I'm getting a little whiplash from the flitting between generic laissez-faire libertarianism and TOTAL SOCIAL CONTROL authoritarianism. They're a maverick at least, I'll give 'em that.
That's the libertarian-to-fascist pipeline for you. He's not even really a maverick - the guy fits squarely in the right-accelerationist camp of Landian/Moldbugian techno-dystopian wackjobbery.
Yeah, it's a really odd combination. A couple of his stances I might actually agree with if they didn't come from such an obvious lunatic, meaning that the implementation would probably end up being evil somehow.
An objectivist friend of mine thinks the government should pay a woman $5,000 if she gets an abortion. Which seems like not such a bad idea, except I don't know how that fits with the objectivist position on government fiscal policy.
Sarcasm aside, this guy isn't _not_ a centrist.
When we hear the word "centrist" we mostly think of boring, milquetoast moderates. Those people exist, but the category also includes folks with political philosophies that are too incoherent or too esoteric to fit neatly onto either pole of the traditional liberal <=> conservative axis. This guy supports a few extreme, authoritarian liberal policies and a few extreme, authoritarian conservative policies because he's just an authoritarian extremist. He'd probably be a swing voter if it weren't for, y'know, the whole racism thing.
Just something to keep in mind the next time you hear a pundit waxing poetic about how someone or other should "appeal to the middle".
Can you really just average out right extreme authoritarianism and left extreme authoritarianism out to call it centrism? Swing voter maybe, but it seems like they are disqualified from holding the center.
imagine having someone in your “community” that says shit like
Complete removal of the prison, replacement with corporal and capital
punishment including slavery (with conscription as an option) and
medical experimentation depending on the severity of the crime (and in
the case of slavery, usually not permanent unless it’s a life
sentence).
You’ve gotta put “?context=X” at the end of the link.
Otherwise people here might miss out on the high octane SSCness that is
a
~1600 word post which opens with
Last week, I asked someone to try to guess what policies I would like
because they claimed to understand my worldview. This didn’t lead
anywhere for whatever reason, so I’m going to post some policies I
like.
Edit: But anyway, this is one way in which /r/sneerclub is better
than /r/SSC. We would instantly ban someone for having that list of
deplorable beliefs (if they didn’t get banned sooner for having a
transphobic slur in their username), rather than welcoming them into our
community. We’d also ban the person who responded to it by saying
“Beautiful list. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.”
Edit^(2): Here’s
an archive of the post, in case it gets deleted.
Edit^(3): The parent post is currently the top-voted post in the
culture war thread. Go figure that /r/SSC would upvote fascism to the
top.
I'm surprised they haven't banned him (I'm 99% sure they're male) already, not for his stances or his god-awful name but for his behaviour. He continually pushes the boundaries of what's allowed on /r/ssc in terms of charity, waging the culture war, etc. and in my opinion has stepped over the line more than some who've already eaten a banhammer. I would imagine it's only a matter of time before he says something that makes the mods pull the trigger on him (who knows, maybe this screed is it) and the subreddit will be vastly better for it.
Most of the top-level items were boiler-plate economic preferences. Some are sneer-worthy for certain, but the post I linked to is what has the real, "oh shit, people actually believe this?" quality for me.
But noted for future posts! I can't edit it now anyhow.
Well, most of them are, but there's also this:
> An End to the State's Monopoly on Violence
Which is some pretty hardcore crazy. He's basically calling for the total abolishment of having a government. Which makes his calls for the government to enslave prisoners, kill adulterers, strip citizenship from people who sleep with foreigners, and police more rather strange. Then, he doesn't really seem like the kind of person who you'd expect to be consistent about things.
> Last week, I asked someone to try to guess what policies I would like because they claimed to understand my worldview. This didn't lead anywhere for whatever reason, so I'm going to post some policies I like.
[I'm the one](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8vhj05/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_02_2018/e1oi7jj/?st=jjg15jbr&sh=3a94f9ad) he tried to bait into that after I politely told him that I'm not interested in debating him on his (what I consider to be) insane ideas. Except more nuclear and carbon taxes, which I'm fine with.
Based on this giant novel of a response, I'm glad I didn't bite when he first challenged me.
>I'm the one he tried to bait into that
I like how he clearly thinks he has some unique ideas that everyone would find either fascinating or offensive when in reality he has pretty much the same positions as the rest of the rationalist community; put libertarianism in a pot with fascism, stir until combined, season with a few sprinkles of misogyny and racism, then throw in a single left-wing position and point at it and say "See? I'm a liberal!".
It's the same BOLDLY ORIGINAL CONTRARIAN TAKE that every other fucking person on that sub has.
Oh that is even better. I love it. So much wrong with it, but as a Swiss interested in politics, this is my highlight:
> Switzerland has a policy that has actually improved its debt situation and been associated with an increased rate of total factor productivity growth. This policy is their debt brake, which keeps spending growth constrained to trend line revenue. This keeps government size relatively constant which is definitely a good start, although it could serve to be smaller most everywhere (private growth should always beat public).
