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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32820 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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I would like to request an effort post in which all of the dubious medical claims made by Robert F Kennedy Jr. in his recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience are examined, if false, refuted.

This is a little low-effort on your part. "Someone please write a post for me" should probably be a Small Scale Questions Sunday post, and not a top level CW thread post.

I had a baby last year. Within hours of birth the medical team tries to get you to give a baby a Hep B vaccine. I’d love to hear someone explain to me why this is necessary. A vaccine for a virus that has no plausible mechanism for infecting the vast majority of newborns in general and my child specifically. A virus that is almost exclusively found in homosexuals, prostitutes, and IV drug users. My wife had multiple STD tests during pregnancy, as do all pregnant women in under medical care. There is zero immediate risk of being infected. Negligible short to medium term risk.

Even if one were to make the case that this Hep B vaccine safe, so just go along to get along, I think we all have enough experience to know that many people feel lousy after a vaccine. I’d love to hear why it’s necessary within 12 hours of a baby’s life outside the uterus to trigger their immune system. Why do they insist on doing this immediately?

It’s really ludicrous.

The stated reason for doing it in the first 24 hours is that sometimes the mother is not tested, or the test results are wrong, and administering the vaccine in the first 12 hours protects the baby. The second stated reason is that giving it immediately results in more people finishing the course.

ACIP recommends that all infants receive hepatitis B vaccine at birth, regardless of the infection status of the mother (11). Infants born to HBV-infected mothers require hepatitis B vaccine and hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG) within 12 hours of birth to protect them from infection. However, because errors or delays in testing, reporting, and documenting maternal HBsAg status can and do occur, administering the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine soon after birth to all infants acts as a safety net, reducing the risk for perinatal transmission when maternal HBsAg status is either unknown or incorrectly documented at delivery. Also, initiating the hepatitis B vaccine series at birth has been shown to increase a child’s likelihood of completing the vaccine series on schedule

No other vaccines are given in the hospital, and many are far more important than hepatitis B for a newborn so the second reason is bunk. If there was a systemic problem in errors and reporting, then maybe they should fix that, rather than inject newborns. Obviously, the infants of women who have not been tested, or whose test results have not come back, or whose test results are lost, could be treated separately.

The real reason is that this vaccine is to protect a small group, not most people, and thus people have to be tricked or coerced into taking it for the benefit of the small group, as for most people, the vaccine is not a benefit. It remains primarily a sexually transmitted disease, so can wait until the usual vaccine schedule.

Older children can become infected through injection drug use or unprotected sex.

I suppose we could vaccinate the kids to prevent Hep B, or, adopt my preferred solution which is to minimize childhood IV drug use and all (not just the unprotected version) childhood sex before age 9 (The age we vaccinate for HPV, but insert whatever age you want here, but as a minimum, something that Julius would probably accept as reasonable).

A good parallel is the HPV vaccine. This does not benefit boys, but there are tenuous claims that it reduces anal cancer. This obviously is only an issue for the small subset of men who have sex with men (and women who have anal sex). However, the medical authorities claim spurious benefits for boys, rather than just being honest and saying that everyone taking it leads to herd immunity, so boys should get it to protect women. Medical ethics does not allow arguments like this, it seems, so instead they claim dubious things.

Furthermore, medical ethics is very much dominated by maximin thinking, protecting the most vulnerable, rather than utilitarian thinking. As a result, they suggest the HPV vaccine for 9 years olds, despite it lasting 5 years. 9-14 is not the window that will reduce the greatest number of infections, but middle (or earlier, as they are 9) schoolers are the most vulnerable, so the medical establishment favors them incorrectly, in my view. Different cultures and ethnicities have earlier and later onset of sexual activities, and age 9 is chosen to reduce cases in certain cultures, while later administration would work better for others.

Overall, the teenagers in the sample had a median age at first sex of 16.9 years. Black males had the lowest observed median (15.0), and Asian American males the highest (18.1); white and Hispanic males, and white and black females, reported similar ages (about 16.5 years).

The same applies to Hep B. It mainly affects MSM and IV drug users, in the US, but these are a vulnerable class, so it is the most important vaccine for the establishment to push - hence the only one that is mandated for newborns. They found a reason - the spurious claim that Hep B tests are sometimes wrong, and use this to push a vaccine that protects their favored group, the most vulnerable.

This kind of dishonesty is why people are dubious about vaccines. A system where boys were told to take HPV to protect their girlfriends, with the small benefit that it might make girls more like to engage in oral sex, will get just as many boys to take it, as lies about how it protects the boy. In fact, the "more oral sex from girls" promise is probably much more effective, save for the group of boys that actually needs it - those who engage in receptive anal sex. The medical establishment is uncomfortable with the idea of duty, and people doing something for the common good, as opposed to treatments that just help themselves.

My own country does it, but not till the infant is two months old:

Hepatitis B

Hepatitis B is caused by the hepatitis B virus. It is spread in the blood of an infected person.

It's a common infection worldwide. It is usually spread from infected pregnant women to their babies, or from child-to-child contact.

In rare cases, it can be spread through unprotected sex and injecting drugs.

Hepatitis B is uncommon in Ireland. Most cases are in people who got infected in another country.

Most adults infected with hepatitis B are able to fight off the virus. They usually recover from the infection within a couple of months.

But most people infected as children develop a long-term infection. This is chronic hepatitis B. It can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Antiviral medication can be used to treat it.

Vaccination against hepatitis B is recommended for people in high-risk groups, such as:

-healthcare workers

-people who inject drugs

-men who have sex with men

-children born to mothers with hepatitis B

-people travelling to parts of the world where the infection is more common

The hepatitis B vaccine is part of the routine immunisation programme for children.

I agree with other posters, probably this is the only time the medical staff can be sure of access to the baby if the mother doesn't follow up on routine check-ups later. Sure, you and your wife are clean and healthy, but can you be absolutely sure about that with regard to every other adult and child you may encounter?

There's a huge amount of vaccines and vaccinations in children since my day (they didn't even do the measles vaccination when I was a child) but I suppose that's because of increasing risk. Possibly also litigation - don't vaccinate the baby, baby gets sick, parents sue because hospital should have known and prevented it.

Can I point how gloriously contradictory the passage you quoted is? The rare cases of transmission are on the top of the vaccination priority list.

Right under healthcare workers?

I wouldn't read too much into it. Priority list isn't so important when we have enough to catch all infants, period.

Healthcare workers are legitimate in danger - they are always around blood. Which by default is suspicious. Children hep b should be quite rare when mothers are free from it.

Don't be crazy! It's just because that's the only time nearly 100% of babies are in the hospital. Being handled by... health care workers.

Why do they insist on doing this immediately?

That's the only time nearly 100% of babies are guaranteed to be in the hospital.

It's part of the worldwide strategy to literally eradicate the disease. This has been relatively successful. Before that, it was several times more common, and hit a wider swath of society.

About 9,000 of the 18,000 children [per year, before the vaccine] infected in the first 10 years of life caught the virus from their mother during birth. However, many young children didn't catch the disease from their mother. They caught it from either another family member or someone else who came in contact with the child. Because hepatitis B can be transmitted by relatively casual contact with items contaminated with the blood of an infected person, and because many people who are infected with hepatitis B virus don't know that they have it, it is virtually impossible to be "careful enough" to avoid this infection.

50% of kids weren't getting it from their mothers, and I doubt they were shooting up or having gay sex. They got a little bloody or handled someone's razor. I wouldn't want to go back to those days. Not for the sake of a couple days discomfort.

They got a little bloody or handled someone's razor.

Kids get scrapes and cuts all the time. Little Johnny and Billy are playing together, Billy falls and cuts his knee, passes on infection to Johnny.

I agree with this. Unlike MMR, which I have actively observed children suffering from, and are horrible for babies, some of the vaccines seem way too early.

You've seen children suffering from rabies?

R = rubella

I have seen an infant with rubella. And he was suffering severely.

The young child vaccine I am most in favor of is Pertussis. There is nothing I have ever experienced worse than a child with whooping cough. It is insanely horrific even if the kid lives.

Thanks for clarifying.

"Measles, Mumps, Rubella."

Oh, whoops, thanks.

The FBI Didn’t Persecute Hillary. It Protected Her. (Eli Lake @Tablet).

The gist is in the title, a longer gist is:

If the Durham report shows anything, it is that the FBI leadership bent over backward to protect Clinton’s campaign while launching a full investigation into Trump’s campaign on the thinnest of pretexts. In other words, the FBI was not really the Clinton campaign’s persecutor, as so many insisted over the past few years, as much as its protector.

I urge you to read the article itself, as it's about details and evidence for the claim above. It did also finally clue me in about why the secret services might be supporting the left. Before Trump was elected they were:

—hoping to curry favor with the person they expected would be the next American president.

[EDIT: _I wrongly thought my original referred to the FBI. That confused reading did in fact solve the puzzle that I had been wondering about, but is nonethless confused. I should have quoted: _]

... headquarters demurred. “They were pretty ‘tippy-toeing’ around HRC because there was a chance she would be the next President,” an FBI official told Durham.

This is very plausible. I hail from a longstanding 3rd wold democracy, and this is pretty typical behaviour. None of the elections are fair because the authorities tip them in favour of whichever side looks more likely to win. Usually this is the government of the day, but not always. In Australia, Rupert Murdoch behaved this way too with his media coverage.

Once Trump was elected, you would expect the FBI to quietly switch sides. But they might have accidentally burned their bridges. Or you might blame Trump for being too volatile and sour-minded to be worth sucking up to.

The other angle is topical: is prosecuting Trump and not Clinton a double standard? There's an argument (ping @ymeskhout) that the difference is that Trump has so brazzenly admitted guilt. Well if there's videotape Clinton also bragging about how her sever was illegal but she's above the law, then we are less likely to know about it because she really is above the law.

If the Tablet article is accurate, this casts light on this and every other putative distinction between the Trump and Hillary cases. Whatever distinction there is, it has (at least if the article is accurate) been brought out under circumstances where investigating authorities have bent over backwards to find ways to protect Hillary.

I mean there’s a double standard between trump and establishment figures, but that’s partly because establishment figures listen to their lawyers after committing crimes.

People who do listen to their lawyers don't thus get have senior policemen covering up their crimes for them.

Now that article might be wrong about accusing the FBI of covering for Hillary, but then your comment doesn't address that at all.

It's hilarious (and by that I of course mean: pathetic) that revealing things like blatantly cheating at a presidential debate means that Hilary Clinton (the cheater) is somehow the victim.

"Oh no, you've revealed what a corrupt person I am. I am the victim here!"

It's actually sortof incredible how well they framed that one to their advantage.

Here's the hard truth that will be difficult to stomach - Donald Trump was also a victim of the crimes carried about by Russia. He was a victim of their foreign influence attempts. A victim of their attempt to recruit members of his circle. A victim of the fact that their crimes tainted, put an asterisk on, his election in the minds of millions of people. A victim of the resultant investigation that hamstrung his administration for years. While he benefited by having the crimes of Manafort/Cohen discovered and prosecuted before putting them in any real positions of power, he was a victim of the process in that it removed his National Security Advisor for utterly bullshit reasons that ultimately stemmed from the investigation into Russia's crimes.

It's only because of our screwed up partisanship that essentially no one is okay with saying both of these true things. Some folks on the right can't bring themselves to acknowledge that Hilary was genuinely a victim of Russia's crimes. Some folks on the left can't bring themselves to acknowledge that Trump was, too. We could have had a moment of all acknowledging that Russia victimized Hilary, Trump, and America... and maybe, we could have gotten our shit together in order to actually do something real about it, but instead, we get partisan pissing matches.

Well, you’d have to establish some reasons for thinking he, specifically was behind it. In any election of the most powerful office in the most powerful country on the planet, there is goin* to be foreign influence. It’s simply too important to the rest of the world for other countries to ignore it. While i can see a country like Russia (who didn’t like Hillary) trying to tip the scales, I never saw anything that unequivocally pointed to Russia or anyone else working with Trump specifically.

Wikileaks and the contents of Wikileaks were well known ten years before Trump descended the golden escalator. His very online fan base was talking about Wikileaks nonstop. Trump might well have gotten wind of things released on Wikileaks because it was on social media and he used social media a lot during both his campaign and his presidency. The “Russia if you’re listening” quip was in response specifically to a reporter questioning his involvement in the hacks by Russia. It was a joke, and unless you were already predisposed to think he’s involved, it’s a reach. Someone makes an accusation like “people are saying that Russia is hacking Hillary and releasing information to help you,” if you don’t take that claim seriously might well be played off with a joke.

Even if Russia is trying to make Trump win (which is probably true) they didn’t investigate Russia they investigated Trump. That’s not the same. An investigation into Russia that leads through six degrees of Kevin Bacon and into the senior members of the Trump campaign would make sense. It starts with the crime at hand — the data breaches and releases — and moves toward figuring out who’s releasing them, why, and if there’s anyone calling the shots.

Jokes have elements of truth in them. And to take a holistic view is important. Most politicians would make the joke, and then clarify at some point. However Trump to my knowledge never ever released nor spoke about how he thought the email hacking was bad and shouldn't happen, nor warned against foreign interference. Thus I think we're justified at taking the "joke" at face value. We all know that one guy in our lives who makes mean jokes and then when called out on it goes "JK bro why so serious". It's a similar thing.

To be clear, I don't think the conclusion that Trump colluded in some way is correct. That's also what the investigations concluded, rightly. Justice was served in the end. But starting the investigation isn't out of the question, and people who are super outraged about the start of things ignore that politically, it seems to have helped him, if anything. So I fail to see the cause for outrage.

They did investigate Russia. They did a lot, and still do all the time. We just don't see the results of that sort of investigation because it's CIA business and not something that's usually public.

But starting the investigation isn't out of the question, and people who are super outraged about the start of things ignore that politically, it seems to have helped him, if anything. So I fail to see the cause for outrage.

Except the problem here isn't just that they started the investigation - they helped create the circumstances which justified the investigation and knowingly lied in order to justify the surveillance which was performed. They knew that the contents of the Steele Dossier were unreliable, and they then went and leaked information to the media, in order to create media attention which was then used to back up the need for the investigation. That's the reason why there's so much outrage - not that they dared to investigate Trump at all, but that they did so under false pretences, knowingly, and then shared the information they gained with his political opponent in an important election.

The investigations that ultimately ended up clearing Trump were treated as de facto proof of guilt by the media, Dem politicians, members of their investigative committees, and various NatSec officials in positions of seniority. Even with the Mueller report, the common refrain in its aftermath was "Trump may not have been proven guilty, but he wasn't proven innocent either". Even today, it is nigh impossible to get any plurality of Trump opponents to admit the accusations were bupkis, and there remains a substantial minority that still believes them outright.

As many here are fond of saying, "the process was the punishment". The investigations were blatantly weaponized, leaving a stench even if the shit didn't stick.

The CIA and its affiliates may be totally sqeaky clean and above-board behind closed doors. But since nobody has visibility into that apparatus, and history would indicate that's not particularly likely, I'm giving them zero deference.

Then wouldn't it be wise for Trump to take steps to avoid being investigated? It seems at every opportunity he acts guilty enough to get investigated but is actually clean enough to get out clean. I don't think it's out of the question to think he benefits from the image of the establish going after him, and he knows it.

In the end you get a bunch of people complaining about how he was treated, and that's what he wants. That's why he acts the way he does, anything to make him look like more of a victim.

Why? It was a political persecution, not Justice. It’s like asking why blacks don’t just stop doing whatever it is that makes the cops shoot them more often. If the answer is “just stop being you and the cops leave,” it’s more like victim blaming than advice. And this was politically motivated, so the advice would have been “have you tried not having any platform positions Hillary doesn’t have? Maybe if you just stopped trying to drain the swamp and end wars the swamp would leave you alone.”

The point is Trump doesn't want to stop, and if he knows what's good for him he won't stop trying to get investigated, because they improve his political prospects.

Then wouldn't it be wise for Trump to take steps to avoid being investigated?

Trump is being investigated because of the same political positions that allowed him to gain power. The steps he'd have to take to stop being investigated would mean completely reworking all of his policy positions to be the same as the Bush/Obama consensus - more support for forever wars, infinite immigration, corporate welfare, etc. The moment he does that he'll lose all of his political power, because those positions were what earned him his initial support.

The moment he stops being investigated he also loses his political power. He's powerful because his actions feed the collective persecution complex of him and his supporters. It's not just political. He also always creates the appearance he is doing something shady behind the scenes, to bait investigations because they are good for him and his political prospects.

I disagree - I think that these investigations are actual, earnest and serious attempts by the Establishment to tank his administration and demonstrate to his followers that they have no say in the administration of the country. They're only "good" for him in the sense that a lot of people understand the attack on him to be a proxy attack on their own ability to influence the direction of their country, and hence get motivated to support him. He'd be doing better without the investigations, in my opinion at least.

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The Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Hillary Clinton's campaign manager were hacked into, and their internal communications were released in a manner designed to politically disadvantage her, and advantage her electoral opponent, Donald Trump. Given those crimes, and Donald Trump's public support and encouragement of them (including the famous "Russia, if you're listening" quip, as well as 100+ references to Wikileaks in his stump speeches) there's very obviously reason to follow up seriously with a look at the Trump campaign.

This is 100% not probable cause or legitimate grounds on which to premise an investigation into the Trump campaign. That is why none of the reports from the "investigations into the investigation" found that any of the investigations were predicated on this... it would be literally illegal to do such a thing. Instead, they relied on other grounds.

This is 100% not probable cause or legitimate grounds on which to premise an investigation into the Trump campaign.

Probable cause is not needed to begin an investigation. Probable cause is the amount of evidence needed for an arrest, so obviously investigations are begun on less than probable cause.

"or" is the word you're looking for.

What I am looking for is someone who doesn't try to legitimate his personal opinion ("legitimate grounds") by making an incorrect reference to a legal principle.

Bullshit. What you are actually doing is just failing to read and then trying to act tough when it's pointed out that you failed reading comprehension.

Try to do something other than legitimate your own personal opinion. Perhaps reference one of the public reports from one of the special counsels or OIG. Or perhaps reference the DOIG. Or even case law. Show me a single example where, "Whelp, we just randomly praxxxed out who we think would benefit from this crime (bonus points if it's something as diffuse as benefiting electorally), and that's clearly sufficient grounds on which to predicate a wide-ranging investigation into everything about them."

But seriously, dude. You know that it's OBVIOUSLY not PC. Like, not even in the same universe. I'm pointing out that not only is it not that, it's not even grounds for starting an investigation. No serious person thinks it is, and you can't find such a thing in any gov't document. They had something else that they believed was predication for an investigation, and at various points, believed they had PC for various things.

Try to do something other than legitimate your own personal opinion

I haven't expressed an opinion. I merely noted that your reference to the alleged lack of probable cause is irrelevant. "The Constitution does not require evidence of wrongdoing or reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing by a suspect before the government can begin investigating that suspect." Rehberg v. Paulk, 611 F. 3d 828, 850 fn 24 (11th Cir 2010).

Why don't you, instead of resorting to infantile ad hominem attacks, provide actual evidence regarding what is or is not considered "legitimate grounds" for a law enforcement agency initiating an investigation. A court case, perhaps. Or ethical standards for law enforcement agencies. Or Justice Department regulations and policies. Anything at all that supports an inference that you are just rendering your uninformed opinion.

You know that it's OBVIOUSLY not PC.

Again, that is irrelevant, because law enforcement does not need probable cause to start an investigation.

Like I said above, check out the DOIG.

Your own personal opinion is that "or" is not a word with meaning.

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Crimes were committed. That is legitimate grounds on which to premise an investigation.

Not of the Trump campaign.

That investigation of those crimes then looking at the primary beneficiary of those crimes is natural.

