United States Politics Thread 46

[Travis B.]

Also the actually existing Transhumanist Party under Zoltan Istvan is a shitshow, but I'd really like to see the NSF set aside money for mechanical augmentation (healthy individuals replacing their body parts with superhuman mechanical equivalents)

Of course we will see mechanical assistance for disabled people long before that, and the technology we have for assisting disabled people is currently so primitive that it is very hard to imagine technology that would make healthy people better than they already were appearing anywhere in the foreseeable future.

[Linguoboy]

If you want me to defend myself, you can use the quote button and show me my own words .... but I'm not going to be roped into defending an argument that I never made and which I don't agree with. If I don't see my own words on the screen, then it's not really my opinion that's being questioned.

Okay, Pabappa, here are your actual words:

In my experience, conservatives have a much better grasp on leftists' thought processes than leftists do on ours. So many leftists seem to, at best, view conservatives as no more than miseducated leftists, as if our interests are the same as yours but we just can't see it ............and at worst, as an evil group with no legitimate interests, and wholly undeserving of compassion, let alone debate. Read upthread if you don't see what I mean, and it's certainly not just confined to this community. I've never seen this sort of thing from the Right.

Not only do you not make it clear you're only contrasting two online communities, you even include the line "it's certainly not just confined to this community", which has the effect of completely opening up the scope of the statement. Maybe you thought it was obvious that you only meant to expand the scope to a few other online communities of which you are a part but you don't say this. You can't fault us for not taking into account statements you never actually made.

Yes, you did clarify this, but in a way that looks weasly, because it reduced the scope of your sources of evidence but not of your generalisation. Your original generalisation is not--cannot be--about "conservatives" and "leftists", only about the people you subjectively define as "conservatives" and "leftists" in a tiny subset of the Internet. That's fine, you don't have to talk about the larger world of political discourse if you don't want to, but be honest with us and--more importantly--yourself about what you're actually doing. You haven't really discovered any deeper truths about two divergent mindsets among humanity; you've just noticed a small-scale pattern among a statistically insignificant number of posts (which coincidentally happens to confirm your underlying intellectual biases). Despite this you continue to talk as if you have hit on a generalisable truth. Every attempt to lay bare the fallacious nature of this argument you take as further proof that the argument itself is sound.

As I said before, the argument you've constructed is effectively self-confirming and irrefutable. I can't go to the conservative communities you're talking about and independently verify that the posters there actually understand how leftists think. I have only your word to go on. But because of the flaws in your argumentation noted above, I have no reason to put faith in your ability to judge. Moreover, I can look at the larger world of political discourse and easily find examples which refute your argument--examples which you claim you don't need to deal with because reasons.

Now that we're this deep into metaargumentation, there's really no hope of find a way back out, but if there were, I think it would start with you answering Moose-tache's challenge:

Pabappa: I would love to see you actually respond to linguoboy's argument. How are we to know that bad behavior is limited to "the Left," if we are not allowed to call the shouty men on TV/Congress "the Right?"

You've presented a thesis based an extremely limited number of examples. You claim that it's generalisable far beyond the communities which gave rise to it. Now prove it. Explain to us why people who call themselves "conservatives" and make the same arguments as other self-identified conservatives like you shouldn't qualify as "conservatives" for the purposes of testing your hypothesis. Tell us where we are allowed to look for counterexamples and explain to us what justifies limiting the pool to only those examples for a statement which purports to be of general validity.

[Ares Land]

Thought experiment:
What if a radically socially liberal but anti-identity politics movement emerges, a hard center analogue of the Claremont institute, advocating for the following policies:
(...)

Evidently not for the US, but leave the transhumanism aside and you could make quite a career in France based on that list.

[Nachtswalbe]

Thought experiment:
What if a radically socially liberal but anti-identity politics movement emerges, a hard center analogue of the Claremont institute, advocating for the following policies:
(...)

