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☖ Forums → Discussion Forum → Inauguration Day, Inauguration Hooooooraaay!
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Inauguration Day, Inauguration Hooooooraaay!
2018-02-12, 1:02 PM #7241
Originally posted by Reid:
I didn't repeatedly call him an "unconscious" white supremacist, I said he's not a conscious white supremacist. You're the one insisting that I'm calling him a white supremacist. He might be white supremacist, he might not be, I don't have the time or the inclination to read that far into his writing, because it's not worth my time.

I don't "know" in a strict sense, it's just a hunch.


omnis determinatio est negatio, my friend.
former entrepreneur
2018-02-12, 1:16 PM #7242
Originally posted by Reid:
I didn't repeatedly call him an "unconscious" white supremacist, I said he's not a conscious white supremacist. You're the one insisting that I'm calling him a white supremacist. He might be white supremacist, he might not be, I don't have the time or the inclination to read that far into his writing, because it's not worth my time.

I don't "know" in a strict sense, it's just a hunch.


DID YOU ORDER TEH CARD RACIST
2018-02-12, 1:37 PM #7243
I think the debate was about someone who is on the center-left trying to convince someone on the far-left that a center-right critique of the far-left is actually pretty accurate.
former entrepreneur
2018-02-12, 1:54 PM #7244
Interesting.

I think the center-right critique of the culturally motivated "far left" is accurate, and the center-right critique of the economically motivated "far left" is pathetically wrong.

And aren't these two orthogonal debates pretty much the two perenial topics of discussion on this board? With Reid being on the wrong side and Jon`C being on the right one (with some crossover, of course, but let's just take Jon`C's last comment in contrast to Reid's recent posts as representative for the purpose of this post). Leftists should stick to their economic message and don't waste time talking about how dark the inner world of some crypto-racist is. In my mind the gazing upon the ugly parts of fascism is more akin to attempting to diagnose symptoms of a late stage disease than a reasonable plan for a healthy society in the first place that would have precluded such a sorry state.
2018-02-12, 1:56 PM #7245
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
Interesting.

I think the center-right critique of the culturally motivated "far left" is accurate, and the center-right critique of the economically motivated "far left" is pathetically wrong.

And aren't these two orthogonal debates pretty much the two perenial topics of discussion on this board? With Reid being on the wrong side and Jon`C being on the right one (with some crossover, of course, but let's just take Jon`C's last comment in contrast to Reid's recent posts as representative for the purpose of this post). Leftists should stick to their economic message and don't waste time talking about how dark the inner world of some crypto-racist is. In my mind the ugly parts of fascism is more akin to attempting to diagnose symptoms of a late stage disease than a reasonable plan for a healthy society in the first place that would have precluded such a sorry state.


In the case of Charles Murray, his views have been highly influential on welfare policy (guess which direction) and informing neoconservative social Darwinist philosophy (not from The Bell Curve, from other works), if that's the only criticism you find interesting.
2018-02-12, 2:00 PM #7246
Originally posted by Eversor:
I think the debate was about someone who is on the center-left trying to convince someone on the far-left that a center-right critique of the far-left is actually pretty accurate.


I did mention that I agree with the criticism in some loose sense, but what I did say was the criticism is couched in far-right lingo and perspective, and that there are much more serious criticisms to make.
2018-02-12, 2:00 PM #7247
Also, right-libertarians are stupid and their big tent ideology let racists into the mainstream. Let's blame them for that. For example, if Jeb Bush likes Charles Murray for the wrong reasons, it might not be explicit racism (being charitable, which I feel like we ought to, in contrast to Reid), but simply an intellectual framework that isn't capable of realizing that adjacent, enabling ideas should be rebuked. I mean, a lot of conservative ideology amounts to passive aggressive ignorance about the racial implications of their policies.

But you're not going to win an argument against them by calling them secretly evil if they themselves don't have the framework to appreciate this, whereas leftist economic ideology is in fact just what could have helped do just that!
2018-02-12, 2:01 PM #7248
In other words, next time if you want to make the criticism, use Chait's article and don't repeat the topic ten times as has been repeated already.
2018-02-12, 2:02 PM #7249
Originally posted by Reid:
In the case of Charles Murray, his views have been highly influential on welfare policy (guess which direction) and informing neoconservative social Darwinist philosophy (not from The Bell Curve, from other works), if that's the only criticism you find interesting.


