RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive463

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Should we make an article about FATAL?

I feel that F.A.T.A.L. is at least somewhat missional for RationalWiki due to its sexist and racist content. We don't need to go anywhere near as in-depth about why it sucks as 1d6chan does (in fact, we could probably defer readers over there for more detail), but we should at least give shit like "Armor of Nigrous Nincompoopery" and "Armor of Jewy Jewbacca" the mockery it deserves. Luigifan18 (talk) 13:07, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

You have a keyboard, don't you? Write it yourself. Carthage (talk) 14:43, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't think we should give oxygen to something to small. You can, of course, write an article if you disagree with me though. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 15:23, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml

Not sure anyone can best this! KarmaPolice (talk) 15:30, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Ah, the classic FATAL review. I still haven't read all the way through that. Luigifan18 (talk) 16:07, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

It's worth doing (as in, reading the review). KarmaPolice (talk) 16:26, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Is there anything an RW article on FATAL could provide that the existing 1d6chan article about it doesn't already? (I did like the latter's article about Chris-Chan, but they unfortunately later decided to remove it.) IntrepidSkeptic (talk) 19:37, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the rationale is that Chris-Chan's antics eventually got so weird, toxic, and pathetic that 4chan (or at least /tg/) decided that talking about him was more "depressing and horrifying" than "strange and funny". As for having our own coverage of FATAL when 1d6 has already tackled it, see the sub-section below. Luigifan18 (talk) 15:31, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

I'm not sure it's needed here. First, as some have noted above, it's been dealt with rather thoroughly elsewhere (1D6chan, TV Tropes, and the famed RPG Net review), and secondly it has about as much impact on the tabletop gaming world as a snowflake does in the crater of Mt. Pele. Seriously, it's not a player in that genre in the least. If anyone looks it up it's out of bile fascination at best. It's vile, it's revolting, and it's unspeakably sexist and racist and most other kinds of --ist, but it's also far from notable to anyone except those who have an interest in really really awful RPGs. Kencolt (talk) 02:02, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

The whole thing is just the project of a deranged man who had his moment of gamer infamy nearly two decades ago. I can't imagine it has any unironic fans. Also, the author is doing time for drugs and rape. So there's that. Paul S (talk) 02:08, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

However, taking a look at our Role-playing game page FATAL could easily get a semi-stub paragraph under 'types'. After all, we do have a page on Racial Holy War... KarmaPolice (talk) 09:07, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

That is similar to what I was thinking — RationalWiki doesn't need to go as in-depth on FATAL as 1d6chan, and we could focus on the parts of it that are relevant to our mission, i.e. the sexism, racism, and mind-boggling amounts of rape. Indeed, it was always my intention for our FATAL article to be something of a gateway to 1d6chan's article, since it's more relevant to them than it is to us. (This kind of thing cuts both ways, BTW — we go a bit more in-depth on, say, the Satanic Panic or Jack Chick than 1d6chan does, since they focus on the impact those things had on tabletop gaming (which means that they go a bit more in-depth on that subject while we cover the entirety of those topics). 1d6chan does go more in-depth on Racial Holy War's origins in their article on it than we do, but that's because they don't have any particular reason to have a separate article on the Creativity Movement, whereas that depraved cult is missional for RationalWiki. Holy Terror is just one more entry on 1d6chan's article about edgy shit, whereas we have a full-blown article on exactly why it's repulsive. And their article on MYFAROG treats Varg Vikernes himself as just a framing device for the game's crappiness, whereas our article on Varg Vikernes treats MYFAROG as just another of his repulsive brain farts.) So, yeah, that's my take on it. FATAL is just one more area where 1d6chan and RationalWiki have overlapping interests that can be used to supplement each other. Luigifan18 (talk) 14:40, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I purely personally are against effort duplication but also okay with RW pointing out good/reliable other sources etc where they come up. So in FATALs case I would do a one para précis and then point readers towards more in depth articles etc. KarmaPolice (talk) 17:38, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

An alliance between RationalWiki and 1d6chan

I did allude to this the last time I brought up the subject, but I have noticed a good deal of overlap in the interests, tone, and overall opinions of both RationalWiki and 1d6chan in my time on both sites, and I think that both wikis could benefit from cross-referencing each other in circumstances where a given subject is relevant to both — especially when the subject in question is more relevant to one wiki than the other, allowing the less-invested wiki's coverage to be the "entry-level" version and the more-invested wiki to go into further depth for more interested readers.
Now, 1d6chan is still a 4chan derivative, and while 1d6chan emphatically does not like /pol/, they are also somewhat annoyed by "SJWs", so we can't really get too buddy-buddy with them and it might be a mistake to try. We also need to acknowledge that there will be subjects where RationalWiki and 1d6chan won't necessarily be in agreement. Take their article on religion, for example — they treat the subject with a great deal of tact and nuance (though they're still notably snarky about it), acknowledging its contributions to society and human development while also warning of the dangers that it can pose when followed to excess, but they remain overall neutral about it. RationalWiki is not neutral on religion; we don't hate it with a burning passion, we acknowledge its positive aspects where it is pertinent to do so, and our overall stance is tolerant yet wary, but we generally tend to view the concept of religion with some degree of disapproval. (We don't subject religion to criticism it doesn't deserve (unlike some people (see our articles on Islamophobia, militant atheism, etc.)), but we don't overlook areas where it doesn't make any sense or has actual blood on its hands, either.) Thus, cross-linking between RationalWiki and 1d6chan on religious subjects may not always be a good idea. Still, I think that an alliance between the sites could have a positive impact on both. Luigifan18 (talk) 15:16, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Is the idea to flood a Chan adjacent with weekly snark that disavows casual raciam? We can't flood anything. There has never been a limit to joining this site or speaking on it. I don't understand this appeal. Torrent (talk) 06:07, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

…Uh, no, I never said anything about going to 4chan. I was talking about the 1d6chan wiki… what are you talking about? Luigifan18 (talk) 06:41, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I also can't read context, so I never said 4chan Torrent (talk) 07:07, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Nope, nope, nope. All the good things you see there are from over a decade ago, and even then it was like walking a tightrope. This is me speaking as both a former /tg/ reader and as someone who contributed to the wiki. Hell, I was the one who created the pages for Murderhobos, Judge Dredd and the list of /tg/ characters. Going further, I was even the one who came up with the origin and uniforms of the 1st Membranes and pretty much established all the fluff for the Hell Harlots (others rolled the dice on the tables, I just put it all together with a name, the backstory and how they look). I got the hell out once the bigotry started to get more and more common, such as casual antisemitism when talking about publishers and outright racism derailing threads. A lot of the later stuff on the wiki tends to do both-sidesism on hot-button topics AT BEST. On top of that, RationalWiki earned the reputation of being the "SJW wiki" when we called out GamerGate for being the bullshit that it was. Because of that, I can't see any of the long-time people at 1d6chan even considering a partnership with us in any way, shape or form.

I'm sorry, but this is just a bad idea. While they won't try to pull a DDoS on the site or dox any of us, your proposal would not be welcomed warmly over there. Best to not take this any further. Paul S (talk) 05:05, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I for one am not interested in opening this community to a flood of toxic channers. Carthage (talk) 05:41, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

1d6chan user here. Frankly, a good number of us don't want you and your wiki's baggage near us either, for the sake of avoiding potential flamewars over style and politics as much as differing focuses on content. Because of course having an 'alliance' between a broadly right-wing tabletop games-focused wiki and a very left-wing wiki with a general dislike of anything right-wing isn't going to end in tears, banhammers, and screaming insults. Also the admin on 1d6chan has rendered his official verdict that we aren't making any kind of 'alliance', and that the sites should be enjoyed separately rather than stitched together like some Clan Moulder experiment because we happen to have a tiny overlap on interests.

TL;DR: Luigi's a fucking idiot, please disregard his proposal. Idiocracy (talk) 20:14, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Yep, I'm here to confirm from the Discord channel that 1d6chan wasn't enthusiastic about this idea, so it's unfortunately being shelved. Luigifan18 (talk) 20:16, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

...I honestly don't know what to say to you. Paul S (talk) 00:04, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I wish to see these 'flamewars over style' which has been spoken about.... KarmaPolice (talk) 20:29, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

1d6chan has special pages for pointing out when something is stupid, controversial, brutal, or pathetic (Derp, Skub, Rape, Fail, etc.) Maybe it has something to do with that? Or maybe he's referring to me preferring to underline work titles rather than italicizing them. Luigifan18 (talk) 20:41, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Too-da-loo-da-loo. Carthage (talk) 20:45, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

1d6chan's generally going for an informal tone. Rationalwiki's more like Wikipedia with an obvious political bent and snark. Also, as Luigi pointed out I very heavily doubt the site's more chan-y sense of humour and page linking is going to go down well with the RW userbase, if both of our respective sites lost any sense and decided to regularly interact cross-site. Idiocracy (talk) 21:05, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I like the fact that for once, RW is being basically being called as 'too stuffy'. Normally, it's [mainly trolls] who are complaining that we aren't the frowsty tweed of WP. I'm not exactly sure we have a definite 'political bent' - however, it seems like the shit we don't like is more prevalent on one side of the political aisle... KarmaPolice (talk) 21:33, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Chan culture used to not really have a political bend to it either from what I remember, it was more childish lulz shit and whatnot. Sadly the alt-right thingy on some of the big chans (like parts of 4chan) changed that around. Likewise, anything "nerd culture" really doesn't have a political bent overall. Except, unfortunately, for certain reactionary sorts that are quick to throw out terms like "woke" and "SJW" at things that have, er, minorities with agency or something. Thus you get things like the whole Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies fiasco at the Hugos (in addition to Gamergate). It actually can be humorous when this crowd targets things that have always been rather "progressive" (I mean, Star Trek, which does have a humanist angle from the get go, was "woke" before "woke" was a term, making it funny whenever the Pepes have whined about it). Now, 1d6chan at first glance seems way more lulz than Pepe; I really didn't see where the site was "right wing" (though I didn't look too far). It still probably isn't a good mix these days. Maybe 2010 troll Rationalwiki (also far more lulz oriented) would have gotten along.

RW is not an explicit political site - it is anti-authoritarianism, anti-fundamentalism, and anti-crank. In the United States, this means it is "leftist" due to the volume of such on the "right" (it's not like RW supports the whackadoodle parts of the political US left like Nation of Islam, though). Some crank movements more associated with the left (at least historically) like New Age are frowned upon here as well, but if your perceived enemy is that Rationalwiki Gamergate article, you're going to ignore that when hurling insults. BobJohnson (talk) 23:22, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

RW is a political site by virtue of its opposition to authoritarianism. Anti-authoritarianism is a political position in and of itself. I'm not sure I would really consider the NOI to be "leftist," though. "Leftism" implies a sort of politics oriented towards egalitarianism and anti-hierarchical dominance, at least to some extent. The NOI isn't egalitarian or anti-hierarchy. Maybe the existence of organizations like the NOI bely the Eurocentrism implied behind the terms "left" and "right"? Carthage (talk) 23:39, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Do people still believe gamer gate was a legitimate movement? I used to get Nintendo Power magazine when I was a kid. Donkey Kong 64 is one of the worst designed games I gave up a birthday present for, it's an awful game. Video game journalism? It's fake? it's advertising!?! And it's proved because who gives a fuck whether it's true or not some girl banged some guy? Who cares? Gamer gate was a shout into the void, and the void somehow shouted back to itself. If you think it was real, find a ducking Nintendo Power, gaming 'journalism' has always been advertising. Torrent (talk) 06:06, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

what was even the problem, Depression Quest by AnitA Sarkisan? I never played it. Torrent (talk) 06:10, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Chat, is this for real?

Someone posted this video in a Discord server I'm in, and I can't tell if it's real. The thing that's making me confused is the presentation, because usually 'Dramatic reading overlaid with a drawing' is the type of thing you would expect to see done to silly internet drama, not this.

The answer may be in the description, but I haven't bothered checking it because morbid curiosity and not wanting to see the cesspits that Youtube Comments tend to be in these types of videos is a very bad combination. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 04:16, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Appears to be real, though Mike Howell is described by the Heritage Foundation's own website as "executive director of the Heritage Oversight Project... Heritage’s investigative and oversight arm" rather than general head of the think-tank itself. Impiricism (talk) 05:54, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Serious: What would you do as president of your country?

What would your policies look like? How would you interact with foreign leaders? What would your foreign policy be like? Would you fundamentally change institutions, or let them be? To those interested, Please give at least somewhat serious answers, even though the question is almost certainly unrealistic. It doesn't have to be the US, you can choose your own country or any other country too. This is the same person who posted the question on ideological orientations above. Since that seems to have become controversial quickly, this is hopefully going to work a little better. BoN (talk) 10:57, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

It you want short answers, you might be better off asking questions about one topic at a time. You are inviting people to invite essays with this one.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 13:41, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I have absolutely nothing against developed answers. With this post I'm just trying to formulate the question better than last time, and reduce the tension a little bit. (As a side note, This is my main account. I have not used this one since the question is rather controversial, and causes tensions). New world (talk) 14:03, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

My foreign policy would be non-intervention (which includes not sponsoring wars with funding or materiel). I would 1) Rework public education entirely, with an emphasis on abstract problem solving and critical writing/analysis. 2) Revoke The Federal Reserve's issuing power and prosecute its leadership for malfeasance, abuse of power, fraud or whatever the proper charges are. Implement monetary reform. 3) Fire the whole state department and prosecute its leadership for treason and war crimes. I could go on in this vein, but you get the point: I'd rid the government of swine. 4) Sabotage the entertainment industry, e.g. by revising copyright laws to make it unprofitable, by imposing taxes, and generally any other available means so long as they do not infringe upon freedom of expression, which I would reinforce so that social media companies cannot shape public discourse/opinion through censorship. 5) Put stronger regulations on the food and beverage industry to improve public health. 6) Crack down on big pharma's profiteering, as well as anti-competitive business practices in general. I'd do a whole bunch of good stuff, but these are just a few things off the top of my head. Fun question. Accumulator (talk) 14:28, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I'd also strengthen consumer protection, for example by implementing policies against planned obsolescence. Accumulator (talk) 14:58, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Suppose I am the leader of the United States. I would abolish all tariffs and trade bans, especially with China and Cuba. This would help with the import of Chinese electric vehicles, which are very affordable and will improve the environment.

I would upend the public education system entirely. There would be mandatory courses on mental health to teach you how to help people with depression and what to do if you have depression yourself. This is important as a lot of mental disorders develop in your early 20s, which is right after you graduate from high school. There would be a comprehensive sexual education which would have emphasis on transgender issues; Julia Serano's Whipping Girl would be mandatory reading. Students will learn how to read via phonics teaching methods based on the latest scientific evidence. There would be an additional fifth year of high school, which would reduce the time it takes to graduate with a bachelor's degree from four to three years, as well as get rid of several courses that would be mandatory in college. I mean, has anyone seen MIT's General Institute Requirements? They're practically making you do one year of high school that you pay money for [1].

Abolish the SAT, LSAT, MCAT, GRE and all other standardized tests; they discriminate against people who cannot afford courses to do well in them. I would also abolish all copyright laws and set up a comprehensive digital library without the stupid loaning system that the Internet Archive has. And I'm now too tired to keep writing, so that's all. 45.67.97.21 (talk) 14:56, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Trolling tip: start the lead sentence with "Serious" or "Seriously". Fantasizing about leading a country is not being serious. Bongolian (talk) 14:59, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

On the contrary, it seems like a good exercise. A bit of fantasy makes it fun. Accumulator (talk) 15:12, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

It's political daydreaming. Carthage (talk) 23:43, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Hardly any more fantastic than the political nonsense churned out by mass media. Certainly more honest. Accumulator (talk) 00:43, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

increase tax on wealth, work to break up privatized prison, schools, and hospitals. There are stupid evil things in this world. One is to hold money. The second is to try and make money off of prison, education,and health care. Libertarians that believe the free market can sort it all out are stupid evil. If you hoard the money, it doesn't fucking work. Profit for no social benefit is stupid evil. Torrent (talk) 06:18, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ If only it were economical to build a prison in low earth orbit, for malfeasant public officials, private central bank shareholders, child traffickers, etc. Windowless, of course. Accumulator (talk) 02:26, 13 September 2024 (UTC) ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I don't know what you meant by "hoarding money", but if you're talking about savings you're factually incorrect since saving equals investment (see Saving identity). People don't "hoard" money by hiding it below their matress, they put it in the banks, the banks loan the money to people that invest money, creating jobs and making the economy grow. This is not a libertarian approach, in fact I think that Keynes was the first to say that S=I. if he wasn't, he agreed with it, just like his followers. Even Abba Lerner, possibily the greatest socialist economist of the 20th century, wrote about how S=I. This is not even a macreconomic model, it is an accounting identity. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 11:31, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

"Julia Serano's Whipping Girl would be mandatory reading." Cruel and unusual. Accumulator (talk) 05:22, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Do you really think I'm talking about a scale that you or I would fall into? Very cool if you got enough money and influence to mix up the stock market, but I think you're being a real dork. The prompt was president, your take is taxing the ultra wealthy is incorrect because you don't know what I mean and savings are tight? What are you talking about? i'm talking about taxing incoming wealth once you have the savings, if that helps make it a little harder for your galaxy brain.Torrent (talk) 05:39, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I apologize, that was mean. Torrent (talk) 05:49, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

When people talk about "hoarding wealth" they don't mean that people are hiding money under their mattress. That's a strawman. Carthage (talk) 05:14, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

As Keynes brilliantly posited, money has three functions: store of value, unit of account, and medium of exchange. Torrent say that "If you hoard the money, it doesn't fucking work." The only way that this conditional is true if if the money is not circulating (e.g. when it's under a mattress, or buried, or in a safe) If anything, you're strawmanning me. Supposing that this was just a problem on his writing and the "it" in his sentence means something else other than money and this wasn't a causal conditional. Then they are also wrong, but that's another discussion, and I don't have time to answer it right now. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 16:39, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

The rich tend to invest their money into shit like stupid super-yachts or expensive pieces of art. Does the wealth invested in those super-yachts and art pieces trickle down like you claim it does? I would consider that to be an obvious example of hoarding wealth. The rich are also hoarding their wealth in safe, static assets like cash. Carthage (talk) 21:39, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

With all due respect, there are honestly too many mistakes in your tiny post for me to write right now, but I'll answer a few of them. First. Who told you I was talking about "the rich"? I am talking about money, and that includes M0 to M3 (see money supply if you're not familiar with these terms). As I said before, money (your money) in your bank account) doesn't remain frozen. The bank loans it and people (often people that are not rich) use it to buy their homes, open a business, and stuff like that. This is called the money multiplier (in fact the process is much more complex, but that will do). Something that was not important to my post, but you're also conflating spending and investing. Most rich people don't use all their money to buy a yacht or a Rolls Royce, and that's not an investment, that's an expense. Rich people do not have most their assets in physical stuff. Most of their assets are not very liquid either. If Warren Buffet needs for some reason to spend 2 billion dollars tomorrow or else, I doubt he'll be able to do it without making a loan. Now, as I've written about before, on the bar and on the main space, I think the rich should be more heavily taxed, and I don't believe (very few people do) on trickle down economics. But George H. W. Bush tried to tax yachts. It didn't work, the government ended up spending more on unemployment benefits to the people that were fired in the yacht industry that it actually collected. Luxury taxes are, along with wealth taxes, the worst way tax the rich since these goods have a very elastic demand. Taxing their income is much more efficient (and maybe capital gains too). I also think you didn't read your link carefuly since it shows that the vast majority of the wealth is not on cash. It is from 2019 and it's probably outdated now anyway given the fact that money is not by any means scarce (we just have to see the inflation rates over the last years), and with the interest rates skyrocketing if I had to guess, rich people are probably lending most of their money to the US government now. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 22:20, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Damn, you beat me to most of it - to add to your points; a) the FT article should have been called 'HNWIs shun equities', b) it was only a rise of 0.7% of cash holdings and c) it was cash and 'cash equivalents' as the category so if those folks were throwing all their 'spare' cash into Treasuries/Gilts now they'd still count in the 'cash' definition [they count as 'near-cash' because they're very easy to liquidate into cash at near-full value].

