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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3323 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for February 21, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Hey Wellness Wednesday, I've completely lost faith in the motte this week. See I've used "I think I fucked up my niece/nephew by playing a single song/tv show/movie" as a premise about a dozen times over the course of my life, and the only time it was taken seriously was with a group of college freshmen. Everyone else immediately understood that it was a premise, because you would have to be totally disconnected from reality to think a single piece of media reshaped someone's entire worldview. 100% disconnected, Being There disconnected.

But the thing is, I know the motte isn't full of freshmen, it's full of gen xers and millenials. And yet posting here was the second time my ridiculous premise was taken seriously. I used to make jokes 10 times as convoluted on /r/cwr and everyone got them, and when I'd do one on the motte I'd get accused of going for cheap laughs!

So it brought to mind a lot of other things I have noticed over the past few months, which can be summed up like this - I no longer believe I am stupider than the average motter. But, and this is the important part - I still know I'm a fucking idiot. Half of the cwr threads might as well be written by markov bots these days, there are still quite a few insightful comments every week, but so much of the rest is just rote bullshit. Just everyone talking down to each other, using passive aggressive laziness to evade the modhats - but not even making it entertaining, it's just talking points vs talking points.

I want to feel stupid again. I want to have to bring my a-game again. I don't know how to make that happen.

The forum is being overmoderated, and the additional mods are not helping. Not that they are making bad decisions or moderating good posters particularly, but the presence of somebody breathing down one's neck as to whether a toppost is 'substantial' enough makes the place less fun for everyone, resulting in people finding better things to do with their time.

I don't have much a reputation on TheMotte because I don't really write much about the things that are discussed here, nevertheless I felt like commenting on the change of tone - if I can define it that way - of the discussion and subsequent reevaluation of my abilities. I started lurking in 2016 but I posted my first comment on the reddit sub in 2021 because I felt unprepared to participate, now I wonder if it is because I learned the jargon and the writing style or the discussion just became more... I don't even think the correct term superficial, it is more surreal, like we are retreating more and more into rarified sophistications that exist only online: it's not our off-line life that help us navigate the online but the online life that provides an interpretative framework for the real life. I'm sure there is some philosopher that has written about it but I do not really recall the name, maybe Debord?

Baudrillard's simulacrums?

Damn chum, if this is your average level of response I would love it if you joined in more. Surreal is an excellent way of putting it, although I see it more as a reaction to the society of the spectacle, like monks retreating to their cloisters to argue about dancing angels.

I'm going to chime in, too, because I was looking at this before nara, dammit!

I can't tell how many levels of irony you're on. It's kind of a moot point, given the "speaking plainly" rule. I don't have any reason to believe that you're trying to pull one over on those dumb idiots who can't comprehend your humor. And yet, users dipping into farce have a strange tendency to push that boundary. Please don't give me such a reason.

It was the Friday fun thread. I don't want anyone to feel bad in the Friday fun thread. This is not a speak plainly issue because the joke was only, in my eyes, a clear cut example of the issue of surface level engagement. It was in itself not a big deal, but it both made me think of a problem I had seen more and more and appeared to be a perfect example of it.

I made a mistake in this Wellness post. I forgot how highly smart people value their intelligence, and so my claim that I no longer felt stupid here is all anyone can focus on and has caused great injury. I am sorry. You should probably mod me. Threatening to shut down analogies and metaphors on the speak plainly rule is absurd.

No, no.

You’re allowed to cause great injury and/or post cringe. What you aren’t supposed to do is ironic stupidity.

Know the difference.

For clarity, acting as if I think something which even the people arguing with me about it down thread agree nobody ever thinks is ironic stupidity?

It sounds like an accurate label to me, yes.

Ironic as you’re “acting.” Stupid as “nobody ever thinks” it.

I made a mistake in this Wellness post. I forgot how highly smart people value their intelligence, and so my claim that I no longer felt stupid here is all anyone can focus on and has caused great injury.

