site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   34788 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

12
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

… Two elderly superhumans were competing for the presidency of the planet's foremost nation, USA: a 70-year-old schemer with obvious signs of sexual-pharmacological degeneration, and a 70-year-old demagogue, showman and professional bankrupt who had never been in politics before. […]

For a European, any medicine is poison: an evil which treats an even greater evil. This has been the basis of European medicine since antiquity. It is clear that no Europeans will take pills without a great and pressing need, especially if those pills affect the inner sanctum of man - his psyche.

Americans gobble up drugs by the handful, since for them they are not poisons but enhancers and dietary supplements. By the age of 50 an average American has enhanced himself to the stage of psychopathy, and then it gets worse and worse.

– t. Galkovsky

Sick burns. We're all living in America, though.

I've heard it asserted that European boxers were disgusted upon learning that Anglos do weight training to prepare for competitions. Those are supposed to be games, vigorous festivals of bodily perfection, causes for joy – the opposite of dreary displays of a peasant's work ethic or a merchant's cold numerate chase after marginal returns. Or something. Well you know how it turned out, and the role performance enhancing drugs play in competitive sports now. Moloch whose dumbbells are (mumble mumble), I guess. But don't the stunts of modern champions look positively superhuman? Don't those playful Chads of the all-natural era seem scrawny next to the optimized contemporary giants?

This jealous amazement underlies general American obsession with finding some edge, and specifically Silicon Valley fads like mindfulness meditation, diets and training routines, ADHD medication, microdosing LSD and now weirder prescription stuff. (A guy called Sam doing EMSAM, seriously?) The most egregious case was probably Serge Faguet. Like Sam, only on a much smaller scale, he crashed and burned thanks to his miracle enhancements (he had the bright idea of visiting Russia with LSD and amphetamine in his luggage). The most incredible bit of his story wasn't drugs – it was using fancy hearing aids without indications. To hear more than others.

All that being ridiculous enough, what is your actual objection? I may be wrong, but it seems you'd take issue with PEDs whether they work or not, regardless of their safety profile and side effects; they disgust you viscerally due to their inherent effect.

My hypothesis is that this is your lack of chutzpah talking. Fair play, equivalent exchange, no weird tricks, not trying to get something for nothing, not getting carried away with hypothetical astronomic returns, not gambling, not doing crazy drugs – those are reasonable defaults to avoid failure modes like St. Petersburging oneself, setting the community on fire or summoning Cthulhu. But like I've argued recently, chutzpah, the brazen rejection of those defaults, and pursuit of narrow unorthodox openings, can be instrumental for actually transcending the status quo. Sometimes it works, and works so well we've come to depend on it with all of our engineering and science and finance; it is reasonable, then, to ask if practicing it in a certain manner is justified in a specific case. This is a question of specifics.

Unfortunately, the specifics with current psychoactive drugs are pretty dismal even if they don't make you outright crazy. The brain is… complex; effects of any molecule peppered onto its mechanism are crude and untargeted. Using drugs to improve one's already healthy cognition is equivalent to using Curves in a graphical editor to «enhance» a picture, or naive transformations of sound: good enough if you have shit taste or sensory deficits, but it only destroys available information; wipes out subtle differences of pixel values by banding them; clips audio tones; reduces precision of inference; discretizes and roughens your thoughts. Across the multidimensional space of mental contents it erases the lion's share of possibilities and, may Allah forgive me for such mawkishness, the depth of human soul. It may work well enough in a predictable environment like school or the workspace of a linear worker, where prioritizing the few legible, measurable features the Boss cares about is a sensible trade-off. If you make high-uncertainty decisions, you may find that «production velocity» isn't as valuable as seeing clearly the road your'e on.

Drug enhancement does not disgust me any more than the normal condition. It is more noble to struggle against the limitations of human condition than to accept it. «Baseline humans aren't that cool» is something any transhumanist feels viscerally and seeks to remedy.

It is, however, prudent to acknowledge when you're being greedy and petulant in denying that the tech isn't there yet.

Or, well, that your scam is going tits up and you'd do well to liquidate it before collapsing the entire market.

It may work well enough in a predictable environment like school or the workspace of a linear worker, where prioritizing the few legible, measurable features the Boss cares about is a sensible trade-off.

In fairness it worked pretty well for Paul Erdös and Francis Crick too.

If performance-enhancing drugs actually had zero side effects, there would be no need to worry about fair play. It's not a fair play problem when an athlete has to wear shoes to participate in most sports, even though shoes give athletes an unearned advantage over athletes who don't wear shoes.

Drug enhancement does not disgust me any more than the normal condition. It is more noble to struggle against the limitations of human condition than to accept it. «Baseline humans aren't that cool» is something any transhumanist feels viscerally and seeks to remedy.

Some people can tolerate drugs well; for others it destroys them and even those around them. It's like a coin toss as to how someone will respond. With alcohol there is not as much variability compared to the more serious stuff, but it can still be pretty bad.

All that being ridiculous enough, what is your actual objection? I may be wrong, but it seems you'd take issue with PEDs whether they work or not, regardless of their safety profile and side effects; they disgust you viscerally due to their inherent effect.

As I mention in another reply, I'm actually still trying to parse exactly why I'm disgusted, which means that any answer is likely to be more rationalization than reality. I suspect that if there was truly no side effect, I wouldn't much care. In the case of these psychoactive drugs though, there always seems to be a side effect - in this case, there's video of SBF jittering in his chair like a crackhead. Worse still, the use of PEDs in this case isn't to some noble end, it's to spend more time running a harebrained financial scheme. I'm not disgusted by a cyclist taking EPO (even though it's cheating, I don't feel disgust), but I am disgusted by the inhuman looking freaks in bodybuilding taking steroids to make themselves that much more inhuman. Likewise, a caffeinated scientist doesn't disgust me, but a finance scammer on designer drugs does.

there's video of SBF jittering in his chair like a crackhead

maybe he's autistic?

In the case of these psychoactive drugs though, there always seems to be a side effect - in this case, there's video of SBF jittering in his chair like a crackhead.

IF you have a link handy, please give. I've got my treasured video of Hitler & George Floyd rhytmically jittering like crackheads, were I to add in Bankman the whole thing would be somewhat improved.

best I can do is a deepfake of Xi Jinping pulling his eyebrows out with tweezers, take it or leave it

LOL, are you curating a Stereotype Paragon of the Race collection?

No, but well, now that you've suggested it..

there's video of SBF jittering in his chair like a crackhead

Honestly I think a big part of that is Sam knowing his accounting is fraudulent and he's about to be fried, and desperately putting up a front of a weird whiz kid who's got it all under control.

It is part of the branding. If he looked like some boring guy in suit he probably would not have gotten as much media coverage.

I dunno, seems like he rode this horse into the ground, and seems to have had a pretty good time until now.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats