Politics/Slapfights - Ancient history to modern day!

[Vol]

That's probably because the rules of evolutionary biology do not exist to satisfy a human intellect.

There is nothing else in existence that can create, understand, or give an opinion on our models of evolutionary biology except for us. We're the only ones with the cognitive ability to observe and theorize, the "rules" (not to imply telos) can only be known by the human intellect. Without us, there is no evolution, because there is no one to categorize the process as anything. The change in life over time is only meaningful to observers. So, yes, the rules of evolutionary biology exist to satisfy a human intellect.

And the lack of predictive power has to do with the fact that the evolutionary force at the basis of them all, mutation, is random, and we have no computer powerful enough to predict what biological changes will occur when an Adenine is replaced with a Thymine in a random genomic location.

I was meaning to ask, in terms of predictive power, is our ability to assume the offspring of a given couple still more probabilistic than predictive? I remember the logic square for the odds of having a blonde child from science classes I took (Though I assume now the examples are on how many generations to get rid of blondes, ohoho). But that was probability, I assumed that at the professional level, they could isolate and model the related variables to get a much better idea of what a theoretical kid would look like, at least in some traits.

There is nothing we've found on Earth that does not follow these rules.

How would you know if something did?

Now, few deny that it will eventually occur - assuming assholes don't exterminate them before that - and most will even agree on what kinds of traits will be selected in each future species, but whether they are one or two species right now is under debate.

If humans can restrain other humans from wiping them out over the length of time needed, that would be more a marvel than observing speciation.

So no, there is no "static horse DNA" because there is no such thing as a horse for nature. A horse is a phenotype, which itself is a sum of traits, and all animals whose traits roughly fall in that category have been named horses. If nature pressures those traits to change, they will change, or the species will go extinct, as has happened a lot over time.

There is no such thing as "phenotype" or "traits" either, for the same reason. If we take that reductionist view, "evolutionary theory" is more accurately described as "estimated organic chemistry," no?

They have absolutely started doing something along these lines now with DNA because genome sequencing has gotten exponentially cheaper and faster in recent years. There are no truly static bits of DNA (to my understanding, Sine could probably explain it better) because of recombination where genetics sequences from mother and father are shuffled around to produce offspring. However, some things do indeed persist intact down the ages which is why we can speak of certain genes we have as being "Neanderthal" genes or "Denisovan genes" or whatever.

So there is no static horse nature, no, but this kind of thing can absolutely be used to identity common ancestry and even the approximate time that ancestor lived.

My vague sense of the kind of work being done is that we can digitize DNA samples very well now, but figuring out specifics, much less editing, is still like a 15 year old boy facing a fancy bra clasp.

Though as the (half) book I read on human ancestry pointed out, while our genetic Adam & Eve are an always changing, never contemporary, pair, based on known migration patterns and some educated guesses, most if not all humans alive now probably share tons and tons of common ancestors that don't show up in our DNA, from only a good few thousand years ago.

Anyway, I'm not particularly eager to dive into the kiddy pool of alternative evolutionary theories just yet. I'd rather largely accept what I've been taught, and think more about contextualizing and applying intellectual rigor to some assumptions.

[Ragabul]

Anyway, I'm not particularly eager to dive into the kiddy pool of alternative evolutionary theories just yet. I'd rather largely accept what I've been taught, and think more about contextualizing and applying intellectual rigor to some assumptions.

Once I started to read some about it, it's seemed straightforwardly correct to me. But it also isn't some kind of incontestable answer to religious questions either the way Dawkins seemed to think that it was. All it does is repackage "the problem of evil" into "the problem of randomness." And pretty much any answer that works for theodicy also works for randomness (or any other feature of reality humans consider "flawed" for whatever reason).

*Edit*

The Rise and Fall of Civilizations: a Reader Course

Blah. Not fair, not fair! Too many books that sound interesting to read!

[Sinekein]

They have absolutely started doing something along these lines now with DNA because genome sequencing has gotten exponentially cheaper and faster in recent years. There are no truly static bits of DNA (to my understanding, Sine could probably explain it better) because of recombination where genetics sequences from mother and father are shuffled around to produce offspring. However, some things do indeed persist intact down the ages which is why we can speak of certain genes we have as being "Neanderthal" genes or "Denisovan genes" or whatever.

So there is no static horse nature, no, but this kind of thing can absolutely be used to identity common ancestry and even the approximate time that ancestor lived.

Some DNA sequences are extremely stable, not because they are special or something, but because the proteins they are coding are so fundamentally important that any change is likely to have devastating effect. When you want to compare two wildly different species - like a man, corn, a mushroom and bacteria - you compare rRNA, the RNA that form ribosomes, used to turn mRNA into DNA.

But all rRNA are basically identical among human, so if you want to study genetic drift in the human species, you will have to pick other genes. Progress in DNA sequencing have allowed researchers to cherrypick the DNA sequences they study depending on how well conserved they are.

[Vol]

Once I started to read some about it, it's seemed straightforwardly correct to me. But it also isn't some kind of incontestable answer to religious questions either the way Dawkins seemed to think that it was. All it does is repackage "the problem of evil" into "the problem of randomness." And pretty much any answer that works for theodicy also works for randomness (or any other feature of reality humans consider "flawed" for whatever reason).

*Edit*

The Rise and Fall of Civilizations: a Reader Course

Blah. Not fair, not fair! Too many books that sound interesting to read!

Dawkins, and most people, pick the low-hanging fruit. I've listened to some debates he's done, and he's very good at smug mockery, but he's standing on the shoulder of a giant he denies exists. There's a young guy, CosmicSkeptic, whose content I briefly watched about a year ago. He was willing to bite the bullet on some very difficult positions as the consequence of his atheistic philosophy. Saw a clip from a debate he did with a Muslim group, where he was asked if rape was objectively wrong, and he really couldn't say it was, because determinist materialism excludes that possibility. And that's intellectually honest, and brave, if nothing else. As opposed to asserting that modern western morality is entirely obvious, intuitive, and correct.

Speaking of "the problem of evil," I read an interesting debate on a tangential topic. (Theology stuff)

► Show Spoiler

It was on the premise that Jesus' message could be summed up as "don't judge people, bro." I don't know if Dawkins has ever tried for that tact in debate. But the explanation for what that actually meant was interesting to me. It was most obviously a rebuff of hypocrisy, and the Pharisee specifically. Judging by moral standards they've failed to uphold themselves. Which is a completely true point in the material sense, we _are_ judged by how we judge others, the GOP member who votes against gay marriage then gets caught in a gloryhole in a men's room coming to mind. And then in the supernatural sense of the premise that when we die, we are judged for our life, and what we judge others by will be part of that experience somehow. If I lived my life looking down my nose as everyone else for being impure, I better be saintly in my own conduct.

But then the guy kept going with it. Because Jesus was the only man who _could_ judge someone fairly, as a perfect man. But that's a standard in the context of being fallen. Not sinning is an impossible feat of self-control and piety. But Man is _supposed_ to be that way, creation was "good" until Adam. In the context of Man's full nature, not sinning is how we're supposed to be. Which is what you want in a judge, somehow who can see both sides, be neutral. Someone who is good in the scope of sinless man would be alien to us, unable to understand sinners, in the same way I'd have a hard time judging infanticide among tribal people because of superstition about jinxes. Whereas the judges we have are all fallen, they're scumbags among scumbags, maybe to lesser extents, but never sinless. So their rulings, anything anyone judges another person for, are innately unjust. Which makes sense of why Catholics are against the death penalty, but not why Orthodox are not.

It was an interesting little reddit slapfight, anyway. I knew the "judge not bro" meme was stupid, but I'd never seen someone articulate why so well, or go into the way ancients would've interpreted. Today, it's more, "don't have standards, kowtow to malcontents and weirdos."

And a farming book for good measure: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BB ... tkin_p1_i3

[Ragabul]

The Complicated Legacy of E. O. Wilson

Setting the Record Straight: Open Letter on E. O. Wilson Legacy

The Scientific American pillories a prominent scientist who died last December for vague thought crimes and some other scientists write a letter in his defense.

@theology (or really more Christian practice in this example)

► Show Spoiler

It also gets into all that "there is no sharia equivalent in Christianity" thing I said earlier. Core Christian texts (in the form of the Bible, Paul, and some early Church fathers) barely (and ambiguously) tell you how to organize the church, let alone society. Theories of Christian governance were developed much later and debates over the precise role of state vs church goes back into the early middle ages at least. Even *church* governance rules didn't solidify until centuries after the death of Christ. As one example, priests were a mixed bag of celibates and married men until the 9th century or later.

And yet, Christians are clearly not supposed to be radical anarchists. Jesus was a lot of things but a freedom fighter wasn't one of them. The recurring them of Jesus and early Christians is a separation from the world, which is probably why hippies consistently find them appealing and ascribing "make love not war" type commune values onto them. But the whole point of such an act of separation is to remove yourself from impurity and temptation, which absolutely carries an implicit act of judgement on the behavior of the world.

There's plenty examples of the texts condemning judging of the hypocritical kind such as you are referencing. But there's just as many about cutting off that which is impure:

"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ e 28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell."

"Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father[a] is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever."

This act requires judgement. The analogy includes cutting off *people* who are in an incorrigible, ongoing state of sin they refuse to repent from. It's usually interpreted specifically towards church membership and is why pretty much all denominations have some excommunication equivalent (though very few churches use it these days because our culture frowns on such things).

If you are in the groovy commune and you keep voting for Johnson and getting all jealous about free love and calling acid trips disgusting, you are going to get thrown out of the commune as a disruptive influence that undermines what the people there are trying to do.

This is one of the main reasons the modern church cannot hold itself together on the question of sexual immorality. They are now hypocritically trying to use excommunication on the topic of homosexuality while being A-okay with rampant divorce and promiscuity among straight members. To be an effective church, you have to be consistent on the Christian understanding of the nature of sex. Because your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, sexual union is a spiritual as well as physical act, and marriage is a sacrament. Sin is sin. Sexual immorality is sexual immorality.

