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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28890 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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I'm well aware of the contradiction, I wrote this 5 days ago [emphasis added]:

This is a discussion forum for people with sometimes drastically different views. It feels like a fragile thing somedays. We are asking people to talk politely with one another when they may disagree with each other's entire existence. Most of the internet is filled with people pointing out that politeness in those circumstances is absurd. And thus most of the internet has descended into a bit of a hell hole that I cannot personally tolerate for any topic much less the topics where people might actually have a reason to hate each other.

Hlynka wasn't interested in maintaining decorum when it was an obvious papering over disrespectful or violent thoughts. I admired how long he was able to act on that disinterest without getting permabanned.

Personally, the masquerade is getting boring for me too. But out of respect for mod wishes, I'll try to fade out rather than flame out if it becomes too annoying to bother with.

I'm not really sympathetic to people that can't maintain the masquerade. Because I maintain it quite easily. I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and just about everyone on here is a statist of some sort. I believe most of those views are morally repugnant, and any statist view is an active advocation of violence against me. I also don't consider myself some paragon of self control. I think most people have the self control muscle and exercise it all the time. If you can drive in traffic and not run someone off the road when they do something dangerous to you then you also have that self control muscle. My 5 year old kid has the self control muscle. My 3 year old, does not. So its a skill you can learn and start using as young as 4 years old.

Also according to psychology there are bunch of psychopaths just walking around among us, following the rules, and not murdering people for shits and giggles. We don't threaten to purge all the psychopaths as uncaring monsters walking among us. And the psychopaths mostly don't act like the uncaring monsters that they are, except in specific high level managerial positions where we have designated their behavior "ok".

People complaining that it is hard not to say things in an online forum where they don't need to even participate is a bit mind-boggling to me. I truly do not understand how such a person navigates their day to day life. Perhaps they have an extreme set of blinders? Perhaps they are lying, and its actually very easy to follow the rules around here, they just don't want to? Perhaps they are in a special set of circumstances where people coddle them like I do for my three year old in order to avoid public tantrums?

Regarding you being an anarcho-capitalist, I'm sure you've heard it a hundred times, but why won't governments just step in and take it over?

Anarcho Capitalism I consider a moral imperative. Its the right thing to do. Even if all the practical details haven't been figured out. Similar to how I feel about anti-aging. We don't have anti-aging figured out, but when we do it will be the morally correct thing to allow.

So, practically speaking: you are asserting that it's more important that you not impose force upon others (that is, form a government) than that you prevent other, worse people (that is, your most conquest-prone local powers) from imposing force upon those same people?

I was not speaking practically. I was speaking of a moral imperative.

Practically speaking I'm a run of the mill libertarian.

I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and just about everyone on here is a statist of some sort.

Is there any plan to bring back the user viewpoint focus series? Hearing an ancap explain why their preferred system won’t just result in SomaliaHaiti is always at least interesting.

Pretty sure the viewpoint series died off by people just not doing it. No one ever asked me for my viewpoint, and I never quite felt arrogant enough to write something that long at that level of 'navel gazing' without prompting from someone else.

Should we resume?

Do we need to first gather a body of willing people, or how is it maintained?

I'm not against resuming other people resuming. I was never certain I'd be good about doing it. I typically only have the patience/interest to participate in a discussion for about 8 hours, and I'd spend most of that time just writing the things in the first place and then barely responding to any question.

It was maintained chain mail style. One person gets it and then they pick a person to pass it on to.

I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and just about everyone on here is a statist of some sort.

I’m an Objectivism-adjacent minarchist Christian, so you’re one of the few here to the freeward side of me. (As opposed to left or right.)

People complaining that it is hard not to say things in an online forum where they don't need to even participate is a bit mind-boggling to me.

I don’t know that this describes Hlynka. But neuroticism is a hell of a drug. I work to keep myself under control, but there’s definitely an undercurrent of subconscious screaming and threat detection that can get activated by online forums.

When young lefties talk about hate speech being violence and trying to purge the commons of hated speakers, I get it. I don’t like it, I don’t agree with it, I think it’s wrong, but I understand on a deep level the underlying psychological impulses that motivate it.

I think following that logic makes the problem worse, and forms a catastrophization cycle that reinforces and strengthens their distress. But I can totally see how “these terrible ideas cause me so much pain, we need to get rid of them” is a train of thought people go through.

And there is pain. I know, when I see ideas that particularly get my gourd, ideas that threaten, if taken seriously, to damage values I hold dear — I know those things can easily make me freak out, become despondent, vindictive, to lash out like a cornered tiger.

This isn’t something I can easily describe to someone not familiar with serious anxiety, not because it’s some secret knowledge or something I’m “special” for feeling, but just because the feelings are so profoundly out of place that I think many people would find it shocking anyone could react in such a way.

I think this describes some of the “I can’t help but post on this forum I hate” phenomenon. People love hate-reading and hate-posting. It’s not helpful, it’s not healthy, but it is gut-level rewarding because of the great salience of threatening ideas.

But encountering a threat, however overblown, makes anyone want to eliminate it. And thus we get censorship, and long screeds whose text rhymes with “fuck you.”

The difference between me and the cancellers, I guess, is I know my emotional response to these things isn’t helpful, and it isn’t anybody else’s problem. It’s mine. And it’s my responsibility to deal with it, and to respond to the world in an intelligent manner. To be slow to speak and quick to listen.

I know I’m an unusual case. Sometimes I like to talk like I’m typical of the zoomers because of my experience of mental illness. But if I’m truthful, I’m not. My neuroticism is way higher than the average even for my generation.

I also… and this contradicts everything I’m saying here, but I don’t think of my struggles as an identity. But I talk to some people who seem like they view themselves as a Certified Generalized Anxiety Disorder Experiencer (TM) and not a person who struggles with anxiety. I’m not a person-first language advocate (I think language games are silly) but I do think there’s a mindset difference there.

I do think we’re doing things that lower the sanity waterline, lowering all boats. And social media is ground zero of this as far as I’m concerned. I’m not sure that exposure to random strangers’ ideas is actually helpful for people who struggle with calibrating their threat detector. I also believe that facing difficult situations is the only good way to calibrate. I just think there’s a balance to be struck between engaging in things that are scary but useful and being a masochist who tries to argue with people you believe deeply in your heart are wrong, and evil.

All I’m saying is, maybe Hlynka was higher in neuroticism than he let on. At the very least, some fraction of “involuntary” posters is explained by what I described.

I truly do not understand how such a person navigates their day to day life.

If we’re talking about the neurotic ones, often not very well.

I have two highly neurotic family members. One is very well adapted to society, and one isn't. The one who isn't very well adapted to society would probably love to post here, but then I'd have to ban them, because they'd probably be like hlynka but far less well spoken. The well adapted one would probably take one look and nope out.

Perhaps we are sometimes selecting for the neurotics who like the elevated threat level. The same kind of people who like roller coasters.

I still don't feel my sympathy increasing for those who severely lack the self control. I still think this forum is pretty low on the level of things that could trigger threat levels. Its purely text, which is far less stimulating than video and images. You have to have a long attention span to even pick up on some of the threats. You can find more blatant threats with even the most milquetoast set of social media friends. Every news station is trying to one up the threat level to get eyeballs. And daily life in any metropolitan area is plenty threatening enough.

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