Post: #126

(07-13-2017 12:51 PM)heavy Wrote:  while we can discuss differences between groups (races, genders, careers, nationality, etc) and these differences are very real, the differences within groups are always greater.

Counter-example to this lefting banality:

Men have very close to two testicles, while women have very close to zero

Intra-group difference is dwarfed by inter-group difference in this case

Post: #127

(07-13-2017 12:57 PM)JohnSmith Wrote:  

(07-13-2017 12:27 PM)Ghost Tiger Wrote:  However, in order to perform repairs and maintenance effectively, you have to be able to use your imagination to see the bike in a "perfect" state, a state that must be a model in your mind.

You don't need to know where the exit is to find one when stuck in a labyrinth

Do you know anything about Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods? Local moves can lead to global mixing if done right

A person is not going to use a Monte Carlo method to repair a motorcycle. Even if you had an AI-powered robot, you'd probably want something more efficient than Monte Carlo.

Besides, those methods simply operate with more abstract conceptual models, albeit not models normally used by people intuitively. The model for a markov chain is a memory-less stochastic process, while the underlying model used by the Monte Carlo method is a Turing machine.

Post: #128

(07-13-2017 01:52 PM)Blaster Wrote:  

(07-13-2017 12:57 PM)JohnSmith Wrote:  Do you know anything about Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods? Local moves can lead to global mixing if done right

A person is not going to use a Monte Carlo method to repair a motorcycle. Even if you had an AI-powered robot, you'd probably want something more efficient than Monte Carlo.

Besides, those methods simply operate with more abstract conceptual models, albeit not models normally used by people intuitively. The model for a markov chain is a memory-less stochastic process, while the underlying model used by the Monte Carlo method is a Turing machine.

You've lost forest for the trees, which is typical of intellectual centered people who confuse symbols with what stands behind them and a finger with the Moon it is pointing to.

Post: #129

Blaster Wrote:Here's an example I heard a long time ago, back before the internet, when libraries were common and relevant. A man walks into a library and picks a stack of 20 books and brings them to the librarian to check out. The librarian has a fit and says "you can't do that!" The man says "why the hell not?" They argue back and forth and get nowhere, because what's happened is that they have a functionally different concept of what a library is. The man views the library as a dispensary-- an institution that makes books available for people to read. The librarian views the library as a repository, a place to keep and protect books for all time, that lends books to people as a courtesy. The librarian is offended by the idea that a man should just walk out of the repository with a huge pile of books, while the man is offended that the librarian won't let him do that. The difference is subtle, but enough to cause a serious disagreement. The people involved don't realize what's happening, they just see a stubborn asshole, or a greedy entitled one.

This is both well written and more important than you think.

Scott Adams had a Periscope about this less than two weeks ago.

Scott Adams Wrote:In olden days, if a neighboring kingdom was prosperous and capable, it was a risk to your security. A rich neighbor can assemble powerful armies to capture your resources and enslave your people. In those primitive times, any powerful empire was a real enemy, and you had to treat them as such.

Fast-forward to 2017, and some of those old rules have changed. A rich country with nuclear weapons won’t attack a weak country with nuclear weapons. Economics and national defense are somewhat disconnected in modern times. Nukes changed everything.

*skipping*

In the modern world, the real enemies of the rich countries are some of the poor countries, with their nukes and their terrorists. Rich countries are not much risk to other rich countries in modern times. I think we would all do better if we recognized that reality.

Scott Adams is proposing a brand new political model, right under everyone's noses, which eerily reflects a country-wide comparison of average IQ scores [b]without the overtly racist language.

French President Macron drew a lot of heat for saying Africa's problems are "civilizational", and referencing the fact that Africans have "7 or 8 children". Liberals may have taken these remarks out of context, (or maybe not), but they were extremely triggered by them.

To me, Macron's remarks crudely challenged the "A civilizations are roughly equal" model that hasn't been challenged in decades. (That's why liberals reacted with emotionally-strong, but factually-weak remarks like, "Good God!" - retweet by Christopher Hayes, MSNBC reporter.)

Attacking liberals who are shocked by this argument is pretty simple. Ask them how frequently they've visited majority-Black, majority-Latino, and majority-Muslim countries, then tell them they're White Supremacists because they haven't. Provide easily-Googled links to country-wide rankings by IQ, wealth, freedom, education, life expectancy, and so on - and then comment that majority-Asian and majority-White countries excel in all of these. Tell them that the set of American political rules are responsible for all of these things, and so an American is a better person because he understands these rules.

Most liberals won't last very long under this barrage, and they'll leave demoralized and shocked - not empowered.

And if God-Emperor Trump wins the Nobel Peace Prize by teaming up with Russia and Japan against North Korea, I'll definitely hammer Muslims, Blacks, and Latinos for excluding themselves from that great cooperation with their racist, selfish bullshit.

Post: #130

I checked out some of his stuff, he is great!

Post: #131

(07-13-2017 12:51 PM)heavy Wrote:  It's funny, even Peterson hasn't delved into the male female sexual dynamic completely, and I hope he doesn't.

...

Even in his Rogan interviews, he doesn't go into why generally women are liberal and men are conservative.