But I'd like to run a theory past you; do you think the socialist's focus on the '1%'/0.1%' individuals is in fact an obsolete position in 2024? That generally speaking, we've moved from the world of the 'active super-rich owner/manager' and into the realm of professional managers running corps/funds at the behest of shareholders who are also manager-run concerns and thus, socialists should instead focus on making them pay the tabs? KarmaPolice (talk) 22:57, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Hard to tell. I think it would depend on the social mobility rates (or the lack of it) and I don't know a lot about it. Inheritance taxes aside, I think that the European left should focus more on income taxation to mitigate social inequality. The US could be an exception since even if you leave the country you still have to pay or taxes there, so maybe they could try a wealth tax. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 23:08, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

The problem is that in places like the UK, it would appear the folks who pay [as a %] the most tax are the middle class - the poor are well, poor while the rich salt it out of sight. One of perhaps the most iniquitous situations we have right now is that income from assets is taxed lighter than income from employment and the former is a lot easier to hide to boot. Again, I think the folks who we really should gun for are the large, mainly faceless corps who seemingly do so much business in our country but never make any profit there and reside in a office in the Virgin Islands which contains another 10,000 companies. It's plain ludicrous that there's certain companies which after you deduct all the job subsidisation, tax breaks and sweeteners given actually are costing the country more than it's taking in tax [again, if they're bloody paying any!]. KarmaPolice (talk) 23:20, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not really familiar with the situation in the UK. I think that massive changes in the tax brackets are one of the worst part of the neoliberal era legacy, and with the UK it isn't different (in fact I'd guess that they were probably worse). I therefore think it's possible to have higher tax brackets (though, unless other rich countries also increase theirs, it would probably be hard return to the 70s in this aspect). As I said in my answer to Carthage, I also think that capital gains could be higher, and while I don't like luxury taxes, assets such as land and property could perhaps be higher too, so maybe these two forms of taxations could also help the problem that you pointed out. And of course, figting tax evasion from the rich is also important. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 23:56, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I'd predict all the nations in the Anglosphere are suffering from the fact that the general tax burden has shifted off corps and onto people - and while in the past you could argue that you'd get that tax eventually when it got paid out in dividends etc we much more have the situation now where a lot of those dividends etc are paid to other companies. For let's be honest here; corps as a rule get more out of the state than they put back in [from infrastructure to having an educated workforce]. However, I'd consider staying the axe on that if I could somehow ram through a decent minimum wage law and actually enforce it - because while a lot of folks complain how high our welfare bill is a very large chunk of that is the state subsidising jobs which are impossible to live on otherwise. Now, if we were in a situation where chronic unemployment was an issue subsidising work would make some form of sense but we're not and future demographics tell me the labour market is going to be tight for the foreseeable [even with AI coming online]. I'm sorry, if your business model requires folks working at £11.50 p/h and the minimum wage is £17.50 p/h well, your model simply isn't viable anymore. However, I get some folks will get pissed at this because a decent chunk of retail, delivery and hospitality will increase in price significantly but I don't feel it's the duty of the state to subsidise the delivery costs of your crap bought from China or your pizza. KarmaPolice (talk) 01:01, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Evidence for my point about 'hit corps not people'; the UK's richest man [Gopi Hinduja] is worth about $37bn. If he was a UK-shored corp he'd be the 19th biggest. KarmaPolice (talk) 22:23, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

The Dead Internet to Come

So I read this article, and it's depressing as fuck. So the basic idea is that as AI advances, and becomes more and more profitable, soon enough all open spaces like Reddit or 4chan will be infested with bots to the point almost no one you interact with on that platform is the real deal. It's all AI-generated spam. The only real sense of "community" left on the internet will be in closed chat rooms and the like, as everything else will be a bot-infested wasteland. This could also result in a loss of anonymity on the internet, as platforms insist on increasingly invasive measures to verify that their users are people and not bots. One way is to put entire platforms beyond paywalls that require a subscription fee to access. Bots don't have bank accounts, do they? Carthage (talk) 02:17, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Reddit and 4chan have always been terrible. Reddit is practically designed to be terrible. I'm more concerned about censorship, propaganda and the manipulation of public behavior. Very few humans are the real deal to begin with. Most of the 'real' people on wikipedia, reddit, and so forth might as well be bots. But yes, chatgpt sucks. Accumulator (talk) 02:45, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't go so far to say "it's all enshitified, oh noes!" but "big spaces" *already* are infested by "bots" or manipulators of various kinds; AI *already* has made things like Google search rather terrible; it's been on this sort of decline since the mid-2010s or so; and it's going to get worse, methinks. Reddit though has a nice feature here -- subreddits. The big subreddits in general are terrible, but it's still possible to find relatively small subreddits (as well as some tightly moderated subreddits) that are alright. It's still better to search Reddit (using Google) for many questions than doing straight Google searches... for now. So I think places that allow some sort of decentralized small spaces, ones that have *no algorithmic manipulation* for interacting with your circle (I'm looking at you, Facebook), are the way to go. (It's the only model that sort of resembles the "old Internet" of blogs and forums etc., which was hardly drama free, but also was far less enshitified.)

Based on Elon Musk's "blue check" fiasco at Twitter, I actually think paywalls make things *worse*. One key element here is that those who want to flood the Internet with propaganda are happy to pay for the promotion to do so. BobJohnson (talk) 12:59, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

The point of no return for chatbots would seem to be when different corporation's chatbots begin interacting with each other and then start vacuuming up each others chatbot output as if it were 'real' people. Expect the grey goo apocalypse after that. Bongolian (talk) 19:23, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that Reddit has no algorithmic stuff; I recall seeing more and more stuff from the political subreddits over my time there. Luigifan18 (talk) 21:18, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Spammers have also noticed that people are adding "Reddit" to their Google searches. So that option really no longer works anymore. Carthage (talk) 22:18, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Reddit definitely has algorithmic stuff, didn't mean to imply otherwise. However... you still can get a chronological feed on subreddits by sorting by new. For now, at least. (At least on old.reddit.com... whenever I peak at Reddit, I only use that URL base. It might be different on the app, from what I'm seeing in other posts. Reddit's definitely "trending" in an enshitificated direction so no surprises if this ability one day disappears). BobJohnson (talk) 22:22, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean by "Very few humans are the real deal to begin with"? Ioe bidome (talk) 21:26, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

People seem so passive, for the most part. And when they do become indignant, it's usually over something trivial. Accumulator (talk) 03:16, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

There's one serious unspoken assumption with that article's painted future - that AIs shall not only improve in capabilities, but also continue to reduce in cost. This cannot be assumed - Hidden costs of AIs and are already starting to become [as the writer put it] '800 pound gorillas in the corner of the room we constantly have to feed'. Current issues also faced by cloud computing. If we enter a relatively 'dear electricity/rare earths' scenario the economics won't add up and the rollout of LLMs will be severely curtailed. We are also in the 'splinternet era' and the amount of different competing national demands over censorship, controls etc means that I suspect by c2035 there will no longer be any major 'one world, one platform' social media providers left which again, shall erode the value of bots.

On the other hand, I can see a situation where the vast majority of people have 'quiet quit' classical social media - that while they do still consume content, they no longer really reciprocate [that they save it for their 'walled gardens' of their friends etc]. Is this a bad thing? Or is this a sane reaction to the realisation that there's not really 'user created content' much anymore? Things like IG is not 'social media', they're pages of visual ads. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing - as a kid I used to enjoy flicking through dead-tree shopping catalogues and now I find myself scrolling through IG looking at home decor ideas [I've recently moved to a 'proper home' and are now starting to indulge in the bourgeois hobby of kitting it out 'right'] for ideas. Everything has it's place, even gazing at the delightful abs of the influencer trying to sell you supplements [wait, is that just me?]

I also think AI isn't going to kill the internet, it's simple monetisation. The 'golden age' of the internet was when the majority of content was either generated by users themselves or (cough) stolen from other places for free. It was a 'Wild West' in that almost anything went, which allowed the formation of anarchic communities of anything and everything [I would put RW's formation near the end of this era]. Then it hit the 'It's popular now, it sucks' trope - that the moment that 'the suits' really noticed you could make money off it and it can influence people there the enshittification began. FB began to die the moment a HR article told hiring managers to scope out applicants FB pages while IG did the day where a 'doing it for the fun of it' popular poster got approached by a wad of cash to plug a product. Even more fundamentally, a lot of the architecture of this Wild West was either paid for by the end user or provided by some form of non-commercial entity - for example, a lot of previous functions social media fill used to be provided by paid-for personal websites/blogs, online forums and yes, wiki projects. Well, all that free stuff you're getting now has to be paid for someone - I mean, those delightful abs in GymShark don't make themselves! Just that we have decided to go down the ad-based model for internet content rather than other options.

The other thing I'll blame for this 'dying internet' issue is the smartphone. In short, it's hard to be a real contributor online only using your phone. You simply couldn't do it here at RW, for example. The fact folks are using their phones for more and more online stuff and more folks only have a phone for access encourages you to be a passive consumer, not a creator. It's also introduced the internet into situations which the 'PC internet' simply wasn't. Internet use via computer is akin to you sitting down to properly read a book while internet by phone so often falls into being akin to skim-reading a magazine while you're on a train or in a queue.

The problem might ultimately be that the idea of 'one site to rule them all' and maintaining a sense of 'community' is an unachievable goal. You can't have a community of millions [or even billions] of members - perhaps the largest organic one is WP with [according to their own stats] 115k 'active editors' [so let's say a real 'active community' globally of 60k]. Similar has been seen in decline of magazines; that while all magazines have declined, generally speaking it was the niche hobby/interest ones which held on while it was the 'general interest' ones which have slumped to the point of some have perished [I will say it is because a lot of the former's content is 'too deep' for the paddling-pool of the superweb and is to some extent evergreen]. That originally 'social media' sites like IG, YT, FB etc still fill important functions but are not 'social' as any human being would consider as such and stop calling them that. However, [as anybody knows of RW's recent legal woes shall understand] they cling to the idea they are social media because otherwise they might be defined as 'publishers'. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:40, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Thoughts on US Presidential Debate

As the title says. Impiricism (talk) 02:07, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Trump's senility is showing, as expected. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 02:35, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I thought Harris did good on some questions but very meh on others, particularly the first couple... which I guess is to be expected at the start of the debate. I thought she was generally successful in painting Trump a hateful and delusional old man, at least to people that haven't drank kool-aid... I hope she wins. Also got a good chuckle about people in Springfield, Ohio supposedly eating dogs: like... what? First time hearing about it. Impiricism (talk) 02:43, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Vance has been pushing that as anti-immigration rhetoric. The idea that Haitians are killing and eating pets along with ducks and geese in Springfield, Ohio. Total bullshit, of course. ^{— Unsigned, by: Paul S / talk / contribs}

At times it seems like new MAGA talking points are created using random buzzword generators. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 03:13, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Fairly good night for Kamala. She did firmly okay for her part, but the big story will be how Trump melted down and started rambling about eating dogs and aborting transgender immigrant babies. He sucked so much oxygen out of the room that it prevented her from talking as much about her own policies as I would’ve liked to see. The other nice part of the night was getting the official Taylor Swift endorsement, which could help motivate turnout. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 03:46, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and who can forget the 28 Spheres of Terra? Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 03:50, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

The what now? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 03:55, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

"Spheres of Terra (terror?)" mentioned at 1:59:50. Impiricism (talk) 04:38, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Elon Musk is taking the Taylor Swift endorsement well I see. Chillpilled (talk) 06:39, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Trump got dog-walked by Harris: he started ranting on whatever crazy idea of his that Harris poked him with. More to the point, Trump's full metric range of verbiage was in plain view: lies (low), bullshit (medium), gibberish (high). The higher he got the more repugnant he must have appeared to ordinary voters, meaning he's likely to have failed to reach the narrow target audience of undecideds. Bongolian (talk) 07:11, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

but he wasn't tired or incoheren. The moderators putting him up to his lies, while people who aren't weird might get it , the weirdos are going to cry foul Torrent (talk) 08:21, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth (because a lot of online world is bullshit), it seems like a lot of online chatter in MAGA land is pissed off with the moderators for, er, actually moderating. To me this shows who won the debate pretty clearly. Trump's ranty gibberish-filled performance won't move the MAGA faithful. But what I've noticed this election cycle so far is the enthusiasm you saw on one side for Trump in 2016 just isn't there this round. This debate won't help that aspect, and I doubt it will help capture independent voters.

And if you had told me in 2008 that Dick Cheney and Taylor Swift endorsed the same presidential candidate in 2024, I would have assumed that the candidate would have been the Republican. Times change, don't they? BobJohnson (talk) 12:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

If you'd told me in 2008 that right-wing trolls would be attacking 'the left' for supporting 'endless wars' and 'Wall Street', I wouldn't have believed you. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:23, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

If you had predicted almost anything in in 2008 about US politics in 2024 I wouldn't have believed you - and history would probably have proved you predictions to be incorrect.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 14:07, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I dunno about that. I was over twenty years ago warning Third Way types that they were losing the 'left behind' white working class vote and that neoliberal economics was not working for anyone not of the 'capital-owning' class. What I did not expect was that said Third Way types would manage to hold onto the Democrat's power-structures or re-assert themselves after Corbyn in such a bloody-minded fashion. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:19, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Likewise, the rise of pseudo-fascism, authoritarianism, and puritanical fundamentalism in the Republican party is not surprising for those who not only remember 2000s Fox News, but also remember the AM talk radio of Rush Limbaugh etc. Even here, some of the "details" are odd (such as the Putin Russia bromance, in defiance of all the 1980s anti-Soviet US propaganda), but this "trend" was even obvious enough well before this that an author named Margaret Atwood picked up on many of these motifs in the 1980s and wrote a dystopian "speculative fiction" book on it. Neoconservatives are still in the Republican party and "hanging on", but the power in that party now lies pretty firmly with the Dominionist preachers and other angry culture war folks. BobJohnson (talk) 14:47, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

One can find the roots of Dark-GOP (fascism/authoritarianism/isolationism/bigotry) going far back: Herbert Hoover (isolationism, America First), McCarthyism, John Birch Society, Barry Goldwater (the tacit JBS candidate), Nixon ("I'm not a crook", cough cough). Bongolian (talk) 15:08, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

In terms of immigration, it goes back even further. Much of the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic "Know Nothing" Party merged into the GOP in the lead-up to the election of 1860. Chester Arthur, a GOP president, signed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, and Benjamin Harrison, another Republican, made it permanent in 1892. America's first comprehensive immigration law, which also established border controls, was signed by Calvin Coolidge in 1924. It's kind of why I roll my eyes when people describe the Southern Strategy as a "party switch." The GOP was pretty much always anti immigration to varying degrees. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 15:43, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I remember reading 'The State We're In' some ten years ago and thinking 'we really should have fucking listened to this guy'. Will Hutton in 1996 saw fairly clearly 'the shape of things to come' if we continued on the present trajectory and unsurprisingly, he wasn't listened to and now we're living in his 'Bad Britain'. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:06, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

The other big story from debate night, probably the biggest if we're being honest, is the fact that Trump refused to say that he would veto a national abortion ban. He even overruled JD Vance. The women on NBC's undecided voter panel were pretty upset about that, and it hopefully validated the Dems' arguments in the minds of moderates and swing voters that Trump is a threat to abortion. It's so weird too, since Trump is no stranger to lying, but he picked the dumbest possible time to be semi-truthful. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 13:30, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I think Orange One's political antennae were twisted. One of them was remembering that 'Federal Abortion Ban' was Very Unpopular™ with the Big Public [lose votes!] but the other one was echoing the threats from said fanatics that unless he didn't come out fully for such a thing they wouldn't support him [lose votes!]. I think this might hurt the libertarian vote too; the Democrats are pushing the narrative that abortion is a 'freedom' issue [which is a canny way to re-tune the debate from the tired angles] though I'm not sure how well it's working. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:43, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm very convinced that just lying and saying "I'll veto an abortion ban" would be more electorally useful than any alternative. That even my home state of Kansas is voting down anti-choice measures strongly indicates that abortion restrictions just aren't a winning issue. The "no" vote on our referendum outperformed every Democrat running for a statewide office as far as I can remember. It even did better than Sebelius' big win in 2006. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 13:57, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, but you're not the Orange One. You don't live in a closeted world where anyone approaching an 'honest advisor' has been driven out of your circle. The only voices he is hearing now is of extremists, 'dark technocracy' tech bros, idiots and sycophants. There is also the risk that - like Steve Bannon he's getting high on his own supply re: '80% of America is MAGA' and thinks doubling-down on the same old shit is the way to saving his ancient ass [I think Trump is now starting to really sweat; that if he doesn't win he will be 'destroyed']. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:01, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I think Trumps' funniest line has the to be: "“Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison!”. It's well up there with suggesting that injecting bleach would cure covid.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 14:57, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Lol, true. I really hope that "Let Trump be Trump" remains the strategy for him going forward. It's his best chance to lose. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 15:24, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Nah, 'migrants are eating pets!' has to be the winner. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

The interviews/polling I've seen post-debate so far is mildly encouraging. Not only has Harris managed to persuade a few indies towards voting for her, but it appears Trump persuaded nobody who wasn't already in his bag [his complete over-the-shop rambling did him zero favours - after all, if he can be goaded/led into such traps by Harris, how will he stand up to Xi and Putin?]. It also seems that some within 'Trump's bag' were in fact reassured that Harris was 'not as bad' as the MAGA propaganda is trying to paint her - this might allow them to slide into a) voting Libertarian and/or b) not kicking up such a stink if Trump loses. I still don't think it's Harris' to lose, but I do think if the Democrats continue to plug away in this manner [and Trump is unable to change] they are going to win. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:15, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, one of the undecided voters on the NBC panel who was leaning Trump seemed to be disgruntled into staying home by the end of the debate. Hopefully it's a wider trend, and one that sticks. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 15:22, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Both Fox's and WaPo's focus groups thought Harris won (in the case of WaPo's group, just two said Trump won). I don't think it was as decisive as it could've been. There seems to be some want for her to have made more specific economic statements. Chillpilled (talk) 18:08, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

That's the big asterisk on this debate performance. Yeah, Trump was a lunatic, but everybody expected that of him. But he was such a raving madman that he took the attention away from Harris, who needed room to define herself before the voting public. The only big thing that I think will stick to him is his total botching of the abortion question. A lot of Trump-leaning women, who wanted any excuse to think Trump would uphold abortion rights, didn't get that from him. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 18:13, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

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I think the problem with "debating" Trump is that any sober "debate" on things like policy is pointless. Trump is a well known abuser (intentionally or not) of the Gish Gallop "debate" tactic; countering this through your typical sober policy talk simply won't work, it tends to get swallowed up in Gish Gallop bullshit. Harris actually showed an interesting strategy towards countering a Gish Gallop: "bait" an opponent via a personality weakness so that they "gallop" towards things that are irrelevant distractions, or even self-owns. Thus, Harris was able to somewhat steer the debate narrative from issues that are weak for the Democrats, like immigrants; Trump's massive ego got the better of him, and he played "defense" on things when he didn't need to. BobJohnson (talk) 19:06, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Republican candidates have been fairly fact-free for some time; as the Obama-Rommney cartoon on RW's Gish page shows - I vaguely recall this being the thing right back to 2000. I've noticed that Republican candidates normally get a pass of being 'policy light' to a level which a Democratic candidate would never get - I mean folks are complaining that 'Harris has not put out her positions enough' but hell, she's put out a lot more than the Orange One has.

Anyway, I don't think a 'proper KO' was possible for either side; the ideological situation makes this impossible. But I theorise a lot of Americans weren't prepared to just how the Orange One appears to be falling apart in front of their eyes and they might need a few days to really 'process' this. Clinton discussed that in 2016 how despite his ramblings and lies he was capable of making coherent points which stuck and had an almost primal ability to scent weakness and go for the jugular. If he still has this now, well America didn't see this last night. I think it as an opinion piece in The Atlantic which described him going from basically being 'that crude and racist Uncle who despite this made decent points now and then' to 'Grandpa six months before we put him in The Home'.

More important, I think is that some of the old anti-Biden propaganda shall come back to haunt the Orange One. Here's a sample of the crud; curtsey of Fox Business News.

"The Democratic Party is a collection of interests who want to remain in power. The Democratic Party is the party of government," Sacks said. "Its goal is to allocate money and power from the government to the collection of interests who back the Democratic Party. In other words, it's basically a collection of interests who want to loot the Republic."

"Well, obviously no one's going to vote for that. So they have to make it about something else. They choose a figurehead, they talk about how this is about saving democracy. They basically invent, hoax after hoax, lie after lie to basically maintain their power," he continued.

"And I think what's happened is, the mask has come off, the whole shell game has been revealed. It's obvious that Biden was always a puppet for these interests who were hiding behind him. And now, it's all being exposed," Sacks said.

Hmm... an elderly puppet president, being kept amused and occasionally being 'persuaded' to sign stuff so faceless 'special interests' can go and loot America? Hmm, who are these folks *cough* Project 2025 *cough* JD Vance *clears throat* Out of the two candidates you saw last night, America - which one fits this bill closest? Hell, even if the Orange One had promised to veto any Federal abortion ban, would he remember he had promised this? If he remembered he'd promised, would his handlers distract him with a chat about golf or some Playboys? Hell, could he be 'convinced' that the napkin he was signing was that veto? KarmaPolice (talk) 19:22, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

(Spoiler Warning for 'The Boys', in case anyone cares) Apparently, Trump's whole 'Transgender surgeries on illegal immigrants' remark is very close to something that Homelander says in the show. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 19:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Again, Trump would hardly be the first GOP candidate (or POTUS) to either mix fact and fiction (cf. Ronald Reagan) or even unique in his contemporary appropriation of a combination of pop culture and conspiracy theory (similar to how Ted Cruz appropriated the moronic “Bernie Sanders is like Thanos” argument from such intellectual luminaries as Tim Pool). ScepticWombat (talk) 20:04, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

The Keystone XL Pipeline was a trash project

I was a minor player in stopping the Keys tone pipeline. I didn't own any land it might have gone through, I was not offered any money to be for or against it. However, Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state gave a verbal OK for it, which was illegal and made things difficult. I sided with the land owners that didn't trust an oil company to run pipes. During this controversy, it was discovered that Welspun was going to deliver the pipes. Also during this controversy, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Mayflower_oil_spill and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamazoo_River_oil_spill Happened. I looked at the final imPact statement at the time, and it it said there was a 0℅ chance of a spill in Nebraska, so that's impossible. A 2019 route runs along other lines but still includes a 'preferred' line, the original, suggesting to me they only want to build it if it saves them a few pump stations. The absolute problem with pumping shale is it's barely fluid. To keep it moving in a pipe, it has to be diluted with chemicals strong enough to dilute shale, but it's also abrasive. A leak means groundwater contamination, and groundwater is all the water west of the Platte. At the time, Welspun was being investigated for classifying their pipes incorrectly. TransCanada Was also trying to buy their way through the state using the verbal endorsement as a threat to 'sell now or lose to eminent domain'. The problem was, they had to get through the Nebraska Public Service Commission, which regulates digging and requires proof of public benefit for eminent domain claims, which was not provided. It would bypass every state it ran through to get to a Port Arthur processing plant in Texas on the gulf, to be shipped. No benefit to anyone whose land it passed through.