This is not probable cause or grounds for an investigation. (Notice I said "or", which responds to your second paragraph.) It's wayyyy too subjective. One could legitimately believe there was probable cause to investigate, say, the release of Trump's tax records. Very possibly a crime was committed. Very possibly not (that's the nature of PC/investigations). If they had something specifically pointing to a particular individual for an actual crime, they could go about investigating them, with the level of what they're able to do being dependent on the nature of the evidence in question. It would be insane to say, "Whelp, law enforcement can just willy-nilly decide 'who benefits' from the release of Trump's tax returns and use that as a predicate for a far-reaching investigation into them."

The investigators said this was why they were looking into it (Mueller Report, p. 5)

Bullshit. Page five is just facts and narrative. Page 11 is where they describe why they were doing what they were doing. Nowhere in this document do they ever say that any investigation was predicated on anything as ridiculous as, "We picked who benefited and started investigating them."

Citation?

Check out the DOIG.

based on the foreign government reporting... Do you think that was a valid grounds for the investigation, or no? If not, why not?

This is where the real battleground is, and probably where reasonable minds could disagree. Of course, some unreasonable minds are going to be super partisan about the whole thing, tipping every subjective factor one way when it comes to politicians they like, but the other way when it comes to politicians they don't like. Regardless, this is a far cry from, "We looked to see who benefited and opened an investigation into them."

That's like 500+ pages across 6 pdfs. I've given you quotes or pin cites that can be checked. If you believe your source is in there, please specify where.

Section 5 covers assessments, Section 6 covers preliminary investigations, and Section 7 covers full investigations. These are the areas where this current battle is being waged.

I think my original point matters as to why the FBI would take such a tip seriously and start an investigation off of it.

Sure. A lot of people think that. The key question is what kind of investigation, what kind of investigative steps. There's a huge transition to:

Trump's campaign is the obvious beneficiary of the Russian govt crimes, and so youd tend to take any indication that the beneficiary is in on it very seriously.

They had basically nothing here. You could easily take such minimal indication seriously by, for example, going and interviewing the source of that indication, seeing what's there. If there was something worthwhile, that could justify some additional steps. Instead, we pretty much just had fever dreams of a Manchurian candidate. Those dreams were crossbred with wet dreams of getting The Donald and preventing him from becoming president. It was irresistible to them politically, and the response to the same set of facts would have been completely different if the ox being gored was tinted blue instead.

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foreign government reporting

If I've kept my Trump-drama details straight, what happened was that:

The Australian High Commissioner to the UK Alexander Downer had drinks with George Papadopoulos, a member of Trumps foreign policy advisory panel. Papadopoulos reportedly told Downer that Russia had dirt on Clinton. Downer then passed on his account of this conversation to Elizabeth Dibble, the US Charge d'Affaires in London.

I think it's pretty arguable that this is the sort of event that can either be used as the pretext for launching an investigation (as it was) or ignored as baseless shit-talk (as it turned out to be). Which way it goes is not unlikely to be politically influenced.

To be clear, my position is that both sides regularly conduct politically motivated investigations of the other, whether over Russia collusion, Benghazi, Ukraine bribery, Whitewater, or whatever. Both sides engage in some level of illegal/unethical behaviour, so sometimes these politically motivated investigations actually find something even if it wasn't the thing they were exactly looking for.

I think this is a good and proper state of affairs.

I think there’s a clear double standard between Trump and Clinton. However, I’m also convinced that Trump is retarded enough to show the papers to some honeytrap ‘friend’ or ‘investor’ brought to him by China / Russia in a way Clinton isn’t, if only because the CIA could warn both and Trump would tell them to go fuck themselves or otherwise wouldn’t listen.

Agreed. If you're going to do crimes, at least be smart about it.

Actually you don't even need to be smart - you can not just do crimes but record yourself doing them (even a few extra photos of you smoking crack for fun), write lengthy messages about them and even have your partners in crime record lengthy messages detailing the crimes you're committing, including the fig leaves you're using to disguise them. You can leave all this incriminating evidence in the hands of random civilians and not give a shit, either, as long as you're on the right side of politics (the establishment side that is, not left vs right).

This isn't about cocaine - I actually wish influence-peddling and corruption were pursued at all rather than encouraged and enabled by the ironically named intelligence community that is meant to stop that kind of behavior.

Are you saying that the FBI should not be involved with foreign nationals purchasing influence from and bribing high-ranking members of the government? If, for example, the president's son is involved in shady dealings and getting blackmailed by people with footage of him smoking crack and banging prostitutes, should the FBI just completely ignore this as non-important? I was under the impression that the FBI would get involved if an important member of the executive branch became beholden to foreign interests, whether Chinese or Russian, and it absolutely seems to be within their remit. They certainly acted as if it was during Crossfire Hurricane.

Well, yeah, obviously. I don't think I have a better example of the whole two movies thing that the way people see Clinton's emails. While there are admittedly some blank spots that I can't fill in with details, the outline of the story is so incredibly damning, so plainly the acts of someone engaging in corruption that I have a very difficult time understanding how anyone could believe otherwise. The act of setting up a private server rather than just using legitimate State Department resources should straightaway result in adverse inference regarding any follow-up action; perhaps not legally, but certainly from a political understanding of motives and behavior. Likewise for the deletion of approximately 32,000 emails that putatively were just personal emails. What, exactly, was she hiding? I don't know and that part barely even matters to my evaluation that her behavior was the behavior of someone that's trying to hide what she's doing.

That other people don't just disagree, but think the whole thing is so made-up that it should just be flippantly mocked is wild to me. Accusations of "whataboutism" aside, I just think it's plainly obvious that she acted like a guilty person trying to cover-up their actions. I can't even imagine someone behaving this way in my personal or professional life and being able to just say, "no, I checked them and they were just personal emails, we're all set". Everyone would assume the worst!

The legality probably hinges on technical details that I frankly don't care about very much. The obvious wrongdoing does not hinge on anything other than the weirdness of a government employee diverting their emails to a private server and deleting them when they're requested by the government.

What, exactly, was she hiding? I don't know and that part barely even matters to my evaluation that her behavior was the behavior of someone that's trying to hide what she's doing.

I shouldn't have to tell you this but most people—including major public figures—have some expectation of privacy when it comes to their private lives, even if it isn't anything that most people would find embarrassing or inappropriate. Once when I was younger a cop who wanted to search my car gave me the classic line about "why do you have a problem with it if you have nothing to hide", to which I shot back that when we were done maybe we'd go to his house so I could go through his stuff since after all, he presumably has nothing to hide either. On a more down to earth note, I serve on the board of directors of a small nonprofit and we deal regularly with state government officials, outside contractors, and other interested parties, and we often speak candidly about them, or express our frustration with them, or talk about how to strategically deal with them. You don't think that Hillary Clinton speaking candidly about a high-level official or venting frustration to a friend might not be something she wants bandied about the public square, especially if it deals more with a personal relationship than official business? You can, of course, make the argument that as a Secretary of State and presidential candidate she should be subject to greater scrutiny than your average Joe, but that doesn't mean that the desire for privacy isn't there, and it's a pretty slippery slope if we decide that certain government officials effectively have no privacy at all. It's the same thing with Trump's tax returns; every left-wing pundit thought that Trump was hiding something, but no one considered that the real reason he didn't release them was because he thinks it's none of our damn business.

None of this applies to emails sent from a State Department address.

If she had been using a State Department address there wouldn't have been any controversy and her IT guy wouldn't have been able to delete anything. The whole scandal was based on the fact that she was using a clintonemail.com address and server for official State Department business, which was intermingled with her personal email.

Because State Dept officials never speak candidly and critically about high ranking officials in official communications? Obviously you are forgetting the documents released by Chelsea Manning. And, no one ever speaks negatively of colleagues in work emails?

I would consider it ill-advised and I behave accordingly in my own work emails.

In any case, the whole point is that there is no legitimate basis to hide and delete those work emails - the whole setup was an obvious attempt to workaround the norms and legal requirements for State Department emails. If the only things they were trying to hide were candid discussions, so be it, but that's still not a legitimate practice.

So here the facts specific to the case matter a lot. Investigations showed that the emails were sorted through and set to be deleted PRIOR to the public blowup and it becoming a campaign issue. The sysadmin in charge of the deletion seemed to have followed through on the deletion as a way to cover their own butt (fearing Clinton's retribution more than others, apparently). Given this information, what can we conclude or assume about intent? The presumption is of course that the private emails were in fact private and not "oh this looks illegal better get rid of it". Because at that time, it was still a FOIA-type, "avoid something embarrassing" concern, not a "let's hide illegal behavior" thing. Clinton wasn't even involved in this process directly.

Who asked for the emails to be deleted in the first place?

Because at that time, it was still a FOIA-type, "avoid something embarrassing" concern, not a "let's hide illegal behavior" thing. Clinton wasn't even involved in this process directly.

Except for the whole part where conducting official government through a private to avoid FOIA is itself a violation of federal records keeping laws and at the end of the day she or someone on her staff still removed compartmentalized material form its compartment and put it out on the internet, yet we won't be seeing Huma Abedin's perp walk because the FBI doesn't go after Democrats.

So what? That might sound flippant but it's truly not. What is the implication or application to politics here? What are we supposed to do with this information/what is the logical call to action? I think that's almost as important as discussing the actual contents.

Example. A lot might read your post and linked article, and let's say for the sake of argument it's all true. Some might say, "well this means Trump shouldn't be charged for the crimes he's currently accused of." Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Because at the end of the day, intent does matter. While Hillary is certainly guilty of thinking she's above the law, used to be coddled by the media, and having her wishes fulfilled by government bureaucrats, and being dishonest on top, she didn't intend to expose confidential or classified information and most of the email saga came down to a mixture of negligence and pride. Contrast Trump in the most recent classified docs saga. It's NOT an issue of over-classification (though it does exist). It's NOT a case of negligence, as he was given a number of chances to cooperate. It was WILLFUL retention of government secrets. It's not like he couldn't access these secrets -- I'm almost certain former presidents are given access to these materials if they are writing their memoirs, for example. It was the pride of "owning" them, though they manifestly weren't his. It doesn't matter how the investigation started, only how it ends.

Vague gestures at other would-be conspiracies sound much like the Steele Dossier inspired ones. Hunter Biden has gone through at least one GOP led congressional investigation. So far, not a whole lot to show.

Because at the end of the day, intent does matter. While Hillary is certainly guilty of thinking she's above the law, used to be coddled by the media, and having her wishes fulfilled by government bureaucrats, and being dishonest on top, she didn't intend to expose confidential or classified information and most of the email saga came down to a mixture of negligence and pride. Contrast Trump in the most recent classified docs saga. It's NOT an issue of over-classification (though it does exist). It's NOT a case of negligence, as he was given a number of chances to cooperate. It was WILLFUL retention of government secrets.

They both willfully retained government documents. The only intent difference that makes any real sense is the audio of Trump talking to the media figure, which I think is totally overblown. We use circumstantial evidence to ascribe intent in almost all criminal cases, and Hillary had mountains of that showing willfulness and intent. If we use the Comey standard, only people who confess the intent element to the police would ever be charged with murder. Every man who stabbed his wife would be charged with manslaughter because well, perhaps he did fall over 17 times with a knife in his hand in the direction of his wife's chest.

Hillary had mountains of intent/willfulness in doing what, exactly? Please state exactly what you're implying because it isn't at all obvious to me.

All I can tell is she was trying to hide embarrassing stuff from becoming plastered over the front page of the NYT, stuff like "yeah I secretly hate Obama" or whatever, not "oh I embezzled some money". Stuff like the DNC leaks, maybe a Hatch act violation or two. The private vs public line is always a bit fuzzy when it comes to FOIA type record keeping, this isn't anything new. The fact she had her own email SERVER (with accompanying insecurities and non-cleared IT guy), not merely her own private email (which others did do before her), is not exactly "retention", though it is criminally negligent IMO (my whole point is that negligence is technically illegal but not worth prosecuting as a precedent, but willful commission of an illegal act is).

Great point about circumstantial evidence, though.

Hillary had mountains of intent/willfulness in doing what, exactly?

The construction of the server demonstrates deliberate intent to mishandle documents. It served no other purpose (other than evading FOIA laws).

She obviously showed willfulness when she directed subordinates to use specialized software and literal physical destruction to destroy the server when it was under subpoena.

The only thing we don't have is a literal confession of her state of mind.

she didn't intend to expose confidential or classified information and most of the email saga came down to a mixture of negligence and pride.

No, she intended to keep it very secret indeed, so secret not even the government was allowed to see it, which is why she wiped it "with a cloth". It also seems ironic to see an argument that the foolish pride driven imbecile is Hillary Clinton and the nefarious master manipulator is Donald Trump.

I don't think you read my comment closely enough. I claimed both of them were due to shortsighted pride but one of them was a lesser, "omission" type deal and the other is a much more brazen "commission" type, which I do think should be treated differently. I think most people agree the intent of the server was to avoid embarrassing FOIA type revelations rather than a deliberate and insecure discussion of top secret stuff.

I claimed both of them were due to shortsighted pride but one of them was a lesser, "omission" type deal and the other is a much more brazen "commission" type, which I do think should be treated differently.

This framing would make sense if you were going harder on Clinton than Trump.

Storing documents in a shower that you want is an omission. Sending documents over an unsecured internet line and then deleting them while you know an investigation is happening is commission. Somehow I don't think the FBI would have gone easy on Trump if when they conducted the raid all they found was a burning pile of papers and some cans of petrol in the toilet.

See my other responses in this thread -- deletions did not happen by Clinton or on her orders and evidence about the process that was investigated by the FBI found nothing strange or odd about the process of marking private emails nor the actual deletion by a panicked subordinate. Sure the deletion sounds nefarious but this turned out not to be the case. You are mischaracterizing this deletion entirely and I encourage you to re-check your sources about it, as we now know much more than we did initially. Her crime was being told "your setup is insecure" and her going "well no I like it the way it is and don't want to break things" like an old tech-illiterate person in a position of power frequently does. That's akin to omission because the email server was one she had been using for eight-ish years as a senator and didn't want to change. It's not like she made a big deal about setting it up that way, just that no one relevant knew about it or if they knew, they were a junior person who didn't raise a stink about it.

Trump's timeline is different. He's literally pestered both formally and informally to give stuff back, doesn't give back the majority of it, and then is on record as taking action to hide or move other stuff. The search warrant was an unusual step, I agree -- one that proved to be wholly valid as they found classified stuff in new unexpected locations. There are elements of obstruction and admission of guilt and of lying to the government. It was a crime of omission initially, as there were admittedly a LOT of documents and I'm sure a lot WERE personal, but as soon as the official requests are coming in Trump has a duty and legal obligation to do his due diligence and return stuff. But what, at that juncture, was his response? Not just ignoring the requests, but deliberately doing the opposite. Right at that moment, it becomes a crime of commission.

deletions did not happen by Clinton or on her orders

You actually think this is true? Or is it what the FBI wanted to conclude so it structured its investigation to not probe that question too much?

I am not mischaracterizing what happened. I got all the information from the IG report that is one of the most pro-FBI sources.

I read your comment fine. I may have misunderstood your point, probably because you claimed Clinton was so much lesser that nobody should give a shit and it has zero relevance to politics(!) and Trump was NOT negligence, NOT over-classification, but WILLFUL retention of government secrets. But I think your goal was to defend Clinton by bringing Trump into it based on an argument nobody here had made, which this follow up only solidifies. What exactly do you think were the embarrassing foia type revelations that "most people agree" she wiped the server to avoid, and how specifically do they differ from a deliberate and insecure discussion of top secret stuff?

I always assumed it was an attempt to evade FOIA requests.

I agree, she had no reason to fear the government, but she knew the government would have to comply with foia requests, which would allow her opponents to look into the cavalcade of highly suspicious coincidences that followed in the wake of her political career, which would tank her run for president regardless of how many were actionable.

It was WILLFUL retention of government secrets.

The President is the Constitutional, ultimate classifying authority. If Trump wanted to maintain those documents, as president, that suffices.

Anyways your post just reads like an elaborate rationalization. Hillary's crimes aren't so bad because reason-reason-reason, Hunter Biden's crimes aren't so bad because reason-reason-reason, but Trump's crimes are bad because... How do you know that Hillary Clinton didn't "intend" to expose materials? How do you know that the documents manifestly aren't Trump's, when we don't know what the documents even are? You can fill in the blanks however you want, I guess, but it won't make a very rigorous argument.

Investigate Trump over Russia, investigate Trump's business records, investigate Trump's campaign, investigate Trump's sexual relations, investigate Trump's administration... wow, after eight years of manufacturing pretexts to spy on him, he finally committed a crime after we picked a fight. He waved classified documents in front of a reporter's face and everything. Guess we have to charge him now, everyone is equal before the law, justice and democracy and liberty and freedom prevail. What, charge other politicians? Hahahaha

Well the Clintons had undergone multiple decades of scrutiny before the election so it makes sense there's only so much "new" stuff. Whitewater, for example. If she had been new to politics like Trump, you'd see a similar level of scrutiny. And in fact if you sum up all the investigations on the Clintons over the years you probably get a similar scope. Trump has so many investigations because he was a businessman in a famously shady business (real estate and show business both tend to be full of obfuscation and do often hide real crime), not because of being a "threat" to the "establishment". And note that Justice was indeed served at the end of the day, most of the investigations didn't turn up too much and the one that did (impeachment) went through the normal process and he was found not guilty. End of story. I know people were bitter about investigations starting but in the end he wasn't actually harmed all that much?

It also makes zero sense that Hillary would deliberately allow her personal email to be hacked. That's an insane suggestion and you should feel bad for making it. Note that I never accused Trump of actually cooperating with a foreign power or anything. Just like in Hillary's case, it's a pride thing, but manifested a different way. When you're no longer the President, you are no longer the President! You can't just make your own rules, much less retroactively, you have to "declare" them and then follow them. That's what the whole presidential order system is for. Trump even himself admitted that he could have but did NOT declassify these things in order to keep them. And either you're being disingenuous or are misinformed when you say we don't know what's in the documents. We have a decent idea of at least a few articles, and they are most definitely classified. And remember, the classification system exists to protect harmful secrets from becoming public. It defeats the whole purpose if you arbitrarily declare manifestly harmful secrets to be declassified (read: non-harmful) when they clearly still have the same potential for harm.

Don't get me wrong, I DO think Hillary should have been charged with a lesser crime of negligence and maybe obstruction, but in terms of setting a precedent it's more important to convey to future leaders Cabinet level and up that negligence is bad and will hurt you politically but willful disobedience will result in criminal charges. That's a reasonable precedent in my opinion. After all we don't want to make a habit of charging former officials left and right, it leads to a cycle of retribution. You might ask, well won't this Trump thing lead to it? It wouldn't have if there wasn't WILLFUL lawbreaking involved.

It also makes zero sense that Hillary would deliberately allow her personal email to be hacked. That's an insane suggestion and you should feel bad for making it.

This is not what I said or what I implied. It sounds like you don't know what you're talking about.

Hillary didn't put classified documents on a private email; she put them on a private email server. This is a big difference. This is the difference between opening a private bank account at Fort Knox, and opening your own Fort Knox. The US government maintains a vast infrastructure of classified networks. Thousands of technicians work to keep those networks safe and secure. There is a classified email network, that runs on its own servers, that runs on its own devices, totally in parallel to the regular internet. Some of the best security in the world is applied to it. China can't hack into it, Russia can't hack into it. It would be a big deal if they could. Breaking into the US's encrypted networks would be like cracking the Enigma Cipher.

When you work on a classified system, there is literally, on every monitor, a big bar running across the top that says something like:

<<[[THIS IS A CLASSIFIED SYSTEM. CONTROL OF THIS MATERIAL IS AUTHORIZED BY THE US GOVERNMENT]]>>

It's not embedded in the web page of your browser. It's part of the screen. Every single device has a label saying that it is a machine designed for the classified network. This is before documents are even marked with classification markings.

