Oceans Yet to Burn — sadoeconomist: mutant-aesthetic: I’m actually...

sadoeconomist

mutant-aesthetic

I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies

Like Macron just recently pointed out that this was a huge problem and a lot of lefties went bonkers and got really mad but the African population boom and all the resulting effects are going to be more or less catastrophic for the planet

sadoeconomist

Screaming ‘that’s racist!’ whenever anyone mentions it seems to be how they deal with a lot of issues

For the left, environmentalism is just thinly disguised anti-capitalism, and for the globalist elite, environmentalism is about creating a world state. Actually trying to protect the biosphere from potential threats is not something anyone in politics is really sincerely concerned with - kind of a frightening thought

I don’t know that high population growth is necessarily such a terrible thing, though, having more people in the world has a lot of positives to it that usually winds up outweighing the negatives, even for impoverished Africans. Most of the time the people who are concerned with population growth have a skewed zero-sum view of the economy that only lets them see more people as more mouths to feed, but especially in the future that won’t be the right way to look at it

mitigatedchaos

Setting aside that not everyone wants to live in Coruscant, that depends enormously on energy prices, and I’m not optimistic about medium-long-term energy prices.

Much less a bunch of chronically malnourished people don’t give you as many of the benefits of high population. There’s a lot of argument about the heritability of intelligence, but it’s less controversial that it isn’t that hard to damage intelligence development with environmental factors.

Source: mutant-aesthetic alison dont read

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@wirehead-wannabe

There this rightist thing that keeps fucking infuriating me more and more, where they won’t state outright whether their bundle of policy and norm and social technology proposals is supposed to help everyone or whether it’s supposed to help the ingroup. Like, is this whole localism-ingroupism thing supposed to be pursuing the utilitarian optimum, or is it supposed to be pursuing ingroup benefit at the expense of everyone else, or is it supposed to be giving up on the rest of the world and saving yourselves or or or or or or I’ve never found any socially conservative rhetoric that didn’t leave me ruminating for hours on end trying to extract something coherent and driving myself insane trying to articulate what specifically it even is that’s nothing me.

How much freedom should others have?

It isn’t a trick question.

The reason it doesn’t seem like localism-ingroupism is either trying to completely solve for global utility optimum or global freedom or fuck-everyone-else-ism is because it’s trying to find a balance between competing concerns.

If I am responsible for the well-being of everyone, then I become obligated to destroy their cultures and replace them with something more effective/efficient, because I am not interested in paying for the side effects of their dumb cultural policies.

If there is total freedom, then like Hell am I paying for everyone else’s dumb decisions, because there will be no end, ever, to the subsidy. And if it ever seems like my shining army of economic robots has finally defeated the scarcity and delivered the desired level of wealth at the same time as full freedom? They’ll just have more kids and push the per-capita wealth right back down again.

This localism-ingroupism places non-absolute limits on freedom and non-absolute limits on obligation, making it feasible to transfer wealth to the worse off by limiting the effects of cultural policies that would destroy or overwhelm the ability to create that wealth in the first place.

And, it says “well if you want to do something that stupid, then go do it over there and don’t make me pay for it”, so there is still even more freedom, but it’s decoupled from obligation.

And, if every country works for its own benefit but without randomly trainwrecking other countries in the manner of the Bush Administration, then the effect is somewhat akin to the invisible hand - different climates, economies, and populations have different needs, so it makes sense for those close to these needs who are acquainted with them to make the law.

(Thus I oppose a number of measures which various right-wing or more dominance-focused nationalists would support. Seeing as I’m trying to summon a new ideology from beyond the veil, I’m not necessarily a representative sample.)

politics alison dont read nationalism

squareallworthy

mutant-aesthetic

I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies

mitigatedchaos

The plan is to migrate them all here, because developed nations have infinite money and structural reinforcement. Or there is no plan. Just cross your fingers and hope it all works out.