Long story short, it actually is possible to have strong state governance in the face of federal pressure, so this whole Roe v Wade ruining states' rights is backwards to me. I really roll my eyes when even my state officials won't point to systems of democratically elected representatives that regulate against nonsense. The state has gone ruby red since, but protecting a resource was the right decision. We also have a public power district whose officials are elected. Oh the tyranny of socialism, as we all benefit from impeccable response times to weather related power outages. if a state doesn't want to uphold federal law, it can basically already do that.

The idea that Biden put down the Keystone pipeline is insulting. I did my small part, but it was the landowners and the public service commission that said no to the original route, and TransCanada really didn't want to change the route. We fought Obama to stop it, if it was a matter of Republican versus Democrat, Trump has no valid argument as to why it didn't go through under his 4 years. Torrent (talk) 04:35, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

You're late to the party. Carthage (talk) 06:12, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

talking about a 2012 environmentalist fight, yeah sure, reeeaaal late. Trump made it a point in the debate. Torrent (talk) 06:27, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

What's wrong with Musk?

Never knew about the guy till he bought Twitter. And while he once seemed respected, he seems to dig himself deeper into a hole. Just now he made some comment that maybe a lot of you know already. Seriously, he never went this far previously no matter how outrageous he is. What's wrong with this guy? Twitter's future looks more and more bleak. ^{— Unsigned, by: Cereal / talk / contribs}

He's a Rich White South African. A somebody. (talk) 00:21, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Does this, from long ago apply?

The bigger problem is that he's a greedy asshole who panders to bigots. Luigifan18 (talk) 01:14, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

The biggest problem is that he's a rich oligarch who not only panders to bigots but is more powerful than some nation-states. Musk is a genuine threat to not only domestic security, but international security. Nationalize his assets. Carthage (talk) 01:32, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Billionaires should not exist. Every billionaire is a policy failure. IntrepidSkeptic (talk) 01:43, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Give him credit for his early days when he kick-started the electric car revolution. But I see a couple of things that have happened to him:

A) As a whole, too much of Silicon Valley has become rather insular and out of touch IMHO, with too many people being elevated as tech messiahs or rock stars or whatever the phrase of the day is, where essentially god complexes are formed and hero-worship is way too common. As a result, the reports are that Musk is surrounded by "yes men", who cannot tell the guy "Elon, that's a shitty idea". So he has a big ego resulting in Dunning–Kruger effect moments, and a thin skin (as demonstrated by the false paedophilia accusation with the Tham Luang cave rescue). I don't think this is unique to Musk in Silicon Valley.

B) I think there's a general consensus that some combination of his fury at COVID-19 lockdowns and (probably even more) the fact that one of his IVF children was transgender (which he couldn't handle) sent him over into "the reactionary dark side". This is... different. It's not like there's no such thing as a tech guy who is kind of creepy on certain subjects (Richard Stallman is the mold I think about), but I rarely encounter full-on Trumpism in the tech world personally. And I would say Musk fully embraces Trumpism these days. BobJohnson (talk) 01:57, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

He didn't 'kick start' the electric car revolution, he was at the right place at the right time, and a lot of things happen in spite of him, not because of him. A somebody. (talk) 02:05, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

To quote that old song; half of everyone's chances are luck - yours and everyone else's. If I remember right, he was 'lucky' to have some money off daddy to make a few investments/ventures, and one of them lucked out to be absorbed into PayPal [one of the first bits of the non-porn SuperHighWeb which actually found a way to 'make it pay']. He then he 'stood on the shoulders of giants' to found Tesla. Truth be told, this is fairly normal in history - it's not the folks who invent the shit who normally get rich [Gates and Edison being the exception than the rule and even then a lot of the 'inventing' was done by others] but the shrewd businessperson who spots the potential of tech, of how to slap together different tech to make it pay and to actually run a real-life, breathing business which can actually survive. Even 'giants' like Henry Ford didn't actually invent anything [the motor-car, assembly line, mass production etc all pre-existed the foundation of Ford in 1903] but he hit on a way to a) make it cheaper and then b) make it pay. Musk was in fact 'in the right place at the right time' as in they got decent electric cars 'working' [in a fashion] right at the point the USGov started throwing massive subsidies at every electric car sale [I think as late as 2018 'green rebates from Washington' was the main provider of a profit-margin for Tesla].

I basically agree with BobJ's analysis, esp the first bit as being perhaps the main culprit. That he's been around warped 'Dark Technocracy' bro-wankers for too long, and this as well as 'I am really rich so I am god' mentality has eaten his mental equilibrium I remember him vaguely a decade ago, and he seemed then to be a little odd, a touch of the grifter about him [the fact he kept on using messaging to pump up Tesla stock etc, which was waaaaaaaay overvalued for it's ultimate business model] but no way that he was 'terrible' in any way - the main thing which I recall from those days was that a significant amount of the finance establishment didn't hugely like Musk because they felt he was 'spreading himself far too thin' over so many companies [as in he was trying to be an 'active boss' in too many of them] and more spoke about his rather shit 'Pointy-Haired Boss' tendencies [ie arrogant micromanagement tendencies and personally rather abusive].

But how he morphed into a generally generic 'dickwad billionaire' into the sort now a lot of people like to loathe remains a mystery to me. KarmaPolice (talk) 02:43, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Most billionaires are probably bigots, the thing is most of them are smart enough to hide it most of the time. The Boer isn't one of those people and while he has gotten a lot worse over the years it is my personal opinion that he was always like this, but Ket, the lockdowns, and twitter melted his brain beyond repair to think that Sexual harassment (on twitter) and KKK-level racism was good to tweet out into the void, but he wasn't a good person even before the Pedo guy incident. I have good reason to believe that the sexual harassment and the toxic workplace culture at his companies isn't new in the slightest. A somebody. (talk) 03:07, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Who's Ket? What's the Pedo Guy Incident? What was the Sexual Harassment he did on Twitter? /gen TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 03:29, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Ketamine. Elon was enraged that a professional underwater cave-diver called one of his half-baked ideas stupid; Elon proceeded to call him a pedophile. Per the recent WIGO Clogs post, Elon made a Twitter post creepily suggesting to impregnate Taylor Swift after she endorsed Kamala Harris. You can Google search this stuff y'know. Impiricism (talk) 04:13, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

What is Dark Technocracy? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 03:29, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Ultra-wealthy tech bros whose fortune and power have gone to their heads, and who have proceeded to adopt neo-reactionary views and behaviour is my understanding. Impiricism (talk) 04:13, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Pretty much. A portmanteau of Dark Enlightenment and Technocracy; folks who believe in science/technology but also crap like Social Darwinism, topped off with the 'Masters of the Universe' arrogance of Gordon Gecko. A lot of the shite that JD Vance is peddling is straight out of their worldview. Here in the UK, we got the lite version in Rishi Sunak. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:53, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

i saw something the other day that says hes essentially radicalised himself via twitter and its algorithm. nazi twitter strokes his ego telling him great for letting nazis back in while everyone not a nazi bruised his fragile ego telling him hes a fucking idiot for letting nazis back. nazi fucknuts get more of his likes and rewteets as a result and the algorithm feeds him more and more of the same as a result. and he spends a lot of time on twitter. 24/7 constantly posting shit. his feed must be all nazi fucknuts at this. anyway, musks a nazi now. or at least nazi enough to call him one. was probably already susceptible to that shit and just like anyone is, twitter is always going to be the place that drags you right over the edge. Elon musk is should be a case study of online radicalisation AMassiveGay (talk) 03:32, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Didn't Elon buy Tesla from somebody else? His claim to fame is stolen credit. Carthage (talk) 03:45, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Yup, both his PayPal and Tesla money were about having money to invest at the right time to get ludicrously large ROIs due to the “first hit” advantage. Musk has not really invented or founded anything of what he’s famous for (okay, he did found SpaceX, but that’s about it and it was hardly the first or only private space venture). Not to mention how much public money his various schemes has managed to finagle out of various national and local coffers.

As for what passes for Musk’s ideology, it seems very similar to what other tech bros, incl. the most prominent member of the self-proclaimed “PayPal Mafia” Peter Thiel, has been pushing for a long time and I think Musk has always been more or less onboard with it. Musk is just far more public, vocal and crass about it and owning his own SoMe company he can and will spout his nonsense and petty grievances non stop, unlike Thiel who primarily prefers to work behind the scene and through others (e.g. J. D. Vance and Blake Masters). ScepticWombat (talk) 04:14, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Musk is both unique and not-unique among tech bros. The unique part is how his transphobia led him down the radical rabbit hole in a different way than other tech bros. On that, AMG is right, there's much resemblance between the radicalization of Musk and the radicalization of J.K. Rowling.

The not unique part is that the Silicon Valley scene, particularly the venture capital side, has become *really* a lot more classist over the years. Tech has always had a libertarian side.. but there's an issue I've found with too many libertarians, especially the Objectivism types... that group is essentially overloaded with men of privilege, and far too often when you dig down into their so-called "libertarian" beliefs, you find that they really only give a shit about "freedom" for rich narcissistic men. Since anyone with any empathy will likely reject Objectivism bullshit outright, such has led a few tech-bros to actually openly advocate techno-fascism, as those who follow the neo-reactionary movement do. Because obviously, according to this lot at least, rich narcissistic tech bros know what's best for everyone. (/sarc) I mean, yes, people like Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin have been stinking this way for quite some time... so it's not *new*... but my perception is that the stench from that scene is far worse than say 15 years ago.

To me, one of the big moments that exposed the increasing classism of Silicon Valley was the murder of tech bro Bob Lee a year ago or so. As a whole, the SV tech bro scene increasingly is in one of those Fox News type negative feedback loops where they are imagining that crime is spiraling out of control in San Francisco, fueled by the visible homeless problem (a thing not unique to *any* city, but it's not like they'd spend a penny of their VC money to do anything about it). So when the murder was first reported, lots of SV types (Musk included) went wild, believing that Lee was murdered by a "psychotic homeless person", and accusing those liberal SF city council types of essentially turning the city into some kind of crime hellhole that enabled this sort of thing to happen.[2]

Bob Lee was killed by a fellow tech bro named Nima Momeni. The story of the murder is not one of psychotic homeless people, but of a tech bro party scene fueled by drugs (Lee was on many when he died, including Musk's favorite, ketamine) and loose sexual norms. Such pissed off the tech bro Momeni, who happened to also be a jealous brother when Lee crossed his path via his sister. So it goes.[3][4] BobJohnson (talk) 13:34, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

RIP James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, has passed away. Carthage (talk) 06:20, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

My first exposure to him as a kid was as the player character's hardass commanding officer in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. He was canonically the protagonist of the previous game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT6Y0EIMRiI He will be missed. IntrepidSkeptic (talk) 07:08, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Also voiced Mufasa in the Lion King. That was one of my favorites as a kid. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 12:45, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

His first film role was in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 Dr. Strangelove as one of the bomber crew. Bongolian (talk) 07:43, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

So can Twitter ever be reclaimed?

With Musk continuing to sink lower and lower, will Twitter ever again return to its former glory or has Musk killed it? Will another time-honored social media site sadly go down soon? Can it not be saved it this guy who is bringing it down with him? ^{— Unsigned, by: Cereal / talk / contribs}

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 18:18, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

That would require Musk to give up control to someone else, and that's not something I think he's capable of. In all likelihood, BlueSky or some other competitor will take over once people get sick of all the Nazis. IntrepidSkeptic (talk) 19:01, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Especially so now that Musk has shown himself to not give a shit if he's breaking laws, given the recent Brazil and Australia incidents; I wouldn't be surprised if another non-dictatorship decides to ban it too. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 19:30, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

No. Because I believe the idea of having 'one social media to rule them all' model is obsolete - in fact, Twitter had been cracking up before Musk got in to it. The future for social media is going to be much more decentralised networks centred around particular functions/interests. Musk also won't let go of X unless he's literally prized from it, and this will only happen when the banks who supported his takeover get so sick of him they throw him over. Ie when it was too late. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:59, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I finished my masters program.

...feels kind of underwhelming, ngl. I have an MA now, but it is in philosophy so it does feel sort of useless. I still very much do not regret going to graduate school though, and I do plan on eventually getting into a PhD program. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 03:39, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Congrats! Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 04:42, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Congratulations! Bongolian (talk) 04:45, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 05:07, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Well done!Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 07:13, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Progress & Regress Pokémon — Review Request

Hey, I'm here to talk about my Progress & Regress Pokémon project again. The Progress & Regress Pokémon project was devised and developed in large part as an advertisement for RationalWiki and a vehicle to facilitate its mission. I'm afraid that I may have strayed from this goal in a few areas. In particular, the description I just wrote up for Evarwilect (which is meant to be the embodiment of evolution and natural selection) goes in depth about how it encapsulates both life and death due to how evolution and natural selection operate (e.g. the well-adapted survive longer and breed more, while the poorly-adapted die sooner and breed less), how natural selection is non-sentient and unguided and thus has no concepts of "pity" or "mercy", and thus Evarwilect is a speedy and strong assassin-type character that specializes in smashing low-survivability opponents like other glass cannons… but I'm afraid that I might have unwittingly gone a bit social Darwinist in the description, and that really wouldn't fit RationalWiki's style. Could someone please read it over and give me their thoughts on it? Thanks. Luigifan18 (talk) 22:08, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I have only the vaguest knowledge of Pokémon. The page is probably fine for Essayspace; otherwise TLDR. Bongolian (talk) 22:15, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

The main thing I want reviewed right now is Evarwilect's section; like I said, I'm afraid that I might have unwittingly said some social Darwinist shit while trying to explain how an embodiment of natural selection would mercilessly strike down the weak because… that's what natural selection does. Luigifan18 (talk) 22:21, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Altruism can also be a vital part of ensuring "survival of the fittest." You seem to be conflating fitness with "strength" or whatever. Evolution doesn't really care if the way you encourage "fitness" is by communal solidarity as long as the behavior in question ensures the passing on of genes to the next generation. In social creatures like humans, altruism can be a net benefit for fitness. For example, taking care of the elderly can mean that we have trusted elders who can pass on their knowledge and help take part in the care of children. Carthage (talk) 03:19, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

In addition evolution is about reproductive fitness. If you put all your energy into becoming the strongest that might or might not make you more successful. If you are the biggest lion strength will certainly get you more reproductive chances. On the other hand, if you are bower bird then building the best bower is the way to go. If you are a bonobo - I honestly don't know - being the sexiest?Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 08:00, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Criticizing my own answer - it's telling how I seem to have unconsciously looked at this from a male perspective.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 08:04, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Hm. I see the logic in your answers, but I'm still having trouble thinking of how to incorporate them into Evarwilect's description. It embodies both evolution as a whole and natural selection, which means that it's both a life-bringer and something like a psychopomp (hence its Ice/Grass-typing; Ice represents death, whereas Grass represents life). (And since Gogoat is its template, that means it's going to have to be a Gogoat that carries the imagery of both a fertility god and a Grim Reaper in its design… that'll be fun…) Luigifan18 (talk) 13:49, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

The problem is the evolution is about facts and Pokémon is about fantasy. The mix will always be somewhat off.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 14:21, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

That's a good point, but my Progress & Regress Pokémon project's Pokémon descriptions aren't meant to go ultra-hyper-in-depth on the concepts that the Progress & Regress Pokémon represent; that's what RationalWiki's actual mainspace articles are for. The Progress & Regress Pokémon project is more of a hook or gateway to draw people into RationalWiki proper (while still being a well-thought-out and balanced fakemon project that could theoretically be put into a battle simulator or made into a fangame without having too much stupidly overpowered or nigh-useless stuff (which is one reason why the Regress Pokémon have to be competent, even when the stuff they represent is utterly absurd and non-functional (like Creikipath for crystal healing, homeopathy, and alternative medicine in general, Noharkaiak for creation science/intelligent design, the Noah's Ark narrative, biblical literalism, etc., or Legandeeract for freeman on the land/sovereign citizen nonsense and pseudolaw in general)). Thus, my greater concern is making sure that I'm not misrepresenting RationalWiki's viewpoints or accidentally advancing some form of crankery or odious ideas (such as social Darwinism). So I want to make sure that I'm actually talking about evolution and natural selection when I discuss Evarwilect, and not sounding like a social Darwinist or eugenicist. Luigifan18 (talk) 17:13, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

No True Scotsman or not?

If someone on youtube has several videos where they talk about social issues yet later claim (and holds on to that) that they aren't into politics/political, would this fall under No True Scotsman? I'm not 100% sure myself. Leaning towards "yes". Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 14:56, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I'd argue yes, because social issues are political issues. Carthage (talk) 15:02, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

A lot of people say 'I'm not political' in the definition 'I am not a member of a political party or engage in formal party politics [ie watching debates, discussing individual politicians views, learning about government structures etc]'. I've seen this also described [more accurately] as the 'big P / little p' politics divide; it is difficult [as Carthage notes] to completely avoid discussing anything remotely politicial. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:09, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I can't see a way to make it "NTS". You would need to stretch it to: "No member of group X has political opinions". Countered by "Person Y is a member of group X and they have political opinions" followed by the "NTS" - "Person Y is not a true member of group X".

I would say that your example is more like selective memory, motivated reasoning, special pleading or, more likely, simple hypocrisy.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 15:46, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

The main 'motivated reasoning' here being that if you're making money off this in some way [and most YT'bers are these days] if you're an American you run the risk of losing a significant % of your base if you even show a bit of a 'lean' towards either side [to the extent even if you say something bad about one side but not the other]. Ironically, the repeated chant 'I'm not political!' is actually showing a society which is very politicised / polorised to the point their chant is more the yelp of the fence-splinters impailing their arse. KarmaPolice (talk) 16:13, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Trump

I'm across the pond and looking at the US with growing disbelief: how the hell can anyone, however white, right or republican consider voting for the absolute idiot for President of what claims to be the leader of the western world? Scream!! (talk) 23:38, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

There's a lot of reasons. What I find most significant about it is that it's essentially a cult. Old white Christians see their worst aspects reflected in him and think of it as something to admire. As they say, there is no hate like Christian love. I'd recommend the book [i]The Authoritarians[/i] by Bob Altemeyer. It goes into their mindset and psychology - basically everything, their moral framework, their epistemology, their relationships - just gets sublimated into loyalty to their central figure. My hope is that Trump loses this election and we can finally stop hearing about him. IntrepidSkeptic (talk) 01:14, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

"There is no hate like Christian love" - funny quote, since Christians are on average more charitable, tolerant, benevolent et cetera when you control for other factors (and even when you don't). Typical reddit catchphrases. 2603:9001:300:81A:44B3:FC67:FB8E:584E (talk) 04:58, 15 September 2024 (UTC) 2603:9001:300:81A:44B3:FC67:FB8E:584E (talk) 04:58, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

My sibling in Christ, the whole point of the saying is not to suggest that all Christians are bastards or whatever, but instead to criticize those who use Christianity as a justification for their hatred and bigotry. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 17:40, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Some examples of "There is no hate like Christian love":

• Bless your heart. — ranges from Southern Christian sympathy to mild abuse
• Godspeed — Conservapedian for fuck off
• Thoughts and prayers — Christian legislators code for fuck you, we're not doing jack shit

Yes, Trumpism has been rightfully called a cult since the time he first ran for office. He's been able to collect a motley cabal of fundie Christians, traditionalist Catholics, bigots of various stripes, Lost Cause of The Southers and Texan secessionists, a variety of criminals and criminally-minded (supporters will say either say "I'm voting for the felon." or psychologically project "Kamala is a crook."), "low information voters" (who will tell non-Trumpists that they're idiots but use bad grammar or spelling), techbro billionaires, and foreign dictators who know how to manipulate him. Bongolian (talk) 05:44, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

He has the violent extremist vote in spades. It is kind of ironic that self-professed "anti-authoritarians" like the Boogaloo boys support a proud authoritarian, but that intersects with the "low information voter" angle too, I suspect. Either that, or they're lying through to their teeth about being anti-auth. Carthage (talk) 07:19, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Also on the other side of the Atlantic and I share Scream's disbelief. On the other hand, the UK public voted for Brexit, so I guess we shouldn't say to much.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 07:54, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, the US used to be a colony from the UK. "Like father, like son" as they say. Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 21:14, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

There is also the 'Republican loyalist' vote who will turn out whatever, the hard-right extreme [think folks like actual Nazis] who have been convinced to lend some support and perhaps most importantly, the 'Country Club Republicans' - these folks generally don't appear to give a single shit about anything apart from making more money [and Trump has been good to these people]. These folks don't give a fuck [as a rule] about culture wars shite, but live in the firm expectation that said shite won't effect them personally. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:07, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, apart from the outright MAGA cultists, KarmaPolice is right to point to those who cynically vote for Trump to get even more tax cuts and will just pay/travel to get around any of the batshit culture war legislation.

But there’s also those who are disappointed and worried about their own and their children’s economic prospects in the sense that they aren’t sure they’ll be able to survive, let alone “make it” in the current economic system under the current circumstances, and, furthermore, think that their children’s prospects look even bleaker.

The big problem for the Democratic leadership is that they’re still generally pretending that “economic normalcy” is delivering just and attractive economic prospects and benefits for most Americans and I’m not sure that opinion is particularly widespread. Even worse, sections of the Democratic Party seem to think that those who “don’t make it” are just the necessary casualties of a meritocratic system (because they didn’t do well in education/attended the right educational institution/chose the “wrong” type of education).

