Oceans Yet to Burn

collapsedsquid

mitoticcephalopod

I’m really confused that the animosity between ancoms and ancaps. I feel like we all agree on the most important thing: that the state is bad. We just disagree on the economic system we should use after the state is removed. tbh I really don’t feel like that’s worth spending so much time arguing about when the real enemy is the statists.

collapsedsquid

One answer to this is that for ancoms any entity with the power to define and enforce property rights is a “state.“ Regardless of whether it’s a subscription or taxes , if It walks like state, quacks like a state, and enforces property rights like a state it will have to solve the same problems as a state and will crack heads like a state.

mitigatedchaos

Many state policies can be replicated in Anarcho-Capitalism by adjusting who has the property at the start, only without the recourse to democracy to blunt the effects of the worst ones. I’m not even an Anarcho-Communist and it seems obvious to me why they shouldn’t be friends.

Source: mitoticcephalopod politics

sinesalvatorem

I really don’t understand white nationalists who think antebellum slavery was a good idea - even from a self-interest perspective.

Like, you guys do realise how the people you hate so much got to the Americas, right?

For people who say blacks can’t swim, you seem surprisingly convinced that we crossed the Atlantic without help.

mitigatedchaos

The first White Nationalist I’ve met in a while does indeed think that the Atlantic Slave Trade was a bad idea, and roughly for that reason.

From a regular Nationalist perspective racializing slavery was also a dumb idea since it essentially created a separate ethnicity in a group that could have been fully integrated, causing expensive and politically-divisive rifts in society that last to this day, undermined the nation’s moral character, undermined national morale, etc. And that’s before even accounting for the ordinary moral damage it did in terms of unnecessary human suffering, which was enormous.

Of course if one is the kind to practice mass racialized slavery, one may not be the kind to give thought to the long term implications of mass racialized slavery on others in general.

politics racism race politics slavery

argumate

Source: facebook.com politics violence

argumate

fuckheadwitha asked:

a friend told me using hand claps between words was cultural appropriation and now im shitting my pants good dude

memecucker answered:

The emoji? Uhhhhhb

fed-detector

I’ve seen this before. Supposedly black people invented it and now white people using it is like the height of racial slights.

argumate

this👏is👏bullshit👏like👏everything👏else👏on👏tumblr

mitigatedchaos

The handclaps thIng is dumb but I’m not evil enough to claim it’s cultural appropriation to try to stop people using it.

Source: memecucker

argumate

nostalgebraist said: i don’t understand these two sentences – if they couldn’t reach him, how do they know what he said? – “Moldbug, who does not do interviews and could not be reached for this story, has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary, according to a source. Yarvin said he has never spoken with Bannon.”

blatant bullshit Kremlinology, I just like the fact that Americans spend so long vetting their presidential candidates (over a year!) then once elected they immediately install a cabal of incredibly shady characters to run everything.

“oh I’d have a beer with Dubya!”

*cue Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, and Wolfowitz striding into Whitehouse in slow motion like world’s worst boyband*

mitigatedchaos

Some dark part of me longs for Technocratic Dictatorship.

politics

sinesalvatorem

Anonymous asked:

G-d. I am so fucking nervous about where this anti-fascist stuff's going. I feel like I'm an island in a sea of an increasingly violent left-wing culture. I lean left and libertarian. I sincerely feel that initiating the use of force is wrong. I have a kid. I don't want her growing up in the middle of a civil war or a totalitarian regime, and I feel like one or the other's inevitable. People keep telling me 'if there are Nazi sympathizers in power, why shouldn't we use violence', but no, _no_...

sinesalvatorem answered:

*hugs*

I know how you feel. I’m terrified. But I think in the coming months it’ll settle down a little as the left realises that Trump isn’t going to run away scared and the Administration realises that people are actually going to resist if they do anything egregious, and we’ll reach a lower-energy-if-still-unstable equilibrium.

I’m still not happy about anything that’s happening, though. You have all of my sympathy. Feel free to message me any time.

mitigatedchaos

If Orange Capitalism Man has any idea what he’s doing - and my estimate is like 50:50 he does vs does not - his plan works based on creating outrage on demand to suit his purposes. He can only extract so much outrage that way until outrage reserves are tapped out and people start pursuing other methods that involve more argumentation and less use of social power.

