Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Does anyone else feel like there is some indulgent aspect to posting? The whole reason I began posting on the motte was that "iron sharpens iron", but talking about the same CW issue for the 100th time isn't helping much more in that regard. I realized that as of late, I have been putting comments out there just for the sake of it, even when I don't have anything meaningful to add to the discussion; With the faint rationalization that "I can be someone else's iron".
I am not making some grand announcement to the world, but rather want to hear if anyone felt as such as well. I am going to reduce commenting for a while. Instead, I'll go back to reading more. I'm going to finally address my growing backlog of books and papers to go through. I will still participate in the motte once in a while, but only if I deem it to be meaningful participation and not just pseudo-socialization. For the near future, the motte is going to be partially read-only for me.
Partially related to this, I have had some severe panic attacks and anxiety about the way I am living my life (details not necessary right now). I realized that I am not "happy" , and that around 90% of the world has a life much worse than mine. The weight of this realization is heavily weighing down on my conscience, Just the sheer volume of suffering. I don't understand the psychology behind this, but my gut tells me that living a simplistic austere life more in service of others than hedonism (even small ones such as spending too much time scrolling Instagram or ordering takeout too frequently) is the remedy.
I definitely feel this. There was a comment from a few years back about how early in The Motte's life there was more genuine curiosity and good faith engagement because many users were embarking for the first time (in their own experience) on a grand adventure to try to understand the Outgroup. Some were repelled and went away confirmed in their belief that the Outgroup were irredeemable scum, many others gained newfound respect and empathy for the Outgroup, and a small group actually converted to Outgroupism. Those who remain here years later are jaded culture warriors in it for the intellectual stimulation (and/or the perverse pleasure) of litigating with rhetorical flourish the minute details of our 99th abortion/HBD/transgender/holocaust/woke-takeover/AGI-apocalypse debate. Every now and then a newbie stumbles in wide-eyed and innocent and asks a question that triggers another beating of one of our old dead horses, and he usually gets snapped at for being a troll because the userbase here is just tired (and perhaps justifiably so).
If I'm being completely honest with myself, I probably come here more for entertainment than to have my mind changed. I could blame this on the decline in quality posts, but that's only part of it. I think that I too am tired, I've seen the elephant, I've read what the other side has to say and I was unimpressed, though it was very interesting to learn where our root differences lie. That said, I still believe in treating my Outgroup with charity and I still enjoy reading their posts. I do sometimes end up having my stances softened or my eyes opened to additional nuance in spite of my disposition.
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I'm not sure I really understand the difference. When I see something I disagree with I register the disagreement with whatever, sometimes feeble, justification I can muster on the grounds that people here who disagree with me likely have some reason for doing so. Then if I'm engaged with we sharpen eachother. If I don't that's unfortunate but this is the benefit of the CW issue coming back another 100 times, either I changed their mind such that they didn't need to engage, I understand this is not frequently the case, or I did not make my point well enough and will wait until the opportunity comes again.
Now if you're engaging with things you agree on I can see how that would quickly lose it's interest but I don't often do that, even people I mostly agree with I can find some dissonance worth addressing.
You have my condolences, we cannot help how we feel nearly as much as we wish. I won't give unrequested advice but you are not alone in this feeling and others have overcome it.
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I think that environments where iron actually sharpens iron and undeniable progress is made over time – big boy science, competitive sports and games – are very different from The Motte (except in the narrow sense of rhetorical finesse and ability to abide by arbitrary rules of polite discussion). As Daddy Peterson puts it, they constitute hierarchies of competence. I've typed a paragraph on leagues segregated by ability, on legible scoring, on frivolous weirdness getting weeded out and robust, boring paradigms rising to the top (think Sambo/Kickboxing/Wrestling vs Karate or Kung Fu in MMA), but erased it. We produce enough smartassing routinely.
The point is, a hierarchy of competence is an environment where you can undeniably lose and your entire approach can lose, deemed pointless and discarded. In this capacity, The Motte is broken by design. Not everyone gets an AAQC but everyone is welcome to participate, over and over, so long as they play nice; and they can bring their toys too. We don't even have a shared epistemology. We can't have one, because Building Consensus is actually proscribed by the rules. This prevents us from becoming a total echo chamber, but doesn't allow to build on our not-inconsiderable output and move beyond circular hobbyhorsing. As a generalist forum for discussions of social issues pertaining to the Culture War through rational lens (arguably a restrictive definition but one I'm happy with), it's an Epistemic Minor League in an environment where Major Leagues have been carpet-bombed and made unavailable; and it can't grow into a Major League.