...

Probably the biggest difference women have....Women have a very difficult time understanding generalities and while maintaining individualism and individual judgment. They have a tough time understanding that while we can discuss differences between groups (races, genders, careers, nationality, etc) and these differences are very real, the differences within groups are always greater. That's my experience, having had discussions with intelligent non-feminist women.

There's two factors that lead women to have liberal politics and be more concerned with SJW causes. One is them not being as able to deal with abstractions and instead focusing more concrete, in the flesh suffering individuals. The other is their maternal instincts and how they were designed for care taking of helpless, vulnerable beings (babies).

Abstract concepts such as justice, honor, and such doesn't do much to stir the hearts of women unless you can somehow also put the face of a dying child, a wimpering puppy, a poor Syrian refugee, bullied teen, etc. on it as well. Arthur Schopenhauer wrote in his infamous essay "On Women":

Quote:It is because women’s reasoning powers are weaker that they show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men, and consequently take a kindlier interest in them. On the other hand, women are inferior to men in matters of justice, honesty, and conscientiousness. Again, because their reasoning faculty is weak, things clearly visible and real, and belonging to the present, exercise a power over them which is rarely counteracted by abstract thoughts, fixed maxims, or firm resolutions, in general, by regard for the past and future or by consideration for what is absent and remote

When men talk about ideals such as honor and justice, there's a focus on two aspects: one is on how it effects their personal relationships with others and on wanting to honor these ideals for their own sake. A man wants to keep his word to another man not just because of his respect for the other man and wanting to maintain a relationship or partnership of some sort with him but also because they feel beholden to the idea of honor itself. With a woman on the other hand they place much more emphasis on the former aspect (the hurt caused to a person who is wronged) and less so on the latter (upholding the abstract ideal).

The maternal instinct that most women have further amplifies this effect. It's what causes them to have pity for whatever the oppressed minority group of the week is and what allows for these feelings to override other imperatives. A good example would be some European woman arguing for her country's borders to be opened to refugees. Her sense of pity for these people have overridden concepts such as loyalty to the tribe, perservation of culture, etc. which to these women can't compare to the images of a drowned Syrian boy lying on a beach.

Post: #132

Quote:Even in his Rogan interviews, he doesn't go into why generally women are liberal and men are conservative.

Watch enough of his videos, and you'll get your answer.

I am mostly echoing what Wutang wrote above, only using Peterson's kind of language.

If you watch his lectures on personality, as well as his explanation of his research on political correctness, I think he explain this stuff pretty clearly.

He makes generalizations about temperament, using the Big Five taxonomy.

He would say that women are high in agreeableness, and low in conscientiousness.

Agreeableness is the mothering instinct. It interprets everyone who complains as if they were a crying child.

On the flip side, everyone who does not react in the same way is a threat to a child, so the mother grizzly kicks in.

That is why someone like Moldylocks can feel great compassion for the downtrodden at the same time she is trying to hit YOU in the head with a wine bottle.

For people who are high in agreeableness, the world is divided into crying children and monsters who are trying to eat them.

On the other hand, they are low in conscientiousness, so they don't really worry if they have a consistent argument, or whether or not they are contradicting what they said a minute ago. So while they may be open to the poor trannies who will commit suicide if you don't let them use whatever bathroom they want, they won't be the ones who have to draft coherent legislation, or enforce it, or be the one who has to explain to a nervous mom why there is a grown man in a wig in a bathroom alone with her five year old daughter.

She has made her decision, the trannies are the crying babies, and everyone else involved is a monster, that is, transphobe, literally Hitler, whatever.

You will have to track it down, but I have listened to him lecturing about politically correct people being high in agreeableness and low in conscientiousness, and women in general having these same qualities.

Post: #133

Quote:Agreeableness is the mothering instinct. It interprets everyone who complains as if they were a crying child.

He also noted that for SJWs (PC Authoritarians) in particular, there was an measured tendency for women to be SJWs, even after controlling for personality factors. So it wasn't just that women were more agreeable than men, but the simple fact of being a woman still predicted a tendency to be SJW. Which I think is relevant because agreeableness isn't exactly synonymous with the mothering instinct. Agreeableness works in service of cooperation and social cohesion, an essential trait for all humans regardless of sex.

A related take on the political divide is that in the moral psychology research being done by Jonathan Haidt. Moral philosophers and psychologists have established several dimensions of moral concepts, Moral Foundations Theory.

Care/Harm: Morality based around the idea that harm is bad and protecting others from harm is good. (The mothering instinct is overwhelmingly care-based morality)
Fairness: Morality based around concepts of rules, justice, and proportionality. Cheating violates fairness
Loyalty: Morality based around acceptance and dedication to group. Betrayal violates loyalty.
Authority: Morality based around respect for tradition and established hierarchies. Subversion and insubordination violate authority.
Sanctity/purity: Morality based around maintenance, cleanliness and avoidance of disgusting things and decay.