*Edit*

In addition to all this, the strain that separates orthodox (little o) from heresies like Gnosticism is that this separation from the sordid world does not relieve you of your responsibilities to it.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

14“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Gnostics (as much as you can identify a central Gnostic doctrine anyway) also believed the world was fundamentally polluted (in fact created not by God but by the Demiurge, a mere lesser being who masqueraded as God and is the figure in the Old Testament). Their escape was to utterly renounce the flesh by tapping into internal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) that only an elect few were capable of finding.

It's an irony that many hippy types finding standard Christianity too demanding on the topic of what you do with your body go off looking for answers in Gnosticism which holds that *everything* about your material body is base and polluted. Gnostics were a lot of things, but sex positive wasn't one of them.

[Ragabul]

Just an unexpected recent softening on my opinion on something from a singularly silly source.

Squirrel hunting has made me hate communism less.

More seriously, I hunt mostly on public land. Up until this year, I hunted 100% around this one lake in Central Texas and on private land at a handful of my dad's friends places. This lake in Central Texas has its own permitting process which has nothing to do with the overall Public Lands Permit. It's also 4 hours away so going there is a big ordeal involving taking off work and driving a long way and so on.

For various reasons, I bought the actual Public Lands Permit this year and have been making various day trips to hunting sites within 1 to 2 hours of Houston this year, mostly to hunt squirrels, which require the least prep for day hunts.

One of my biggest horrors at socialism has been the idea of not getting to own land (I get not all socialism works this way but forceable taking and redistributing/consolidating of large rural plots has certainly been a recurring theme). To be very blunt, I sincerely don't care how oppressive society is for peasants if the only way to make it less oppressive is to strip me of my ability to walk outside into a big patch of nature that I can mostly be alone in and do what I want in. The peasants can just eat it. I don't want to walk down your stupid designated trails along with a bunch of tourists. I want to walk out into it with a compass and a bottle of water and go where I want to go.

But this is precisely what public lands hunting is. (I'm explicitly forbidden from hunting off the trails). I can just take off into the middle of Sam Houston National Forest from any random public road going through it. I could walk ten miles in and set up camp if I wanted. I could hike five miles up the San Jacinto River and fish or swim or whatever I want in it. I can climb the trees. I can wade creeks barefooted. (Not that I routinely do either). I don't have to hang around with a bunch of other humans and never see or experience anything that isn't nature handed me on a plate. (As one example of cool things that 100% don't happen around a mob of humans traipsing down a designated trail or similar, last week I got to hear a barred owl duet. What with most of South Texas being a swamp and how eerie they sound, this definitely left some Crookback Bog vibes).

Anyway, rambling, but I could probably live in my government appointed housing if this was still possible. (Realistically that's not how it works, but in theory).

[Ragabul]

How to Think About War in Ukraine

More re-enforcement that Substack is the way to go for nonstandard nonstupid takes on things. I've taken to just googling *thing I want to read about* + Substack and getting good results pretty consistently this way. In this case, it pointed me at this guy who I didn't even know had a Substack. He's a historian that mostly specializes in WWII Eastern Europe. I've read one of his books (Black Earth) which was really good.

*Edit*
How 14 Independent Voters Feel About America

Price of milk > Jan 6
No lockdowns > fear of Covid

Boring moderates are still watery Reaganites.

You Don't Get to Withdraw "Your Share" of Public Expenditures, Doofus

Main thing interesting about this is that it goes over *why* problems with American schools are not because we don't spend enough on education and also not because our schools fundamentally suck compared to what most other developed countries are doing.

[Vol]

https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/sta ... 3082094598

"Woman physically unable to see peasants assembling guillotine."

She's referring to this: https://www.reuters.com/business/autocr ... 022-01-18/

Which is not surprising. The rampant corruption, impotence, and active malice of our republic alone has soured me quite a lot. Still, something worth preserving, in the sense of a bag of truffles dropped into a septic tank might have something edible at the core.

https://twitter.com/satanic_temple_/sta ... 4210208772

In lighter news, edgelords espousing nihilistic hedonism rediscover "love thy neighbor" in record time.

@Raga - Squirrels - I'm failing to make the connection from being immersed in nature to left-authoritarianism. What you're describing sounds more like what America was, before the encroachment of oversized government for the comfort of bug-people, instead of anything you could expect under socialism. Regardless of the flavor of Central Committee we could get, the luxury of Economic Unit Raga to go off-grid and hunt the peoples' squirrels would be unlikely. Whereas, taking a (figurative) torch to the financial apparatchik we have, and most of government, would free you do just that. There would be nothing to stop you from going inawoods, as opposed to a pencil-pusher allowing you to. Or more simple, one overly structured system is inevitably as restrictive as another, to wade in streams and listen to owls blissfully alone has to be unstructured.

[Ragabul]

I was being extremely unserious. My point was just that some model of living in dense housing *and* having access to stuff like this is actually possible if extremely unlikely. I am *very* pro property rights (and I still am) partially because of the historical reality that people with no property are trampled over and partly for the purely selfish reason that a dream of mine is to own a bunch of acreage in the middle of nowhere and recreate the environment I grew up in. My point was that the second thing is not entirely out of my grasp even if I don't own lots of rural acreage. The first problem would obviously remain.

*Edit*

Though I do have to do the obligatory add that before government encroachment most large game animals were either hunted to extinction or almost hunted to extinction. So I'm not terribly upset that explicit wildlife management was started. The woods in question are also in undeniably better health than the ones I roamed around in as a kid because logging is controlled and controlled burning happens. I don't mind rules existing. I would resent the only thing being allowed me is "woods under glass dome" aquarium experience of woods.

[Vol]

Thought you might, but wasn't sure. Toneless text. Envy you guys for that, there is dense suburban sprawl all around me, couldn't go a mile in any direction on walkable land without crossing a road. When I lived in SC, it was all filled in marshland, all planned communities. Never had the experience of "proper" wilderness, and it's not a pleasant thought. Incidentally, as I've said before, our governor canceled the yearly black bear hunt. As of today, 2 dogs have been killed by wandering black bears. A mystery!

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWt3mLPUs7g

Took a moment to see what normal Americans are into, this popped up. Stupid, pretty, schmaltzy cartoon song about hyper-individualism, hating daddy, all that. But watching it again, what is actually being said here, regardless of context, and the symbolism employed is depraved. I'm not going to watch the movie, but given the last animated film I hear a song from was Frozen, "Let It Go," my sample of 2 shows a pattern that maps onto real behavior. But it's so colorful and fun and catchy, it slips by, and that's a little impressive.

[Ragabul]

Go watch Coco. Easily the best animated movie of the last 10 years and also does not have this same theme on repeat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7tsmR5ybHg

[Mazder]

Took a moment to see what normal Americans are into, this popped up. Stupid, pretty, schmaltzy cartoon song about hyper-individualism, hating daddy, all that. But watching it again, what is actually being said here, regardless of context, and the symbolism employed is depraved. I'm not going to watch the movie, but given the last animated film I hear a song from was Frozen, "Let It Go," my sample of 2 shows a pattern that maps onto real behavior. But it's so colorful and fun and catchy, it slips by, and that's a little impressive.

Depraved in what manner?
Because what I personally see in there is that the lyrics only have impact IF there is a context.
Because it can be read as either;
1) Someone wanting to break from a romantic relationship that they are no longer happy in and find their life dull and oppressive under their lover. (KInda like a woman trapped in a loveless marriage because of old school values of "no divorce because of 'family values'", which is Bullshit on it's own because a loveless marriage is sometimes worse than a non-existant one)

2) Someone caught in an oppressive/restricting environment that wishes to experience new things they've been exposed to because they found they like them, but the other is being controlling and so they want out, or in the very least to experience them and not being controlled any more. (Which would be the personal freedom thing, which is okay.)

3) A kid disregarding the advice of a parent and being reckless. (Which can be read into the lyrics but, honestly, I don't think that's the message given. And even if it is I don't think that's really a problem. Many of the world say that kids are brought up in bubbles these days and not enough explore and shit so it'd be kinda be going against that messaging if that were the case.)


Or is it more visuals that are depraved?
because if so, child beauty pageants exist in the USA today. They are much worse than theatre kids.
Go be mad at that first.

[Ragabul]

Because the subtext of the song on its face is that you are the center of the universe and anything that remotely constrains your hedonistic desire for experience is intolerable and should be resisted. I'd say "Let It Go" doesn't quite fit into the theme as much because of context reasons. Can't speak to this movie on context as it's not one I've seen or intend to see.

I'd say Frozen even subtly subverts the hedonism theme in places because it supplants the traditional "girl runs off to be with dude" Little Mermaid story line with one of commitment between sisters. Moana likewise mixes up the themes. Moana is all about "finding herself" but she is doing so by looking to the history of her own tribe which everybody else has forgotten and she's setting out on a quest to save her homeland. Maui's entire character arc is about committing to addressing things he has screwed up even though he's a god and has the power to ignore it.

Of course, if you want to go down a far-right rabbit hole with this, there is really 0 I can come up with to dispute an interpretation which is something like "subverting hedonism for the good of your family and home is great but only if you aren't white." I'm not an ethnonationalist as I've said before so I don't care what specific people are putting this theme forward. I also don't have a litmus test on movie themes. I just said in the other thread I love TNG though I find the politics derisible and naive a lot of the time.

[Vol]

Go watch Coco. Easily the best animated movie of the last 10 years and also does not have this same theme on repeat.

The last animated kids movie I watched was...a pirated copy of Rio, I think. I assume you've been shanghaied into keeping up to date, so what is the "standard" message? I assume the stories themselves are pretty similar to old Disney.

Depraved in what manner?

The way the rebellious individualism is portrayed, as well as the symbolic visuals. For example, if I asked you to draw an orc to be the bad guy in a RPG campaign, and gave you no specifics, whatever you come up with will impart on the story. Larger or smaller than a man? What color skin? Porcine or mutant features? Jewelry, piercings, scars? No armor, leather armor, mail, plate? Rusty or new? Weapons that require skill or brute force? On and on.