Probably. I’m only estimating that those outrage reserves are finite.

politics trump violence

wirehead-wannabe

nothingismere

exhijabifashion:

Unpopular opinion: intersectional feminism is responsible for a lot of collateral damage that it is becoming increasingly urgent to address. It presents itself as comprehensive in its revelatory powers re: marginalized experience even though it actually enables silencing and reinforced marginalization of the most marginalized of such experiences by virtue of its very theoretical structure. Its ideals are not practically supported by its theoretical tools due to their own structural flaws.

In brief, upholding positionality as a criterion of discourse and ultimately decentering privileged commentary in attempt to define narrative authority ends up fostering oppressive dogma and suspension of necessary critical inquiry in the very attempts to do the opposite, and in ways that large-scale matter to the lives and plights of the most marginalized. […]

This may be a relatively digestible bit of expansion copied from another thread. For context, someone was musing about how third wave feminism seems to have a severe problem recognizing issues like misogyny and homophobia and generally identifying social conservativism within Muslim communities:
Honestly I think this is partially wrought by intersectionality theory itself. It tries to unravel and juxtapose nuanced experiences within marginalized groups, but is absolutely ill equipped to do so because it falls into the trap of crystallizing identities and experiences to the testimony of visible community voices without interrogating those voices to begin with, because its very model undermines interrogation. It hinges on mechanisms like positionality to center the voices and experiences of oppressed people, such that representatives of those people are granted authority and outsiders are considered incapable of accessing the knowledge and experience to challenge that.

Except when those representatives given authority by virtue of their positionality are themselves bound to a conservative institution and dedicated to a cultural zeitgeist that is at odds with the values underlying intersectional theory to begin with, while intersectionality itself put roadblocks against any capacity to question or challenge such positionality and upholds a model of specifically decentering critique from outsiders, you get people who believe they are being the most authentic and supportive they can by refusing to extend models of critique that are not necessarily limited by their position as outsiders by sheer virtue of how they are positioned. So they eat all the BS up and the Linda Sarsours of marginalized communities continue to be upheld as representatives beyond reproach. And that’s third wave feminism ‘done right’.

There’s something perversely lacking in self awareness about the very theoretical models people take as authoritative right now precisely because they attempt radical self awareness.

I think a symptom of is that the moral and epistemic clarity of posts like http://nothingismere.tumblr.com/post/154828689842/ozymandias271-questions-that-will-apparently-be is weirdly uncommon. Like, this is such a bizarre exchange:

Querent - “How can I figure out what I should be doing to fight racism without burdening people of color by constantly asking them what I should do?”
@ozymandias271 - “You have a brain? Presumably you can use it to assess the quality of information yourself? Why are you making people of color do this for you?”

It’s one thing to recommend a debiasing intervention (e.g., ‘people under-weight evidence in the form of self-reports of others’ experiences when those people have lived very different lives; assign more weight to compensate’), and another thing to act as though the debiasing intervention replaces normal weighing-of-the-evidence altogether.

First-hand accounts from the disprivileged are a weight on the scale, not a qualitatively higher form of evidence/argument; obscuring that fact and talking in non-quantitative terms encourages epistemic learned helplessness like in Ozy’s post.

wirehead-wannabe

I mean, the exchange makes perfect sense once you take into account that Querent readers are trying first and foremost to ensure that they don’t get yelled at, and that openly admitting to that would get them yelled at. Ozy’s approach is the one that actually works better for everyone in the absence of any risk of yelling.

Source: nothingismere gender politics feminism

sinesalvatorem

Apparently You’re A Nazi

sinesalvatorem

I just encountered a tweet with a gif that showed a woman in a “Make Bitcoin Great Again” hat being blindsided and pepper-sprayed by some guy, with a reply saying “you dont often see female nazis getting what they deserve”

Originally, a “Nazi” meant someone who wanted to create a fascist state and commit genocide. Any decent person would hate these guys, so we all understood that Nazi=Evil.

Then “Nazi” meant someone who endorsed racist beliefs, regardless of policies. This was transparently diluting the meaning from its original form, but we didn’t really mind, because racists suck and we were going to be pissed at them anyway.

Then “Nazi” meant someone who supported Donald Trump for any reason. ie: Over a third of the USA.

Now “Nazi” means someone who wears ~edgy~ hats supporting bitcoin.

And, regardless of your opinion on genocide - or literally anything else, for that matter - in a month, “Nazi” is going to mean you.

It literally does not matter what you believe. Not a single bit. You could be the most fervent anti-racist in the world. You could hate Hitler with all your heart. You could have been completely certain that no one in their right mind would call you a Nazi.