Hillary didn't take some emails from one bucket and move them to another. Politicians maintain private email accounts all the time, and naturally sometimes conduct official business on personal time. That's normal. That's not what Hillary did. It would be meaningless if she had.

Hillary made her own private email server. She replaced the thousands of technical workers, the parallel infrastructure, the monitor warnings, everything. Her server, as I understand it, was basically maintained by one guy. Imagine if I tried spinning up a competitor to gmail, and I ran it out of my basement. It's a small operation, so it's just me maintaining everything. I've borrowed whatever code and servers I need to make it work. That's how secure her server was.

This is so monumentally stupid, and illegal, that either Hillary knew exactly what she was doing, or someone would have told her that what she was doing is wrong. There are no accidents about this. There is no legitimate reason for her to have made a private email server. Perhaps it's not so nefarious, and she wasn't trying to sell state secrets but was, say, annoyed by some technical restrictions and wanted to get around them. She wanted to run it off her Blackberry, whatever. In any event, it's stupid. She made a very stupid decision. It's a stupid decision because there is no possible way she can guarantee the technical safety of those documents running on that server. It's eminently possible that Russia, or China, or, for that matter, some scriptkiddie could have hacked her server. A private server has exactly as much protection as you put on it. She put one or a few guys on it. That's it.

I spun up a private server for testing one time and within 24 hours some hacker in Russia sent me an email saying that he'd found an open port on my server. I turned the server off, and within 5 minutes I had a reply from him saying he'd noticed I'd turned the server off and would I please send him some money since he "warned" me of my mistake. There are guys and groups like that, they go around sniffing every device on the internet to see if it's something they could exploit. National governments have guys like that too.

So:

It also makes zero sense that Hillary would deliberately allow her personal email to be hacked.

Hillary didn't deliberately allow her personal emails to be hacked. She just created the exact conditions in which, if it's not inevitable, it was extremely likely. She had no legitimate reason to do this. She would have had no permission to do this. She had no Constitutional authority to do this. Her best excuse is that she was inconvenienced by the rules. Other excuses could be worse. I wouldn't know what her excuse would be, the only answers the press ever made her give were that it was a mistake and she regretted it and let's move on.

I know you said you think she should have been charged, but I want to make it very clear what the nature of her offense did. What Trump did or is accused of doing is not in the same universe as what Hillary did. She is not going to get charged. The FBI, in fact, actively tried to cover up what she did, and gave all her subordinates immunity in exchange for "cooperating" with their investigation. Trump, meanwhile, is being charged. Because he's Trump, and they hate him. You can argue that they should charge Trump and Hillary too. But that's not how this system works. Charity only goes one way. They are going to invent new rules to prosecute Trump and then turn around and say that nobody else needs to worry, their crimes don't actually account, everybody is fair and equal before the law... They'll invent all sorts of rationalizations and reasons. There will be reasons for everything. They will ask you to believe them.

China can't hack into it

Except for the instances when they can. Remember the OPM hack, aka Chinese getting the personal data of every government worker in the US, and everybody who ever undergone a security check, and their friends and relatives? I am still fascinated of the absolute absence of interest to this from pretty much everybody - like China having all private information of all US government is no big deal at all.

In any event, it's stupid. She made a very stupid decision

I disagree. She made a very smart decision - to circumvent every and all disclosure rules, created to supervise government workers, and she was successful in this. Of course, full success would be if nobody ever found about it at all, and the materials she wanted to hide just disappeared without a trace, but the second best was actually what happened - what she wanted to delete was deleted, what she wanted to hide was hidden, and she did not suffer any prosecution for it. If anything, she made it into a PR campaign - she is as brazen as to sell merchandise with "but her emails" written on it - she literally is marketing her own criminal behavior. This is not a behavior of a stupid person, this is a behavior of a brazen and arrogant criminal secure in her knowledge that she is untouchable.

There is very little similarity between Hillary and Trump cases. Hillary created a system to hide information from legitimate oversight - one crime (or, rather, one set of crimes), and that system likely also was insecure - second crime. The first crime had clear intent, while the second can be argued as criminal negligence (which does not require intent), since she did not specifically intend for the documents to be disclosed.

With Trump, there's a disagreement between whether or not the documents that Trump possessed are allowed for him to possess or not. While the President is supposed to be the ultimate authority in what is secret or not, I am not a lawyer, so I could imagine there are some technicalities that he should have gone through and he didn't, because he's Trump. It is, however, very clear that he did not intend to hide these documents from oversight or destroy them because they contained information he wanted to hide, and neither he did it in a manner that would be criminally negligent (despite all the photos with the boxes next to the toilet - the question is not about the toilet, but about who gets to be there and handle the boxes. There's nothing inherently insecure in the presence of the toilet, however bizarre it may look out of context) and expose them to disclosure. Very little in common between the two cases except they are both concerning documents.

They are going to invent new rules to prosecute Trump and then turn around and say that nobody else needs to worry,

And we know how it works because for example they said FISA surveillance would only be used in extreme cases against violent foreign terrorists, and they kept their promise. Oh wait, they didn't eve try...

I think the FBI basically concluded something very similar to what you and I are both saying, in fact, which is not actually that far apart.

A few key quotes from the actual statement:

Was there deliberate deletion? Seems not (they also reviewed the attorney process and found that basically it was just lazy and not very particular, using mostly header searches, thus not consistent with behavior trying to hide specific stuff)

I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.

Was the rule-breaking willful? No, but "extremely careless".

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information

Should she have known better for certain conversations? Yes. I think your comment is right on the money about this point!!!

There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.

But let's take a step back. I am in total agreement that it was monumentally stupid of her. But Hillary used a freaking BlackBerry. She wasn't that tech savvy. She ignored warnings about it being insecure. And as far as I can tell, they just discussed classified topics, with occasional lower level (confidential) copy-pasting going on, they weren't attaching fully marked documents.. I also don't think she really did the majority of her regular work via email either, like most of us do. It's not like 100% of her communications were through email like today they might be.

Was it hacked ever? No direct evidence, but didn't expect any, so hard to say. They use the phrase "possible":

Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.

So does it meet the standard I propose, of "willful"? What about similar cases? The FBI here outlines four key areas that can help decide. THIS is the critical paragraph. Emphasis mine:

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

While Hillary lied to the public a lot about the facts, she didn't lie to investigators about it. Thus no obstruction allegation. This is a key difference when comparing the Trump case, in addition to the "willful" aspect which is applicable to his actions after the Archives directly asked for the classified stuff back. That's why I made a comparison to "criminal negligence", which you seem to think is grounds for prosecution. I think that's a fair opinion to have, but ultimately a bad idea. Like in plane crashes, it's often best to allow immunity in these cases and focus on improving processes to learn from the mistakes and make sure it doesn't happen again. Which would have been the case if Trump had not been so incredibly prideful so as to refuse to return things and attempt to hide them when officially asked told to. She gave bad excuses, but not horrible ones. Avoiding FOIA requests is borderline illegal to illegal but not as severe a violation. Personal convenience was cited (she didn't want to give up her BlackBerry or use several phones).

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now. As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.

The above just lays out explicitly what we already know: A run of the mill employee might be charged, but civilian heads of department and top leaders get a bit more leeway. That's not super great, but also understandable. Also, it's important to ask-- were the people around her careful (i.e. was she an anomaly? No. She wasn't too abnormal. Just an old person who hates change and dislikes personal convenience.

While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.

In summary: None of these reasons apply to Trump. I think it's totally appropriate and also consistent with the past to have him charged, found guilty, and then given a slap on the wrist type of sentence (or have the current President pardon him, only at that stage, similar to what happened with Nixon.)

Was there deliberate deletion? Seems not

Uh... I'll point to here. At best, Clinton's contractor willfully deleted e-mails three weeks after receiving a document retention request, and her chief of staff issued a deletion policy that violated the Federal Records Act. Which would only be a problem for this unnamed Platte River Networks employee and and Clinton's Chief of Staff. But they weren't prosecuted, either.

Like in plane crashes, it's often best to allow immunity in these cases and focus on improving processes to learn from the mistakes and make sure it doesn't happen again

There are different types of plane crashes. There are crashes caused by a malfunction in the plane systems, there are crashes caused by human error, and there are crashes caused by somebody deliberately directing a plane into the World Trade Center. Arguing that the latter should be handled by "improving the processes" and the direct perpetrators should be excused because with better planes and better buildings we could avoid all that would be insane. The behavior of Clinton was very deliberate and deliberately aimed at circumventing established laws and procedures. There's no "improving processes" that can deal with a person that deliberately chooses to not use the existing processes. You could claim "she did it just for convenience" (though the BleachBit part reveals it to be a lie, deleting anything on a server under data preservation request is a crime per se, but even without that it requires very motivated credulity to believe) but a crime made for one's convenience does not become less crime, it is still deliberate behavior to violate the law, not an accident.

This is delusional. The people prosecuting Donald Trump are not going through all this trouble just to give him a slap on the wrist. You have a seriously warped perspective about what is going on.

Trump has so many investigations because he was a businessman in a famously shady business (real estate and show business both tend to be full of obfuscation and do often hide real crime), not because of being a "threat" to the "establishment".

The FBI spied on Trump's political campaign and his employees using, as a pretext, a political document of misinformation that the FBI itself knew to be full of lies. They didn't investigate Trump because he was a businessman, they investigated him because he threatened them. If they wanted to investigate Trump because he participated in shady business deals, they'd investigate Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer or Mitch McConnell. (How did Diane Finestein become so wealthy? Who was Trump conducting shady deals with if not, at times, other politicians? How many of them are being investigated?)

I want to repeat this because this is key to repudiating your argument: the investigations against Trump were not normal and they were not lawful. We have the documents and records. There was a cadre of top officials at the FBI, like Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, who wanted to do everything they could to impede Trump. People like Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe ordered investigations against Trump on pretexts they knew to be lies. Lies about Trump were deliberately leaked to the press, so that those news reports could be used as justifications in a FISA court. The Durham Report tracks this. There was nothing normal about any of this.

You specify one specific investigation that the Durham report rightly concludes was founded on bogus grounds. However, this is not the only investigation against Trump and those in his orbit, and is not sufficient by itself to generalize. You're implying that all investigations against Trump follow this form, but that's incorrect. Rather, you should also consider the people in Trump's orbit that were indeed found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of various crimes (or admitted to such), including Flynn (lying), Stone (lying, threatening a witness), Manafort (conspiracy, obstruction), not to mention several financial related crimes (Cohen, Trump Org, Gates, Barrack, etc.)

Manafort and Cohen deserve to go to jail for what they did. That said, their crimes were totally unrelated. That is in absolutely no way justification for the particular way this investigation played out. It's the definition of a fishing expedition, and fishing expeditions certainly catch some guilty fish from time to time. One can justifiably hope that their crimes had been discovered, investigated, and prosecuted, but via other means. I don't think anyone on the right thinks, "Oh, maybe there's something worth investigating concerning China and the Bidens, so that's justification for the FBI to start rooting around in every single prominent democrat's business, and the whole expedition will be justified so long as we catch a couple folks doing random, unrelated, dirty shit. I hope the specific folks who are doing random, unrelated, dirty shit get caught specifically for what they're doing.

You're joking, surely.

Flynn "lied" after being set up under an investigation for a Hatch Act violation, ambushed by FBI interviewers, made to answer all sorts of questions, and then misremembering the answer to a particular point. Before he "lied" the underlying crime was that, before Trump was officially sworn in, he talked to the Russian ambassador and briefly discussed the prospect of sanctions. Not illegal in the slightest, but blow it up into a big controversy because of the spectre of "Russian collusion" (which, again, the FBI already knew to be bullshit) and then harass the victim until they commit some sort of process crime.

This is what all these "crimes" were like: unprecedent levels of investigative harassment against Trump and his people, with the underlying investigations based on completely made-up accusations, and then charging them with process crimes committed during the investigation. "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you. ... Mom, Flynn just attacked my fist with his face!"

This is a ridiculous argument. All the examples you cite are proof of exactly the dynamic I've been describing. It's as if you took the fact of prosecution of witches at Salem as proof that there must have been witches after all.

This is something that frustrates me to no end about this conversation. The moment you pay the slightest bit of attention to the corrupt origination of Crossfire Hurricane it becomes immediately obvious that all the horseshit about this not being a political operation is exactly that - horseshit. The FBI knew that the Russian allegations were bogus, shopped the story around to the media, then used those own media reports as justification. I don't think even the most disingenuous of commenters could make the sequence of events outlined in those reports look good, and the only way they can even try in comment threads like this is to just ignore huge elements of what happened (like the FBI knowing in advance that there's actually no Trump/Russia collusion at all).

if we accept for the sake of argument that what Trump did is no worse than hat Hillary did, how am I supposed to see Trump as anything more than a rank hypocrite? Trump excoriated Hillary for mishandling documents. He tore her to pieces. He wanted her locked up. Given how close 2016 was it's probably not an exaggeration to say that Hillary's emails won Trump the election. and then at the end of his term he stashes a garage full of classified documents in his house? and then lies to investigators about it? Why on earth should I care that he's getting a taste of his own medicine? Crooked Trump.

If Trump wanted to maintain those documents, as president, that suffices.

If it is true that Trump can psychically declassify documents then I'm sure that Trumps very competent, very well paid lawyers will put together an extremely convincing argument to that effect and get the case dismissed. I'm not holding my breath.

if we accept for the sake of argument that what Trump did is no worse than hat Hillary did, how am I supposed to see Trump as anything more than a rank hypocrite? Trump excoriated Hillary for mishandling documents. He tore her to pieces. He wanted her locked up. Given how close 2016 was it's probably not an exaggeration to say that Hillary's emails won Trump the election. and then at the end of his term he stashes a garage full of classified documents in his house? and then lies to investigators about it? Why on earth should I care that he's getting a taste of his own medicine? Crooked Trump.

Well, for one, that is rhetoric. He actually let her off the hook.

For two a bathroom or garage with Secret Service protection is orders of magnitude more secure than an email server set up in 2008 with 1980 level protections.

Third they both lied. But at least he didn't attempt to destroy the evidence and only get found out because the spouse of his top aid was caught up in a child porn investigation.

If it is true that Trump can psychically declassify documents then I'm sure that Trumps very competent, very well paid lawyers will put together an extremely convincing argument to that effect and get the case dismissed. I'm not holding my breath.

Come on, really? The whole argument is about political persecution against Donald Trump, and unprecedented levels of scrutiny against him. It doesn't matter how well-paid or competent Trump's lawyers are (and surely they're both, wisecracking aside) -- the federal government is bigger and has more resources than Donald Trump. Yeah, sure, if Trump were in the right, the case would be dismissed, because the law is never unfair, that's a crazy accusation, I can't imagine anyone in this conversation alleging that. Be real. This argument is beneath me, even if it's not beneath you.

the federal government is bigger and has more resources than Donald Trump.

McDonalds had more resources than Stella Liebeck

It doesn't matter how well-paid or competent Trump's lawyers are (and surely they're both, wisecracking aside)

I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm sure they are very competent. Which is why I don't really believe your legal theory. If what you are saying is correct, and it is uncomplicatedly true that Trump axiomatically cannot mishandle documents, then why aren't his lawyers screaming it from the rooftops? Why haven't they made that argument in court? why aren’t there droves of grumbling articles from the New York Times about how 'this is all BS but unfortunately his lawyers do kinda have a point'? Why did his previous lawyers appear to quit over this? Why did Trump try and hide evidence from investigators if what he did wasn't even illegal? It's all very weird.

unless, of course, you're wrong.

if we accept for the sake of argument that what Trump did is no worse than hat Hillary did

I think what Hillary did is worse than what Trump did. Presidents have ultimate classifying authority, and storing government secrets in a box in your bathroom is much better than storing them on a private server spun up by a small-time IT guy. Maybe Trump should have burned the boxes with a hammer?

Presidents have ultimate classifying authority

You keep mixing legal arguments with moral ones. Even if we accept that what Trump did was legal (not conceded) you have conspicuously avoided the argument that it was deeply irresponsible. there is no law of physics which says that a former president cannot injure the nation by mishandling such documents. Even if a box in a garage is not as bad as an email on a server (not conceded) you still have to admit that a box in a garage is pretty goddamn bad. And after all that shit he gave Hillary, too. Is it really such a terrible thing to hold Trump to his own standards?

If we're going with moral arguments, I'd unfortunately have to say that the verdict almost certainly rests with a set of currently unknowable facts - the exact content of the various documents in question. Given the problems of overclassification, it's actually quite tricky to determine whether, and to what extent, each of the documents really was a danger to national security. Obviously, no one is going to come out and make a public appeal in the form of, "Oh come on, all the real content of Document A was already long past sensitive, even broadly published in the NYT already," or whatever. But frankly, if we're thinking about the moral standpoint, such considerations would actually be super important, and we just don't have a clue which way that goes.

You keep mixing legal arguments with moral ones. Even if we accept that what Trump did was legal (not conceded) you have conspicuously avoided the argument that it was deeply irresponsible. there is no law of physics which says that a former president cannot injure the nation by mishandling such documents. Even if a box in a garage is not as bad as an email on a server (not conceded) you still have to admit that a box in a garage is pretty goddamn bad.

A box in a garage is certainly worse than an email server with regards to security (and this was a particularly insecure server, we'd be better off if she had used AOL, as a country). And even that is merely Biden. A private bathroom in a residence is even more secure. Even moreso when that residence has Secret Service security forces on the premises.

There is not even a slight implication that the US was harmed by Trump's document hoarding. There are multiple experts who believe that it is implausible that multiple foreign nations do not have mirrors of Hillary's server.

Who cares if it was irresponsible if it was legal? Are we really going to break open Pandora's Box and start indicting presidents for doing things that are irresponsible? If so, great, because I have a long list of politicians who "injured the nation"...

Come on, don't lecture me about boxes in garages when Joe Biden has the same. Maybe if you start by admitting that this whole prosecution is made-up double standards over nonsense no one really cares about, in a long line of same, all directed against Trump, I'll concede that sometimes he acts stupidly.

I'll agree that if what he did was legal, he shouldn't have been indicted. I'm not at all convinced by your argument that what he did was legal, and even if you're correct, people sometimes get indicted for doing legal things; it's just a thing that happens sometimes.

Maybe if you start by admitting that this whole prosecution is made-up double standards over nonsense no one really cares about

He cared about it. That's what really gets my back up. 'Crooked Hillary's emails' was like his #1 talking point back in 2016. The man is the king of double standards.

As for unfairness, I think if Trump had done what any other politician would have done, and just handed over the documents when they asked instead of being deceitful, then this whole saga ends with Trump getting a sternly worded letter and a half-dozen news articles written about him. The way Trump acted makes this a very different situation. Of course, I'll admit it's possible that in my counterfactual he gets prosecuted anyway. But then your unfairness argument would be far easier to make, wouldn't it?

if we accept for the sake of argument that what Trump did is no worse than hat Hillary did, how am I supposed to see Trump as anything more than a rank hypocrite?

My rules > your rules, fairly > your rules, unfairly.

Your rules, fairly would imply either arresting Hillary or letting Trump go, and I don't think arresting Hillary is in the cards.

And where do "My rules, unfairly" sit on that spectrum? Trump made an absolutely massive deal out of Hillary mishandling documents and the injury to Hillary was huge (probable cause of losing the election). And now it turns out he's also been mishandling documents and people are making a massive deal out of it and suddenly Mr. "lock her up" is all about forbearance and even application of the law? Even if the basic argument about fairness is true, can you explain to me why I should feel one jot of sympathy for this massive hypocrite?

If politician X in state Y gets prosecuted for smoking weed even though in state Y almost no-one ever gets prosecuted on straight possession, then yeah I would be upset at what I would see as a politically motivated prosecution. If, however, politician X also campaigned like mad to keep weed illegal and made tons of political hay by pointing out that his opponent smoked weed in college? Man, fuck that guy with a stick.

