posted on June 03, 2020 05:06 AM by
u/Throwaway_sneerer
51
u/yemwez44 pointsat 1591164177.000000
They’re discussing my post in modmail because I civilly and perfectly
well argued that maybe it’s acceptable to blow up federal buildings with
large truck bombs. killing large numbers of people including women and
small children. Even in a hypothetical somewhat abstract argument,
that’s going to raise some eyebrows.
I love the attempt to reduce everything to “red tribe” and “blue
tribe”. Because economically screwed over black protesters and the
mayors ordering them to be tear gassed have so much in common!
You know it’s bad when their political models would be improved by
introducing them to the political compass.
Yeah, it seems like the red/blue tribe thing is, at best, a purposeful trick to avoid doing historical or political thinking. Maybe at one point it was kind of like "from my lofty perch, your small-minded political differences are mere arbitrary tribal colorations, how sad!" But trying to make a serious point while pretending everything is purely red vs. blue, us vs. them? It looks so bad. I mean, in what world is the actual *FBI* part of "the left"?
not to mention that this is not how actual tribes work, according to anyone who has ever read an actual book about actual tribes. however, mere "knowledge" and mere "reading books by people who are experts" is irrelevant to the BIG BRAIN BOIS
The reduction of everything to blue red, with no consideration to amything else is nuts. Esp when the democratic reaction is just reading the bible... or going to a protest and hot micing 'im only doing this because there are primaries'.
The tribes are the powerfull vs the powerless and they cant see it. Even after waco they cant see it.
e: While on the subject of not seeing things, scottalexander can't even see how horrible the culturewar shit has become, if only he would have actually read the project he started, and not just defended it because it came from his principles.
It's an almost too perfect indictment of the rationalist mindset generally. By attempting to filter every possible thing that happens into neatly understandable rational paradigms and then applying them over and over because hey they're useful, they've circled back around into an understanding of the world many times simpler and less connected to actual human events than the chaotic mess they tried to rationalize their way out of in the first place.
Is there a point where the pretense is so thin, and the code names so transparent, that the whole charade is pointless? Because I feel they've long passed it
Like, just say "left" and "right" or "Democrat" and "Republican," it will mean the same thing and be equally accurate[1]. I get the point of code terms to avoid irrelevant (as opposed to relevant) emotional loading, but I don't see it serving that purpose here
[1] As a pedant, I am compelled to point out that Minnesota doesn't have a Democratic Party, in the same way Kentucky isn't a state
These people are not our countrymen. They hate us, and they mean us
harm, and we are fools to try to help them when their plans backfire.
They will not thank us, and their hatred will not soften. They will
simply use the energy freed up by our assistance to work more ruin on
us.
Pains me that my immediate response was “right back at you,
buddy”
Install leechblock the browser addon on your browsers, you clearly need it. You can even setup it to block sites after you watched them for a certain amount of time.
But also their takeaway from "we are protesting the unjust killings of minorities and unchecked police brutality" is "they hate us and everything we stand for!"
So... what is it that they stand for? Hmm
Nah, they also stand for transphobia now in particular, but will go to be anti-lgbt+ when it is more acceptable again. That and greed, and being anti charity when it is done by the governement (because that means some charity can go to the ~~degenerates~~ moochers, which takes away money from the powerful sheepdogs who guard the flock with their hard work)
Mine was - you literally sound like the nazi's speaking about the Jews, and actually, it would not surprise me if that user believes that this was all orchestrated by Soros.
I’ve been out of the rationalist circle for quite a while. I thought
by ‘blue tribe’ they meant the police, so I read the first couple of
sentences and thought to myself ‘hey, this is a pretty good take. Why is
this in sneerclub?’
I read that when it was only a couple of hours old and it sank me into a deep depression for about an hour
There really isn’t much else to say, or analyse about the rationalist mindset here
[I’ve temporarily given up on Dominic’s Basilisk for more or less this reason](https://irrationallyspeaking.home.blog/2020/05/31/dominics-basilisk-part-3-i-give-up/)
There’s nothing really to be gained but selfish self-approbation and careerism from doing that right now
It’s just painfully there, dripping with something unpleasant, and should be left to merely poke at like a child with a stick
He keeps using that word. I don't think it means what he thinks it means.
But I wouldn't expect different from a christian who was mad about the baking a cake for gay people thing. (via their post history).
> The making of a wedding cake for a gay wedding goes beyond doing business. It is putting your artistic abilities to work in dedication of something you find to be wrong. It goes beyond typical business and into the realm of religion.
Also a US christian saying a repeat criminal deserves death, that is pretty much what I expected. [Nice person](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/7bdn2z/til_death_row_inmates_in_japan_are_held_in/dpho0h8/).
And I think the this persons concerns about not wanting to see dead people on social media is more about not wanting to see it on social media than actually caring [for black people](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/gd5irz/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_may_04_2020/fpnv73m/). (notice how the gang member accusation comes out of nowhere).
Yeah, that poster is definitely one of the worst I met in my naive quest to engage with and understand 'the other side.' Honestly, I appreciate the ideals of that sub but the mods are absolutely trash at enforcing them which has generated this toxic circlejerk community. If people have other recommendations I'd appreciate it. But I guess I'm preaching to the choir...