So if you drew a 5' tall, light green, nearly human-looking orc, with gold loops in his ears, a well kept beard, full, shining plate armor, a sword and spear, and some sort of crest on his chestpiece, I would use that to tell a story about a brilliant orc with a Napoleon complex. As opposed to a 7', dark green, hunched over, loincloth wearing savage, wielding a blackened hunk of wood with bits of bone sticking out, with elaborate scars carved into his hide. Every design choice conveys meaning for the people participating to soak in.

It's fair to assume that a very expensive animated movie has not a single second of footage that isn't designed and polished to look exactly as it does, with all the meaning that entails. If the message is to break with a bad family relationship and go pursue a dream, why is portrayed _this_ specific way of all possible ways?

3) A kid disregarding the advice of a parent and being reckless. (Which can be read into the lyrics but, honestly, I don't think that's the message given. And even if it is I don't think that's really a problem. Many of the world say that kids are brought up in bubbles these days and not enough explore and shit so it'd be kinda be going against that messaging if that were the case.)

I skimmed a summary of the story. Girl wolf is a spoiled brat, wants to be in entertainment but sucks at acting, joins up with misfit singing group, changes her character, father wolf says no performing because it'd embarrass them publicly, she runs away to do it anyway, he gets arrested after finding out she's a good singer, girl wolf goes off to tour with misfits.

Or is it more visuals that are depraved?
because if so, child beauty pageants exist in the USA today. They are much worse than theatre kids.
Go be mad at that first.

The visuals are beautiful, very well done. You don't think as much when hypnotized by wonderful animation and a simple, catchy song. That's what makes a stupid message into a depraved one, because it's masked in razzle-dazzle prettiness.

Imagine if the song was reversed. And it was about the wolf girl standing by her father, singing about how family comes before selfish goals, how grateful she is to him despite his flaws, and how "she can't hear" her new friends for trying to tempt her with fame and fortune instead of doing her filial duty. And the visual symbolism implies she wants her dad to arrange a husband for her so she can start having cubs and become a housewife, so she can serve the family forever. That is not a bad choice to make, after all, and it's entirely relatable to real-world stories. And that people who resist this are evil and get punished. Would it be depraved to sell that message to kids under the same colorful, fun veneer?

[Ragabul]

The last animated kids movie I watched was...a pirated copy of Rio, I think. I assume you've been shanghaied into keeping up to date, so what is the "standard" message? I assume the stories themselves are pretty similar to old Disney.

Not shanghaied. I unironically enjoy good animated movies. I loosely keep up with Disney ones and Pixar ones because they still have more enjoyable ones than duds for the most part. I do not keep up with much outside of those though. Or with movies in general.

Can't speak to theme in assorted Dreamworks and lower caliber junk movies, but the Disney/Pixar ones are definitely "find yourself" but this is done with varying degrees of subtlety and effectiveness. As I said, Coco is IMO the best. Though I admit some of that is probably personal because I've got a very eccentric, very close family.

► Show Spoiler

Young boy lives with his multigenerational family and wants to be a musician. His grandma won't let him because his great-grandad was a musician who abandoned the family. In a fit of pique on the night of Dia de los Muertos he steals a guitar from a burial vault and ends up cursed and in the land of the dead. He must obtain his dead ancestors blessing to end the curse, but they won't grant it because of his disobedience to his grandmother unless he agrees to give up being a musician. He again runs away and finds the dead grandad musician in the land of the dead. Through various adventures he finds out the musician did not abandon his family but was actually murdered and came up missing. He reunites the grandad with the rest of the family, returns home to the land of the living, and clears his grandad's name. The movie ends with the family being reconciled to everybody and again good with music.

Onward is a like B- level movie that released straight to Disney plus but it's 100% a "family is good" movie. Totally about the bond between two brothers.

*Edit* The most progressive animated movie of recent years is probably Zootopia and I'd argue even it does a good job at being subtle. It's very much about prejudice but is equal opportunity in making sure to demonstrate that no particular group is uniquely prejudicial or immune to being targeted. It also actively works against critical theory type nonsense by demonstrating hard work is important (and the main character is a cop).

*Edit*

Oh, yeah, Soul. Also a B- level movie but totally subverts the whole "find your passion" theme.

[Vol]

I'd say Frozen even subtly subverts the hedonism theme in places because it supplants the traditional "girl runs off to be with dude" Little Mermaid story line with one of commitment between sisters. Moana likewise mixes up the themes. Moana is all about "finding herself" but she is doing so by looking to the history of her own tribe which everybody else has forgotten and she's setting out on a quest to save her homeland. Maui's entire character arc is about committing to addressing things he has screwed up even though he's a god and has the power to ignore it.

I'm never going to watch Frozen, though I've seen that song quite a few times. I took it as her clothes were her duties, and she sheds them into what she imagines a mature woman is, along with uncorking her ice-witch powers. Sensual dresses and a sparkling palace, with no one around to restrain her behavior. A womanchild's take on womanhood, but not visually designed to show she's wrong, only the glamorous liberation. Which I assumed would be proven wrong by the end, and she'd end up at a midpoint, but I'll note that song is what went super popular, not whatever comes later.

Did see the Moana song. It was presumably the beginning of the movie, where she's complaining how she's being groomed for leadership but wants to go sailing instead. I'll take a guess and say she probably gets to, but also becomes chieftain, in some capacity.

Of course, if you want to go down a far-right rabbit hole with this, there is really 0 I can come up with to dispute an interpretation which is something like "subverting hedonism for the good of your family and home is great but only if you aren't white." I'm not an ethnonationalist as I've said before so I don't care what specific people are putting this theme forward. I also don't have a litmus test on movie themes. I just said in the other thread I love TNG though I find the politics derisible and naive a lot of the time.

The visual design of the characters is very loaded, and nothing isn't by design. I won't say it is meant to be what it seems like, but given how well it maps onto very real archetypes and pipelines, it's hard not to see at least subconscious intent. As a matter of artistic speech, whatever. In the backdrop of rapid, degenerative change, at every level of society, seemingly with a targeted malice, it is becoming extremely difficult to stay moored to ideology. If you go down the far-right rabbit hole, you end up with Hitler, Christ, or Kaczynski, and all that.

*Edit* The most progressive animated movie of recent years is probably Zootopia and I'd argue even it does a good job at being subtle. It's very much about prejudice but is equal opportunity in making sure to demonstrate that no particular group is uniquely prejudicial or immune to being targeted. It also actively works against critical theory type nonsense by demonstrating hard work is important (and the main character is a cop).

Ah, I did see Zootopia, actually. I liked it a lot, and I remember being surprised it emphasized those themes. Felt a little anachronistic almost. Judy was not fit to be a cop like the giant male animals, so she leveraged what she could do to an effective level, not become GI Jane. It both validated stereotypes as a real thing, but subverted them as not binding. I wouldn't call that progressive so much as being what we once were aiming for in America, which might seem progressive in the face of racial determinism.

[Ragabul]

but I'll note that song is what went super popular, not whatever comes later.

Better than the little girl princess par excellence thing it finally supplanted after 30 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXKlJuO07eM

I've said before that on some level, these songs work as female equivalent of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVcLIfSC4OE

For all this song is from Mulan, to a one all the people I've met who love this song are dudes. My reaction is like "yep, not particularly noteworthy Disney song." (Though this is actually my reaction to the "female" ones as well).

It's a form of idealistic escapism into a cliche gendered archetype. I don't really have an issue with this. Seems healthy on some level.

*Edit* I also went back and watched the Little Mermaid for the first time in like 20 years a few months back and the movie was more subtle than I remember. I remember Tritan being a kind of irredeemable asshole, but as an adult you notice that his whole shtick is that he doesn't want Ariel to be killed by "fish-eaters" which is, you know, pretty damn reasonable actually.

[Mazder]

Because the subtext of the song on its face is that you are the center of the universe and anything that remotely constrains your hedonistic desire for experience is intolerable and should be resisted. I'd say "Let It Go" doesn't quite fit into the theme as much because of context reasons. Can't speak to this movie on context as it's not one I've seen or intend to see.

I'd say Frozen even subtly subverts the hedonism theme in places because it supplants the traditional "girl runs off to be with dude" Little Mermaid story line with one of commitment between sisters. Moana likewise mixes up the themes. Moana is all about "finding herself" but she is doing so by looking to the history of her own tribe which everybody else has forgotten and she's setting out on a quest to save her homeland. Maui's entire character arc is about committing to addressing things he has screwed up even though he's a god and has the power to ignore it.

Of course, if you want to go down a far-right rabbit hole with this, there is really 0 I can come up with to dispute an interpretation which is something like "subverting hedonism for the good of your family and home is great but only if you aren't white." I'm not an ethnonationalist as I've said before so I don't care what specific people are putting this theme forward. I also don't have a litmus test on movie themes. I just said in the other thread I love TNG though I find the politics derisible and naive a lot of the time.

See to me it more reads as not remaining in an oppressive constraint where you can not exercise any self control. Or any self expression.
If the images in the music video are some insight to the context I read it as "rich kid of wealthy family goes to show to audition, expecting shit to be put on a platter for her and get the lead. Doesn't but still participates. Day goes along the lines of 'no daughter of mine will self express (or some other bullshit)/next heir to family wealth got to groom you for the business because you're my legacy'. Daughter rebels, finds her voice, says fuck you to oppressive dad via song, either reconciliation happens or merely just acceptance."

I have seen the firs tone and there is a similar storyline with it but it's a young dude and criminal dad. Dad is stereotypical tough bloke. It's basically animal Billy Elliot, except it's singing and not ballet.

Honestly if "not following the path set out by parents because they don't like the thought of you not doing what they do" is hedonism then the world is honestly fucked because that's just a basic human right. Self determination.
Yeah if they're minors it's a little different but at some point it's either you keep pushing down your kid's interests and make them a hollow husk of an individual or you make sure they're as safe as they can be and learn to love the person they become.

Did see the Moana song. It was presumably the beginning of the movie, where she's complaining how she's being groomed for leadership but wants to go sailing instead. I'll take a guess and say she probably gets to, but also becomes chieftain, in some capacity.

Yes she goes sailing.
No she doesn't become chief in the film.