Trump made an absolutely massive deal out of Hillary mishandling documents and the injury to Hillary was huge

This is the kind of distortion that the news media often makes: giving two separately true statements and implying that there's a connection between them. (Actually, I'm not even sure the injury was huge, but let's assume it was). To the extent that Hillary was injured, it wasn't because Trump specifically complained about what she did.

And where do "My rules, unfairly" sit on that spectrum?

Trump may have talked about Hillary's documents, but he didn't get her jailed or even arrested and, in fact, had no power to do so. So you don't get to invoke unfairness if you want Trump to be jailed. You can invoke it if you think that Trump is talking about Hillary's crimes but Democrats aren't talking about Trump's crimes, but that's obviously absurd.

Obstruction to me seems like a much bigger issue.

Declassification is not like art in the White House. The President has Constitutional authority over declassification. Classification doesn't derive from Congress, or any particular law, or the Executive Orders in general. It issues from the President.

The theories and scope of what, exactly, that encompasses, have never been properly challenged or defined in court. But that's a simple matter, new legal theories have been invented before in order to target Donald Trump, and will be again.

Yes, and if they had not done so, there would have been every justification to follow the process for getting the stuff back that was followed with Trump. The Clintons, like most other sane politicians, took the "we got a letter asking for the stuff back and sent the stuff back" route.

There was a much longer timeframe for a lot of it...

And, to note, this is understating how much trump shot him self in the foot.

Trump didn’t say ‘no’ when he got the letter. He told his lawyers he didn’t have any, got raided over it, was caught, and now is charged.

I mean this alone should mean the next administration, R or D, should dissolve the FBI with extreme prejudice. It's not even the best reason to do it, but you can't run a liberal democracy with a partisan secret police. That said, I'm not holding my breath.

Your apologia about intent whilst admitting that the benefactor of the double standard is guilty even of the hypothetical other standard is nonsensical though. Hilldawg's actually destroyed evidence, remember? How's that for malice aforethought?

With this level of contorting what we should judge things upon, why even bother thinking of a standard?

Here's the most concrete plan I've seen along those lines:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/06/13/exclusive_the_desantis_plan_to_wage_war_on_weaponized_doj.html

...she didn't intend to expose confidential or classified information and most of the email saga came down to a mixture of negligence and pride...

...It was the pride of "owning" them...

Um, your justification seems to apply equally to both Hillary and Trump, even by your own words. So far as I know, nobody is accusing Trump of actually intending to expose the information.

First of all, Clinton seemed genuinely surprised that classified info was found on the server. After all, investigations showed that nothing was clearly marked as such. There was no moment where she was told by the government officially, "hey, shut this down" and then she said no. Intent was all about FOIA and disclosure avoidance (not appropriation of government secrets), which is bad and sorta illegal but nothing super new in government and she was punished appropriately (politically, by the public - hell she lost an election in part because of it).

Contrast Trump. He clearly has explicitly labeled classified stuff. He knows it's classified. The government very officially says "give it back" and he says "no". That's as plain as the nose on your face.

The penalties for FOIA violations run to single-digit prison terms and being barred from holding office, so if she'd been prosecuted for that instead of the classified docs found on Weiners laptop I don't think the red-hats would have been too disappointed.

Just noting, this line:

hoping to curry favor with the person they expected would be the next American president

was referring to the foreign government looking to donate to the clinton campaign or maybe clinton foundation, not the FBI. Meanwhile in durham's reporting, apparently the FBI were intentionally 'tippy-toeing' based on the chance clinton would be the next president. So it's not quite as strong as you're describing. But an interesting takeaway from the Durham report regardless.

You are correct, mea culpa, I should have quoted the later part of that paragraph instead.

Massachusetts Man Arrested for Knowingly Concealing the Source of Material Support or Resources to a Foreign Terrorist Organization, otherwise known as the FBI grooms yet another kid; an agent have been in contact with a guy since he was 16 until 18, LARPing as an ISIS recruiter and soliciting gift cards, Indian scammer style.

  1. What is the value of these ploys to society? This seems morally abhorrent to me and the only justification I can find is that "he would've done it if the agent was a real ISIS member," but (a) he tried to report the contact and (b) this logic doesn't work for entrapment.

  2. What is the value of these ploys to the FBI? Going off tropes, more crimes = more funding more power and more reputation. If that's the case I want more concrete and detailed pathways.

  3. Is there a way I can access the criminal complaint? I am skeptical of the "Brain Development Issues" and think the Intercept is trying to sensationalize the story which works to the latter's detriment; what the FBI did is unacceptable even if the guy was a genius.

I think presumably the implication is that the FBI believes that ISIS truly does recruit online and that by re-routing some of the would-be terrorists to them, they are taking away "real" terrorists. This assumes that a) there is a finite number of people who would commit a terror attack for ISIS online (thus being a sort of zero-sum thing), and b) if the FBI doesn't help them, they will go to someone real who can. I think assumption A is probably fine, I don't really think that the FBI is somehow generating additional potential recruits by their actions, so a fixed pool generally seems to make sense. Assumption B is a bit trickier, but from a law enforcement perspective, is it truly worth the risk of ignoring potential terrorists because you're hoping that they aren't serious and that they will grow out of it or something? Furthermore, I don't have much sympathy to be honest for the so-called "false positives" in this kind of scenario. Even if you are (let's say) hoodwinked and egged on by the FBI to do things you don't want to do in actuality... nothing's really stopping you from just stopping these conversations? Unless their process violates assumption B (the honey traps somehow radicalizing MORE than a comparable "real ISIS" control group) I can't see this being a concern keeping many people up at night. It's not like going to a terrorist training camp is the kind of "whoopsie" that anyone could be suckered into doing.

is it truly worth the risk of ignoring potential terrorists because you're hoping that they aren't serious and that they will grow out of it or something

The effort/skill gap between getting into honeypots and real ISIS recruitment is immense; consider the weakening to irrelevance of ISIS and the ease with which FBI can just place links into search results among many other things. All the people who fall into the gap are would be innocents if not for FBI intervention. But I view this method of law enforcement distasteful, violating the presumption of innocence and akin to running a statistical analysis and arresting everyone who fit the psychological profile of terrorists.

nothing's really stopping you from just stopping these conversations

You're underestimating the power of attachment and coercion. At the very least getting into extended contact with a recruiter builds expectations. I have as much sympathy for the false-positives as much as I have for victims of entrapment.

It's not like going to a terrorist training camp is the kind of "whoopsie" that anyone could be suckered into doing.

The low barrier to entry that allows even a 16-yo to contact them is malicious. Those are the exact types of people to commit to the cause when presented with a seemingly viable avenue for action, and would've otherwise just moved on.

It also is probably a good idea to let actual wannabes know that the "recruiter" they are talking to might be an FBI agent. Clandestine networks can't work if participants can't be confident that they are actually clandestine.

Flood the zone with fakes, and then to the extent actual terrorist recruiters exist, they'll always be written off as fakes by potential recruits.

Not a bad idea. Imagine a future of fedposting bots, deployed very widely. You can test the loyalty of the citizen to the state in real time. Occasionally expose him to a proposal of terrorist activities. If he responds positively or doesn't report it to the government, he is targeted for punishment or remedial patriotic education, depending on the seriousness of the offense. You could pretty much snuff out all terrorist activity in the crib.

You could pretty much snuff out all terrorist activity in the crib.

1984 was not intended to be an instruction manual! And this would be a perfect way to start terrorist activity in anyone who did not want to live in a totalitarian state. What would be considered "lack of loyalty to the state"? You really don't think that would suffer definition creep?

Well technically it would work I guess. But then you could also torture anyone suspected of disloyalty to the regime to death while forcing them to name accomplices. That also works quite well, but I don't think I'd want to live in a country where that was routine policy.

Exactly where to draw the line is a little tricky, but I think if we're routinely persuading malcontent teenagers to do just enough to get them convicted without them ever having spoken to an actual dissident group of some sort, and this happens say 10x more often than actual terrorist acts, we've gone too far in the direction of suppressing dissent.

Yeah, if we're talking "isolated 16 year old meets sympathetic listener online who subtly encourages him in the direction of jihad over two years worth of interaction", then the Feds could as easily have encouraged him to talk about wanting to shoot up his school, or rob a bank, or assassinate a state governor.

If they were really serious about preventing radicalisation or whatever, they'd have contacted his parents or mental health services when he was 16. Instead, they waited until he was 18 and legally adult before "surprise, you're arrested, you criminal terrorist master mind you!" That sounds a lot more like "keeping our numbers up" than "nipping terrorism in the bud".

Feds could as easily have encouraged him to talk about wanting to shoot up his school, or rob a bank, or assassinate a state governor.

Please, the Feds do not do assassination plots against state elected officials. It would be about KIDNAPPING a state governor, though what you do with her once you have her I don't know.

I don’t think there is any reason to conflate lack of loyalty to the state with willingness to commit crimes, including aiding violent organizations in faroff lands. As far as we know, this guy was completely loyal to the state. Just as plenty of Americans who illegally aided the IRA during the troubles were loyal to the US.

Was the IRA an enemy of the US like ISIS is?

It was engaging in what it considered to be a war against the UK (the UK considered it to be sporadic violent crime, rather then war). If you accept the IRA's claim that it was waging war, then it was an enemy of the United States per article 5 of the NATO treaty.

Just as plenty of Americans who illegally aided the IRA during the troubles were loyal to the US.

This is oxymoronic. If you violate the policies and laws of the government, you are by definition disloyal.

To the government perhaps, but the government and the country weren't always considered one and the same. Civil war is usually patriots vs patriots.

I think presumably the implication is that the FBI believes that ISIS truly does recruit online and that by re-routing some of the would-be terrorists to them, they are taking away "real" terrorists.

That's similar to my thinking, I would imagine that the justification is that they're clearing out the proverbial deadwood. This approach also has the added benefit of reducing the probability of these kinds of people forming their own groups and deterring smarter people from attempting to reach out and join/form their own groups.

I would say it's a sound strategy.

On the other hand, if you filter out all the dumb people, only smart people end up forming groups. Maybe you want the dumb people to join the groups because it'll make it easier to break the weakest link.

if you filter out all the dumb people, only smart people end up forming groups

More likely you get no groups forming at all, as the number of smart people who also want to join or form radical terrorist groups in the US is so small that the odds of enough of them actually connecting with one another to make a meaningfully sized network are practically non-existant. The exception to this is when you have places where smart malcontents may end up naturally gathering, like universities, which you should be monitoring closely to break up any nascent networks in their infancy.

Clearly the FBI are good at their jobs, the kind of attacks that the modern US regularly faces are not ones conducted by organised groups, but are instead almost always lone wolves and lack any sort of staying power, usually being "one and done" terrorists.

It’s fairly plausible that the smart people join different groups, or follow strategies for joining the same groups which are calculated to have an ending other than being the one wearing the vest and shouting allahu akbar, and the dummies are never really trusted with much information anyways.

I don't get it either. I'm sure there is more to the story, but at risk of strawmanning:

"If I can groom him into terrorism, someone else could. Therefore he's a criminal" entrapment as well as some sort of KPI's for arrests that make the weak-minded and gullible low hanging fruit.

Is there a way I can access the criminal complaint?

Courtlistener for the case is here, complaint and affidavit, though the pretrial detention motion may be helpful as well.

Obvious disclaimer: these are all allegations by the FBI. I'd hope they wouldn't outright lie, but I wouldn't put money on it, and I'd expect that they've excluded anything especially exculpatory from the complaint.

What is the value of these ploys to society?

The FBI alleges that Ventura had made at least some motions common to ISIS fanboys who escalated to violent acts, and plan to travel to join ISIS fighters:

From the complaint affidavit:

On or about August 3, 2021, during the chats exchanged between the OCE and VENTURA, VENTURA explained he had not yet pledged his allegiance to the leader of ISIS. Pledging allegiance is a common way for ISIS supporters to demonstrate their commitment to the group. This is referred to as making “baya” or “bayat”, and typically this pledge is made before any martyrdom operations or acts that are taken on behalf of ISIS so that if the supporter is killed, he supposedly obtains all the rewards from Allah, or God, when he goes to heaven.

On or about January 26, 2023, when asked about hijrah (i.e., traveling to join ISIS), VENTURA stated “I want to give my life for jihad fisabillah [for the sake of Allah] intention is pure from heart,” and also stated that he would “make good fighter for dawla.” As described above, I understand “dawla” to mean ISIS.

On or about January 26, 2023, VENTURA asked the OCE if VENTURA could perform an “ishtishadi” attack. VENTURA further informed the OCE that he wanted to fight for ISIS for a couple of months, but then became a “shashid” (i.e., a martyr) via the ishtishadi operation.

On or about April 9, 2023, The OCE asked Ventura if he would want to participate in an ISIS operation on Eid al-Fitr or go straight to the ISIS training camp. On or about April 10, 2023, VENTURA responded to the OCE "Be party of attack ...." and "Then can send to training camp ....."

In the same conversation, VENTURA told the OCE, “I plan buy ticket for tonight or tomorrow night inshaallah".

On or about April 10, 2023, VENTURA purchased a ticket for a Turkish Airlines flight from Boston with an ultimate destination of Cairo, departing at 11:10pm on April 10, 2023

And from the motion in support of pretrial detention:

The Defendant has shown an obsession with violence – he indicated a desire to commit a suicide attack, attempted to travel to join ISIS to participate in its operations, maintained a cache of over 100 horrifically violent videos, and researched homemade grenades, fertilizer bombs, and how to obtain firearms...

Third, the Defendant is a flight risk. He made at least three attempts to leave the United States and join ISIS. He obtained a passport, credit cards, and airline tickets. He inquired about traveling to Russia to join the Wagner Group of mercenaries in its fight against Ukraine and conducted internet searches about traveling to other European nations.

If this is true, it's likely that the FBI are emphasizing the financial support simply because it's the easiest to get a conviction, but it's not hard to imagine a slightly nuttier kid doing something violent as a result. Of the presented evidence, this might just be within the scope of janky sixteen-year-old 'planning', but it's at least the sort of thing that's easy to talk up how it might be the Next Terror Attack.

Though even the affidavit doesn't push that direction universally. Hussain mentioned the kid "appeared ready to turn in his purported ISIS contact", but the actual behavior was a little dumber:

On or about April 10, 2023, at approximately 10:50pm, the FBI received an electronic tip (E-tip) to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center (NTOC) from an anonymous source stating the following:

I want 10 million dollars in duffel bags and time to get money in proper places you know who I am you already lost my trust so if you want information on attacks you must pay if you want to save lives and do you’re job this offer here is you’re final chance I want the Cash and Immunity no funny games I known you thought I am retarded fool but jokes on you I will not admit I sent this or communicate until the cash is delivered [FBI AGENT 1] I am speaking to you dumb little bimbo this is my only offer try more offensive actions and you will regret it do what I ask and I will help you simple as this Cash and immunity Cash delivered first 10 mill duffel bags front door no jokes I am not joking or playing funny games you have already lost my trust and this is you’re last chance to fix it text or email me when my demands are accepted then give some days and we can talk in person.We have 1 week or 2 until attacks I have information about happen and much more if do what I tell

On or about April 11, 2023, VENTURA called the FBI Boston Operations Center requesting to speak with someone because he wanted to help with “terror”.

On or about April 12, 2023, at approximately 2:14pm, VENTURA called the FBI Boston Operations Center requesting to speak with FBI AGENT 1 because he had information about urgent incoming terror attacks, but would not provide any further information to the Operations Center Technician.

On or about April 12, 2023, at approximately 3:03pm, VENTURA called the FBI Boston Operations Center requesting to speak with an agent again regarding upcoming terror attacks. VENTURA stated the attacks would take place overseas and would happen in the next 1- 2 weeks. He said the sooner agents call him back, the sooner they can “make the deal”.

On or about April 12, 2023, at approximately 4:43pm, FBI personnel placed a call to VENTURA. On the call, VENTURA stated he had information regarding upcoming mass attacks in Egypt planned by Daesh in Sinai. He stated the attacks were scheduled to take place around the time of Eid al-Fitr. VENTURA also stated that he had information pertaining to ISIS recruiters and individuals who facilitate travel to ISIS.

On or about April 13, 2023, at approximately 7:55am, VENTURA wrote-in an electronic tip (E-tip) to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center (NTOC) requesting a call back by April 14, 2023. He requested 10 million dollars and immunity in exchange for information he believed would stop an ISIS attack.

This seems less like someone wanting to flip cell leadership, and more someone worried they were getting caught.

I think the FBI's framework is still bullshit. This kid probably flunks the propensity prong for entrapment as a legal matter, because most people aren't going to spend a whole bunch of time trying to find ways to join ISIS and then toy with flying to Cairo. The FBI's handler (says that they) very carefully simply prompted the kid about things he could do, rather than telling him to do them; a genuine terrorist recruiter could probably have been more direct.

But at the same time, it's difficult to understand what's better served doing a severe prosecution, rather than calling the kid's parents early on and having them pull his internet access — even assuming he would have been as easily manipulated by an actual terrorist, that’d still keep him out of their reaches. Maybe that's what would have happened if he didn't try the ETip fuckery, but we don't really have insight for that.

What is the value of these ploys to the FBI? Going off tropes, more crimes = more funding more power and more reputation. If that's the case I want more concrete and detailed pathways.

The FBI has made very overt claims that ISIS-specific stochiastic terrorism justifies or requires special powers or legislation, and it's one of the few remaining places that Red and Blue Tribe normies continue to trust the FBI. I think the focus is more specific than the general Gotta Keep Numbers Up.

We don't know enough about what happened to conclude that the FBI acted improperly, do we? The Intercept article says, "In August 2021, when he was 16 years old, Ventura began communicating with an undercover FBI agent online. He told the agent of his desire to make “hijrah,” or migrate to territories under control of the Islamic State." That certainly sounds like he initiated the conversation, though we can't know for sure.

Then, after backing out of plans to go abroad, " In January 2023, just after his 18th birthday, Ventura got back in touch with the FBI agent on the encrypted messaging platform. Apologizing for not being communicative in previous months after his supposed injury, Ventura again said he wanted to travel to the Islamic State. The pair discussed the possibility of him dying in an attack by ISIS fighters somewhere in the world or attending a training camp." Again, that sounds like he reinitiated contact and claimed to be interested in going.

And I am not too impressed with him calling the FBI tip line, given that he demanded $10 million in cash in duffel bags.

None of this means that he was a threat; the cash in duffel bags thing certainly supports the notion that he is not all there. But unless the FBI knew that, which they probably didn't, that says nothing about the propriety of their actions. And note that young, not very sharp, males are probably the demographic most likely to actually go through with joining violent groups or with harebrained schemes like going abroad to wage jihad.

And I am not too impressed with him calling the FBI tip line, given that he demanded $10 million in cash in duffel bags.

The irony would be if he was only going along with the 'recruiter' in order to scam them, as the FBI were at the same time scamming him.

Either he thought he really was talking to a genuine terrorist, or sometime during the two years he figured out it was the Feds. Either way, his ultimate goal was to get money out of them by claiming "I totally have solid real info about a terror attack, trust me, just pay me and give me immunity (so I can't be done for blackmail) and I'll tell you" while having no intention ever of going anywhere near a genuine attack or martyrdom.

Feds hate him! He got free machine guns and a cute informant gf with this one weird trick!

After all the sordid scam investigation history of the FBI I wouldn't presume good faith. The press in general has also tended toward covering up and cooperating with FBI, so I wouldn't parse The Intercept's exact wording as a clue to figuring out what happened. Granted, we don't know enough to say for sure what happened. But the precis makes this sound very sketchy. How likely was it for some autist 16-year-old to get anywhere on his own merits without the FBI stepping in?

I am not arguing that we should presume good faith. I am arguing for not presuming bad faith.

How likely was it for some autist 16-year-old to get anywhere on his own merits without the FBI stepping in?

I have no idea what the data says on that. Do you? Presumably, it depends on the degree and type of autism. Assuming this guy has autism in the first place.

