The "Raphael posts links to his latest blog posts"-thread

[Raphael]

Right-wingers have a knack for stealing vocabulary. See 'freedom' or 'liberty'. (I'm entirely in favor of freedom, just like everybody else, but when I hear it in a political context my thoughts run to 'oh dear lord what is it again')

I know how you feel.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I feel about the same.

[Torco]

relevant to the 'personal responsibility' deal, yesterday I came into contact with this idea, and while I'm not convinced of it, is strikes me as exceptionally accurate. I hear it referred to as Wilhoit’s Law.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

of course, I'm careful of swallowing it prima facie, as it strongly panders to the "people who think differently than me are, and think how they think simply because they are, evil" part of the brain, but it would explain the apparently contradictory thing here: personal responsibility means 'those people's problems are their fault" because those people are the outgroup, and it means "I deserve whatever good I get" but at the same time "whenever a bad thing happens to me, it is someone else's fault" because I am, necessarily, the ingroup. This way, personal responsibility is -as it would appear to function in conservative discourse- a universal reason for the state to only help the privileged, never the people who are worse off. Wilhoit speaks here of the law, but the same idea can be applied to any other normative framework of allocation of goods and evils: the economy or whatever.

[Raphael]

I wouldn't say that's the entirety of conservatism, but it does sound like a good summary of the conservative position on many law-related issues to me.

[Raphael]

And a short, trivial, tongue-in-cheek post:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... ion-books/

[rotting bones]

I'm not against individual responsibility per se. My objections are:

1. Individual responsibility is not enough to fix systemic issues.

2. Individual responsibility often breaks down into unhelpful moralizing.

3. An exclusive focus on individual responsibility leads to unhelpfully cruel punishments.

---

The Lumosity app has a game called Organic Order that might also help improve the memory of permutations. Too bad it's behind a paywall until it becomes randomly available for a day. Does anyone know if it was copied from another free, independently available game? Or where I can find out?

[Raphael]

I have mostly written another blog post, but am not at all sure how to bring it to a conclusion.

[rotting bones]

I have mostly written another blog post, but am not at all sure how to bring it to a conclusion.

End it by embedding this video: https://youtu.be/3ANufwUPFm8

[Raphael]

I have mostly written another blog post, but am not at all sure how to bring it to a conclusion.

End it by embedding this video: https://youtu.be/3ANufwUPFm8

Ha! I'm afraid I didn't. The post is now up, here:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... -the-left/

[rotting bones]

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... -the-left/

I agree with the general thesis, but who are you referring to as the hard Left? Karl Marx is the father of systemic analysis.

[Raphael]

I agree with the general thesis, but who are you referring to as the hard Left? Karl Marx is the father of systemic analysis.

I'm more thinking in terms of subcultures than theory.

[Raphael]

And another one:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... in-utopia/

In case you're wondering, I wrote the first one of today's posts this morning, while the second one is a post that I had written a while ago and kept in reserve.

[rotting bones]

I'm more thinking in terms of subcultures than theory.

1. Historically, agents of change that were granted extraordinary powers like Vanguard Parties have been weaknesses through which authoritarianism leaked into leftist movements. To play the devil's advocate, Leninists should counter that the only alternative to a Vanguard Party is waiting for a majority of the working class to enter a revolutionary mood. In practice, this means doing very little besides protesting and propagandizing. Is doing nothing special when you have a better than average understanding of the system an abdication of responsibility? If not, how should agents navigate the minefield of power so as not to get blown up by the Logic of Political Survival?

2. Anecdotally, privileging ideal systems over material systems is another pipeline to fascism in my experience. It lets you paint the world as a struggle among cultures. If economic growth is mostly driven by values, then introducing holders of Third World values into the First World can directly make you poorer. I have seen fascist-adjacent influencers become basically Marxist after tracing how corporations structure production across global trade networks. This forced them to learn how "values" arose as self-serving propaganda after supply lines already determined the material conditions of these societies.

Apart from being difficult to learn and master, there's an availability bias against this material. These facts don't seem to be the first thing people remember when they think of life in different countries.

[rotting bones]

And another one:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... in-utopia/

In case you're wondering, I wrote the first one of today's posts this morning, while the second one is a post that I had written a while ago and kept in reserve.

1. The French Revolution exploded, not when the people were downtrodden, but when their quality of life was improving, and they perceived the monarchy as holding them back from even greater things. If you want to motivate people, make them think the Promised Land is just over the horizon.

2. The problem with "equality" is that it's a mathematical concept. What it denotes when applied to people is ambiguous until you elaborate. This ambiguity is what allows libertarians to accuse leftists of trying to make everyone literally the same. Different people who elaborate on it might discover irreconcilable differences they hadn't noticed before.

One benefit of systemic analysis is that it lets you focus on types of inequality that destabilize social systems. For example, corporations are motivated by profit, but, all else being equal, this motive reduces market demand in the long term, destabilizing the economy.

3. My impression is that many of the people revolting against "perfection" were revolting precisely against the "not looking too closely" that allowed their parents to maintain an illusion of utopia. A sham utopia, which, in the view of the revolutionaries, made small people who failed to dare greatly, and as a result, became mere bricks in a wall housing unseen machinery of oppression.

[Ares Land]

And another one:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... in-utopia/

In case you're wondering, I wrote the first one of today's posts this morning, while the second one is a post that I had written a while ago and kept in reserve.

I generally agree. A good question to ask of any ideal proposed system isn't only how it would eliminate problems and conflicts, but also how conflicts in that ideal system would be handled.

I'm generally sympathetic to socialism and anarchism; in both cases, though I'd really like to know what's going to happen when things go wrong.

[Raphael]

Today's post - probably the last substantial post for a while:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... an-beings/

[Raphael]

One last very short housekeeping post:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... now-folks/

[WeepingElf]

Today's post - probably the last substantial post for a while:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... an-beings/

I largely concur with this. Progressive politics is IMHO advisable because people aren't perfect.

[rotting bones]

Today's post - probably the last substantial post for a while:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... an-beings/

True, my progressivism is driven to a great extent by my pessimism. I'm a supporter of direct democracy because I firmly believe that humans are physiologically incapable of believing a truth.

[rotting bones]

One last very short housekeeping post:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... now-folks/

I don't understand how people ever run out of content. If there are n things in your world, then there are n×(n-1)/2 pairs of things. Take bananas and robots, for example. What are the difficulties in building robots that pick bananas? Is fruit bruised too easily without the human touch? Do a deep dive.