Ah, I did see Zootopia, actually. I liked it a lot, and I remember being surprised it emphasized those themes. Felt a little anachronistic almost. Judy was not fit to be a cop like the giant male animals, so she leveraged what she could do to an effective level, not become GI Jane. It both validated stereotypes as a real thing, but subverted them as not binding. I wouldn't call that progressive so much as being what we once were aiming for in America, which might seem progressive in the face of racial determinism.

Or the giant female ones.
Like the Elephant cop who's birthday it was.
Or the Polar Bear instructor that kept telling her she wasn't going to make it in trainign flashbacks.

The way the rebellious individualism is portrayed, as well as the symbolic visuals. For example, if I asked you to draw an orc to be the bad guy in a RPG campaign, and gave you no specifics, whatever you come up with will impart on the story. Larger or smaller than a man? What color skin? Porcine or mutant features? Jewelry, piercings, scars? No armor, leather armor, mail, plate? Rusty or new? Weapons that require skill or brute force? On and on.

So if you drew a 5' tall, light green, nearly human-looking orc, with gold loops in his ears, a well kept beard, full, shining plate armor, a sword and spear, and some sort of crest on his chestpiece, I would use that to tell a story about a brilliant orc with a Napoleon complex. As opposed to a 7', dark green, hunched over, loincloth wearing savage, wielding a blackened hunk of wood with bits of bone sticking out, with elaborate scars carved into his hide. Every design choice conveys meaning for the people participating to soak in.

It's fair to assume that a very expensive animated movie has not a single second of footage that isn't designed and polished to look exactly as it does, with all the meaning that entails. If the message is to break with a bad family relationship and go pursue a dream, why is portrayed _this_ specific way of all possible ways?

The closest I could see the visual style being anything close to depraved is one was colourful and the other wasn't. And seeing as the father figure (the oppressive businessman who is most likely one of the villains in the entire film and not just in the story arc of this one character and her song) is probably the villain it's very "evil" coded.

I don't get what you're trying to see.
Is it the spandex based costume? The one we also saw the pig wearing? Because I've seen the first film and that pig character is a mum of, like, 10 kids and a loving husband. It looks in the video the part is originally meant for her so the coding is....if it wasn't the wolf then the pig-mum would be hedonistic?

I skimmed a summary of the story. Girl wolf is a spoiled brat, wants to be in entertainment but sucks at acting, joins up with misfit singing group, changes her character, father wolf says no performing because it'd embarrass them publicly, she runs away to do it anyway, he gets arrested after finding out she's a good singer, girl wolf goes off to tour with misfits.

So basically dad is all about image for his own career and legacy, ignoring her wants and wishes and gets arrested, probably not for finding out she's a good singer because that's ridiculous, even for a kids film (oh I read it was for at best kidnapping and at worse attempted murder but I just glimpsed it so...yeah).

So...what it's better to do as daddy says and never follow a talent because it makes him look bad?
If that's the case then fuck that dad, fuck that mindset and fuck anyone who thinks that's a good idea.
Like, if your kid wants to do something and they're good at it, but it makes you looks bad, swallow your pride and help them live their passions instead of crushing it.
That's not hedonism, that's being a parent.

The visuals are beautiful, very well done. You don't think as much when hypnotized by wonderful animation and a simple, catchy song. That's what makes a stupid message into a depraved one, because it's masked in razzle-dazzle prettiness.

Imagine if the song was reversed. And it was about the wolf girl standing by her father, singing about how family comes before selfish goals, how grateful she is to him despite his flaws, and how "she can't hear" her new friends for trying to tempt her with fame and fortune instead of doing her filial duty. And the visual symbolism implies she wants her dad to arrange a husband for her so she can start having cubs and become a housewife, so she can serve the family forever. That is not a bad choice to make, after all, and it's entirely relatable to real-world stories. And that people who resist this are evil and get punished. Would it be depraved to sell that message to kids under the same colorful, fun veneer?

Except given the context of the film she's basically complicit in a kidnapping if she does that in the context of this film.
"My dad's a criminal but family comes first so I'm gonna stay with him" is not really that good of a message to send to kids.
"Gee dad, I know I said I wanted to try this thing I am good at, but you know what I want to do? Whatever you tell me is right" sounds like a pretty shit moral on the face of it.

And honestly the main reason it's not done that way is because it's fucking boring.
The "I want to settle down and become a tradwife" angle is just dull and honestly always has been. Tell me how you can make that exciting enough to make it entertaining for kids . Because honestly I don't think it's actually possible without it sounding like "get in the kitchen, make babies, stay at home, be a board for the man of the house to walk all over".

Because if we take it from the angle of the character doesn't want to join the singing group they'd not have auditioned in the first place and there would be no conflict to arise and the singing group would never have heard of her.

Also filial duty.
Ew.
Just, ew.
If any kid feels obligated to do the things their parents say with their passions and drive because of some weird thought of owing the parent then just...no. That just sounds horrible. Imagine the burden that places on a kid who just wants to live their dreams/passions, as we tell all kids at some point.

[Mazder]

I've said before that on some level, these songs work as female equivalent of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVcLIfSC4OE

For all this song is from Mulan, to a one all the people I've met who love this song are dudes. My reaction is like "yep, not particularly noteworthy Disney song." (Though this is actually my reaction to the "female" ones as well).

It's a form of idealistic escapism into a cliche gendered archetype. I don't really have an issue with this. Seems healthy on some level.

Must be a location thing because every single woman my age who grew up with Disney loves this song and film.

I can see how it speaks more to guys on a surface level though so not actually disputing that.

[Ragabul]

That's not hedonism, that's being a parent.

Also filial duty.
Ew.
Just, ew.
If any kid feels obligated to do the things their parents say with their passions and drive because of some weird thought of owing the parent then just...no. That just sounds horrible. Imagine the burden that places on a kid who just wants to live their dreams/passions, as we tell all kids at some point.

This goes both ways. You do in fact owe your parents things. Both the caricature of the Asian vision of filial duty *and* the Western image of the soccer mom are anemic, bastardized understandings of the dynamic of this relationship. The parent must sacrifice dreams to care for the child and the child must at some point sacrifice dreams to take care of the parent. Such is the appropriate cycle. I would in fact be an irredeemable asshole if I slapped my mother in an old folks home she hates because taking care of her means I would lose out on my promotion or couldn't make skiing trips or whatever.

"Be yourself" is only half of the truth of life. Telling a kid that divested of anything about duty and responsibility is both irresponsible and cruel. I'm not claiming this movie is doing that as I've not seen it.

As for trad movies done well, my absolute favorite Disney movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmWKvvXzlyg

Mulan is also obviously playing with the filial piety theme. She is breaking one set of traditions to uphold another.

Also not "trad" in the conservative sense but conventional and yet still very cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JijT5vjXuI

(Yes, I am absolutely also just using this as excuse to post clips from Disney movies for the sheer hell of it).

[Mazder]

This goes both ways. You do in fact owe your parents things. Both the caricature of the Asian vision of filial duty *and* the Western image of the soccer mom are anemic, bastardized understandings of the dynamic of this relationship. The parent must sacrifice dreams to care for the child and the child must at some point sacrifice dreams to take care of the parent. Such is the appropriate cycle. I would in fact be an irredeemable asshole if I slapped my mother in an old folks home she hates because taking care of her means I would lose out on my promotion or couldn't make skiing trips or whatever.

"Be yourself" is only half of the truth of life. Telling a kid that divested of anything about duty and responsibility is both irresponsible and cruel. I'm not claiming this movie is doing that as I've not seen it.

As for trad movies done well, my absolute favorite Disney movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmWKvvXzlyg

Mulan is also obviously playing with the filial piety theme. She is breaking one set of traditions to uphold another.

Also not "trad" in the conservative sense but conventional and yet still very cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JijT5vjXuI

(Yes, I am absolutely also just using this as excuse to post clips from Disney movies for the sheer hell of it).

Yeah except one thing is wrong with that.
The child had no choice on being born so their obligations at the ages of teen rebellion are non-existent, the parent chose to have the child so it's their choice of a sacrifice so asking the kid to carry the burden for the parent' choice it just asking for trouble.

And, if your mother had dementia or needed professional care putting her in an old folks home is a kindness because they get care 24/7. If that care stopped your own life from progressing until the point you yourself was in need of that care then your own life is shortened. And you're just passing that burden then off to your own kids, if you had any. So long as you're not just dumping them there and forgetting them but visit because you actually care and love them then it's all good in my opinion.
If it were me and I could no longer take care of myself I wouldn't want my kid having to waste their life taking care of me.

The main difference I have with Mufasa and The Lion King is it's basically inspired by Hamlet and that's OOOOOOLD tradition dynastical shit.
I more read the lesson as being "I've not left you, you didn't get me killed so you never had to run away in the first place out of the "duty/honour"."
I personally don't see it as pro filial duty but more just pro love and redemption.
He's gotta kill his uncle to stop him fucking over his family and his homeland. He had a happy life before and was quite removed before his old life came crashing into his new one. And it was technically his filial duty (in the respecting elders sense) that made him run away at first at Scar's orders.

[Ragabul]

Moscow's Compellence Strategy

Chartbook #68 Putin's Challenge to Western hegemony - the 2022 edition.

*Edit*

On Not Hating the Body

Sounds like some tedious thing about fat-shaming or whatever, but really about the history of the metaphysical concept of a soul. (Granted a large part of it is still inane, but it's got some interesting tidbits in it).

[Vol]

For all this song is from Mulan, to a one all the people I've met who love this song are dudes. My reaction is like "yep, not particularly noteworthy Disney song." (Though this is actually my reaction to the "female" ones as well).

Watching it now, first guess is that it's a celebration of martial masculinity, and punishes Mulan for playing at it. Same with the later song about what kind of women the soldiers like. So in a movie I remember as otherwise being largely about Mulan righteously defying MEN to do THE RIGHT THING, catchy songs that mock her ignorance probably impressed on boys better. I imagine Mulan isn't popular on reddit anymore.