Now, is Trump going to make things better? Hell, no! But don’t underestimate the attraction in him actually addressing the issue at all, while a lot of Democrats keep pretending that there is no major problems to address in the first place (other than a bit of tinkering along the edges and some minor attempts at “equality of opportunity”). And this is bolstered by the (rather unjustified) traditional knee jerk notion that the GOP is “better on the economics” than the Democrats.

To be fair, Harris/Waltz are beginning to sound a somewhat different tune from the earlier “everything is actually going alright and you’re just being unreasonable” approach, but it’s unclear how much of this is merely electoral (and opportunistic) rhetoric and how much is a(n honest) significant change of political course. ScepticWombat (talk) 09:59, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ There's been a spike in Neo-Nazi street "activism" this year, precisely because of the GOP's full-throttled embrace of hard-right authoritarianism. Like, we haven't seen this level of energy from the white power movement since 2017. Carthage (talk) 11:20, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I think it's important not to over-analyze Trump. There is exactly one reason he was able to win the Republican primary in 2016: he said that he would deport immigrants and block Muslims from entering in the country. Trump appeals to those locked in "culture war" bullshit. That's it. Cultural conservatism and other isms like "racism", "sexism", etc. links a *lot* of the groups that are drawn into him (apart from the people with too much money that only think of their income tax). Such has been the nexus behind the Southern Strategy for decades. It's just that most of the people deploying the strategy have had an extensive legal career -- they look and sound like such, so they don't generate the enthusiasm among the rubes. They also took care to "dog whistle" and not "bullhorn" in the past.

Ronald Reagan perhaps foreshadowed that appeal to celebrity was becoming a factor -- although Reagan did have significant political background, Reagan also had a significant career as an actor, so he could draw on some "name recognition". Although Trump is an Ivy League grad (somehow -- Trump and many in his family don't seem like "the brightest"), Trump also has spent significant amounts of time in lowbrow entertainment like The Apprentice and professional wrestling. Intentionally or not, I think he has learned how to talk lowbrow as a result. So I think that's a pretty significant additional factor behind the cult here, his persona is more "genuine" to the rubes.

I'd love to think that "economic policy" matters, but from my viewpoint, decades of Southern Strategy working shows that it doesn't. Certain people seemed to be happy to ditch things that helped the working class, like unions, in favor of voting for someone that supposedly stuck it to the Others. So it goes. BobJohnson (talk) 16:40, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Re "Southern Strategy" shows that economic policy doesn't matter to a lot of people: There's actually some pretty good analysis about how local authorities in the South shut down public pools rather than allow them to be racially integrated. Specifically, it's about how this example illustrates a major trend: when it comes to public programs that benefit everyone, a lot of people would rather see it all ended than allow the programs to benefit those they hate. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 16:45, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I think it needs to be noted that there's been decades of anti-union propaganda going, along with the right throwing wedges between unionised and non-unionised labour. There is also the belief (not utterly unfounded) that American-style welfare programmes are only there to stop people 'falling off the cliff', not actually 'help them get on in life'. JD Vance might be a total smeghead but some of his lines about bootstrapping do resonate - the belief that 'welfare' only helps the useless/lazy while somebody with a bit of 'go' in them is basically told to do it 'all by themselves'.

I've noticed it's about definitions too. That everybody is 'middle class' unless actually destitute. Therefore, a lot of the rhetoric about working people goes over their heads as they don't believe it's for 'them'. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:23, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Some thoughts on interacting with MAGA Texas

I've been doing some get-out-the-vote in Texas from the safe distance of far-far away, and have come across lots of MAGA in the process. Some observations:

• Texas terms of abuse seems to have been greatly degraded since decades past. I used to imagine that Texans were uniquely creative in their terms of abuse. this was based on my reading of Ken Weaver's 1984 book Texas Crude. Instead MAGA Texas is a story in tiresome repetition of bigotry, trite phrases, ad hominem attacks, and Trumpist regurgitation.
• People have unrealistic expectations about what can be accomplished by government in a given time frame (inflation, felony enfranchisement at the federal level).
• Predictably, misogyny is rampant since Harris became the nominee.
• People will call you an idiot based solely on political preference, while demonstrating their own poor grasp of the English language (spelling, grammar).
• People write walls of text expecting me to read it all. Of course I don't.
• "It's a republic not a democracy." has not appeared at all like it did a few years ago.

Bongolian (talk) 07:27, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I remember the days of Ann Richards Texas. Texas has always had plenty of weirdo fundies and some pretty whacky politicians, but the overall paradigm that I recall was more "libertarian West" in earlier times. For too many of them I guess, it's like the propaganda arms of the Republican party infected their brains, and now instead of being proud Texans with very distinctive Texan cultural things, they are now "just another MAGA parrot". BobJohnson (talk) 12:36, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Texas fucked our country by voting her out in 1994 in favor of Dubya. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 13:18, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Weird hand feelings

So I'm feeling a like sort of fracture line in my hand. It's not especially painful, but it is awkward and kind of numb. My sibling, who's a med student, told me it may be carpal tunnel. Any idea how to deal with it? Carthage (talk) 10:18, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

If I put pressure on it it hurts like a motherfucker. So uh don't do that. Carthage (talk) 11:42, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I heard they make special gloves for that. Chillpilled (talk) 12:13, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I'd see a doctor if I were you. Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 14:47, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I'd see a priest. Likely an idle hand... don't want it to become the Devil's play-thing. Thoughts and prayers should exorcise the evil out. Impiricism (talk) 15:36, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

As suggested above - and this may seem radical - see a doctor. Opinions from unqualified individuals on the internet who have not even seen your hand (and wouldn't know what to make of it if they did) are unlikely to be helpful.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 15:49, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

See a doctor, they should at least prescribe an X-ray, the results of which should indicate the type of treatment. Bongolian (talk) 02:52, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Thoughts on Sabine Hossenfelder?

She's a science Youtuber, but apparently she tends to get things wrong often and seems a bit iffy on Trans stuff, though I haven't looked into it much because I only watched like 2 of her videos. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 19:20, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I've watched more of her videos (yet still only a fraction of them), and I've gotten the impression that she's usually good on physics (her specialty) and astronomy, but the further the topic goes from that, the more it feels like clickbaity filler. Among science infotainment YouTubers, my current impression is she's mediocre on the whole, neither terrible nor great. But on some specific topics (others have mentioned trans issues, I haven't watched her on that) it could be worse for all I know. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 20:16, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I wonder who are (if any) the good science popularizer YouTubers (and other modern social media) these days? Essentially the modern equivalent of a Carl Sagan or Bill Nye, those that in the past helped take the "dry and stuffy" world of science and are able to distill it into a more entertaining form. In America at least, general television has been heavily enshitified into dumbness -- I mean, that was always there, but a lot has decayed, with once nicely-science oriented networks like Discovery Channel network decaying and giving more of a shit about hokey staged survival shows (but they are naked, oh noes!) these days. Though there's a few holdouts like Nova on PBS, it seems to me that the days of something in the "old media" having the cultural impact that Cosmos did back in the day are gone (the last "big cultural impact" documentary of this sort I can think of in the US is the 2006 nature documentary Planet Earth.)

But I admit that I am a Certified Old Fart (TM) who knows little about YouTube and all of the other social media. Maybe something is on the "new media" web that is providing something similar. It would be nice to know, because what little I know of the YouTube and similar is as crappy for the brain as most television. BobJohnson (talk) 20:35, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

First off, there's a divide between those that are focused on science news mainly (of which Sabine's an example), and those who are more geared to making documentary-like videos. The former usually mainly looks like someone talking about the topic, presenting images and text and clips, and good presentations often come from low-budget presenters who focus mainly on one or a few areas. The latter may look more varied, but there's a fewer number of channels who're really good at making slick productions on a broader range of topics. (For science news, the very worst stuff is increasingly AI-generated now, lots of pure junk channels have popped up in the age of ChatGPT.)

For science documentaries on YouTube on a wider range of topics, Veritasium is currently my overall favorite. Their videos are usually top-notch. Then there's the more short and cutesy Kurzgesagt on a range of topics.

For science news, I only look for some topics and not all. On physics and space, PBS Space Time is good. Anton Petrov and Dr. Becky are a little like Sabine, but especially focused on space topics mainly, though Petrov branches out into all kinds of things. Petrov keeps things very simple and accessible, while Becky is a little more in-depth. There's more to look at, but there you have a few more. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 21:54, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. Will have to dive deeper later. What's also interesting in some ways is that you have both the intersection of old and new media (Veritasium is Derek Muller who is also part of ABC (Australia TV)'s pop science program Catalyst, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is some "old media help" with that channel)... as well as how new media helps more independent producers (like Captain Disillusion) focus on more niche subjects (but still extremely relevant, given how most people are - of course - not going to be well informed about digital media production, something schlock carnies take advantage of.) BobJohnson (talk) 12:25, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

@BobJohnson If Bill Nye-y Youtubers is what you want, then why don't you check out Captain Disillusion? His main focus is on Special Effects and debunking Hoax Videos, but he has a few more science-oriented videos, and has even collabed with people like Mark Rober and Beakman. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 22:29, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Vsauce is also pretty good, though sadly, only one of the three Vsauce channels post long form videos semi-frequently (Vsauce mainly posts shorts nowadays, and Vsauce 3 hasn't posted anything in I don't know how long). Did introduce me to some good music too. Hydrogen by Jake Chudnow, my beloved. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 22:42, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the very nature of YT is part of the issue. Bill Nye [perhaps a better example than Sagan, as to my knowledge he stuck more closely to his area of expertese] would almost always have something of 'a team' behind him when producing their TV work - gathering materials, plotting general scripts, fact-checking, asking for expert opinion etc. YT'bers as a rule are solo producers, so they don't get all this help. Therefore, their output shall be uneven. KarmaPolice (talk) 21:29, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

This is just me being a pedant and doesn't take away from the truth of what you're saying, but Kurzgesagt does have a team, and I wouldn't be surprised if Veritasium does, too. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 22:31, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Skimmed her bio on Wikipedia and other websites.. watched a couple 5G network videos and a "Flat Earth "Science" -- Wrong, but not Stupid" video on her Youtube channel that were listed under the popular section; in the latter video she appears to be making the argument that flat earthers are the way they are because science/academia does a bad job explaining things to laymen, resulting in lack of trust? Okay, but still a weak argument IMO. The style and delivery of the content in her videos I find is jarring. Looking at Reddit threads of people discussing her reputation, and found these enlightening responses:

• "She is a legit physicist in quantum gravity but of no particular relevance."
• "I don’t think Sabine is a bad person or necessarily a bad educator. I just disagree with her disposition and see her content as more of a “devil’s advocate” for alternative ideas than as a primary source of information."
• "... given that it's Sabine Hossenfelder I would assume it is nonsense"
• "Sabine Hossenfelder is someone with bona fide physics credentials who more or less sold her soul when she found out she could get more attention with clickbait videos and controversial claims. She comes off as a sour grapes contrarian more than anything else."

I think the Reddit responses generally give a decent picture. Maybe she's worthy of a RW article? ;) Impiricism (talk) 22:16, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Dr. Fatima is another science youtuber, in the broad sense of the word, who has a doctorate in astrophysics but is especially critical of the discipline. Carthage (talk) 00:52, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Hossenfelder appears to be a real theoretical physicist, author and philosopher of science. "She gets some things wrong" is not that surprising since most of us get most things wrong from other people's POV. She is to be admired for her attempts at trying to explain contemporary issues from the POV of a physical scientist. If you can't explain it, you don't really understand it; and while it may be the case that she has misunderstood some non-physical theory or other, nobody is perfect. Many people claim to understand ideas they can not explain to others. I think she is honest in her attempts. UncleKrampus (talk) 01:12, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Ultracrepidarianism rears its ugly head. Dr. Fatima is a real astrophysicist, I don't see you salivating over her. Carthage (talk) 01:32, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I think I just pointed that out. Such folk are common enough that I see them , not as ugly, but more like the homely residents of this wiki. I am Unfamiliar with Fatima. Whatever do you mean by "a real astrophysicist?" Are they different from, you know, astrophysicists? UncleKrampus (talk) 01:43, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

What's the difference between "real theoretical physicists" and theoretical physicists? Carthage (talk) 01:57, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Theoretical physics. Or actually, here, the best thing to do is to hit the Google scholar.

So, she was a big "math nerd" physicist at one time with a particular interest in "the quantum", but man... some of her video titles are so clickbait.

Although to be fair on "closer examination" some of the videos actually are push-back against bullshit like climate change denialism and idiots like Tucker Carlson. Same with a video concerning Marc Andreessen, whose futurism "techno-optimist manifesto" is a mixture of "ok, that's good" and tech-bro WTF naivety, and I think her take on it calling out the WTF parts (transcript skim) looked pretty good. Still, her videos seem like (first impression) an exercise in punditry more than science (with the typical speaking-outside-field possible problems that often frequently befell the pundit class) and should be treated as such. Even pundits like Paul Krugman that I often agree with are still pundits. BobJohnson (talk) 15:46, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Language just grunts with meaning?

So I was watching a video about the importance of being authentic and the person prefaced it with the "big brain take" that language is just grunts we assign meaning to and that after some practice you won't have to worry about whether you're authentic or not. I thought that was a weird way to preface a video on the importance of a trait, but more than that it felt like they didn't understand language or the impact it has.

To me the real big brain take is that you wouldn't really be able to come to any of that without language, let alone not worrying about whether you are something or not if you don't know what that something is and whether you're being it or not. A side effect of that was me realizing just how much language shapes our lives. To me calling it just "grunts we assign meaning to" is a wild understatement bordering on false.47.5.66.54 (talk) 17:22, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. You post stuff like that quite a lot. Are you looking for an argument? LANCB (talk) 17:47, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Of course you can call language "grunts with meaning". You could equally well call it "sounds with meaning" or - right now - "marks on a screen with meaning". As for the rest - I honestly don't know what you are trying to "say". Which I guess means it's "grunts without meaning".Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 19:47, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I guess the point I'm trying to get at is how much that statement overlooks the power language has and the way it impacts all of us. I mean you wouldn't be able to criticize or comment about languages without it, I also doubt you'd arrive that that conclusion without it either. I dunno, the point just seems circular or myopic to me, like someone who hasn't thought that much about it.47.5.66.54 (talk) 20:39, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I think you are in danger of failing the Turing Test.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 10:23, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@Bob M, for information, this user is banned indefinitely from the Saloon Bar. New world (talk) 16:19, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@New world"Meaningless grunt".Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 18:54, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

The problem with arguments that don't have a solid answer is both sides settle on an argument and then work to find a new settlement, and that is not 100℅ bad. What is bad is disconnecting from your argument which is also hard to not do. Nobody needs to tackle an argument in a debate anymore because it's all hee and haw, grunt even less in an argument itself, because narrative is everything. The language argument is nutso bonkers violent, nod to I don't really care. It has been one argument and it has come from one person if you drill in far enough, delivered many times in particular so I'm not exactly surprised or hugely empathetic. It's the US, please don't shoot anyone. No person deserves to be murdered, in anger is not a justifying qualia. The narrative of the Bible is perceived as challenged, it's never going to end. Torrent (talk) 09:28, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

The vocalizations made by chimpanzees have meaning. They have inherent truth value. Chimpanzees can't deceive each other with their vocalizations alone. Human language is truth-neutral. It requires a degree of trust that other primate societies lack. So that's one distinction between human language and the vocalizations of other primates. Truth-value. Carthage (talk) 09:49, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

The "language = grunts + meaning" sounds like classic deepity. Bongolian (talk) 01:51, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Just found something I think you'll enjoy…

Here you go! Luigifan18 (talk) 14:03, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately that seems to be a link to "X" which I've got blocked. Scream!! (talk) 14:10, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it's a Twitter link… Luigifan18 (talk) 14:38, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

My bad for already forgetting that Twitter's name is mud in some countries. Ah well, I was gonna upload the thing to RationalWiki and stick it in the goat article anyways. Luigifan18 (talk) 14:47, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

"Twitter's name is mud in some countries" might be an understatement.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 06:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

A random thought that came my way

I wonder if any Fundamentalists have claimed certain parts of the Bible were written by Satan? It's already a thing in Islam, and the similarity between the stories told in 1 Chronicles 21:1 and 2 Samuel 24:1, with one saying Satan got David to number Israel, and the other saying God did it, seems like the kind of thing that would spark this belief. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 21:27, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I've seen fundies claim that versions of the Bible which didn't agree with their positions were perhaps 'corrupted' by Satan's minions. KarmaPolice (talk) 22:59, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Jack Chick of Chick Tracts is a believer in the King James Only doctrine. King James Only seems to be a common believe among fundies for one reason or another. Chick alleges that apocrypha and other versions were influenced by Satan. Other than that, would Satan torturing Job in the Book of Job count for anything? IntrepidSkeptic (talk) 23:04, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Christian fundamentalists are a punching bag at this point. Not that you shouldn't criticize them necessarily, but it's trite and there are more important critical arguments to make. If one's critique is risk-free and socially fashionable, then it's probably irrelevant and barely worth making. Accumulator (talk) 02:47, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

For instance, what if anything do authors like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris hope to accomplish writing such books, besides making money? I've not read them, but what argument could they possibly make that the public hasn't already heard many times? You either accept magical thinking or you don't. It's hardly a test of bravery either - at least in America, criticizing religion is risk-free and so overdone that it has become insipid. Personally I think it's tasteless and crass, especially when they could have written a critique of something more relevant instead of raking in money by pandering to their already-secular readers. For instance, US foreign policy, which probably causes more muslims to take up terrorism than any religious text. Accumulator (talk) 05:30, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I partially agree with your first paragraph. However, Dawkins and Harris wrote their most famous books on religion 20 years ago and they wrote it as the Christian right was trying hard to bring their religion into politics and education. Dawkins was mostly writing from an evolutionary perspective because there was a strong push to teach intelligent design in school. I don't remmeber if he made many original points but that doesn't matter. Fact is that the book exposed a lot of people to some basic and some advanced evolutionary arguments that they had probably never heard. Same with Hitchens, Dennett and Harris, they each exposed people to certain types of secular criticism, rational, philosophical and scientific and have probably done a lot for the visibility of atheism.

And I disagree that criticism of religion is risk-free in the U.S.. I would agree that criticism of fundamentalism is mostly risk free because almost everybody who is not one of them hates them. Criticism of religion as a whole might be easy but it definetely not risk-free, try criticising moderate Christianity as a politician or even state openly that you are an atheist and it might destroy your career. Try criticize some more moderate beliefs and even many non-believers will come to the defense of Christians out of "tolerance". This is something most people do not do for other ideologies they do not adhere to. What we should be doing, always, is to give conversational pressure to Christians when they make their claims. We should treat them exactly as we would any other idea. This is often already considered inappropriate criticism, to treat their ideas with the same scrutiny you would any other idea.

This is only anecdotal evidence but if you are interested, go visit some Ex-Christian communities, for instance on reddit etc. There is a lot of people crediting people like Matt Dillahunty and the 4 Horsemen with helping them deconvert. All of their books have issues and mistakes in them but I think you are being unfairly dismissive. The U.S. out of all places in the west needs religious criticism the most, nowhere in the west is politics, including the foreign politics you say should be criticized, so strongly linked to religion as in the U.S. NastyNugget (talk) 08:28, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the important bit is that a lot of folks haven't heard these arguments before. American / British schools [from what I can tell] rarely really teach kids critical thinking / logic / philosophy / politics because they're shit scared of being accused of 'indoctrination' [as well as the more mundane issues of overstuffed curricula, not really wishing to teach teens to argue better at adults and the Big Public whining that it's worthless because 'it's not practical™ stuff'] and I can't quit counting the amount of people I've come across who seem to have quit any form of abstract thought since leaving school. Yes, it's unlikely that any firm Abrahamic believer [I suspect 95% of The God Delusion is also directly applicable to Islam also] would pick up said text but it would help firm up the arguments of the 'firm but fuzzy' nonbeliever and might sway some of those teetering on the cusp. And even incorrect books/media can spur your own thinking on the subject, including reaching out for other texts etc which can set you on a real intellectual adventure [granting that these things are only incorrect in parts, that is]. I mean, I read Jared Diamond's Collapse and while he does have a butt-load of conjecture and doesn't really say anything new not already pointed out by proper historians he does wrap all the disparate things into an overarching narrative which a reasonably well-educated but non-specialist reader could get their heads around. In short, I think there's a solid case for pop-history / science / philosophy / psychology / etc even if they're rehashing old arguments etc as long as they are not actually incorrect. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:26, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Jared Diamond is actually incredibly deprecated among professional anthropologists. Carthage (talk) 12:29, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't like Diamond at all, but his h-index is over 60. Just because you saw people berating him on Reddit and YouTube that doesn't mean that he is not one of the most influential scholars on the field. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 12:36, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

This might be true [not going to argue these points over Diamond] but you find me a 'subject populariser' who to some extent isn't looked down on by their 'academic' brethren [Dawkins?]. To some extent it all boils down to the 'lies to children' argument - that every time you try to widen your possible readership, you in some way 'dumb it down' which would be strictly verboten in an academic setting [I mean, academic papers or even texts are not designed to be actually read by a layperson, even a reasonably intelligent one]. I recall perhaps a apocryphal bit of advice given to Steven Hawking when he started A Brief History Of Time - that each equation within it would half the sales.