You've missed the point of why people are upset with you and I honestly can't tell if you genuinely don't see it, or if you're trolling. People aren't annoyed because you said that the posts here are getting less intelligent. They are annoyed because you are using people's good-faith responses to your Friday Fun post as some kind of gotcha.

Your actions here, simply put, come across like you were setting out to pick on people from the beginning. Of course nobody likes that. If you simply had posted about how you felt like the posts here have gone downhill (and left the movie thread out of it entirely), nobody would be upset.

I can get thoughtless good faith responses from reddit or Facebook or a million billion other places.

Your actions here, simply put, come across like you were setting out to pick on people from the beginning.

Really? Which ones? The action where I mentioned being a fan of two of the posters who misunderstood? The action where I said I don't think people are actually less intelligent, but behaving less intelligently? The action where I said the problem is people are retreating from their humanity out of fear and complacency? Or is it just the action in the op where I impugned people's intelligence?

I genuinely can't see it. I expected people to be upset with me, but I didn't expect this level of upset, with cjets mantra of mod vengeance and so on - it genuinely looks to me like narcissistic injury (as in identity injuring, not implying narcissism). The conflict I was expecting was for people to bring up examples of times I have been guilty of using semantics and passive aggression to avoid actually engaging, because they absolutely exist. Is any critical comment a gotcha now? Can we not just say "yeah that was dumb, we need to get our act together" Not to mention if I brought it up without an example it would have been immediately dismissed as a strawman.

For what it's worth I agree, some people were made a fool of and aren't taking it well. I don't see why your statements should be modded here or there. I responded as though the question were a serious premise, though if it were the question under discussion I would have argued the premise.

Part of the problem might be people getting used to truly insane posters, who have become legendary around here in some cases, and as a result responses were tough to nail down tone for. Is believing Fight Club might brainwash your teenager more or less crazy than any other aspect of American politics at this point, though it may represent a decline for this particular board?

Not to pile in, but people are trying to give you thoughtful good-faith responses. The expectation of good faith is one of the things that separates the Motte from most of the rest of the internet; I really don't want to try and dissect exactly which bits of people's posts are truthful and which bits are jokes, ironies, or falsities for the purpose of eliciting a reaction. Especially when many of us come from quite different cultures.

people are retreating from their humanity out of fear and complacency

I really think this is just a cultural expectation that's being violated. Maybe as we move off reddit our demographics have changed? Personally I value sincerity and prefer to be straightforward when discussing things; a friend enjoys being gratuitously rude in order (he says) to shock out a reaction and that doesn't sit well with me at all.

I would have appreciated the pile in earlier, I don't know why anyone would think I wasn't expecting pushback, if everyone agreed with me there wouldn't be a problem because everyone would have also decided to make an effort to understand every post they reply to at the start of the year.

But I have learned my lesson now. I was picking on people and no I don't get to find out how I should just shut up already. This is fine.

For what it’s worth, I have caught myself deleting posts a couple of times because I responded to what I thought someone was saying rather than reading their post properly. I’ll try to be more careful.

I'm not really interested in hearing your defenses. What I said is how your post came across to me, regardless of whether you think it should have come across that way. I can't speak for others, but you certainly rubbed them the wrong way and I would guess it's for similar reasons. If I were you, I would walk away from this one and simply accept that it didn't go over how you thought it would, rather than trying to defend yourself.

Yes, less engagement is what this place needs.

I'm not going to dig up the post where you made this "joke," but one way to follow the rule requiring charitable interpretation is to take people seriously even when you're unsure about them.

I'm not going to dig up whatever post it was where you did this, but if I see you doing it, I'm going to moderate you for not speaking plainly.

Did I touch a nerve?

  • -16

Okay so, reevaluating your premise again: it is not impossible that a single exposure to a social event can change a young person’s interests and then trajectory. A young person might go see a baseball game and that sparks a lifelong interest in baseball. Or they might have seen a cool juggler, then gone on to juggle as a hobby. Or maybe they saw V for Vendetta and became infatuated with the idea of anonymous figures and rebellions, and then decided to form a hacking collective…

Fight Club presents an attractive image of young men forming an identity around primitive masculine fighting and tribalism. It’s also a great movie. So this can absolutely affect a young person’s life, who has just been exposed to a persuasive argument for masculine bonding and detesting female-coded safe spaces. Young people are also hardwired to imitate cooler older guys, and the movie stars prime Brad Pitt.

