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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33401 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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This started as a post reply, but I decided to make a top level post instead. It's an opinion piece to sum up my own personal reflection on what used to be 'my side' of the culture war. I believe that by the very definition of racism itself if we used the 'privilege + power' definition a lot of Western institutions and cultural beliefs can easily be classified as racist and as a system of power and hegemony they may actually represent a cultural memeplex that blinds people to the true nature of their beliefs and creates a systemic myopia to what I would define as 'cultural white supremacy'. I'm kind of trying to get back into writing more, but unfortunately in many ways this is kind of a poor attempt and ought to be revised and revisited, and I kind of just wanted to get something out there.

There has been significant trade and cross-pollination of cultural ideas between East and West for a significant length of time. So much of what we would consider to be purely European or American cultural, political and economic ideas have been adopted wholesale or in large part by Eastern nations to the point where I would argue that the argument itself that 'white people' have no culture is in effect a product of the tacit white supremacy of progressive and left leaning intellectuals. It is pure narcissism in the way that they often assume the only cultures with agency are major Western powers and this by extension can deny that same agency to those whom are intended to be helped. The phrase "white people have no culture" can cause annoyance, or worse, to the people on the right; but, considering it as something that essentially camouflages a hegemonic belief system amongst powerful NGOs, governments and businesses that directly interface with a significant proportion of the global population I find it particularly chilling. Focusing attention on a few blow-hards and random easily provoked 'losers' isolated from real institutional power is a giant red herring against the very real and extremely powerful institutional power ideas on the left have.

Cultures can export much more than just music and consumer goods; there is a whole spectrum of significant cultural adoption and adaption to new technologies, economics, geopolitical realities and social/societal relations. Europeans sold much more than guns for instance, they also shared the military culture and tactics that stemmed from it as well. One of the biggest factors is the adoption of Western style education, and especially the university system that represents nearly a 1000 years of European tradition, to the point where higher education is used as an indicator of 'immigrant fitness' in most countries that use a 'merit' based criterion for selecting immigrants. The greater the level of education the better the fit seems to be between the immigrant and the host society when considering net immigration to the West from other areas of the globe. An uneducated illiterate laborer is likely a terrible fit for instance, but as years of education increases the average compatibility improves. One major push for instance is the spreading of education to the masses, which is truly in my opinion an honorable goal, has the added effect of spreading and increasing the cultural hegemony of the West. My imagination of this is basically Abe Lincoln sitting bored at his computer endlessly hitting 'ENTER' to win a culture victory on Civilization.

If we consider for instance the perspective of 'seeing like a state' in the context of understanding foreign governments the mass adoption of Western norms of government has made the whole world 'legible' both in an imperialistic as well as real-politic diplomatic sense of global relations. Non-government organizations also have a similar 'ease' in dealing with foreign countries and local peoples as they can interface with both an international system as well as peoples that have already been exposed to significant Western ideas and concepts through everything from entertainment to education and the way their governments have agreed or been coerced to adopt significant foundational beliefs of the West. Our governments and institutions are staffed with the products of our University systems so the beliefs they adopt from these institutions have significantly greater power than a few uppity 'right wing' billionaires. Robber barons eventually sleep, but it's those who are doing it 'for your own good' are tireless for their crusade is a righteous and moral one. Random billionaires have not got the economic or political firepower to completely upturn a society; however, there are major institutions and governments that do. We should therefore be much more critical of the nature of the beliefs of those who wield actual power over the stupid overexposed wailing of the relatively powerless.

I believe that if we judge the institutions from the frame-work of the left then PMC (professional management class) leftists who are true to their core beliefs would be compelled by their own 'scripture' in essence to tear them down. The culture wars against religion helped to unseat the WASP (white anglo saxon protestant) somewhat from political power and increased the power of social organizations such as universities and government agencies. The issue with the education system is that beliefs that have as much actual 'proof' as scripture in essence can borrow the prestige and credibility of the hard sciences. These cultural beliefs are being presented with the same credibility often as actual hard sciences through the error or myopia of the media. At the end of the day it is the beliefs of the most powerful people in the world that has the greatest impact of human beings, so we should and must question the institutions that exercise power over us. Are we ruled by people with no concept that their shit stinks with nobody to tell them their questionable clothes choices are leaving them looking rather naked? Using the Bible to prove the existence of God is just as circular an argument in essence as using educational credentials as credibility when those credentials are based not on fact but belief. The people who form the parts of the education system working to 'smash the patriarchy' for instance could be viewed from a certain perspective as the actual white supremacists themselves due to their power and the hegemonic nature of their beliefs that are based on culture as clearly as religious beliefs are too formed through culture. From Nietzsche's perspective God is dead; but, from a post-modernist perspective God is very much alive and that could be even more scary.

I like the way you frame things, could definitely use some clarity because I don't really understand the thrust of your argument. Happy to workshop it with you if you're curious.

You might also be interested in this piece about the effect Western cultural exports have on more 'traditional' societies.

I posted about excess deaths continuing a few weeks ago. Eric Topol writes on that today and blames it on COVID causing heart attacks/strokes far later. The evidence seems solid though I don’t think it’s the sole explanation of excess deaths. I do think this is an underreported story and quite alarming. We should seem to want to know if vaccines or covid are causing the continued rise (along with increased deaths of despair amongst other things).

Anywhere on Reddit I couldn’t even get people to deal with the data. Even throw a blue tribe approved cause of long covid effects. Here’s his article and data he’s citing. Because of replication issues, confounding biases, and my guess excess deaths are coming from multiple causes I don’t ever truly understand what’s going on. Especially when these things can get blended into culture wars. My guess is and I don’t understand why covid does have some kind of long term damage effect that’s not common in other colds. And the vaccine also causes this effect probably at a lower rate.

https://erictopol.substack.com/p/heart-attacks-and-strokes-late-after

The smarter corners of the heret-o-sphere are taking this in stride and postulating that given rates of COVID infection are getting very low, so too should rates of long-covid/excess deaths in the near future.

The demographic breakdown of the excess deaths in the EuroMOMO stats that I posted a couple of weeks ago is still very weird under the "Long COVID" theory -- why would we see this effect particularly pronounced in the demographic that is least susceptible to severe effects from COVID, and also pretty unlikely to have a heart attack for more normal reasons? (I don't think they break this down by sex, but the male/female divide might be useful to look at here; AIUI men are quite a bit less likely to report 'Long-COVID' symptoms, and quite a bit more likely to suffer from vaccine-induced cardiovascular issues)

Evidence is somewhat less than solid. Study is comparing people diagnosed with something post-COVID with uninfected controls, and noting that the former are sicker.

I think at least some of this is stress from lockdowns and the economic uncertainty of people dealing with job losses and potentially business losses. There’s also the uncertainty of when or if anything will go back to normal. Basically everyone in society had their lives upended and didn’t know what would happen with any of it. This would cause a lot of stress and stress isn’t good for longevity.

This is a strong candidate for a contributing factor to deaths. For example, I'd argue that loss of job due to a vaccine mandate will carry worse outcomes than actually receiving a vaccine, or getting Covid unvaccinated. So in a way, our own public health response could be responsible for causing harm to people

It's the binding site of the virus. The ACE2 receptor, its more common in muscles and the heart is loaded with it. The reason the vaccine fucks your shit up is micro clots and autoimmune shenanigans, the reason the virus fucks your shit is damage to muscles and also auto immune shenanigans.

There is no "long covid" all of the symptoms of it are consistent with clot/hypoxia damage to nerves and fine veins.

I don’t know the science specifically but this explanation makes sense to me.

It seems to me vaxxes and virus fuck up your heart. Which if the vaccine is only working 4 months at a strong effect raises big questions to me on how much we should be vaxxing. And could explain continual excess deaths.

This is not the right take.

You should be much more concerned about the size, shape, and ability to move through your body compartments with a Vaccine, than with a virus entering your mucosa.

The virus, if anything, is very limited by ACE2 receptors, whereas the lipid nature of the mRNA droplet allows it to merge into literally any cell and make it into an antigen producing cell. Much more than ACE2

The virus, if anything, is very limited by ACE2 receptors, whereas the lipid nature of the mRNA droplet allows it to merge into literally any cell and make it into an antigen producing cell. Much more than ACE2

This is sort of like saying "the antibiotic, which can get into every cell" or "the air conditioner, which can change the room temperature in a way that affects every cell". You're writing as though you think it's significant that it affects every cell, but you give no reason why that's actually significant.

Now I think I'll go eat a hamentash. The carbohydrates in it, entering my body, will affect the synthesis of ATP in every cell in my body.

Well, the carbohydrates will not fold into a protein. Carbohydrates mainly going to enter the blood stream as glucose, simple principle of digestion and metabolism in human physiuology.

Using your muscle cells, vs. using one of your cardiac muscle cells, is why you do not want mRNA droplets in your blood stream interacting non-specifically with your organs

My understanding of the way the mRNA vaccine works, is that it induces cells to generate proteins that match the one of the virus, so your immune system can attack, and train on it. If the virus' structure limits what kind of cells it can attack, and the vaccine has no such limits, and thus can trigger an immune response against any type of cell, that would mean it can cause greater damage.

There can of course be other factors that could turn all that around, and still have damage done by the virus be worse than the damage done by the vaccine, but the argument cannot be dismissed by sheer snark.

Yes. Imagine someone saying "Let's try injecting the antigens into their heart!"

Well, we know the mRNA enters the bloodstream, so it could transfect any cell...

This is not all proven - the vaccine entering body tissues because there's no known characterization of nanolipid particle pharmacokinetics is the main issue her. There's no concentrated ACE2 receptor in testicles, but the nanolipid particle will be exposed to the testicles via the blood stream (at the testicle blood barrier, which the vaccine can cross).

I want to make a separate point to bring up your blue tribe distinction.

Every time Covid-19 vaccines come up, very low level "pro-vax" discussion starts occurring. I see extremely washingtonpost or Foxnews tier discussion of these products.

If you check my post history, I have a complete throw down against the mRNA products. Currently, the pro-vax perspectives coming in this thread could have been completed by Reuters fact checks or some other political organization.

So, I offer the following:

  1. Astroturfing in the provax camp is occurring on the Mott OR

  2. Only less educated, less biologically inclined 'pro-vaxxers' are appearing in these threads with years old talking points and critical obfuscations of what happened during the mRNA / adenovirus vaccination campagin.

  • -16

"Everyone who disagrees with me is astroturfing or ignorant" is much too partisan and "boo outgroup" to throw out there unless you are willing to bring some serious evidence (not just "refer to my post history").

While it may not be appropriate to call it astroturfing, I wanted to point out that it is uncommon to see a detailed pro-vax analysis on the motte. It uses very quick "off lamps" that are supported by fact checking / expert trust / credentialling institutions.

Rather than say AstroTurf, I'd say there is a peppering of shallow, short cut arguments that never develop fully into an authentic, organic long form idea.

Agreed, I will be much more careful to use a short cut like that, and avoid needless linking to an outgroup that's not the main topic of my concern.

When has the motte had a pro-vaccine post? I can’t remember one. I think most have been throwing concerns at vaccines.

I don’t think this post was pro-vaccine. At best it was an attempt to explain a lot of excess deaths to COVID related organ damage (which vaccine clearly does too).

There were a bunch of them back in the day, and one of the regulars here evidently has domain expertise.

I recall ChrisPrattAlphaRaptor had some very good ones.

He's never been pro-vax in the "mindlessly repeats CDC talking points" way though -- I'm pretty anti(MRA subunit)vax, and he always has been interested in what I've dug up, and provided informed pushback.

If you want to see literal astroturfing, the SSC sub is a great place for it -- to this day there's people (?) on there following that "how to convert skeptics to vaxxmaxxers through psychological manipulation" checklist that was circulating.

Somewhat related The Swedish govermnetal statistics bureau released new data on excess mortality in Europe

Turns out Sweden has had the lowest excess mortality in Europe during the pandemic. Previously there some of our neighbours had lower numbers but now that the data is in for the full 2020-2022 it turns out sweden is even below them and compared to Finland Sweden had half as high excess mortality.

This strikes me as a somewhat funny result because Sweden both didn't really lock down or use masks, but at the same time we were very good at vaccinating people, so it's not because "people aren't dying from the vaccines" either like some people like to imply. It seems to me that hysterical people and conspiracy theorists everywhere can go and pound sand.

Should be noted that for large stretches of the crisis, Finland actually had less stringent measures than Sweden.

The oxford stringency index is alright for large-scale studies where you use the entire dataset to mine for trends, but it falls short when making individual comparisons. The reason being the differential in enforcement and on-paper laws were quite varied from locale to locale, and this adds a tremendous amount of noise to the data. To make sure a comparison you would have actually had to be on the ground in both countries and carried out a detailed study taking those things into account. I don't want to give examples now because covid talk is tiring, but one simple example is Japan, they had no legal mask mandates, but did it feel like such on the ground, there definitely was a social one. Or in India there were on-paper mandates/restrictions for all kinds of things, but people stopped giving a shit altogether 2 weeks after they were put on paper.

How does Sweden compare to Denmark/Norway/Finland in vaccination percentage? I thought all Scandinavia/western Europe were good in that.

They are, and rates are broadly comparable. Sweden has marginally lower (like 1% lower than Finland) full vaccination rates but higher total doses administered.

One can generally say that the Nordics have been good at vaccination and that Swedens more open strategy seemingly didn't come with any cost at all could even have helped.

Sweden's state department of public health thinks that the lower excess mortality might have something to do with a comparatively more successful initial targeting of risk groups for vaccination, but I've not seen any data on that.

Well, hold on there. For the entire lockdown I had to listen to how the difference in excess mortality between Sweden and other Nordics proves "Sweden's irresponsible approach" was wrong, now it turns out their excess mortality was actually lower, and not only are we supposed to forget all about the lockdown argument, the same comparison is now used to argue for the vaccine, even though there are no significant differences in vaccination rates between the Nordics?

I'm not even entertaining that argument, until the pro-lockdowners are publicly made an example of.

Good point, Sweden is doing well despite giving the mRNA vaccines. I'm happy you found a single western country that used mRNA and is not experiencing a precipitous increase in death. And they have excellent foresight to avoid giving risky vaccines to children.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-decides-against-recommending-covid-vaccines-kids-aged-5-12-2022-01-27/

I know Sweden acknowledges that the risks of the vaccines are only useful when comparing against the risks of the virus.