Evidently not for the US, but leave the transhumanism aside and you could make quite a career in France based on that list.

The bans on dresses and candidate-competency-boards?

[Ares Land]

The bans on dresses and candidate-competency-boards?

Okay, not these two!

(I personally disagree with most of your list, but I do like the idea of a candidate-competency board.)

[Travis B.]

Nachtswalbe, you have managed to construct a utopia that is highly objectionable to as many people as possible, myself included, no matter what their political positions.

[Nachtswalbe]

Nachtswalbe, you have managed to construct a utopia that is highly objectionable to as many people as possible, myself included, no matter what their political positions.

Well then, if it isn't the consequence of guzzling bizzare ideologies from twitter and beyond (the ban on gendered clothing from gender abolitionism and Soviet/Maoist campaigns against traditional femininity, the candidate competency boards from Post-liberalism from Our Father's Stars from www.alternatehistory.com , the creches from the Garderista movement of Look to the West from www.alternatehistory.com, the English-language requirement from certain Assimilationist American liberals, and the anti-nationalist twitter account @zanyfen ) and coming to believe bits and pieces of these doctrines

Even in middle school I had few friends and read John Michael Greer
s the Archdruid Report which predicted the Long Descent into preindustriality due to a perfect storm of climate change, resource shortages, peak oil etc. , later the Russian Survivalist Dmitri Orlov, and of course the esteemed Ribbonfarm set Venkatesh Rao, Sarah Perry, Mike Traven etc.

And of course my life which I fucked up and was fucked up by, so it's no surprise my personal beliefs are ... off,

Part of my desire to legalize suicide comes from personal experience.

Twitter is a hotbed for mutual-radicalization as people say and increasingly come to believe crazy shit

[Travis B.]

Nachtswalbe, you have managed to construct a utopia that is highly objectionable to as many people as possible, myself included, no matter what their political positions.

Well then, if it isn't the consequence of guzzling bizzare ideologies from twitter and beyond (the ban on gendered clothing from gender abolitionism and Soviet/Maoist campaigns against traditional femininity, the candidate competency boards from Post-liberalism from Our Father's Stars from www.alternatehistory.com , the creches from the Garderista movement of Look to the West from www.alternatehistory.com, the English-language requirement from certain Assimilationist American liberals, and the anti-nationalist twitter account @zanyfen ) and coming to believe bits and pieces of these doctrines

Even in middle school I had few friends and read John Michael Greer
s the Archdruid Report which predicted the Long Descent into preindustriality due to a perfect storm of climate change, resource shortages, peak oil etc. , later the Russian Survivalist Dmitri Orlov, and of course the esteemed Ribbonfarm set Venkatesh Rao, Sarah Perry, Mike Traven etc.

And of course my life which I fucked up and was fucked up by, so it's no surprise my personal beliefs are ... off,

Part of my desire to legalize suicide comes from personal experience.

Twitter is a hotbed for mutual-radicalization as people say and increasingly come to believe crazy shit

You do realize that Twitter is not a place from which reasonable political views come forth, right? Likewise, science fiction usually should not be taken as a model on which society ought to function.

[Nachtswalbe]

You do realize that Twitter is not a place from which reasonable political views come forth, right? Likewise, science fiction usually should not be taken as a model on which society ought to function.

But I didn't make a social circle for fear that
1) the previous social circle I alienated in high school and fragments of which still attended college would find out and tell everyone else why
2) I believed that according to zemblanity - as introduced by a Venkatesh Rao consulting slide, I was doomed to keep being antisocial and end up in either jail or the asylum.
I had trained myself to be a "Dwight Clueless" or "Michael Clueless" as described in The Gervais Principle
https://twitter.com/__femb0t/status/1452042467902164997

[bradrn]

Yet again this discussion underscores my original point, ....that Leftists cannot and will not understand the Right, .... and at best see the need to forever interpret conservative arguments in a way that makes more sense from a leftist point of view, as though conservatives were just liberals wearing blinders. At worst, again, the conservative position is so grossly misrepresented that it's unrecognizable.