I am arguing for not presuming bad faith.

About the FBI? You should re-evaluate your life's choices my dude. If the FBI told me the sky was blue I'd go outside to check, just in case.

Perhaps you should evaluate your vulnerability to availability bias.

Not-all-there males in their late teens leave behind body counts all the time. Now whether the FBI is stepping in to assist these budding mass shooters, I couldn’t tell you, but they are uh, mostly not unabomber level geniuses nor pictures of mental health.

Right, as I noted, "young, not very sharp, males are probably the demographic most likely to actually go through with joining violent groups or with harebrained schemes like going abroad to wage jihad."

What is the value of these ploys to the FBI?

Arrests. So long as they are arresting people, they can continue to justify their budget to congress.

Consider instead that they don't arrest him with the information they have. Six months later, he blows himself up in a mall and takes a dozen people with him. Headlines scream: 'Mall Jihadist on FBI radar and they did NOTHING,' whichever political party not in control of congress spins up an investigation and media frenzy to score points in the next election, people hate the FBI anyways.

It's easy to just say the spooks are doing shady things again, but probably harder and more valuable to think about the systemic incentives we've given them to behave that way.

But there's the other possibility of going and saying "We need more funding, in order to prevent terrible things like that mall Jihadist!"

blows himself up in a mall

Except in this instance there's no claim he had actually communicated with actual terrorists, only FBI pretending to be terrorist recruiters.

Isn't the expectation that the FBI should be disrupting terrorist networks? There's no network here only the FBI communicating with a young man described by his father to The Intercept as;

“He was born prematurely, he had brain development issues. I had the school do a neurosurgery evaluation on him and they said his brain was underdeveloped,” Ventura said. “He was suffering endless bullying at school with other kids taking food off his plate, tripping him in the hallway, humiliating him, laughing at him.”

Except in this instance there's no claim he had actually communicated with actual terrorists, only FBI pretending to be terrorist recruiters

Here’s the thing- he doesn’t have to get in touch with actual jihadis to commit an act of jihad. Isis attacks in western countries are for the most part basically indistinguishable from garden variety nuts carrying out mass casualty attacks, just with different stated reasons, and usually carried out by perpetrators who fit the profile of garden variety mass shooters except for claiming a different ideology. And I want to emphasize that last bit; taliban bombers might be particularly religious, but it doesn’t seem like IS attackers in western countries are.

a young man described by his father to The Intercept as;

I mean does his increased susceptibility to the FBI agent's advances surely not also imply increased susceptibility to real terrorists? In which case it's better than he be arrested in this way than find his way to a real recruiter an go on to be a real terrorist.

increased susceptibility to real terrorists

Likely describes 10's if not 100's of thousands of people. Is the FBI going to arrest them all one at time?

Perhaps the recruiter groomer should have gone for stupid idpol instead.

The purpose of the FBI is not supposed to be to test people to destruction.

Inferential Distance: part 4 of ? Do You Think That's Air You're Breathing?

This post is an installment of an ongoing series.

@DaseindustriesLtd writes...

After you get out of jail, I would like to see an Inferential Distance episode where you finally explain your strange predilection to insist that people believe things they vociferously repudiate and belong to groups they consistently and vocally loathe.

...and to be fair, he and I have been going back and forth enough for long enough that I genuinely feel like I owe them an honest explanation. The short answer is that I am a genuine believer in this sub's core premise IE that "engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time". The long answer is to follow...

Long time readers will know that I've been going on for years about that Star Trek TNG episode Darmok and Jalad. For those unfamiliar, the premise and core conflict of the episode is summarized in this scene here. The idea being that without a shared narrative or frame of reference communication becomes difficult if not impossible. As observed by Dr Crusher, the image of "Julliet on her Balcony" would mean little to someone who has never been exposed to the works of Shakespear. An alternative for those more academically inclined might be to consider Wittgenstein's "If a lion could speak, we could not understand him". Long story short I actually agree with Wittgenstein here, but I also think that this is an obstacle that can be overcome and if anything, overcoming that obstacle is what this whole series is about.

As such, If you really want to understand what I'm doing here I urge you to watch Fight Club and The Matrix. These two movies were released about 6 months apart and came along at a very strange time in my life. My user-name "HlynkaCG" is, among other things, an obscure Fight Club reference. Hlynka/Hilinka being the Czech word for quicklime and a surname associated with makers of soap. These days the name is more closely associated with hockey but that too feels appropriate as an online "fighting nam". (See the old joke about going to a fight only for a hockey game to break out) In any case, being fresh out of high-school and just starting to realize that the vision that I had been harboring of my future was not going to come to pass, these films left me feeling "seen" in a way that I hadn't since I was a small child. This scene in particular had a profound effect on my outlook in life and it is one that I still find myself reflecting upon and seeing in new light over two decades later.

The extreme degree to which the modern secular mindset tries to insulate itself from the simple universalities of life and death is one of those things that I had never noticed it until it was pointed out to me, but once it had, I found it impossible not to notice. Every subtle (and not so subtle) "nudge" to accrue debt, consume [product], and engage with [latest thing], all seemed to come back to this impulse. The impulse to turn away from life. The Sheeple/NPC meme is rightly derided, especially when it's some angst riddled 19-20 year-old pushing it, but it feflected my sincere feelings at the time. I just couldn't understand how so many people could miss what now seemed so obvious to me. Could they not see where this path leads? Do those Raging Against the Machine not recognize that they themselves are part of it, that their whole existence depends on it?

Enter The Matrix.

I'm a huge fan of The Matrix, I'm even a fan of it's sequels. It is easily one of my favorite series. I'm not going to describe it as underrated or underappreciated because it's not. It was massively influential across multiple domains and basically set the tone of the early 2000s and 2010s. That said I do feel like it's often underestimated. There seem to be an endless stream blogposts and YouTube videos arguing something to the effect of "the Matrix is a lot smarter than you remember" or "the Matrix is a lot smarter than you remember" and they're both correct to some degree. The important and "underestimated" part in my eyes (and in the context of this post) is that the Matrix by presenting us with a narrative it provides the vocabulary needed to discuss a deep inferential gulf. the "red pill", the "blue pill", "cipher's speech", "freeing one's mind", No one can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.

So to finally get to the meat of @DaseindustriesLtd's question, let's adress with the elephant in the room.

Identity politics is bullshit.

To be clear, I'm not saying that I don't like it, or that I disagree with it's policy proscriptions. I'm saying that it's bullshit, all of it. Identity politics is a load of incoherant post-modernist nonsense that actively diminishes an individual's ability to understand basic human psychology/behaviors and make accurate predictions about the world. In short, identity politics makes people stupider. It makes people stupid because as with a lot of other post-modernist academic fads it gets cause and effect, source and sink, exactly backwards.

Marcus Aurelius admonishes us to look upon each particular thing and ask what is it's nature? IE what does it do? where does it come from? How does it behave? The answers you get are what that thing is. Scott wrote about this idea at length in The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories but veared away from the what ought to have been the logical conclusion at the last moment rather face it squarely. Identity, to the degree that it represents something meaningful and real, exists for the benefit of the identifier rather than the identified. Dylan Mulvaney can identify as woman all he likes but it but it wont make him a biological female any more than my identfying as a LGM-118 Peacekeeper Missile means that the US government must report on my movements in accordance with the START treaty.

Dase asks from whence "my predeliction" comes, and my reply is whether someone identifies as a progressive or expresses loathing towards "the woke" is not the point. The point is how do they behave? what beliefs do they espouse? and where do they come from? My position is that somebody who behaves like a progressive, comes from a progressive background, and who argues progressive talking points, is for all practical intents and purposes a progressive regardless of how they might identify. Identity exists for the benefit of the identifier rather than the identified.

Which brings us back to the Matrix. The reason that various flavors of failed progressive seem to gravitate towards an ideology resembling early-mid 20th century fascism (as opposed to some flavor of conservatism) is that fascism is a fundamentally progressive ideology. They might take the red pill but they never manage to free thier minds. They want to continue believing that the world runs on inductive logic when any game involving multiple agents is going to be anti-inductive. They want to quibble some group's position within the intersectional stack rather than question the validity of the stack as a concept. They cling to psuedo-marxist nonsense about group/class consciousness and group/class differences to salve their own wounded pride. They still seem to think that they can appeal to some non-existant higher authority with words like "academic consensus" and "studies show". In other words they still think that's air they are breathing.

At the risk of eating another ban I think that it is quite possible for both of the following statements to be true...

The median east African has a room temperature IQ.

The median east African is more intelligent than most posters here on TheMotte.org including myself.

The thing that struck me about Africa when I was living there back in 2012-13 was that everyone had a hustle or three, the people who didn't have some sort of hustle going were bums, as in literally destitute. There's nothing like neccesity to narrow one's focus. Truth is I don't think guys like Bryan Caplan or Elizer Yudkowski can even hold a candle to the average Kenyan Cabby, in terms of observational astuteness, number of languages spoken, or real-time problem solving ability and there is no study you can cite that will convince me otherwise because the entire institution of social science is a fucking joke.

Truth is that primary goal of academia is not to educate, it is to sort winners from losers on the basis of academic aptitude and ability to flatter one's professor. The reason your professors graded on a curve was that your professors were lazy and stupid. After all "Why go through the trouble of designing your test so that only X% of students can answer 90% of the questions when you can just hand out the test as is and set the threshold for an A at the Xth percentile of correct responses?". At the end of the day it is much easier to get students to compete amongst themselves than it is to accurately grade their understanding/uptake of the material. This in turn comes back to what I've said before about how it is combativeness, not consensus, nor the desire to please that produces truth.

I couldn't help but think about this comment when reading Tyler Cowen's latest post. A modern academic, normally completely sequestered from the realities of life and death, existential struggle, catches a glimpse of multi-agent games.

It sometimes feels like the biggest inferential distance for me is between the typical motte poster you describe and myself, despite the hugely similar surface level appearances.

I'm on OG motter, I came over as a moderator from the culture war thread on slatestarcodex. You know this, because (for those who don't know) you were there with me.

I'm a systematizer, I liked reading some of Elizer's fictional works, Bryan Caplan has long been an intellectual north star for me, I often dislike getting my hands dirty, I doubt I would have made it through a week of boot camp, and I'd certainly be lost and hopeless in a foreign country etc etc.

Still, I read your posts and I never think "that is me he is talking about". It is like describing to a fish that a fish is creature that swims in water. The fish looks around and sees other fish and thinks "oh those things".

Anyways weird personal feelings aside, or maybe because of them, I feel like I've already grokked these insights you have to bring.

Humans are adaptive. And when we live in a world of systemetizers we shall get good at systemetizing. When we live in a world of multilingualism, multi-businesses, and multi-cons we shall get good at that too.

To a large extent I think the world of academics and systemitizing has not arisen out of anyone or anything's desire for control, but as a natural competitive process among humans. Our big useless brains are peacock feathers. Adaptiveness is hot and sexy, and to be so adaptive that you can waste a bunch of resources on something that is not adaptive is even hotter! The original academics were all bored out of their minds landed aristocrats. Pick almost any philosopher / thinker / scientist from the 17/18/19th century and they were nearly all independently wealthy. Those aristocrats had won the game of life so badly that they had to invent a new game just to keep playing.

The enlightenment was a great accident. A result of man's competitive nature hitting a wall. A wall that meant that the best of them had all sort of won. Or at least couldn't figure out how to clearly win any harder than they already had. The new game they created was enlightenment about the physical world. Eventually they seemed to tire of that game as well, and they went back to killing each other to prove who was best. We ended up with the absolute tragedy of the world wars, and a century of the elites trying to strut their dicks around like fucking cavemen. A tragedy, but a predictable, and expected one.

I think of all the competition in the modern world as a game. Its not really for survival, unless someone chooses to make it about survival (which they often do). And I fully get that I am playing a game, and that it is very different than the struggle that is survival.

It is fathers day. My father has always epitomized a yearning to have that struggle for survival. He joined the army just as the vietnam war was ending. He was disappointed that he wouldn't get to go over and kill the [ethnic slurs]. He loved camping, hiking, cross country running, collecting knives, hunting small game, carpentry, and construction. I use past tense because he is old and does fewer of these things nowadays, and has mellowed out with the copious amounts of marijuana he consumes.

He was always terrible at playing "the game". He always managed to be on the wrong side of office politics anytime there was cleansing. There was always a bitterness he carried through life as he never seemed to understand why he kept losing at the soft things in life.

In contrast, my mother plays politics like a champ. Well enough that I can't always tell if she knows what she is doing, or has just been doing it so long it is second nature. She was nearly in the c-suite at a company that had billions in revenue a year before she retired.

So I get it when guys watch fight club and the matrix get that feeling that the world is fucked up. We are animals damnit! Our instincts and our bodies are not meant for these soft games of politics! We are meant to fight for survival, to truly struggle, and to be beaten by the world not by our fellow people! I get it. I feel the same way.

But I grew up watching my dad yearn for that world that doesn't exist, and I think it broke him hard enough to make me and my brother come out pre-broken. I'm not gonna live wishing for a world that doesn't exist. I've got the world as it is, and I don't plan to be a sucker that loses to the soft men and women of the world. And by being unwilling to lose to them, I have become a soft man myself.

Long rambling to say, we won too hard at the struggle of survival. Now everything is just games of competition, and losing isn't fun.

Here I am reading Nietzsche like a chump where I just consume popular culture like Fight Club to learn how we are socialized into obidient little slaves to the "Machine". All that to have the fleeting experience of escaping the cave of our social conditioning we have known for over two millenia. Catching a glimpse of the outside and then heading right back into our schackles staring at the shadows because we think that there is nothing more to be learned. But alas there is...

The machine/system/society strives towards totalitarianism through techonology, even if the technology doesn't work in reality. To quote "Industrial Society and Its Future" from the recently deceased Theodore Kaczynski

But it is not in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small-group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest possible extent.

Every piece of media you have quoted is only there to give you glimpse of the truth and then having you heading back into the cave to service the machine. I have also learned a glimpse of the truth but I have no intention of stopping trying to learn more.

Thank you for taking the time and effort to write these posts. As I understand it, your argument is more or less as follows:

  • There is a large inferential distance between yourself, as a former soldier and a representative of the Red tribe, and most of us on this forum, who went to university young and are mostly some form of international knowledge worker.

  • This is not something we can see ourselves. The equipment being used to do the looking gets in the way of the looking. As with the matrix, only a situation that forcibly relocates our worldview will allow us to see what you're getting at.

  • This inference gap, to the extent that we're capable of seeing it, is basically that we ultimately see things in a systemising, academic way. We are armchair professors who sit down and discuss abstract ideas like race, class, representation. We believe in the existence and importance of Society with a big S. We spend most of our lives in urban environments where social convention and rules are more relevant than fundamental natural laws.

  • Because we discuss in those terms, we're incapable of stepping back and seeing that this is all just people. By discussing the culture war, we inevitably find ourselves seeing the world on the culture war's terms. You aren't sitting in traffic, you are traffic.

  • Therefore it is acceptable to describe the average Mottizen as a progressive, even if we vehemently reject that classification, because ultimately it's true. From the perspective of one who can stand outside, we are part of a modern movement which uses a lens that is fundamentally incompatible with what we say we would like to conserve.

@HlynkaCG This is a bit short and muddled, but how close is it? I have thoughts but will put them in a different comment.

@HlynkaCG This is a bit short and muddled, but how close is it?

Pretty damn close, in particular the observation that "you aren't stuck in traffic, you are the traffic." is a framing that I wouldn't have thought of myself but kind of wish I had because it I feel like it accurately conveys the broader idea that I am trying to get at. Now take that principle and apply it wholesale to the sort of people who say things like "but it's society that is to blame". Bro, you are the society.

There is a large inferential distance between yourself and most of us… This is not something we can see ourselves. The equipment being used to do the looking gets in the way of the looking.

The irony here is that this (and I do think what you’ve written here is an accurate summary of Hlynka’s position) is a very postmodern view of knowledge and discourse. It’s something that Foucault or Derrida easily could have written themselves.

Well, yes. One of the things that I would really like Hylnka to write about is what this inferential distance means for his understanding of the average Mottizen’s position.

EDIT: I think there’s something to it, though. I write a bit about it below but in the last few years my understanding of the world had several big shifts. There’s an impossible-to-describe difference between intellectually analysing position that position and feeling in your bones that it’s true. I have a friend who is a pretty serious conspiracy theorist and on occasion I can just about get close enough to feel his viewpoint from the inside. It’s vertiginous, a cascading loss of trust that produces a completely different understanding of the world. Discussing it from the outside is much easier and more comfortable.

Well, yes. One of the things that I would really like Hylnka to write about is what this inferential distance means for his understanding of the average Mottizen’s position.

I would like to open by freely conceding that I may very well be wrong. These are only my own personal impressions that I am describing.

But my understanding average Mottizen’s position is that they expect things to make inductive sense. they expect the world to be coherent, simple, and readily systemitizable. The absolute last thing they want to hear is that their "one weird trick" wont work, and that reality is naturally messy unpredictable and analog. Multi-agent problems will naturally resist systematization, but that wont stop them from trying.

My position is that the alleged "sense making crisis" so many rationalists are fretting about is not a crisis at all, It is simply how things have always been.

I might not fit into average...

they expect things to make inductive sense. they expect the world to be coherent, simple, and readily systemitizable.

I do believe this. But I also think we (as humans) will never be up to the task. Our models will get better (than other models) but will never be perfect (always wrong).

My one weird trick might might be useful but it will always fail eventually. I know this... And if I can understand why it wont work, I might be able to improve my weird trick.

:marseyshrug:

(Continued from the above)

I have some innate sympathy with this position, because I have personally known very intelligent people who had blindspots you could drive a bus through and they couldn't see it however gently you led them.

I used to think somewhat similarly to you (perhaps, inferential distance and all that). I was a Cameron Conservative in the UK (kind of like a Reaganite conservative in the US). I really believed in colourblindness, and treating everyone as an individual, and in equality of opportunity. I scoffed at left-wing abstractions like the Establishment, manufactured consent, class conflict. Most of my extended family were army officers.

And then the wind changed.

Without any particular intention to do so, I got caught up in a proto-Culture War conflicts in 2015/2016. I won't bore you with the details, but I learned very quickly that what was said did not matter. There was no meaningful possibility of persuasion. The way you won conflicts was by controlling the people who were in the room to vote. The usual mechanisms for that were to get the committee secretary to slip in lots of boring business before the meaty stuff, so that anyone who didn't care enough to listen through hours of bullshit and miss supper left, and by making life miserable enough for the people who stayed that they didn't come back. I also learned that it's impossible for a man to win a public argument with a crying woman.

The Brexit vote happened maybe a year later. The pattern was stark. Mostly the university staff (cooks, cleaners, etc. were in favour). Every single academic and student was against. Every. Single. One. Even outside academia, again and again I would find myself the only one in the room. At best people would be interested, at worst they would say vile things without even considering the possibility that someone like me could exist. (Those who expressed doubts about mass vaccination during Covid will recognise the feeling). The Establishment did exist, and I'd just fallen out of it.

By your taxonomy, maybe this makes me a failed progressive, I'm not sure. But what I feel like is a failed Conservative. I tried to be an individualist and I found that in this place and at this time, individualism is wrong. There really do exist mass movements of people that you describe with an abstraction like "whites" or "blacks" or "the Establishment". In a world ruled by identarian leftists, which one of those groups you get pattern-matched to, and the relative status of that group, really does matter - it changes what you can do, what you can say, and the consequences for doing so.*

The live-and-let-live rugged individualism that I think you would like us to follow is not adaptive. A predator has appeared that exploits its weaknesses with great efficiency. The Kendi card beats the MLK card at trumps. You can sit there in splendid isolation as you lose your money, happy that you stayed true to yourself, or you can find a different card.