The simple truth is that from what I can tell, the vast majority of folks who are truly subject masters are utterly crap at communicating to the Big Public. The 'subject populariser', while not being 'that good' on said subject [or not even being from within that subject; Diamond isn't a trained anthropologist while Bill Nye isn't an actual 'scientist' (he's an engineer)] is still better by a fair margin than the layperson and is good at the 'communication' bit. What's more, sometimes a 'populariser' can spur the 'proper experts' to debunk the issues raised better, meaning that if the offending books / etc were done again, they would be different because they'd take into account new developments in the field [if I remember right, Nye shifted his opinion on GM crops after his anti stance pissed off an expert in it to invite him to learn more etc]. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:01, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Gee, you're not as knowledgeable as you think. Literally, there's entire articles written about how Diamond pisses off actual anthropologists. Stop being an arrogant jackass for once. Carthage (talk) 13:18, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I never claimed to be knowledgeable, and as I said, I don't like Diamond at all, IMO Ian Morris is much more interesting when it comes to geographical determinism. The point is, if he was as atrocious as you said, he would be much less relevant than he really is according to indicators. We're in September and Guns, Germs and Steel has been cited almost 300 times this year, even though it came out almost 30 years ago.[5] Yes, lots of people hate them, and for good reasons. But many people also love him. If anything, you're being arrogant and one-sided for trying to discredit a guy that is more relevant than we can ever hope to be. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 13:45, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Is relevancy all that matters to you? There are numerous criticisms that have been made of Diamond's work (some of them can even be found in the article I linked). How many of those citations are positive, or without reservation? If your contention is with my word choice, and not substance (that Diamond is a problematic author who numerous anthropologists have written scathing criticisms of), then you're literally wasting time. "Some people love him" doesn't make those criticisms go away. I've been told, to my face, by actual anthropologists, that Guns, Germs and Steel is only good as an introduction to the subject it covers, and only barely. Carthage (talk) 13:51, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

(EC) Why are you being so aggressive? I feel like you are assuming that I like the guy when I already said twice than I don't. I mean, at all. My point is that I don't think that he is not "incredibly deprecated". Controversial would probably be a better word. People still have to study Diamond if they want to study development, even if they strongly disagree with him, like I do. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 14:02, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Then there is a difference between development economics and anthropology, as actual anthropologists tend to think Diamond doesn't have much of anything at all useful to say. Here is an academic essay criticizing Diamond's promotion of environmental determinism: [6] Carthage (talk) 23:30, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I would argue that 'environmental determinism' is a valid theory [or more correctly, the weaker variant of 'environmental possibilism']. Yes, I know this theory was pushed by racist fuckwit white people of the 19th Century as a kind of geographical Darwinism to justify enslaving/exterminating everyone else [partly by suggesting environmental factors have strongly influenced morals and culture] but the economic historian within me is screaming 'of course geographical location is fucking important! If there's no possibility of producing decent reliable food surpluses there's not going to be any cities, is there?' It is in fact a non-racist explanation of how some areas of the globe ended up being 'on top' by about 1400 ['no, your genetic stock isn't shit, your starting location is. Shame this isn't the game Civilization and you can't begin 'start scumming' for a better starting-place']. Like Gee notes, to a major extent Morris echoes Diamond's main argument [or is it the other way round?], though the latter did quite a bit more conjecture with the spotty source material. In fact, the main crime here is perhaps of 'overfitting', by making it sound like humans were all slaves to our starting-points and had no agency past this.

Lastly, I've taken a little peek at the anthropological 'case against Diamond'. From the looks of it, their main complaint appeared to revolve around 'these 'collapsed' cultures still have thriving cultural lives [well, apart from the ones who are all dead]' which kind of ignored the fact that Diamond didn't hugely care about that [at least, I don't think he did] - he was much more in the business of discussing the material/technological/organisational aspects of their relative 'civilisations'. Which is why I think they don't like him - perhaps unconsciously and third-hand he gropes towards a kind of generalised historical materialism which they simply don't like. KarmaPolice (talk) 01:21, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

That essay I linked contains salient criticisms of Diamond's model of geographic determinism, and points out he made basic mistakes while articulating his argument. For example, he insists that root crops like the ones grown in New Guinea were not very nutritious, but he ignores the fact that you can overcome this by simply eating more root crops and supplementing your diet with other foodstuffs. Likewise, he claims that tropical foodstuffs don't do well in temperate climates and vice versa, but Native Americans were growing maize from "Peru to Canada." Yes, it's true that there are hard physiological limits, but you can work around and push at those limits via artificial selection, which is exactly what Native American farmers did with maize. He claims that the indigenous peoples of Australia were isolated from agricultural peoples, but as always there's a wrinkle to this claim that Diamond ignores. The Yolngu were in active trade relations with Indonesian sailors for centuries, and indigenous Cape Yorkers had active contact with agricultural Melanesians for millennia. Cape York was not "isolated" from the rest of the world by any means. They were aware of farming, despite what Diamond implies, and still chose not to engage in agriculture. Hunting-gathering was sufficient for the energy needs of their population. Likewise, Diamond's axis model is not without its holes. He claims that midlatitude Eurasia is free of the environmental barriers that the north-south axis possesses, but midlatitude Eurasia also possesses high mountains and deserts. To quote that essay: "Diamond supplies a brief and standard description (not an explanation) of the way in which technology developed after Sumer and the way non-agricultural innovations spread westward to Europe and evolved in China. In this description he fails to mention the fact that diffusion eastward and southward from the Near East via the Indian Ocean, and southward from China via the South China Sea, was as important, and as easy, as diffusion westward..." Carthage (talk) 01:27, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Those 'basic mistakes' were less mistakes as you think [ie the mistakes are on your end]. 'Simply eating more poor-nutrition staple crops' is an option, yes - but this means the amount of population which can be supported by the agriculture is lower. Secondly, this very well could lead to the 'modern' variant of malnutrition - overweight [surplus of calories] but deficient nutritionally [as they're eating crap]. What's more, it's only within the last 150 years or so that we really started to get a grip on modern nutrition; before this there's very good chance that a decent %, perhaps most were living a life of mild malnutrition. This is been noted to be an important comorbidity for stuff like infections diseases.

Maize can be considered an 'exception to the rule', and what's more was only availability to the 'Old World' after the 16th Century [by this time most societies had already adopted a staple crop]. From my experience, Diamond never said that humans didn't try their best to make the best of their situation - his 'Polynesia' section in Collapse chronicles an interesting discussion of the island trade-lanes where each island geared their own advantages to the limit and via trade, support a higher population than they would alone.

The Australian issue, yes was incorrect. There's reasons why the Aboriginals didn't develop themselves into a higher level of technological civilisation due to location, but being 'utterly isolated' wasn't one of them. Those reasons mainly being that Australia appeared to lack decent staple crops or domesticated animals and as they never developed the ability to work metals [which seriously cramps your exploitation of environment re: axes, chisels and ploughs.] I really don't like the idea 'they were content being hunter-gatherers' because almost all other peoples of the world weren't [humans, the clever monkeys we are tend to learn how to exploit our environment to the limit regardless of starting location] and this them makes the assumption that the Aboriginals are somehow 'different' and I won't accept that without evidence.

With the 'geographical blocks', yes he oversimplified. But bottlenecks are an issue [the tales of Ibn Battuta providing excellent examples of how difficult some of the journeys around much of the then 'known world' showed] because it to some extent retards the spread of 'best practice' etc. Perhaps the most important aspect of these communications was that it offered a 'second chance' for groups which due to the 'luck of the draw' started off missing a critical element [access to good staples, horses etc]. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:03, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Sorghum was a crop domesticated in Africa, but then spread to midlatitudes in Eurasia, so Maize is by far not the only crop to have originated in tropical latitudes but spread to temperate ones. Bonus points for also spreading through a north-south axis as opposed to an east-west one. "Diamond's error here is to treat natural determinants of plant ecology as somehow determinants of human ecology. That is not good science."

You are also acting guilty of overgeneralizing an entire continent's worth of peoples. Cape York was clearly aware of agriculture, and animal husbandry, and yet neither took off. Also, can you provide a solid citation that all peoples will seek to become agriculturalists if given the opportunity? I can name you some peoples who deliberately resist attempts to force upon them a settled, agricultural way of life. Indigenous Australians also lacked metals, yes, but you gloss over that they did improve their environment. Australia was not some untouched wilderness. Indigenous Australians had been shaping the land via firestick farming since time immemorial. Some indigenous peoples even took up aquaculture. You seem to have some kind of romanticized notion that hunter-gatherers don't exploit their environment "to the best of their ability." Do you think hunter-gatherers live in a mythical state of nature? You seem to be arguing that the general trend, given enough time, is for all societies to become agriculturalists. As if cultures lack agency. That is not evidenced by reality.

That essay I cite calls Diamond's contention that root vegetables are not nutritious as being based off of a discredited hypothesis. It also is the one raising the contention that, even if what Diamond says is true, there are work around to that issue, like not only eating more of that food but also supplementing that food with other foodstuffs. Which you ignored. Carthage (talk) 10:42, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

First off, quit fighting points already conceded - I accepted that Diamond overdraws the points as to appeal more to the Big Public and that of 'geographical blocks' being one of them. It's why 'proper anthropologists' don't like him.

As most human societies do practice at least a form of agriculture, is not that hard to work out (ie concept) and if you get working is more efficient a form of food-generating than hit-miss foraging. Therefore, I am going to operate the principle that if a society didn't seem to practice this, the most likely reason shall be geographical / situational - if nothing else, this is easier to prove than arguing about cultural reasons and avoids making culturally biased, perhaps racist assumptions.

I never said the Aboriginals didn't work their environment, merely pointing out that without metals, you remain stuck at a fairly rudimentary level. I in fact said before said outright that all humans seek to exploit their environment, to turn it to their advantage.

On nutrition, all I need to do is quote you back; ...also supplementing that food with other foodstuffs. This takes effort, time and energy (hunting/foraging is pretty inefficient, which is why I don't have a romanticised view of this) and is usually a very finite resource. Which now can't be spent on other activities. If civilisation can be summed up as anything, it's that of surpluses - more plentiful/reliable food/water means more people doing stuff which isn't directly related to food production. What staple crops they did produce also effect their trajectory - part if the success of particularly ancient China was their access/refining of soya (best nutritional mix) and rice (very calorie dense). Guess what, I didn't ignore this. KarmaPolice (talk) 11:54, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I should have been less vague about what I had in mind when I was writing about root vegetables. I thought it was quite clear that I wasn't talking about Indigenous Australians when I brought root vegetables up. Indigenous Australians, outside of Torres Strait Islanders, didn't practice agriculture or keep animals outside of the dingo. Papuans on the other hand, did grow root vegetables. They supplemented their diet of taro with pigs, chicken, other crops like bananas, and foraged plants and game. Anyway, one argument I do find credible is that of time. The civilizations of the Old World essentially had a "head start" on that of the New World. By the time the first humans were setting foot in the Americas humans were already inhabiting every bit of Afro-Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years. By the time metallurgy became widespread in the Americas, metallurgy in the Old World was already ancient. The metalworkers of the Americas never even reached brittle iron casting, although some civilizations like the Aztecs were well aware of metallurgy, they were content to use stone tools for the most part, leaving metallurgy to ceremonial objects. So again, agency still played a role here that Diamond ignores. The same can be applied to the abandonment of the Old Copper Complex. It was simply more economical to use stone tools than copper ones. Carthage (talk) 11:58, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

There's a good reason [well, hypothesis] why societies didn't discover metal; unlike other things [like agriculture, pottery, stoneworking etc] it's not really intuitive. Most likely, what happened was that copper-bearing ores were used to ring a large fire [say for cooking, or performing slash/burn agriculture] and then some bright spark would need to be curious about what they'd found and then be able to devote time / energy to learn more [which again, is only relatively possible if you don't have a society which all energies are being put into food production]. Plus, they'd need to be in an area they'd use said ore-rocks first. Similar can be said about the discovery of glass.

The acceptance that 'the Old World had a headstart over the New' is basically, geographic determinism - ie the former had a much larger 'society pool' in which new innovations could spread [or spread back, if a civilisation collapse had happened]. We know that by roughly 200 CE the vast majority of the Old World trade-lanes were already in existance - for example, the Roman Empire and the Han Chinese knew of each other and traded, and how [relatively] 'advanced civilisation' was re-seeded in the likes of Britain after the 8th Century from lands further south which had maintained the 'Classical legacy' better [this was part of Diamond's argument about the Greenland Norse; they were on the end of a very thin trade-lane and it snapped, which meant as things went south they couldn't get help].

Yes, there's always going to be other reasons for not doing certain decisions and so on - I don't think Diamond ever argues there isn't [again, with the Greenland Norse; he reaches for the 'cultural' answer - that the Norse imported 'the Norse way' of doing stuff and clung onto it even though it didn't suit their new location]. So I actually think we agree a lot more than it appears; I am just more pro geographic determinism because it is often easier to prove/disprove [soil/ice cores, old waste pits, testing of skeletons etc] rather than trying to get into very dead people's heads [even asking a 'modern' Aboriginal what their ancestors thought 200 years ago is hugely fraught with danger, because even the descendant's mindset is significantly different]. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:42, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Actually, the OCC was an Archaic period material culture, meaning that its users were hunter-gatherers. They cold-smithed their copper tools. Usage of copper continued all the way up until European contact, but it was relegated to ceremonial usages. Utilitarian tools were made out of stone, wood, and bone. According to Wikipedia, the abandonment of copper as a base material for utilitarian tools coincides with the development of "more complex social organization" in the Eastern Woodland. Woodland farmers tended to use stone tools rather than the cold-smithed copper tools of their hunter-gatherer ancestors. Remember that bit about how copper continued to be used, but only for ceremonial objects? That's because copper was increasingly seen as a status symbol. If you were wearing copper pendants during the Mississippian period, odds are you were a notable of some sort. Carthage (talk) 13:49, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I suspect economics was the main culprit here. By the later stage the supplies to make more bronze / copper may have become exhausted to the point where it was seen as 'a waste' to use something that precious on a mere utensil. On the counterpoint, they might have discovered new alternative raw materials which were more acceptable subsitutes - for example, Mesoamerica and obsidian. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:06, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

The Eastern Woodlands actually make for a really interesting counterpoint to conventional narratives about civilizational development. For example, monumental architecture (mounds), metal working, and even cities predate the development of agriculture in the region. Typically, according to these narratives, it goes the other way around. Agriculture is typically cited as the catalyst for urbanization and metallurgy. Of course, the next round of urbanization in the Eastern Woodlands (think Cahokia) was associated with agriculture, but it's still an interesting wrinkle nonetheless. Carthage (talk) 14:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Even completely retracted journal articles continue to be frequently cited (for real look it up), much less this. Chillpilled (talk) 13:54, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

'Actual anthropologists [say] that Guns, Germs and Steel is only good as an introduction to the subject it covers'. I think that's the point - it's an introduction for laypersons. It's also an interdisciplinary work [like Collapse also is; have not read the others] which the coverage shall be uneven. Diamond's target market isn't academia [at least at the upper levels; I could see me as a teacher pirating sections for A-level reading] which means in this case the anthropologists' complaints is like me complaining that the basic/cheap fitness gear in my local Aldi isn't suitable for professional athletes to train with. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:58, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

They also tend to say that it does a disservice to understanding of actual history: [7] Carthage (talk) 23:23, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

How did we get here? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 18:02, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

'Bible written by Satan' > King James Only movement > Religious Right > Richard Dawkins > 'provoking thought in people' > Jared Diamond > 'originality vs popularising'. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:39, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

There is one fucking important detail you guys forgot to mention. His shit theory is not actually supported by many Andeanists and Mesoamericanists. Especially his attempt to brand it as an 'anti-racist' work is so damn backwards. He literally argues that "People in the americas weren't inferior savages compared to all others because of their colour, they were inferior savages because of geography of course, now let me explain how exactly geography made them the barbarians they definitely were, causing them to be defeated by the technologically developed colonisers'. No matter how many times he is cited, this theory to explain the European colonisation is not supported by people actually studying the various different states of the Pre-Columbian Americas. A majority of ethno-historians (a mix of anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, linguists, etc.) does not claim to my knowledge that the Inca state fell because of geographical isolation. Geographical isolation is cited however, but to explain the particular economic system of the Andean realm. And I bet the same is true for experts studying polities in Mesoamerica. His theories are not being accepted by a majority of experts is the only conclusion I can make. Seriously, someone who says "those are inferior not because of the stupid reasons people chose before, but because of this new justification" and then has the arrogance to call the book 'anti-racist', isn't a good reference. OldPerson (talk) 07:57, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

It's apparently too much for some people here to accept the obvious: that Diamond is considered a quack by actual anthropologists. Carthage (talk) 10:46, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Is Morris a quack too? How do you explain all those cultures in history who didn't develop ? 'Lifestyle choices' alone? KarmaPolice (talk) 09:19, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't know about Morris, but I trust anthropologists when they say that Diamond is a quack. Literally, I've read piece after piece by anthropologists, listened to personal anecdotes by anthropologists, that Diamond is almost a trigger for them. What's so hard to grasp about that? You mentioned reading Collapse. You are aware that Diamond's covering of the collapse of the Rapa Nui does not concord with academic consensus on the topic, right? Rapa Nui society didn't collapse due to "ecological suicide." It collapsed because of the disastrous effects of European colonialism. Carthage (talk) 09:34, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Again, look beyond those who refute Diamond, ethno-historians generally don't support his theory. Got it? Pre-columbian societies have agency. This is like ignoring the conclusions of many knowledgeable experts on the fall of the Roman Empire, just to defend the very fringe view of one best-seller. OldPerson (talk) 10:10, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Diamond doesn't deny how destructive European interaction with Easter Island was. His argument was that the society encountered was one in technological terms appeared to have been less capable than the one that proceeded it (ie the ones which raised the moai).

Diamond never, ever says that humans don't have agency. His whole arching theme is that while humans are not slaves to their environment, they clearly are moulded by it and often have to go to extreme lengths to overcome it. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:05, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Diamond's contention is that there was an ecological collapse, which in turn led to a societal collapse that was the cause of the abandonment of moai building, is not borne out by the evidence. There was no population crash in Rapa Nui history prior to European contact. There was an abandonment of moai building, but that is not the whole of his argument. His argument was that there was an ecological crash which led to a population crash. In fact the population of Rapa Nui has always been quite small, and evidence indicates that after the deforestation of the island the islanders adapted quite successfully, taking up "rock-farming" instead, where rocks were spread around to encourage soil fertility. Carthage (talk) 12:09, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Again, you're ignoring the actual ethno-historians who study pre-columbian chiefdoms/states. Most of them cite various reasons for the fall of societies in the americas which are different from Diamond's. For example, the lack of national identity in the Andes mountain range (causing local rulers to be nostalgic of the liberty of their ancestors), the appearance of European diseases, the ravages of civil war, and the hubris of the main Inca ruler, Atahualpa, are all cited as potential causes of the 'fall' of the Inca state. Technology isn't in there, right? What does that mean? That means that the fall of the Inca state was apparently not inevitable. The actions and policies of the Inca caste in Cusco, and of Atahualpa, influenced the outcome. OldPerson (talk) 14:16, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Er, what? Cotton armor against European guns (albeit muskets) and swords obviously wasn't going to end well, and their lack of wheels as a functional tool (they had toys with wheels, so they clearly understood the concept, but llamas are horrible work animals) sharply held them back. Plus, there was the whole capacocha thing (also known as torturing and murdering children) that meant people there were pretty much willing to take their chances with whoever came along next. Certainly not the only factor, but not nothing either. (I read Guns, Germs, and Steel as well as Collapse years ago, and while I don't take it as gospel I also don't think Diamond was entirely wrong) The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:40, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Great, so that's the result Diamond's works have on the big public. Amazing! Again, for the fourth time, ethno-historians study this thing. You can't just make these weird general claims about any entity, not even in the Americas. And on Capacocha, what, exactly, did you just say? Society was extremely hierarchical, so what "the people" thought about the conquest is often overlooked. Again, the Spaniards entered the domain of a grand state, they had to make alliances with the regional entities, who, perhaps nostalgic of the past liberty of their ancestors at the head of local socio-territorial units, allied with the Spanish in order to end Inca dominance. Allied normally doesn't mean submitted. It's a complex 'fall' which didn't happen all in 1533, the structures associated with the person of Atahualpa weren't Spanish in 1533. People don't just decide the Spanish are better, it's too complex of a mosaic of little chiefdoms and big chiefdoms for this simple explanation to make sense. And none of this has to do with the Capacocha ceremony, practiced by other people in the Andes too, and sometimes to a higher rate. OldPerson (talk) 04:49, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

...OK, so what is it that you're saying which isn't compatible with what I said? It turned out to be a Faustian bargain, but under the circumstances who wouldn't align with a group of people who at least had a chance of not continuing the systematic torture and murder of children and possessed what anyone with a functioning brain could determine was vastly superior weaponry? I didn't say it all ended right then and there, that requires reading things I never wrote; pointing out the most obvious immediate cause doesn't imply it all ended there and that told the entire story. I'm perfectly aware of the in-fighting between Huascar and Atahualpa set things up as well, I'm from the state where the man who, among many other things, rediscovered Macchu Picchu hailed from, this is eminently familiar history. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:20, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

The problem with your interpretation is that many of the tribes that allied against the Inca had themselves practiced human sacrifices; it was common in that region at the time and the Inca would not have been seen as uniquely evil by their contemporaries, at least not for that reason. The Inca were in conflict with the surrounding tribes before colonization, so it's more likely that they just weren't swayed from their previous position. Also, I love the idea that you being from the same state as someone makes you an expert, does my opinion on electricity suddenly hold more weight given that I lived in the same state as Ben Franklin? Plutocow (talk) 06:06, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I think you and I both know Benjamin Franklin has a lot more universal name recognition than Hiram Bingham; Franklin quite understandably is better known to a broader audience. And the idea that the "surrounding people" were so accepting of the Inca is hard to square with how they immediately aligned themselves with the first group of people who demonstrated, through vastly superior technology, an ability to overthrow them. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:40, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Franklin was just an example, I'm probably the only person here who knows who Monk Miller was but that doesn't make me some sort of expert on bootlegging or anything. You are missing my bigger point, that the tribes in the region wouldn't have seen anything unusual about the Inca's use of human sacrifice and fought them for other reasons, as many of them were doing before the Spanish even arrived. Plutocow (talk) 19:53, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Ok, so, essentially: The Spanish, who came right after the European diseases they spread, used diplomatic means to secure the support of regional macro-ethnic groups, like the Chachapoya, who were particularly hostile to the Inca, and, taking advantage of the hubris of the Inca ruler, Atahualpa, who thought that the foreigners were no particular danger, defeated the Inca forces at the administrative centre of Cajamarca. The regional states, or curacazgos, did not 'integrate' into a well-defined empire, there was no special patriotic sentiment. Instead, the regional states thought that overthrowing the rule of the Inca ethnic group/nobility/caste in Cusco was a way to regain independence (which isn't surprising really, the groups who gave the Spanish supplies were mainly historical enemies of the Inca), they didn't "chose" the Spanish.