In that case, do you think you could summarise the main elements of the conservative position as you see it? That would be quite interesting for me.

This television argument, for example, comes nowhere close to what I said. I don't think it even qualifies as a straw man. I felt it was plain in my original post that I was comparing left-leaning communities to right-leaning communities of the same kind, but even if it were not, I wrote a second post explaining clearly what i meant. To keep pushing the television thing at this point is disingenuous, and, predictably as always, illustrates my point that you feel the need to stick manufactured opinions in my mouth instead of using the ones I've stated on my own.

Thank you for clarifying. I wasn’t quite sure what you were trying to say, and obviously I misinterpreted you; I apologise.

One point I should mention here is that there are left-leaning communities who seem to make an effort to understand the right on its own terms — the Astral Codex Ten blog (previously Slate Star Codex) is one which comes to mind, but I’m sure there are others.

The other, I think, is that people are really sceptical that your conservative group truly has a good grasp on leftists’ thought processes. If they did, how could they ever disagree with us‽ And honestly, I’m a bit sceptical myself… my previous sentence was somewhat strawmanny, true, but I do think people generally overestimate their understanding of the other side. The general pattern is that it’s obvious when other people get your opinions wrong, but you don’t necessarily notice when you’re mistaken about other people’s thoughts.

[MacAnDàil]

Thought experiment:
What if a radically socially liberal but anti-identity politics movement emerges, a hard center analogue of the Claremont institute, advocating for the following policies:

• Official ban on the use of ethnic and racial identifiers e.g (Black, Asian) and a One-Nation policy that "refuses to strengthen the social fiction of race" or "cultural division"

• Bans on all identity group celebrations and heritage months

• Requiring public English fluency as a conditiion for staying in the US for immigrants

• Prohibitions on gendered garments (skirts, dresses, heels) and gendered makeup as a means of 'freeing women from gender norms'

• State subsidized creches so no one has to stay at home to take care of the kids

• The creation of an openly irreligious political class

• Placing all pastors/priests/imams on the govt payroll (and monitoring)

• Combatting superstitions like creationism, anti-vax and faith healing

• Promoting scientific education and rational thought

• A phonetic American alphabet a la Dewey

• A candidate competency board so only "rational candidates" a certified to run

• Sponsoring space colonization and a 2,000 person space wheel in orbit around the lagrange point

• Support for transhumanism as the means of "strengthening America", "every man a Superman"

Drawing inspiration from the 1900s Progressive Movement, Kemalism and "radical-republic" France and radical transhumanism

The language policy here especially is not anti-identity, it's pro-Anglo identity. Would you ban Lakota speakers - there are or were some learners on the board? Or Spanish speakers moving to El Paso or Los Angeles?

And banning gendered garments would alone likely get the support of noone whatsoever: too authoritarian for liberals, and too secular for conservatives.

[zompist]

Thought experiment:
What if a radically socially liberal but anti-identity politics movement emerges, a hard center analogue of the Claremont institute, advocating for the following policies:

None of that is "center". You can't exactly be centrist if you hate most of the population.

What it sounds like is a version of engineer's disease. Highly educated people, almost always white men, feel like they could easily solve everyone else's problems, which are due to everyone else being less "rational" than them.

I don't trust anyone trying to create an identity around "rationality"; it almost always means they are going to be irrationally regressive in their social politics.

[Travis B.]

Thought experiment:
What if a radically socially liberal but anti-identity politics movement emerges, a hard center analogue of the Claremont institute, advocating for the following policies:

None of that is "center". You can't exactly be centrist if you hate most of the population.

And people who claim to be "apolitical" or "non-ideological" very much aren't - they're just trying to hide their ideology and underlying assumptions.