I don't know what that card looks like. Accusations of anti-semitism were very powerful against Corbyn, groomer discourse seems to get somewhere. To be honest, I think it's too late for the UK - we've imported too many immigrants and we have too few children. We are going to be cursed with a permanent disaffected ethnic minority and the resultant identity politics from now on and I can't see anything we can do about it in the time left. So it goes, I guess.

But if you are sure that the most important thing for conservatives is that they hold fast and don't get seduced by the poison of identity politics, please consider it possible that you might be wrong.

*I have a strong feeling that you are going to say, "Nope, you can say and do whatever you like. That's your decision, and the consequences will be whatever they are." Bugger that. There was a time I didn't have to self-immolate to have a sensible conversation and I want that time back, please. And call me a coward, but if I'm going to kamikaze I want a reasonable estimated return on investment.

The live-and-let-live rugged individualism that I think you would like us to follow is not adaptive.

Say rather, it will not maximize material outcomes when you are the only one doing it.

On the other hand, nothing good will ever happen unless a critical mass of people do it.

Further, no critical mass is possible if everyone else is waiting for others to do it first.

Finally, there are things more important than maximized material outcomes.

The game-theoretic logic you are describing is doomed. People adopting this logic is why everything is going to shit. It cannot make things better, only worse. Self-immolation is not necessary, yet, but what will keep it at bay is for people to live by worthwhile axioms, rather than sinking to the level of their environment. That doesn't mean walking into the office and laying down truth-bombs until you're dragged bodily from the premises. It does mean figuring out what your principles are, and living by them, regardless of the outcome.

There is a problem with your claim. Game-theory was once the best argument in favor of individualism. Game theory predicted that communism would fail because of the incentives. If people had been ready to ignore their own interests for the greater good, then individualism would have had a harder time. And how do you justify the sacrifices for individualism, if you are individualistic? It seems to me it makes no sense.

I think it touches the core of the problem, the heart of the internal contradiction of the american patriotism (or any kind of disinterested attachment to individualism). On one side, there is the individualism that you have learnt to love, and on the other side the attachment that you feel for it; you feel it so strongly that you are ready to sacrifice yourself for it. The problem is that both are contradictory.

Game theory is individualistic (it assumes everyone follows his own interests), yet it predicts that individualism will sometime be sub-optimal. It's like saying that saving America requires more state intervention, but more state intervention will destroy what America stands for. If what I just said is true, then America (or the world individualist party if you prefer) is doomed.

Fair enough. Serious question: What is your plan for obtaining a critical mass?

From where I am standing, you and I are the possessor of exactly one human body each. Those bodies exist in the vicinity of many, many other bodies and so, whether either of us like it or not, they must contend with game theory.

The power of tyranny comes from fear. Fear is generated and maintained by observing punishment. Every time someone stands up for their principles without a plan to survive doing so (or at least to extract net benefit), I believe they are making of themselves a sacrifice to feed what they hate. So the outcome matters. Whether your beliefs work in situ matters. I’m not arguing for nihilistic pursuit of gain, but I am arguing for pragmatism, and sacrificing your lower-level principles when they’re sabotaging your ultimate ones.

I think we are going to have to suffer. As long as you require a reasonable return on your investment you will remain hostage to the powers that be.

The obvious question in such a case is who has the gun to who's head? If you try to take me hostage, I'll take you hostage first. You didn't really think the gun to the head was a metaphor did you?

So what would be an example of a situation in which you'd start non-metaphorically holding up people with Gun and expect it to help?

Well I don't have a gun, which is my biggest problem (second biggest: explaining why this is a problem to Australians). But my point is that we hold it to our own heads when we try to play by stable society rules in an unstable society.

From where I am standing, you and I are the possessor of exactly one human body each.

I have a family, so that's a couple-dozen people right there. I have a church, which is upwards of a thousand more. I have a state and, at least nominally, a political party, and finally a tribe. All of these can be encouraged, strengthened, grown, built-up, in ways small and large. The best way to avoid the problems of atomic individualism is to not be an atomic individualist.

The power of tyranny comes from fear.

Fear is a choice. It works by threatening things, and leveraging your desire to preserve them. The truth, however, is nothing can in fact be preserved. Death comes to all men soon or late. Everything you have will one day soon be gone, and this realization can be internalized, to a lesser or greater extent. Doing so immunizes you against fear to the degree the internalization is successful.

I am all for being intelligent, understanding the reality of the situation, and having a plan. What I have found, personally, is that your plan needs to account for the very real possibility that you will suffer significant losses, and you need to make peace with that reality in advance. Here is an example of what that peace looks like, from a time when people were trying to deal with a novel emergent threat of apparently titanic proportions. If one cannot grasp this peace, fear will never cease to cast the deciding vote.

This is not, I think, something that Rationalism is good at, speaking at least from my own meager attempts to apply it. Rationalism is about winning, about optimization, about superior planning leading to everything working out after all. This is one of the major reasons why I don't think Rationalism is actually a workable approach to cognition; it doesn't seem to encourage the sort of gambles that life requires, and its obsession with calculation self-defeats due to unaccounted errors.

In any case, some values are subordinate to others, true enough. But terminal values are not created equal, and "survival" is a very poor and quite doomed one. "Success" is not much better. "Defiance" is better than either, and "Virtue" better still.

This is one of the major reasons why I don't think Rationalism is actually a workable approach to cognition; it doesn't seem to encourage the sort of gambles that life requires

After the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, people were criticizing rationalism/EA for the exact opposite reason, i.e., that it encouraged him to take a gamble and risk major losses just because the expected value was positive, and that without rationalism/EA he would have been more risk-averse.

Stupid, illegal bets with other peoples' money != doing the right thing even if the evidence indicates it's going to cost you dearly. The arguments I saw about SBF's gambles rather underscored the point: I recall people claiming that the fraud made sense by EA principles, because even though he and his business got burned, he donated a lot of money first (apologies if this is misrepresenting the arguments, but it's my basic recollection). This is very, very far from anything I would recognize as "doing the right thing because it's right, even at significant cost, even with no reasonable expectation of a payoff." For starters, it's the difference between accepting hardship and inflicting hardship on others. I can see how hardcore utilitarians might disagree, but that's one of the reasons I'm not a utilitarian.

I have a family, so that's a couple-dozen people right there. I have a church, which is upwards of a thousand more. I have a state and, at least nominally, a political party, and finally a tribe. All of these can be encouraged, strengthened, grown, built-up, in ways small and large. The best way to avoid the problems of atomic individualism is to not be an atomic individualist.

Will any of these groups stand with you if you go against larger society? I've found not only will they not, but the opposite is true. Family is not support but control and hostages; if your family cannot directly coerce you, you will be coerced into going along by implicit or explicit threats of harm to them if they continue (e.g. if you lose your job how will you support them?). Other organizations will warn you not to make trouble because it reflects on them, and expel you if you continue regardless. They may claim to support your position but in fact they will tell you it's not worth it to fight any particular battle. And of course they're right, because the juggernaut state can crush them as easily as it can crush you.

You can 'solve' the problem of atomic individualism by not being an atomic individualist. But that just replaces it with the problem of being a collectivist, which is that nobody gets a say except the head of an independently-powerful faction.

Will any of these groups stand with you if you go against larger society?

Yes, they will.

e.g. if you lose your job how will you support them?

I'll get a different job. In the meantime, my parents and siblings, and my wife's, and members of our church will be happy to house us.

Other organizations will warn you not to make trouble because it reflects on them, and expel you if you continue regardless.

Some organizations will do that, definately. Not my church, I don't think, at least not for reasons I wouldn't consider valid before the fact, and hence would not engage in.

They may claim to support your position but in fact they will tell you it's not worth it to fight any particular battle. And of course they're right, because the juggernaut state can crush them as easily as it can crush you.

The crushing seems to be slowing of late, and much remains un-crushed. In any case: "If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." And also: "The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one".

What victory are you, personally, willing to accept other than one that comes at no cost to your comfort? If there's a fight and my side wins but we're stuck living with the damage long-term, I can live with that. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that you are not, because long-term diminished standards of living re just another form of loss to you. Am I mistaken?

Then you get a lot more support than I have ever seen. Perhaps you are simply higher status; in any organization I have been in, the organization's needs (meaning those of the people running it) come first, second, and last.

What victory are you, personally, willing to accept other than one that comes at no cost to your comfort?

I no longer believe in victory.

If there's a fight and my side wins but we're stuck living with the damage long-term, I can live with that. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that you are not, because long-term diminished standards of living re just another form of loss to you. Am I mistaken?

I could live with that as well, but your side seems mostly unwilling to fight and if they did would likely be unable to win. Those on your side in power hold to principles the other side cynically turns against them, even to the point where they enforce those principles against their own side but not the other (e.g. see the recent Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act). The rest retreat believing that perhaps THIS TIME, they will not be chased... and if they are, well, there's always victory after death, as both you and Hlynka have claimed. I'm not religious and not a born Red Tribe person; I have nowhere to retreat to and I do not believe in anything after death.

The median east African has a room temperature IQ.

The median east African is more intelligent than most posters here on TheMotte.org including myself.

This isn't just wrong, it's antagonistically wrong. You do not understand what intelligence is. You do not understand what identity or progressivism is either. By your own epistemology, I don't even have to back this up with any kind of serious reasoning or source, I can just state and restate it, likening it to some pop-culture concepts (in an admittedly artful way).

But since I have a better and clearer method of thought, I'll explain. Intelligence is not whether you can hustle or are observationally aware, or can speak many languages. A meercat can be observationally aware. Intelligence is the capacity for abstraction, logic, planning, critical thinking and so on. It's precisely and ironically what you're doing and what the median East African is not doing. Even if you go by Taleb's 'intelligence is about making money rather than passing tests' concept, we can be confident that East Africa is not a particularly intelligent place. If East Africans are so smart, why aren't they living like kings on a programming salary (as many motte posters do)? Why aren't people sifting through Africa for cheap programming talent, as is done in India or Eastern Europe?

Societies composed of intelligent people have enormous amounts of machinery to do their work for them. Societies composed of unintelligent people murder their children in witchcraft rituals to this very day: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-02/witchcraft-child-sacrifice-uganda-victims/11248026

As for 'fascism is progressive', not in any useful way. Would a fascist agree with a liberal that 'there is a role for politics in improving society'? Yes, of course. But the ideas they support are totally different, based on different values and goals, with a wildly different understanding of what improving society looks like.

Furthermore, when most people say progressive, they mean the blue-haired they/them, not the SS officer. Calling fascists progressive introduces unnecessary confusion and anger. Even more confusion is added by reactionaries, who are in some ways progressive (in wanting a radical change to society) and other ways reactionary, wanting to go back. We should classify political beliefs by their goal, not in their desire to change things.

Finally, everyone is progressive from some point of view. Say you're against child sacrifice to appease the spirits and want some kind of political action to prevent it. You're seeking a progressive stance in certain parts of Uganda! Every institution we have today was progressive once. Even you are a progressive, you just want a different direction and mode of travel to other people. Do you see how the meaning you have assigned the word becomes worthless and shallow?

Identity politics is similar. It exists. It is political. America or China might well be an 'imagined community' full of people who feel solidarity with eachother, yet they are still enormously powerful entities. People will rally around the flag, a piece of fabric with some ink on it. People will fight and die for their identity. It can't get much more real than that! You can't just smear it as being bullshit when identity rules the world, forms the world, is the substance that social structures are made of.

As for 'fascism is progressive', not in any useful way.

I liked most of your post, but this I totally disagree with. Progressives basically agree with fascists on tactics, and delude themselves in some ways to convince themselves they don't also agree on policy. The only real difference is a who/whom not on what prescriptions are to be once you figure out who is the baddie. Its always centralized power with plausible deniability when everything goes pear shaped.

The median east African has a room temperature IQ.

The median east African is more intelligent than most posters here on TheMotte.org including myself.

I don't think this statement is in any way banworthy, but it is rather ironic. Because you're basically arguing the "multiple types of intelligence" theory, which is just a step away from blank slateism (everyone is equally talented and has equal potential, just in different ways).

It reminds me of something. Ah yes-

Gathering knowledge of abstract items, from words to equations, that have no relation to our everyday lives has long been the amusement of the leisured elite. Relegating the non-elite to the basement of intellect because they do not know as many abstractions has been the conceit of the elite.

What if we measured literacy by how knowledgeable individuals are about their own environment: how much individuals knew all those complex equations and verbal and nonverbal vocabularies of their everyday life?

What if we measured intellect by an individual’s desire to know? What if we measured intellect by how open an individual’s mind is to self-critique and new ideas?

Given that you seem to be echoing Ibram X. Kendi, maybe there is something to your theory that a lot of right-wingers are actually just parroting woke ideas.

I don't know if I have the right to call myself a Mottizen, but I'm not getting bent out of shape about this and I certainly didn't take Hlynka to be saying we're all stupid.

There's book smarts and street smarts, and the East African guy probably has a ton more street smarts to survive in his environment whereas we'd be robbed, rolled, knifed, and left in the gutter if we were plonked down there.

Plus, me am stupid too so I can't object to the characterisation, and I've had people call me dumb in online exchanges much more directly because I wouldn't kiss their... shoes about their special snowflakeness.

😁

If you want to get Hlynka banned, man up about it (even if you identify as female) and ask for it directly instead of doing the "Mommy, he said mean word about me!" dance.

I don't know if I have the right to call myself a Mottizen

Is there any right needed besides being on here? You have over a thousand comments, not many can say that.

Amadan seemed unable to see this, so I was attempting to enlighten him. It failed, as it usually does.

Oh hey, now I know who you are. Just like old times, I guess.

Anyway, the point is not whether a statement is, in theory, banworthy. Of course you could construe the quoted words as being banworthy. Fortunately for everyone, "use the most pedantic interpretation that could be considered a violation of one or more rules" is not how we do things.

Way to miss the point buddy.

I'm not arguing that the median Mottizen is retarded, I'm arguing that IQ has only a tenuous bearing on actual intelligence or ability to function.

Isn’t the general understanding among the HBD crowd that IQ and g are distinct. IQ may be a decent approximating of g for lack of a better measurement.

I presume that if someone has above average g, they will be able to easily navigate whatever environment they find themself.

Some environments reward g a lot more than others. For example, in a food-scarce environment, it might be beneficial to be really small, and people with bigger brains might actually be hurt by the extra caloric needs. This happens in isolated communities, supposedly, and is why Homo floresiensis became small and dumb. In other environments, perhaps size and martial vigor are more useful, harkening back to the old debate between Odyseus and Ajax.

It is only in environments where there are options that intelligence becomes important. If all you can do is scratch a living out of the ground, perhaps g does not matter so much. In contrast, perhaps it matters a lot more for hunters.

The statement implies that most posters here on TheMotte.org are mentally retarded (in the sense that their IQ is less than 70, which I presume is room temperature). That is a personal attack on people reading this and would normally be the subject of a ban.

I don't think you are being ingenuous. If you read his entire post, he's very clearly not saying he thinks most posters on the Motte have sub-70s IQs. His entire point is that IQ is not a reliable measure of "intelligence." Agree with him or don't, but engage with what he's actually saying.

I did read his whole point and I know that was what he was arguing. That does not make the quoted piece not offensive if taken out of context.

Then don't take it out of context.

Credit where credit is due.

Amusingly if we follow this line of thing to its natural and logical conclusion, we arrive back at MLK's dream of a world where people are judged by the content of their character rather than skin color or group affiliation. IE the precise thing that Kendi finds so problematic.

We’re still waiting for one of your high-effort “Inferential Distance” posts to produce a single new insight or argument that hasn’t already been repeated by you in tons of smaller comments over the years. This was literally just a long-winded (and full of misspelled words and poor grammar) restatement of the exact same argument you’ve made 10,000 times.

You mock people who want to “consoom product” on the one hand, but on the other hand the only new content you produced in this post is extolling the supposedly profound insights of two massively-popular Hollywood films.

You brought up the Wittgenstein quote about how if a lion could speak, we would not understand him. Well, the lion also would not understand us! We could maybe glean an interesting window into the thought processes of an alien mind, if we really cared to listen and to parse things out over iterated conversations; meanwhile, there are entire constellations of subject matter which intelligent humans could try and make the lion comprehend - particle physics, the principles of compound interest, comparative linguistics - and he just wouldn’t have any hope of grasping any of it. Firstly because his brain simply does not have anywhere near the level of raw computing power that even a below-average human’s brain does, but also because he would find all of it utterly uninteresting and would not bother to try and grasp it.

I’m not saying you’re as dumb as a mere beast, Hlynka. But I am saying that your posts on this topic grow more and more tedious each time, because you continue to fail to demonstrate that you’re even making a cursory attempt to understand, or learn anything from, or synthesize, any of the counterarguments we offer. You can shout “identity politics is bullshit” three trillion times into the void, but if every time some smart person offers a sophisticated rebuttal and you don’t integrate that rebuttal into your worldview at all, people will justifiably begin to lose interest in you.

You brought up the Wittgenstein quote about how if a lion could speak, we would not understand him. Well, the lion also would not understand us! We could maybe glean an interesting window into the thought processes of an alien mind, if we really cared to listen and to parse things out over iterated conversations

Yes, that's the joke. And here you are getting angry about how said alien mind stubbornly refuses to conform expectations. What a prick. Why cant they just be "reasonable" IE not alien.

This isn’t about being “reasonable”, it’s about the fact that you keep repeating the same argument over and over, providing little to no additional scaffolding to support it, and basically never respond to specific criticisms of specific claims, nor show any sign that you’re even listening to the actual words any of us are saying. Your problem isn’t “Inferential Distance”, it’s an “Inferential Moat”. You intentionally insulate yourself from our attempts to bridge the inferential distance, content to lob infinite reiterations of the same tired general-purpose argument over the carefully-constructed mental fortifications you’ve erected to avoid ever having to grow or have your mind changed about anything by anybody from your hated outgroup.

We’re still waiting for one of your high-effort “Inferential Distance” posts to produce a single new insight or argument that hasn’t already been repeated by you in tons of smaller comments over the years. This was literally just a long-winded (and full of misspelled words and poor grammar) restatement of the exact same argument you’ve made 10,000 times.

Yeah dude, do you get tired of @SecureSignals constantly reiterating the same talking points over and over 10,000 times? Or do you eagerly wait for his next epistle on why you should hate the Jews?

This is not a mod warning, because you're allowed to criticize people and tell them you don't like their posts, but it's borderline, because if all you have to say is "I don't like you and I don't like your posts," maybe you should just skip them instead of writing a tirade. You get a pass because at least you picked at a few specific things to refute. But I also noted the "I’m not saying you’re as dumb as a mere beast, Hlynka" apophasis.

But I also noted the "I’m not saying you’re as dumb as a mere beast, Hlynka" apophasis.

This was not an apophasis at all, but merely a way to proactively head off that interpretation at the pass. I understood the way that the lion analogy might be perceived, and I was genuinely attempting to make clear that the intent was not to call Hlynka stupid. I have made no secret that I find Hlynka’s oeuvre tedious and of very little intellectual value, but I don’t think it’s because he’s not smart enough to do better. If I thought he was too dumb to learn, I wouldn’t keep replying to him in an attempt to get him to learn.

Say what you will about SecureSignals, but every time somebody refutes or challenges on of his points, he has a well-sourced and effortful response that addresses the specifics of the challenge. I myself have argued with him multiple times, and I’ve explicitly told him that he has failed to adequately meet challenges to some of his claims. He also has many users here who take shots at his claims, and who are far more knowledgeable about the subject matter than I am; are you suggesting that I’m not allowed to argue with Hlynka unless I also spend equal time arguing with every other user?

In any case, being fresh out of high-school and just starting to realize that the vision that I had been harboring of my future was not going to come to pass, these films left me feeling "seen" in a way that I hadn't since I was a small child.

That's fascinating, because I saw the movie and then sought out the book, and both seemed very male to me, the movie in particularly - a young man's vision of the world, when he's drifted into adulthood and so cannot rely on his parents shielding him from the world any longer, but without roots or attachments (like marriage and family) to anchor him.