Roughly speaking, it seems like the political spectrum breaks down like this: Overwhelmingly, liberals care exclusively about harm and fairness, while conservatives are balanced along all 5 dimensions:



I would also say that the more "classical liberal" side of liberalism tend to dwell on fairness while the progressives tend to obsess about harm while presuming an authoritarian structure. I haven't read enough of Haidt's research to know whether the progressive tendency towards appealing to an authority counts as authority-centered morality or not. Because my impression of progressives is that they tend not to see obedience to authority or tradition as a moral virtue, but they take the existence of authority for granted and view it as a mere tool to be used to achieve their ideological goals.

Two other related points follow this, both from Peterson (the Joe Rogan podcast I think). First is that Peterson cited a study showing that prevalence of infectious diseases predicts authoritarian governments. Second is that logs of Hitler's pre-WW2 pontifications show a remarkable emphasis on cleanliness and purity. He invoked disgust-oriented language with great frequency when describing the ultimate targets of his extermination campaigns.

So, you could hypothesize that the Nazis are what you get when you extend this graph all the way in the other direction, where authority, purity, and tribe become more important than harm and fairness.

Post: #134

(07-17-2017 12:20 AM)Wutang Wrote:  The maternal instinct that most women have further amplifies this effect. It's what causes them to have pity for whatever the oppressed minority group of the week is and what allows for these feelings to override other imperatives. A good example would be some European woman arguing for her country's borders to be opened to refugees. Her sense of pity for these people have overridden concepts such as loyalty to the tribe, perservation of culture, etc. which to these women can't compare to the images of a drowned Syrian boy lying on a beach.

Pardon the slight thread derail, but this is a point that has long bothered me, in the abstract.

What I mean by that is what I would call masculine vs feminine political ideals (I don't mean those held by men or women, I mean that one type of thinking is what I call masculine and the other feminine).

Welfare in any shape or form is a feminine political ideal. This is not to say it is bad. We could have a very healthy debate about helping people in need vs letting things play out.

Some of the most masculine of men can otherwise hold a very empathetic and charitable (feminine) attitude towards helping anyone they see as less fortunate. I don't hold this attitude at all, but at least I can understand it.

What is madness is when someone holds the feminine political ideal of welfare at the same time as the authoritarian ideal of making Everyone Else pay for it (in money, energy, care, effort, whatever).

I think encouraging vagrancy (aka giving money to beggars) is contemptible, but if someone else wants to give away their cash or time then I leave them be. Even though they may actually be hurting me in the long run by cultivating that beggar (and more like him) to continue slumming around my area.

But the person who sees a beggar and just can't wait to vote in a politician who extorts my money under threat of men with guns... this is a special kind of enemy.

And this has become more prevalent in my lifetime.

First it was some women under special circumstances need an abortion.

Then it was legalize all abortions.

Then it was public funding for abortions.

And the cherry on top is "let's all celebrate abortions". Now if you don't openly celebrate someone else's (at best) tragic & vile choices, you are attacked.

Perhaps it ties back into Jordan's observation that, to the pomos, everything is about power. Their own political beliefs can only manifest if they not only reflect their own ideals but exercise ultimate force over my ideals as well.

Post: #135

(07-18-2017 12:17 AM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  

(07-17-2017 12:20 AM)Wutang Wrote:  The maternal instinct that most women have further amplifies this effect. It's what causes them to have pity for whatever the oppressed minority group of the week is and what allows for these feelings to override other imperatives. A good example would be some European woman arguing for her country's borders to be opened to refugees. Her sense of pity for these people have overridden concepts such as loyalty to the tribe, perservation of culture, etc. which to these women can't compare to the images of a drowned Syrian boy lying on a beach.

First it was some women under special circumstances need an abortion.

Then it was legalize all abortions.

Then it was public funding for abortions.

And the cherry on top is "let's all celebrate abortions". Now if you don't openly celebrate someone else's (at best) tragic & vile choices, you are attacked.

Perhaps it ties back into Jordan's observation that, to the pomos, everything is about power. Their own political beliefs can only manifest if they not only reflect their own ideals but exercise ultimate force over my ideals as well.

I'm not that old but I've seen that evolution (devolution might be a better term) with several social justice issues, not just abortions in my lifetime.

Racial issues is a good example. In the beginning the racial justice crowd was pushing the idea that race shouldn't be a factor when considering someone's abilities or talents. That idea was gradually accepted by most of the population. Fast forward to today and being race-blind is now actually seen as somehow contributing to systematic racism and fostering racism.

Other forms of social justice politics has taken a similar path. Now it's not enough to simply tolerate trannies. You must actively condition yourself to be attracted to them. Tolerance was the ideal that social progressives were fighting for and now that they've made big victories in the past decades simple tolerance isn't enough. Now people must be forced to actively celebrate whatever gender identity a person identifies with at the moment, gay marriage, and such. I saw an example of this on Facebook with one of my former "woke" acquaintances. When the SCOTUS gay marriage ruling was handed down she had gone silent for a few days on her social media. After she came back she wrote a status indicating that she had just simply not been online for a few days during the time period the court decision on gay marriage was made and she hoped that her silence wasn't taken as her not caring about the issue or God forbid, being against it. It's already ridiculous people have to be constantly apologize for making comments that might be slightly heterodox to the social justice creed but feeling the need to apologize for simply NOT being saying something supportive? Absolute madness.