Sounds like some tedious thing about fat-shaming or whatever, but really about the history of the metaphysical concept of a soul. (Granted a large part of it is still inane, but it's got some interesting tidbits in it).

The Russian thing is fairly interesting, mostly in trying to make sense of what exactly is going on there, but I'm more naturally more concerned with the impotence of the US, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

As for the "disgust" piece, I didn't read the author's name, and about a third in I was sure it was written by a woman. Point on the board. I disagreed with her premise out of the gate though, and then it devolved from there, to towards the end where every moral claim she made, I compared against the mental image of elephants shitting in celebration as a traumatized woman brought her mulatto baby to visit them. The glorification of these physical things, followed by harsh, arbitrary judgement for disgusts that disgust her, all as natural as anything else. But within the narrow scope of Platonic disgust, that was the interesting parts. I don't know what to do with it. I could just as easily take the Ulysses excerpts and flip the meaning, from shaking off the immaterial nonsense that divorces us from accepting our bodies, and the social consequences, to intentional corruption of universal values, in one form or another, by debauched children spiting their metaphorical parents. On one hand we have evolutionary factors and necessary biological hazards, and on the other, we have a guy savoring the taste of animal piss and smell of his own shit, as a shocking subversion. Like with Cilia, the angel, who shaves and stinks like everyone else. Reminds me of being a teenager, and bringing up something gross, but banal, that is tacitly understood to be impolite to talk about, and acting as if I'm a genius for it. "It's romanticism, you joyless boob."

The queer part was my own experience, in that I had a phase of extreme disgust of body, but without any ideological component, it was purely and totally, as far as I remember, an outgrowth of learning the scientific material for that age and evolving that into a fear and loathing. It wasn't that I thought we were disgusting because we sullied the spirit, I didn't have that framework, it was the material facts and the material consequences that set me off. And it was growing up and the unlearned stirrings of a metaphysical framework that changed it for the better. So as I said, interesting ideas, but not sure what to do with it.

[Ragabul]

Started reading this behemoth I've been meaning to read for several years now.



It's like *the* book the Bernie Sanders style progressive left tends to lean on. I was expecting something very egg-headed, dry, and full of economic jargon, but it's thus far surprisingly accessible without being vapid.

[Ragabul]

The Middle East and North Africa’s patrilineal trap

*Edit*

The Success Sequence Has Found Its Latest Mark

Obvious problem with this. He says this:

"The SS is instead an ad-hoc way of expressing the authors’ personal cultural preferences at this moment in time."

Admits this:

"For the purposes of our poverty metrics, this challenge can be met by either (1) combining people on the right side of the graph in family units with people on the left side of the graph or (2) using the welfare state to transfer money from the right side of the graph to the left side of the graph.

From the perspective of an overall society, if you are trying to limit poverty solely through approach number one, what you want to do is match every worker with a nonworker and then combine as many of these worker-nonworker duos as you can into each family unit. The optimal family would be something like a unit with 10 workers and 10 nonworkers living together in a single dwelling. This ensures that each unit has the same 1:1 ratio of workers to nonworkers, ensures income from workers spreads to nonworkers, and ensures that economies of scale (which are reflected in poverty lines) are as high as possible."

And then goes on to say:

"You could certainly try to rearrange workers and nonworkers across family units to fix this, but I don’t see any plausible policy for doing that and trying to get people to live with one another when they don’t really want to also seems a bit repugnant to me as a philosophical matter."

You can't have this cake and eat it too. I see 0 reason you couldn't solve this by amending the success sequence to the following:

1. Finish high school
2. Get a full time job
3. Get married to someone else with a full time job
4. Don't have more than 2 kids
5. Don't get divorced

The only reason not to is because of the author's preferences.

Related to first: Across the Muslim World, Islamism is Going out of Vogue

At the end, it doesn't seem to be saying much other than "The Muslim world remains largely a mess. People there are sick of their governments being a mess. Islamist governments are also a mess and so now people are sick of that too." I don't think you can deduce any real predictions out of this other than "Islamists have been no better at stopping the mess than anybody else so they probably aren't worth worrying too much about."

Bounded Distrust

About biased expertise, when the news does and doesn't lie, and how to try to sift through the chaos to extract meaningful and accurate information

[Mazder]

You can't have this cake and eat it too. I see 0 reason you couldn't solve this by amending the success sequence to the following:

1. Finish high school
2. Get a full time job
3. Get married to someone else with a full time job
4. Don't have more than 2 kids
5. Don't get divorced

The only reason not to is because of the author's preferences.

I mean by that metric I am struggling at step 2, will most likely never reach steps 3 and won't even do any of 4, 5 I can do if I never get married.

So I am not successful and most likely won't be by that metric.

So fuck success, lol.

But on the grounds of that communal housing bullshit, I find it terrible as an idea.
I would like affordable housing be more a thing if the "greatest nation on earth" can't sort out the housing crisis.

Mind you i'd also like the UK housing market not to be entirely shit for non-rich people.

[Ragabul]

Once again, USA is not uniquely bad on metrics of homelessness and many cities are quite affordable. It's middle of the road.

Housing problems here (and most places) run up against two straightforward and hard to mesh realities.

1) High cost of housing is straightforwardly a problem of lack of supply relative to demand

2) The choices most people make about housing have a whole lot more to do with aesthetics and social status than they do about economics

Put simply, most people buy the cheapest salt at the super market because there's just not that much difference in fancy vs not fancy salt, but they will usually buy the absolute best housing they can afford because there is a *huge* difference in housing quality by price that mostly has to do with signaling one's social status. This both incentivizes people to compete for overpriced housing *and* encourages them to discourage the building of cheap housing that will dilute the value of what they've bought.

I got roped into this metric myself. I actually mostly don't give a shit about aesthetics at the house level but do at the neighborhood level. We actually almost bought a 75 year old pier-and-beam one-bedroom house in a decent neighborhood because we objectively don't need more house than that. There are plenty of houses like this in slums. However, I don't want to live in a slum. The deal fell through and that house was a unicorn. There are almost no houses like that in decent neighborhoods. (My definition of "decent" here is "my Amazon packages aren't routinely stolen off my front stoop," "there are actually some trees and not just concrete," and "there are not random people and stray animals wandering around in the street at 2 am." So not ritzy by any stretch). In "decent" neighborhoods, the thing people overwhelmingly want is 3-4 bedroom brick houses. Thus I ended up with a 3 bedroom brick house as my price of entry to "decent" neighborhood and the third bedroom is literally just a room I put junk in in haphazard piles and is not even furnished.

I've described the housing market in Houston, but definition of desirable is highly contingent on local geography as well. The reality of Manhattan being an island means nobody on Manhattan owns stand-alone 4-bedroom houses and "nice" is mostly how fancy your apartment is relative to other people's. All things being equal, most people prefer ownership. They default to renting when some constraints of geography, economics, or competition for a desirable spot drives prices of housing so high that ownership is mostly a pipe dream. Even if you don't own the place you live, signaling you can afford to pay $5000 a month to live in said fancy apartment near the beach is signaling something. If lots of smaller, cheaper apartments are built in your area, the overall price of apartments comes down, but the desirability of that neighborhood as a signifier also comes down.

Thus, yes, you can build undesirable, affordable housing and help out the truly desperate. But this won't really move the overall market because by definition the desperate weren't even in the market. They were sleeping under a bridge. To really bring down the price of housing, you need to build *desirable* housing in greater abundance as well. If you are homeless, you *may* jump at the prospect of living in the projects. (Though some homeless people straight up prefer homelessness). If you can just barely afford your meh apartment in the lowest tier "decent" neighborhood, you would almost certainly rather eat Ramen and sleep on a futon than live in subsidized housing in the projects even if it saves you money.

The answer to this problem is straightforwardly "build more housing people actually want to live in" but this runs into other problems like geographical limitations (Manhattan is only so big) and the aesthetic problem of people not wanting their neighborhood to change for umpity reasons (Gentrification! Crime! Pollution! Whatever. Take your NIMBY argument of choice). It is not so straightforward as "build affordable housing." The only way to make housing in general affordable is build more housing at all income levels.

Housing shortages are usually a product of 3 things in particular:

1) Geographical constraints
2) Really stupid zoning policies and/or ridiculous building regulations
3) Nimbyism

[Ragabul]

Thoughts on “Post Liberalism” (I)

More thoughts on the post-liberal academic right.

[Ragabul]

Is Slavery an Evil Beyond Measure?

I've never understood this kind of vague fretting about historical data. You see similar stuff with the Holocaust. The sources are what they are. Wishing we had different ones or better ones doesn't change anything. You also cannot control how the public responds to what you present to them and if you muddle information in pursuit of some goal, somebody else *will* discover that you've muddled it and release it anyway.

*Edit* Put another way. Slave narratives already exist. Having quantifiable data in no way replaces or undermines them. It's all just *more* information to use to analyze the topic and more information is good because it means less ideologically motivated guessing. My hunch is that a real reason for this guy's vague fretting is that more data will open up other ways of talking about it that somewhat move away from his ideologically motivated framing of choice based on mostly anecdotes.

It's doubly ironic because one of the more popular fads in slavery scholarship of recent years is The New History of Capitalism. This seeks to emphasize the essentially capitalistic nature of cotton production by focusing on things like bookkeeping techniques used at some of the better run plantations. This is a dumb thing to do for many reasons I won't write a whole tangential WOT about. But true or not, the only thing allowing people to make the silly assertions trying to demonstrate the slave system as fundamentally responsible for capitalism (and therefore conveniently morally validating 10,000 progressive economic policies) is to abstract at a high level the labor and output of millions of slaves. And abstractions of this kind are precisely what this guy is fretting about.

[Vol]

Bounded Distrust

About biased expertise, when the news does and doesn't lie, and how to try to sift through the chaos to extract meaningful and accurate information

The most interesting of the articles I read here. Not too long ago, I would've totally agreed with the author, except with a different bent. But the histrionics of the last 5 years, and the 2 of corona especially, have shifted me away from believing in that sane, stable middle ground we all quibbled around.