So it really is - to me - a young guy going "wow, real truths!" but give him another ten to fifteen years of life and he'll grow out of it.

EDIT: That scene is also pointless damage. Yes, learn to face pain and endure, but that scene ends up with a suppurating wound which will need to be treated or else he will suffer more damage and may even lose the use of the hand. Ridiculous vaunting for the sake of it, not for achieving anything.

The damage in this seen is far from pointless, it is intensely meaningful. Tangentially I think Moby Dick is an excellent book that is mostly wasted on highschoolers because you have to have been in a failed relationship and had a brush with death (or three) for its themes to really start resonating.

You say "give him another ten to fifteen years of life and he'll grow out of it" but what do you think is the mechanism here, because it's clearly not simple age. An argument I get into on a semi regular basis here is where someone will say something to the effect of "a man with a gun to his head never has a choice." and I will respond "a man with a gun to his head always has a choice". As Tyler says "First you have to give in. First you have to know, not fear, know you are going to die." This acceptance is crucial (especially for men as the disposable sex) to becoming a functional adult and agent in one's own right. Without getting into spoilers for a two-decade old movie, it's worth noting that Jack ultimately rectifies his issues with Tyler by letting go of his fear of death.

His alter ego pours lye on him in order to teach him to endure pain, but by sitting there and letting the base burn him, instead of seeking a way to remove it, the character is not learning to endure and be strong and steadfast, he is self-harming.

That is not healthy psychological coping mechanism.

It may be I am indeed more female than I generally feel like, in that there is a vast difference between the bravado of this ultimately useless scene (he gets a scar for nothing, it is not a scar won in battle or from performing any useful task or action) which does seem like the sort of thing to appeal to young men who have no means of otherwise expressing how Manly and Tough they are (they're white collar middle class white boys), and how women would think about this.

(I speak as someone who managed to get concentrated sulphuric acid spilled on the back of my hand in one early job and rushed to wash it off, but by some fluke the acid was so concentrated it was too oily to penetrate and I've come away without a scar. I certainly would not have sat there gritting my teeth and 'toughing it out' for any silly show of machismo, there's enough real pain in life to learn how to put up with it).

I don't want to just say "what @FCfromSSC said" but at the same time i kind of want to want to reply with "what @FCfromSSC said"

You keep describing the pain and damage that jack endures as "useless" and "meaningless" and my reply is that it is anything but. In both the book and film the moment jack chooses to face the pain and trauma head on rather than turn away is a critical moment. It is the moment that Jack begins to take charge. Prior to the burn he has been acting purely as a spectator, It is only after the burn that he begins to act as an active participant.

And I would contend that it is the willingness to "turn in to" that pain that makes him an agent in the proper sense.

I speak as someone who managed to get concentrated sulphuric acid spilled on the back of my hand

How much? I went to a private high school that was hard-core about chemistry, and at the start of the year the teacher said something on the lines of "if you don't use more than the recommended quantities, the only thing we do here that can actually permanently injure you is alkali in the eye". A few drops of conc. H2SO4 on the hand was considered a nothingburger - it stang a bit. The same amount of conc. HNO3 was embarassing because your hand would be yellow for a few weeks. The worst accident we had was when someone filled the lab with hydrogen sulphide and we had to evacuate.

His alter ego pours lye on him in order to teach him to endure pain, but by sitting there and letting the base burn him, instead of seeking a way to remove it, the character is not learning to endure and be strong and steadfast, he is self-harming.

The narrator's entire existence has been self-harm. He's lived his entire life to that point reactively, instinctively, to the point that he's incapable of choice, only scripted response. He's dead inside, a walking corpse, a moral nullity, neither satisfying his desires nor living for something beyond them. A chemical burn is the least of his worries, and the pain can be instructive. Specifically, it's pain he chooses, pain he accepts and endures rather than being driven by.

I certainly would not have sat there gritting my teeth and 'toughing it out' for any silly show of machismo, there's enough real pain in life to learn how to put up with it).

The whole point of the film is that for the characters, there isn't enough real pain, at least not in the forms they need. The reason it continues to resonate to this day is because that's true in the real world too: we are anesthetized to the point of catatonia by a culture of relentless, lazy hedonism while our lives slowly drain away a minute at a time.

The point isn't that it's super-cool to get a chemical burn. The point is that excessive comfort is deadly to the soul.

Probably the single most manipulative person I know has a documented mental disability (low IQ) in addition to her autism (which I share, which is how we met). She tried to manipulate my emotions to get me to be on her assisted decision team, which I know she will hector until they bow to her wishes and let her go to Disney World for a week instead of fixing her roof with the savings.

She has had her rights thoroughly and fully explained to her throughout her public schooling in Special Education. She insists upon them at every turn when someone says something she doesn’t like. She uses threats of suicide to summon the police Crisis Intervention Team to try to get her caretakers at group homes and even her mother to give her what she wants.

But her deficit is real. Attempts to explain, by people she genuinely trusts, go over her head and you can practically hear them whizzing by. Try to stuff into her head a concept not directly concrete or tied to her health and wellness, and you will find nothing but misery and confusion.

She has been convinced, in those terms, that literally every Republican wants to take away her Social Security and let her starve, and she was genuinely suicidal during Trump’s Presidency, and grateful that someone let her vote. No concept of the deep philosophical reasoning behind the right to vote, just a bunch of motivated reasoning.

I find myself remembering that IQ 100 is an average, and realizing how many more Americans like her I’ve never met because I never go where they are; my ingroup is clever talkers, and she is adjacently a clever-talker by the quirks of autism.

They cling to psuedo-marxist nonsense about group/class consciousness and group/class differences to salve their own wounded pride. They still seem to think that they can appeal to some non-existant higher authority with words like "academic consensus" and "studies show". In other words they still think that's air they are breathing.

No, I think the studies are only necessary to argue with people that reject what's in front of their own eyes. You see it as clear that Africans are actually more intelligent than Motteposters. OK, if we redefine the word to mean something other than typical usage, that's probably true, so you'll get no argument from me, other that my usual quibble that I find it irritating when people use words in non-standard ways and insist that they're actually more correct than the standard. Whatever. At the end of the day, my position that living around large numbers of people of African ancestry sucks isn't based on what studies show or academic consensus, it's on looking at places I've been to and observing that I'd rather live near the Scandinavians. I think most people can see that just as easily, but to argue with someone that insists up and down that they don't really see the difference, I can pull data on productivity and murder rates, but that's still just a proxy for my sincerely held position that it's obvious to all that it's better to be surrounded by a bunch of Dutch, Swedes, and Germans than a bunch of Somalis. If someone points out that those designations are just, like, a construct man, I'm left to roll my eyes and move on.

Re Africa — judge them by their fruits. Either intelligence isn’t really helpful to building prosperity or the Africans aren’t that intelligent.*

*On a large enough time scale.

Intelligence is helpful, it just isn't sufficient. African kingdoms have been prosperous before (at least in a similar way to other old civilizations, which is to say, they had rich rulers and impressive art, even if the average person's life sucked). But building truly prosperous societies, in the sense of benefiting a large portion of the people, is incredibly difficult. What many African countries have now--a strong man extracting wealth from an oppressed populace--is probably closer to many ancient societies that we now glorify as being important steps on the road to civilization, than the latter are to what we have today.

they had rich rulers

There is no question, that Mansa Musa, King of Mali, was immensely rich.

impressive art

This is more questionable. Here are some highlights from Met. Which do you consider impressive?

What many African countries have now--a strong man extracting wealth from an oppressed populace

The model African model of a strong man extracting wealth is only possible because of Western (or recently Chinese) trade. The ruler can now exchange what he takes from his people for useful things. Prior to being able to trade with the developed world, there was little reason to oppress the populace as they had nothing (save some daughters) that was particularly worth much to the ruler. It takes a lot of organization and manpower to extract rents from the poor.

This is more questionable

I can only assume that you don't consider Egypt to be "Africa" if you are questioning the impressiveness of African art and architecture.

It takes a lot of organization and manpower to extract rents from the poor.

Rulers have been extracting wealth probably since rulers and concentrated societies existed. This review agrees with you that it is difficult, but it seems an exaggeration to say that Africans couldn't figure it out until the past few centuries. Unless I'm wrong, but if Africa also lacks anything worth anything worth stealing, maybe that contributes to its lack of developed nations?

I can only assume that you don't consider Egypt to be "Africa" if you are questioning the impressiveness of African art and architecture.

When HBD proponents talk about “Africa” we are pretty much exclusively referring to sub-Saharan/“black” Africa. Egypt, Carthage, and other historical North African superstates were Semitic or Semitic-adjacent, and part of the Mediterranean world, not the “African” world as most people intend it when doing comparative history like this.

Ok, but the Northern part of Africa is still incredibly dysfunctional and poor today, so it still seems to present a question about what makes people capable of building civilization which can't be answered by reference to inherent intelligence. I don't know enough about the ancient history of sub-Saharan Africa specifically, but I do know that Botswana has seemingly dodged most of the problems plaguing its neighbors and is substantially richer than Egypt today.

The northern part of Africa today has basically no genetic continuity with ancient Egypt or Carthage; Northern African countries are overwhelmingly Arab, due to the Arab conquests of the seventh century under the Umayyad and Rashidun Caliphates. I agree with you that hereditary IQ is not the entire story of why many MENA countries are as poor and dysfunctional as they are, but trying to link them to the ancient Mediterranean empires of the Bronze and Iron Ages doesn’t make any sense either, since there’s little to no genetic carry-over between then and now.

But the ancient Arab world didn't lack large and rich cities, centralized empires, writing, art, mathematics, etc. either. Even today some Arab countries have most of those things; yes, it's unsustainable decadence due to oil rather than true economic development, but they still managed to maintain a reasonably stable government, something resembling property rights, etc.

Actually, Arabs are Semitic, so yes the current inhabitants of North Africa are not directly descended from pharaohs or Carthaginians, but they aren't that distantly related either.

I would say that intelligence is helpful but, contra most other users here, far from necessary or sufficient. Something you see a lot of in Africa is a reluctance to build wealth/institutions because people (quite reasonably) expect some warlord, crimeboss, or whacky tribal/religious group to come along and murder them for it should they succeed in rising above their station. A common sentiment i heard expressed was dont try to fight or fix Africa, Africa Always Wins.

Mexico (and much of Central amd South America) are highly dysfunctional for similar reasons, yet you still see significantly better results in infrastructure, innovation, and general prosperity in Latino countries than in sub Saharan Africa. Why bother building a successful ranch or small business or whatever in Mexico if the cartels are just going to take it away? And yet a decent amount of Mexicans strive and succeed despite such risks.

How does your mental model account for this?

How does your mental model account for this?

Easily, culture matters. Even when it is irrational and silly, perhaps especially when it is irrational and silly. It only takes a few farmers choosing to be unreasonable out of a "misplaced" sense of machismo to skew the Cartel's cost-benefit equations the other way.

Geography and historical happenstance.

Everyone has geography and everything that's ever happened is historical happenstance.

Everyone has geography

Well obviously but it is not all created equal. See fertility of the soil, temperateness or otherwise of the climate, and in recent centuries the big one, coal.

Hard to say, but my personal suspicion is that culture and tradition matter a whole lot more than most rationalists would like to acknowledge.

Like Admiral Cuningham said when asked by Parlament why he was risking his ships to support what was ultimately a doomed last stand. "It takes three years to build a ship, it takes three centuries to build a tradition.”

What I often see overlooked in these arguments is that culture and biology reinforce each other in feedback loops. Africans don't have high IQ's because having a higher IQ is not incentivized in their society; being smarter and inventive beyond the bare minimum to survive will simply result in a larger number of friends and relatives mooching off your success while you are left with the same amount. Are East Asians better at taking standardized tests on average because it is a skill that has been traditionally valued in their culture or because they have inherited traits that make them good at it? Both.

This still leaves the question of which to target if one's goal is to create a better society (of course some might argue that having this goal is precisely the problem). The historical record shows us many examples of improving culture leading to what we now consider desirable outcomes, while the track record of changing biology so far is a list of genocides and atrocities. Whether that will change with new medical technologies that enable parents to create designer babies we can't say for sure, but I certainly wouldn't fault people for being suspicious.

Given that virtually every population has lived in situations in which there is a high risk of some warlord, crimeboss, or whacky tribal/religious group coming along and stealing the fruits of their labor, the answer probably is not cognitive ability. Societies in which individuals are free from such predation are historically very rare.

It's a long post, but it doesn't say much; largely it's an extended sneer. Yes, we who oppose progressive politics know the framework is bullshit. We know that if you attempt to dig through the morass of contradictions that it claims as principles and internal logic that you will find either nothing or just power politics -- "who/whom". And yes, it is true that much of the online right comes from a progressive (though usually not "woke") background, though some do not. That does not mean they are still progressives.

I don't know how bright your average Kenyan cabby is; unlike some HBD believers, I find IQ measurements in the Third World to be extremely suspect. But while you may find it admirable that they "hustle" constantly, that doesn't make them highly intelligent. Again, perhaps they are. There are similar types in the US -- some of them fitting the stereotype of the late '80s Jamaican immigrant who has three jobs and is always looking for more work, and others always looking for a new con/scam. The former may be admirable for their work ethic but it says nothing about their intelligence. The latter aren't admirable and most often tend to prey on those of a similar class; they're not lazy but that doesn't mean they're intelligent, just a little brighter (or just less trusting) than whoever they scam. And certainly your average Kenyan cabby has better real-time problem solving ability in his domain than your average Motte poster does. But the reverse is almost certainly true as well.

The reason your professors graded on a curve was that your professors were lazy and stupid.

Some of them were, some of them were not. There are good reasons for not grading on a fixed scale other than laziness, the main one being that if you change your test questions, it's possible you erred about its difficulty. Professors don't have the luxury of trying their questions in advance on calibrated students and seeing how hard they are.

Curves also help fight grade inflation. Yes, your exam was good but it was only the 10th best exam so I can’t give you an A no matter how much you protest.

I found in law school the nature of the curve encouraged me to study harder as it was zero sum and the stakes were high. I acknowledge it can also cause students to study less (probably depending on staked and personality type).

Professors don't have the luxury of trying their questions in advance on calibrated students and seeing how hard they are.

I had one particularly likeable professor that did grade on a curve, but also threw out questions that seemed to get outlier quantities of incorrect responses on the basis that even though the question seemed clear to him, the number of bright people getting it wrong demonstrated that he had either failed to teach it correctly or had asked it poorly. His approach certainly wasn't some red in tooth and claw vision of pitting students against each other, it was genuinely trying to get kids to work hard to understand the material.

This happened to me literally once, in an advanced engineering statistics course. The class average was like 16/100 and the professor decided he would rescind the exam. Except for 3 of us. We had curiously scored in the low 90s. He just told us we'd be getting 105/100 for the exam and could go home for the week.

Identity politics is bullshit. [...] look upon each particular thing and ask what is it's nature? IE what does it do? where does it come from? How does it behave? The answers you get are what that thing is.

As I understand it identity politics caught on as an alternative to class politics. It was a means for the left to scoop up the various previously un/under-represented minorities in an effort to gather enough extra votes to tip the scales in their favour. In the 1970s politics was class politics with labour unions playing a significant role. Then Reagan and Thatcher came along, crushed the unions and identity politics followed. It had little to nothing to do with what you "identified as" and lots to everything to do with who you voted for. It was about politics, not identity, and although the academic material and its derivatives that explore identity are 99% socially corrosive bullshit the political appeal is arguably pragmatic, albeit on a short-term and short-sighted basis.

It seems to me your point is that people from outside the left have adopted the identity lens with the difference being that they largely denigrate the minorities to flatter the majority. This has taken over from the socially synthesising MLK colour blindism and classical albeit imperfect liberalism that preceded the idpol era. Well, yeah. You can't form an ingroup without creating an outgroup. This is what has always baffled me about the identity politics of the true believers rather than the pollsters. It makes sense for the majority to adopt idpol, they're the majority. The minority are at a democratic disadvantage by definition, and the only way it worked/works is that it depended on the majority adhering to fuzzy social liberalism while the minorities rally around their flag/s. Once the idpol mindset takes root in the wider discourse, even if it's just via objection to it, you get the opposing side being drawn onto the pitch and you start to see MRAs, HBDists, trans denialists, principled free speech trolls and so on take up position. And if the idpol nonsense gets too fevered you arrive at the yeschad.jpg ethno-nationalism of white people, after having been identified as such externally, coming to a position where they may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. It ain't pretty.

In summary the idpol left promoted it, the minorities adopted it, the classical liberals and class-first left adapted to it and the majority are progressively shifting from passively accepting it to being boxed into actively adopting it in kind. It's less The Matrix's "you think that's air you're breathing" and more the fish noticing the water it's been swimming in. It's less red pill vs blue pill and more black pill vs white pill.

Identity, to the degree that it represents something meaningful and real, exists for the benefit of the identifier rather than the identified.

Quite, and like the saying goes just because you do not take an interest in [identity] politics doesn't mean [identity] politics won't take an interest in you.

In 2020, Biden said somewhat infamously words to the effective of ‘if you ain’t voting Biden you ain’t black.’ That is, he said the quiet part out loud that politicians viewed identity as downstream of political affiliation.

That seems consistent with your post.

Indeed, It's also why you'll see articles in Salon, the Washington Post, and LA Times lamenting the "white nationalist tendencies" of men like Thomas Sowell, Vodie Beauchamp, and Larry Elder.

This scene in particular

Don't take it as a personal criticism when I say that I hate shit like this.

This naive optimism of "rah rah face the pain, ride the tiger, you'll come out stronger for it". For the most part, this line is only repeated by people who have never faced true terror before. People who haven't faced up to the gravity of the problem.

Now, I am not saying that we should simply crumple in the face of tragedy, or that it would be better if we could simply eliminate it. There is a tension that I must navigate here because, as I have intimated elsewhere, my fundamental project is to argue, contra utilitarianism, for the necessity of (the possibility of) pain, even terrible pain, even the worst pain, as a precondition of anything that could be called "meaningful". But I recognize full well that this is a fundamentally insane proposition, at least prima facie. Any person with any sense at all should be running for the safety of the experience machine once they comprehend what horrors are "out there", in "reality". Overcoming this eminently reasonable proposition will require the marshaling of the most advanced and subtle resources at our disposal. This puerile pollyannaism of "ah, bring it on, I can handle it, because I'm tough!" is simply not up to the task. There is a limit point where things simply break. Only beyond this limit does the problem of pain actually begin to present itself.

Consider the case of Elisabeth Fritzl, an Austrian woman who was imprisoned by her own father in the basement of their house for 24 years. She was never once allowed to leave her prison chamber in that time period. She was raped repeatedly and delivered several children while in captivity.

Would you go to her in that basement and tell her "stay with the pain, don't shut this out"? Would you tell her "what you're feeling is premature enlightenment"?

She did end up surviving and is doing remarkably well now, but of course she would have had no way of knowing that while the ordeal was actually going on. As the years ticked on, she would have faced nothing but crushing uncertainty every day, the knowledge that every day could be her last. And of course she just as easily could have died; there could have been no happy ending. What then? In that case, there are no scars to serve as monuments of your victories; there is only a terrible waste of life.

fascism is a fundamentally progressive ideology. [...] They want to quibble some group's position within the intersectional stack rather than question the validity of the stack as a concept. They cling to psuedo-marxist nonsense about group/class consciousness and group/class differences to salve their own wounded pride. They still seem to think that they can appeal to some non-existant higher authority with words like "academic consensus" and "studies show".

As has been pointed out to you multiple times, the policy prescriptions proposed by the far right and progressives are wildly different. Fascists want to railroad women into being housewives, they want to make pornography and other types of sexual "deviancy" illegal, and they want to build a wall to keep immigrants out. Progressives don't want these things. The two camps want to build two different types of societies that are obviously different and would feel different to live in. Given these numerous disagreements, any assertion of similarity between the two ideologies in terms of alleged shared metaphysical or epistemological presuppositions seems rather moot.