The Inca Empire was an extremely complex thing, so here's a general explanation: Power is based on local territorial divisions, based themselves on religious beliefs, and these local structures extend to higher levels of power. The smallest socio-territorial unit, an ayllu, might dominate over other ayllus in a small chiefdom, and that small chiefdom (around 1000 families), governed by this ayllu, might dominate over other small chiefdoms inside of a big chiefdom. This is generally the highest level of territorial integration reached in the Andes. There's many terms for this: The big chiefdoms are the macro-ethnic groups, composed of many ethnicities (small chiefdoms), who are in turn composed of ayllus. Other terms include Hatun curacazgo (big chiefdoms had rulers called Hatun Curaca), guaranga (the proper name for a unit of 1000 families), pachaca (the name for a unit of 100 families, the north Andean equivalent of ayllu), hata (the south Andean equivalent of ayllu). Then of course the territorial divisions present in the small groups or ayllus also extend to higher levels of power (these divisions could be left/right, high/low, west/east, south/north etc.). There's much debate around this, some say the decimal system was added by the Inca, and the Inca generally had a habit of displacing groups for administrative purposes, but what I described is what would have been in place at the time of the Spanish conquest. Now, the Inca Empire has two administrative systems overlapping: on the one hand, there's the chiefdom of Cusco (the capital) which has various ayllus, called panacas in Cusco, in addition to various local divisions (imaginary lines which define religious sites, groups, borders; directions associated to the lines (west, east, north, south); and a "high" and "low" division (east and north are "high Cusco", south and west are "low Cusco". There's some speculation on multiple rulers existing based on those divisions, which have a hierarchy); on the other hand, there is the Inca Empire, in which the main ruler of the Cusco chiefdom, the Inca emperor, adds another layer to the Andean structure of power. Through conquests and alliances, the Inca emperors have successfully managed to impose themselves as above all other structures. The emperors rule over regional states through personal links to the rulers.

If one emperor dies, then the regional powers almost have legitimacy to "revolt" or separate from the Cusco elite, meaning that every emperor has to face rebellions at the start of his reign. The execution of the Inca emperor meant that the empire of Atahualpa was effectively at an end. A puppet installed by the Spanish wouldn't have the same legitimacy anymore. And then there is one more factor to include, the arrival of Spanish settlers, while at the same time the native population was dying to European diseases. After an attempt to defeat the Spanish by the new ruler failed, the Spanish effectively conquered the region.

While I don't deny technology has some part in this, what does Capacocha have to do with this? In any way? At all? I just don't see where you're going with this. OldPerson (talk) 12:05, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

The evidence against an Easter Island population collapse appears to have been produced after Diamond wrote Collapse. Therefore, on this one I file this under 'superseded theory' [and if some folks did this study to 'disprove Diamond', well I think he's done his job, yes?] There still is the question of where the trees went and what ecological damage from the loss of said trees might have done for the locals [and their SoL]. And just because technological / geographical issues can't explain everything, it doesn't mean they can't explain anything. In some cases, the geographic issues a culture was facing might have merely made an existing situation worse - for example, having a society which was already somewhat 'near to the brink' even when times were good. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:57, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

A big part of what made the Spanish so effective as conquerors was that they were masters at exploiting internal divisions within indigenous empires. However, when it came to facing up against societies where power wasn't so neatly centralized, or unified, they tended to flounder. The last Maya city state was conquered in 1697. The Mapuche presented an effective bulwark to colonial expansion south of the Andes for centuries. In fact it wasn't until decades after the Spanish American Wars of Independence that Patagonia was colonized. The Spanish fought a decades long guerrilla war against the Chichimecca in the north of Mexico, and they ended up suing for peace in that one. Likewise, Spanish expansionism into Aridoamerica and beyond was effectively checked by the mobile bands of the Apache, Navajo, and later the Comanche, who'd prove a thorn in the side of not only the Spanish but later the Mexicans and Americans as well. For over a century the dominant power on the Great Plains wasn't any European, but the Comanche, who got so powerful inadvertently because of a European introduction to the continent: the horse. Carthage (talk) 14:15, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

"Christian fundamentalists are a punching bag at this point...there are more important critical arguments to make." From a US perspective this is an odd statement to make honestly given the rise of Trumpism and its connection to Dominionism. Like hell criticism of Christian fundies (as well as the these days closely aligned trad Catholics) is irrelevant when fundies have taken over the Heritage Foundation and produced Project 2025, Trump cynically panders to fundies as a key pillar for his "base", and Dominioinists like Samuel Alito are on the Supreme Court. Though I agree that now is not the time to resurrect New Atheism and its polarizing antitheism (much of the surviving "Four Horsemen" have embarrassed themselves these days anyways). Christian religious institutions have supported fascist movements before (see: Benito Mussolini and the Catholic church... or Francisco Franco and the Catholic Church)... there is plenty of ground in simply using the Bible alone to document Trumpism as yet another Christian institutional heresy. BobJohnson (talk) 13:56, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

The USA is a one-party state and all such political media is theatre. To be clear: I don't care what Trump is up to, I don't care what plans to do if he wins, I don't care what he said on twitter this morning. Not even a little. Accumulator (talk) 15:41, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Play less Metal Gear Solid. A somebody. (talk) 21:39, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Not modern fundamentalists but (some of ) the original Gnostics believed that the good guy and the bad guy were reversed in the story of the Garden of Eden. They saw the serpent as a bringer of knowledge who freed humanity from the control of an evil demiurge. In fact, unless you have already been conditioned to read the story another way, it's an easy conclusion to reach.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 17:54, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

It is possible for creationists and evolutionists to try to live in harmony. Accept they bevel two possible Origins for humans. One based on spiritual faith and the other on scientific evidence. Both are equally possible. Just one requires faith and the other needs to have empirical evidence. Just creationists should stop pretending creationism is science and evolutionists should stop claiming faith is inferior to reason. Given for all that is possible the "God did it" is indeed right and Occum's razor is completely useless. Or indeed there is no personal God and only scientific evidence is useful in understanding the world. It'd be nice if the two could just live in harmony and be honest about things. After all, we don't know why humans exist and for what purpose. Might as well as love each other rather than fight over tribalism.^{— Unsigned, by: SantaClaus / talk / contribs}

Of course faith is inferior to reason. There is absolutely nothing - true or untrue, good or obnoxious, healthy or lethal - that you might believe because of "faith". And there is no way to check it or correct it if its wrong.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 07:12, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Muslims typically consider scriptures like the Bible to have been "corrupted." Carthage (talk) 15:39, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Which I'm betting is what (many) Jews and Christians would say about the Quran.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 08:10, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Many Christians in the Middle Ages viewed Muhammad as a heresiarch, so yes. Carthage (talk) 08:17, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

@Bob M Maybe I'm just sleepy, but I don't get what you're saying here. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 02:53, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

That the opinions of Muslims about the Bible are as valid (or invalid) as the opinions of Christians about the Quran. But I honestly suspect that we are talking past each other in some way, and neither really understands what the other is getting at.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 06:34, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Did you misread the user tag line? I was responding to the OP lol. I'm not Cirrus. Carthage (talk) 06:41, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

@Bob M I was talking about the 'Faith is inferior to reason' thing, because I don't quite get what you mean by 'there is nothing you believe in because of faith'; Is it a "You can't hate something that you think doesn't exist" situation where on the surface level it seems to not make sense (People hate on fictional characters all the time), but there's an extra, overlooked piece to it that makes it make sense (They do so within the context of the fiction, not outside of it)? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 19:28, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Increasing retirement age

As you may have known now, China has increased its retirement age recently. This got me thinking. Marxism (I think, I might be totally wrong) says that as technology gets better and better, people can work less and less. Well, technology is getting better nowadays, with AI and everything, but countries all over the world are still raising the retirement age, making people work more. Doesn't this mean that Marxism is wrong? This question might sound dumb, but I'm genuinely asking. 5.180.179.141 (talk) 04:21, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, that's not actually what Marxism predicts. A social revolution is still a prerequisite to actually use advancing technology as a basis for "luxury gay space communism." Otherwise the exploitative power dynamic inherent to the private ownership of the means of production remains. Carthage (talk) 04:41, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

That's also a stretch to claim that technology is getting better with AI. Arguably AI of the type that's being promoted by techbros, generative AI (as opposed to the older science-oriented AI), is just enshittification for profit. The increase in the retirement age in China was predictable from the 1-child policy and concommitant rapidly aging population. Bongolian (talk) 04:52, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

If China and other East Asian countries let more migrants in, they would have a suitable pool of labor to not necessitate raising the retirement age. Carthage (talk) 04:55, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Do keep in mind that, despite outward appearances, China is less Marxism and more authoritarian capitalism these days. BobJohnson (talk) 05:02, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I have no doubt that many people in the CCP do actually believe their own propaganda about "building the productive forces." Carthage (talk) 05:11, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that Marxism doesn't say that - and many countries are increasing retirement ages because of demographic issues which have nothing to do with whatever political ideology might be in place or what AI might be doing.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 07:16, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Not exactly. Marxism argues that as tech develops, the 'surplus' shall increase [something agreed to by orthodox economists, as this is basically 'increasing productivity']. What happens to said surplus afterwards is the thing which is 'open for debate' with the capitalist class - the Marxian 'crisis theory' being that the tech gets so efficient it produces an 'unconsumable surplus' because it no longer needs labour to produce it but still needs labour to consume it [and how the hell can they, if they're all unemployed]. AIs are just a tech in a long line of tech which increased the productivity - from PCs to the Internet, electricity to the humble gaslight.

As Bob points out, the rising of the retirement ages is mainly down to demographic pressures, though I will argue that tech has something to do with it too - ie medical tech. In the last century in the UK we have gone from an average lifespan of 53 to 81 while the cause of death has gone from 'cheap' fatal heart attacks/strokes and poorly-treated cancers to 'expensive' long-term conditions like dementia. Our 'old age systems' simply cannot cope; they were designed for an era where a relatively small demographic cohort most would drop dead three-five years after retiring, not a large cohort slowly 'dying by inches' after fifteen. As 'healthspans' have also increased [as a rule] too, there's an argument to be had that forcing a load of reasonably-healthy 'youngish seniors' out of the workforce is not really helpful, esp as said workforces are often the first generation to get relatively lavished with modern education etc. KarmaPolice (talk) 08:37, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

There are actually multiple associated demographic problems. These problems have different economic impacts depending on whether or not the country has a socialized healthcare and/or a state provided pension. (This is the case for western Europe.)

1. People living longer so there are more people drawing pensions - which costs money. 2. These longer-lived people need increased healthcare as the get older. So not only are there more of them, they also get increasingly expensive to maintain. 3. Fewer babies are being born. A trend which has been affecting most developed countries for decades. This means that the number of people working and paying for the first two things is getting smaller while the costs are constantly growing.

However, many of the people who are living longer do actually maintain their health well into their 70's or longer. So the logical government action is to ask them to extend their working lives, something which many governments are doing. Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 09:13, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

But! Active workers as a % of the whole population by historical standards in countries in the advanced world is not that bad - I saw stats that showed the UK percentage as of 2019 was still higher than it was in the 50s. What has happened is that the abnormal situation of a very high workforce % (1980-2010) was simply down to the Boomer bulge entering their main workspace and now it's coming to an end. What's more, labour output per-head is about 3x higher since the 1950s.

So 'crisis, what crisis'? If there is a crisis here is that there is a lot of 'production' that appears to be vanishing into the ether. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:20, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@KarmaPolice Ok, so (according to you) Marxism says that once technology becomes advanced enough, no labour power would be needed for production. This would make all workers unemployed and unable to earn money to buy things. But there's one problem: the existence of bullshit jobs. Workers could still be 'employed' and earn money via bullshit jobs that result in zero productivity. So there wouldn't be an unemployment crisis, but rather a 'productivity vanishing into the ether' crisis as you pointed out is actually happening in the UK currently. Is this productivity crisis predicted by Marxism? I would think that this productivity crisis is worse than the unemployment crisis because it makes it less obvious to the workers that capitalism is a broken system; they could carry on with their lives doing bullshit jobs.

As a corollary of the productivity crisis, the real purpose of increasing the retirement age would seem to be denying pensions to seniors rather than increasing productivity, letting the capitalists hoard more of the surplus; otherwise, why would bullshit jobs exist? 5.180.179.144 (talk) 19:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, 'BS Jobs' generated by capitalism does help to keep the show on the road a little longer - anything which generates consumption without increasing production would do - but then again, so would UBI, having the country on a thirty-hour week, expanding the military or simply building pyramids [which was an element in Brave New World; material consumption was always being encouraged simply to soak up the excess so the 'lower castes' actually have something to do]. However, the difference between a BS job and a pyramid is that a) the latter is a conscious decision while the former is essentially 'a bug' and b) most BS job occupants are still stressed and hate their jobs [a surprising amount of people will quit a BS job, even if it makes no real demands of you except turn up and sit around all day]. And yes, Marxism has noted the ability of other methods to 'soak up the surplus' - for example, in waging war. War is in fact an excellent method to do this, because not only does it produce a lot of goods which are neither capital goods or consumables but often it shall also result in physical destruction of capital which then needs replacing and take large amounts of labour from the labour-pool [ie turns them into military personnel]. It is also the kind of 'government spending' which right-wingers usually like.

Oh, I slightly mis-wrote above - I said 'increase productivity' when I meant 'increase production'. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:27, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh dear...

Another Trump assassination attempt. This seriously is not looking good. His followers are now going to make accusations of conspiracy. And Elon Musk is now complaining of Biden and Harris not being targets. Will Trump become a martyr now? Will people now vote for him out of pity and he'll get reelected to bring more mischief after those four years he damaged the country? ^{— Unsigned, by: Saveus / talk / contribs}

The alleged perp co-authored a Kindle e-book with his fiancé on Amazon last year in which wrote that he was a disgruntled MAGA and wrote, "You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgment and the dismantling of the deal." He also was charged with owning a weapon of mass destruction in 2002, but that charge was dismissed for some reason.[8][9] Bongolian (talk) 03:51, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

While I'm not condoning this, I can understand this. When you breed a culture of settling disputes by Weapon Of Gun™, an utterly dysfunctional political landscape and then the belief (not totally unfounded) that like in Italy '22 and Germany '33 a dictator is about to be helped into power by the forces of the 'respectable right' who do not give a dam about democracy... this is the net result. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:03, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I think we're closer to Yugoslavia post-Tito than Weimar Germany personally. Like Yugoslavia, America is a highly diverse, multi-ethnic federation where hatred, nationalistic fervor, and genocidal sentiment is being promoted by self-interested elites at the expense of a country that is suffering an extreme amount of economic inequality and is filled to the brim with guns and people eager to kill their fellow citizens. I think regardless of who wins this election America is fucked. Carthage (talk) 09:10, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't expect this to have much of an effect long term, both because it failed and because it happened before. Which says a lot of itself! What scares me about political violence on a pragmatic level is that it has the possibility to turn someone into a martyr and thus make their movement stronger. I don't see MAGA surviving post-Trump by whatever means that era arrives, because it's extremely centralized. It's a cult of personality dedicated around an authoritarian populist leader. I'm not encouraging anyone to do anything, but I'm certainly not going to cry no matter what happens. Remember what happened to Paul Pelosi and how MAGA laughed at him for it? IntrepidSkeptic (talk) 04:15, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Don't forget - Tito was kept alive-but-unalive while the Yugoslav political leaders tried to create a viable succession/keep the state from falling apart. (I would not be surprised if Prince Rainier (until after the Pope had died) and Benedict XVI (to 31 December/1 January to be the last/first notable death of the year) were also 'encouraged to stay alive').

@Bongolian So I looked at the Amazon link to the guy's book, and the product reviews are... quite something. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 14:00, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

The reviews got axed by Amazon after they found out. Bongolian (talk) 05:00, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

So - what happened was not 'propaganda of the deed.' Anna Livia (talk) 09:26, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

America is a different kind of 'multiethnic' - it's a melting-pot settler state, not a composite state made up of several geographically distinct ethnicities who's histories often featured them killing each other. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:41, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Does that invalidate my analogy? Carthage (talk) 10:27, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

To a part. Yugoslavs had another 'identity' that they could take up with relative ease and unless you lived in mixed-ethnic zone (qv, Bosnia) you were already in the majority in your own area. America doesn't gave these 'parts' it can break down into. To paraphrase Thatcher, Europe is shaped by ethnicity, while America is shaped by ideology. KarmaPolice (talk) 11:11, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Ironically (given how unhinged certain sections of MAGA are) it is... er... the more "unhinged" section where both assassination attempts have come from. Neither of the would-be assassins have had a very coherent political ideology, but both of them have come from the conspiracy / rage sect of the universe. In this case, it appears that this guy was MAGA but became pissed off regarding the MAGA leadership turn against Ukraine. All early reports I hear also seem to indicate that this person's social media was nutty (eg COVID-19 conspiracies and other extremism).

Like KP, not condoning the incident, but this perhaps can be seen as "the new normal" when the always-present Paranoid Style in American politics grew thanks to the Internet; guns as identity also has been growing ever since the NRA shift in the late 1970s; and one political party, rather than thoroughly rejecting the crazy (as they did in the past), now actively embraces it (like a Trump hanging out with Laura Loomer type of embrace). It's not like this sort of thing is unknown in American politics, though. But this sort of thing seems to have accelerated in the last couple decades. (Though so far, Trump has had relatively less crazy go after him compared to Barack Obama...) BobJohnson (talk) 13:54, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

This is more a symptom than a cause. What's more these 'paranoid and extralegal' methods often become endemic in nations with a democratic system close to snapping (qv;Japan 1930s). KarmaPolice (talk) 14:11, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

The common factor of the two attempts is there was no actual damage to Trump (and why did the CIA agent say he thought the gun was pointed at *him*?).