Now I would argue every young man should watch fight club, but that’s a separate point.

edit actually for an even better example, fight club influenced early early 4chan, instituting the norms of anonymity and secrecy, the anti-mainstream ethos, the “operations”, and some early memes. So that’s a good example of how one movie can influence something larger. But also, your post could easily have been read as “coloquial exaggeration”. Like someone posting, “did I ruin my life by choosing a culinary institute over Harvard?” Obviously not, but the person is really asking whether they’ve done goofed sufficiently to feel bad about their decision and readjust their future decision-making.

I disagree. If anything, the mean writing quality of the weekly thread has undoubtedly improved since we left Reddit, and I say that as someone who was extremely skeptical of that move and argued against it consistently.

Go back to the CW threads from 2020 or 2019 and they’re stuffed full of low effort drive-by posting from default redditors (of all political persuasions). Low quality writing, bad argumentation, random schizoposting, autism, baiting, boring incelposting, /pol/ trolling, all the usual stuff was commonplace. Seriously, go back and check! (Some was surely moderated, but not all.)

At that time, while the board was still very high quality compared to other Internet forums in general, I’d say it was probably still substantially below a good LW or SSC comments section, perhaps even a good HN comments section. Today the above three have all declined, but The Motte has at least held its ground. As I said last time this was brought up, there is nowhere better on the public internet. Yeah, perhaps you have access to Moldbug’s secret elite discord server populated solely by intellectual titans, but I’m gonna say it - a lot of people here write better than Yarvin does, so I’m not sure I’d frequent it even if I had access to it, and I very much doubt it has better moderators than we do.

I’ve been here since something like 2015 or 2016, almost a third of my life. In that time I have yet to find a superior online locale for English-language politics and current affairs discussion. Believe me I’ve tried and There Is Nothing. So I guess I’ll be here until the end.

Go back to the CW threads from 2020 or 2019 and they’re stuffed full of low effort drive-by posting from default redditors (of all political persuasions). Low quality writing, bad argumentation, random schizoposting, autism, baiting, boring incelposting, /pol/ trolling, all the usual stuff was commonplace. Seriously, go back and check! (Some was surely moderated, but not all.)

that is what made it better in some ways. things have gotten worse since 2022 in that things seem too serious and the stakes too high instead of just chit chat. i don't feel like having to always take a side or be conscripted to fight the culture wars.

I mean over the past few months. What it feels like to me, is that everyone is afraid of a) looking stupid and b) getting modded, so they pull back, and like @f3zinker said only engage with the barest surface reading of the posts. And so every second thread devolves into arguments over semantics - I'm half afraid someone's going to pull me up here and show me three threads in a row with no semantics, like that means anything. I'll get dinged for not "speaking plainly".

I don't want to go anywhere, I had hoped I could maybe wake people up to the fact that it kind of looks like we're all retreating into autism to avoid our humanity.

Edit: accidentally hit post. To continue: I have professed my love for this community many times, and I always try to encourage good writing when I see it in posts, I think there's only one or two users who encourage others more than I do in fact. I haven't been here as long as you, but it is special to me too. Like I said, I don't know how to fix the problem.

being downvoted to oblivion is worse than being seen as stupid

The mods here are very light touch, really (how many times have Hlynka and Count been modded now? They’re still here) and nobody cares about you looking stupid as long as you own up to mistakes. When I get schooled here (which is often) I usually say ‘thanks, fair enough’, either directly or by DM, and/or change my view. Everyone’s been embarrassed here before, I can’t think of one regular who hasn’t written-before-researching and come up against a quality rebuttal at least a few times.

But the line is mockery. Nobody likes to get made fun of, certainly not relentlessly, it’s a respectful environment.

Is that what I do, relentlessly mock people? I am asking genuinely. Also you have never thanked me for an argument.