Hitler is the Satan figure of modern progressivism/liberalism. Anything that even has the slightest whiff of something he might maybe have once possibly considered doing for a few seconds is tainted by association. On top of that, there have been previous racist actions in the developed nations. On top of that, it has been decided that the majority whites of the developed nations bear the original sin for racism.

Telling people to have fewer kids is worth celebrating by progressivism, but only if you’re telling white people. Telling anyone else is vile racism. (Even, of course, if it would lead to terrible conditions in majority-PoC countries.)

For the progressives that actually notice that you can only consume what is produced, and that while the wealthy have a pretty good-sized amount of money it isn’t anywhere near unlimited, embracing any discouragement of population growth is considered too dangerous, a slippery slope to eugenics and baby licenses.

…even to the ones that “jokingly” suggested swapping everyone’s babies to end “genetic chauvinism”, I would imagine.

Of course the Conservatives keep trying to kill abortion in those areas with their controls on American government aid funding, so mostly they don’t really care, either. Catholics I’ve encountered seem to believe that God Will Provide or something, one of them talking about the Earth supporting a potential population of 100 billion.

Only a few villains see this as an issue, like you, me, and Emmanuel Macron.

squareallworthy

I believe the progressive line on this is “education and improved public health lower the birth rate.” And it’s also the neoliberal line and not too far removed from the libertarian line.

mitigatedchaos

@squareallworthy‘s reading is probably a fairer one, and it’s what they’re hoping for with the crossed fingers.

@mutant-aesthetic

To add on, it should be noted that the birthrate is falling there, even if it’s still crazy high and may end up exceeding the carrying capacity anyway. World population is forecasted to stop growing somewhere at something like 9-11 billion.

Source: mutant-aesthetic alison dont read

mutant-aesthetic

I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies

mitigatedchaos

The plan is to migrate them all here, because developed nations have infinite money and structural reinforcement. Or there is no plan. Just cross your fingers and hope it all works out.

…even to the ones that “jokingly” suggested swapping everyone’s babies to end “genetic chauvinism”, I would imagine.

Only a few villains see this as an issue, like you, me, and Emmanuel Macron.

alison dont read politics

argumate

Anonymous asked:

*squints* wait what does communism have to do with not "liv[ing] in a secluded home with their one marriage partner" though

argumate answered:

all bad things are related and all good things are related.

this is why ending capitalism (a bad thing!) will also end racism, homophobia, the nuclear family, child abuse, exploitation, climate change, and death itself.

(if it turns out that some people have different opinions on which things are good and which things are bad then you just repeat it louder).

but more specifically some people are pining for an aesthetic of communal living and believe that everyone else is too or are willing to force it upon them if not.

mitigatedchaos

all bad things are related and all good things are related.
this is why ending capitalism (a bad thing!) will also end racism, homophobia, the nuclear family, child abuse, exploitation, climate change, and death itself.

Ugh this happens so fucking often.

(Just for the record, upping levels of Nationalism won’t fix everything, it has to be part of an overall plan that will have to include a lot of different elements. - this National blog)

politics

argumate

marcusseldon

Sometimes I worry that everybody, including me, EA’s, silicon valley, the media, and so on should be more concerned about climate change than we actually are.

argumate

the most effective thing to be doing at any given moment is trying to take over the world

Source: marcusseldon

mutant-aesthetic

politics

argumate

how bad can I possibly be??

The problem is not that the Onceler is morally bad, but that he is rationally responding to bad incentives which lead to bad outcomes: he is indeed “doing what comes naturally” in the current (lax) regulatory environment.

If the only way to avoid bad outcomes is for everyone in your society to be morally virtuous and to have access to perfect information then you have a problem!

A better way would be to pay attention to outcomes and have a system of checks and balances that provides a feedback loop to correct the incentives that led to them, combined with an enforcement mechanism to punish violators.

mitigatedchaos

My my, Argumate, what a novel idea.