But at least in terms of being an adult capable of consuming adult media (not porn), yes, a finely tuned bullshit detector, seeking the patterns of duplicity so you can have reasonable confidence in what's true, is a very difficult, necessary skill. Still largely true of news outlets, but when "experts" are malicious and/or incompetent, there is a fatal breakdown of shared reality. Because I can understand the patterns of CNN/Fox bullshit, and reliably predict what actually occurred from a slanted piece, and hopefully teach little Vol's if the stars align. But when people smarter than me, with specialized knowledge I do not have, are liars or listening to liars, there is no laymen's filter I can apply. I can't assume that consensus or even humanist principles are to be assumed as barometers of truth with these people.

Thoughts on “Post Liberalism” (I)

More thoughts on the post-liberal academic right.

Dammit, Raga, I just read a different article on this and you beat me to it. Funnily enough, multiple friends, apropos of nothing, have recently brought up how the Enlightment was stupid bullshit. So there's something in the air tonight (hold on).

[Ragabul]

But when people smarter than me, with specialized knowledge I do not have, are liars or listening to liars, there is no laymen's filter I can apply. I can't assume that consensus or even humanist principles are to be assumed as barometers of truth with these people.

The only thing you can do is become a misanthrope or try to get non-dumb about as many things as possible. This later thing is a vain pursuit but a much happier one. I am an expert in nothing. I'll settle for being not-stupid about a variety of things.

Funnily enough, multiple friends, apropos of nothing, have recently brought up how the Enlightment was stupid bullshit. So there's something in the air tonight (hold on).

I'm in an ongoing process of rethinking "where it all went wrong." I think this article (which is plugging a book I have already plugged a couple of times on the topic) is broadly correct that the problem is expressive individualism. The thing I am unfortunately starting to suspect more and more though is that this might just be what makes the West the West and kinda always has been. (Or less dramatically and more locally, it might be an Anglophone thing). And America is this on steroids.

It's related to why I stopped believing the Disenchantment idea about the west. And yet we've believed in something like Disenchantment for a very long time. Saw this excerpt from Chaucer at some point and it surprised me though I don't know why it should have:

In the'olde dayes of Kyng Arthour
Of which the Britons speken greet honour
All was this land fulfild of fayerye
The elf-queene, with hir joy compaignye
Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede.
This was the olde opinion, as I rede;
I speke of manye hundred yeres ago.
But now kan no man se none elves mo.

The Elves have always been leaving Middle-Earth.

[Vol]

The only thing you can do is become a misanthrope or try to get non-dumb about as many things as possible. This later thing is a vain pursuit but a much happier one. I am an expert in nothing. I'll settle for being not-stupid about a variety of things.

The third way is to read philosophy. Never studying it, that makes a person insufferable. But understanding the mother of science lets you see why Little Johnny Naturalism is throwing rocks at other kids.

I'm in an ongoing process of rethinking "where it all went wrong." I think this article (which is plugging a book I have already plugged a couple of times on the topic) is broadly correct that the problem is expressive individualism. The thing I am unfortunately starting to suspect more and more though is that this might just be what makes the West the West and kinda always has been. (Or less dramatically and more locally, it might be an Anglophone thing). And America is this on steroids.

Pretty much. Like I've said, the MAGA movement was Boomers wanting their childhood America back. I think it's more a very American kind of naivety towards threats that aren't martial got us. The ongoing, expediated (2,000,000+ last year) ethnic replacement of America makes the point more clear that whatever "expressive individualism" we believe in is not possibly what it historically was.

In the'olde dayes of Kyng Arthour
Of which the Britons speken greet honour
All was this land fulfild of fayerye
The elf-queene, with hir joy compaignye
Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede.
This was the olde opinion, as I rede;
I speke of manye hundred yeres ago.
But now kan no man se none elves mo.

The Elves have always been leaving Middle-Earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXnef2Ltklg

(He's not a crazy person)

[Ragabul]

The third way is to read philosophy. Never studying it, that makes a person insufferable. But understanding the mother of science lets you see why Little Johnny Naturalism is throwing rocks at other kids.

Sorta. But I'd say it's only to the extent that you realize it's actually impossible to know anything other than via what I've been calling gnosis and then just choose to move on anyway.

[Ragabul]

First tentative thoughts on Piketty. He's still going over historical data for the most part and hasn't gotten to policy prescriptions yet. This information is not new but because of the way he's framed it, I've thought about it in a slightly different way.

Socialism wants "joint ownership of the means of production" on the assumption that the "means of production" and capital are more or less interchangeable terms. In the 18th century the means of production was mostly agricultural land and was indeed also largely the biggest share of capital. In the 19th century, it became mostly industrial machinery and facilities with some agricultural land left over.

Today capital overwhelmingly consists of residential land and financial instruments (stocks, bonds, etc.) These are not means of production in the sense of the other things. They don't *produce* anything other than wealth for their owners. Thus the only way to collectivize them is to redistribute the wealth they generate. Also highly meaningful that *the* biggest predictors of where somebody falls on the have/have-not scale is whether or not they own the place they live and whether or not they own financial instruments.

I don't have an answer to this conundrum other than to say once again that the kulaks (grandma with her 3 bedroom house and decent IRA) is not your enemy. Your enemy is Baron so and so who owns 60% of the stock of the company.

I've never quite understood the singular hatred Bernie Bros have for the Jeff Bezos types of the world. Not because I have any great love of Jeff Bezos but because it's never been clear to me how his obscene wealth is somehow undermining my own position. I don't actually care if Jeff Bezos has a yacht or not by living off his rents (meaning wealth attained without labor in this context). I was never under any delusions I would ever have a yacht from my rents. My hope is my rents are sufficient to afford retirement. But inasmuch as he lives entirely off rents and many people have 0 rents and live entirely off labor, I can see how he might become a singular object of hatred.

Much as I'm not particularly upset by his existence, I'm also not terribly upset if he is financially torn limb from limb and the proceeds of his rents distributed to the masses. We don't really *need* dukes either. The reason my hackles start rising is because the rentless mob has never been very good at differentiating between that obscene entity who lives entirely off rents and those who mostly live off income but use rents wisely to prepare for the future when they will no longer be able to earn an income (kulaks).

Collectivization as a solution only works during the widget factory era because you can't partial out a widget factory to individuals. You *can* partial out land and financial instruments to individuals. Put another way, the issue is not that kulaks own the dirt under where they sleep at night and also have a pension fund. The issue is that the proles do not. There are lots of ways we can talk about to address this issue. "Fuck anyone who own stocks" (a sentiment I have seen addressed on this very board) is not one of them. If it comes to that, I'll side with Jeff Bezos.

*Edit* Put another way. The prole who lives entirely off labor is already in the position that his existence is largely dependent on some entity (his employer) doling out sufficient income to keep him alive. For the prole, interchanging the person doling out the money from an employer to the government makes 0 difference. He utterly lacks autonomy and is in a state of dependency either way. He's just hopeful the government is a kinder thing to be a dependent of. The kulak is the individual who currently exists in a state of dependency but can see a plausible future in which they have at least *some* autonomy because of rents. A better way of equalizing things are solutions that try to get autonomy for proles. Not ones that put everybody into a state of dependency. I think this is straight-forward common sense. If you ask a prole "would you rather be given a house that you own forever" or "would you rather have an extra X dollars a month that lets you pay your rent" most of them will choose the house.

*Edit*

A center right dude and a socialist I read talking to each other. It covers the educations stuff I've mentioned various times above well and is just a civil interesting conversation between very different ideologies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFajtjj23qw

Also brings up "Star Trek socialism" which is ironically fitting for me at the moment.

*Edit again*

More:

Why Post-Liberalism Failed

I know 0 about this writer. He is referenced (from a non histrionic pearl-clutching source) as an actual reactionary.

[Vol]

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1489336004637044746

Here's my hot take: The Russians have a video of Ukrainians committing some sort of atrocity that would justify invasion. Our State Department found out. They're floating this story now to deflate the inevitable release of the video, if diplomacy falls through, because it serves a dual purpose of also justifying intervention.

Oh, also we killed a terrorist leader. That's good. A bunch of women and children, presumably not terrorist leaders, also got killed in the process. That's bad. A helicopter used in the op also broke down and had to be blown up, presumably because the military canceled "mechanics" in favor of sociology courses. That's funny. Our government insists the terrorist had a suicide vest on and killed the innocents, other people insist we killed them with indiscriminate violence. Given the US's long track record, and this administration's specifically, of murdering innocent Middle Eastern people and declaring victory, I'm inclined to not believe anyone.

[Ragabul]

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1489336004637044746

Here's my hot take: The Russians have a video of Ukrainians committing some sort of atrocity that would justify invasion. Our State Department found out. They're floating this story now to deflate the inevitable release of the video, if diplomacy falls through, because it serves a dual purpose of also justifying intervention.

Why can't it just be the baseline unflattering reality? It doesn't even need 3 dimensional chess in the dark. Russia straightforwardly doesn't like Ukraine slipping out its orbit for various pride/historical and security/geopolitical reasons. It's willing to gamble it cares a lot more about Ukraine than the West does and thus the West will back down faster than it will. It has, does, and will use military brinkmanship and various destabilization techniques against Ukraine itself and anybody it thinks might interfere.

Our (and to some degree the UK's) hawkish foreign policy Blob is always super happy to advocate for wars partially for self interested career/economic reasons and partially because they really genuinely do believe we have some mission to deliver "freedom" at the tip of a bayonet.

The American public is sick of it and not interested because 1) experience with Iraq and Afghanistan and 2) the correct assertion that Ukraine really doesn't matter much at all to American interests.

Europe (especially Germany) is wringing its hands because 1) they depend on natural gas from Russia, 2) they don't want to have to spend the money necessary to make up the security difference if the US no longer provides a security blanket for Europe, 3) vague "oh no but Nazis" historical concerns.

This is not me saying "just trust the government." It is me saying that this can all be true with no need for anything beyond this to explain what's going on.

The civilians being killed strikes me as much more straightforwardly a lie if they are claiming it wasn't collateral damage. That seems specifically like Biden administration attempted ass-covering because they blew up that van full of kids in Afghanistan.

