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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   14175 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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You're probably right that it's a deepity, but Scott was still wrong by arguing that it is false. Arguing that "bLACK lIVES mATTER" is false is not really going to get you anywhere, but you can argue that the people saying it are retarded.

Scott is correct that there are a bunch of retards throwing around an inane phrase in a nearly meaningless way, but his argument is a jumbled mess and goes too far into the weeds trying to argue that the phrase itself is false, rather than simply arguing that the logic after retards contorted the phrase is wrong.

Perhaps many deepities are also scissor statements?

Perhaps, but I don't believe the statement itself is a scissor. The entirety of the scissoring is from the community and context around the statement. If you asked people about "bLACK lIVES mATTER" in 2001, very few people would consider it divisive, but the fact that the enemy has turned it into a slogan and oath of loyalty has made it that.

I think actual scissor statements encode their scissoring in their meaning. Something like "Trans should/shouldn't be allowed to compete in women's sports" is something that would be durable through rephrasing, and also something that someone without cultural context can still form a strong opinion either way about.

Mod hat off, but I really wish that Tumblr-style sneering by typing "in bRoKeN Case To MeAn THiS iZ St00P1D" would die.

Would you consider the slogan "black lives matter" (confused by your odd capitalisation) a deepity? To me it comes off more as a motte-and-bailey argument. I can't see any interpretation of the slogan "black lives matter" which is factually untrue, but which would be profound if it was true.

I agree it is not a deepity, or at least not a central example of one. The bailey of BLM is "black lives should matter, but in fact they do not matter to the police who gets away with killing black men at random".

This is a bit more distance than saying "Everything happens for a reason, and the true reasons for things happening are non-mundane woo." Or "beauty is only skin deep, so people who care about beauty are shallow".

The bailey of BLM is "black lives should matter, but in fact they do not matter to the police who gets away with killing black men at random".

I haven't run the numbers myself, but I would be thoroughly unsurprised to find out that the large spike in murders starting mid 2020, which is IMO at least partially attributable to "BLM," actually caused an increase in the total number of murdered black lives. Uncharitably, "The purpose of BLM is to secure sinecures for friendly academics" seems a POSIWID-framing of the situation, which I'm partially inclined to believe as someone who actually wants to care about (all) lives.

I haven't run the numbers myself, but I would be thoroughly unsurprised to find out that the large spike in murders starting mid 2020, which is IMO at least partially attributable to "BLM," actually caused an increase in the total number of murdered black lives.

You are correct.

You want black people to stop murdering each other? How dare you judge their culture by your colonial White values.

I jest, I jest. But the truth is that BLM was never about the big picture outcome. They were zooming in on a small part of police conduct and deciding that this was the real purpose of the police, and that they would be better off if there were no cops.

I think a model of their movement would have to recognize different kinds of actors. The people who are genuinely disgusted by police misconduct. Rioters who are happy for whatever reason to riot. Dogmatic wokes who believe that skin color indicates how righteous a cause is. Then you had the covid lockdown situation.

Some systems are clearly build for a purpose, either their stated purpose or an unstated one. Think government agencies.

BLM does not seem to be such a system to me. Asking what its purpose is would be like asking what the purpose of a coral reef or Ganymede or an arms race is. Of course, this should not stop us from analyzing the outcomes of such systems.

System aiming to solve a problem actually concentrates power and money for its advocates, while making its key issue significantly worse.

Many such cases.

So the natural question that raises is, what system can we create to solve this problem of systems that aim to solve problems actually concentrating power and money for its advocates? And as one of its advocates, how can I secure some of that power and money for myself?

The most important thing is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.

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