You're one of the best new contributors, so it'd suck seeing you leave. But I wish you well on your journey of self-actualization.
I was never under the illusion that the motte is anything but a productivity sinkhole, albeit there was a disconnect between the visceral and the intellectual realization of that. The point of not being able to iterate on past work and just having output disappear into the aether (in a loose sense), whatsoever the mechanism is only further worsens that.
But yeah I needed a long-awaited recalibration of how (WHY) to spend time here (and elsewhere) and am working towards that one grain of sand at a time.
I consider that high praise coming from you, so Thanks for that. I'm not going to leave the motte, but rate limit all my online activity because in the simplest of words, there are better and more important things to spend precious time on. (I'm thinking 10-15 minutes a day total on the motte should be enough)
Most of what I said really isn't about the motte, it's about me. Did a bad job at putting it into words.
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Yeah. To reply to the first part, my answer to that is to realize that knowledge is valuable insofar as it changes decisions, and to try to generate knowledge that changes decisions that are important. YMMV.
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Is the motte perfect? No, but what community is? I will probably not stop posting. The motte is the only community that actually is truly committed to debate and the expression of ideas, especially non-mainstream ones, which is becoming increasingly hard. I have been banned from many reddit subs (usually when disagreeing with the sole moderator, which almost never ends well), but in 5+ years on SSC and The Motte , only got maybe 3 temp bans total. Admittedly, as a mod of some subs ,I have issued bans, but they are always well-earned (spam or insulting yours truly), not out of disagreement. Same for Scott's blog (the comments). If anything, I am not using this site to its fullest potential.
Find new things to discuss?
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You probably don't need a massive lifestyle change. Odds are that putting some time into helping people you care about will make you feel better.
Try something small. Help a friend or relative with some yard work or clean up their house.
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It's entertainment so of course it's indulgent. I post here occasionally because I like talking about these things and I especially like talking about these things with the kind of people who can make coherent arguments. I also enjoy reading other people's posts. But that's about it. I don't think that posting here is improving my real life arguing skills or having any other effect on my real-world self, and if it is than it's only incidental. If you want to post half-baked comments for the sake of argument, then go for it. There's no higher purpose that you're going to be disturbing by doing this. Obviously keep things within the usual standards of discourse, but keep in mind that the vast majority of people on here have no specialized knowledge about the vast majority of things that they post about. And by "specialized knowledge" I mean "do this for a living" or at the very minimum have a degree in the field because otherwise it's just a contest of "I read something" propositions, and anyone can become an expert by dint of having read more articles. We're just a bunch of lay people arguing about stuff that we're never going to have any real influence over, and that's perfectly fine.
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That's been my approach for approximately a year now. Rather than getting into randomish arguments for the sake of practicing argumentation I'll try to focus in on topics I actually have insights on by dint of my career or location or experience.
Lately that's had to do with Ron Desantis and Florida politics in general, it's actually amazing to see so many people who don't seem to get what people who live in the state are experiencing and the political shenanigans that were occurring in the leadup to his first election. But that's presumably near-mode vs. far-mode issues.
I'm happy to try to clear things up if I can.
Since he's a likely presidential candidate I expect this will remain relevant and keep me posting around here for the next couple years.
Of course I still fall to the temptation of "SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET, THIS MUST NOT STAND" urges.
I went through this a while back. Based on my experience you're on the right track in reasoning. I've never had an instagram account and plan to never get one. You also have to scale back on almost all social media use. And phone apps in general.
What you are likely experiencing is basically the realization that you're not 'doing' anything with the blessed life you've been given by dint of being born in a first-world country. So many aspects of your life are likely based on interacting with the world in a 'superficial' way, likely mediated by an app that makes you feel like you're doing something meaningful but leaving you with nothing to show for it. Many apps are literally designed to get you 'addicted' to making a digitally displayed number go up, and once you leave the app... the number means nothing. You're tricking your own brain into feeling a sense of achievement without any notable personal development or tangible result. You're running up the hedonic treadmill without actually increasing the amount of joy you experienced. You fall into a routine that reinforces patterns of behavior without moving towards a particular goal or endowing you with a purpose for it all.