[Mazder]

Europe (especially Germany) is wringing its hands because 1) they depend on natural gas from Russia, 2)

Maybe they shouldn't have disassembled all their fucking nuclear plants then, lol.

[Ragabul]

Yeah, that's another example of aesthetics getting in the way of better arguments.

Green/renewables > nuclear and dams > fossil fuels.

I totally get wanting to be 100% green for both environmental, health, and aesthetic reasons. Nobody likes smog or living next to a nuclear plant. (Dams are more complicated because they also are for flood control and people do like big lakes). But current reality is that we don't have the green infrastructure to make up the difference if nuclear plants go down because nuclear plants are hosses. Demand won't go down if you get rid of a nuclear plant, and if there isn't enough green infrastructure to make up the difference (and there isn't), more coal will get burned instead. Getting rid of nuclear plants "feels" right so people prefer a bad policy that feels right right over a better one that feels wrong.

[Mazder]

True but it's much better than germany's current model of Fossil Fuels>talking about green/renewables>Green/renewables>stuff>stuff>literally anything else>nuclear.

Like nuclear isn't great but it's still better than fossil fuels and just removing your ability to use it makes no sense. Well maintained and oerating nuclear energy in tandem with current green energy and moving to more green energy so it can be phased down is much better than replacing all current nuke plants with fossil fuel ones/ramping up coal and gas.

[Ragabul]

Here's a fun one:

https://www.timesunion.com/state/articl ... 623236.php

An actual case of voter fraud that was plausibly bad enough to change an election outcome. But it was some Republicans who did it so 0 people want to talk about it. Repubs for obvious reasons. Dems because they don't want to admit voter fraud could ever actually be a problem.

[Vol]

Sorta. But I'd say it's only to the extent that you realize it's actually impossible to know anything other than via what I've been calling gnosis and then just choose to move on anyway.

More for the ability to contextualize assertions. For example, a materialist asserts that reality is utterly chaotic, because there is no telos, but also it is perfectly ordered, because the physical laws are absolute. So we experience a perfectly ordered chaos. I can't dispute the scientific claims behind that, because I either agree with them or am too stupid to comment. But the premise or ordered chaos colors every claim, and if the claim does not further prove that, I can fairly assume error.

I've never quite understood the singular hatred Bernie Bros have for the Jeff Bezos types of the world.

It's selfishness disguised as morality. You see it manifest in guys like the streamer Hasan, Sarkeesian, etc., whose principles extend no further than achieving and sustaining their own fortunes. Different flavor of limousine liberal.

If you ask a prole "would you rather be given a house that you own forever" or "would you rather have an extra X dollars a month that lets you pay your rent" most of them will choose the house.

Half would take the house. The other half would happily own nothing. The wealthy, educated, professional caste have rejected the concept of legacy, and achieved creature comfort, and as that is the caste the proles are best able to ascend to, so too does that behavior roll downhill.

Why can't it just be the baseline unflattering reality? It doesn't even need 3 dimensional chess in the dark. Russia straightforwardly doesn't like Ukraine slipping out its orbit for various pride/historical and security/geopolitical reasons. It's willing to gamble it cares a lot more about Ukraine than the West does and thus the West will back down faster than it will. It has, does, and will use military brinkmanship and various destabilization techniques against Ukraine itself and anybody it thinks might interfere.

Occam's razor. A false-flag like this would be a very large conspiracy, too many moving parts and failure points for a casus belli. Whereas Ukrainian forces fucking up, while someone has a phone out, has odds of approaching 1 as the days go by. It also syncs with Alinskyism, the DC orthodoxy. Also consider that if this information is real, why would we announce it? Russia coming out with a fake video, of real crimes, would suit us much better to debunk after the fact.

Our (and to some degree the UK's) hawkish foreign policy Blob is always super happy to advocate for wars partially for self interested career/economic reasons and partially because they really genuinely do believe we have some mission to deliver "freedom" at the tip of a bayonet.

https://sites.lafayette.edu/lafayetteww ... us/gilmer/

A lovely article about a debt well paid. I found it going down a short rabbit hole of reading about Tombs of the Unknown Soldier in other countries. If you had to rate Washington, Lincoln, Pershing, Bush Jr., Obama, and any other neocon/neoliberal alive now, in terms of sincerity about delivering freedom to men, would any of them be higher than Pershing?

This is not me saying "just trust the government." It is me saying that this can all be true with no need for anything beyond this to explain what's going on.

It is you saying that, but you're also correct, it is entirely possible Russia will false flag Ukraine to justify invasion. Or maybe, not "trust" so much as estimating likelihood. So why do you think Russia is more likely to false flag than the USA is to lie?

Maybe they shouldn't have disassembled all their fucking nuclear plants then, lol.

Right across the bridge in NY, they shut down a nuke plant a few years ago. Energy prices are through the roof now. It's all so tiresome. I'd rather have a nuke plant next door than the equivalent energy production in solar panels blotting out every open field.

[Mazder]

Right across the bridge in NY, they shut down a nuke plant a few years ago. Energy prices are through the roof now. It's all so tiresome. I'd rather have a nuke plant next door than the equivalent energy production in solar panels blotting out every open field.

I've got one 22 miles away.
It's going to be expanded on soon.

Honestly right now the UK is probably one of the better places to build nuclear plants in conjunction with green energies like wind. Sadly solar won't work, lol.

[Ragabul]

For example, a materialist asserts that reality is utterly chaotic, because there is no telos, but also it is perfectly ordered, because the physical laws are absolute.

The materialist can assert that the universe is *morally* chaotic but *physically* ordered by sheer accident and this is not contradictory. It goes back to my Lewis/Nietzsche divide.

Half would take the house. The other half would happily own nothing. The wealthy, educated, professional caste have rejected the concept of legacy, and achieved creature comfort, and as that is the caste the proles are best able to ascend to, so too does that behavior roll downhill.

I'm very skeptical of this and my skepticism seems born out by data. Legacy is only one reason (and not even remotely the strongest) to have a house. It's mostly about autonomy, social signaling, and space. With some considerable economic motivation of investment and getting your kid into a non-shit school.

A lovely article about a debt well paid. I found it going down a short rabbit hole of reading about Tombs of the Unknown Soldier in other countries. If you had to rate Washington, Lincoln, Pershing, Bush Jr., Obama, and any other neocon/neoliberal alive now, in terms of sincerity about delivering freedom to men, would any of them be higher than Pershing?

Lincoln was no slouch. (Book plug of book I already mentioned. The Fiery Trial by Eric Foner). You can have debates about how central he was to Union victory in the war but his role in directing the flavor of the war is pretty dang irreplaceable. It's not really fair to say "he singularly freed 4 million slaves" but its also really hard to discount him as an irreplaceable component of their liberation. I also think Washington and Bush, Jr. were very sincere. Washington's impact was just lesser and Bush is the avatar of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Obama was not insincere per se but it was not an abiding goal of his either. Obama's foreign policy philosophy seemed to be more prioritized towards "don't step in dogshit."

Occam's razor. A false-flag like this would be a very large conspiracy, too many moving parts and failure points for a casus belli. Whereas Ukrainian forces fucking up, while someone has a phone out, has odds of approaching 1 as the days go by. It also syncs with Alinskyism, the DC orthodoxy. Also consider that if this information is real, why would we announce it? Russia coming out with a fake video, of real crimes, would suit us much better to debunk after the fact.

Why can't it be "Russia really did make up such a video as entry #45689 of various propaganda they intend to use to try to justify invading Ukraine" *and* "the Blob jumped all over it and exaggerated its importance because it perfectly aligns with their agenda and preconceptions."

It is you saying that, but you're also correct, it is entirely possible Russia will false flag Ukraine to justify invasion. Or maybe, not "trust" so much as estimating likelihood. So why do you think Russia is more likely to false flag than the USA is to lie?

It is not me saying to default to "trust the government in general." It is me saying in this exact instance that exaggeration caused by groupthink is more likely than outright organized lying. And I don't necessarily believe that Russia is more likely to run "fire at the Reichstag" level conspiracies than the USA is to engineer elaborate lie/conspiracies to justify war. But I *do* believe the Russian government is much more likely to create various propaganda that the Blob opportunistically inflates than that the US government will engineer a massive conspiracy.

There's a whole lot of space between saying "the government is not usually guilty of deliberate, malicious conspiracies" and "you should just trust the government."

Another variety of Occam's Razor is that it's a leap to assume organized malfeasance when simple stupidity, negligence, or groupthink will suffice as an explanation.

But for specific reasons as to why I doubt the "actual Ukrainian atrocity" idea.

Why wouldn't the Russians lead with this? They've been building up on the border for weeks now and making mostly dumb arguments about why Ukraine is a problem. Why wouldn't they front good arguments?

Does Ukraine have a greater track record of committing atrocities worthy of having a neighboring state invade or Russia of invading territories it has issues with or wants to pacify?

@ nuclear plants

For anecdotal evidence of how much power a nuclear plant generates and why they are so much better than most available alternatives. During the notorious winter blackout here in Texas last winter, the South Texas Nuclear Generating Station went offline because of icing of instrumentation. I was watching this website religiously to track total outages. In the space of basically "click refresh" large chunks of South Texas went from red to yellow. I went "what the hell happened?!" and looked it up. The nuclear plant had just come back online.

As to ugliness of wind farms/solar farms. Fortunately the best places for them mostly contain a whole lot of nothing. Here they are mostly in West Texas which has counties the size of Rhode Island with a total population of like 10000 people.

[Vol]

Minor news: GoFundMe has laid claim to $9,000,000 of the $10,000,000 raised for the trucker protests in Ottawa, the other $1m will go to them. People have to personally file refund requests. GoFundMe will give the organizers a list of charities they deem acceptable to distribute the outstanding funds to. I really, truly hope every one able files an arbitration request with the company, to fuck them out of a fortune in legal fees.

Edit: Oh, forgot the biggest point, it was done at and with the request of the government.

[Ragabul]

Upon further digging on the false flag thing, the government is also claiming they released this information to try to deter Russia from trying this. This strikes me as entirely plausible and doesn't even need the "the Blob is exaggerating a thing Russia did in order to warmonger" speculation I levied above.