And then someone wearing a dumb hat got pepper-sprayed.

So, the next time you see the punching discourse, remember this: All of those arguments in favour of punching Nazis are encouraging people to punch anyone in a silly hat. Even if the person making the argument doesn’t endorse punching people in stupid hats, this is where it leads. And saying “But I thought they’d only punch the real Nazis!” is no excuse.

Saying “You can punch Nazis” means “You can punch people you call Nazis”. Simple as that. There is no ledger in the sky listing the True Nazis and distinguishing them from the Fake Nazis. If there was, people in stupid hats wouldn’t be pepper-sprayed. Any and all endorsement of punching Nazis on sight is an endorsement of “Use your judgement to decide who to punch, because no one’s judgement is ever flawed”.

And then people wearing the wrong hat will be punched. And people wearing the wrong shoes will be punched. And people eating the wrong food will be punched. And people listening to the wrong music will be punched. And you will be punched. You will always be someone’s Nazi, and this is the political climate in which they will feel justified in assaulting you.

So, if being a fucking decent person who doesn’t attack strangers based on their hat doesn’t compel you, at least let a little self-interest do it. Do you want a jacked up whiteboy with a saviour complex to beat your ass for walking down the street the wrong way? No? Then don’t contribute to the culture that wants to make that happen.

Because when you ride with the disintegration of the social order, you ride with Hitler. ///

the-real-seebs

Ayup.

sptrashcan

Why do we not like Nazis? Because they want to use violence on the people they don’t like. What normalizes Nazis? Using violence on the people we don’t like.

snitchanon

“You will always be someone’s Nazi, and this is the political climate in which they will feel justified in assaulting you.”

This is exactly the sort of thing that’s a counterpoint to everyone I’ve seen whining about how slippery slopes don’t apply to nazis.

7outerelements

I disagree. I don’t have to worry about being someone’s nazi. There are actual emboldened or recently converted nazis out there who worry me more. But stepping away from the element of personal preservation, let me argue more objectively.

You don’t like the argument that punching fascists, assaulting nazis, is categorically different from other violence. OK. Then let’s perceive the phenomenon dimensionally. Everyone can be placed on a scale of 0-100 in terms of nazi quintessence. Public outcry for and against violence done to a fairly high level nazi is a known value: lots of approval, some guilty appreciation, lots of moderate condemnation, and some nazi response. Someone is lower on the nazi scale? Radicals still cheer, but the guilty appreciation and moderate condemnation factions grow. Nazi response is a constant, because they’re nazis. This pattern continues until the majority of society sort of agrees that no, this particular act of violence is not meme-worthy. The market speaks, and our collective decision tree reaches a conclusion - level 69 nazis are not nazi enough to punch, or whatever the needle lands on. People won’t keep slapping level 12 nazis, because the blowback will be huge. It will get no likes.

I trust this system. It will never bite me in the ass. Under no circumstances will I ever be anywhere near the margins of maybe-punchable. Which is as it should be, because nazis are inherently the worst sort of extremists. Avoiding this ideology should be political easy mode. If this social wayfinding violence convinces a few people to maybe shift a little down on that scale, away from the 60-70 splash zone, forgive me for not stepping up to protect their collective right to be dill holes.

sinesalvatorem

So, I have three problems with this:

The first is that the Nazi scale is not consistent or predictable. Lots of people think the scale is in a completely different place from other people. I’m not saying some people want to punch level 50 Nazis, while others only punch 80 and up, and the former is willing to defer to the latter to avoid backlash.

I mean people who actually don’t realise that other people might see the person they’re calling a 90 as being a 20. I have encountered people who are honestly confused that someone on the left might think they’re an asshole if they punch anyone registered to the Republican party, regardless of how or whether they voted. There are people who don’t understand that there might be backlash from all quarters - not just the administration - if Trump’s grandchildren were kidnapped.

There are people whose scales look nothing like anyone else’s, and I don’t even want them to hear “punching level 90 Nazis is OK” because then they’ll punch people no reasonable person would count. I want a blanket injunction because it’s the only thing that’ll stop the paranoiacs who twist everything into Nazis under the bed.

But even beyond that - even if we granted the idea that the perception of the Nazi scale was consistent across everyone - I still don’t want violence to slide further down it. Do we want to to go from punching 80s to punching 60s to punching 40s to the breakdown of civil discourse (to the extent that we still have any)? This is why I want people to stop calling for violent escalation. I want to at least arrest the decline of civil society.