No, you don’t, but I think you got some pushback because people did think you were making fun of them. It’s not a big deal! Sorry that I’ve never thanked you for an argument, I enjoy a lot of your posts.

you would have to be totally disconnected from reality to think a single piece of media reshaped someone's entire worldview.

Oh, wait, I was skimming and didn't even read this part. This is just flatly wrong. Single pieces of media do sometimes change the entire direction of peoples' lives. I've seen it happen! I mean they technically don't change someone's "entire worldview" because that's not really possible, but definitely can be critical very large personal changes. And yeah, I know, everything changes slowly and maybe the piece of media was just a "straw that broke the camel's back", but in my experience that's only partially true. Which makes sense, "media" broadly are stories that are designed to be as compelling as possible to people, and the reason we like stories is that we learn from them. It just makes sense that strong resonant "emotional" experiences could influence someone.

Now of course it's very rare for that to happen, given how much people read and watch and listen in their life, and even if it does happen it's probably better to let the person evolve by learning new compelling information even if it makes them partially wrong for a time, you can let them fail and figure it out later.

I mean they technically don't change someone's "entire worldview" because that's not really possible

...

And yeah, I know, everything changes slowly and maybe the piece of media was just a "straw that broke the camel's back"

Come on man.

  • -11

But how else do you think beliefs/worldviews are shaped? Lived experiences usually, sure, but I believe it's the 21th-century schizoid modern man we're talking about, whose lived experiences account for like 20% of his actual sum total of EXP points (guilty as charged, at least), the rest is pixels or letters. Do you totally deny the ability of artistic media able to change people's minds in any way, or is the issue that inducing anything less than an immediate and total crisis of faith is not enough?

I join other commenters below in their admission of being thoroughly influenced by media, mostly vidya in my case: Bioshock planted seeds of doubt against libertarianism which persist to this day (even if I was a countryside rube and knew jack shit about e.g. coordination problems at the time), Persona 3 made me a robofucker introduced the careless teenage me to the concept of death and its consequences, etc. Call me shallow if you like, but I firmly believe that the correct response to "to think a single piece of media reshaped someone's entire worldview" is "that but unironically", and media doesn't actually have to be "deep" (which is subjective as hell anyway) to get the proverbial noggin joggin - it just has to resonate with you to some extent that you begin to think on the evoked themes independently. It is indeed closer to a spiritual experience instead of anything literal.

Feel free to consider this a midwit take because it kind of is, but I struggle to understand or agree with your viewpoint. I'll posit that either it's the air you're breathing to some extent, i.e. you're so accustomed to thinking along the lines of or drawing inspiration from various intellectual works that you don't notice the influences in your thinking, or that you've actually never experienced that distinct "THIS HOLE WAS MADE FOR ME" feeling of inexplicably clicking together with a piece of media, a sensation definitely not age-restricted to zoomers or millenials, in which case I respectfully sympathize.

Am I wrong about the average age here? The joke was that I was afraid this kid would watch a movie and suddenly flip his entire worldview, a premise that was mocked mercilessly when I was growing up, because "everyone knows" that nobody is influenced by just one thing, everything is a confluence of the innumerable stories everyone hears all day every day. That doesn't mean media doesn't have an influence on people, of course it does! But nobody becomes a nihilist after watching fight club one time, just like nobody becomes a libertarian after reading atlas shrugged and nobody becomes a mass shooter after playing doom - there are a thousand other stops along the way there, and if it looks like an immediate turn that is because prior stories predisposed the person to absorb that influence.

I chose the words "a single piece of media reshaped someone's entire worldview." very carefully, to avoid this exact tangent.

So the issue is that inducing anything less than an immediate and total crisis of faith is not enough for the purposes of your joke?

I chose the words "a single piece of media reshaped someone's entire worldview." very carefully, to avoid this exact tangent.

Not carefully enough, it seems, they could use a timeline descriptor since from what I read the pushback you get (mine included) seems to be that a single piece of media can absolutely [re]shape someone's entire worldview, just not immediately.