"Conspiracy theorists." Why are you drawing conclusion on a single countries demographics? This is not a good faith accusation to people who are worried the novel mRNA vaccine is causing unnecessary morbidity and mortality, even Sweden has decided to stop putting children at risk. Is this responsible for their better mortality statistics? Hard to tell but I know you need to update your priors here.

There is a radical difference in allowing 5 year olds, and 12 years olds, to receive nanolipid particle injections. And you failed to mention that.

Lingering effects of novel viral illnesses have been well-documented, particularly in the case of the Spanish Flu. Woodrow Wilson's bad case of influenza is believed by some to have contributed to the stroke that later incapacitated him during the negotiations to ratify the Treaty of Versailles. While many cases of long covid are likely some form of generalized anxiety or culture-bound illness, I have no doubt that some are real. I see no reason, however, to think that covid vaccines could ever do anything worse than give certain people an extremely mild case of a disease they would have inevitably caught regardless. Either way whatever excess deaths we see will, in the absence of other confounding variables, slowly decrease to baseline over the course of several years and are not really worth worrying about.

Inaccurate. If you look at the mRNA vaccines in particular, they can cause a heart condition that can cause death. Its a well recognized condition called peri-myocarditis. Are those deaths worth protection from covid? That's the argument that's falling apart right now.

"Lingering effects of novel viral illnesses have been well-documented" Did you mean to use the word novel? There are lingering effects possible of all viral illnesses, not just novel ones. I would not compare this to Spanish Flu, compare it to The Russian Flu/Corona of 1800s..

The idea that nascent respiratory infection would have killed someone that had a "mild" reaction to the mRNA is completely unsupported, and conveniently forgets the introduction of the novel nanolipid particle that delivered this first generation vaccine.

The risk of myocarditis from covid infection is greater than the risk from covid vaccination. It is true that all viral illnesses may have lingering effects. I was more implying that we may expect a greater amount from one to which we are immunologically naïve than from something like the common cold or annual influenza. I was not implying that any specific individual with a mild vaccine reaction would have been killed by a covid infection, only that it would have been slightly more severe. At a population-scale that results in a greater overall number of deaths and complications. It is also unclear to me by what mechanism the nanolipid particle is supposed to be harmful outside of causing minor inflammation at the site of injection.

"Electronic databases (MEDLINE, Scopus, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and the WHO Global Literature on Coronavirus Disease) and trial registries were searched up to May 2022"

This is old data now, and every single undetected case of Coronavirus during that time period was not counted into that rate. This is what all the health authorities used to make light of the heart damage that mRNA can cause, just like you are doing now. There's incidentally been hundreds of millions of natural infections since then, undetected, making the rate of myocarditis by covid essentially become asymptotic to 0 as everyone becomes naturally immune, possibly twice.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36436002/

Here's a post-mortem that shows the same WBC in your injection site, infiltrating the tissue of the heart and causing sudden death. You must not keep up with Pathology journals about people found dead after the mRNA vaccination, or they're not talked about or published in your countries.

"The relative risk (RR) for myocarditis was more than seven times higher in the infection group than in the vaccination group"

Even at best: you're telling me we are giving a vaccine that causes heart damage, only one order of magnitude less than a novel clade of beta-coronavirus that spilled out so fast we couldn't even count all the cases? And that's a good thing?

And that's a good thing?

That's a shift in the question from: "Are those deaths worth protection from covid?"

People entering the medical system and producing positive incidental Covid-19 infections are already likely to be sick.

"It was based upon nearly 154,000 patients with Covid (median age 60, 90% male)"

How can this be related to a 21 year olds decision to avoid getting a mRNA vaccine, known to have cardiac side effects, when the study looks at an already unhealthy patient population?

Not even trying anymore, Mr. Topol may be right that Covid causes problems, but his whole basis reeks of damage control.

The vaccines, with their side effects, need a deadly disease to be worthwhile giving. We are riding out the last days of accepting a chance of heart damage to be immunized against a contagious disease that you get exposed to at the bar, grocery store, and in your home.

I aggressively don't care. Everyone should stop paying attention and be less sensitive to slight changes in rates of deaths; we got into this stupid situation due to exactly this sort of anxious over-sensitivity.

1/2 (so far)

The Saga of Karl Kasarda

File under: Internet Drama

Dramatis personae:

Karl Kasarda is very real person with a significant internet presence, whom I have paid attention to since maybe 2015. He is (or has been) partners with Ian McCollum, who runs Forgotten Weapons, initially a website, mostly famous as a Youtube channel, and lately expanding to other social media platforms. If Forgotten Weapons is Ian's baby, InRangeTV is Karl's baby, though Karl has rarely (never?) made an appearance on FW, while Ian is (or used to be) a regular on IRTV.

Ian's focus is mostly on rifles and handguns, occasionally shotguns, and often military weapons. If it fires a brass cartridge, it's a potential Forgotten Weapon. While the focus is mainly on lesser known and rare weaponry, Ian won't hesitate to cover ubiquitous guns like the AR-15. He is also known as Gun Jesus for his long hair, mustache, and goatee, and his extensive research and authoritative takes on niche subjects.

Karl's competency is mostly based on competition shooting. He's a cerebral guy with a network security career, who has historically competed in "High Power" rifle disciplines, as well as "Cowboy Action Shooting". In the last 10 or 15 years, he has been a big promoter, host, and competitor in so-called 2 gun Action Challenge Matches, which are mostly defined in opposition to 3 gun competitions. There is plenty of history and internet words spillage regarding "2 gun vs 3 gun", but here's the gist: "3 gun" refers to rifle, pistol, shotgun, while "2 gun" omits the shotgun. "3 gun" as a discipline and community has a focus on precision without much physicality. "2 gun" as a discipline and community has a focus on effective shooting with lots of physicality (action challenge match).

Mostly within the last 5 years or so, InRangeTV has featured Russell Phagan, aka SinistralRifleman. He is a skilled 2GACM competitor, and good friend to Karl and Ian, who are all based out of Arizona (AFAIK). Russell works for KE Arms which manufactures firearms parts, largely for the AR-15 platform.

WWSD (What would Stoner do?)

In 2017, it was widely recognized in the American gun community that the AR-15 rifle (aka M16 or M4 in its military designation) (5.56mm ammunition, 16 inch barrel, gas operated, with a buttstock) is a pinnacle of engineering and design. It was designed by Eugene Stoner in the 1950s, as a scaled-down successor to the AR-10, which used a larger 30 caliber round (7.62 mm). It's pretty wild that here in 2023, the best all-purpose rifle for Americans was designed nearly 75 years ago. Have there been improvements along the way? Abso-fucking-lutely.

So now it's 2017, and what would Eugene Stoner do? Well, one of the unifying principles his early design was to use modern materials, like aluminum and polymer, to reduce weight for the same effectiveness. Polymer science was very primitive in 1950 before carbon fiber and modern epoxies. Both aluminum and steel production have become much more sophisticated, consistent, and reliable. Small parts tolerances have improved with CNC and modern milling machines.

I have a lot more to say here, but Karl and Ian came up with a modern "build" of an AR-15 rifle that uses carbon fiber and polymer along with modern metallurgy and design lessons learned from the last 75 years. Importantly, this design was based off of a polymer "lower receiver" for the AR-15, which is the item that the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives) considers a firearm. The milspec lower receiver is a chunk of forged aluminum that is then machined or milled to its final dimensions.

There have been many attempts at polymer lower receivers throughout the years, essentially all of which have been failures in function, design, or sales. The WWSD 2017 design was based off the CAV-15 from GWACS, which is a one-piece polymer lower receiver which includes the grip and the buttstock. The milspec lower receiver does not include the grip or buttstock and instead provides attachment points. The so-called "monolithic" design of the CAV-15 gives it extra strength and reliability relative to other polymer lowers.

Then, in 2020, just before the COVID pandemic hit, we have a product called "WWSD 2020". Partnered with KE Arms, Russell Phagan's company, Karl and Ian want to produce WWSD AR-15 Rifles to sell for a profit. First of all, due to their following, there are thousands or millions of enthusiasts trying to buy CAV-15 polymer lowers, along with carbon fiber handguards, and pencil profile rifle barrels, and the suppliers cannot keep up with demand. Second of all, of course, let's "monetize" this following. No shade.

I have a lot more to say but I am running out of steam. I will augment this post within 12 hours.

I never knew what to think about Karl.

On one hand he runs a very interesting and fun channel and is attuned to the issues a lot of old school cypherpunks are, which I believe to be of great import today.

On the other hand he has insane meme political views only a child could entertain.

How a grown man who in many respect is a respectable expert and subtle enough to make the best of some of the problems of modern life (his video on online censorship I believe to be quite enlightening) could also behave like such an idiot at times puzzles me.

I won't begrudge nerds for being weird, but he goes so much further than that. At least Ian has the professionalism not to embarrass himself with this sort of online drama.

I'll preface this by saying I do not know the details of whatever dumb things Karl said a few weeks ago. Other than what you posted below.

I believe Karl suffers from a simple and severe case of contrarianism. Karl is or has attended Church of Satan stuff, and the Church of Satan is filled with contrarians, skeptics, rebels, and cynics. Out in the world, a contrarian can be satisfied as a supporter of guns rights. There's a litany of false beliefs and memes surrounding firearms to feel sufficiently superior to the masses when it comes to firearm discussion, the Second Amendment, etc.

On the internet, especially in the "guntuber" scene, it's not enough for an uber contrarian to be satisifed as A Gun Guy. The gun guys can be said to be pretty similar to one another. They are freedom loving, right coded, proud rural Americans. To satisfy uber contrarian desires, one must go against the grain. It's the culture he has to set him self apart from as a transgressive guy.

A few years ago Karl would appear to be a principled libertarian or anarchist with libertarian streak. Maybe he always had some edgy takes, but what he shared were principles that could be considered advice-- no matter political leanings. A healthy skepticism of authority and the Feds, high value on self-sufficiency, personal responsibility, and safety/security. Now, he's a culture warrior. It might be the youtube version of audience capture, or it might be a natural progression with Karl filling a niche in the market. These days there is more demand for self-declared leftist/left of center gun enthusiast types. It's the culture war stuff that fills the gaps and allows him to stand out.

I suspect Ian saw this coming years ago. Whatever falling out they had over InRange business wise (afaik they are still friends) I am confident it was around Ian's basic "minimize political stuff, keep it professional" policy that has allowed Ian's brand to explode. They made some entertaining content together, but without Ian to check Karl's excesses he's gone a little kooky.

They were friendly until the most recent drama. Nwallins glossed over it, perhaps for the better as the details are buried in long forum threads and private Discord servers. Both previously maintained the story that Ian was too busy with his own channel, so Karl took over InRange in a mutually amicable split and the there was no bad blood between them. However, when Brownells decided to back out of their deal, they put their remaining stock of WWSD rifles on liquidation sale, and Ian promoted it on his social media. He all but confirmed this was him choosing a side, stating that he wants to continue working with Brownells in the future. For this, Karl called Ian a backstabber and a coward.

I've been following these men for many years, and when this exploded a weeks ago I was pretty torn up. I imagine it was like witnessing the break-up of the Beatles.

However, when Brownells decided to back out of their deal, they put their remaining stock of WWSD rifles on liquidation sale, and Ian promoted it on his social media. He all but confirmed this was him choosing a side, stating that he wants to continue working with Brownells in the future.

Damn, that's what that sale was about? I saw the YT Community post about the sale, didn't know there was a deeper context.

Man, y'know, I actually saw the two of them together at a local gun show like a couple years ago.

On one hand he runs a very interesting and fun channel

Unfortunately, in my opinion they (well, I guess just really Karl at that point) stopped producing anything particularly interesting around 2019 or so. They were exploring interesting things, but they slowly stopped over time; they peaked at WWSD and then the channel broke in two. They had a few more videos on their 2020 version, but to me it came off as padding out the fact the channel was winding down (and a bit more sponsored-content-y).

I honestly find it's more just the Sinistral Rifleman show these days to try and recapture the early days of "how does thing X do in a match environment?". And that's fine, but if half your content is functionally just sponsored content I won't pay for that.

For fuck's sake, Karl, you have access to an SOT now; could you at least have an opinion about that?

could also behave like such an idiot at times puzzles me

It puzzles me that he drank the establishment propaganda on "muh oppression" considering most of his Old West stuff is a chronicle of the disaster that results when you make people with chips on their shoulders deputies in law enforcement, and that he styles himself as specifically counterculture. It's inconsistent with what I understand of that brand of Satanism in general- if one is anti-institutional-religion it naturally follows one would be anti-institutional-race and anti-institutional-sexuality but I guess that's what who/whom's for.

At least it hasn't managed to really make it into his videos, not that he even makes videos these days- though his refusal to use Odysee and/or Utreon for moral grandstanding reasons doesn't help the fact he shut himself out of being able to do what Ian's been gradually trialing with "go watch the full version of this over here".

At least Ian has the professionalism not to embarrass himself with this sort of online drama.

Ian has enough professionalism to only embarrass himself in the ways I would expect from someone trying to advance the state of the art more than his own ego.

The Azov book didn't really go over well with his Russian contacts; in particular, Max Popenker "broke up" with him after that- I would have liked to see it specifically because, if its billing was accurate in that it shows how wars are actually fought now, it would have been informative insofar as the field of modern weaponry and its use in a fight against a neer-peer adversary. (Note: this was pre-invasion.)

For fuck's sake, Karl, you have access to an SOT now; could you at least have an opinion about that?

Wait, when did that happen?

Also, re: Max Popenker and the Azov memoir thing, it's darkly funny that that happened literally like a week before Russia invaded, though it also sucks that we lost Max's book on Avtomats because of it. I wonder if that Azov guy ended up getting a publishing deal elsewhere.

If this is the same author:

https://antelopehillpublishing.com/product/the-foreigner-group-by-carolus-lofroos/

That might be the one, I remember hearing that the author was a Swedish volunteer.

Wait, when did that happen?

Since Sinistral joined the channel (he posted match footage of a full-auto KP15 he made).

It would almost certainly be trivial for him to get access to proper machine guns for a video; I want to see someone seriously analyze the vz. 61 and P90, revisit that P&S collaboration where they tested ergonomics of full-power rifles and see whether or not 3-round burst really was ever a valid training tool, and maybe other stuff along those lines I'm not thinking about.

InRange has the technical capability to explore a lot of interesting stuff; Karl would rather argue on Twitter than use it.

2/2 (so far)

Note, this comment has been significantly updated and extended since first written (and replied to, sorry).

