Is there a name for when you don’t engage with a subject directly but
prefer to cast aspersions on the meta level?
What if the increasingly difficult to ignore anti-reactionary
backlash is just more methodological malfeasance from the elites and the
normies being normies and falling for it, you guys?
I've noticed this weird attempt to deny that political conflict even exists, it's very strange [https://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2018/03/conflict-theory.html](https://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2018/03/conflict-theory.html)
Five years ago he would do incredible gyrations to try to banish the very idea of conflict from reality. It was kind of impressively thorough, if wrong. As other commenters said, he's kind of phoning it in these days.
I had an epiphany reading [this take](https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/socially-acceptable-anxiety-is-still):
>Anyone who follows politics already knows who they’re voting for; nothing will change their minds. The fate of the free world will be decided by 5,000 people in Pennsylvania who will only remember to vote when the Domino’s app on their phone offers them $2 off a medium two-topping pizza if they send in a selfie with their "I voted" sticker. They'll show up to the polls undecided, casting their vote based on half-remembering something like "Republicans want to resettle illegal immigrants on the moon" or "Democrats want to pass a bill saying that the Statue of Liberty is bi." This is how our political system works, and you will not change it by reading a bunch of articles about who has the better "ground game."
In short: a certain kind of privileged person realizes that they are personally insulated from the near-term consequences of most political outcomes, and realizes moreover that they, personally, have been following politics as though it were a sport, and then experiences this as a "red-pill" moment and concludes that politics *is* nothing more than a sport, that political coalitions are just sports teams, etc.
It seems to me that the rationalist maxim "politics is the mind-killer" is basically just the crystallization of this experience into dogma.
>being working class or being black doesn’t automatically mould you into an engaged, theoretically attuned citizen of a free republic
To be clear: I agree with this completely. What I find so transparently false and self-serving about Mastroianni's argument is not the idea that part of the electorate is poorly informed. It's the leap from that fact to the idea that poorly informed voters *decide* the outcomes of close elections (which rests on what is, to say the least, a highly tendentious theory of causation [1]), and then the insinuation that because of this, elections are not important and should be beneath the notice of the rational person. For a straightforward counterargument, there's, e.g. [Anne Applebaum's piece from the lead-up to 2020](https://archive.is/LUc3j).
In terms of the role of privilege, I want to give Scott [2] credit for [realizing](https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-johnson-or-stein/) that having a malignant narcissist and pathological liar as POTUS would significantly increase the tail risk of a global military or economic crisis, and that this would be bad for everyone, including Scott himself. (This is, to my mind, a rare example of rationalist epistemology and decision theory working as expected towards a correct result.) So why, in contrast, is Dobbs just another horse-race issue for him? I think one explanation is that this time his ox isn't being gored, nor the ox of anyone he cares very much about, which comes back to privilege. (As you and other commenters have pointed out, the straightforward explanation for Dobbs backlash is people realizing for the first time that the issue has real consequences.)
[1] One of my personal hobbyhorses is that because of their obsession with decision theory, rationalists have an impoverished theory of collective action (as [pointed out by Srinivasan](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n18/amia-srinivasan/stop-the-robot-apocalypse)) and have difficulty understanding even basic concepts of political organizing.
[2] I'm going to keep calling him Scott, if that's OK. For what it's worth, I have met him.
Why, oh why do so many right-wing policies like abortion bans, brexit
etc cause extensive backlash, in the sense of decreased policy approval
after enacting them, while so many left-wing policies like healthcare
insurance, gay marriage, abolition of slavery etc don’t?
Must be liberal bias in MSM. Perfiduous cathedral. Cthulhu always
swims left.
There was a political backlash against Democrats in response to the passage of the Affordable Care Act under Obama, leading to big victories for Republicans in the 2010 midterms.
But (might be wrong on this) I don't think there was ever a backlash in public opinion against many of the headline components of the ACA? (Except the individual mandate, which was never popular.)
I’m inclined to blame / credit the media more than anything. They
tend to celebrate liberal victories, bring awareness to their positive
aspects, and decry conservative victories shedding light on their
negative aspects. This may be naive, but it seems like a simple
explanation thay fits the data?
The idea that some policies can actually be “better” than others
based on their outcomes or that left ideas are actually popular because
they address conditions for more people is completely outside of their
conceptional abilities.
I suspect that in terms of supply, there are more liberal media outlets than conservative ones. But on the demand side things balance out, as conservatives just congregate more tightly around a smaller number of outlets partial to their views. So I don’t see how the poster can blame “the media” for causing a shift like that.
I think it's just the complete absence of the possibility that there's a material analysis of those victories that might warrant more or less positive coverage. It's a kind of terminal centrism where you define the sum of politics as points on a number line that total zero, so no matter what policy decision is a "victory" for each party they're necessarily equal.
He raises a good question! Why do people have different
reactions to different policy decisions? It’s almost like, even setting
aside the bananas cherry-picking of examples, we can’t completely ignore
what was done or how, when coming up with a theory of how people will
feel about it?