Post: #136

@TooFineAPoint

I am kind of drilling down and listening to a lot of Peterson lately, particularly his college lecture series on personality.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...34eKN6XhCi

I would say that of all the things I have learned from him, like a rekindled respect for Western Culture, the importance of free speech, the true nature of Post Modernism, the most valuable idea I got from him, the one that is a practical takeaway that I have internalized, is that a lot of politics comes from temperament.

I haven't read enough about the Big Five taxonomy, or its origins, and haven't yet tracked down the sources of his statements on how women generally have certain traits which translate directly into political views.

But, roughly speaking, to coin a phrase, the idea that political ideas come from temperament, and not from dispassionate logical thinking, is a killer idea, and I have been using it in conversations lately with people on the left and it kind of stops them in their tracks.

One guy I have been talking to almost visibly bristles when I make generalizations about men and women and what they are likely to do or believe, and I always come back with an argument that he can't really refute.

The reason that he can't refute what I say, and so the conversation either winds down, or later he comes back and repeats what I said earlier as if it was his idea not mine, is that I have a secret weapon that he doesn't have.

I know he is arguing from temperament. They all are. We are too. Everyone is doing the same thing. (Roughly speaking!)

They aren't actually arguing for the things they are arguing for, they are arguing for their temperament.

No one can truly believe that there are temperaments other than theirs.

So what I try to do, and this is something I cribbed straight from Peterson, is get them to admit that not only is there a place for other temperaments, but that we need all sorts of temperaments to have a functioning society.

In other words, if everyone was like them, society would fall to pieces.

The reason that this is valuable is that it is like a wedge that I can drive into the monolithic structure of the progressive world view.

I can say, look, it is great that you are compassionate to all people, are open (Big Five trait Openness) to new ways of doing things, and that you care about people on the margins (Big Five trait Agreeableness), but can't you also see that there are all sorts of people running society who have to generalize and make assumptions to keep society running? (Big Five trait Conscientousness. Also low in Big Five openness.)

In fact it is the people who are conservative, and who want to do things the same way they have always done them who actually create a comfortable society so people like you can debate about what to do about the downtrodden.

Engineers, Architects, Farmers, Actuaries, these people aren't sitting around talking about their feelings, they are using tried and true methods to keep society running so you can even have the opinions you are having.

You don't want an architect designing your house saying fuck math, I am going to design how I feel. Also, you don't want guys on construction sites sitting down and crying because someone didn't say hi to them.

There isn't much they can say to that unless they are on the far delusional left.

I had one conversation with a psychologist who contrasted himself from experimental psychologists by saying they were cold and distant and theoretical, while he really cared and had actually experience dealing with people.

By the end of our conversation, I had him not only admitting, but even endorsing the fact that we needed all sorts of people in society.

In his mind, it was us cool loving people vs the other cold unloving people, and by the end of the conversation, he had fully accepted the wedge I hammered into his thinking.

I think this way of framing arguments could be useful to you in trying to get people out of their one track mind irrational thinking.

For example, you say:

Quote:What is madness is when someone holds the feminine political ideal of welfare at the same time as the authoritarian ideal of making Everyone Else pay for it (in money, energy, care, effort, whatever).

If you are talking to someone like this, you have to remind them, indirectly, of the hypocrisy of their position. It is so ingrained in their minds that they are the only ones who care, and so forcing everyone else to follow along seems like a good idea.

You can put a wedge in that thinking. Who is going to carry this out? You? Are you writing the legislation or enforcing it? And if you are doing this, as you say out of respect for weaker people, how can you believe that you can actually create respect through force?

If you can get them to open up out of their temperament even briefly, and see that there are not only other temperaments out there, but other temperaments that they need in order for society to work, it makes it harder for them to stay in their self righteous thought bubbles.

I am still working on this idea, but it seems like a productive way to engage with close minded people.

It challenges their image of themselves. It is like saying, you are open and agreeable, right? So why aren't you open to this idea or to these people?

It should go without saying that none of this applies to the feral antifa left. They are beyond conversation.

Post: #137

(07-17-2017 11:40 AM)debeguiled Wrote:  

Quote:Even in his Rogan interviews, he doesn't go into why generally women are liberal and men are conservative.

Watch enough of his videos, and you'll get your answer.

I am mostly echoing what Wutang wrote above, only using Peterson's kind of language.

If you watch his lectures on personality, as well as his explanation of his research on political correctness, I think he explain this stuff pretty clearly.

He makes generalizations about temperament, using the Big Five taxonomy.

He would say that women are high in agreeableness, and low in conscientiousness.
...

Right...no doubt I can read between the lines and hear what he is saying...he just doesn't say it directly, and again, I hope he doesn't.

I think this speaks to the current level of discourse, and his target audience. As long as he doesn't *directly say* any generalizations that could incriminate him, he won't get called out for them. That's how dumb they are ("they" being the media, SJW, women, young skulls full of mush, etc).

It's not that dissimilar to never saying you supported Trump, even if you thank God every night we have Gorsuch, which I suspect of JP. He can have the philosophical/psychological discussion without actually addressing the players.

He understands, don't hate the player hate the game...so he doesn't play the identity politics game.