This seems like a semantic quibble at its core - you yourself admit in your reply "that there are a thousand other stops along the way", I'm not sure what your objection is when people point out that a single piece of media can indeed be the last stop, the straw that breaks the camel's back (which as written would presumably qualify for the purposes of your joke?). I'm not even sure we disagree at all. Maybe the argument is too big brained for me and I embody everything that's wrong with the Motte nowadays.

Yes, it is a semantic quibble.

My Little Pony Friendship is Magic is singlehoofedly responsible for:

  1. Reducing my depression to manageable levels which a support group managed to finish off
  2. Giving me enough confidence to get my degree
  3. Reigniting my passion for writing
  4. Teaching me about healthy relationships in a theoretical and logical enough way to break through my autism and show me what everyone had claimed was so profound all my life which I couldn’t see before, to the point people are now generally shocked when I say I have autism and I mostly don’t feel I have it anymore
  5. Showing me how journalism really works, and why never to trust a journalist
  6. Rescuing a long-time family friendship I accidentally almost broke
  7. Getting me the third best job I’ve ever had
  8. Revealing a piece of theology which is sorely underserved, the true meaning of shalom

I would be a completely different person today if I hadn’t seen the first episode I ever saw, S1E4, at that exact moment in my life.

lol wut? Am I missing something

I'm pretty sure he's entirely sincere, although idk if it's an example of what I described or not.

He's sincere, we've discussed it before. Personally I watched one specific anime series, maybe 5 hours long, in one afternoon and that had pretty formative effects.

I can't really narrate a personal experience I or a close friend of mine might've had without coming too close to doxxing myself (and I'm not a good enough writer atm to do it well), but things in the same vague category as 'fight club' have, in my direct experienced, causally affected peoples' life trajectory or ideology at the largest scale and in a non-butterfly effect way. Something doesn't need to change someone's entire worldview, nor does it need to require zero pre-existing affinity to the topic to work, to be the kind of thing you're claiming doesn't exist.

It's definitely a judgement call to say that it isn't mostly the 'straw break camel back effect' and I can't really justify it in any compact way, but I'm like 99% confident these individual instances of watching/reading media have several orders of magnitude more impact than others in these peoples' lives. It's sort of similar to a spiritual experience, I think.

iirc, 'this book changed my life' of thing isn't that uncommon a trope for notable figures, and while most cases are clearly exaggerated I think some cases aren't.

(I don't think this makes it reasonable to worry about individual pieces of media though.)

Single pieces of media do sometimes change the entire direction of peoples' lives

Right, the existence of this community is arguably a result of Harry Potter fanfiction of all things. That book certainly changed the course of my life.

you would have to be totally disconnected from reality to think a single piece of media reshaped someone's entire worldview.

A single piece of media can get someone to buy a product. A single piece of media could make someone decide to try a drug, or always avoid that drug. A single meme can cause people join online groups and that can lead to real-world consequences. It is directionally correct that media reshapes people's worldviews. Some people just steelman the main points to more reasonable positions instead of responding to the literal content of the post.

More generally, people lose interest in things over time. A video game can be fun at first, but then you get to the end and lose interest. You realize there are more fulfilling ways to spend your time. You skim top-level posts for the few topics that most interest you and ignore the rest. You can predict what will happen if you post a reply. There is no longer an expectation of getting into a novel conversation or learning something new.

I'm not sure it's a lack of intelligence, exactly. Smart and independent people usually have some (or many) strange beliefs they've worked their way into - it's just impossible to get the thousand complicated judgements you make every day all correct if you make any attempt to think about them yourself, and you won't be making the same mistakes everyone else makes. And as a result it's entirely plausible a motte member would have a dumb fear of introducing their kid to a movie. There have been stranger premises in Wellness Wednesday questions. And some of the very intelligent people I know personally have much dumber anxieties in their personal lives. I was skimming, thought the premise was kinda dumb (everyone makes dumb posts sometimes), upvoted Pasha and moved on. Maybe if I'd thought about it for more than three seconds it'd be weird that you'd take the implied political position, but whatever.