The thing with Tito - those around him were trying to do whatever it took to keep Yugoslavia-the-country together, while with the MAGA-meister there is no intention to maintain the stability of the US. Anna Livia (talk) 19:35, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

i dont get why we dont hear about shots fired at public officials and people doing politics for realsies like every week. it wouldnt be good or anything, but shooting up schools and stuff ia already a weekly occurance already. its not like you are short on dangerous lunatics, or just dangerously disgruntled, who do all their thinking down at the range. why dont all your politicians need to be decked out in kevlar 24/7? i know there been actual serial killers who done murders via sniper fire, actual good shots. do your crazies just not do politics? AMassiveGay (talk) 21:32, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

RationalWiki articles not showing up on Google

There appears to be some kind of glitch at the moment, a lot of RationalWiki articles are not appearing on the 1st or 2nd page of Google or any for that matter, normally they are the first or third hit if you search for specific articles. The articles do not show even if you search for the person's name, all you see is an archive if they have a talk-page. This seems to be happening for dozens of articles I have searched. Anyone know anything about this? 143.198.117.200 (talk) 12:19, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any differences. PIDOOMA for instance shows the Rationalwiki article as the first hit. Argumentum ad baculum shows up in the first page (barely). You won't find the RW article on any subject that gets standard-media attention (unless you add "wiki" to your search, and maybe not even that). Not surprising considering that RW is not mobile friendly so it will get penalized in Google search just for that. BobJohnson (talk) 14:49, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

If you search "RationalWiki" the Wikipedia article will show up, before the main page. That seems like proof. And then the RationalWiki articles on RationalWiki and Wikipedia. New world (talk) 16:16, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I haven't seen this, but if you want to improve that, one idea would be to systematically repair dead links on old articles. Whether by finding the updated link or a web archive. I've done this for the pages Conservapedia and Goat so far, selected because they're pretty high on our Special:MostLinkedPages indicator. Chillpilled (talk) 16:37, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

There is definitely an issue. Little to no biographies are showing up on Google currently. Just a brief example - Shawn Baker's article is now nowhere to be found on Google but it is usually on the front page of Google, usually around the 3rd link. Nigel Farage doesn't even show. I have used multiple VPN to see if is a specific country problem it isn't. I believe this issue has happened before but after a few days resolves itself. Johns (talk) 17:52, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Trying to force Google to give the RationalWiki result on Shawn Baker (search on: "Shawn Baker" site:rationalwiki.org) seemed to only return our talk page. The Microsoft-based DuckDuckGo search returned our main page at the top for the same search. But searching on just "Shawn Baker" on DuckDuckGo did not turn up RW on the first page of results. Bongolian (talk) 02:47, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

This is now also discussed on RationalWiki:Technical support#Hundreds of RationalWiki articles deindexed by Google (hundreds as the BoN titled it could be an underestimation). It seems to cover all kinds of mainspace pages, nothing outside mainspace noticed so far. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 16:30, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

This is your brain on nationalism

So I found this live on-the-ground footage of January 6th and these motherfuckers at one point literally started singing the National Anthem while doing a literal coup. You can't get any stupider than this. Carthage (talk) 16:26, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Wingnuts can ALWAYS get more stupid, since they have no brain. Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 17:11, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Is there such a thing as 'negative IQ'? Anna Livia (talk) 17:40, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Since IQ is a scale that, as a general rule, tries to find the average of all human intelligence to use as a baseline, I'd say probably not… Luigifan18 (talk) 18:07, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Something something “when fascism comes to America, it’ll be with a flag and cross” moment. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 18:20, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

No it cannot be negative except in childish taunts. IQ is a quotient: test score divided by age. Either the numerator (score) or the denominator (age) would have to be negative but not both for a negative IQ to exist. There are no negative test scores for this test and no negative ages, so the IQ is always positive. Also after a certain point, IQs decline with age because age always increases but test scores are unlikely to increase substantially after a certain age (discounting cheating and unfair test preparation). Bongolian (talk) 05:42, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

(Perceived) intelligence has nothing to do with this TBH. Smart people fall for propaganda all the time. No one is immune to propaganda. Carthage (talk) 06:04, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

It is possible for someone to have a negative IQ according to pure math if we use a normal distribution. According to Google, the average IQ is 100 with a standard deviation of 15, so all we need to do is is to calculate how many standard deviations 0 is below the mean. I did it and the answer is 6.67. The chance therefore is extremely close to zero, around one in 100 billion, which, again, according to google is close to the number of people that have ever lived. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 11:16, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

It is perhaps a 'colloquial construct' - but how should some of the believers of certain conspiracy theories easily proved wrong, 'not even wrong' and 'wronger than wrong' be defined? Anna Livia (talk) 10:34, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

As fuckwitted as those people are/were over a whole lot of things, if they believed what they were doing is for the betterment of the us, why would they not sing the national anthem? they are 'patriots' after all. just their us might not look your us. thats kind of the point isnt it nationalism isnt it? deciding who gets to be part of the nation, what that nation should like, etc? id kinda would expect nationalists of any persuasion, but right wing ones particularly, would humming the anthem at all times and maybe even know a verse or two. i bet you they had plenty of flags waving and adorning every surface of any object or clothing item they could slap it one. the fucknuts are not dumb for thinking they are the patriots, they are cunts because they are trying to define who the patriots are. they wish to define who can be an american.

seems to me their america with fascists and maga and oompla loompa hitler, everyone tut tuts and say thats the antithesis of what america is, but the problem is too many of you believe your own propaganda. its probably closer to the maga fucknuts idea of what the us is than the bastion of freedom and liberty and equality, the land of opportunity, justice for all, and assorted cliches you folk have been selling the rest of the world decades at least. the religious right, the alt right fuckers, the totally not nazi pricks we all spend far too much time worrying what kind of almost nazi but not quite nazi they are (fascist, nazi, racist, etc - they are all in the same basic ball park for general conversation), they have captured the spirit of what america was at its birth. freedoms, liberties, constitutions, and all that fun stuff, just not for all of the people. especially some of the people. those maga fuckers are the real america. the upcoming election is on a knife edge. we can rationalise about about the economy, and messaging, and sleepy joes and stuff all we want. there is no way on earth that it should be such a close run thing. its fucking insane. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:55, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I think it's more accurate to say the United States has been at each other's throats since the beginning on racial and minority issues. :) It's no surprise that Confederate flags were also seen at the January 6th riot. Precedent!

It's pretty obvious that America tends to throw itself into overboard jingoism that oversells their Shining Star of Democracy mask. But, at the same time, I don't think it's fair to demonize *too* much. There are a lot worse places in the world than America for authoritarianism. When it comes to racism, in no way is America alone. I don't even think America's the most racist / nationalist country in the world... by quite a bit, actually. America is a bit unique in that its endemic racism and other isms is pretty open and there's a lot of people who vehemently disagree with it. It's more obvious. A lot of Asian countries, even well developed relatively democratic ones like South Korea and Japan, also have some serious institutional racism and sexism problems. Such is discussed for sure... but from what I can tell, it isn't so big of a "news feature" like such is in the U.S. And from what I know, minority protection laws are *much* less in these countries. Then there's Israel... settler movement Jewish supremacists, 'nuff said about that. We haven't even gotten to authoritarian countries like Myanmar, home of "the Nobel peace prize winner that supported a race-oriented genocide". Or China... where the authorities want you to know that there absolutely isn't a genocide going on in their country, no siree! The list goes on...

That's not to say that it's not ridiculous that the whargarbl of the American culture war is so strong, that a presidential race with a senile rambling old man (who only is in the position he is because he is a mask off racist dumb fuck) is essentially tied. It is ridiculous. But a lot of humanity is ridiculous. In the end, too much of the human race is not really any better than tribes of angry primates throwing shit at each other; certainly there are too many humans of whom the term homo sapiens ("thinking man") hardly applies. Treasure the good parts, I suppose... BobJohnson (talk) 23:23, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I've said this once, and I'll say it again; the real 'threat' doesn't come from randos doing dress-up and waving particular flags while shouting obscenities, but the calm folks in well-cut clothes, coming to the decision that 'you know, this democracy thing just doesn't work' at the '19th hole' at the golf club. Or uniforms in officers' messes deciding that 'yes, [politician] is No Good for the country and it's only right we correct this'. Or elected officials or civil servants concluding 'the end justifies the means'. Or judges deciding their own personal ideology is much more important than their oaths or their professional reputation.

Just imagine Jan 6th if just one military/police unit decided to 'protect' the wannabe-putschists. Or if judges actually backed the 'fake electors' wheeze. Or if the requests for National Guards continued to be denied. Or if Fox News had thrown their airwaves to Trump. Or even if Trump has more fucking balls and openly called on 'all good people' to take over the whole country. KarmaPolice (talk) 00:10, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Ukraine post-war

What do you think the post-war situation in Ukraine will be like? Carthage (talk) 10:16, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

It will depend in part upon how the war ends, and who is sitting in the Kremlin (and how they got there). Anna Livia (talk) 10:36, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

To answer that, you first need to ask 'what causes the post-war situation to start?'

My prediction is the most likely endgame [aka if current trends continue] we're looking at is something similar to Korea - aka a cease-fire based on the current frontline but no peace because each sides 'minimum demands' can't be brought together. They can't be brought together because a) Moscow's minimum demands are analogues to a diktat imposed by a victor on the defeated and b) Kyiv has zero trust in Moscow keeping to any deal cut even if they did cut a deal. Problem is, Russia won't sign even a cease-fire while Putin a) believes they can still do better and b) he feels it's not a victory he can wave in front of the narod. And as he doesn't give a fuck about anything except himself, he is impervious to any other appeals.

Except from Xi.

What does China want from this war? I suspect the main goal is to extract as much resources out of Russia [tech, raw materials, cash] as cheaply as possible while taking over Russia's remaining 'superpower' pretensions [from deepening ties with Cuba to trying to muscle in at Central Asia]. At the start, this war was good for Beijing - watching a declining power frittering away her remaining strength so she sank into 'colony status' quicker was something that provoked much Chinese schadenfreude [esp as the leadership shall remember how imperious the Russians had been to China during the Cold War]. But the issue now is that it's becoming more obvious to the world that China is the sole reason this war is continuing - and is taking the rep hits etc due to it. Even more importantly, there is the growing risk that the longer this war drags out, Russia might become too weak. I argue China would like to see a pliant Russia, but not one which is too weak to perform their supporting functions within their permitted 'zone of influence'. Also slightly oddly, China also has decent relations with Ukraine. Lastly, China has her own concerns - and I suspect Beijing is not blind to the fact that this war has pushed Europe and the US back together right at a point where it was starting to look like most of Europe wouldn't help the US in a 'Sino-American war' [note that this would be outside of NATOs jurisdiction, so the Americans would have to ask personally every member for help]. Thinkpieces;

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4723649-russia-is-now-a-chinese-colony-while-still-foolishly-dreaming-of-empire/mlite/

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/4/17/is-china-growing-tired-of-russias-war-in-ukraine

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/russia-tomorrow/five-scenarios-for-russias-future/

KarmaPolice (talk) 13:23, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

What happens to all the paramilitaries? Foreign fighters in particular. What's the risk that, after the war is over, some of the foreign fighters currently in Ukraine will "bring the war home" so to speak? Carthage (talk) 13:26, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I think that it’s extremely unlikely that any significant numbers of the foreign volunteers will “bring the war home”.

Unlike, say, Afghanistan or Syria (or, for that matter, The Spanish Civil War) those volunteering are not likely to be motivated by any broader, revolutionary attitudes/ideologies, but seem to mainly have rallied in support of Ukraine’s determination to defend its own borders (and/or to confront Russia).

Despite Russian brouhaha and propaganda, it doesn’t seem like many foreign volunteers are right wingers/neo Nazis (indeed, adherents of those ideologies in the countries supporting Ukraine are more likely to sympathise with Russia). The conflict also doesn’t seem particularly attractive Islamists or adherents of any of the other ideologies that aim to “revolutionise the home front”, either.

In addition, the opposition to volunteers in their countries of origin tends to have to do with avoiding direct entanglement with Russia, not hostility to support of Ukraine. By contrast, in the conflicts which have seen foreign volunteers “bring the war home” afterwards, those volunteers tended to be in opposition to their home governments before they left. For their part, the governments in these other conflicts either tried to prevent volunteers joining the conflict (e.g. Syria, Spain) or mainly encouraged them in the hope that they would die, or at least never come back (e.g. the Russo-Afghanistan War). ScepticWombat (talk) 14:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Speaking of propaganda about Ukraine, here's an interview with Rudy Giuliani about why conservatives hate Ukraine. Carthage (talk) 14:24, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the analogy of the Spanish Republic's foreign fighters is perhaps the closest - because it's fairly obvious the 'Western' ones aren't coming for pay and there is a clear ideological difference between the two sides. In that it's a mixture of folks driven by ideology [Russia is wrong/evil and must be opposed] and those driven by morals [Ukraine deserves help and I can do that by fighting]. As Wombat notes, the majority of actual far-right folks sympathies are on 'the other side' and thus, generally unlikely to end up in the Ukrainian forces.

From what little stats I've seen, the majority of 'foreign fighters' are a) ex-Soviet state citizens with an axe to grind against Russia/Putin and/or b) those from the Ukrainian diaspora. And there's only been perhaps 25k of them in total - I think personally what put a lot of folks off was the realisation they lacked military experience [I remember the 'officially unofficial' line from UKGov at the start was that only military veterans should volunteer].

However, what I can see happening is a few 'Tom Wintringhams' arising - aka Ukrainian veterans don't 'bring home the war', but do the experience and training of it. What happens if they're 'Antifa' and decide to teach all their friends these skills that normally you'd only be able to get from paranoid, nasty MAGA-hats or actual fascists?

Thinkpiece: https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/why-foreign-volunteers-enlist-ukrainian-international-legion

KarmaPolice (talk) 14:37, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I do think there is probably reason to suspect that some of the Belarusian fighters in Ukraine plan on using their experience in Ukraine to conduct resistance against the Lukashenko regime in the future. Carthage (talk) 14:40, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Chechens too. Oh, and the Russian exiles. But you have to remember that quite a lot of 'Russians' [something like 10-15%] have at least partial Ukrainian ancestry/connections [this is similar in the UK; some 10% have enough Irish ancestry/connections to claim citizenship]. KarmaPolice (talk) 17:03, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Somehow, I don’t really see either Lukashenko or Kadyrov allowing anyone who fought for Ukraine to return either Belarus or Chechnya, or leaving them free/alive if somehow some veteran did manage to return.

Chechnya already has its share of domestic resistance and I doubt veterans from Ukraine will make any difference there, considering the brutal “security state” already in place has already faced down both more or less secular nationalist and militant Islamist armed resistance.

Now, we could imagine a scenario in which Belarusian volunteers might conduct cross-border actions from Ukraine into Belarus, but I don’t think that Ukraine would allow that: During the war, such incursions would risk adding another border to be defended, stretching Ukrainian resources even more. After the war, incursions would risk reigniting the war, which would again mean that Ukraine itself would likely try to prevent such actions.

I’m not sure about the plausibility of the “veteran trained ANTIFA” scenario either. It’s not like it’s impossible to find military veterans with combat experience and some kind of leftist (or just broadly anti authoritarian/anti government) sympathies already, so the scenario might as well have happened by now, if it was particularly likely. I just can’t see why the relatively few veteran volunteers from the war in Ukraine would drastically increase the likelihood of the proliferation of such training.

Another important question is why combat experience from a fairly conventional war would be more useful/relecant for ANTIFA types than, say, the kind of experience in counter insurgency/(anti) guerilla warfare that veterans from Afghanistan or Iraq might provide. Considering that many countries sent quite a lot more soldiers to those wars and subsequent occupation/peacekeeping missions than the numbers who have volunteered to fight in Ukraine, it seems odd to me to suddenly start worrying about the latter. ScepticWombat (talk) 20:36, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I think there are 4 basic scenarios for post-war Ukraine

1. Trump gets in and/or western support for Ukraine collapses: Ukraine is essentially conquered (eventually - probably a nasty guerilla war continues for a while cf 1945) and either becomes a Federal Subject of the Russian Federation, or puppet state with a Kremlin approved/selected government - either way "Ukraine" as a country and Ukrainian as a nationality and culture cease to exist.
2. Current situation continues - in which case I do not actually see an end to the war at all
3. Western support stops pissing about and gives Ukraine the tools for a battlefield victory - this restores all areas to Ukraine control and likely sees Putin toppled. Then Ukraine has an indeterminate period of peace until the next rabid nationalist enters the Kremlin, suppresses all internal opposition and starts trying to conquer Ukraine again.
4. Putin dies or is overthrown somehow - in which case the internal political situation in Russia is turmoil and possibly Ukraine can seize back much or all of its territory, but the RF will stall claim the annexed Oblasts as "enshrined" in the RF "constitution", so that's just an interregnum before the next war.

Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 00:01, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Depending upon events 'Putin's successors' might say: it was all VVP's doing, we were forced to agree, can we arrange something (eg New Hebrides Condominium, (French-Spanish) Pheasant Island and similar)?

Also possible - something happens to Zelensky; even if 'no worse than' the Trump incidents Putin gets blamed and Action Is Taken. Anna Livia (talk) 10:53, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the second option is the one we're heading to right now. That both sides will get exhausted enough to want a 'pause', but neither of them willing to concede anything [Ukraine won't 'sign away' her lost provinces while Russia won't give up her demands for a Ukraine with limitations on her sovereignty]. Therefore, a 'Korea ending' aka a cease-fire which kicks all the big questions into the long grass, the new 'temporary' border basically being the current frontline and nothing much past that than some exchange of prisoners/population [in this scenario, I think Kyiv should prioritise getting 'as many of our people back' as possible, as human capital is the most valuable here].

Therefore, the only real question is where this border ends up - and that's what the war is about now. To hold on to as much of Ukraine as possible as they continue to bleed out Russia. Obviously, this depends mainly now how much support we continue to give to her.

The after-war scenario for this variant is also highly dependent on whether the promises of reconstruction aid come through. I will cite Korea again - South Korea was almost nothing in 1954, but a shed-load of economic aid got her firstly back onto her feet and then walking - getting to the point they're running as fast as we are. Think of this, a 'West Ukraine' getting lots of investment, aid, modernisation and almost likely, on the path towards stronger long-term relations with NATO/EU while the 'Eastern Ukraine' shall sit behind a rusting Russian war machine in a semi-isolated economy with little reconstruction aid.

But that's a problem. Russian planners may very well fear that they won't ever be able to 'resume the war' because even giving Ukraine five years of a 'breather' might allow them enough time to really beef up their defences [modernise older kit, build bunkers, get more aircraft etc] to the point the General Staff might believe their odds for success are even worse than now. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:33, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm gonna be the Americentric guy and say that a lot depends on what happens in our elections this year. Trump winning would probably get the GOP a majority in both chambers of Congress, and a resulting end/reduction in US aid to Ukraine would greatly limit Zelensky's options. At that point, I think he'd have no choice but to go with the ceasefire option and accept the current borders. On the other hand, if Harris wins and Democrats at least hold their own in Congress, that limits Putin's options since he'd face at least 4 more years of US aid going into Ukraine. Zelensky would therefore be emboldened, and the war would continue with reduced Russian morale and possibly end with some Russian concessions. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 15:06, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

The economic spectrum

I was recently grammar-checking the page on property, and a thought occurred to me. Would it be accurate to say that socialism and capitalism occupy certain spreads of points on an "economic spectrum" that runs semi-parallel to the political spectrum? With this understanding, I would say that communism is the extreme socialist end of the spectrum, and laissez-faire (i.e. unregulated capitalism) is the extreme capitalist end of the scale. Also, I say that the economic spectrum is semi-parallel to the political spectrum because socialism tends to correlate to left-wing politics and capitalism tends to correlate to right-wing politics, but it's not totally unthinkable that a person could hold right-wing political views while supporting socialism or hold left-wing political views while supporting capitalism (though such a person would probably be more likely to be closer to the center on both spectra than a left-wing socialist or a right-wing capitalist; an economic conservative is a capitalist practically by definition while still possibly supporting [left-wing] social justice causes, and a social conservative favors "traditional" social hierarchies and formulations but is not necessarily opposed to even distribution of wealth). Also like the political spectrum, extreme positions on the economic spectrum tend to do a lot of harm when put into practice (as seen with the Soviet Union's attempts to establish communism and… whatever you'd call the era of company towns, nigh-nonexistent work safety practices, and other hallmarks of robber baron corporatism). So, am I on to something here? Luigifan18 (talk) 17:26, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

1) Market socialism. It's possible to have a socialist program within a market economy. Look at worker co-ops.

2) I'd say there's no difference between the attempts to establish communism during the 20th century and the multiple peasant rebellions against feudalism. There is no reason to assume that just because some attempts to overthrow capitalism failed doesn't mean that capitalism will last forever. Feudalism didn't.

3) How do you define socialism and capitalism? How do you define "right-wing politics" and "left-wing politics"? Carthage (talk) 17:33, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh dear, you've got some interesting ideas. To start, a right-wing “socialist”.. that sounds familiar, right? And a left-wing capitalist, well, I mean, you know what I mean, they, sort of, exist, already? I prefer this: There's political issues, economic issues, and cultural issues. A left-wing capitalist, is right-wing on political and economic issues, and left-wing on cultural issues (might as well call them right-wing, most of the ones proudly capitalist are anyway, others are left-wing of course); a right-wing “socialist” would be “left-wing” on political issues and is left-wing on economical issues too, and right-wing on cultural issues. Problem is: there's a name for that, it's called a far-right nazi. We've got plenty of far-right people already, don't see how any of those are centrist. HumanBeing (talk) 17:39, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Nazis can call themselves "socialists" all they want. That doesn't make it true. If anything, rich elites tend to side with fascists during periods of crisis. It's no coincidence that as soon as fascist regimes are in power labor unions and socialists tend to be the first on the chopping block. Carthage (talk) 17:41, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

That's my point. There's no such thing as truly right-wing socialists. HumanBeing (talk) 17:45, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough. Carthage (talk) 17:47, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I think it's more accurate to say that there's roughly four political spectrums; that of economic, social, freedom and organisation. Therefore, what someone might call a 'right wing socialist' is in fact a socially conservative socialist. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:07, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

So to you, right-wing and left-wing are cultural and not political or economical? Right-wing isn't economically liberal? It’s socially conservative? Again, problem: A socially conservative socialist is what most of the far-right claimed and claims to be, more or less openly.

Edit: I’m confused, I think I mixed up some posts. If you’re replying to Carthage, yea, it's pretty much that. Though “political” issues aren’t freedom only to me but things like philosophy, reasoning. HumanBeing (talk) 18:17, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I didn't read everything OP wrote. I know this is an appeal to authority (and to be honest, I tend to agree with HumanBeing that there is no right-wing socialism). But Marx himself wrote about conservative socialism on the Communist Manifesto[10]. As most people ITT probably know, there was the "Right Opposition" in the Soviet Union, though I don't think that anyone would seriously consider Bukharin right wing, I think "right" in this context meant only that they were to the right of Stalin. Also, believe or not, but Hayekian socialism does actually exist.[11] So, while I agree with the the idea that there is no right wing socialism, I think it is also possible to argue otherwise, just like a socially conservative left exists in some parts of the world even today, and I'm not even talking about Nazbol. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 19:19, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Left-wing' and 'right-wing' are shorthands which can be useful if discussing current political parties/situations, but not in the abstract. I would say you have a 'communialist'-'individualist' economic axis, a 'reactionary'-'progressive' social axis, a 'totalitarian'-'libertarianism' freedom axis and finally, a 'egalitarian' vs 'hierarchicalism' organisational axis. In practice, some of the positions become associated with each other, partly because there are some 'mixes' which simply don't work [for example, an 'individualist' / 'egalitarian' mix].