Yes, they may have been influential among people who subscribe to a broken ideology that can't handle inequality except by resorting to tribalism. But it's not enough to point out the flaws of half-baked theories about race and competence when the reason that people are receptive to it in the first place is evidence that something bigger in their thinking is missing.
2018-02-12, 2:04 PM #7250
In the end like Jon`C said I'm not sure much can be done now that we have democratic capitalism, and, as Isaac Asimov pointed out, a lot of anti-intellectualism ingrained in the culture.
2018-02-12, 2:05 PM #7251
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
Also, right-libertarians are stupid and their big tent ideology let racists into the mainstream. Let's blame them for that. For example, if Jeb Bush likes Charles Murray for the wrong reasons, it might not be explicit racism (being charitable, which I feel like we ought to, in contrast to Reid), but simply an intellectual framework that isn't capable of realizing that adjacent, enabling ideas should be rebuked. I mean, a lot of conservative ideology amounts to passive aggressive ignorance about the racial implications of their policies.


I'm not going to relitigate the topic, but the accusation of racism extends to other work by Charles Murray. If you care, here's a Current Affairs article (which disagrees with my perspective) discussing it.

Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
But you're not going to win an argument against them by calling them secretly evil if they themselves don't have the framework to appreciate this, whereas leftist economic ideology is in fact just what could have helped do just that!


There's more to it than just left-wing economic policy.
2018-02-12, 2:06 PM #7252
[quote=Isaac Asimov]
...democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge".
[/quote]

+ democratic capitalism

=

lot's of morons promoting broken ideologies that are implicitly (or explicitly) racist
2018-02-12, 2:06 PM #7253
Originally posted by Reid:
I'm not going to relitigate the topic, but the accusation of racism extends to other work by Charles Murray. If you care, here's a Current Affairs article (which disagrees with my perspective) discussing it.



There's more to it than just left-wing economic policy.


But if 2016 proved anything, calling people out for being racist doesn't seem to do jack ****.
2018-02-12, 2:08 PM #7254
But anyway this is not an argument against anything in this thread, but just my point of view.
2018-02-12, 2:09 PM #7255
Charles Murray might be racist. Is this interesting? Mildly, maybe? But to me not even as interesting as the possibility that something good and interesting might be salvaged from his work, and to me it's more interesting to piss off leftist ideologues who pretend that I can't do this without suffering guilt by association.

But I don't even want to do that, because as Jon`C pointed out, the fact that he might be racist makes it likely that he made a conceptual error at some point in his reasoning that could well likely render his work useless.
2018-02-12, 2:11 PM #7256
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
But if 2016 proved anything, calling people out for being racist doesn't seem to do jack ****.


Well, yeah, I'm not writing letters to Charles Murray calling him racist. I'm more pointing out to Eversor that "center right" critiques are actually further right than he might be aware of. But apparently the fact that "Cultural Marxism" is a historically antisemitic phrase brought into mainstream culture by GamerGate and the alt-right isn't a warning sign.

Or maybe it's just a sign that far right ideas have become normalized already. Who knows?
2018-02-12, 2:13 PM #7257
OK, that sounds like an interesting rabbit hole to go down, and I see where the motivation for this sub-thread mostly originated now. It sounds like an interesting topic.

That said, a lot of common parlance have an ugly origin, and when at some point it just becomes a wash and we ought to move on.

Care for a brazil nut?
2018-02-12, 2:16 PM #7258
On the other hand, you have revisionists who want to do things like mess with pronouns. This kind of thing is very gradual and painstaking, and a little bit goes a long way.

For example, for better or for worse, I am now adverse to saying "he" as a generic pronoun. Sometimes I just use the "improper" neuter plural form 'they', unless I have a specific concrete example of a person I am referring to whose gender I am aware of.
2018-02-12, 2:19 PM #7259
Originally posted by Reid:
Well, yeah, I'm not writing letters to Charles Murray calling him racist. I'm more pointing out to Eversor that "center right" critiques are actually further right than he might be aware of. But apparently the fact that "Cultural Marxism" is a historically antisemitic phrase brought into mainstream culture by GamerGate and the alt-right isn't a warning sign.