The fundamental difference between WWSD 2017 and WWSD 2020 is the monolithic polymer lower receiver, originally the GWACS CAV-15, and then later the KP-15 from KE Arms. The KP-15 is a successor design to the CAV-15 which had gone out of production (and with GWACS effectively dead as a business). While obviously inspired by the CAV-15 with similar features, it is a fresh redesign without reusing any specific design or feature from the CAV-15 while improving function with additional features (e.g. flared magwell). Extensive research and testing went into the production methods and polymer molds.

As KE Arms was ramping up production to meet the considerable demand for the monolithic polymer lower, two significant events occurred: GWACS sends a cease-and-desist to KE Arms over intellectual property concerns regarding the CAV-15, and a deal is struck with Brownells regarding marketing, distribution, and retail sales for the WWSD concept including both parts and complete rifles. KE Arms sues GWACS over the cease-and-desist, and GWACS countersues KE Arms as well as several related organizations and individuals. Kasarda is not named as a defendant but is deposed as a witness.

Fast forward to 2023. Due to COVID and legal interference, the production ramp-up for the KP-15 takes longer than expected, but the lowers are now produced in significant quantity, available from both Brownells and KE Arms directly. However, forum drama is about to upset the apple cart once again.

I wasn't aware of the forum drama or any of its basis until Karl himself posted to the InRangeTV subreddit, seeking consolation for what he felt were unfair attacks on him. The basis for the forum drama, as I was to find out, was mostly Karl's own social media posting, often under his InRangeTV brand. I was mostly just watching the YouTube channel, which had a pretty strict focus on guns, 2 Gun Action Challenge Match stuff, and occasional forays into First and Second Amendment issues and advocacy, along with complaints about Youtube content policies. The social media posting, mainly Instagram, was a different beast entirely.

One Father's Day, Karl posted:

Happy Father's Day!

Personally, I have chosen to not add more of us to this overpopulated planet as my gift to humanity. I highly recommend a vasectomy. Additionally, as a person of entirely Scandinavian descent, I am assisting with the extinction of the white race.

~Karl

Now, there is obviously some attempt at humor, here. Still, I find it pretty offensive and abhorrent. I love my dad, and it's largely because of him that I am comfortable with guns, gun safety, basic carpentry, basic mechanic skills, motorcycles, etc. To take something like Father's Day and twist it into a sick joke just rubs me the wrong way. Still, I have very thick skin and am pretty much a free speech absolutist, so Karl is welcome to hold and express these views. I just find the holder of such views to be disgusting.

He got a pretty negative reaction to this post, and tried to play it off as "just a joke" and not any sort of self loathing or promotion of genocide; it's not anti-white but anti-racist. Yet in the very same post and reply chain, he complains about white fragility. I find it very hard to square this circle. While I struggle to find the humor in the Father's Day post, there is a very obvious butt of the "joke". It's a troll post that targets white people in an attempt to expose white fragility (which he clearly admits).

A later post:

"DEATH to all who stand in the way of freedom for queer people"

This is pretty clearly a call to murder people, which Karl and his buddies attempt to deny. And which freedoms, exactly, are we talking about, Karl?

There is a lot more of this stuff, all posted by Karl to social media, going very much against the grain of American gun culture. As people started to notice this, compilations of Karl's material were posted to ar15.com forums. As the drama was blowing up, Brownells backed completely out of the WWSD deal, which Karl had some stake (5% of something, I forget) in.

I have some thoughts about what is motivating all this drama, which I will save for a further comment.

From Karl's reddit post:

http://Ar15.com is a site owned by people at least complicit, if not aligned with, hate speech.

AR15.com is owned by... Brownell's.

Maybe it wasn't the best idea Karl ever had to enter that forum swinging hist fists around.

I liked Karl a lot when the first InRange videos were gaining steam. The spirit of intended use, practical application and halfway 'scientific' testing of things other than 'when does it blow up' was something that seemed missing in a lot of channels. And thinking back, it definitely had a sort of 'blue' approach to guns as opposed to 'red'. For better or worse, at least it was different. Karl was also kind of a 'sperg'. But it seemed appropriate for the subject matter and company.

Fast forward through satanism, open findom relationships, antifa friends, trans rights and racist jokes, if you care about 'ethical consumerism' like is clearly done by Karl and friends, why should any right of center person support or tolerate someone like Karl?

Hopefully Ian will be doing a video on 'his own' rifle, recounting how he and his partner, after a lot of time, effort and research, advertised a product they weren't selling, before realizing there was money to be made by selling it. Hastily trying to figure out how to procure the parts they had already told everyone about, that had become very scarce as a result, so they could sell them themselves. Going through a lot of work and hassle trying to get the ball rolling before helplessly watching the project crash and burn since his partner was too autistic to handle social media and keep his extreme politics in his pocket.

A humbling moment of becoming a part of history, if nothing else.

Fast forward through satanism, open findom relationships, antifa friends, trans rights and racist jokes, if you care about 'ethical consumerism' like is clearly done by Karl and friends, why should any right of center person support or tolerate someone like Karl?

Do you ever get upset when progressives refuse to tolerate somebody because they expressed right-of-center views that aren't central to what that person is primarily known for? Do you ever feel like, you know, it's kind of unfair for somebody who's really good at something like acting or writing or programming or making cool YouTube videos to suddenly have no platform to do those things because they said something completely unrelated to any of those things that progressives happened to disagree with? If so, then why would you think it's okay to do that when the shoe is on the other foot?

FWIW, I have enjoyed owning, shooting and maintaining guns for years, but I find it increasingly hard to enjoy the hobby as somebody who's culturally blue tribe because of exactly the attitude you just expressed, and the fear that in order to be a "gun guy" you also have to hate non-whites and LGBTQ people or you won't fit in.

Do you ever get upset when progressives refuse to tolerate somebody because they expressed right-of-center views that aren't central to what that person is primarily known for?

Not anymore, no. When I actually believed in the concepts that have now been expressly refuted by lib/left/progressives I assumed that there was a broad recognition and understanding of the value of free speech and all the rest. I, through experience with exactly the kind of people Karl enables, learned that I was wrong.

Do you ever feel like, you know, it's kind of unfair for somebody who's really good at something like acting or writing or programming or making cool YouTube videos to suddenly have no platform to do those things because they said something completely unrelated to any of those things that progressives happened to disagree with?

Not anymore, no. Everyone is already playing by the rules of the lib/left/progressives. You can't say X on 99% of platforms. Most of the internet I liked, the youtube channels, twitter accounts, podcasts, subreddits like this used to be and everything else, has been relegated to obscurity or simply scrubbed from existence. Users lost, essays, exchanges, information and friends, all gone. All of this happened years ago and continues to happen. Because of the kind of people Karl is rubbing shoulders with.

If so, then why would you think it's okay to do that when the shoe is on the other foot?

Because controlling 99% of the internet vs. controlling 1% isn't comparable. Regardless of everything else, no one lives by the libertarian ruleset Karl pretends to support. Everyone has to, in 99% of cases, contort themselves to the ruleset of lib/left/progressivism. In 1% of cases some people, who are not on board with the lib/left/progressive ruleset, can tell the 99% to fuck off and act and speak more freely. That's where Karl comes in and decides to take a principled stand on free speech and call everyone out for their hypocrisy? Give me a break. How about he make that stand anywhere else and see how long he is tolerated. Maybe he'd recognize just how good he has had it with the people he so indignantly accuses of hate.

FWIW, I have enjoyed owning, shooting and maintaining guns for years, but I find it increasingly hard to enjoy the hobby as somebody who's culturally blue tribe because of exactly the attitude you just expressed, and the fear that in order to be a "gun guy" you also have to hate non-whites and LGBTQ people or you won't fit in.

And just what kind of attitude is that? The kind that every single blue triber mandates for everyone else, everywhere else? Take a good hard look at yourself and read what you are saying. Imagine how it feels like for someone red to have to live with what you are pretending is pushing you away from guns, but in night every aspect of their lives. They can't use the internet without blue signaling people prodding their fingers around, looking for an excuse to take everything they can away from them. They can't turn on the TV without being bombarded with blue propaganda.

And when they manage, by chance and luck, to carve out a space where they can exist, a wolf in sheep's clothing starts knocking on their door. Asking to be let in. After they let it in the wolf demands that the space conform to the practices of the 99%. And when they tell it 'no', the wool comes off and it goes for the jugular: 'Why do you HATE me so? The minorities, the gays, the oppressed? Why are you so evil? Why do you HATE?'.

The only thing you need to be a gun guy is a gun and an interest. You are not just a gun guy, you are intolerant. The existence of people who you perceive to be not like you is so insufferable that you are willing to drop your own interest for the sake of it. Contrast that with anyone not drinking the lib/left/progressive koolaid and how they have to contort and stifle themselves just to be allowed to have a job, and maybe have some empathy before baring your fangs.

It would be perfect for his "gun manufacturing is harder than you think" series, wouldn't it?

I'm not sure how much I should say here as I generally try to keep my internet persona's separate for OPSEC reasons and this is coming dangerously close to crossing the streams but...

...I would feel remiss if I didn't bring it up. When GWACS when out of business KE arms bought up the tooling along with several former GWACS employees with the intent of restarting production of polymer lowers. Meanwhile the rumor is that the GWACS name and IP was bought by some progressive culture warrior with the intent of undermining the opposition and that the cease and desist letter was effectively culture-war motivated. This had the effect of drawing in additional "combatants" from outside the immediate 2A legal and Southwest competitive shooting communities (parallels to jihad in the ME are left as an exercise to the reader). The ensuing drama (both internet and legal) in turn lead to Ian catching a lot of flak from Karl and the John Brown Gun Club for "Associating With"/"Failing to Denounce 'Nazis' and 'Far Right Agitators'" like Mike Jones, the Volokh Conspiracy, and Administrative Results (who TBF between the Obi-Wan-Nairobi aesthetic and making his handle a play on "Executive Outcomes" kind of invites those associations) but even so.

Edit to add: TLDR a bunch of people on the internet lashed-out out at Ian and in response a bunch of people showed up to defend him which in turn lead Karl and a bunch of others to lash out in response leading to the dynamic described in the OP, "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." This in turn lead to a number of arguments within ARFCOM's mod-mail that ended with an agreement on all sides to lock the thread and walk away.

The ensuing drama (both internet and legal) in turn lead to Ian catching a lot of flak from Karl and the John Brown Gun Club for "Associating With"/"Failing to Denounce 'Nazis' and 'Far Right Agitators'" like Mike Jones, the Volokh Conspiracy, and Administrative Results (who TBF between the Obi-Wan-Nairobi aesthetic and making his handle a play on "Executive Outcomes" kind of invites those associations) but even so.

This explains a lot. Also there is good info here: https://old.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/comments/sltls3/forgotten_weaponsheadstamp_controversy_summary/

Edit Edit to add. This is not intended as a call but I seem to recall @ymeskhout having ties of some sort to JBGC and I wonder if he's got any insight on this front.

I was, but haven't had any involvement at all since I resigned in late 2018. I'm not familiar with the names in this thread, nor do I really understand the "controversy", except that everyone loves Gun Jesus.

I second that emotion. I definitely recall JBGC affiliation from reddit comments and maybe B&R podcast. I like hearing Yassine's takes, even when I have some quibbles.

Now, there is obviously some attempt at humor, here. Still, I find it pretty offensive and abhorrent.

My thought process through Karl's comment got me perplexed.

Not knowing anything about this Karl guy (and honestly skimming your well-written post), I read the Father's day post and just interpreted as a guy sarcastically making fun of woke culture. After reading the "white fragility" comment well, that threw me off, maybe Karl was actually serious OR is doubling down on sarcasm, but doesn't seem so.

If it's not all sarcasm then FarNearEverywhere is right, replying "congrats" or just ignoring it's the only way. Incredible.

I have followed Karl for quite a while and I still don't know what he was thinking with that post. He is far enough left where it is not beyond the pale that those are his true feelings, though more extreme than anything he'd publicly expressed before. However, he is also a troll, and an explicit part of his mission statement is to "slay sacred cows." He even made an emblem of a silhouetted cow with a sword through it to represent this idea for his channel.

Personally, I have decided to walk away from his content. Regardless of his true beliefs I cannot support someone who makes such agitating statements. It's not a decision I made lightly.

To take something like Father's Day and twist it into a sick joke just rubs me the wrong way.

I don't know this guy or anything about this entire topic other than what I have just read here, but without knowing how old he is, yeah - that's the kind of edgy contrarian stuff I'd expect. The best retort is not to get upset, it's to reply "Congratulations on the vasectomy! I completely agree that you should not reproduce!" and leave it at that 😁

Church of Satan/Satanic Temple/whatever other splinter group types do evoke 🙄 in me - not because I'm afraid they are teaching little kiddies to worship the Lord of this World, but because they're still stuck in the 50s mindset about shocking the squares. Anton LaVey was a clever grifter and I admire his showmanship in monetising the California weird scene, but come on people: society has moved on and even the squares are out there waving flags for Pride month. You're fighting an enemy that only exists in certain places and mostly in your imagination (even the Bible-basher types are using contraception and getting divorces and multiple remarriages today) and you're no longer on the cutting edge of being daring. This is this year's German Eurovision entry, for pete's sake. If you honestly did believe in and worship Satan, that would be shocking nowadays.

You're fighting an enemy that only exists in certain places and mostly in your imagination

For the people I know personally who are still very edgy atheists (admittedly not Church of Satan stuff) as fully grown adults in the year of our lord 2023, it's because they also happen to exist in those certain places. They all live in very religious areas (one in a heavily Christian part of the US, one in the Middle East and one in South America) and grew up in very religious families. On the internet their views are passé, but in their day to day lives it's still very much counter-cultural.

Basically anything "edgy" is highly context dependent- there's a big difference between burning a Quran in rural Texas, burning a Quran in London and burning a Quran in Saudi Arabia. And the internet removes local contexts, so beyond edgy stuff in all forms inevitably being kind of cringe, you end up with it being especially cringe in places where it isn't counter-cultural. An example in the opposite direction would be the South American atheist finding the "based tradcath converts" cringe beyond all belief, since basically every authority figure around him is Catholic.

The actual ARFCOM thread about this is pretty long and has some interesting content, ought to be okay to post since it's already locked: https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/Looks-like-Karl-from-InRange-TV-isn-t-shy-about-his-love-of-Drag-Queens-Karl-buttmad-p-32/5-2607124/

I used to post on ARFCOM a lot in the early-mid 2000s, back when PHPBB style boards were the main type of social interaction online.