Are you suggesting that perhaps we should also judge the rule systems themselves by their outcomes?

shtpost

argumate

so yeah the obvious reason why the left shouldn’t justify its policies for non-leftist reasons is that short-term justifications are slippery and can twist in your hands, and you don’t want to put effort into undermining your own ideology.

for example, say you justified an extensive recycling program on environment grounds, then later it turned out that it actually had a higher environmental cost than straight landfill- wait shit this is a terrible example let me come in again.

argumate

say I strongly believe that these propositions are true:

A
A → B
A → C
A → D
…

perhaps proposition A is that everyone deserves equal opportunity in life, and from that I draw B (open borders!) and C (public healthcare!) and D (antiracism!) and all kinds of other things.

now perhaps I can’t convince someone of proposition A, or I’m too gutless to try, so instead I construct alternative justifications and try to sell those instead:

X → B
Y → C
Z → D
…

perhaps proposition X is we should strengthen the country (by boosting skilled immigration!), and Y is that we should strive for efficiency (public healthcare!), and Z is that we shouldn’t make Jesus cry so much (fight racism!).

but wait, these alternative justifications might prove much more than I intended! investing heavily in the military might also strengthen the country, and clamping down on premarital sex might also stop Jesus crying.

or the implications may not be factual: someone might decide that actually the country isn’t strengthened by increased immigration, and then we have a pickle on our hands; by ceding our true motivations we’ve compromised our entire political program.

this doesn’t mean you can’t mention when a policy has multiple benefits, and something can be win-win on more than one axis. but it’s almost impossible to be a win on every axis and anyone who says otherwise is lying, although typically to themselves.

mitigatedchaos

Sometimes people may also not agree on the A→B, however. I’m not a Nationalist because I think my country is always correct, but for more Consequentialist reasons. Same thing for rejecting open borders. Antiracism seemed to be a good thing but as practically implemented by activists it’s a lot more mixed (see: Bernie got accused of being White Supremacist, numerous attempts to redefine both “Racism” and “Violence”.) My opposition to Communism is not because I’m against redistribution from an inherent perspective - I believe property is useful but not true - but based on how it turned out.

politics

Memetic Immune Systems

To expand on that jargon-post…

We can model ideas and ideologies as existing in an environment of evolution, much like creatures (not a new idea - this is the basis of meme theory AFAIK).

In so doing, we can model them as having various components that suit different purposes, like viruses. Metaphorically.

There may be parts evolved to cause people to adopt the idea, parts to cause people to spread the idea, parts to prevent people from giving up on the idea, and so on.

If a human wants to stay aligned with the truth, they need to process and filter out harmful or dangerous idea complexes, because like viruses in nature, the only hard rules that prevent them from being too dangerous is that they don’t kill their hosts too quickly to spread.

And so humans reason about ideas, and have intuitions about bad ideas, and have various layers of defenses to protect themselves from bad ideas.

Now, if you’re making idea and don’t care that much about truth or whatever but want it to spread, what could you do to increase its chances of replication?

Demand that it not be scrutinized (so more of it gets through and it isn’t rejected)
Demand that it must be followed and copied EXACTLY (so more of it gets through)
Demand to punish anyone that gives up on it
Demand to punish anyone who doesn’t adopt it

Etc.

So, in the discussion of Bad Social Justice rhetoric, we sometimes see something come up about standpoint theory (or whatever the formal name is), the idea being that privileged people such as whites, men, white gay men, etc, cannot truly know the experiences of oppressed groups.

They must “sit down and listen”, to use the vocabulary.

Criticism of the ideology is then rejected (on the grounds that they cannot ever truly have the proper knowledge). The full content must be accepted, acted upon, and spread. No stopping to consider whether it’s healthy or safe or anything else.

The problem is that, like a rootkit that gets direct access to the core of a computer system, this leaves a giant, exploitable hole.

This is not the only group, ideology, or movement to do or have done this.

It’s way more common than it should be.

politics meme warfare

ranma-official

theonion:
“SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass....

Source: theonion queue

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

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how bad can I possibly be??

Memetic Immune Systems

This is not the only group, ideology, or movement to do or have done this.