Post: #138

@heavy

I am not sure what you mean.

It seems to me he has said directly several times that women tend to be this way, and men tend to be that.

Especially during his talk at Ryerson.






That is why he is getting attacked all over the place. The biggest controversy surrounding Peterson is that he is refusing to use made up pronouns because he specifically calls the Post Modernists behind the push.

Do you mean that he isn't naming names?

Post: #139

(07-13-2017 01:24 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  The fact that a couple of people have shown up recently trying to dismiss Peterson with trollish tactics is actually pretty good evidence he is a threat to someone out there.

He has essentially declared war on Postmodern neo-Marxist influence in academia. He openly stated that his mission is to it drive out by starving it at the source: the students who take their classes. His stated strategy is to get the word out to young students to stop taking these brainwashing indoctrination courses and to stop enrolling in programs that have been infected by Postmodern Neo-Marxism. This as a more liberal alternative to his previous proposal to cut funding to universities by 25% across the board.

Meanwhile he's also working on a long-term plan to get quality humanities education available in an online format. The idea being that without being able to preach their dogma to captive audiences of impressionable minds conveniently insulated from reality, and with a cheap and convenient alternative publically available their ideology will die off.

Post: #140

That's some top shelf excellent analysis Debeguiled. High Quality!

I particularly liked this part:

(07-18-2017 11:20 AM)debeguiled Wrote:  No one can truly believe that there are temperaments other than theirs.

So what I try to do, and this is something I cribbed straight from Peterson, is get them to admit that not only is there a place for other temperaments, but that we need all sorts of temperaments to have a functioning society.

In other words, if everyone was like them, society would fall to pieces.

Reminds me of a discussion TooFineAPoint and I had offline not so long ago. He and I tend to have arguments over free trade. TFAP identifies as a free-trade supporting anarcho-capitalist in agreement with the Austrian school of thought endorsed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and I identify as an Alt-Right (Alt-West to be specific) nationalist supporting Hamiltonian-style trade protectionism endorsed by one President Donald J. Trump.

I recently argued to TFAP that the worldview of libertarians like him and Hoppe had failed (see: NAFTA) and that they couldn't see the superior value of Hamiltonian trade policies over free-trade policies because of the kind of men they were... because they are pacifists who worship the "Non-Aggression Principle". I argued that men like myself and Trump are more predisposed to aggression as an option and therefore we are better able to see the failure of free-trade and the necessity of the aggression of trade protectionism. I followed that argument up by saying that men like me and Trump thought we had become obsolete after the end of the Cold War and that we were pleasantly surprised to discover that our particular worldview was still essential to the survival of Western Civilization. I finished my argument, as I often do, by saying that we will all be Alt-Right soon (a Vox Day-ism) and that libertarianism will be a footnote in history with less pages devoted to it than communism. TFAP echoed your analysis when he replied that men like himself and Hoppe will still be necessary in the coming culture war. And he's right. An army needs medics just as badly as it needs snipers. So I tip my hat to you Debeguiled. Your analysis is lucid here.

It also reminds me of an argument I once had with a feral Antifa-style leftist woman. We were doing tech training in the same class and we had hated each other from the get-go. But she warmed up to me after I successfully tutored her in IP subnet addressing methods, which was no easy task I can tell you. So we were having a little chit-chat after that and we got to talking about leadership. I argued that certain aggressive masculine characteristics were essential to leadership and it's why men made better leaders than women. This made her hair catch on fire (she was a ginger) and she argued fiercely from a place of pure emotion. She was an immigrant to Canada from England and she was in her 40's so I immediately compared the failure of emasculated cuck Neville Chamberlain to the success of salty old Uncle Winston Churchill. This instantly took the wind out of her sails. She sighed deeply and conceded, "Ok, every now and then we need a brute." That's as much of a victory as I could hope for with her.

And she's damn right. And us brutes are not entirely unhappy about it.

Post: #141

(07-18-2017 12:17 AM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  

(07-17-2017 12:20 AM)Wutang Wrote:  The maternal instinct that most women have further amplifies this effect. It's what causes them to have pity for whatever the oppressed minority group of the week is and what allows for these feelings to override other imperatives. A good example would be some European woman arguing for her country's borders to be opened to refugees. Her sense of pity for these people have overridden concepts such as loyalty to the tribe, perservation of culture, etc. which to these women can't compare to the images of a drowned Syrian boy lying on a beach.

Pardon the slight thread derail, but this is a point that has long bothered me, in the abstract.

What I mean by that is what I would call masculine vs feminine political ideals (I don't mean those held by men or women, I mean that one type of thinking is what I call masculine and the other feminine).

Welfare in any shape or form is a feminine political ideal. This is not to say it is bad. We could have a very healthy debate about helping people in need vs letting things play out.

Some of the most masculine of men can otherwise hold a very empathetic and charitable (feminine) attitude towards helping anyone they see as less fortunate. I don't hold this attitude at all, but at least I can understand it.

What is madness is when someone holds the feminine political ideal of welfare at the same time as the authoritarian ideal of making Everyone Else pay for it (in money, energy, care, effort, whatever).