This is a bizarrely small second part of your post. No mention of the GWACS legal drama? No deeper explanation for what happened with ARFCOM? Did you hit the character limit in part 1?

Criticism accepted. I completely revised the post. Less than ideal, I agree.

Much better, thank you.

The whole saga has some major plot points that are missing here. I think it would have been better to hold off on posting until it's all together.

Criticism accepted. I completely revised the post. Less than ideal, I agree.

Just gotta say, the comment histories of the accounts in that inrange thread are something else. I still have no idea what the drama is about, but at least it's easy to see what side the literal trans maoists are on. And wow they're going mask off these days.

Edit: wow, Karl did videos with one of the murderers in the CHAZ militia, that's way worse than I was expecting. And all the info was collected by kiwifarms, which once again explains why this crowd is so adamant about shutting them down.

They're turning on gun jesus too. May Satan help them, because God obviously won't.

Edit: that arfcom thread is amazing. If I was more into guns it would be a "finding my people" moment.

wow, Karl did videos with one of the murderers in the CHAZ militia, that's way worse than I was expecting.

Are you repeating a statement from the ARFCOM thread/other socials or is that your assessment? Genuinely curious.

I ask because the escalation of rhetoric throughout this ordeal has been really bothering me. The first one that stuck out at me was how Karl and all of his supporters are now "groomers." It's easy to see how his detractors arrived here: he allegedly made comments supporting "drag queen story hour," and drag queens have been reported making sexual comments to children. But is implicitly, nay, explicitly accusing Karl of grooming children helping? As far as the "antifa CHAZ murder" claim goes, to my knowledge this has been leveled at Tacticool Girlfriend, an openly trans gun YouTuber. I have never seen this claim made with evidence, though I haven't made any effort to confirm or deny it myself. But again, it's now more often than not that I see this person referred to as "the CHAZ killer" as if it is hard fact.

Fringe loonies will do what fringe loonies do. I wonder if the usual suspects over on /k/ are still fervently denouncing Ian as a dirty commie for disabling comments on videos related to Rhodesia.

I have a huge amount of respect for Ian for staying the course by remaining professional and basically apolitical. The man just wants to talk about guns, their workings and their history.

trans maoists

It couldn't be Ahuviya Harel, could it?

deleted

I was surprised to see in /r/dankchristianmemes, a heavily upvoted thread about wanting traditional hymns, but not wanting "conservative/far-right ideals" in the church. All the comments are about how great it is that mainline Protestant denominations are affirming of all kinds of alternative lifestyles.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dankchristianmemes/comments/11i1mit/is_it_too_much_to_ask_for_both/

Honestly this really made me think. On Reddit, the gun people are leftist, the Christians are leftist, etc. etc. I spend so much time on Reddit that it makes me think leftism has literally taken over everything. Then I went to church this morning and realized there's an entire big population of people who don't use Reddit, have never heard of Reddit, and who still exist across the whole spectrum of political belief.

I need to get off of Reddit.

I need to get off of Reddit.

Yes

At least here it's the modern worship churches that are right wing and traditional denominations that song hymns and hang rainbow flags and seem pretty left wing, are those still too far right for reddit?

Reddit looks more leftist than it is because leftist groups are very good at two things: mod takeovers and brigading from their discord hangouts. Stalking post histories made me realize that in most cases the "radically leftist highly upvoted post in a normally non-political sub" is completely artificial.

But my god it's an amazing tactic for imposing the appearance of consensus. Back in the days of the open internet the left was at a disadvantage, but they've adapted wonderfully to this new environment that rewards procedural manipulation and party organization.

Back in the days of the open internet the left was at a disadvantage, but they've adapted wonderfully to this new environment that rewards procedural manipulation and party organization.

I have to wonder, if this is true, why was this? Was it harder to entry-ize a regular old forum somehow?

There were too many of them. Take over some forum and you have control of one of a thousand comparable discussion forums. Take over the relevant subreddit (and leverage that into more control over other subreddits) and you can control a much larger portion of the internet.

The thing about that meme was its use of “extreme right-wing beliefs”. After browsing the thread, I found myself wondering what they might consider “moderate right-wing beliefs”.

Before KE Arms announced the development of the KP-15 lower, the subreddit was very low traffic. Its tone mirrored that of the youtube channel, which had none of the weird racial and sexual politics stuff. For the 2-3 years of development and production of the KP-15 lower, the channel was pretty much all about eager anticipation and then people showing off their builds. Once the forum drama hit, there was a large influx of "supporters", and I think the brand and community will never recover the tone that I enjoyed.

Karl was already subtly working an agenda with his historic pieces, that were often about convincing leftists that guns benefited black people. His view of history was often a bit dubious/one-sided as well.

whether there's a reason that particular SUBREDDIT would be more left-leaning than gun owners writ large.

There's your answer: it's Reddit

No Chinese-Americans are not just high IQ whites

1] From the moment of birth, Chinese-American infants show extreme acceptance to conditions that horrify European ones.

-Cover a European 40 hour old infants nose, either directly or by lying them face flat on the bed; and they'll struggle to uncover it. Chinese infants will breath through their mouth, otherwise remaining entirely motionless. Where European infants will become more aggressively distressed the longer you do this to them, Chinese infants will remain calm.

Study by Dan Freeman and his Chinese-American wife in Nature:

https://sci-hub.ru/10.1038/2241227a0

2] Dramatic differences remain at four months:

REACTIVITY BATTERY RESPONSES: Exposed to a battery of tests designed to elicit reactions; moving, crying, fretting, vocalizing and smiling; Chinese infants are undeniably different.

For example, the most mobile Chinese infants are less than a third as mobile as the most mobile American ones and half as mobile as the Irish sample. In each area except for smilling, American and Irish reactivity can be expressed as multiples of the Chinese ones; with a degree of difference that would be shocking in a gender study! This is even after 32% of the Boston sample, but none of the Chinese sample, was excluded due to infant non-cooperation.

See the chart on page three. It's really, really dispositive.

https://sci-hub.ru/10.1037/0012-1649.30.3.342

CRYING IN RESPONSE TO INNOCULATION: Other studies involve observing differences in rates of crying upon childhood innoculations, and compare American infants to Japanese ones. Here, you get shocking differences like, 4 out of 26 Japanese infants crying in response to a shot where every single American infant did so. This, at least partially results from considerable differences in levels of cortisol production, both prior to and immediately after innoculation.

https://sci-hub.ru/10.2307/1131465

General Note: I tried to find East Asian American studies for the four month behaviour section, but couldn't. Readers of the papers will find that they appear to be well controlled as these things can be, with the Chinese sample being from the infants of students at China's top university.

3] Dramatic differences obviously remain in adulthood:

3.1 THE BAMBOO CEILING: There is asian overrepresentation in every field involving intelligence and a bamboo ceiling in every subfield requiring a personality. To give one example from reuters:

"Asian Americans comprise 13% of associates at major law firms, but just 4% of equity partners — the lowest ratio among minority groups, the report notes. Only one of the current 93 Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorneys is Asian American, and their representation among law clerks has been stagnant for the past 25 years."

The difference between associates, and partners/US Attorneys is of course, that the latter might occasionally try a case or engage in unmediated interactions with people who are not like them and need to build up a rappor.

3.2 MASKS PEOPLE, MASKS! Explain to me why, until perhaps the last two months, your average East-Asian American was more likely to be masked than blue-anon types. Isn't the parsimonious answer simply that infants who won't fight to uncover their nose, become adults that are indifferent to showing their face?

Do we realy have to litigate this one?

3.3 MUSIC: Asian parents sure as hell get their kids to play piano, and early, often similarly strict musical upbringings are common among music stars generally. Where then, are the distinguished East Asian-American popular musicians?

3.4 NOVELS: Where are the great East Asian-American novelists?

@sword-of-empire: I can be reached at lepidusian@protonmail.com

  • -25

Where then, are the distinguished East Asian-American popular musicians

K-pop, or well-integrated into the U.S. music scene. E.g., Mike Shinoda, Steve Aioki, Far East Movement of "Like a G-6" fame, Dream Theater's bassist John Myung, Lawrence's guitarist Jonny Koh (okay, that's from my personal playlist and not from general prominence), the Disney/musical theater singer Lea Salonga, does Yo-Yo Ma count? It's not exactly popular music per se, but he's one of the greatest popularizers of classical music of the last 50 years...

And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there's other obvious ones I'm missing, as well as an at-least representative sample of backing musicians, producers, studio engineers, etc.

James Iha from Smashing Pumpkins etc. Karen O from Yeah Yeah Yeahs (half Korean). Even the Van Halen brothers (part Indonesian) might count here.

This seems like a good sell for Asian-Americans as the best possible integration case with the traditionally white United States of America. What we get:

  • High economic productivity

  • High compliance with local rules and social standards

  • Replication of our historic cultural traditions in music and literature

These are pretty strong benefits, and we don't even have to deal with the kind of sociopathic climbers that become partners in law firms! I have a hard time imagining a group of people that I'll tend to have more affinity for than those with the intellectual capacity to do high-level law and finance that choose tech and science at disproportionate rates instead.

I agree with the thesis that Asian-Americans are not just smart whites, but disagree with the implication that the outcome of that is negative. Instead, I think the Asian-American population synergizes with legacy Americans and is one of the few examples I can think of where diversity is our strength is more than a slogan.

i guess clarification is needed given "-american." i thought it was apparent. OP is talking genetics, HBD. "-american" is in this context meaningless, it is only present to avoid the obvious absurdity of wondering why 1.5 billion east asians aren't producing great english novels. but it is even more absurd to use this framing as the gotcha for "where are their great novels--they aren't particularly creative--they aren't particularly intelligent" when east asian storytelling in the west has success ranging from merely incredible in video games to total domination of the market in comics and animation.

3.4 NOVELS: Where are the great East Asian-American novelists?

yukio mishima

yasunari kawabata

kazuo ishiguro

haruki murakami

that's poetry and prose. beyond that, japanese creatives apropos manga and anime are the most successful and among the most interesting storytellers in the world. i consider pure prose as incomparably above illustrated stories, so the great mangaka do not compare with the great authors of the last 150 years, but below the likes of hemingway, mccarthy, faulkner, rushdie, coetzee, updike and of course mishima/kawabata/ishiguro/murakami, and above almost all other living english language authors, are katsuhiro otomo, akira toriyama, hiromu arakawa, masamune shirow, kentaro miura, and also sunrise/"hajime yatate".

3.3 MUSIC

ref. above. when adapted, many of those iconic japanese series have iconic scores by japanese composers.

one of the greatest living producers is the filipino chad hugo. the biggest japanese artist in pop right now might be rina sawayama, i don't know, i don't listen to much. steve aoki is successful, mike shinoda extremely so. the popular lofi owes much to the various -waves, especially vaporwave, which itself pulls heavily on work like tatsuro yamashita/japanese citypop. but these aren't straight causal lines, music is collaborative, between partners like hugo and williams and between generations like yamashita to macintosh plus, and that's ignoring everything else vektroid worked off. i'd sooner criticize pop anyway for lagging behind, all the brilliant producers work in hip hop and electronic. what's popular on the radio today uses techniques kanye worked out 20 years ago.

great artists often have troubled childhoods where their creative expressions go from psychological escape to literal escape. i think this is why the US black community produces so many singers and musicians, and this could explain why the asian community of the US, half as a whole (which it certainly is not) as large as the black community and far more economically successful, seemingly produces fewer great musicians. forcing a kid to play piano or violin for 13 years isn't going to turn them into a superstar, they have it or they don't, they'll be exposed and fall in love or they won't. how many white kids play instruments in school but never do anything beyond orchestra or band?

and again to close . . .

Where are the great East Asian-American novelists?

many, varied, and incredibly easy to find. the concluding point of your short essay was to discredit yourself with profound cultural illiteracy. you should consider this an opportunity to reexamine how you think about the world, as you are wrong.

Ishiguro is British, not American.

OP argues from genetics, legal nationality is immaterial. pointing out the immense success of east asian creatives answers the substance of his essay.

beyond that, japanese creatives apropos manga and anime are the most successful and among the most interesting storytellers in the world

Don't forget video games; the stories contained within their media are probably even more popular than their works of written and televised art.

Music

Nearly everyone on the face of the Earth has heard the compositions of Koji Kondo in some form or another. Sure, you can argue that the reason for that is circumstantial, yet I don't believe any other composer has the same distinction.

i thought about editing my comment or posting a reply mentioning video games but figured someone else would. sure enough.

it is especially laughable to asperse creativity when the juggernaut of manga/anime still strides inside the footfalls of the behemoth called NINTENDO

Sounds pretty great for the people around them.

yeah. quiet neighbors, quiet well-behaved kids

You were warned the last time you engaged in literal Chinese cardiology that you are allowed to develop weird theses, but it can't just be cherry-picked examples of why your target group is bad.

Do we realy have to litigate this one?

Yes, if you are going to offer anecdotal observations as "evidence" that the Chinese are lizard people, you have to actually justify your just-so stories.

This kind of manifesto-posting is not desirable. Lots of people come here with very particular ideas about certain racial and ethnic groups, and as you are no doubt aware, we don't prohibit that, but you actually have to make a well-founded argument, not just "Look at how obviously alien and inhuman these people are." We have rules against weakmanning, and rules about writing like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

Just to take an obvious example, we have several posters with very obvious antipathy for Jews. Yet when they go off on their favorite topic, they usually manage to post in such a way that there is at least something to engage with, it's not just "Jews bad." Complaining about Holocaust memorials or the amount of dollars that go into funding Jewish NGOs might be a veneer over their real agenda, but it's a veneer that allows even Jewish posters to argue at the object level.

What you offer a hypothetical Chinese poster to engage with is "true or false, you are an alien bugman of a hostile alien species."

Since you were already explicitly warned to stop posting like this, banned for three days. If you want to come back and keep riding this hobby horse, you will need to seriously up your game.

I'd like to make a meta-comment here; I got this thread in the daily volunteer janitorial duties. Without context, I see consensus building, cherry-picked (though not insufficient) evidence to support his claims -- No Chinese-Americans are not just high IQ whites seems to be the one real claim of the entire post, which the subsequent evidence feels so disconnected from I almost forgot about it --, vague weakmanning.

That said, on a quick read, and without seeing his name, it wasn't even clear to me whether he was pro or anti East Asian. The first two sections seem to suggest that the babies are a lot tougher/more stoic than Europeans, not a priori a negative trait. The last section, without context, could read as evidence of East-West cultural incompatibility or discrimination. Initially, when reading the title, I thought he was going for Chinese don't just have higher IQs, they are more resilient/industrious in general. This falls apart in the third section, where he's hammering the trope of East Asians = seen by Westerners as emotionless/cold/disconnected, which I think vaguely passes muster? There's considerable asymmetry in general cultural exports between East Asia and the US after WW2/Korea.