Or maybe it's just a sign that far right ideas have become normalized already. Who knows?


Also, at some point we might want to win over the contingent of people who were brought over to the alt right through GamerGate.

The question of just how much you have to concede their ****ed up use of language that has implicitly pulled in some stuff with some serious negative baggage depends entirely upon whether you intend to win them over by addressing directly by engaging with them, and if so, how likely they are to respond to an intellectual critique (hah!), versus talk about them among fellow outsiders who are predisposed to agree that the thrust of their movement was bad anyway.

In other words, leftist circle-jerks never worked, and they still don't.
2018-02-12, 2:21 PM #7260
That said, shame is a powerful tool.

But in the age of anonymous internet media? Not so sure if it has the effect it used to any more.

And until the Democrats get that, they will repeat 2016 over and over again (which might be OK, since Trump just barely slipped through by getting lucky anyway).
2018-02-12, 2:28 PM #7261
Originally posted by Reid:
Well, yeah, I'm not writing letters to Charles Murray calling him racist. I'm more pointing out to Eversor that "center right" critiques are actually further right than he might be aware of. But apparently the fact that "Cultural Marxism" is a historically antisemitic phrase brought into mainstream culture by GamerGate and the alt-right isn't a warning sign.


I'm asking a serious question here: does your entire argument that Sullivan is not merely center-right but far-right hang on the fact that he uses one phrase?
former entrepreneur
2018-02-12, 2:42 PM #7262
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
On the other hand, you have revisionists who want to do things like mess with pronouns. This kind of thing is very gradual and painstaking, and a little bit goes a long way.

For example, for better or for worse, I am now adverse to saying "he" as a generic pronoun. Sometimes I just use the "improper" neuter plural form 'they', unless I have a specific concrete example of a person I am referring to whose gender I am aware of.


It's insane. I remember the first time I ever saw someone use she as an improper noun in an academic paper. I found it really distracting, and for a while afterwards, I was annoyed that it felt like an act of defiance whenever I used he as a generic pronoun in something I was writing. I don't know when it happened, but now I can't use it as a generic pronoun. I do the same thIng that you do now. It just feels wrong anything else, like it's making too much of a statement.

Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
But if 2016 proved anything, calling people out for being racist doesn't seem to do jack ****.


Preach!
former entrepreneur
2018-02-12, 3:21 PM #7263
Originally posted by Eversor:
It's insane. I remember the first time I ever saw someone use she as an improper noun in an academic paper. I found it really distracting, and for a while afterwards, I was annoyed that it felt like an act of defiance whenever I used he as a generic pronoun in something I was writing. I don't know when it happened, but now I can't use it as a generic pronoun. I do the same thIng that you do now. It just feels wrong anything else, like it's making too much of a statement.


How dare you. You are alt. right for saying this.
2018-02-12, 3:27 PM #7264
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
How dare you. You are alt. right for saying this.


Must be all that money I've received from the Pioneer Fund.
former entrepreneur
2018-02-12, 3:51 PM #7265
A cursory view of the Wikipedia article for that page, and in particular the funding of studies used to back up the arguments of The Bell Curve, like the Minnesota Twin Study (which I have seen quoted by those on the alt. right), is making me question my implicit defense of Charles Murray.

Still, I don't care for this topic. Lol
2018-02-12, 3:57 PM #7266
Right? The obvious thing to do if I really cared that much would be to read the Bell Curve. But there are probably a hundred books I'd rather read before that.

Say what you will about the protestors, I've concluded they're really dumb. If they didn't protest the guy, he probably could've explained the contents of the book to them in less than an hour and spared them the trouble of reading it.
former entrepreneur
2018-02-12, 3:59 PM #7267
Originally posted by Eversor:
It's insane. I remember the first time I ever saw someone use she as an improper noun in an academic paper. I found it really distracting, and for a while afterwards, I was annoyed that it felt like an act of defiance whenever I used he as a generic pronoun in something I was writing. I don't know when it happened, but now I can't use it as a generic pronoun. I do the same thIng that you do now. It just feels wrong anything else, like it's making too much of a statement.


