complaining about it all the time.

Platform X doesn't let me promote other platform Y doesn't seem like a shocking situation to me. Nothing is preventing them from writing an X-article or wtf X calls their longer form platform if it bothers them so much. They're not being censored, they're being encouraged to produce on the same site they're promoting on.

The more likely explanation is they are optimizing for time spent on X

Fine, but wasn't Elon's whole motivation for buying X to improve or level in some way the social media information space? With which the link de-boosting works at total cross-purposes.

I guess the first priority is making the site self-sustaining.

This opens up the -- theoretical -- possibility to engage with them over the factual state of the world and convert them.

Many of them explicitly say "do not even try to understand what racists are thinking -- or you might yourself turn into a racist".

Yes, but I would rather deal with hypocrites who claim to be on the side of truth and logic than with honest conflict theorists, because with the former there is an opening, however small, to engage intellectually, while with the latter there can be only war. Obviously both sorts exist on either side and we may disagree on their proportions, but to me it seems clear that the median woke progressive is more of a hypocrite (based on revealed preferences when it comes to lifestyle, the neighborhoods they move to, etc.) while the median dissident rightist is more of a conflict theorist.

I specualte that often two conflict theorists often ally against third conflict theorist, and that conflict vs mistake is false dichotomy.

I dunno, I would rather my side wins battles rather than constantly loses them while “fighting fair” against an opponent who refuses to even entertain the idea.

Truth matters in pragmatic affairs science, or from purely philosophical perspective - but it has never mattered in politics. Nope, not ever. This is perhaps the one area postmodernists get it right, in the struggle for power in the political arena, the winners get to tell you what the truth is.

The way I would put it is that there is a correct way to do things, but the people who believe in it were lulled into a false understanding of the world and exploited by the unscrupulous. By the time enough of them woke up to do anything about it the game had already been thoroughly rigged against them, so they were forced to turn to the unscrupulous to fend them off.

I would then go on to say that that through something like deus ex machina, they somehow managed to get Trump. And that his deceptions are red tribe styled not blue tribe and that's essentially what this disagreement is about.

But I left that off the first bit because then the first bit is easier to agree with. Because that's how little effort it takes to influence people if you know what you are doing, and for all their faults the media does know how to influence people.

If your opponent burns down the epistemic commons, and you respond in kind, you have just ceded the moral high ground.

It turns out the moral high ground is not useful.

The woke left has obviously not been a steadfast ally of the Truth. They certainly pick the studies they cite as cannon fodder for their side, and this has skewed all of the social 'sciences'.

And they've got something better than objective truth. They define the accepted truth. If you try to contradict them, they'll print a thousand authoritative studies that back up their work and prove you're not only an evil racist but an ignorant science denier too. THAT is useful. That means that whatever "objective criteria" you try to institute, they can define the truth so those criteria support whatever they want. You can't beat this with words; you can only beat this with an "objective truth" they can't mess with. Not one "so obvious" they can't mess with it, because there's nothing so obvious. One that is as futile to deny as an oncoming train.

It turns out the moral high ground is not useful.

I, as a person who hates and argues against the act of doxxing--regardless of who is involved, have just met an argument I can't defeat.

"Moral High Ground?" Fuggedabout it.

If that's a veiled threat, don't bother; I've already been doxxed.

If not, the point of the term "moral high ground" is that "high ground" is in some way a superior tactical position. If it is not, the term is misleading. Without that implication, complaining that someone should not respond because they will lose the "moral high ground" is basically saying they should follow your (not their!) principles and lose rather than violate them and stand a chance. If you want to say that, say that; using the analogy of a "moral high ground" implies otherwise.

I was absolutely sincere, very confused why you thought it was threat. I think Doxxing is about the most evil and dishonorable thing you can do with the Internet. I consider Swatting a form of doxxing.

What other argument--aside from "moral high ground" is there to not dox people?

It turns out the moral high ground is not useful.

And they've got something better than objective truth. They define the accepted truth. If you try to contradict them, they'll print a thousand authoritative studies that back up their work and prove you're not only an evil racist but an ignorant science denier too. THAT is useful. That means that whatever "objective criteria" you try to institute, they can define the truth so those criteria support whatever they want. You can't beat this with words; you can only beat this with an "objective truth" they can't mess with. Not one "so obvious" they can't mess with it, because there's nothing so obvious. One that is as futile to deny as an oncoming train.

they they they

The claim was that team Musk+Trump have left the level 1 reality + destroying regular people's opportunity to seriously discuss level 1 reality on social media. Instead of employing " "objective truth" " in quotes, they employ bullshit. As far as I understand, you argue it is good and necessary because you will lose to "they" (Team Blue) otherwise?

Consider the downside of this policy: There are several examples modern and past what happens to a country when its governance is based on bullshit. Requiring your underlings and associates to repeat your bullshit back to you leads to success of people who are good at bullshitting or stupid enough not to know the difference. When ideological vibes and feels become more important than material reality, being knowledgeable about material reality becomes a hindrance in a smart person's career. Venezuela and South Africa are prime examples of such countries. If you try to build a dystopia of lies out of Ayn Rand novel except nominal political valence switched, more likely you are going to get more of Trumpzuela where big corp CEOs continue to get fat government contracts to build things that don't work as long they fat flatter Trump's ego. It is unlikely to be a cathartic step in a heroic journey where you win the fight and get to start building country you like after you win. The bullshit apparatus will say that fight is still going on no matter what it achieves. It was built for having power and repeating bullshit and after it has been built, its prime objective is to perpetuate itself.

This dovetails to a more important complaint. If the politician supposedly representing my tribe is running on vibes and bullshit, I can't trust them to do anything long-term useful. Musk claims that DOGE has achieved an amount-you-can't-keep-track-of in saving government expenses and exposing fraud but it has not. Instead, the claim is that Musk does his best to foster an information environment where it is difficult to find out what they really achieved and how they could achieve what they set out to do.

Let me extrapolate: Team Red says they will do something about gender ideology in schools, do something about the border and the illegals, do something about China, do something about economy and trade. Do I really want to hear about Team Red's performance concerning these issues by the way of DOGEfied information environment? Truth-seeker is always in danger of learning something new, followers of philosophical system of abandon-reality get to bullshit everyone, including their voters.

The claim was that team Musk+Trump have left the level 1 reality + destroying regular people's opportunity to seriously discuss level 1 reality on social media. Instead of employing " "objective truth" " in quotes, they employ bullshit. As far as I understand, you argue it is good and necessary because you will lose to "they" (Team Blue) otherwise?

I am saying that most of social media was never really discussing "objective truth". Instead, they were discussing accepted truth, as defined by the institutions. Trying to hew to THAT means you lose, because the institutions are controlled by Team Blue.

Bullshit, of course, has been a staple of political discourse forever. It's just that Team Blue has been able to pass their bullshit off as objective truth for a long time.

Consider the downside of this policy: There are several examples modern and past what happens to a country when its governance is based on bullshit. Requiring your underlings and associates to repeat your bullshit back to you leads to success of people who are good at bullshitting or stupid enough not to know the difference.

This is where Team Blue was taking us.

Musk claims that DOGE has achieved an amount-you-can't-keep-track-of in saving government expenses and exposing fraud but it has not. Instead, the claim is that Musk does his best to foster an information environment where it is difficult to find out what they really achieved and how they could achieve what they set out to do.

One cannot expect Musk, as a principal of DOGE, to give objectively true facts about it. He will boost it and should be expected to do so.

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