He's begging the question with Where are the great East Asian-American novelists?, but taking a step back, my main exposition to Japanese/Chinese culture has been self-sought (barring reading Sun Tzu when I was a young teenager, who's become a ubiquitous prototype of eternal Eastern wisdom) and entirely autochtonous. I've briefly perused top 25 best books in Asian-American literature and don't recognize a single title (except for a Murakami book, whose inclusion I find borderline offensive).

I believe I rated this as Bad, maybe an extremely charitable Neutral, but I feel this showcases a shortcoming of the hyperlocal view the volunteer system offers: not only am I unable to immediately view his previous posts (which in my opinion are significantly easier to classify without context) -- they are two clicks away, context then profile --, but am also not necessarily aware that this is a toned-down/more indirect version of the usual manifesto, for which he was already warned.

I feel obligated to point out that Haruki Murakami is not Asian-American, he's just Asian (Japanese).

As for the meta-comment, @ZorbaTHut can comment further if he wishes, but I think it's by design that volunteers only judge posts in isolation, since it's just meant as a sort of triage system. I don't think the volunteer janny system is ever meant to replace moderators, because the mods see user histories and take that into account.

Adding to the meta comment: it would be nice when jannying to be able to go and see the context of a post, and then be able to give an opinion.

At least for me (on my telephone), if I leave the janny page for any reason, I forfeit the volunteering for 24h.

Tap the three dots below the post, hold the "Context" option which appears in the pop up and tap "Open link in new tab". At least that is how I do it on firefox on android.

Thanks! (I'm feeling rather embarrassed for not having found out myself)

I feel obligated to point out that Haruki Murakami is not Asian-American, he's just Asian (Japanese).

"whose inclusion I find borderline offensive" I wasn't offended at the quality of his writing :P

Thanks. I could've sworn that this exact nonsense about Chinese babies was seen before on here, but I wasn't about to hunt down proof. I didn't engage either time because I'm not even sure what the point to all this is.

He doesn't seem to participate otherwise so it was just a profile check to see.

This kind of manifesto-posting is not desirable

It's not even a manifesto. The last time it was more well-formed but also fell short of our classical manifestoposters. It's «here are some reasons I find compelling to think that the Chinese are, essentially, yucky emotionally stunted robots. Amirite?» He suggested some racial struggle, but what's the struggle? Chinese babies are significantly more chill than other babies; Chinese adults tend to wear masks, excel at technical competence and fail at entering the PMC; a hundred years ago, Mainland Chinese elite women had their feet bound. Okay, I personally buy all this and much more.

Where's the thesis and its development? What is supposed to be or not be litigated, exactly? That a sovereign Chinese state is inherently a threat to Western values or something? This doesn't follow from the provided evidence, such as there is, and isn't even articulated.

Maybe I just lack the context of the Yellow Menace discourse and it's assumed to be self-evident the moment Chinese differences are established. I can certainly see how an intuitive antipathy for a racial Other can inform policies. But this is supposed to be a place for rational-ish discussion. You need to spell this stuff out.

I wish there was a Yellow menace. If I was to choose between the current woke pmc and ccp leadership I wouldn't blink before choosing them.

Are you really that bullish on the CCP after 2 years of zero-covid and rolling lockdowns? A consistent pattern over the last 3 years seems to be, America is retarded, but they consistently get outdone by the rest of The World. Russia started a full-scale war, China did zero-covid, Australia/NZ tried zero-covid, Canada went full authoritarian, Germany phased out nuclear... to go back to coal! The UK's economy stagnated. So many other countries got on the lockdown train. And the Third World, they are going to need a lot of IMF loans soon.

Yes. CCP Don't want to export their values unlike Brussels or Washington and them being the hegemon will allow to solve the two biggest problems facing EU - mass migration and inability of current migrants to culturally assimilate. Which requires some mild application of the stick not only the carrot.

CCP Don't want to export their values unlike Brussels or Washington

Are we sure about that? Sure, China may not necessarily be interested in International Communism, but they seem to like asking their business partners (NBA, Disney, etc.) to make the right noises and not make the wrong noises. China's investments in African nations is also likely for a similar reason, to shore up international PR and UN support for the PRC.

Maybe it's just that being the hegemon requires or results in values spread--maybe material power is not enough without memetic power.

I suppose Dase could repost that Russian "proverb" about the two chairs here...

Something something two chairs but one ass? Now sure how that applies here.

While I cannot know for certain, I think @HalloweenSnarry references the classical Prison Riddle, i.e. a shit test used as part of a «registration» rite for a new cell mate, popularized on Russian imageboards (this stuff was recently brought to the attention of Westerners by Galeev).

The riddle in question is a near-perfectly polished psychological attack against a relatively powerless newcomer in a honor culture setting; it's really pretty crude, but lazily googled translations are lacking, so here goes. «There are two chairs. On one, sharpened pikes. On the other, jerked [erect] cocks. On which one do you sit, on which do you put your mother?» As is common with riddles, it rhymes.

Supposedly, default passwords are:

  1. «I'll take the sharpened pikes, cut down the jerked cocks, will sit myself and sit my mother».

  2. «I'll sit on the pikes and sit my mother on my knees».

In principle, the universal counter «For what reason do you inquire?» (literally), or some blah like «We're fine with standing, thank you very much» are also valid, though I haven't had the opportunity to try it out.

There is a whole family of those riddles, sadly their charm is untranslatable. The most reductionist one is «Offer your ass vs. sell your mom?»

I like the trolley problem one:

You're on a train, chained to levers that can turn either left or right. There's a fork in the road ahead - your mother is tied to a pole on the right and your buds, ten of them, are on the left. Which way do you turn, who do you hit?

Answer: today's buds [could be] tomorrow's cops.

Russian (and broader Russophone) culture pays a lot of attention to the problem of choosing between terrible options and false dichotomies, captured in the saying «horse-radish ain't sweeter than radish». E.g. the Escobar Axiom of Choice (Escobar is a Ukrainian black metal character):

In any choice between only two mutually exclusive and opposite entities, both alternatives will be exceptional fucking shit.

Or in the original form:

«this [one] is fucking shit, and that one is fucking shit. Both fucking shits are such that I just fuck her mom's mouth».

Pelevin has developed this idea into a faux-dialectical method, e.g. in «Batman Apollo»:

– The Chinese Taoists, – he said, – had a similar notion, I will retell it in my own words. Struggling for hearts and minds, discourse workers constantly demand that people answer 'yes' or 'no'. All human thinking must flow, like an electric current, between these two poles. But in reality there are always three possible answers: "yes", "no" and "fuck you". When too many people begin to understand this, it means there is some wiggle in the skulls. In our culture, it has reached a critical point. It needs to be reduced drastically.

And earlier, in «P5: farewell songs of the political pygmies of pindostan»:

Ludwig Wittgenstein had claimed in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that he had discovered a general form for describing the sentences of any language. In his view, this universal formula accommodates all possible signifier constructions – just as the infinite space of the universe accommodates all possible cosmic objects.

"That there is a general form of sentence," writes Wittgenstein, "is proven by the fact that there can be no sentence whose form cannot be foreseen (i.e., constructed). The general form of the sentence is: "The issue is so und so" ("Es verhält sich so und so").

However, philologist Alexander Sirind, an associate professor at the Irkutsk Pedagogical Institute, recently managed to disprove the famous formula, by giving an example of a sentence that goes beyond the all-encompassing paradigm outlined by the Austrian philosopher. It goes like this: "Fuck you, Wittgenstein".

But as for the CCP vs the Globohomo, I think another piece of imageboard fancy is more relevant – the 4chan «freedom is best, and hard choices» or maybe the Ben Garrison remake «the march of tyranny». If you don't have negotiating power except in the form of defecting in protest, and your defection threshold is only reached after both tyrants have curtailed freedoms of their subjects, just to a different extent (and that's still a better case than what we have here) – eventually both tyrants converge to absolute dominance and all subjects are maximally debased.

The Chinese Taoists, – he said, – had a similar notion, I will retell it in my own words. Struggling for hearts and minds, discourse workers constantly demand that people answer 'yes' or 'no'. All human thinking must flow, like an electric current, between these two poles. But in reality there are always three possible answers: "yes", "no" and "fuck you". When too many people begin to understand this, it means there is some wiggle in the skulls. In our culture, it has reached a critical point. It needs to be reduced drastically.

This reminds me of older discourse around powertalk(?), wherein enough people "leave" the game of producing to extort producers, that society begins to collapse. (I only briefly leafed through a decade ago and current perusal leaves me uncertain whether that was the source.)

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Yeah, that first one was what I was thinking of.

Your ending paragraph puts things a lot better, though.

There are two chairs. On one, sharpened pikes. On the other, jerked [erect] cocks. On which one do you sit, on which do you put your mother?» As is common with riddles, it rhymes.

Password template seems to be any solution where you don't sit on the cocks and your mother is absolutely unharmed/uncocked. I did figure that out as much, but thought of retarded shit like placing the chairs sideways and both of us sitting on the side edge or something. I might just be too "neurodivergent" for Russian prison. That fails the "fuck you" criterion though.

Exactly, I’d rather continue to take mandatory DEI trainings than be under the CCP.

‘Lies about how awesome Mao is’ are not a significant improvement on ‘lies about how awesome black supremacists from the 70’s are’.

It's not "the lies" that are the issue.

Pretending to think that declaring war on sparrows and killing 100 million people was a stroke of genius doesn't seem like a notable improvement on pretending to believe that black women have some kind of unique insight.

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Why? I feel the exact opposite way.

You’d rather take mandatory trainings on the party? Wear a loyalty pin?

For me zero COVID alone would be a nightmare. Hong Kong just dropped their mask mandate last week!

I suppose if I have to be ruled by tyrants, I'd much rather have the ones that don't change the rules constantly and look to permanent revolution.

At least with the CCP, you know what you're getting.

The sense of unity though, of everyone of any religion, ethnicity and political persuasion coming together - from all over the world - to fight Winnie the pooh and friends, it would be such a relief.

Just think - no wondering if that person I just met at work is a monster obsessed with killing black/white people - not having to wonder about anyone who isn't Chinese at all at the start (not to mention how much easier it would be to score a cute Chinese girlfriend when everyone is terrified of them - sure you can spy on me sweetie, I know less than nothing). It sounds like bliss.

Note that I read the scenario here as things are exactly the same as they are now but the ccp are in charge, and people aren't saying they wish the last 20 years were rewritten so that the ccp steamrolled the world and everywhere now looks like China, because I can't imagine either IGI-111 or Lizzardspawn going for that based on previous conversations, and because that would require a lot more set up to engage with hypothetically.

Yeah I don't think anyone saying they would love to be under the ccp lived in a place that "took covid seriously", my country dropped their mask mandates mid-2022, by god I was going insane, if I was in China where they have stricter covid rules and lockdowns, I would have probably jumped out of the window by now.

US Red State residents have no idea how good they had it the last two years.

My favorite part was where he implied that 3-chord overproduced popular music is better than classical music.

Better or worse is purely subjective in art. I won't call pop music the pinnacle of music, but I personally would rather listen to pop than to classical music.

Yeah popular music is trash. East Asians contribute (or at least K-pop and J-pop do), but it's just more slop.

I for one would like to welcome our new stoic Asian overlords.

I'd rather have people with hard skills in my country than 'soft-skills' people. Better to have rule by high-INT than high-CHA. Nobody's ever denied that East Asians are clever, they make contributions in technology. If they've all joined the Democratic/leftist mainstream media ideological consensus, then that's really more our fault for founding it in the first place.

So what if they're a bit less creative and more disciplined? It's not a highly significant effect, there's plenty of start-ups and development in China. They lead in many sectors of technology: https://twitter.com/scienceisstrat1/status/1557866377486245889 How is this possible if they're not significantly creative?

Discipline can also be good in certain circumstances, if you've got a soldier who'll fight to their last breath, that can be useful. The conditions China fought under in Korea were horrendously bad, they had no air cover, negligible artillery/armour and their logistics were minimal. They could only move at night lest they get found and pummeled by the US air force. The mountains of Korea are immensely cold and tens of thousands of them died of frostbite. But they fought the UN forces to a standstill with skillful infiltration tactics and night fighting, using infantry alone. In terms of generalship and valor, they outclassed us as much as we outclassed them in firepower and materiel. Surely such feats deserve respect!

I really liked the Three Body Problem series, it was thought provoking. I also liked Reverend Insanity, which is very unlike other books and webnovels in various ways. Both are from mainland China. And there are considerable political problems in the mainstream publishing industry in the US, there is a tendency to market various politically-correct literature, from authors of favored ethnicities.

Anyway, of all the ethnic groups in the US, you're finding problems with the East Asians? The ones with the lowest crime rates and highest incomes? The ones who are getting lumped with whites in terms of anti-meritocratic discrimination?

If they've all joined the Democratic/leftist mainstream media ideological consensus, then that's really more our fault for founding it in the first place

Have they? Every Asian-American I meet is grounded in traditional responsibilities of the nuclear family & boomer era conservative society.

Natalists:

  • Have children....and live for your children

  • Take care of your old parents.... and they will do the childcare while you work

  • Pay for your child's education...which comes with the implicit expectation of getting grandchildren.

Merit & work ethic based values

  • Pull yourself up by your bootstraps --> go to school & get a job

  • Excuses like 'I do not have privilege' are never tolerated

  • Anti illegal-immigration --> pro skills based immigration

Emphasis on their culture's preservation

  • Take pride in being the race & culture they hail from

  • Kids are expected to come home for special events celebrated in a historically faithful manner

  • Defer to elders continues to be the norm.

  • Jadedness around blank-slatist neo-ideologies. The great leap forward and the general failure of neo-systems across Asia has made them quite resistant to 'brand new ideas that will fix everything'. There is a 'you have no idea how good things in the 1st world are, do not fuck this up' belief that pervades the culture. (I'd say this applies to 1st and 2nd gen immigrant culture at large)

There are 2 reasons that Indians and Chinese aren't solidly red-coded.

First is because of the Republican's insistence on 'Whiteness & Christianity' being core to the platform. If it gets reframed as 'protestant values & religiosity', then people-of-color would be more likely to associate with the group. Trump and more concretely: DeSantis, has already started this process by capturing Cubans & religious Hispanics. The model clearly works.