Also, some of the people who you say 'took the bait' are some of the best posters, so I don't really think it's strong evidence of anything.

Also, some of the people who you say 'took the bait' are some of the best posters, so I don't really think it's strong evidence of anything.

I agree, like I said it brought to mind a trend in have been noticing. Pasha is very insightful and orthoxerox is one of my favourite posters. The problem isn't that the level of intelligence has dropped, or I guess it is, but it's not that motters have lower intelligence, it's that nobody thinks for three seconds about anything unless it's their hobby-horse. Like @f3zinker, @ThisIsSin and @bolido_sentimental said, the engagement has turned superficial.

I was only pretending to be retarded ask for movie recommendations

Thanks for this, it's a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

For fucks sake you have catch 22 flair, how do you not understand the concept of farce?

Are you sure it's me who doesn't understand?

I was sincere about wanting movie recommendations. The joke was in the premise. That's the set up. Furthermore the pretending to be retarded meme is about someone doing something stupid in earnest then claiming it was a joke to escape ridicule. It is not doing something you think is too outlandish to take seriously and then having to disappointedly explain that you were joking. How much further do you need this broken down?

I didn't get it. Can you explain it again?

Lol good save.

This place is still a paradise compared to /r/ssc which has become Quora. ACX comments are looking rough too. I looked up to these people? Yeah, it's bad.

But another thing: You've grown. Communities don't grow, but individuals can. There's a chance you've absorbed whatever lessons TheMotte had to teach, and you're in a class full of students waiting for a new teacher. Stagnation is the fate of all adults, and like illness the best we can do is delay it. We are all destined to become boring, vegetative adults unless we have some process of continuous, lifelong self-transformation. Don't ask why TheMotte is failing to meet your needs. Ask how you're failing to meet your own needs, and then find a new teacher.

I think that's part of the problem - all of the "teachers" that interest me have been run off the internet or into some corner I don't know about. I don't even know where to look anymore.

Then the only remaining option is to either look outside the internet or stop relying on teachers.

Yeah, it's seemed less good to me than it did a few years ago, which I also don't know to what extent it's me acquiring the insights I once found novel vs. comment quality declining.

Just everyone talking down to each other, using passive aggressive laziness to evade the modhats - but not even making it entertaining, it's just talking points vs talking points.

I've also noticed that I tend to have trouble getting engagement with posts I consider well-written (and tend to get more engagement when I'm not sending my best). It depresses me that I get AAQCs with literally zero follow-on comments and maybe one that spawned more than one; sure, I get upvoted from time to time, but I'm looking to sharpen my knife further, not merely be praised with a show of hands that believe it is already sharp.

The few users with a worldview most starkly different from everyone else's barely post here anyway, which is unfortunate because I think they had facets of a clearer picture of certain things this board tends to concern itself with CW-wise (though not everyone is capable of hearing them since we wouldn't be treading the same ground were they taken seriously).

Maybe I just have myself to blame for expecting any different results from parrotting Orwell to a group of Winstons.

I think by now a lot of people have understood that there's no point to debate.

The big issues are settled; the Left wants mass immigration and promotion of transgenderism as there's a critical mass of activists whose jobs depend on it. They - and by this I mean race & gender activists are not interest in debating either, they never really were. They're conflict theorists.

We're even getting Carl Schmitt Friend/Enemy distinction videos for boomers now.

So there's not much of a point talking about any of it.

Personally, I'm beyond tired of CW. The right is mostly stupid, the left is mostly insane. To me, observing and discussing the precise ways in which the right is stupid or the left is insane did get old.

If I'm thinking about anything, it's doing something such as translating the better NRx adjacent essays to publish in our right wing boomer outlets and such, eschewing all esoteric language and such. Maybe find some sensible people to meet IRL.

People need to get organised and understand what's going on.

Saying "look at these insane people" is useless. Everyone in Europe needs to understand the bureaucracy / judiciary / NGO is their enemy and thinks it can set policy. "Civil society" is largely an enemy because it's composed of people who want to "change the world" and such are disproportionately utopian idealists.