Some other entries from my hall of shame:
[A charitable, not obnoxious, kind take on AOC](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/gq50mo/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_may_25_2020/fs16q51/)
[Another comment from the same thread, 'blue tribers just want to associate red tribers with slavery for elections'](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/gq50mo/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_may_25_2020/fs0xlzl/)
[crush the dumb animal protesters, no mod action! (I guess he made a charitable, non-obnoxious, high-effort quality contribution)](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/gq50mo/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_may_25_2020/fs8954y/)
[Twitter wants Minneapolis to burn (why? I don't know)](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/gq50mo/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_may_25_2020/fs7fqhn/)
[Anyone worried about covid was ackshually just using it as a political weapon to tank the economy and damage Trump's election chances](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/gq50mo/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_may_25_2020/fs7nd6m/)
[A personal favorite, which on digging up actually received a comment from the mods!] (https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/g4mse5/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_april_20_2020/food8pv/)
I tried replying in kind to the comment I linked and immediately got shadowbanned. Honestly, I can't get over that post and how blatantly it breaks so many rules of that subreddit with no action being taken whatsoever.
I don't reply, or interact in any of the places I sneer about, in fact, when I just started my sneercareer, I took that decision (which was just before the ssc/themotte split) and apart from the split period, in which as a new convert I defended this place (badly of course) I have not posted there and here at the same time.
And well, I don't think I have posted there (being themotte/ssc/or any rationalist(ish) blog) in a very very long time.
When I login to my other account and check the comment I'm replying to I can't see the comment from account A.
I think actually it just got picked up in a filter they have by default where newer accounts need their posts approved, I didn't realize that was a thing.
I’ve recently been reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for
Meaning, which is an account of his time in a Nazi concentration
camp.
What really struck me was his ability to humanise his oppressors.
While he was, of course, subject to endless abuses by innumerable moral
monsters, he is always careful to avoid treating entire groups as ‘bad’
(in one striking episode he tells of one particular SS guard who was
always regarded as ‘one of the good ones’ being sheltered by jewish
prisoners after the liberation of the camps). Likewise, after his time
in the Soviet gulag Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote that “the line dividing
good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
So it’s really something that this person seems able to regard 50% of
his own country – including, presumably, people that he interacts with
perfectly pleasantly every day – as irredeemable monsters.
These people are not our countrymen. They hate us, and they mean us
harm, and we are fools to try to help them when their plans backfire.
They will not thank us, and their hatred will not soften. They will
simply use the energy freed up by our assistance to work more ruin on
us.
Are these people taking the ‘tribe’ metaphor that seriously? Like,
they realise that ‘blue tribe’ and ‘red tribe’ aren’t actually a real
thing, right? Having two vaguely-correlated-clusters of beliefs that
people buy into to a greater or lesser extent is very different to this
military fantasy where everyone gets assigned a colour and it’s
all-out-war between two ‘teams’.
What? Those people are mostly silent, this is a genuine protest of
poor black people, and the poor black people are not blie tribe
elites.
Totally not racist to imagine the protests are actually led by the
blue tribe elites…
The blue tribe elites are in fact part of the problem. Has any
democrat started walking with the blm movement? Nope. Has any univeristy
leader declared unilateral support? Not that i heard off. The
journalists most seem shocked ‘they are also beating us, but we are
press!!’. Blue tribe elites prffff. (Yes i get it is some sort of 34D
chess argument, which is silly, as the blue tribe couldnt even defeat
trump).
Ow god he considers the fbi blue tribe… because of waco.
Yeah, it’s way too based for a bunch of limp-wristed rationalist
poindexters. He should have known better
Im starting to think there has been a bit to much interest in
themotte from the fasc.
Unrelated, if i had posted that post i would potentially be in
trouble, glorifying terrorism isnt exactly legal iirc.
posted by a mod
And as the old joke goes; If some rando shows up to your range day
talking about blowing up a church or a federal building, you should
probably shoot him. He’s either an enemy of the people or an FBI agent
and in either case you tell the county sheriff that it was a ND.
What the fuck.
At
least the mods know they have a problem, but in that same post you
also see why it never will be fixed, seeing the problem and then going
‘lets metalevel this problem’ will not solve shit and will just allow it
to fester. (There is a good analogy to be made with this and the
liberals way of fighting racism)
And because so many are going ‘if only the protesters were
non-violent, trump doesn’t have to call the national guard’. Don’t
forget stuff like
this. (There also was the nonviolent occupy protests which obama
send the national guard after as well)
> [At least the mods know they have a problem](https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/gq50mo/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_may_25_2020/fsoxepu/), but in that same post you also see why it never will be fixed, seeing the problem and then going 'lets metalevel this problem' will not solve shit and will just allow it to fester. (There is a good analogy to be made with this and the liberals way of fighting racism)
I don't think I have ever seen a mod response that made me more disappointed in a person I have never met. 'Rationalists' consistently talk about the virtues of thinking, and then refuse to do any actual thinking.