That... is not how it works. The debt brake means that you either need a qualified majority to raise the debt, or raise taxes and fees *if* you want to raise spending and/or investments. And it can actually be problematic if a big investment is needed. Say, your country wants to dig a huge tunnel, like ours does all the time.
It’s fascinating how quickly that went downhill. These are the first
four points on the list, in order:
Carbon taxes and emissions taxes (especially on PM2,5).
This is a reasonable policy that addresses global warming, admittedly
in a way that is overly market-driven.
Dietary guideline reform.
Uh, sure? I have no idea what this would mean, but I also can’t
really imagine a set of dietary guidelines that I would consider
terrible.
Educational competition (including vouchers).
This is a bad policy, but it’s just generic Republican bad.
Complete removal of the prison, replacement with corporal and capital
punishment including slavery (with conscription as an option) and
medical experimentation depending on the severity of the crime (and in
the case of slavery, usually not permanent unless it’s a life sentence).
Exile as a first option.
And this is objectively horrifying and completely insane. “Kill,
enslave, or exile criminals” is apparently the rational solution to
prison reform.
Other batshit crazy nonsense:
removal of citizenship for people who marry/procreate with
foreigners
That’s right, if you slept with a foreign exchange student in
college, you should be stripped of your citizenship. This is a
reasonable policy reasonable people support that should be responded to
with reasoned arguments rather than mockery.
Removal of all protected classes/free segregation
The honesty of straightforwardly calling for a return to segregation
is almost refreshing.
Corporal or capital punishment for adultery.
Adultery as a civil crime.
Setting the precedent of handing out the death penalty for civil
crimes seems bad.
> And this is objectively horrifying and completely insane.
But also legal under the 13th Amendment. I'm not sure about the exile part, but the slavery part definitely is.
Well, yes, the American prison system is horrible and does need to be reformed. It just doesn't need to be reformed by killing more people and being more explicit about prison slavery.
That said, there's a difference between "this is legal" and "this is the policy". The United States *could* nuke ISIS. That didn't make Ted Cruz's comments about "finding out if sand can glow" less stupid, warmongering, or offensive.
I admire the chutzpah of it, yet another fantasy world constructed
around arbitrary requirements with a cheat clause in there for “the
enlightened” (namely, the “exile as first option” get of jail
slavery/murder/vivisection (FOR SCI-FI-ENCE!)).
I remember making things like this when I was 13; if only we’d have
capital punishment for X behavior, it incentivizes Y behavior. What, you
mean people circumvent loophole to achieve X? Simply making Enablement
of X a more severe crime and we’re good to go!
What, bribing officials? We’ll have a department to investigate
bribery!
What, bribing the bribery officials? Custodial exposit custodians
what? Yeah, I did like Watchmen, except for the dude’s peen. Why
couldn’t it be a chick and have her shaved blue vag on every page
instead? Huh? What do you mean misogynist? It’s a fucking comic
book!
>Or, alternatively, make politics into a protected class.
This sounds idiotic now, but I'm convinced this is the next progression in the "ideological diversity" campaign. There are already a bunch of dopey behavioral genetics studies claiming that political ideology is largely genetically determined. There are going to be future James Damore-style lawsuits where being kind of racist at work will be equated to Tourette's and there will be Republican Lives Matter (and Gamer Lives Matter) bills. The only thing stopping it is that US labor laws are a joke so they'll just get owned the same way Damore did.
Whenever I read about his obsession with forcing marriage and
criminalizing divorce and adultery I can’t help but read some serious
sexual hangups into it.
Several times now I’ve encountered rationalists bizarrely fixated on
species propagation and reproduction as a terminal value. If I asked
every single person I know why they got married or had kids I guarantee
that exactly none of them would list species propagation or maintaining
racial demographics as a reason.
I’m beginning to think SSC is populated entirely by robots trying and
failing to pass as human. Which makes their paranoia about AI kind of
hilarious.
Side effect of thinking armchair EvoPsych provides the Rosetta Stone to understanding all of human behavior. If evolution is trying to optimize for reproductive fitness\* and our brains were programmed by evolution\*\*, then obviously thinking about reproductive fitness is the keyhole through which you can glimpse the conscious mind's inner workings\*\*\*. Pair that with a dearth of real world relationship experience and it's surprisingly easy to construct majestic, gleaming spires of bullshit that are just barely plausible enough not to collapse under their own weight.
\* It's not. Thinking of evolution as wanting things is misleading at best, and anyway the reward function is a hell of a lot more complex than "more babies = better".
\** They weren't. Almost everything more complicated than how to make fire is a third-party aftermarket firmware upgrade, to torture the metaphor.
\*** It isn't. Obviously.
Actually, I'm pretty sure the obsession with evolutionary psychology is a side effect of trying to rationalize a pre-existing bizarre fixation on reproduction as a terminal value, not the other way around.
>Several times now I've encountered rationalists bizarrely fixated on species propagation and reproduction as a terminal value. If I asked every single person I know why they got married or had kids I guarantee that exactly none of them would list species propagation or maintaining racial demographics as a reason.