Is it just me or has Scott’s writing gotten lazier since he moved to
substack? He doesn’t even try to answer the question, just throws out a
few half assed suggestions and ends with a shrug. The first comment is
asking if the post got cut off or something.
His whole writing style doesn't work nearly as well if he doesn't take the time for forty different digressions and meandering his way around the bloody point.
Pretty sure it has , judging from the latest HN submissions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=astralcodexten.substack.com
Also note that there's not much engagement from the HN hivemind, basically the target market for this kind of stuff.
It seems none of these commentators participate in the casual sex
they so do love to talk about. Anyone who has casual sex would
immediately know the #1 reason why anti-abortion policies are unpopular:
the risk of getting pregnant when you’re not ready to have kids, even
marginally, is a bit of a mood killer, and in a sex-positive country
like America, not being able to have casual sex while being sold casual
sex puts a sour taste in most folks mouths.
Conservative policies suck and nature is a leftist.
Also, MAKING ABORTION ILLEGAL AND SEX ONLY FOR PROCREATION MEANS EVERY STRAIGHT COUPLE IS EXPECTED TO HAVE SEX MAYBE 1-4 TIMES BEFORE MENOPAUSE. I do not believe these folks truly expect America, much less the rest of the world, to put down hookups and bar dates and strip clubs.
OK, that’s not how it works. You’ve got to get your facts straight if you want to sneer effectively.
The expectation is that wives are available to their husbands to service him whenever he chooses. EvoPsych something something sex drive something provider something nurturer something something competition.
Quiverfull is how the Irish became the most powerful nation on earth and defeated poverty forever.
ETA: This is not a comment on evangelical's or Ireland's religious and policy history, just rationalist's reasoning style.
Ah so, in this sense, casual sex is still leading to pregnancy, it’s just the wife should be ready to pump kids out forever until menopause because she’s actually very happy doing nothing but raising kids all day.
Or even just because conservative policies are unpopular but the US system is designed to give them disproportionate power and they sometimes achieve minority rule
Something that’s super frustrating about SSC’s writing style is when
he asserts that one position implies another when there’s no clear
implication.
E.g. Liberalism being on the right side of history meaning that
people won’t react to liberal victories but will attack conservative
ones is clearly a non sequitur. Declaring something to be on the right
or wrong side of history seems to be a claim about ultimate results, not
about process. Something can be on the right side of history and still
have a long struggle with violent opposition (see abolitionism).
I actually thought maybe he meant that people believe that liberalism
is on the right side of history, and so reflexively support liberal
positions and oppose conservative ones. But the passage is claiming
liberalism’s right-sidedness is why liberal victories receive less
opposition.
Is there a name for when you don’t engage with a subject directly but prefer to cast aspersions on the meta level?
What if the increasingly difficult to ignore anti-reactionary backlash is just more methodological malfeasance from the elites and the normies being normies and falling for it, you guys?
[deleted]
Why, oh why do so many right-wing policies like abortion bans, brexit etc cause extensive backlash, in the sense of decreased policy approval after enacting them, while so many left-wing policies like healthcare insurance, gay marriage, abolition of slavery etc don’t?
Must be liberal bias in MSM. Perfiduous cathedral. Cthulhu always swims left.
cf quote/meme https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312
How come when idiots fuck everything up, everyone gets mad, but when normal people make an ounce of social progress the majority view it as a victory?
Goddamn, look at this comment:
The idea that some policies can actually be “better” than others based on their outcomes or that left ideas are actually popular because they address conditions for more people is completely outside of their conceptional abilities.
He raises a good question! Why do people have different reactions to different policy decisions? It’s almost like, even setting aside the bananas cherry-picking of examples, we can’t completely ignore what was done or how, when coming up with a theory of how people will feel about it?
Is it just me or has Scott’s writing gotten lazier since he moved to substack? He doesn’t even try to answer the question, just throws out a few half assed suggestions and ends with a shrug. The first comment is asking if the post got cut off or something.
It seems none of these commentators participate in the casual sex they so do love to talk about. Anyone who has casual sex would immediately know the #1 reason why anti-abortion policies are unpopular: the risk of getting pregnant when you’re not ready to have kids, even marginally, is a bit of a mood killer, and in a sex-positive country like America, not being able to have casual sex while being sold casual sex puts a sour taste in most folks mouths.
Conservative policies suck and nature is a leftist.
It certainly cannot be because conservative policies are bad and people know they are bad.
Something that’s super frustrating about SSC’s writing style is when he asserts that one position implies another when there’s no clear implication.
E.g. Liberalism being on the right side of history meaning that people won’t react to liberal victories but will attack conservative ones is clearly a non sequitur. Declaring something to be on the right or wrong side of history seems to be a claim about ultimate results, not about process. Something can be on the right side of history and still have a long struggle with violent opposition (see abolitionism).
I actually thought maybe he meant that people believe that liberalism is on the right side of history, and so reflexively support liberal positions and oppose conservative ones. But the passage is claiming liberalism’s right-sidedness is why liberal victories receive less opposition.
How to say nothing in 500 words.