The second is the tricky one. Both Indians and Chinese diaspora really value social acclaim through institutional success. So as long as the institutions are coded left, they will continue to pretend, and eventually believe themselves to be coded left. It is a very Scott-Aaronson-ian approach to the world. Unless Republicans can tie themselves to being high status, they will never be able to pull Indians/Chinese towards them.

But going by values, Asian-diaspora embodies more of the boomer-era values that Republicans claim to stand for than Republicans themselves.

First is because of the Republican's insistence on 'Whiteness & Christianity' being core to the platform.

This is simply false and has been false for decades. Here's what George W. Bush said about the topic on Sept 17, 2001 for example:

The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war."

Leftists insist that Republicans are racist, and push this meme by misleading media stories. A Bush II example of this was James Byrd (black guy) getting murdered by racists in Texas while Bush was governor. Leftists who oppose the death penalty wanted a hate crime law, Bush said such a law was unnecessary because Texas has strict laws against murder. Texas eventually executed the killers based on those laws.

A Trump example of this is creatively editing a statement to imply Trump described white supremacists as "fine people" when he explicitly said he wasn't referring to them. (Full quotes here: https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trumps-very-fine-people-both-sides-remarks/ )

Now I fully believe that Indians and Chinese believe this to be true - but their belief has nothing to do with any actual mainstream Republican views. Your second reason explains quite well why Indian and Chinese Americans believe this, regardless of how true it is.

This may be true of the immigrants themselves, but I'm not so sure it still obtains among the second- and third-generations; particularly those growing up under contemporary socio-cultural conditions.

In my experience, second-generation Asian Americans are divided between a vocally woke minority of mostly women and a quiet majority of mostly men who don't care about politics and just want to earn a living and be left alone.

Let's assume that your poorly-developed, unsourced arguments are all 100% true. They're not, and throwing music and novels in there is almost absurd enough to suggest parody, but I don't want to deal with your Gish gallop, so I'm going to use my imagination.

Why should I care?

If, as you seem to think, Asians are unfeeling automata who may neither comprehend art nor build genuine rapport...I'm not seeing the problem. Explain to me why the existence of such people is a bad thing.

Some people seem to think that you need to have a "personality" in order to have a right to live.

Some of the arguments are sourced, some are not. I think, as poorly argued as the position is, there are undeniable expressed differences between divergent population groups. I don't know on what basis anyone can deny this considering the widely divergent cultural norms and expressions. Let alone physical and psychological differences. I also, like you, don't know exactly what the person is arguing towards. It reads similar to anti-China CIA threads on /pol/, without the industrial accident webm's.

If, as you seem to think, Asians are unfeeling automata who may neither comprehend art nor build genuine rapport...I'm not seeing the problem. Explain to me why the existence of such people is a bad thing.

I think there is an undeniably obvious problem to develop between two people, one an unfeeling automata and another who deeply feels and sympathizes with everything around him. Now neither the Chinese nor European live up to those descriptors, but I think the principle holds firm regardless. That there is a clash of 'values' there.

I think a lot of the world has been playing by western rules for a while now. And I see no reason to assume that any country anywhere in the world would continue to do so if the west fades as a power. I don't see it as a ridiculous deduction to say that this potential loss of power, coupled with different values of a rising power, represent a threat to the people who value all the things the 'west' has stood for internationally.

I don't think you necessarily need to demonize the Chinese to make this argument, but there does seem to be a numbness to the western population when a threat is proposed that is anything other than the media flavor of the month. A sort of automatic assumption that, no matter what, the status quo established by White expansion and global dominance throughout the recent ages is a universal that was always the case and that it will hold no matter who is 'in charge'. I think that assumption is obviously faulty. But, again, I don't think you make those arguments literally, like is being tried here. I think you just show a Chinese person boiling a dog alive and let the 'visceral logic' do the speaking for you.

Calling a series of factual statements a “gish gallop” is basically telling on yourself. There’s no argument here, but you’re admitting the conclusion you would draw is uncomfortable ergo assuming bad intentions.

It is interesting to try to compare the reaction of this site to this poster to the common reflexively hostile one most reddit subs have to HBD in general (which this site doesn't share and/or looks down upon)

There seems to be some history I'm missing with the user that might explain it though. Maybe.

There seems to be some history I'm missing with the user that might explain it though.

His post a week ago started with "Our struggle with China is racial", focused on the supposed inherent cruelty of Chinese people rather than something more supported like East Asians being higher conformity/conscientiousness, and was poorly argued and focused on anecdotal evidence. So there's some carryover, where people take this post as a continuation of the same argument rather than just being the (quite plausible) assertion that East Asians have personality differences separate from the higher intelligence. Obviously "this race is so incompatible that we're destined for racial conflict" is a much more dubious claim, especially when the argument isn't even about the resentment that flows from differing capability or from violent crime but vague personality differences. And as I pointed out in response to his original post, he's focusing on Chinese people but they don't have that much genetic separation from other East Asians, most of which do not have China's reputation for low empathy or its political antagonism with the U.S.

Regarding this post specifically, my largely uninformed impression of the infant studies is that they're small and potentially questionable for the usual replication crisis reasons, but unfortunately it's probably difficult to do an improved version of them for political reasons. (It's also harder to know what implications they have for adults.) It would make sense, but a lot of replication crisis stuff makes sense, that's why people were investigating the hypothesis in the first place. It's not comparable to intelligence research on population differences, where the state of the evidence is much firmer and more extensive.

Not at all.

I think he’s wrong on the merits, such as with his inability to name Asian (-American?) authors or musicians. He’s also not making only factual statements. Part of what makes it a Gish gallop is mixing in assertions, like the claim that the gap between law associates and law partners implies Asians lack “personality.” He is throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

What was the point of this fever dream rant? Did some Chinese guy steal your girl?

Good lord this got me. Thanks for the laugh.

I don't think I've seen anyone make the claim that Chinese-Americans are just high IQ whites. Usually if someone has gone far enough down the HBD rabbit-hole to have this conversation they will bring up in the next breath the personality differences between East Asians and Europeans as an explanation for their underrepresentation at the highest levels of achievement.

Clearly there are differences, just as Indian Brahmins or unassimilated Ashkenazi Jews are not the same as White Americans, even if they all qualify for the high IQ 'club.' What we should conclude from this fact is unclear, but given intermarriage rates of 20% or more per generation and imminent catastrophic population decline in China cutting off the supply of new immigrants, I don't think you have anything to worry about unless you think that having a future white population with 5-10% Asian ancestry is some sort of disaster.

I think there are enough 'IQ nationalists', especially in the 'fringe rationalist world' to warrant some expressed reservations regarding the alleged supremacy of IQ.

Where are any great novelists of the past 30 years?

Dunno, but ‘where are the great Asian-American novels’ is particularly dumb because Asian Americans A) haven’t been here as long as whites B) language barrier and C) don’t exactly have an industry dedicated to promoting them per their group(which is a partial explanatory factor to the over representation of blacks among the American literary canon) while also being a fairly small portion of the population.

I believe the point was that there haven’t been great novelists of any stripe or race in the last 30 years, so the problem is not solely a Chinese one.

Whether that is true I‘m not really sure.

I agree with all those points!

There is asian overrepresentation in every field involving intelligence and a bamboo ceiling in every subfield requiring a personality

Do you suppose high-caste Indians and Jews have incredible personalities to go along with their intelligence, in the sense that there's «more» of a person there, or a better person? Might this word be deserving of some… scrutiny? This autistic Chinese American guy has an opinion to share:

You, the reader, have probably noticed that up to now, we’ve focused mostly on brains and technical ability. Yes, they are essential, but personality characteristics (both individual and collective) and “soft skills” also matter, especially if one wants to rise to a leadership position. From my personal observation, Indians are, in general, very good at projecting confidence and assertiveness from the way the talk and present themselves, much better than Chinese are, at least in the American cultural context, even when you discount the language barrier Chinese face relative to Indians. I’m talking not only about how one says things in terms of word choice, but the vocal tone and body language behind it. Sure, you can disdain this as superficial, but it matters. Perception matters as much, and in some cases, more, than substance. There is also that Indians seem to have a stronger network and help each out more in the career world. Collective intelligence or ethnic nepotism, you be the judge.

I have stories to tell on this. First of all, I remember vividly how when I interned at the same place as an Indian schoolmate, he was the only one who scheduled, successfully in a few cases, coffee meetings with executives, as an intern (!!!!!), when it never would have occurred to me, or probably almost everyone else except him, to even try. One can sort of link this to collective intelligence, in that it is an indicator of discernment with regard to who matters (the executives) and who doesn’t (the engineer worker bees) within the political organization. And needless to say, you rise up in the organization by aligning yourself with the people who matter. Yes, my telling a full-time engineer this was met largely with a response in the likes of, “He knows who matters and who doesn’t. And even if he completely fucks up, he has nothing to lose, he’s only a 2nd year college intern. In any case, he gets good practice interacting with people who matter.” There is also that multiple people I know have complained about blatant Indian favoritism in interviews in the likes of what is described in this Quora answer. Yes, others have told me that when Indians interview other Indians, the bar is much lower. It’s not just in interviews. Another guy told me about how he once worked for a company that turned into ruins after Indian managers protected some Indian fuckups from getting fired. Personally, I have seen a case of Indians getting promoted way faster than those of other ethnic groups on a big team with an Indian director. So sometimes, I ask myself the verboten. Could it be that Indians really are far higher ranked in tech companies than their ability and contribution, because they are much more self-promoting and collectively nepotistic than those of other groups? Moreover, could it be that many people secretly think and resent this but are too afraid to say out of fear of being publicly vilified for “being racist” and having their careers ruined from alienating a national group increasingly powerful in corporate America? And that gradually, other groups, as they awake to the rigging of the game and get past, reluctantly, their moral objections, will quietly do the same, transforming tech companies and the American workplace at large into literal prison gangs contend, destroying whatever is left of the ideal of meritocracy and fair play in this country, ever more mired in identity politics?

I remember Lynn (probably) writing that black people, too, tend to have «winner personalities», just of a slightly more combative mold, which makes teachers intuitively assume that black students must be smarter than what those ignorant, culturally biased formal tests might indicate: always speaking up in class, not ashamed to ask questions, proud, undeterred by criticism or low-class background… basically model grinning Americans from cartoons and stock photos, who don't even need no Tony Robbins to coach them into success. The other side of that is surprising lack of real success, and probably stuff like this too. The Chinese are more known for videos of this kind. As you say, your struggle with China is racial. So, which way, Western man?

Aside from suggesting that the Chinese aren't full-fledged human beings because something something not emotionally reactive enough, do you have an idea of a perfect American? Less like the Chinese, more like Indians, Jews, Blacks? Or do you suppose that Whites are the only group that's properly balanced? I've criticized them the last time and could go on with mockery, but would you mind making a positive case?

because they are much more self-promoting and collectively nepotistic than those of other groups?

Yes. I have anecdotal evidence generated by my lying eyes, but Indians tend to be prolific nepotists in my part of the world (Dubai). And given 35% of the population is Indian, I think I have a decent enough sample size to base this assertion on.

Anecdotes of an Indian from a specific village/township in India entering the management of a company and the company suddenly becoming a foreign outpost of that village is a dime and a dozen. In the West, Indians are probably less granular in their nepotism in that a manager might favor South/North/X Caste/{whatever tribalism you can conjure up} Indians over other Indians, or even other Desi's (Not Pakistanis) if they are proportionally not large enough yet, but the pattern will eventually lead towards the guy's village if not his extended family as they grow in numbers. The KPMG offices here had to purge their upper management and CEO a few years back because the Indian managers were doing what they do best. Unfortunately for KPMG they hired an Arab!! who did the exact same thing before half the company revolted against him and got him to step down.

Otoh, I can't speak for the entire world, but no one comes second in nepotism to the Lebanese. The "Lebanese Mafia" as they are called here have taken over just about entire industries to the point that people joke you are better off having gone to "AUB" than Harvard if you want to work in Media/Consulting here.

Yes. I have anecdotal evidence generated by my lying eyes, but Indians tend to be prolific nepotists in my part of the world (Dubai). And given 35% of the population is Indian, I think I have a decent enough sample size to base this assertion on.

This is true for most immigrant ethnic groups, though. It's no secret that up until the 60's and 70's policing, municipal waste management, and teaching were all ethnic patronage jobs in most major American cities, with the specifics of which group got what depending on the particular ethnic mix of the region (e.g. Polish ethnic interests mattered in Chicago, but not NYC.) Germans also were famously ethnocentric in the midwest up until about WWI (when it became very politically touchy to speak in German or be overly-sympathetic to the Kaiserreich) however, the fact that they were largely in farming and small communities limited their reach.

I don't think this is really comparable to the «Indian Cordyceps» so aptly described by Moldbugman.

Related take from Razib.

Study by Dan Freeman and his Chinese-American wife in Nature:

https://sci-hub.ru/10.1038/2241227a0

The study…is that really the fully study, or just the abstract…has a total of 48 infants. And the primary criteria is quite subjective—besides blink rate, it was all unquantified “oh the baby struggled more quickly”. (And even the blink rate isn’t actually display in a table anywhere.)

And, it’s the least blinded study I could imagine. The authors quite obviously knew they were looking at white or Asian babies, so there’s a huge potential for bias…up to and including pushing some of the babies harder.

That poster has made top level posts mentioning these unresponsive Chinese babies twice now. Those claims were based on this study? That's how far they strained themselves in searching for sources?

The study…is that really the fully study, or just the abstract

I looked around for copies in other aggregators and it seems to me that is actually the entire study. It's less than 1 page! Being a researcher in the 60's must've been fun.

The study…is that really the fully study, or just the abstract…has a total of 48 infants.

And with this small sample, they nevertheless got massively significant p-value of 0.0001. Small sample size makes it harder for p-values to reach significance.

And the primary criteria is quite subjective—besides blink rate, it was all unquantified “oh the baby struggled more quickly”.

That's why the discuss the reliability:

Four arbitrarily selected infants formed reliability sample, and of the 160 items involved, the authors were over 1 point apart in only three instances; all scales reported below yielded reliability coefficients of 0.912 or better, with an average reliability of 0.969.

So, they are quite subjective, but the authors subjective judgements were in very high agreement.

And with this small sample, they nevertheless got massively significant p-value of 0.0001.

I have no idea whether this study if correct or not, but why are you cherry picking the very lowest p-value of the several reported?