Can you give a quick rundown of what your alternative looks like? What is your proposed belief system that does not depend on these concepts like "group difference" that you find problematic?

I think there is some benefit to “riding the tiger” in a controlled way. It builds the muscles that let you face the worst. It’s really pretty obvious. We’ve never had it so good, yet we have so much anxiety and depression that we didn’t have back before this kind of living was possible.

In my view, the confidence and ability to handle what life throws at you is a muscle. The people who can bounce back from terrible things, failures, and disappointment are people who have done exactly that on a small scale and in safe circumstances. This is why athletes do so well in life. They’ve learned how to win, how to brush off a loss, and (depending on the sport) that a little pain isn’t fatal. These things pay dividends because, first of all, being able to learn to bounce back from failure and setbacks also teaches that setbacks are not permanent. A kid who doesn’t make the team this year tries again next year. And often in the process learns the values of hard work and preparation— because quite often the reason he didn’t make the team was that he hadn’t worked on his weaknesses enough. Either way, learning to fail and try again makes the idea of bouncing back after a setback possible in his mind.

Can we not abuse the metaphor of "riding the tiger"? The significant thing about riding the tiger isn't that it's difficult, it's that once you start it's really damn dangerous to stop (because the tiger will eat you).

Isn’t this merely arguing the difference in aims is sufficient to say progressivism and fascism is different even if the methodology / thought process is the same?

If we are talking about movies, I think the progressive / fascist mind is the Alliance whereas the libertarian or perhaps conservative mindset is Mal’s in serenity. Specifically this scene https://youtube.com/watch?v=1VR3Av9qfZc

The aims are what matter in a political system. People will be more subservient to the aims than to the method. Frequently, one’s choice of method is just a post hoc rationalization of one’s pre-reflective, extra-rational aims.

Immediately in the wake of Hegel’s death you had left Hegelians, who ultimately spawned Marxism, and right Hegelians, who were politically conservative. Both claimed to be following Hegel’s dialectical method, but they had radically different aims. Any analysis that claimed that the left and right Hegelians were somehow “the same” because they both claimed to be inspired by Hegel would obviously be missing the point. They’re obviously not the same, because one side wanted a communist revolution and the other didn’t.

Aims matter to a degree. While not quite the same, there is an almost red queen problem for progressivism/ fascism. They believe they are playing chess but don’t realize even the pawns make moves on their own.

So both systems run into the problem that the outcomes are due to human actions but not human design. Thus the aims may become much less important than the actions and the kind of actions.

the outcomes are due to human actions but not human design.

I’ll ask you the same question I asked Hlynka: what is your alternative, an alternative that avoids these problems that are allegedly shared by progressivism and fascism?

I don’t really understand what your comment is getting at here, but maybe you can help me understand by giving me an example.

After all "Why go through the trouble of designing your test so that only X% of students can answer 90% of the questions when you can just hand out the test as is and set the threshold for an A at the Xth percentile of correct responses?". At the end of the day it is much easier to get students to compete amongst themselves than it is to accurately grade their understanding/uptake of the material.

I had a professor that was ecstatic when I told him I barely finished his test on time, as it was his specific goal to write tests that were just hard enough to be barely beatable by the best student in each class. This both prevented cheating and allowed him to confidently grade everyone on a curve. Alas, he was the only one that want to the trouble of doing that.

The median east African has a room temperature IQ.

The median east African is more intelligent than most posters here on TheMotte.org including myself.

I heartily disagree that the latter is true, with my argument being simply, just look at that cursed continent.

That being said, I once read something by a prolific HBD poster on Twitter or Substack who I can't recall, who made an argument about why black people, despite significantly lower IQs than average, still seem to function much better than that low value would suggest:

When most people benchmark mental retardation, they implicitly consider the case of retarded white people, the majority of who have some kind of developmental or neurological disorder that's dragging them down. They're not just stupid, they're non-functional in important regards.

Whereas an 70 IQ African is not sick, they're just dumb, but are much more capable of social interaction and productive endeavors than the former, though they can't hope to match 100 IQ people of any race.

I believe that person showed anecdotes from special needs tard wranglers who noticed how the black kids were better behaved and apparently smart than the white ones, because they simply were much better functioning overall despite their identically low IQ scores.

I contend that a healthy chimp can beat a bad case of Downs in almost everything, even if they're both terrible at IQ tests. One is an animal well honed to its niche, whereas the other is simply outright defective.

So, African society and culture evolved to be well adapted to lower IQs, and they're not as clearly dysfunctional as you'd expect.

Leaving that aside, in desperately poor countries, like most of Africa, people need to be able to hustle or starve, they don't have well trodden paths ahead of them that they can follow as long as they're competent and come out ahead. While hustling is certainly a laudable thing, I suspect that if the world went to shit and we had to start from scratch, the median Mottizen would spank their asses.

Indians speak 2 or 3 languages because that brings clear and massive utility to them, presumably the same case for Africans who need some more. On the other hand, most Americans can speak English from the cradle to the grave and do just fine, so it's by no means their failure that they don't bother to do so most of the time. In their place, I wouldn't either.

You don't judge Bill Gates by the standards of Stone Age persistence hunters and get all perplexed that he has wealth and high status despite his abysmal inability to run a marathon.

I heartily disagree that the latter is true, with my argument being simply, just look at that cursed continent.

I don't think this necessarily follows, unless you want to look at Europe after Rome left, and declare the Europeans must have naturally crazy low intelligence as well (or, I suppose you could argue that the difference can be made up in 1000 years).

Based on the my observation of the middle-ages, it seems pretty reasonable that the former territories to struggle amongst themselves in a series of constantly escalating conflicts until a distaste for war is (quite literally) beat into the local culture enough to outweigh the natural human drive to see your out-group killed (at least enough to stop fighting with people within a few hundred km). This seems to take several hundred years (it could possibly be faster with increased communication speed, but the power vacuum in Africa is only 60-80 years old, so I'm not willing to write off the theory yet).

It's only at that point that you can build infrastructure and complicated supply lines that complex societies are built on. Before that, I would only expect high-intelligence to result in more efficient killing.

Alternatively a single victor/foreign power can come in and dominate (your classic pax X-ana period). The point is more that stability seems to come from either subjugation or deep cultural changes that seem to be orthogonal to intelligence.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that you're entirely wrong, but I think looking at the state of an area for a single 50-100 year period is a horrible argument about the IQ of the humans that live there.

I'm not really the person to talk about it, since Rome is more my jam than Africa, but there's a couple of decent comparison points. Assuming we're talking about Sub-Saharan Africa, as Northern-Africa is being conquered by the Muslims at this point.

The Great Zimbabwe is being settled around the 9th century. It ends up being a full stone-walled medieval-style city. This seems to be more technologically advanced that Europe was at it's lowest trough, but significantly less advanced than Rome at its height (it's not really comparable to the Theodosian Walls).

The Sao city-states are also humming along at this point. These are more impressive to me, but that might just be because it pattern matches to the Greek city-states.

I catch a lot of flak from HBDers on this sub when I argue that IQ doesn't measure intelligence per-se so much as it measures something like "Academic Aptitude" and that to the degree that any correlation between IQ and life outcomes exists it is mostly due to modern secular society using academics as a means of sorting "winners" from "losers" and enforcing social stratification.

Yet here you are seemingly making what is effectively the same argument.

any correlation between IQ and life outcomes exists it is mostly due to modern secular society using academics as a means of sorting "winners" from "losers"

Do you think tests like reaction time, or reverse digit span fall into this category? Reaction time is correlated with IQ:

Correlations of simple RT means with AH4 scores were − 0.27, − 0.30 and − 0.32, for age 30, 50 and 69, respectively; and − 0.44, − 0.47 and − 0.53 for 4-choice RT.

0.53 is quite high as these things go.

Reverse Digit Span is 0.45 correlated with WISC-R IQs, according to Jensen.

I agree that tests like WORDSUM (whose correlation with IQ is 0.71) are very culturally loaded and surely are mediated by academics, but I can't see how reaction time, or the backward digit span are similarly affected.

g has a lot of correlation with IQ tests and a whole bunch of other measures, and to say that it's irrelevant is just not true. Intelligence is useful. There are other relevant factors in life success, of course.

There are other relevant factors in life success, of course.

What would you say are the genetic factors that are relevant? I can think of a bunch of social factors, like being wise enough to choose parents who are rich and live in a free society. The ones that come to my mind are being good-looking, being musical, and being tall. For women, being blonde is a huge win, as are the other obvious things, so long as you don't approximate the Willendorf Venus (and even then?).

There have been great efforts to find other factors that are independent of g, but it seems quite hard to isolate any. Even being good-looking is correlated with having less genetic mutations, and this also weakly correlates with g. In the US:

It shows that physical attractiveness is significantly correlated with general intelligence (r = .126),

Musicality correlates as well.

A remarkable direct correlation between IQ and musical scores in both the control (r≥0.38) and experimental (r≥0.37) groups was observed.

Alas, among non-Hispanic whites, even being blonde correlates with IQ. Brown haired men (104.4) and blonde women (103.2) are on the top of the heap, though blonde women have the smallest standard deviation (12.2) and black haired men (mean IQ 100.1) the largest (15.2).

The conclusions come from a survey of 10,878 white Americans asked about their natural hair colour (Hispanics and African Americans were excluded to eliminate bias). The results showed the average IQ of blonde-haired women was 103.2, 102.7 for brown hair, 101.2 for red hair and 100.5 for black hair.

The results showed the average IQ of blonde-haired women was 103.2, 102.7 for brown hair, 101.2 for red hair

Scottish and Irish people BTFO? In all likelihood dark hair probably has the highest standard deviation because it includes some white America’s highest and lowest populations, while blondes are more uniformly from Northern Europe.

Red heads are also more uniformly from Northern Europe.

Redheads are highly disproportionately from specific sub-regions of Northern Europe, though.

Some personality traits is one, I think. The big 5, for example, have some correlations with intelligence, but they don't correlate perfectly, and do impact life.

For most of your answers, yes they might correlate, but that's not the same as causation. (or, at least, there will be more than one factor involved in the causation, which complicates the picture beyond IQ being the only factor that matters)

Hlynka, to put it bluntly, your claims on that matter were conclusively debunked by multiple posters, yet your approach, instead of engaging, was to stick your fingers in your ears and not respond.

IQ is a good measure of g and also immensely predictive for almost all life outcomes we really care about.

I've seen several posters catch bans for expressing their frustration with your obtuseness, so I'll leave it here before it annoys the mods.

Hlynka, to put it bluntly, your claims on that matter were conclusively debunked by multiple posters

No they weren't. What happened is that same half dozen or so posters linked the same tired unreliable sources and then got mad and accused me of being "obtuse" when I questioned their sources and methodology rather than play the role of a straw-man who "gets destroyed by facts and logic"

tard wranglers

Leave off the rdrama/4chanisms, please.

Aww, can't a man enjoy himself sometimes? I'd like to think that almost all my posts are still net positive :(

But as you wish.

I'd like to think that almost all my posts are still net positive

They are, that's why this is more of a "tut tut" than a real warning.

The median east African has a room temperature IQ.

The median east African is more intelligent than most posters here on TheMotte.org including myself.

Hlynka confusing extroversion with intelligence once again.

Africans do pretty poor on real-life tasks "realizing witchcraft isn't real" and "whether having sex with virgin cures you of AIDS".

You're a military man. So tell me why McNamara's moron corps were bad at real-life tasks they were assigned, and damaging to other units' morale even though all what they were different is just worse result on paper-and-pencil test?

number of languages spoken

Do you believe if we compelled children to learn multiple languages at gunpoint they'd be any smarter? Compelling vaccinating children makes them healthier, at least for most vaccines.

Hlynka confusing extroversion with intelligence once again.

@aardvark2 making the "uncharitable" straw-man flesh again.

Do you really think rationalists are any better at "real-life tasks"?

Likewise, if you know many military men you know that the name McNamara is a dirty word. There's a reason that his is one of the only red headstones in Arlington.

I'd be curious to hear why Captain DeJearnette deserves similar disdain for having a red headstone. Unless both of them simply paid extra for a custom piece.

I don't know the story behind Captain DeJearnette, but the legend is that McNamara's headstone is red for all the Americans his incompetence killed.

Likewise, if you know many military men you know that the name McNamara is a dirty word. There's a reason that his is one of the only red headstones in Arlington.

Wouldn't that suggest that people who think IQ measures something real and useful in real life might have a point? Guy comes up with idea of lowering the threshold on a mental aptitude test to fill a manpower shortage, and now his name is considered cursed for generations. This sure seems consistent with mental aptitude tests mattering in real life.

No.

If anything Robert McNamara illustrates my point that it is possible for someone with a high iq to be a complete moron.

I've been lurking this community since the /r/slatestarcodex days and I've finally registered for the first time just to say that this is absolutely the worst kind of post.

You've been presented with a massive ironclad statistically significant block of data on the relationship between those silly irrelevant IQ tests and real-world competence, and it utterly refutes your position on the subject.

And what's your response to this? A pithy joke, about how McNamara was a high IQ moron, and for what? Disregarding the value of standardized IQ testing? Kind of giving up the game, aren't you?

You would have been right behind McNamara talking about how his morons had hustle and moxy and what do those eggheads know with their tests anyway?

There's absolutely no reason anyone should take you seriously as a poster after posts like this. In any case I'm relurking, enjoy your ongoing career as Libertarian Darwin for as long as the moderators continue letting you rack up infinite temp bans.

Do you really think rationalists are any better at "real-life tasks"?

I think I am better at picking up real life tasks than other people. For example, I am a better cook than most other cooks. I am a better gardener and landscaper than most of the people who do it professionally. I was a top tier football referee for a while. I learned how to be a glazier to exceed lifelong employees in a summer. I am top 10% at my actual paper job.

This IQ thing seems to translate pretty well for me.

Can you list some examples of real-life tasks?

Do you really think rationalists are any better at "real-life tasks"?

I think intelligent people are generally better at real-life tasks than unintelligent ones.

I think intelligent people are generally better at real-life tasks than unintelligent ones.

I would agree but I'm also the one who is explicitly questioning the premise that IQ = intelligence. The thing about being in the military is that you get exposed to both ends of the spectrum.

It would help, you know, if you defined intelligence in not sense "personality which I like", which is not very useful.

About cab drivers, there's a quote alleged to Mitterand "it is very unfortunate thing that people who know most about how to govern, are already employed as hairdressers and taxi drivers".

And the people who can't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel are pretty fucking useless, right? And they'd score badly on an IQ test, too. Yes, there are pitfalls high-IQ people can fall into that low-IQ people never will. That's largely because they'll never get far enough to fall into that pitfall; for a physical analogy if you can't climb the rock wall in your local gym you're never going to fall from halfway up a mountain. But there's a lot of people in the motte who take pride in their high IQ and by claiming that doesn't mean anything you get to piss on them, so all is good, right?

Hlynka confusing extroversion with intelligence once again.

The extroverts are the people that you'll interact with when you go to east Africa, so there's some selection bias.

The Africans are higher in extroversion than Europeans, esp Northern ones. (~Americans)

I'm sympathetic to the institution of Gen X gnostic angst, but you have to do what every reasonable skeptic does and apply this to your own ideas.

Okay yes nothing is real we're just living through simulacra and buying furniture designed by committees of people whose idea of a human being is a bunch of noisy statistics made by some Marxist that slept through their statistical methods courses. This has literally only become worse since The Matrix.

The West is living a lie that's only maintained by a tower of abstractions that survives on creating more abstraction and nothing else. Collapse is locked in and it's not that people are asleep at the wheel, there's not even a wheel anymore.

But then, people have been saying this for decades now and things have not collapsed. The lie just gets worse and more detached from reality, seemingly without consequence. Clown world marches on over Baudrillard's corpse.

How do you reckon with this?

Strangely you seem to be able to find this problem when Russia is involved. And like many of your countrymen are eager to point out that despite the West living a complete lie, so is Russia and so is China. Just different kinds of lie. The one the other country believes being always the most ludicrous for everybody.

Consider that the Africans you see as practical are living their own kind of lie, and that what you consider resourcefulness may just be adaptation to that different kind of lie.

Also how does any of this relate to your premise of explaining why you constantly seem to accuse people of believing the opposite of what they claim to believe?

Is it really just that you think one's own mindreading of people is the true measure of character because selfid is bull? Because the one thing this does not apply to is politics. Because politics, literally all of it, is coalition building. Even at its best ideology is nice window dressing for a convergence of interests, and at its worst it's nerd bait to keep a meme in cold storage until it's useful again. It doesn't have to make sense. Hell it's better in many ways if it doesn't. In any case the language of truth is as suited to it as empiricism is to theology.

There is such a thing as truth, but politics is the one realm where it's almost completely useless. There is a good moral argument to be made that you should still abide by it ultimately, but if you only think and act in those terms you're going to lose.

The progs may be talking nonsense, but they are still better than you at the actual game being played, because unlike you they know the rules. And yeah sure playing to win means everything burns to the ground because moral righteousness doesn't grow crops. But that's always what happens. And Lysenko died of old age while Vavilov died in prison.

I mean first of all, winning a bullshit game is kind of meaningless. If I’m the best Calvinball player who ever lived, it’s nonsense because Calvinball has nothing to do with reality. Games that are real matter. At worst, Calvinball playing is a horrid distraction from the baseball game that’s actually meaningful. That baseball game is the practical real world problems being ignored to play identity games. Roads and infrastructure need fixing, education needs overhaul, people are not doing so well economically, Russia and China. These are real problems, but we don’t care about them because Dylan visited the White House in a dress and held up a beer can on instagram.

I’ll agree that our current name-and-claim version of identity is largely bullshit. Identity is a social label often given in response to a person’s place in society. Asians are not honorary whites they simply don’t fit what minority means in modern, WEIRD culture, which is that a person’s minority status is seen (wrongly imo) as a lower status to be fixed. Asians are not seen as lower status. That doesn’t mean honorary white, it means higher status. My identities are formed in contradistinction to others or in response to roles I take. I’m not a mother and cannot become one without having children. I am an aunt because my siblings have children. I’m a worker because I have a boss. The best metaphor to me has always been a status effect, not a class. It’s based on something outside of your skull.

winning a bullshit game is kind of meaningless

Not if the victors get to rob and kill the vanquished it isn't.

What you're complaining about isn't that the game is meaningless really, but that people care more about winning than making sure you can continue to play in the future.

My point is, it doesn't matter because if you don't win right now you don't get to play in the future anyways. Because you're dead and poor.

Of course this isn't stable, you can't have people defect like this forever, but this is how and why societies collapse. Focus on internal rather than external conflict, widespread erosion of norms, etc.

What people seem to often miss though is that this is the result of a series of rational decisions.

If you don't fight the meaningless social issue game, if you don't give citizenship to sympathetic foreigners, if you don't loot the treasury to give spoils; you will not get to keep power versus someone who can and does those things. Using power to gain more power at any cost is a practically superior strategy to any other which is why anyone that has power is inexorably attracted to it or replaced by people who are.

The one flaw, or saving grace, is that power is cursed and by accumulating it you will eventually reach a point where you have too much of it and the distance to reality becomes great enough that you destroy yourself.

The best metaphor to me has always been a status effect, not a class. It’s based on something outside of your skull.

You're just laying out the principles of any good model of the world, what naturalists call science.

There is no disagreeing with this.

Except, unfortunately, in the one game where you get to rob and kill the losers. Where this attachement to the truth falls easily pray to the more immediately expedient strategy of seeking power and using it to eliminate the competition.

Connecting this game and truth seeking is basically what the Enlightenment did by inventing scientific government, and though we've gained tremendous boons from it, I think it was ultimately an evil act precisely because now that this connection exists, it has become impossible to have either proper government or proper truth seeking.


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