Comments on: Typical Mind and Disbelief In Straight People

By: Oligopsony

Oligopsony — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 17:06:54 +0000

Then why on earth do we use the term? You might as well object that there are no monolithic mammals. Either the term is useless and should be junked, or feminists have enough in common that one can sometimes rightfully speak of them as a group.

We can rightfully speak of mammals as a group (albeit one with fuzzy or arbitrary boundaries,) but that doesn’t mean that the presence of tusks in some mammals makes tusks a generalizably mammalian trait.

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By: Desertopa

Desertopa — Sun, 13 Apr 2014 06:46:50 +0000

If Jim is someone that Neoreactionaries would classify as a credible representative, I’ll have to lower my credence in Reactionism. While I often find people with political views I disagree with to be intelligent and insightful even when impolite, and I can appreciate the appeal of many Reactionary ideas, I have found Jim’s contributions to nearly every conversation to be frankly inane. Far from simply being “unkind,” he is consistently unable to recognize and engage with the points of his interlocutors, and makes arguments that hold up unsteadily even against the flimsy straw men he constructs.

I can see people who already agree with the standard Reactionary credo seeing him as mostly right, if impolite, but to call him “insightful” strikes me as either an insult or condemnation of the intellectual pool available among Reactionaries.

(Yes, I’m being rather impolite here myself, but I have a lot of pent up frustration from all the times I’ve had to restrain myself from attempting to discuss anything with him at all since I first found that he was effectively incapable of productive discourse with anyone who doesn’t share his views.)

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By: Noumenon72

Noumenon72 — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 11:27:51 +0000

Lots of no doubt very wise people avoid comment threads here, but the comments on Universal Human Experiences are really worth it.

I disagree. You need Reddit-style comments with upvotes and “hide child comments”. The good ones were just drowned.

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By: Randy M

Randy M — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 15:33:48 +0000

I was reminded of this theory/post when reading recently of Leeland Yee.

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By: Valhar2000

Valhar2000 — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 10:38:26 +0000

I’m not sure this holds up to scrutiny. After all, pederasts in the Catholic Church did pretty well before there was “sexual and moral liberation”.

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By: Valhar2000

Valhar2000 — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 10:36:16 +0000

This argument would have more force if conservatives’ and reactionaries’ conception of the past were closer to what the past actually was.

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By: Valhar2000

Valhar2000 — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 10:01:59 +0000

The claim that homosexuality is universally tempting is every bit as ridiculous as the claim that all men want to have sex with their mothers, and for the same reason.

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By: Ialdabaoth

Ialdabaoth — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 01:17:09 +0000

They don’t have to disappear; they just have to drop in lethality below the point where their influence on moral customs ceases to overcome our natural tendencies to do wacky new things.

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By: Ialdabaoth

Ialdabaoth — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 01:11:08 +0000

How would things change for you if someone convinced you that the political enlightenment (progressivism) and the scientific enlightenment were entirely orthogonal such that progressive thought could not borrow the credibility of scientific thought? What if you were convinced that they often contradict each other?

That’s pretty easy for me to answer. In many places where I recognize that they contradict each other, I tend to have somewhat different viewpoints than my more “social justice”-minded liberal friends. In other places, I hold onto my core values, but disagree with other Progressives on implementation.

>our great-granddads didn’t have our knowledge of physics and chemistry and biology and psychology and sociology

Basically, 1.5 of those things are not like the others.

To what degree? They’re enough like them for some purposes, and not enough like them for others. The trick is knowing when to apply which level of abstraction.

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By: nyan_sandwich

nyan_sandwich — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 20:20:50 +0000

I don’t know if it’s possible to evaluate this kind of counterfactual, but let’s try. How would things change for you if someone convinced you that the political enlightenment (progressivism) and the scientific enlightenment were entirely orthogonal such that progressive thought could not borrow the credibility of scientific thought? What if you were convinced that they often contradict each other?

I know if I were convinced that they were they same phenomena with enough overlap to warrant liberal sexual norms borrowing the clout of physics, I’d agree with your perspective. Alas, I am no longer convinced of this.

>our great-granddads didn’t have our knowledge of physics and chemistry and biology and psychology and sociology

Basically, 1.5 of those things are not like the others.

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