It's sufficient to dispose of the argument that the study should be discounted because of its low sample size (which is an innumerate argument that gets thrown around far too often on the internet). P-values are, in part, a function of sample size. They're the answer to the question "what is the likelihood of seeing a pattern at least this strong in a sample of this size under the null hypothesis?". Having a small sample size isn't some sneaky hack to get more statistically significant results - as wlxd points out, a smaller sample size makes it harder to find significant results (i.e. you need a stronger effect size).

A lot of people have this vague idea that a study needs thousands or tens of thousands of observations to get persuasive results about some statistical pattern, and it's just not true. As an intuition pump, imagine flipping a coin 48 times and getting 42 heads and 6 tails. Is that not enough to convince you that the coin (or flipping process) is rigged?

Oh please that was the lowest…but barely.

I suppose it’s a bit cherry-picking to point out the lowest p-value, but all of the subjective observations were in that teeny tiny range.

Well, no, not barely. It was the lowest by a lot. The other p-values were small, but nowhere near that small (they were from .005 to .06). Besides, if they were all about the same, then why not cite the highest? That's what people do when they argue in good faith.

Because they have a conclusion they need to support. This isn't complicated.

3.1 THE BAMBOO CEILING: There is asian overrepresentation in every field involving intelligence and a bamboo ceiling in every subfield requiring a personality. To give one example from reuters:

Isn't this subject to the college admissions counterpoint: i.e. that, just like colleges use "soft skills" to discriminate against otherwise intellectually overachieving Asians - and Jews before them- to serve other ends , so do businesses (or businesses downstream of this tendency pick it up as a result)?

Thus Asians may funnel themselves more into fields with more objective criteria to avoid this issue? (or the downsides of not having social connections)

More likely, the bamboo ceiling just reflects generational effects. East Asians flooded elite law schools only in recent years, it's basically a decade to make partner at most big firms and then you stay for life, so what you're seeing isn't really underrepresentation (though Asian associates will claim it is hoping to get some help) it's just the difference a decade makes.

Yes, it could be. Depends on your priors on the prevalence of bigotry. Is Harvard is just saying Asians have no personality to justify excluding them or is Harvard is excluding them because they have no personalities? That's why I selected Law as a comparative example, where to the extent that soft metrics are being used for evaluation, those doing so are personally acquainted with those they are judging. If an admissons officer says, this kid has no personality, maybe he's meeting a quota. If your boss that's seen you grind for six years before partnership consideration time says, he's cool and all but God I'm not gonna put him in front of clients or juries - this is far more dispositive.

Australia’s Voice to Parliament (1/2)

The Voice to Parliament is one of Australia’s largest active culture and political wars, and I think encapsulates the whole macro global culture war on a (relatively) micro scale.

What is the Voice to Parliament? Well, half the problem is that no one seems to know what it is, as we will soon find out. The Voice to Parliament (the Voice) is a proposed government body of some kind intended to consist of and represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous Australians) enshrined into the Constitution of Australia via referendum. The Voice would have some kind of involvement with the Australian Parliament and the legislative process. The referendum to enshrine the Voice is expected to take place at some point this later this year, and would also enshrine ‘recognition’ of Indigenous Australians in the Australian Constitution. This marks the end of the consensus on what the Voice even is (or would be). Details about what powers the Voice have or how it would function have been incredibly vague and hotly debated.

The Voice is the latest in a long line of attempts to get constitutional recognition (of the special status of) of Indigenous Australians. This is by far the boldest attempt too, attempting include a permanent constitutional body with some legislative power as part of it. The Voice most directly originates from the 2017 ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’, which keeping in with the theme was/is an attempt to get some kind of unspecified constitutional recognition (and power) for Indigenous people. The Statement directly called for “the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution” and “a Makarrata [Treaty] Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.”

After a bunch of government activity looking into the Voice that is honestly not worth getting into, the National Indigenous Australian Agency published the Indigenous Voice Co-Design Process final report in 2021. While this does contain a lot of detail how a potential Voice might work, this is merely a suggestion and is in no sense binding. Mostly charitably (but still concerning), my understanding is that this suggested version of the Voice’s powers would be not dissimilar to the current Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (something I am also sceptical of), which has the authority to review every piece of legislation and legislative instrument and make reports on whether they are ‘compatible with human rights’. The Voice would seeming operate in the same way, except it would be constitutionally enshrined (and therefore virtually impossible to remove in the future), and its member will be made of completely unelected and unrepresentative Indigenous representatives. And I must reiterate, this report is in no way necessarily what the Voice will end up being, and even the report is uncertain what the internal structure of the Voice would look like, offering a number of hypothetical examples.

So what do the major political parties have to say about the Voice? The current Labor (left to centre-left) government, the ones who will be ultimately responsible for putting forward the question and implementing the outcome, obviously support the Voice (or at least their version of it), having previously supported the Uluru Statement and making a referendum on the Voice part of their election promises. But they have been alarmingly sparse on details of what it is exactly they are supporting. The only message they have been clear on is that the Voice won’t have veto powers over Parliament (something that is of genuine concern). Pretty much the only detail is now-Prime Minister Albanese’s draft referendum question he proposed back in 2022 in the lead up to the election “Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?” along with some draft words to add to the constitution which are similarly vague.

The Liberal Party (right to centre-right), the major opposition party, has yet to openly state their position on the Voice referendum, instead repeatedly asking for more detail about how the Voice would function before they state their position. While it’s hard to say with certainty, my feeling is that the Liberal Party generally doesn’t want to support the Voice but can’t state that position openly for whatever reason (internal party politics, don’t want to give left-dominated media ammo) and is instead engaging on this (effective?) strategy of ‘asking questions’ to undermine public support for the Voice.

The National Party (right rural based), the minor party in the Liberal-National Coalition, is the only major party to actually outright oppose the Voice, although it should be noted that their stated justification is not anything along the lines opposing it as an undemocratic, illiberal body or the privileged status it would grant Indigenous Australians over other Australians, but rather for being “another layer of bureaucratic tape” and that the Voice “will not advance the primary aim of Closing the Gap [term used to describe the difference in life outcomes between Indigenous Australians and white non-Indigenous Australians] and dealing with the real issues faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.

Then of course, there’s the Greens, Australia’s progressive party. They whole-heartedly support the Voice to the fullest possible extent, and while they are similarly vague as Labor on details, my impression is that they would support the Voice having veto power or similar powers to Parliament. The Greens also support ‘Truth and Treaty’ which is a whole other can of worms I would rather not get into right now (it’s all the highly woke stuff about ‘Truth-Telling’ and ‘Justice’ and give more privileges to Indigenous Australians). The Green’s position is actually really important, because Labor does not currently have a majority in the Senate, and they need Green crossbench support to pass any legislation relevant to the Voice if it reaches the point.

As a slight aside, Senator Lidia Thorpe, an extremely woke Indigenous woman and Indigenous activist whose actions I previously discussed in an old Motte comment recently broke ties with the Greens over the Green’s support for the Voice referendum (and now is fully committed to representing ‘Blak Soverignity’). This is essentially because she believes the Greens are not radical enough, and she refuses to support the Voice while a Treaty doesn’t exist yet. It says a lot about someone when they think the Greens aren’t radical enough.

As part of the referendum process in Australia, the Government is required to provide a brochure/flyer/information explaining the arguments both for and against the given referendum proposal (including related funding and research, essentially the Government is required to provide support/funding to both sides of the referendum). The Labor Government took steps towards removing this requirement through legislation, claiming such a requirement “out of step with today’s electoral laws and does not reflect modern delivery and communications methods.” Many opposing politicians and commentators quite rightly pointed out that this as a pretty blatant and undemocratic attempt to suppress the ‘no’ campaign, counting on left dominated media to overwhelmingly support the ‘yes’ vote. The Labor government ultimately backtracked in the face of criticism. One more thing of note is that in Senate Estimates the Shadow Minister for Education (Liberal) recently raised the issue of schools only promoting the ‘yes’ case and likening it to ‘indoctrination’. Which absolutely is what is happening, I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty there are approximately zero teachers in public schools opening advocating for the ‘no’ vote and plenty openly advocating for the ‘yes’ vote. As far as I can tell, nothing has come of this event as of yet.

I feel it's worth noting that One Nation (a minor but notable party) opposes the Voice on the principled grounds of nondiscrimination.

I came back to the country a few years ago to find Labor and Liberal in some tedious stouche that I can't even remember; except I was astonished to find that Derren Hinch and Pauline Hanson were acting like the only grownups in the room.

I thought that was just one weird freak of probability never to happen again, but now I am not so sure. The ONP is starting to look smarter than everyone else, if only because Pauline is merely stupid while the rest of the polity is actively anti-intelligent.

Australia’s Voice to Parliament (2/2)

And where does the public stand on this issue? Well public polling seems to indicate that the ‘yes’ has a slight majority, though notably this percentage has been steadily falling over the last year (the Liberal Party strategy working?). Importantly, the people supporting yes (between yes, no and not sure) dropped below 50% recently. In my opinion, much of the support for the Voice in the public is mostly driven by white-guilt-ridden Australians who automatically support any proposal in favour of Indigenous Australians, regardless of practicality or principle. As some critical thought goes into it, the support has dropped. Add in social desirability bias/Shy Tory phenomenon (the gay marriage plebiscite won by a much small margin than was predicted), it seems uncertain if the referendum would pass if it were held tomorrow.

I guess now is a good time to segue to a commentary on the state of Indigenous/woke politics more generally. As you can probably tell, I do not support the Voice on principle, as it is incompatible with liberal and democratic ideals (and even if you aren’t liberal or democratic, then you wouldn’t support it for other philosophical/tribal reasons). It’s also not the first time a body or institution like this has even been tried. Mostly recently there was the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission(1990–2005) which more or less basically tried to do what the Voice wants to do, albeit no constitutionally enshrined. The Commission had to be shut down in 2005 after years of corruption (although in fairness, this was partially driven by the final Chairman in particular). The Voice being constitutionally enshrined as well as having the increasing immunity to scrutiny that woke politics will inevitably grant it is just a shitshow waiting to happen even worse that ATSIC.

For Americans, it might be hard to explain just how (pardon my French, but there’s really no other words to adequately express this sentiment) cucked Australia has become on Indigenous representation/recognition/reconciliation or whatever the buzzword is now. Canadian and New Zealand readers will understand (I feels sorry for our Kiwi brothers who have it worse). The analogy I offer you many American readers is like it’s all the black liberationism woke political stuff has become institutionalised in every institution with official statements. The difference between Australian and America here I think is that America has way more variance, the crazy can be crazier, but in Australia this stuff gets institutionalised scarily fast. Literally every meeting, event or document starts now with a ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ which is basically a statement like a mantra or prayer that ‘recognises’ that the area of wherever you are belongs (in some form, the exact words can and do change) to a given Indigenous group. I’m not sure if I’m even being facetious – in Parliament the sitting day starts with an Acknowledgement of Country and then is followed by prayers. Even worse is ‘Welcome to Country’ which is now omni-present at every major event, is performed by an Indigenous person, who basically “invites” (I would say ‘gives permission’) non-Indigenous people onto ‘their land’ and does some shamanistic ritual. Again, I’m not being facetious, one Welcome I had to sit through included the Indigenous representative doing a ritual to invite the ancestors to come and remove the bad spirits from the audience (my God, how is this allowed in government but a Christian blessing would be the scandal of a century). The Acknowledgement and Welcomes are also becoming increasingly radical too, and it’s becoming increasing common to state that ‘Sovereignty was never ceded’. This was amusingly and frustratingly said in one Acknowledgement by a government employee in a very important government building. It’s honestly hard to describe – look up some (recent) examples for yourself. You get increasingly deluded and discriminatory policies too, for example the Minister for Public Service wanting to increase Indigenous representation in the Australian Public Service to 5%, including executive management, despite Indigenous people making up only 3% of the population and most of them live in remote Northern Territory, Queensland or Western Australia. You get government bodies now who must explicitly have an Indigenous representative as part of their board, even if the organisation has nothing particularly to do with Indigenous issues. I could go on.

The tone of Indigenous activism and Australian society's response has also changed over the years, becoming more radical. Increasing 'blood-and-soil' type rhetoric is being adopted by Indigenous activists (and their naïve supporters). Whereas in the past it was common to refer to an Indigenous group being 'custodians' of an area of land (being semi-nomadic peoples who did not have a concept of land ownership prior to the arrival of Westerners), it's now increasingly common to hear language like 'this is [Indigenous group] Country' and the aforementioned 'sovereignty was never ceded', and some more general claims of the unique and unassailable right that that group to the land that the white man could never possess or truly understand. Similarly, Australian society's attitude towards Indigenous practices and knowledge has gone from liberal paternal 'yeah let them do their own thing and maybe humour them' and 'yeah maybe there is some useful tidbits of information we can glean from Indigenous fire management practices once we get past all the superstitious rubbish' to now being 'we must incorporate Indigenous culture and people into literally everything we do and give it privileged attention' and 'Indigenous knowledge and superstitions ways of knowing have some special quality that makes it them literally True and superior to Western™ knowledge, stupid Westerners have been ruining this sacred Country'.

I want to know where the Liberal Party, and conservative politicians more generally, are in all this. This stuff has completely infected government, in addition to all the usual suspects like education and academia. I’m not sure how they allowed to this to happen. Are they just somehow completely ignorant of how un-impartial and politically woke the government bureaucracy has become? Are they grossly incompetent or powerless to do anything? Have they also fallen victim to this in their own ranks, and lack the ability or backbone to purge it from their own party? Or do they also just support it, if less radically so, being naïve small-l liberals buying into the motte-and-bailey? I have no idea, but from my perspective it feels like they have their head in the sand. It’s been discussed here before about how the Republicans seem to be completely unaware about what they’re up against in the US, still acting like it’s 2008. It very much feels the same way here, if not even more so.

My guess is that Dutton opposes it, but is trying to figure out a way to publicly oppose it which doesn't incur the wrath of the Liberals' own pro-Voice wing, and which doesn't paint a giant target with 'I AM A RACIST' written on it on his back for Labor and the Greens.

I read Dutton's requests for clarification as being basically attempts to get Labor to put up a specific proposal that he can then oppose - much like the republic referendum, the Liberal strategy will be to sidestep the question of whether a republic/Voice is a good idea or not in principle while arguing that this republic/Voice is a bad idea. Labor are making what is probably the correct strategic move in reply by refusing to give any such details - they're trying to force him into either admitting that he supports the idea in principle, in which case he has to join the Yes campaign, or that he opposes it in principle, in which case he has the aforementioned target on his back.