Furthermore, even with a consistent scale, there are outliers. Even if, by some miracle, we could get most people to agree on 60, there would still be people who’ll punch at 30 and damn the consequences because they’re ~saving the world~. Like, if there are already people at the “pepper spray silly hats” level of nonsensical extremism, do we really want the situation to deteriorate? Do we want to lower the average and let the outliers get worse?

Seriously though, I’m not someone’s nazi, I’m someone’s oven joke, I’m literally not allowed to be someone’s nazi, They wouldn’t let me if I tried,

I’m in the same position, mate. I’m Black and Jewish and gay. Any true Nazi would triple-oven me in a heartbeat, so I am fully motivated to track and shame and discredit them.

But some people just don’t fucking get that. I have been called a Nazi on several occasions by obvious idiots. These are the “someones” I mean when I say “someone’s Nazi”. Luckily, none of the people who’ve called me that would have been willing to punch me for it. But that’s the thing: I don’t want that to change. This safety margin is important.

I want the people stupid enough to believe in gay black Jewish Nazis to keep their hands in their fucking pockets. I do not want them to be in an environment where they feel like this is at all justifiable, because those people cannot be trusted to know who to punch. And I have enough on my plate without having to watch my back from so-called allies.

mitigatedchaos

Just to pile on top of this, right wing actions do not occur in a vacuum. Right-wingers are often oversensitive to threats. As the punching spreads, because some people are out there enough to combine “we should punch white supremacists” with “all white people have internalized white supremacy”. Right-wingers are going to respond to that sort of thing by either punching equally unrelated people or going after Leftists. …and they have about as much justification to go after tankies as Leftists have to go after Nazis.

politics violence

bambamramfan

Anonymous asked:

i really like your blog!

bambamramfan answered:

Thanks! That’s not really a question though. And mostly that makes me wonder “why?”

(Also I guess, why is this anonymous? Is liking my blog some dark secret?)

Which reminds me, why do people follow without liking or reblogging some posts. It always makes me curious “what did I just say to make you follow me now?” Instead they just seem to spontaneously come out of the aether.

mitigatedchaos

Sometimes a post is insightful enough to be worth reading but one does not agree enough to endorse it.

argumate

nuclearspaceheater

The situation I’m imagining that brings about massive technological unemployment is one in which most workers’ marginal value contains both a positive and negative component. If the net is positive, then the concept of comparative advantage applies and there is always something that they have comparative advantage at that they can trade with the people who own and operate robots, and still come out ahead. This is the standard rebuttal to the claim that technological unemployment is even possible in a decently free economy.

But given that there is a negative component, this does not follow, because it is enough for automation to reduce the positive component to a sufficiently small (but still positive, by comparative advantage) level that it cannot compensate for the negatives of dealing with them and their marginal value as employees becomes zero or negative if you have access to robots instead, which is not a situation normally dealt with in analysis that assumes that the median worker’s marginal productivity is always positive, even if small.

(If we’re opening up net marginal productivity into a positive and negative component, then robots have their negatives to, of course. But I don’t think this affects the point.)

shieldfoss

My worry has long been that their marginal productivity is positive (because I’ve made the exact mistake you point out) but that it wasn’t positive enough.

My “comparative advantage” doesn’t matter if it’s small enough that my resulting gain from trade isn’t enough to live on.

nuclearspaceheater

Now that you mention it, the concept of comparative advantage only guarantees that you will always be better off under trade than you would be under self-sufficiency. (Except the unlikely situation where you are inferior at everything by the exact same factor, in which case you are still not worse off.)

But a worker is already involved with trade when they sell their labor to an employer. Comparative advantage itself says nothing whatsoever about what might happen to your position when new traders appear in the market to compete with you.

So if your “self-sufficiency” is below sustenance, then comparative advantage, even where it’s assumptions are valid, only guarantees that trade will at worst leave you just as dead but will most likely let your live slightly longer. There is no guarantee that it can raise you above sustenance if you don’t have anything valuable enough on offer.

I’m puzzled that I’d never realized this before. Apparently the main concept used to argue that technological unemployment is impossible doesn’t actually apply to the situation at all? Maybe I’m missing something.

mitigatedchaos

I thought this was reasonably obvious, and was continuously surprised on people not noticing this.

See also, my recent post about the issue with the idea of the cost of goods going towards zero.

Source: nuclearspaceheater politics economics

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Apparently You’re A Nazi