Look, I don't see what's so difficult, unlike the existence of cognitively able [insert minority/gender/group I dislike], the existence of the Valar is wholly consistent with rational thought,
back when the right promoted its ideology under the guise of religion, I always thought the reactionary Christianists who run the US and the reactionary Islamists who run some Middle Eastern states had a lot more in common than they were willing to acknowledge. much of that might still apply after the former group chose reaction over religion.
imagine if all those Rationalist think tanks figured out how to tap into that big oil money instead of just big tech money...
I joked with a friend that Varg (the neo-nazi metalhead giga-nerd) is basically the same as ISIS. (The only differences are that Varg dislikes abrahamic religions and brown people).
Not that strange that reactionary Christians also share the same similarities.
Another funny story like this, there was a very Islamophobic member of the party of Wilders, who ended up converting to Islam.
[One prominent neo-nazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Myatt) converted to Islam and became an Al-Qaeda supporter. He later renounced both and developed his own weird mystical worldview based on Aeschylus, fwiw
Even Hitler himself lamented that he wished Europe was Islamic rather than Christian. Some people are just shitheads. Radical Islam is rather fascist, hence neonazis have a natural affinity for it.
It's really kind of fantastic (and by "fantastic" I mean, "awful, but predictably so") that you'd get a community of nerdy white guys dedicated to reducing everything to first principles like some latter-day Descartes and within a decade they end up reinventing racism and sexism, inventing their own esoteric woo, **and** rediscovering lots of the esoteric woo of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that inspired the fascists.
Like, in their quest to be pulsing-brained geniuses they decided to just recycle every bad idea of the last two centuries and then add their own.
I am incredibly confused, does this person actually think that Lord
of the Rings is a historic document or is this all supposed to be a
metaphor or something that I am not esoteric enough to understand?
It's a whole conversation they're having over there. A subset takes LotR as a religious text with some varying degree of literalism, and this needs analysis or something.
The comments below are actually humoring the idea what the fuck.
I only half heartedly lurked this sub for a long time, sometimes checking in for the occasional post so this may seem like an old and tired observation, but don't these people take pride in how "rational" they are? How the hell do you reach the point of "LOTR is real history" from that?
Many worlds hypothesis. Also, there is such a thing as *post-rationalism* where you recognize you can't be fully rational, and that can turn into "fuck it lets commune with demons and shit"
The Jungian psychobabble has been on the rise lately, with the idea that some fictional stuff is truer than true. JP is big on Jungian ideas and various mythology, and it makes sense ‘rationalists’ would embrace something that irrational.
edit: re
>but don't these people take pride in how "rational" they are? How the hell do you reach the point of "LOTR is real history" from that?
My pet theory is that a certain type of people is prone to priding themselves in what they are bad at (without actually getting good at it first). Some are self sufficient in that tendency, most require a guru (one of the self sufficient ones).
Switch's head snapping back and face going limp is the culture war thread being yanked offline by the meddling of busybodies harassing Scott Alexander irl.
Depends on what you mean by evidence. I've only read Scott's claims that someone called his IRL workplace and tried to get him fired, which is hard to prove and that someone, possibly on this sub, doxxed him(I did see screenshots of this, though I can't be bothered to dig it up now). Somebody more talented and dedicated than me could verify the truthfulness of these claims. I believe what Scott said in the sense that I don't wish to put an undue burden of proof on a possible victim of online harassment. I don't think that in anyway exempts him from a lot of just criticism or mockery for the views he propagates or for hosting the culture war thread.
I'm not trying to be combative. As I said, none of the criticism that Scott has received is invalidated by the veracity of his claims of harassment. The type of harassment he is discussing is hard to prove and considering the Internet's knack for cruelty I don't find it hard to believe Scott. Despite his shitty views, he doesn't deserve to lose his job or suffer through a mental breakdown. For that he has my sympathy.
>human biodiversity
wow. Just looked it up, and... yeah, sometimes you can just peek down the rabbit-hole and get a good enough line of sight to tell that you don't want to go down it even just a little.
HBD is what they call race realism when 'race realism' the term became too obviously linked to racism.
Race realism is what they call scientific racism when 'scientific racism' the term became too obviously linked to racism.
Scientific racism is what they call racialism when 'racialism' the term became too obviously linked to racism.
Etc
HBD is more all-inclusive though in that it can also include scientific rationalizations for classism, sexism, homophobia, and even religious bigotry. It's the true one-stop shop for all your master race needs.
It’s fascinating the sheer number of acronyms and theories that white supremacists are able to churn out. It’s like they have a whole mirror universe of history where discredited theories like phrenology and fake places like Atlantis and North Dakota were all real and never challenged.
I want my beliefs to be a la carte. Let’s take pro-life from the Christianity menu, HBD from Pseudosciences, and uhhh how’s the “great replacement”?
wait, sorry, I didn’t get that far because I was stuck on
also don’t miss this other reply
who?
I am incredibly confused, does this person actually think that Lord of the Rings is a historic document or is this all supposed to be a metaphor or something that I am not esoteric enough to understand?
Every day we stray further from Yuds light.
For those of us who aren’t up on our acronyms, what’s HBD/HDB (it’s presented both ways in the linked subthread)?
Thule goddamnit, you’re thinking of Thule
His flair is “advanced form of sarcasm”, so IDK.