I think encouraging vagrancy (aka giving money to beggars) is contemptible, but if someone else wants to give away their cash or time then I leave them be. Even though they may actually be hurting me in the long run by cultivating that beggar (and more like him) to continue slumming around my area.

But the person who sees a beggar and just can't wait to vote in a politician who extorts my money under threat of men with guns... this is a special kind of enemy.

And this has become more prevalent in my lifetime.

First it was some women under special circumstances need an abortion.

Then it was legalize all abortions.

Then it was public funding for abortions.

And the cherry on top is "let's all celebrate abortions". Now if you don't openly celebrate someone else's (at best) tragic & vile choices, you are attacked.

Perhaps it ties back into Jordan's observation that, to the pomos, everything is about power. Their own political beliefs can only manifest if they not only reflect their own ideals but exercise ultimate force over my ideals as well.

The way I see it, political issues tend to fall into two categories:

1. Ideas that have critical flaws and won't accomplish what they're purported to accomplish.

2. Ideas with irreconcilable conflicts between self-interested factions. Sometimes, the oppressed faction is small and no one sane sides with their position (murder laws, for example, are bad for murderers).

The general goal of our system is to use free speech (arguments, conversations, debates, etc.) to eliminate flaws and transform category 1 ideas into category 2 ideas. Then, once the ideas are as good as they can be, the conflicting factions duke it out in the political or legal system with votes or court cases. Maybe the factions can't resolve it and they have to kick it back to category 1 (critical flaw: idea is too divisive, come up with something that works better for more people). Otherwise, the rules of the game are that once we make the laws, everyone agrees to uphold them.

The problem with the modern left-wing cult is a fervent belief in a 3rd, imaginary category:

3. Ideas that have no flaws and the only apparent conflicting factions are made up of bigots and idiots. Free speech is just another way those bigots and idiots obstruct the onward march of our perfect ideas.

And yes, it seems likely that this mentality is a consequence of the postmodern obsession with power, and their view of free speech and logic and all those tools of reason as merely power games. It's also quite consistent with a compassionate, empathic mentality. A highly compassionate orientation doesn't just preclude principled, logical thinking. The combination of agreeableness and inclusion also leads to a mentality of conflict-avoidance. Highly agreeable, conflict-avoidant types will shy away. They'll use sophistry to convince themselves that their ideas won't lead to irreconcilable conflicts, and will continue doing that until say, Trump gets elected.

Post: #142

(07-18-2017 11:20 AM)debeguiled Wrote:  

Quote:What is madness is when someone holds the feminine political ideal of welfare at the same time as the authoritarian ideal of making Everyone Else pay for it (in money, energy, care, effort, whatever).

If you are talking to someone like this, you have to remind them, indirectly, of the hypocrisy of their position. It is so ingrained in their minds that they are the only ones who care, and so forcing everyone else to follow along seems like a good idea.

You can put a wedge in that thinking. Who is going to carry this out? You? Are you writing the legislation or enforcing it? And if you are doing this, as you say out of respect for weaker people, how can you believe that you can actually create respect through force?

If you can get them to open up out of their temperament even briefly, and see that there are not only other temperaments out there, but other temperaments that they need in order for society to work, it makes it harder for them to stay in their self righteous thought bubbles.

I'm beginning to see (and I think GT would agree with me), that it isn't productive to try to change their minds at all.

Rather it is more productive to say "I wish you well in your campaign to help others. If you try to force me to do so, be prepared to die." But in a bit nicer way.

Either way they will not change their mind, and will try to force me. Once they learn that it is easier to force soy boys, they will move on from me. The trick is to not make them obsessed to beat us, but rather to be dangerous and slippery and never rub it in that they can't beat us.

Of course I agree that it is essential to have different personality types and I have no desire to have all people act and make decisions like me.


To GT --- NAFTA is not free trade; bad example, bro. Like Hoppe says "you don't need a 2000 page document to say anyone can trade with anyone else".

I know you don't believe in that either, I just wanted to bug you about using NAFTA.

Post: #143

There is some nice discussion in this thread.

Post: #144

Earlier in this discussion Blaster mentioned the moral foundations theory which talks about the five different points a person's moral sense are composed of. People prioritize each of these five points different with liberals and women placing more emphasis on care/harm. Turns out there's actually an actual theory of morality that places emphasis on care and surprise, it's associated with feminist ethics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_care

Quote:Care-focused feminism is a branch of feminist thought, informed primarily by ethics of care as developed by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings.[10] This body of theory is critical of how caring is socially engendered to women and consequently devalued. “Care-focused feminists regard women’s capacity for care as a human strength”[10] which can and should be taught to and expected of men as well as women. Noddings proposes that ethical caring has the potential to be a more concrete evaluative model of moral dilemma, than an ethic of justice.[11] Noddings’ care-focused feminism requires practical application of relational ethics, predicated on an ethic of care.

The women pushing these sort of ethics aren't typical basic average females but highly educated academics. It shows that in the end that even a highly intelligent woman is still a woman. Her basic nature remains. That's not to say men can't have these sort of values too but as someone pointed out above, these values are still pretty feminine in nature so it's no surprise that the men who do have those sort of ethics are more likely to be soy boys.