When you put it like this and start to apply it to RL political parties, you start to get some interesting results; because [for example] shareholder-owned business are more 'communialist' than the sole-owner business [not a lot more, but a bit]. So yes, you can have a situation where a Nazi and a Stalinist could sit down at a table and if they stuck to discussing economic affairs they very well would agree on a lot [international Jewish conspiracy or international capitalist conspiracy?... or both!]. The USSR under Stalin, for example was pretty 'conservative' in social/cultural affairs [banning abortion, enforcing 'socialist realism' in the arts, cracking down on 'non-traditional' lifestyles etc] and despite the rhetoric, was fairly hierarchical. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:32, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Not gonna argue against any of this. Still: The line between a socially conservative left or far-left and a very economically social far-right is blurry, but it exists. I'm talking about the concept of “right-wing socialists”. Once we’ve all agreed on them being right-wing, then the social part is probably just talk. Once you know they’re right-wing, calling them far-right nazis isn't that much of a stretch. Either that or they’re not right-wing. A socially conservative socialist is part of a socially conservative left-wing. HumanBeing (talk) 19:43, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

The examples I can think of off the top of my head are George Galloway's outfit in the UK and Sahra Wagenknecht's group in Germany. Economically 'left-wing', but socially conservative to almost reactionary. I think the major cramp here is that we've never really had a major 'movement' in history expressing such a viewpoint. The nearest I can think of is perhaps Baathism. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:53, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps economic spectrum outweighs the social spectrum? Also, just like on the left, where you have anarchism and command economy, the right wing economic spectrum does not always mean economic liberalism and neoliberalism, as many right wing governments have been fiscally irresponsible and protectionist, like Trump in the US and the millitary dictatorships in South America during the 1970s (Chile being the exception). It usually means pro-business, but even that is sometimes true only to some extent, the economy of Nazi Germany being a good example. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 20:31, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

The US economy featured large amounts of planning during WWII. You don't see people calling WWII-era America "leftist" do you? Just because an economy involves a large degree of planning doesn't by itself make planning "leftist." I would argue that's a bias on your part, to equate central planning with leftist politics. There is also an entire philosophical tradition of anarchists who reject the "leftist" label entirely. Carthage (talk) 07:45, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I think it is absurd to compare a war economy with long term central planning, which was obviously what I was talking about, as the section o Nazi German of my post suggests. A war economy may decide what will be produced in what quantity, as well as who will get the output, but does not necessarily decides how it will be produced, or even who will produce, and more importantly, once the war is over, it returns to its market-driven form (though, as some empirical studies have suggested, the size and the role of the state hardly ever completely returns to its pre-war status). I'll just leave you with a quote from Richard J. Evans, probably the greatest living English-speaking specialist in Nazi German, from his The Third Reich at Power:

The Four-Year Plan marked a massive escalation of state intervention in the economy. The priorities were being set by the regime, not by industry, and mechanisms were being put in place to make sure that business fulfilled them whatever the consequences to itself.

[...]

[A]lready in the 1960s, some Marxist historians were beginning to argue that in Nazi Germany at least, the economy was subjected to a 'primacy of politics' in which the key parameters were set by ideology rather than by capitalist self-interest. The truth is, the economic system of the Third Reich defied easy categorization. To some extent its sheer irrationality undermines any attempt to portray it as a system at all. Superficially, the Four-Year Plan in Germany was more than reminiscent of Stalin's Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union. But Nazi economic planning was clearly not designed to further the interests of the working class, as its Soviet counterpart was, at least officially. While Soviet planning under Stalin more or less eliminated free markets and free enterprise, Nazi planning left business intact, from great firms like I.G. Farben all the way down to small retailers and backstreet artisanal workshops. On the other hand, Nazi rhetoric, especially in the 1920s, had a strongly anti-capitalist flavour, so it is not surprising that business only swung round to support the Party after Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933. The destruction of the labour movement in the following months convinced many businessmen that they were right to back the new regime. But as time went on, businessmen found that the regime had its own objectives that increasingly diverged from their own. Chief of these was the ever more frenetic drive to rearm and prepare for war. Initially, business was happy to accommodate itself to this objective, which brought it renewed and then increased orders. Even consumer goods producers benefited from the armaments-driven economic recovery. But within a few years, as the regime's demands began to outstrip German industry's capacity to fulfil them, industrialists' doubts began to grow.

GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 11:05, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

The US economy during wartime was still a planned economy. You're splitting hairs that it wasn't the exact same model as a Soviet-style command economy, but that doesn't change the fact that significant amounts of central planning were involved in the wartime economy of WWII America. Carthage (talk) 11:18, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Did the US eliminate private ownership of businesses? Did the US planning last for more than a couple of years? Did they try to plan the whole economy or just redirect it to the War? I'd bet that everyone that read my post understood that I was talking about Soviet-style central planning. No one thinks about Nazi German, let alone the US, which was much more descentralized, when they talk about command economies. I honestly feel like you're just trying to show your knowledge even though you said something very basic and trivial. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 11:26, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Or to do a précis of Evans; Nazi German economic planning was shit. It was corrupt, it was inefficient, was riddled with selfish actors and was driven by ideology over pragmatism. It was so slack, greedy, disorganised and blinkered that it allowed relatively two-bit actors like Oskar Schindler 'get away' with what he did, to expend massive amounts of resources in genocide, never really rationalised it's various weapon systems, allowed folks to steal even the plinths stuff was nailed down to with impunity and the leader deliberately cultivated rivalries and cross-purposes within various ministries to 'coup-proof' Germany but also crippled coherent planning.

Anyway, Gee quit being a picky pain. No, the USA and UK didn't have a centrally-planned economy during WW2 - but it did have an semi-autarchic, corporatist economy with a strong 'guiding' element to it [in fact the UK did get rather close to being a command economy; most large companies were so intertwined with the relevant govt department they were almost de facto nationalised and the state has such a stranglehold over the allocation of labour and materials that they could effectively veto any plan a business had that they didn't approve of]. And almost the entire capitalist world [with the partial exception of the USA] did have elements of a Dirigisme economy from about 1930 to 1980 [when neoliberalism came to the fore globally]. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:05, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't know why do you think I'm being picky when we're saying almost same thing. And yes, much of the post-war economy was based on heavy interventionism (in the US case, I think this peaked with the Nixon Shock), and it actually worked well for a relatively long time, but I wouldn't call it by any means a command economy. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 14:12, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Because the difference between a 'classic' command economy and say, the British war economy in WW2 was mainly technical - the British Air Ministry [for example] had almost exactly the same amount of control over the Supermarine plant in Southampton that their Soviet version did over a MiG plant in Itursk. The net result was about the same. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:40, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Capitis deminutio and strawman theory

Hey, I just wanted to let people know that I'm having a debate with @Ioe bidome over whether or not capitis deminutio needs to be mentioned there, and I'd like more people to weigh in on it. Frankly, I don't care if I win or lose — I just want RationalWiki to do its due diligence before making a major change to an article, such as gutting an entire paragraph, to make sure that drastic action is actually warranted. So, please pitch in with your thoughts! Luigifan18 (talk) 18:19, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

The Intoxicating Nature of Power

This is a regular thought that occurs to me again and again regarding the dynamics and general nature of power. Those that are not capable of properly handling and managing power will soon become a mere slave to the very power their wield. Power does not discriminate in its grip and allure. Those who don't have power desire to obtain it, while those who do have power desire to keep it. This leads to countless thoughts regarding the pursuit of power, the means of gaining power, and the actions of those that wield it. And I ask myself often: Demographics that didn't have power in history finally gaining power for the first time often results in uncharted waters that are hard to predict. Will they be able to properly manage the power they wield, or will said power wield them instead? TheEternalOutsider (talk) 16:31, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

The cliche that power corrupts and other similar truisms always strike me as a bit too convenient, as though the corrupt and venal are simply victims of their own good fortune and position of influence. In other words it's just a flimsy excuse (regardless of demographic). Accumulator (talk) 20:11, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

As Lord Acton wrote to Bishop Mandell Creighton 'Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. Anna Livia (talk) 23:05, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

So I've heard. Accumulator (talk) 03:17, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Not everyone desires power. At my job, many of us engineers just want to get our work done and will turn down higher positions because it just isn't worth the added stress or aren't confident in their abilities to handle the duties of the higher position. I think there is a sort of "narcissism survivorship bias" with positions of power. The only person who would seriously want to be an iron-fisted dictator (for instance) has to be sufficiently narcissistic to believe they always know whats best; anyone else simply doesn't want the stress or doesn't think they would be the best choice. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 22:33, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

There are many people who prefer 'practical (in the loosest sense) jobs' to 'management jobs' (and would make the same decision as Sam Gamgee when the Ring offered to make him King Gardener of Middle Earth - to push the metaphore). Anna Livia (talk) 23:05, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I never said "everyone desires power", but TheEternalOutsider did. I ignored this because the more salient point is that these platitudes seem to encourage low expectations and a lack of accountability for authority. In any case, don't you think it's more likely that the corrupt are attracted to power than power corrupts those attracted to it? Accumulator (talk) 09:09, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Heck yes the corrupt are attracted to power. Bossing people around is a narcissist's [wet] dream job. Luigifan18 (talk) 11:35, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Regardless, narcissists are all over the Internet and regularly run amok due to their slyness affording them impunity for their actions, often by muzzling any critics via social engineering. That's what I'm worried about. TheEternalOutsider (talk) 12:14, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Define 'power'. The very people Anna refers to - 'practical jobs than management jobs' is because despite the outward appearances to the contrary, the latter generally don't have power either - as in they don't have agency. That they are mere facilitators of policies laid down in rulebooks and implementers of decisions made by their seniors. Sometimes, the 'practical worker' enjoys more autonomy because management has to be less micromanagey because said managers often lack technical knowledge/experience of the task to the point they're aware of it.

What's more I would argue that most people do desire power, but only to limited levels. I suspect, for example Mirror's engineers do desire power in the respect they want the power to do their own damn jobs and not have to run files past three different orgs and five bosses to get permission to sign off $500 of sundry expenses or explain why the process in this case needs to be a little different than laid out in the plan.

There's also different types of 'corruption'. It's possible for your judgement to become corrupted, even if your morals are not. I suspect this produces quite a few of the micromanagers of the world; that over time enough things 'went wrong' with their underlings that they have come to the conclusion that unless they have the 'firm hand' of The Boss in all things, 'nothing would go right'. I'd argue this mentality is more common than you'd think - because humans are hard-wired to remember more firmly 'losses' than 'gains'. Others can mean well, but they get seduced by the power to simply order things to be done - forgetting the lessons of 'bringing the public with you' and y'know, actually selling your policies to them etc [I often see this in progressive politicians].

Lastly, their belief that they know better sometimes might not be narcissism, it's actual truth. Here in the UK, we have a term 'nanny state' - ie when politicians enforce policies which interfere with 'personal choice', esp with public health in a way a nanny [old-fashioned childcarer] would tell their charges to eat their greens, brush their teeth and send them to bed early with cod liver oil 'for your own good'. The Health Minister has a whole department of professionals as well as external experts on tap. Unless they're corrupt, stupid or politically blinkered chances are they do know better for our health than the individual, armed with only some Mail Online clickbait you read and a few bits of half-remembered advice from decades ago. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:16, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

"Unless they're corrupt, stupid or politically blinkered [...]" That wouldn't leave very many, if we're talking about politicians and policymakers. Accumulator (talk) 16:46, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Power can be influence over other people (social clout), financial or legal leverage, and/or military force. Those at the far ends of the political spectrum on both sides crave it in order to bend and transform nearly every aspect of people to their own blinkered whims. And those who don't crave power are often knowingly or unknowingly complicit to someone who is in power (i.e. the followers of influencers, the employees of employers, most people living in authoritarian states), kept in a trance of learned helplessness, intimidated by armed enforcers, and/or given adequate bribes as to not challenge their power. TheEternalOutsider (talk) 20:48, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia is losing credibilty

Ever since it has transitioned into a watchdog website, it has lost its meaning and losing editors as we speak. Many of the editors these days are either bots or AI-generated pushing bias. This isn't a good outlook for Wikipedia. Hired Muscle (talk) 05:37, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

1. You are a troll 2. To my knowledge, Wikipedia does not let AI edit. And editors are not leaving either. And who’s watchdog? HumanBeing (talk) 05:55, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia's credibility is variable, I think non-editors know this but editors or former editors maybe know more intimately the ways in which that's true. To discount the whole site you have to buy into something wrong or other, like believing all the pages are written by CIA agents. Many people probably know to have a critical eye when reading it. I remember the first reason I ever registered there was to correct something so aggressively wrong on a page that it would actively harm people to leave it there. Chillpilled (talk) 11:31, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

There have been many Wiki projects spawned around people who think "Wikipedia is crap", especially for perceived reasons like "bias". These projects are typically started largely due to petty political reasons ("Waah! Wikipedia is not a propaganda mouthpiece for {insert political thing here})" and/or someone has a beef about some issue and thinks that their opinion is the only right one. All of these sorts of Wiki projects have, frankly, been spectacular failures. So... BobJohnson (talk) 12:55, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Didn't this wiki start off as exactly the same sort of thing, just one tier (Conservapedia) removed from the big W? Carthage (talk) 12:56, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

RW is not an encyclopedia, so I don't think we compete with Wikipedia, like CP. Also, while RW is much more niche than it was a few years ago, at least we grew out of CP, and I think that newer articles are, on average, better than older ones. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 13:09, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, RW started off as a CP trolling "wiki". CP of course was started to counter Wikipedia's "liberal bias". Which apparently included accurate scientific and medical information, because CP's suppression of such is from what I understand launched RW.

However, RW has evolved from "CP troll wiki" to become more of a general skeptic Wiki. It's small and niche, but that's far more than CP (or other Wikis launched to counter Wikipedia's supposed "liberal bias") can claim. BobJohnson (talk) 14:25, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Now, I'll be honest here, I can't say I enjoy reading and editing Wikipedia as I used to a few years ago, but that could be just my own biases since I'm a very nostalgic person that thinks that the Internet peaked some 15 years ago, when I was still in highschool. Sure, downloading a whole movie in two minutes is good (yes, books aside, I still download most of my stuff), but I miss good ol' forums, and I don't think that Reddit can replace them. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 13:09, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I'll argue this; WP has become more 'credible' over time, it's credibility is perhaps one of the strongest online and the majority of the criticisms about it are either bad-faith, ignorant, obsolete or done for ulterior motives.

Much is made of the fact that 'anyone can edit it!' by it's detractors, but it utterly ignores the editing/oversight role done by not just Admins, but also just basic users or even visitors [I have a couple of times reverted vandalism/corrected a typo as a BoN]. This means that over time, articles shall become over time much more 'polished' to the point they're like prized antique furniture - because any 'smears' [ie negative edits] are simply removed. And as a decent % of Admins etc appear to have decent knowledge of the subject, this means they often do know what is a 'smear' and what is a 'polish'. Their notability and references rules are fairly strict [and has tightened over the years] and it has a long list of what WP is not. Many of the complaints about WP are not about WP 2024, but WP 2014 or even WP 2009. It's like basing your steadfast refusal to consider an electric car because you once tried out a G-Wiz and it was shit. In 2003. I also suspect age has something to do here; that a lot of older academics/etc simply never really got their head around the concept of WP, just like others never got their heads around the fact a rando FB group or YT'ber are often self-appointed 'community leaders' which little to nil actual clout [and thus can be usually safely ignored]. More accurate is the issue of reference-checking - there's no formal system of it being done and [to my knowledge] no method of showing that a ref has been checked and 'found to be good'. So there is always going to be elements of Caveat lector for WP - but you should always do this. And which is why 'critical reading' training really should be taught in schools [rather than at universities]. The 'ulterior motives' bit is that traditionally a lot of academics used to have nice side-lines in producing/editing textbooks and particularly at the lower level, WP and it's ilk has seriously damaged this market.

Anyway, I think RW has shifted focus over time because if nothing else, a) WP has gotten a lot better over time and b) a more acute realisation of how to avoid effort duplication. And I think everyone knows my feeling that a lot of WP has increasingly been infested with the turgid 'academese' style which is pretty difficult to get your head around [I'm not against complexity or length when it's needed, it's more the bloated and unreadable style that at times assumes a lot of prior knowledge of the subject].

And WP is always 'losing editors' - people cycle in and out all the time, it's the nature of volunteer projects. Most 'leave' due to simple, boring reasons; RL takes priority, work/home life changes, simply loses interest etc. I also suspect the fact that a lot of WP is already good stops editors coming in - if you're a little/new project with a ton of stubs yes, a teenager with little real knowledge could most likely whip up something better than the stub, but not for a 'well-polished' page already with tons of good refs, partly moulded by genuinely knowledgeable folks and is in fact older than our wannabe editor.

And yes, I do wish to know what this 'watchdog website' thing means... KarmaPolice (talk) 13:30, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

'Wikipedia has its uses' - as a point of first resort, 'seeing how coverage of specific topics in different languages varies', some 'later to be notable' topics; people can ask things on the talk pages (and possibly be answered): it contributed to the end of several actual encyclopedias (Encarta etc). And in 'a few days under 16 months' it will be 25 years old - while some people have badges for membership up to 20 years. Anna Livia (talk) 17:29, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Another point that just came to me; while WP [and WP-model derivatives like RW] doesn't respect credentials it does respect good refs. Good arguments usually have good refs to back them up. Folks who know a lot about a subject normally know where some good refs [some off top of head] are and folks who have had formal academic credentials normally know how to find good refs and more importantly, what a good ref actually is. That it's a pitch which is skewed towards the credential-bearing individual but also allows space for the knowledgeable autodidact to join in. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:57, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

How much anti-American is too much?

I don't like the USA. Anytime I hear about its culture and people, something's just off. There's always that thing that doesn't make sense, that's just wrong, annoying. As a foreigner, that might be a feeling caused by the fact I have not seen an actual American person in my life yet (or at least not for long). But it just feels so foreign (not foreign foreign, any African or Asian country feels more familiar). So out of touch. Something's just weird, not-normal. The debates, the people, everything.

Is this feeling wrong? To be very honest, from what I know so far, I am happy I did not grow up in the United States of America. What can Americans say on this? U.S.A (talk) 18:57, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

It might bedevil you to know that you have more in common with some hick living in a trailer park in bum-fuck Tennessee than either of you do with the elites in either of your countries. Carthage (talk) 19:12, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I mean, it's understandable. The US is a rather unique country in that we have a higher standard of living than most of the world combined with a massive economy, hyperpower-level military strength, aggressively patriotic streak, geopolitical involvement in basically every part of the world, and a culture that has spread to almost every country. So yeah, from a global perspective, we're pretty weird and difficult to get away from. As long as distaste doesn't become outright hatred, I don't see a problem. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 19:16, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

The USA is big. There are many, many cultures within it. I'm guessing there's probably something for many tastes here; a lot of them are probably unknown outside America itself. So I would suggest perhaps some "further research".

(I mean, this is true of most countries of significant size, but the USA is *huge*.)

Despite many complaints about this country, I think the US is fine to grow up in. Most countries I can think of "pluses" and "minuses" even with imperfect information (hard to get a really good feel for a country unless you live in it; even visiting a country is "just a taste"). BobJohnson (talk) 19:30, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

there's a fine line between legitimate, evidence-based criticisms of the us and blaming everything that's wrong with the world on the us, even by association ("usa bad"). if you do the latter, you've gone off the rails. otherwise, you're ok. The G (talk) 04:02, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Vaush calls that sort of perspective "American diabolism", which is basically the complete opposite of American exceptionalism. America is always bad, therefore, any entity which is in opposition to America is good. (It's why you see tankies siding with Russia over Ukraine, for instance.) There's absolutely a lot of room for criticism with the US, but being a contrarian and automatically opposing them is just as irrational as automatically supporting them. As flawed and harmful as Western liberal democracy is, it's vastly preferable to Russia or China-style totalitarianism. IntrepidSkeptic (talk) 08:32, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

There are campists on both sides, methinks. It's why you see people excusing atrocities committed in Lebanon and Palestine but balk at the same atrocities committed in Syria and Ukraine. Carthage (talk) 08:48, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Not an American, but I've lived in two different European countries, it's an interesting experience. There are many differences and many similarities. I know other expats who equate "different" not with "interesting" - but with with "wrong". They are usually not happy people.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 11:57, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Trump town hall

So I have the Trump town hall up and, in response to a question about "major threats to the automobile industry" he replied "nuclear weapons." Like, what? Carthage (talk) 13:33, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

What did you expect from a person who just said some rambling shit about 'Democrats wanting to ban windows [as in the ones in buildings]' a couple of days ago...

Anyway, it's actually a bit better strategy than it first appears. If he actually laid out semi-coherent plans / criticisms etc they can be argued against. But throw out random nonsensical shit and you're deep into the Not even wrong territory and how the fuck can you respond to this [apart from a variant of 'wtf?']. What's more, throw enough 'tangents' into the mix and some apologist shall come along, pick a couple up and try to weave it into a more rational narrative and imply we're simply too stupid to see how well he weaves it.... KarmaPolice (talk) 14:15, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

He did lay out one coherent policy piece: 200% tariffs on Chinese automobile imports. Carthage (talk) 14:20, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

The simple way to respond to this should be a variant of "Trump, you're a rambling old fart, that made no sense". Kamala Harris also showed a strategy for Trump that worked well in the debate: attack Trump's fragile ego, and his nonsensical Gish Gallop becomes even more garbled and defensive. A lot of people who use Gish Gallop tactics I feel frankly are covering for their intellectual deficits, so finding ways to make a Gish Gallop extremely obvious to everyone but the converted is a great tactic IMHO. (It's also pretty obvious that Trump is not even close to as sharp as he was even compared to 2016, and he was ramble-y then. This was one of the dumb things about the "Biden is old" propaganda, Biden's also faded since 2016, but at least Biden is still reasonably coherent.) BobJohnson (talk) 17:30, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

So how'd a rap song about Donald Trump go?

One about his career as a businessman, reality star, and politician. Lostmyguitar (talk) 06:22, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Here you go. Carthage (talk) 08:05, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I’m partial to this one by Ice Cube. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 18:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

This is old but still great. LGMR (talk) 18:37, 22 September 2024 (UTC)