It's a rationalization for government-issued gfs and eugenics. If they cared about species propagation they'd be talking about nukes or global warming instead of jerking about Skynet "x-risks" and the browns outbreeding the master race.
> If I asked every single person I know why they got married or had kids I guarantee that exactly none of them would list species propagation or maintaining racial demographics as a reason.
People who you know is doing a lot of work here (if I asked everyone who I know whether they were creationists, there *might* be one; turns out you hang out with the kind of people you like), as is asking everyone (an exhaustive survey gives different results to people who say things that get posted to /r/SneerClub).
> Whenever I read about his obsession with forcing marriage and criminalizing divorce and adultery I can't help but read some serious sexual hangups into it.
Frankly I'm shocked that reddit user TrannyPornO would have any sort of sexual hang-ups.
The good ol’ “call for race-mixers to be made uncitizens and then
throw a fainting fit when anyone dares call you a fascist.” A timeless
classic.
Yo T-P-O we’re gonna degenerate the blood of Evropa into a big
indistinguishable ball of pan-human sludge and there’s nothing you can
do about it. Stay mad.
I’m seeing a lot of eugenics shit mixed in there. Seems like a good
time to plug the new Peter Coffin video on that sordid little cornucopia
of bad ideas.
>Look at this thousand dollar bill I just found!
Don't bother picking it up -- if it were real, someone else would have picked it up already! Boom, out-RATIONALIST'd!!
[deleted]
Well, you see, he’s for a carbon tax, so in reality, this guy is just a centrist at worst.
Very surprising that their ideas outside of genetics are just as stupid as their ideas on genetics
imagine having someone in your “community” that says shit like
and thinking you are rational
You’ve gotta put “?context=X” at the end of the link. Otherwise people here might miss out on the high octane SSCness that is a ~1600 word post which opens with
Edit: But anyway, this is one way in which /r/sneerclub is better than /r/SSC. We would instantly ban someone for having that list of deplorable beliefs (if they didn’t get banned sooner for having a transphobic slur in their username), rather than welcoming them into our community. We’d also ban the person who responded to it by saying “Beautiful list. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.”
Edit^(2): Here’s an archive of the post, in case it gets deleted.
Edit^(3): The parent post is currently the top-voted post in the culture war thread. Go figure that /r/SSC would upvote fascism to the top.
It’s fascinating how quickly that went downhill. These are the first four points on the list, in order:
This is a reasonable policy that addresses global warming, admittedly in a way that is overly market-driven.
Uh, sure? I have no idea what this would mean, but I also can’t really imagine a set of dietary guidelines that I would consider terrible.
This is a bad policy, but it’s just generic Republican bad.
And this is objectively horrifying and completely insane. “Kill, enslave, or exile criminals” is apparently the rational solution to prison reform.
Other batshit crazy nonsense:
That’s right, if you slept with a foreign exchange student in college, you should be stripped of your citizenship. This is a reasonable policy reasonable people support that should be responded to with reasoned arguments rather than mockery.
The honesty of straightforwardly calling for a return to segregation is almost refreshing.
Setting the precedent of handing out the death penalty for civil crimes seems bad.
I admire the chutzpah of it, yet another fantasy world constructed around arbitrary requirements with a cheat clause in there for “the enlightened” (namely, the “exile as first option” get of
jailslavery/murder/vivisection (FOR SCI-FI-ENCE!)).I remember making things like this when I was 13; if only we’d have capital punishment for X behavior, it incentivizes Y behavior. What, you mean people circumvent loophole to achieve X? Simply making Enablement of X a more severe crime and we’re good to go!
What, bribing officials? We’ll have a department to investigate bribery!
What, bribing the bribery officials? Custodial exposit custodians what? Yeah, I did like Watchmen, except for the dude’s peen. Why couldn’t it be a chick and have her shaved blue vag on every page instead? Huh? What do you mean misogynist? It’s a fucking comic book!
incredible
Whenever I read about his obsession with forcing marriage and criminalizing divorce and adultery I can’t help but read some serious sexual hangups into it.
Several times now I’ve encountered rationalists bizarrely fixated on species propagation and reproduction as a terminal value. If I asked every single person I know why they got married or had kids I guarantee that exactly none of them would list species propagation or maintaining racial demographics as a reason.
I’m beginning to think SSC is populated entirely by robots trying and failing to pass as human. Which makes their paranoia about AI kind of hilarious.
The good ol’ “call for race-mixers to be made uncitizens and then throw a fainting fit when anyone dares call you a fascist.” A timeless classic.
Yo T-P-O we’re gonna degenerate the blood of Evropa into a big indistinguishable ball of pan-human sludge and there’s nothing you can do about it. Stay mad.
I’m seeing a lot of eugenics shit mixed in there. Seems like a good time to plug the new Peter Coffin video on that sordid little cornucopia of bad ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMbvtmb79N0
The best part of this is that some of these things are already in place. /r/ABoringDystopia
Wut is
?