A few thoughts on how to improve (all things I have done myself):
A) Find and cultivate meaningful and lasting friendships. The one MAJOR benefit of social media and information tech is that if you form a strong bond with someone, you can keep in touch with them anywhere on the globe. Instead of forming dozens or hundreds of weak and ephemeral connections, work on finding some people whose lives can intertwine with yours without making either of you worse off. And avoid forming parasocial relationships with streamers or other influencer personality types.
(Easier said than done, locating 'quality' people is the hard part)
B) Engage in tasks, projects, endeavors that leave you with something tangible or some notable improvement in your quality of life once completed. Exercise is the obvious example, but it could be as basic as building something that you will use regularly from your own two hands, from scratch or close to it. This develops skills, gives you a goal/purpose in the short term, and leaves you with a meaningful/tangible result.
C) Try to minimize consumerist clutter in your local environment. You can probably, with some effort, figure out what 'objects' you own are actually contributing to your mental wellbeing and which are just taking up space and you bought on a whim but had no actual use for. Donate, sell, or throw away the stuff you own that is not contributing to your wellbeing, is not serving a useful function, or you don't have a genuine emotional/sentimental connection with.
This is HARD in practice, I have a decent urge to hoard things. And on the front end, you must work on resisting the urge to buy useless shit in the first place.
Small point about your local environment: lighting and scents are often overlooked (especially by males) for their emotional regulation effects. A space that has pleasant lighting and smells 'nice' tend to make you feel much more comfortable.
D) Spend more time in natural spaces. Maybe it's just me, but being surrounded by greenery and wildlife (even the more boring types) and 'authentic' natural spaces (vs. curated gardens, for instance) is inherently relaxing to me. If you have no access to such spaces within an easy walk/bike/drive... move.
E) A pet, if you can manage it. Constant companionship, a modicum of responsibility and purpose in ensuring another creature's wellbeing, and they can just be damned fun.
There's a meme about the modern male turning into a "bugman/soyboy" who has few useful skills, defines himself via consumption, and is thus entirely reliant on the 'hive' (i.e. mainstream culture) to tell him how to behave, what to think, believe, and what to buy. I think there's some truth to it. If you're heavily plugged in to mainstream culture, and mainstream culture isn't healthy... it will negatively impact your health. I think this is self-evident.
I think mainstream culture is not healthy along virtually any axis that actually correlates with human happiness/flourishing.
Cutting out most of said culture and limiting your exposure to it (not cutting it out entirely!) seems a necessary precondition to achieving your personal happiness.
Just some thoughts.
That is some of it. But the entire feeling is hard to describe, It feels like a guilt response. I have a tendency to complain about things a whole lot. And it feels like I used up the limited amount of complaining allowed in the universe when there are so many people who deserve to use that specific resource more. As you can tell, it's not exactly a rational thought process.
In the lowest resolution view, it's the stereotypical first-worlder realizing that his phone had child labor embedded in it. But it's not exactly that, I know being in a mining camp is preferable to that kid than starving. My dread feels more abstract, that kids have to be in mining camps at all. Of course, I know there is no quick fix to this. The problems of the world are far too large for one man to bear, regardless of how arrogant he is. I just had that realization at a very visceral level, which is a trip regardless of how you try to rationalize it.
Since we are talking about feelings. It feels disrespectful to all the suffering souls, if I just sit on my ass and eat takeout, scroll videos for hours, argue with strangers online, or just drink and render myself retarded for significant portions of the day. I should be at the front lines fighting to reduce that suffering. Who else is better equipped to do it? I understand this is supremely naive and arrogant.
I appreciate your advice. Making my immediate surroundings better is the correction to my internal miscalibration/confusion as opposed to becoming a fulltime volunteer monk.
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If anything, the motte has a deficit in comments, most especially a deficit in comments answering a parent comment.
See my post history for yourself, I write well argumented, semantically very rich content/micro-essays especially but not only on (ineptly) polarizing topics and to me it is clear the semantic value I add to the motte is unparalleled, yet the level of engagement I receive, be it intellectually curious questions or constructive additional facts or argumentations, is very low, low in quality but most importantly low in numbers. Most of my comments are IMO remarkably interesting and information rich for the internet and yet people don't seem to react to that nor seem to appreciate that unique proposition value in the semantic space. So feel free to indulge some comments on mines.
see e.g. https://www.themotte.org/post/317/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/56897?context=8#context
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