It does not matter if the concept can be generalised if the sub-reddit has a clear, specific problem. There is absolutely no need to make this any more complicated than it is, but they can never resist adding at least two more layers to a simple problem (instead doing any actual critical thinking or self reflection) as long as doing so means they don't have to confront their own inherent biases. They don't seem to realise that meta-analysis is something you do *after* you've already put in some work, not something you do *instead* of work.
Never before have I met a community better at arguing for 'enlightened inaction', or capable of more eloquently demonising anyone who actually tries to make the world a better place for everyone.
> Never before have I met a community better at arguing for 'enlightened inaction', or capable of more eloquently demonising anyone who actually tries to make the world a better place for everyone.
Also ironically dedicated to diversity of opinions, when they have 1-2 regular left-of-center posters, the occasional genocide proponent and then 99% of the sub being center right and constantly circlejerking about idpol.
I largely agree, except I think that sub could only be called center-right in a world where Democrats are considered left-wing (aka the US). From my foreign point of view, they are right wing to an almost insane degree.
It is sad right, a post basically saying 'the far right terrorist was right to kill children' gets 80 upvotes, and he doesn't think there is a problem.
And people keep going 'this is all just toxioplasmosis, nothing to see here' (which takes a lot of rationalization, because then you need to ignore the prison/violence stats in the rest of the western world), just shows that rationalism rots your brain. I'm now sad it took me so long to see that.
that's because the meta level shit was all fake and it always was. whatever it takes to reach the conclusion that violence in the name of white supremacy is good, that's what the mods will land on
I’ve been sitting checking these threads too, and Jesus, they are so
full of shit. That group is well on it’s way from becoming “spectics” of
the SJW movement to MAGA conspiracy nuts
low decouplers, amiright?
Hmm. Reconsidering domestic terrorism. For a motte such as this, what’s the bailey, huh?
Anyway, not the first time I’ve seen a post on the internet with the tell-tale signs of right wing radicalization.
I love the attempt to reduce everything to “red tribe” and “blue tribe”. Because economically screwed over black protesters and the mayors ordering them to be tear gassed have so much in common!
You know it’s bad when their political models would be improved by introducing them to the political compass.
Pains me that my immediate response was “right back at you, buddy”
I’ve been out of the rationalist circle for quite a while. I thought by ‘blue tribe’ they meant the police, so I read the first couple of sentences and thought to myself ‘hey, this is a pretty good take. Why is this in sneerclub?’
Then I scrolled down
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/gueibb/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_june_01_2020/fsj38nx/
You missed this gem. No mod action despite multiple reports.
I’ve recently been reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which is an account of his time in a Nazi concentration camp.
What really struck me was his ability to humanise his oppressors. While he was, of course, subject to endless abuses by innumerable moral monsters, he is always careful to avoid treating entire groups as ‘bad’ (in one striking episode he tells of one particular SS guard who was always regarded as ‘one of the good ones’ being sheltered by jewish prisoners after the liberation of the camps). Likewise, after his time in the Soviet gulag Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote that “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
So it’s really something that this person seems able to regard 50% of his own country – including, presumably, people that he interacts with perfectly pleasantly every day – as irredeemable monsters.
Are these people taking the ‘tribe’ metaphor that seriously? Like, they realise that ‘blue tribe’ and ‘red tribe’ aren’t actually a real thing, right? Having two vaguely-correlated-clusters of beliefs that people buy into to a greater or lesser extent is very different to this military fantasy where everyone gets assigned a colour and it’s all-out-war between two ‘teams’.
lol they mad
What? Those people are mostly silent, this is a genuine protest of poor black people, and the poor black people are not blie tribe elites.
Totally not racist to imagine the protests are actually led by the blue tribe elites…
The blue tribe elites are in fact part of the problem. Has any democrat started walking with the blm movement? Nope. Has any univeristy leader declared unilateral support? Not that i heard off. The journalists most seem shocked ‘they are also beating us, but we are press!!’. Blue tribe elites prffff. (Yes i get it is some sort of 34D chess argument, which is silly, as the blue tribe couldnt even defeat trump).
Ow god he considers the fbi blue tribe… because of waco.
Im starting to think there has been a bit to much interest in themotte from the fasc.
Unrelated, if i had posted that post i would potentially be in trouble, glorifying terrorism isnt exactly legal iirc.
What the fuck.
At least the mods know they have a problem, but in that same post you also see why it never will be fixed, seeing the problem and then going ‘lets metalevel this problem’ will not solve shit and will just allow it to fester. (There is a good analogy to be made with this and the liberals way of fighting racism)
And because so many are going ‘if only the protesters were non-violent, trump doesn’t have to call the national guard’. Don’t forget stuff like this. (There also was the nonviolent occupy protests which obama send the national guard after as well)
I will say I’m happy to see someone reminding this idiot that we tried this before and his side lost. All the Civil War 2.0 LARPers should spend more time studying what happened in the first one.
Countdown to an r/the_mottald spree shooter?
I’ve been sitting checking these threads too, and Jesus, they are so full of shit. That group is well on it’s way from becoming “spectics” of the SJW movement to MAGA conspiracy nuts