The local language environment is largely impoverished in regards to good ideas, so maybe if I I'm concise and eloquent enough, some of the smarter people will learn something.

I think by now a lot of people have understood that there's no point to debate.

At the very top of the CWR, for as long as I can remember, it says 'Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds.' The goal is mostly to clarify one's thoughts.

@ThisIsSin's problem seems to be in this line — his ideas aren't being challenged and refined, not that he's frustrated talking past people or whatever.

We're even getting Carl Schmitt Friend/Enemy distinction videos for boomers now. So there's not much of a point talking about any of it.

And yet, as far as I can tell, the NRx ideas are filtering down into the commons because they spread in the realm of internet debate. So clearly debate has some useful function, assuming NRx ideas are actually useful.

Which users are you thinking of most?

I sometimes wonder if we've fallen below a critical mass of insightful commenters. If nothing else, the CWRs certainly have just a lower quantity of comments - threads from 2022 usually exceeded 2500.

As a lurker who mainly reads the Motte during breaks at work, I am not helping in any way.

I think we’re also just at a less interesting place in the overall culture war. (And I like to hope are spending less time at our computers that 2020-21, anyway?)

I feel you man. Felt similar with my post about driving in New Jersey.

I made a comment about how New Jersey drivers are objectively better than drivers from other states because they demonstrate being able to handle more difficult driving situations and make less universally acknowledged driving errors. Not a single fucking soul got the point. New Jersey drivers are "aggressive" to the average American driver, who happens to drive like a grandma with Alzheimers, so I am the crazy one here who has to downvoted to negative. And no, I will not have my mind changed on this. I'm a hobbyist driver and I race JDM modded cars with 500+HP on the weekends, I know what good and bad driving is.

I just think a lot less people are truly engaging with posts like they used to. Everyones gotten into the pattern of just spitting out a thousand words in response that is tangentially related to the post in some minor way and not receiving any pushback for it. Because the other guy also read only 5% of the post. A few comment chains down, it's game of telephoned to a completely different topic.

I think the mods should in some capacity penalize soapboxing.

I meant to respond to your driving post before getting distracted, so I'll do it here:

Yes, drivers from New Jersey are probably more competent technically than in the rest of the country, but since America's urban planning or lack thereof forces people like me who hate driving and suck at it onto the road every day to get anywhere I would really much rather everyone around me drive "like a grandma with Alzheimer's" rather than get myself killed trying to keep up with the pros.

Having been all over the world it also seems pretty apparent to me that driving cautiously is correlated with having a wealthy and high-trust society, the same way that the more haggling you need to do in a street market the worse the material conditions around you are likely to be.

Everyones gotten into the pattern of just spitting out a thousand words in response that is tangentially related to the post in some minor way and not receiving any pushback for it

I mean, I like reading these, when they aren't clearly motivated culture war reasoning. If gattsuru makes a post about an obscure legal issue I have no natural interest in or a furry VR video game drama, I'll still read it for the same reason i'd read a Scott blogpost about some random thing, it describes interesting relationships between ideas in some niche, and if you read a thousand things like that from a hundred different people you'll see trends and learn a lot about the world in general.

Maybe there's just fewer grand stories to mine in the culture war. It's the same for rationalists and AI risk people and right-wing twitter, all of the fresh big ideas have been mined, every obvious fruit has been picked, there's nowhere left to go. Once you read moldbug or yud or scott there are a bunch of obvious next questions, and they've all been asked and answered over and over. We all know all of the various right-wing ideas and most people agree, anyone who hasn't been persuaded by now probably isn't going to be. Not too much one can do about that, and I don't see why that should stop me from enjoying reading about regulation to prevent hypoxia while flying, or whatever hundred other small topics.

I mean, there obviously are many Big Ideas that we don't know about yet but should. I'm not sure to what extent we'd recognize them as important if we saw them, there's something to the idea that when the time is right, the people naturally have similar ideas due to the surrounding environment and simultaneously become more receptive to hearing about and spreading them.

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