Also recall how I posted previously about how men tend to care more abstract ideals then women do?

Quote:Gilligan further argued that Kohlberg's model was not an objective scale of moral development. It displayed a particularly masculine perspective on morality, founded on justice and abstract duties or obligations. Other researchers, however, have found the scale to be psychometrically sound.[5]

Gilligan's In a Different Voice offered the perspective that men and women have tendencies to view morality in different terms. Her theory claimed women tended to emphasize empathy and compassion over the notions of morality that are privileged in Kohlberg's scale

Post: #145

Quote:Care-focused feminism is a branch of feminist thought, informed primarily by ethics of care as developed by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings.[10] This body of theory is critical of how caring is socially engendered to women and consequently devalued. “Care-focused feminists regard women’s capacity for care as a human strength”[10] which can and should be taught to and expected of men as well as women. Noddings proposes that ethical caring has the potential to be a more concrete evaluative model of moral dilemma, than an ethic of justice.[11] Noddings’ care-focused feminism requires practical application of relational ethics, predicated on an ethic of care.

Not that I couldn't go on a tirade about how stupid this is... leave it to feminists to butcher anything, but the idea that men lack a caring impulse is a mistake. I think it's more likely that women have an abnormally intense care instinct. The instinct is primarily biological in origin[1], tends to dominate, influence, or crowd out other moral principles. As Peterson points out in at least one lecture, newborns are a huge pain in the ass, especially for a nursing woman (in the first few weeks, infants feed roughly every 2 hours, with maybe a break at night if you are lucky). For women to make the kind of sacrifices they make to raise children requires a massive care instinct.

So I think the idea that fits reality better is that all normal humans are capable of recognizing and applying a wide array of moral values. There are some moral primitives that are purely biological and then environmental influences add layers on top of those moral primitives[2]. There may be subtle sex differences in the moral primitives, and subtle differences influenced by socialization. But for women, because of their crucial role in raising children, the care primitive is preeminent. This means women might have a similar moral intuitions and capacity for moral reasoning as men, except where the care instinct goes hyperactive and shuts down everything else.

Quote:That's not to say men can't have these sort of values too but as someone pointed out above, these values are still pretty feminine in nature so it's no surprise that the men who do have those sort of ethics are more likely to be soy boys.

So, following from what I wrote above, I think a better way to look at it is that men are more likely to balance the care morality with other moral principles. Frankly, I think it's absurd to suggest men don't have a care instinct. Since when do men not instinctively protect women? They especially protect their mate and children? That's care instinct.

I think the soy boy phenomenon is partly a case of under-developed moral senses due to lack experience with real adversity. Harm morality is one of the simplest and deepest moral instincts, the basics develop around the same age consistently across cultures[3]. So if you lack moral development across the board, it's natural that care/harm morality will be most prominent for a substantial number of people.

footnotes/rants
[1] Not "socially engendered to women." Christ, the layers of academic sophistry it takes to come up with this garbage is truly depressing.

[2] At this point we have very little idea how deep and complex that moral structure is. Certainly not enough to support the radical feminist social constructionist who believe in solving problems by trying to completely rewrite social programming. These idiots have no god damn idea how important and deeply embedded some of these moral intuitions are. Even if they aren't, technically speaking, biologically immutable, doesn't mean they aren't informed by thousands of years of human social evolution. Even if you could re-engineer society to modify these values, they have absolutely NO clue what the end result would be.

[3] If you are interested in moral psychology, I definitely recommend Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind. His writing is very accessible and persuasive while still being precise and detailed.

Post: #146

(07-18-2017 04:04 PM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  To GT --- NAFTA is not free trade; bad example, bro. Like Hoppe says "you don't need a 2000 page document to say anyone can trade with anyone else".

Yes, yes, of course... NAFTA wasn't REAL free trade I know.



We all eagerly anticipate Hoppe's perfect UTOPIA of free trade when he is in charge.

Post: #147

Strawman.

Free trade means I can buy and sell anything from anyone who wishes to buy from me or sell to me.

Just because some cucks called something "free trade" does not make it so. Like all the political bills Rand writes about in Atlas Shrugged. They would call a tranny bathroom bill "The Set The Children Free Act Of 2018".

The grey and black markets are free trade. They work great. Without them, more people in the Soviet Union would have starved. God bless them.

Post: #148

(07-18-2017 11:20 AM)debeguiled Wrote:  @TooFineAPoint


But, roughly speaking, to coin a phrase, the idea that political ideas come from temperament, and not from dispassionate logical thinking, is a killer idea, and I have been using it in conversations lately with people on the left and it kind of stops them in their tracks.

Very insightful point, I think I've always been aware of this but didn't want to admit it. Fascinating post mate.

Post: #149

^
With every passing year I age, Kurt Vonnegut's description of people as primary-function robots (from Breakfast Of Champions) seems like the best way to sum up humanity.

I wish I could explain it up more succinctly, but you'll have to read the book.

You take whatever your main focus is at the moment, and call yourself such-and-such robot. Like if all you think about is sex, you're a pussyhound robot.

“Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir." he read, "You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next - and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines."