What it sounds like is a version of engineer's disease. Highly educated people, almost always white men, feel like they could easily solve everyone else's problems, which are due to everyone else being less "rational" than them.

And by believing themselves to be "rational", they are blind to their own underlying ideology.

I don't trust anyone trying to create an identity around "rationality"; it almost always means they are going to be irrationally regressive in their social politics.

Elevating a supposed "rationality" simply means stomping all over everyone else who one claims, for whatever reason, to be "irrational" for one reason or another.

[Travis B.]

Thought experiment:
What if a radically socially liberal but anti-identity politics movement emerges, a hard center analogue of the Claremont institute, advocating for the following policies:

• Official ban on the use of ethnic and racial identifiers e.g (Black, Asian) and a One-Nation policy that "refuses to strengthen the social fiction of race" or "cultural division"

• Bans on all identity group celebrations and heritage months

• Requiring public English fluency as a conditiion for staying in the US for immigrants

• Prohibitions on gendered garments (skirts, dresses, heels) and gendered makeup as a means of 'freeing women from gender norms'

• State subsidized creches so no one has to stay at home to take care of the kids

• The creation of an openly irreligious political class

• Placing all pastors/priests/imams on the govt payroll (and monitoring)

• Combatting superstitions like creationism, anti-vax and faith healing

• Promoting scientific education and rational thought

• A phonetic American alphabet a la Dewey

• A candidate competency board so only "rational candidates" a certified to run

• Sponsoring space colonization and a 2,000 person space wheel in orbit around the lagrange point

• Support for transhumanism as the means of "strengthening America", "every man a Superman"

Drawing inspiration from the 1900s Progressive Movement, Kemalism and "radical-republic" France and radical transhumanism

The language policy here especially is not anti-identity, it's pro-Anglo identity. Would you ban Lakota speakers - there are or were some learners on the board? Or Spanish speakers moving to El Paso or Los Angeles?

And banning gendered garments would alone likely get the support of noone whatsoever: too authoritarian for liberals, and too secular for conservatives.

These policies are pro-centralization, pro-homogenization, pro-Anglo chauvinism, and so on - they are essentially for adopting the very worst aspects of the French Revolution (except replacing Parisian French with English), except, perhaps, the guillotine, but then increasing the claimed "rationality" to eleven.

[Nachtswalbe]

Thorne
@ExistentialEnso
in b4 the worst type of dudebro starts identifying as Paul, even though the broader Dune canon is a story of how even well-meaning authoritarians just create more problems

n Dune Messiah (1969), Paul has been Emperor for twelve years. His jihad has killed sixty billion people across the known universe, but according to his prescient vision, this is a fate far better than what he has seen. Paul is beleaguered by a need he sees — to set humanity on a course that does not lead to stagnation and destruction, while at the same time managing both the Empire and the religion built around him.

[Travis B.]

Thorne
@ExistentialEnso
in b4 the worst type of dudebro starts identifying as Paul, even though the broader Dune canon is a story of how even well-meaning authoritarians just create more problems

n Dune Messiah (1969), Paul has been Emperor for twelve years. His jihad has killed sixty billion people across the known universe, but according to his prescient vision, this is a fate far better than what he has seen. Paul is beleaguered by a need he sees — to set humanity on a course that does not lead to stagnation and destruction, while at the same time managing both the Empire and the religion built around him.

Somehow a fictional character who, in story, has led a jihad which has killed sixty billion people is not a good model for how to organize a society.

[Nachtswalbe]

Thorne
@ExistentialEnso
in b4 the worst type of dudebro starts identifying as Paul, even though the broader Dune canon is a story of how even well-meaning authoritarians just create more problems

n Dune Messiah (1969), Paul has been Emperor for twelve years. His jihad has killed sixty billion people across the known universe, but according to his prescient vision, this is a fate far better than what he has seen. Paul is beleaguered by a need he sees — to set humanity on a course that does not lead to stagnation and destruction, while at the same time managing both the Empire and the religion built around him.