I'll amend my speculation to something like this:

1) Russian officials brainstorm various Ukraine strategies, some harebrained, some not. One of them is this weird flash flag idea.

2) Our intelligence (or more likely allied European intelligence) picks up on aforementioned harebrained strategy session.

3) We leak we know this to deter Russia from even trying it but decline to reveal how we know because we don't want to jeopardize this source of information.

*Edit*

Interesting older piece I didn't post but since Russia is currently on the menu:

Russia as the "Great Satan" in the Liberal Imagination

[Vol]

The materialist can assert that the universe is *morally* chaotic but *physically* ordered by sheer accident and this is not contradictory. It goes back to my Lewis/Nietzsche divide.

Under materialism, the physical laws of reality (brute facts of the characteristics of space time, matter, and energy) are absolute. Those laws are the cause for everything that has and will ever happen. So the universe is perfectly ordered, in that it follows its blueprints perfectly, but the blueprints were drawn up by no one, they "am." Perfectly ordered chaos, that somehow produced a subset of humans who, through no agency of their own of course, have the brain configuration that makes them think they know this.

I'm very skeptical of this and my skepticism seems born out by data. Legacy is only one reason (and not even remotely the strongest) to have a house. It's mostly about autonomy, social signaling, and space. With some considerable economic motivation of investment and getting your kid into a non-shit school.

I was baking in the asset value into the bug/pod side of the deal, because I draw a distinction between a house as an investment you can live in and a home you intend to die in. If the survey was posed with the premise that living in the urban pod also includes, in some form, the same perceived value of a house, I strongly suspect the answers would change. Social status is just as easily signaled in other forms, but with less responsibility and speculation.

It is not me saying to default to "trust the government in general." It is me saying in this exact instance that exaggeration caused by groupthink is more likely than outright organized lying. And I don't necessarily believe that Russia is more likely to run "fire at the Reichstag" level conspiracies than the USA is to engineer elaborate lie/conspiracies to justify war. But I *do* believe the Russian government is much more likely to create various propaganda that the Blob opportunistically inflates than that the US government will engineer a massive conspiracy.

The number of people involved in any plan makes the number of failure points exponentially higher. For the Russians, they'd need a large number of extremely trustworthy people to act out and film the false flag, and possibly even more trustworthy people to dispose of them. Then you have the chain of command involved in setting it all up. Many failures points. For the Blob, there is relatively few. Depending on how they're structured, it could be down to 1 man making a decision with little oversight.

That said, if I was (hypothetically) part of a violent dissident group, I would strongly advocate for false flags. If pulled off, the value is incredible, and because they sound like silly nonsense, they give people something they can want to believe in. Though goading the state into making martyrs of innocents would be even better.

And with that said, I am ignorant of how Russia's foreign policy works, but I am very aware that the USA has engineered elaborate lies and conspiracies to get us into wars/regime changes repeatedly throughout my lifetime. So I fully believe Russia can and would do something like that, but I have no faith that our State department is telling the truth. Under Trump, I'd be skeptical, but as he was the least crusading president I've been alive for, and attempted to talk to North Korea, I could cling to something like a child trailing after it's day-drinking mother.

Another variety of Occam's Razor is that it's a leap to assume organized malfeasance when simple stupidity, negligence, or groupthink will suffice as an explanation.

Hanlon's razor. Year by year, I vary wildly in how applicable it is to our leadership.

Russia as the "Great Satan" in the Liberal Imagination

"Globohomo" is a silly meme term, but it's weird how often it becomes applicable to western foreign policy.

The point about people unwilling to invest in the future of their nation (make fuck) is interesting to think about. Because it would be broadly true of the populace, but you don't draw your fighting men from that stock. You draw it from military stock, or the low income, or the aimless. A family man has excellent reason to not go get vaporized on the frontlines, but a NEET has only transient comforts. He won't want to fight, but the latter will never fight to not fight.

[Ragabul]

Under materialism, the physical laws of reality (brute facts of the characteristics of space time, matter, and energy) are absolute.

Sure, but if you think of those laws as being a set of mathematical principles, the chance that you get those by randomly casting some die is exactly as probable as getting any specific set of meaningless, chaotic numbers. (Rolling my billion sided die, my odds of getting the nice clean number 1,000,000,000 is exactly the same as getting 2536942569). If primordial circumstances allowed die rolls of this kind (via multiverses theory or similar), the die can keep getting cast forever until it happens to land correctly. I'm a theist as I've said many times so this is not how my model of the origin of the universe works. But to say "there is an eternal set of circumstances that allows die throws forever that inevitably accidentally creates a temporarily ordered universe" is still logically consistent.

(If you were just summarizing the materialist position ignore this. I'm unclear if this is what you are doing or if you are claiming the materialist position is intrinsically contradictory. It's only contradictory if materialist tries to make moral arguments based in anything other than "because I/a bunch of people I agree with say so.")

I was baking in the asset value into the bug/pod side of the deal, because I draw a distinction between a house as an investment you can live in and a home you intend to die in. If the survey was posed with the premise that living in the urban pod also includes, in some form, the same perceived value of a house, I strongly suspect the answers would change. Social status is just as easily signaled in other forms, but with less responsibility and speculation.

Kinda hard to say I guess because you won't know if younger generations intend to die in their houses until they get around to being old enough to die. That being said, I still don't see a meaningful distinction here because I've seen 0 evidence (other than financial hardship which keeps them from getting any house whatever) which suggests that young people don't intend to die in a house they own. Most people's "house as investment" is not so they can cash out the house for something else but so they can exchange that house for another house if they want to move for some reason. Once you take the step of owning your dwelling (for my purposes I think owned apartments and condos also count) almost no one goes "fuck this, nevermind" and goes back to renting. At a point, this starts to seem like a general complaint about lack of physical rootedness. But sharecroppers and slaves are pretty darn rooted in place but I wouldn't really call that a worthwhile example of the good life in either an Aristotelean or an economic sense. And there's a lot of bizzaro people who would rather sit around beggaring themselves renting crappy apartments in New York or San Francisco or whatever than move because they are from there.

The number of people involved in any plan makes the number of failure points exponentially higher. For the Russians, they'd need a large number of extremely trustworthy people to act out and film the false flag, and possibly even more trustworthy people to dispose of them. Then you have the chain of command involved in setting it all up. Many failures points. For the Blob, there is relatively few. Depending on how they're structured, it could be down to 1 man making a decision with little oversight.

I don't think I'm invested enough in this argument one way or the other to defend one pile of rampant guessing against another beyond this. I'll end with saying that I don't think the Russians have to have been taking this plan particularly seriously in order to have had this plan, especially if it was intended to be one piece of destabilizing propaganda among many. Half of what they do is to simply create an ongoing mental state of "?" in their enemies. So long as their stuff sows confusion, it doesn't matter much that it's easy to see the seams of the operation. Something only marginally better than fuzzy Bigfoot footage would work for this purpose. It comes down to a highly subjective assessment of how big, elaborate, and serious of a plan this may have been. I'm guessing not very.

but I am very aware that the USA has engineered elaborate lies and conspiracies to get us into wars/regime changes repeatedly throughout my lifetime.

There's only been one set of ostentatious lies to start a major war I'm aware of and that was Iraq. The rest has been the Blob just doing what they want while not telling the public at all (Iran-Contra) or else talking about very little and counting on people to not care enough to really investigate (Afghanistan, Libya, etc.) The biggest set of lies they have consistently been guilty of is claiming unwinnable wars are winnable if we only keep wishing hard enough (Vietnam, Afghanistan). (Another book plug on shadiness of CIA in particular Legacy of Ashes by Tim Wiener). There really has been nothing I know of in the way of overt, flamboyant lies trying to trick us into wars with great powers. The closest I can think of was the Lusitania sinking conspiracy and that originated not in the government but in shady newspapers.

*Edit*

Women's Tears Win the the Market Place of Ideas

*Edit 2*

I meant the USS Maine. Not the Lusitania.

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J10_2natxys&ab

[Vol]

https://media.gab.com/system/media_atta ... 7020a7.mp4

https://news.yahoo.com/comedian-heather ... 13281.html

"McDonald had "consumed no alcohol prior to or during the show," added the statement.

The post went on to say that McDonald was admitted to a local hospital where tests were being run to determine what caused her collapse, adding, "Thus far the tests have revealed no underlying medical issues that may have precipitated this event."

McDonald was also tested for COVID-19 and remains negative, the post noted."

There is assuredly a physical explanation, even if we never know it, but the timing is impeccable.

[Vol]

(If you were just summarizing the materialist position ignore this. I'm unclear if this is what you are doing or if you are claiming the materialist position is intrinsically contradictory. It's only contradictory if materialist tries to make moral arguments based in anything other than "because I/a bunch of people I agree with say so.")

Right, that's why the multiverse is necessary for materialism. Or a reasonable theory for why whatever universes come from tends towards the conditions ours has. An infinitely old cycle of expansion/contraction could also work, but has the problem all natural infinites do. So not contradictory, but assumes an infinitely unlikely natural event _is_ more likely than any supernatural event.

My point was that if I can't know any scientific field to it's known limits, I can know enough to be an educated laymen, and I can inspect the foundation for cracks and sinkholes. If a neurologist tells me he's a hard determinist, we're mindless meat puppets, and he's also doing cutting edge research on decision making, I can know that if his study might have produced results that imply free will, it will not. I could never dispute him on the science of it, but I can know he's a methodological midwit, that his conclusions will affirm what he decided was already true. The mechanics he describes will be unassailable, everything beyond is fair game.

There really has been nothing I know of in the way of overt, flamboyant lies trying to trick us into wars with great powers. The closest I can think of was the Lusitania sinking conspiracy and that originated not in the government but in shady newspapers.

It would be extremely difficult for me to hold that lying about lots of small conflicts and regime changes does not destroy credibility, so long as big lies are fairly rare. In that even if that were true, I would be entirely correct to doubt that big, obvious truths _are_ truths anymore. Like a reverse gaslighting.