Post: #150

Not to be prickly. But Hoppe is about the last person we should indicate regarding trade deals. Libertarians in general do not believe in "free-trade" deals. They are free trade deals only in name. It's not even about not being "real-free trade". If you create documents with thousands of pages, rules and regulations to determine how and why transactions are made it does seem like an oxymoron to kill free-trade. And the communist analogies are unneeded, you don't see "free trade" killing over 100 million people in a century. Quite the contrary.

From one of his good interviews: https://mises.org/blog/put-your-hope-rad...ralization

But what about the EU?

Looking at the EU, the picture becomes even worse. The EU is the first step on the way toward the creation of a European Super-State, and ultimately of a one-world government, dominated by the USA and its central bank, the FED. From its very beginnings, and despite all high-sounding political proclamations to the contrary, the EU was never about free trade and free competition. For that, you don’t need tens of thousands of pages of rules and regulations! Rather, the central purpose of the EU, supported all-along by the USA, was always the weakening in particular of Germany as Europe’s economic powerhouse. To facilitate this, Germany was sent on a seemingly never-ending “guilt trip” and thus pressured to transfer increasingly larger parts of its already limited (vis-à-vis the USA) sovereignty to the EU in Brussels. Especially noteworthy in this regard: Germany’s giving up its monetary sovereignty and abandoning its traditionally “strong” currency, the DM, in favor of a “weak” Euro, issued by a European Central Bank (ECB) composed overwhelmingly of politically connected central bankers from traditionally “weak” currency countries.

The EU, then, is characterized by three main features:

First: The harmonization of the tax and regulation structure across all member states, so as to reduce economic competition and especially tax-competition between different countries and make all countries equally uncompetitive.

Second: On top of the economic and moral perversity within each country of punishing the productive and subsidizing the unproductive, another layer of international income- and wealth-redistribution is added: of punishing economically better performing countries like Germany and the countries of northern Europe and rewarding economically worse performing countries (mostly of southern Europe) and thus successively rendering the economic performance of all countries equally worse.

And third, of increasing importance especially during the last decade: In order to overcome the rising resistance, in many countries, against the steadily increasing transfer of national sovereignty to Brussels, the EU is on a crusade to erode, and ultimately destroy, all national identities and all social and cultural cohesion. The idea of a nation and of different national and regional identities is ridiculed, and multiculturalism is hailed instead as an unquestionable “good.” As well, in promoting the award of legal privileges and of “special protection” to everyone, except white, heterosexual men, and especially married family men (who are portrayed as historic “oppressors” owing compensation to everyone else as their historic “victims”) — euphemistically called “anti-discrimination” or “affirmative action” policy — the natural social order is systematically undermined. Normality is punished, and abnormity and deviance is rewarded.

What do you predict, then, will be the future of the EU?

The EU and the ECB are a moral and economic monstrosity, in violation of natural law and the laws of economics. You cannot continuously punish productivity and success and reward idleness and failure without bringing about the disaster. The EU will slide from one economic crisis to the next and ultimately break apart. The Brexit, that we have just experienced, is only the first step in this inevitable process of devolution and political decentralization.

(He's not talking about NAFTA but the position regarding "trade deals" is clearly noticeable, Stephan Kinsella is also a good source on that matter)

The only thing I'd disagree here if how he says Southern Europe was "rewarded". Oh no we weren't.

(07-18-2017 02:32 PM)Ghost Tiger Wrote:  That's some top shelf excellent analysis Debeguiled. High Quality!

I particularly liked this part:

(07-18-2017 11:20 AM)debeguiled Wrote:  No one can truly believe that there are temperaments other than theirs.

So what I try to do, and this is something I cribbed straight from Peterson, is get them to admit that not only is there a place for other temperaments, but that we need all sorts of temperaments to have a functioning society.

In other words, if everyone was like them, society would fall to pieces.

Reminds me of a discussion TooFineAPoint and I had offline not so long ago. He and I tend to have arguments over free trade. TFAP identifies as a free-trade supporting anarcho-capitalist in agreement with the Austrian school of thought endorsed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and I identify as an Alt-Right (Alt-West to be specific) nationalist supporting Hamiltonian-style trade protectionism endorsed by one President Donald J. Trump.

I recently argued to TFAP that the worldview of libertarians like him and Hoppe had failed (see: NAFTA) and that they couldn't see the superior value of Hamiltonian trade policies over free-trade policies because of the kind of men they were... because they are pacifists who worship the "Non-Aggression Principle". I argued that men like myself and Trump are more predisposed to aggression as an option and therefore we are better able to see the failure of free-trade and the necessity of the aggression of trade protectionism. I followed that argument up by saying that men like me and Trump thought we had become obsolete after the end of the Cold War and that we were pleasantly surprised to discover that our particular worldview was still essential to the survival of Western Civilization. I finished my argument, as I often do, by saying that we will all be Alt-Right soon (a Vox Day-ism) and that libertarianism will be a footnote in history with less pages devoted to it than communism. TFAP echoed your analysis when he replied that men like himself and Hoppe will still be necessary in the coming culture war. And he's right. An army needs medics just as badly as it needs snipers. So I tip my hat to you Debeguiled. Your analysis is lucid here.

I