Somehow a fictional character who, in story, has led a jihad which has killed sixty billion people is not a good model for how to organize a society.

That's the point I was trying to make - entrusting everything to prescient authoritarians does not make a good ending.
Also: https://twitter.com/ExistentialEnso/sta ... 6340993029

My dad apparently never loved my mom and married her because he was trying to have a genius kid and thought her genetics were ideal.

[Pabappa]

(to linguoboy) about two months ago in this thread you accused another poster of misinterpreting your argument to find something easier to attack. if you can recognize it when other people do it, Im sure you can recognize it when you do it yourself. my pointing it out, several times now, hasnt stopped you from doing so.

your communication style reminds me of the sales practice of overcoming objections ("do you want to pay up front or in monthly installments?") and of child psychology ("did you find the candy in the cabinet or the refrigerator?") where the listener's own opinion is completely left out of the conversation, leaving them to choose between one of two things they never agreed to.

the sales tactic works because customers who go shopping for phones are typically at least considering actually buying the phone. the child psychology trick works because small children typically cannot outsmart their parents.

though, if anything Im being too generous here .... youre not asking me if i found the candy in the cabinet or the fridge, youre telling me that i found it in the fridge, while if you'd bother to look you'd see that the candy is still there right where it always was.

In that case, do you think you could summarise the main elements of the conservative position as you see it? That would be quite interesting for me.

Certainly not here, but if you really really want to, I suppose we could talk through Discord or some other medium that we both regularly use .... though, that said, why rely on me when conservatism is the ideology of half of America, and of most of the world? My opinions are so common that they aren't particularly interesting. if you want, here is a link to the GOP platform: https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/media/d ... ATFORM.pdf much light was made on the left out of the fact that it was the same in 2020 as it was in 2016 ... but i never saw a convincing argument for why it needed to change.

obviously, i am outnumbered here .... and if you mostly talk with other leftists, you may come under the impression that conservatism is a fringe ideology, maybe at best adhered to by one in ten Americans. yet in both 2016 and 2020, Trump and the Democratic candidate got the same number of votes to within a few percent .... perhaps this is where the "conservatives are just liberals with blinders on" fallacy comes from. But that's just a hunch on my part.

The other, I think, is that people are really sceptical that your conservative group truly has a good grasp on leftists’ thought processes. If they did, how could they ever disagree with us‽

because we understand that you, and leftists broadly stated, have self-interests that don't align with ours.

i expect to be busy until early November so hopefully there is nothing else i need to say here.

all the best,
Soap/Pabappa

[Travis B.]

obviously, i am outnumbered here .... and if you mostly talk with other leftists, you may come under the impression that conservatism is a fringe ideology, maybe at best adhered to by one in ten Americans. yet in both 2016 and 2020, Trump and the Democratic candidate got the same number of votes to within a few percent .... perhaps this is where the "conservatives are just liberals with blinders on" fallacy comes from. But that's just a hunch on my part.

The thing is that leftists like myself tend to have the view that not all conservatives share the same values or the same goals - that the average conservative voter does not actually support the same things as the average conservative politician or the average conservative businessman. Hence the view that if the average conservative voter knew better they would not vote conservative, as, after all, their interests are being hurt by the policies enacted by conservative politicians too.

[Vardelm]

Hence the view that if the average conservative voter knew better they would not vote conservative, as, after all, their interests are being hurt by the policies enacted by conservative politicians too.

Queue Pabappa to re-state that liberals don't understand conservatives' interests.

Queue ZBB liberals saying "well, here's what I think they are, amirit? if not wut r they?"

Queue Pabappa to say "ur liberal and could never understand and don't want to cuz ur a rude liberal, so here's the GOP platform because it's not that hard."

Queue ZBB liberals asking "but that doesn't align with what I've seen and rightist/conservative/libertarian/whatever interests aren't uniform across the rightst spectrum."

Repeat from step 1.