It does show how far the terrain has shifted, though. Go back twenty years or so and John Howard bluntly opposed treaty, Voice, etc., on the plain small-l liberal grounds that the Commonwealth does not recognise or privilege any race or ethnicity, and further the Commonwealth cannot make a treaty with its own citizens. That Dutton doesn't feel able to make a similar argument now suggests that he thinks his position is quite fragile. Some of that might be specific to him - Dutton is a former policeman who was formerly in charge of border control, so he has a reputation as representing the tougher, more hard-right wing of the Liberal party; it makes sense that he feels particularly vulnerable to accusations of extremism - but I suspect that is not all of it by a long shot.

On the ideological background of it all - what frustrates me most is how underspecified all the public activism or debate in this area is. It seems to be something that runs on buzzwords. The biggest example for me is sovereignty. The word 'sovereign' pops up again and again like a tic, and it is extremely unclear what it's supposed to mean. It's clearly not sovereignty in the Western, Westphalian sense - Aboriginal people are demonstrably not sovereign in that sense. It's 'a spiritual notion', apparently, but what that means is never specified - a sense of being-on-the-land? Um, okay? What is that? It 'co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown'? Can someone spell out the political implications of that? If you try to look up any explanation, what you find is frankly a lot of waffle that no one seems to take at face value - the quoted elder there says "we are not subject to the Australian or British law but still maintain our own sovereignty", but good luck arguing in the public sphere that the law doesn't apply to Aboriginals!

And so on with so many of the other claims that seem to come up and time again. Another common one is that Aboriginals are the world's 'oldest continuous culture', another claim whose meaning is never specified and doesn't seem to bear up to scrutiny. So on and so forth. It's hard to escape feeling that, ultimately, there is no there there. Overall it seems that there is a desire among the Australian public to be nice to Aboriginal people, basically, but no consensus about what that means, so what ends up happening is that empty platitudes are voiced and no one thinks further about them. Certainly no one does anything.

Anyway, predictions...

Personally, I predict (but with low confidence) that the referendum will pass, and then conditional on the referendum passing, I predict that the Voice will have no real power. For all the symbolism, I don't believe parliament will do anything that would involve giving up any real power, so I think the Voice will have only the power to advise; and its constitution will be contingent on legislation, giving parliament the power to alter its make-up or defang it at whim. I predict the Voice will provide a bunch of well-paid committee jobs to indigenous activists in Canberra, and not make any difference as regards remote indigenous communities in poverty.

I would not be surprised if activists already expect the Voice to be ineffectual. The moment it's created, I predict the entire sector will turn to pushing for Treaty instead. Just as after the National Apology, energy shifted to advocating for constitutional recognition, and just as Malcolm Turnbull seemed about to achieve that, the Uluru Statement came out advocating for Voice instead, I predict that whether the Voice passes or not, in the next few years the whole sector is going to pivot to Treaty.

Personally, I predict (but with low confidence) that the referendum will pass, and then conditional on the referendum passing, I predict that the Voice will have no real power.

It's not meant to have power, and this is why they will immediately pivot to treaty. It is meant to boil the frog slowly. To change the baseline to "we gave them a voice but no real power, we have to do better!" and suddenly all the 'heroes' who wrangled the voice out of the government become racists or government stooges, just like the apology heroes are now.

I want to know where the Liberal Party, and conservative politicians more generally, are in all this. This stuff has completely infected government, in addition to all the usual suspects like education and academia.

I have a certain level of non-public information which I can't really source for you since it's stuff I overheard. Apparently Dutton is doing his best to wreck the Voice without looking like he dislikes Indigenous people and split the Liberals (who have their own moderate touchy-feely pro-Voice wing). He is the guy who walked out on Rudd's Apology to the indigenous after all, plus has police experience. It's hard to think of anyone who would be more anti-voice in mainstream Australian politics than Dutton. But he doesn't have much control over the party considering how badly the Liberals have been doing electorally, he can't do much overtly.

The inner workings of the Indigenous groups behind the Voice are incredibly incompetent/dysfunctional and simultaneously grasping for more power. They're using the lack of clarity you mention as the thin end of the wedge to gain actual power. They're trying to phrase terms in ambiguous ways such that future courts will interpret more power to them, once they get the Voice through. (Though given how much they gained from Mabo, which found Indigenous agriculture and sedentary lifestyles on one island off the coast of Australia and extended a certain level of land rights across the whole country, waiting for courts to interpret in their favor is not a bad strategy).

Anyway, this tactic is pretty obvious to the much smarter legal advisers who've called for a more moderate, compromise position. But the advisers are largely ignored. Internal divisions within the Indigenous group are opening up and the whole Voice is headed to failure, according to what I've heard. But this may not happen, I don't have a crystal ball to see the future.

(Though given how much they gained from Mabo, which found Indigenous agriculture and sedentary lifestyles on one island off the coast of Australia and extended a certain level of land rights across the whole country, waiting for courts to interpret in their favor is not a bad strategy

The courts just noted that Terra Nullius was bullshit, and that there was pre-existing land-law just like in any other conquered territory. The courts also made clear that Australian governments could override that land law and extinguish Native Title with little more than a wave of the pen.

But Parliament, under Paul Keating decided pass Native Title Act which went and bolstered native title claims around the country.

I'm not a lawyer and can't confidently discuss this stuff, I can only relay what I heard from people who do have expert knowledge of this specific case. The native title that they granted was only really meaningful and effective in places where no Europeans had done anything with the land, basically just wilderness. But the principle of finding settlements on one island in the Torres Strait and then extending it across the whole country is bizarre and goes against a broad principle of law aiming to be specific as opposed to generalizing out from one edge-case.

If I ran the Liberal party, I would try and split the referendum into 2 questions. One that offers "constitutional respect" and one for the voice. Then people could vote yes:no and not be seen as not caring/being racist

There is native title in Australia, but if you're referring to actually demolishing buildings and dismantling Australia and giving it 'back' to Indigenous groups, of course not (although who knows in the future...)

If not, how do the activists swallow the enormity of the condescension?

Huge cognitive dissonance I imagine. Or the more hopeful activists/woke true believers might see this as the thin edge of the wedge to actually deconstruct Australian government and society. The naive (small-l in American speak) liberals who parrot this stuff are useful idiots who use it as a mantra or prayer.

I'm surprised that we haven't seen more falseflag "agree and amplify" type attacks against wokeism.

Surely you could get white leftists to agree that the current Australian government is imperialist and illegitimate, right? They would have to agree, otherwise they could be labeled as racist. So then you just take the next logical step and demand that the Australian government disband and then... what's their next response? How are they supposed to resist that conclusion?

It seems like dedicated infiltrators could cause significant strife in leftist circles by just repeating their own talking points and demanding that they be taken to their logical conclusions.

So then you just take the next logical step and demand that the Australian government disband and then... what's their next response? How are they supposed to resist that conclusion?

Disband the old racist constitution and give them a chance to write their own? Why would they ever resist!

This only works if you have an operation that can put the farce to an end one day. Otherwise, the absurdity is just a raw display of total power; the emperor jerking off in front of your kids while he asks you what you think about his new robe. And who, would rally in the name of someone so pathetic and weak as to tolerate this?

I'm not sure that the 3% are mostly actually indigenous- AFAIK, most "aborigines" are white people who uncovered a family legend of some aboriginal descent and want to use it to grift.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but unlike in the USA there's no incentive for the aboriginal tribes to try to push out these people. Cherokees and Commanches and Choctaws have a real incentive to try to limit membership- they have to spread their resources around to every member of their tribe, and there's limits to how many resources they can generate. This is likely a major factor limiting the spread of amerind wokeness.

There is an element of that around specific tribes/lineages for Mineral Rights & other big influxes of money into Indigenous communities.

Also it's a kind of interesting catch 22. The groups with actual economic benefits tend to be out in remote locations with significant mineral deposits, whilst the tribes in most of the greater metropolitan seaboard were sufficiently disenfranchised that they don't even have any real clear lines of descent into the modern day. Combine that with Amerindians tending towards being far more advanced and stable in the first place, therefore clearer lines of lineage.

If I was trying to claim specific descent and a cut of BP's Indigenous tax payments to whatever groups in the NT, I'd face issues from the local. The main issue with the Australian version as-is is that even claiming a very boilerplate Indigenousnessishness gives you access to a bevy of benefits on its own.

I'm just going off what the census data says. While it's probably true that the numbers have increased at least a little due to grifting/socially incentivised white people claim descent. But my general impression is that it isn't nearly to the same extend than happens in say, Canada. The relationship between Australian society and Indigenous people is slightly different to that in Canada or the US - here in Australia, having a claim of Indigenous member does imply something more concrete about the culture practices you engage in. 'Indigenous' is more a claim of ethnic culture, rather than literal genetic ethnicity in many cases.

Would this be something like the Sámi Parliament? (Also discussed here.) If it's not elected, how is it selected?

The short answer is 'we have no idea'. I have to stress that the what exactly the Voice's powers would be or how it would be structured has not been specifically outline. As presented, this will only be decided on after the fact if the referendum succeeds (classic 'voters won't even know what they're voting for' scenario. Despite pushing from the Opposition Leader for the Government to release draft legislation so people actually know what they're voting on in practice, (woke) 'constitutional experts' have come out of the woodwork and been amplified by media about how releasing draft legislation to the public is totally a bad thing because it will just 'confuse' voters and undermine support for the Voice.

All we can say with certainty is that:

  • The Voice will be a constitutionally enshrined government body that has some degree of influence over legislation

  • The Voice will be made up of Indigenous representatives who were not voted for or appointed (directly or indirectly) by the general Australian public

In practice, it seems like the selection process for the members of the Voice would likely be some combination of appointees from existing Indigenous councils/assemblies/corporations and some elections held specifically by and for Indigenous people in a given area.

All we can say with certainty is that...

I would observe that an absolutely minimal reading of your items here would match the level of representation of DC, the Northern Mariana Islands, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico in the US House: each is allowed a delegate with no voting power. In theory a "voice", but in practice basically no actual power.

An important difference worth noting here is that that meh-voice is all the Puerto Ricans have and would be replaced, not supplemented, with real Congressional representation if Puerto Rico became a state.

Aboriginal Australians already have Parliamentary representation; they get to vote for MPs and Senators just like anyone else. And it's not like their wide distribution doesn't result in any Aboriginal MPs or Senators; they're overrepresented in Parliament relative to their proportion of the population. One would sensibly conclude that they don't need any additional "voice".

From what I can tell from Twitter, advocates say that that's the sort of detail that will be decided subsequently by legislation.

Given the problems in Australia of deciding who is sufficiently Indigenous, I would imagine that the approach would just be to appoint "community leaders", who will then be happy about being paid for having a more prominent voice about Australian federal legislation and being able to declare policies they disapprove as "anti-Indigenous" (officially). So, it seems to be an exercise in what is described as "steam control" in The Bonfire of the Vanities - invest money in self-appointed "representatives" of groups, since these "representatives" have the power to unleash "steam" on politicians.

Actually, the natives of Canada are extremely demographically relevant. Their overall TFR was 2.5~ in 2011 and was higher for those on reserves, where it was over 3, and substantially lower for those assimilated urban populations you mentioned. Their share of Canada's overall population has actually substantially increased over time despite Canada's sky-high immigration rates.

In 2011, when Canada’s TFR was 1.61 children per woman, the TFR for Status Indian women was 2.63 children per woman, 3.25 if living on reserve. The TFR for women identifying as First Nation but without Status was 1.47 children per woman, and the TFR for self-identified Métis women was 1.81 children per woman. The TFR for Inuit generally was 2.75 children per woman, with records collected by Nunavut and the North-West Territories indicating a TFR of 3.02 children per Inuit woman living there.

https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/indigenouseconomics244/chapter/104/

Great post.

A culture war angle you didn't touch on was admixture with white Australians.

You are either aboriginal or not, ie 1/16 counts the same as 100%.

Nature or nurture, whites outperform aboriginals, thus the indigenous medical school scholarship students all look like this:

https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/styles/half_width/public/thumbnails/image/7I8A1087_1.JPG?itok=5ntaThSA

I would be willing to bet most pure blooded Aboriginals are most concerned about better food, health and shelter while the 1/16th seem to be fighting hardest to get the government to hand out cushy white collar jobs - this looks to be what the voice is to me.

It is totally unacceptable in polite company to point out how white some of these activist / scholarship recipients / welcome to country paid performers etc look

Yeah, there's a huge divide between the mostly-genetically-white urban Indigenous and the mostly-genetically-Indigenous Indigenous who live in remote Australia like the Top End. But this divide is rarely acknowledged in practice by either government or civil society, with much of the policies making no real distinction between the two (occasionally you'll see some gesture towards 'remote Indigenous'). Political and social spoils will mostly go towards the urban Indigenous as @Forgotpassword says.

It's actually infuriating because no one wants address the elephant in the room - the main reason that Indigenous life outcomes are so poor is because a significant portion of Indigenous live in remote, 'economically impoverished' communities in the middle of absolutely nowhere that no amount of 'Closing the Gap' initiatives will compensate for. You can't legislate or pay away remoteness, you can't build a major metropolitan centre in the middle of the Australian desert. Anyone who lived in such remote conditions would have their outcomes harmed. And that's not getting into the 'traditional practices' that some groups engage in which might make them incompatible with Western notions of prosperity (i.e. stabbing someone in the thigh with a spear as punishment).

There was also another Indigenous related controversy recently, because an alcohol ban for many Indigenous communities in NT (which was originally implemented with support from Indigenous communities mind you) expired early this year, which was connected to an immediate increase in crime afterwards. After some time by the current Federal Labor government dragging their feet, they eventually agreed to support a more permanent ban on alcohol in the Territory legislature. It's amazing how quickly people will come to support traditional 'law-and-order' approaches to Indigenous issues when push comes to shove.

And that's not getting into the 'traditional practices' that some groups engage in which might make them incompatible with Western notions of prosperity (i.e. stabbing someone in the thigh with a spear as punishment).

I don't think spearing a convicted rapist and murderer after a 26 year prison sentence will substantially decrease prosperity.

My point was more than you might need more modern concepts of justice for prosperity. In other words, as community who still thinks spearing people is a good form of punishment probably isn't receptive to modern ideas and forms of governance

Yeah. The Voice seems very unlikely to do anything productive for full-blooded indigenous in remote areas due to their plight being a gigantic stack of interwoven issues, but will do wonders for a bunch of 1/16th-types who naturally gravitate towards Left wing politics anyway.


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