Incidentally, I couldn't find the specific opinion, but anti-'human supremecist' mathematician and computer algebra extraordinaire Doron Zeilberger once complained that the whole debate itself about gender pronouns is clearly an example of chauvinistic attitudes of humans toward computers, and that the polite thing to do when in the presence of a computer proof program is to refer to everyone, computer or human, as 'it'. :P
2018-02-12, 4:04 PM #7268
And just to be perfectly clear about what Doron is anthropomorphizing, he is talking about programs to brute force check mathematical proofs, and not 'machine learning'.

A conversation with 'a.i.' that had learned to communicate with humans through machine learning, well, there's a good chance it'd be calling us the n-word.
2018-02-12, 4:05 PM #7269
Heh, I love these science/math profs with webpages that look so old they should have a "best viewed with Netscape" button, yet have content from three weeks ago.
former entrepreneur
2018-02-12, 4:09 PM #7270
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
And just to be perfectly clear about what Doron is anthropomorphizing, he is talking about programs to brute force check mathematical proofs, and not 'machine learning'.

A conversation with 'a.i.' that had learned to communicate with humans through machine learning, well, there's a good chance it'd be calling us the n-word.


and god dammit, we've earned it
2018-02-12, 4:42 PM #7271
Originally posted by Eversor:
Heh, I love these science/math profs with webpages that look so old they should have a "best viewed with Netscape" button, yet have content from three weeks ago.


Well, to be fair, the last update on the following website was quite a bit longer than from three weeks ago (um, almost two decades, but OK), but I was surprised to have found myself looking at this page while messing around with JK for the multiplayer thread (n.b. you don't need patch commander anyway if you use a .bat file).

Quote:
Hey everyone...I realize that seven months is a really long time to be out of touch


try 200+ months
2018-02-12, 5:04 PM #7272
Also, check out this guy's site. He apparently hasn't updated the HTML style since circa 2000 1995, but is still updating (2018) it in various places. Actually I think GBK would quite like the immature Bill Gates bashing (unless he's now long since left behind his anti-Gatesian /. heritage).

2018-02-12, 11:55 PM #7273
me reading that HTML:

former entrepreneur
2018-02-13, 1:12 AM #7274
Well tbf

Quote:
Note: The colors of this page are intentionally hard to read in order to prevent accidental reading of material some might find offensive or just plain stupid. Do not read this page if you really value your sanity.
2018-02-13, 1:17 AM #7275
Actually the text of that page is pretty funny. Wtf, Microsoft:

Quote:
1/12/18
I have pointed this out before in my review of Windows 8.0, but I need to point out again exactly how evil the new "open with" dialog is is Windows 10.




Quote:
Instead of just listing applications that are installed on your computer, the first and only entry is to redirect you to their stupid "store". According to advertising executive Staya Nadella, installed applications must be secondary, and they don't want you to search the web for a free tool.

But even more annoyingly, WHERE IS THE CANCEL BUTTON?!?!!

The ONLY option is "OK". No, it is NOT OK! I don't want to do that. How do I get out of this? Oh, well, it seems clicking the mouse outside of the window makes it go away...... WHEN THE **** HAS THAT BEEN A STANDARD UI PRACTICE? Right, NEVER! And there is no window management, that normally would also have a Close button. "No, we are Microsoft and we want you going to our store and giving us your money, **** you".

For the kids who do not remember, here is how a useful, non abusive, "open with" dialog looks:




That said, the UX in the original dialog is also pretty terrible because 90% of the programs on there are things I'd never want to use.
2018-02-13, 1:17 AM #7276
Woah, I forgot how good this scene was:



Speaking of Murrays...
former entrepreneur
2018-02-13, 1:21 AM #7277
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
That said, the UX in the original dialog is also pretty terrible because 90% of the programs on there are things I'd never want to use.


What would happen if you tried to open a .txt file with setup.exe? Probably something really useful!
former entrepreneur
2018-02-13, 1:25 AM #7278
It interprets the text file as instructions written in natural language, and carries them out with perfect precision, no matter how complicated or how little they have to do with your PC.
2018-02-13, 1:27 AM #7279
I feel like a chump for not listening to Mozart every day. Poor guy was a genius and all we listen to is rock... bunch of amateurs!
2018-02-13, 2:18 AM #7280
OoooooOOoo it's so spooky and real
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