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An interesting thing I learned today from Wikipedia:
When president Roosevelt decided to detain citizens based on their origin, the Supreme Court said “sure, go ahead“. When president Trump tried doing a similar thing, citing Roosevelt as a precedent, the Supreme Court said “obviously, we were wrong back then; this is illegal“.
There are different ways people will react to this. Is it “quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi”, or did the arc of the moral universe coincidentally start bending toward justice more strongly after Trump was elected? Anyway, the pragmatic lesson here seems to be…
If there is a legal decision you would like to see overturned, the best strategy would be to convince Trump to invoke it as a precedent in some of his wild plans, and then observe how suddenly everyone turns against it.
An example: Convince Trump to make eating kebab illegal and to tweet: “If it is constitutional to ban marijuana, it is just as constitutional to ban kebabs!”
The next month, the Supreme Court will conclude that preventing people from enjoying as much marijuana as they want has obviously always been against what the Founding Fathers intended.
Another example: Make it illegal for Muslims to own guns. Watch all Democrats suddenly realize that owning a gun is a basic human right.
The Supreme Court upheld Trump’s travel ban in Trump v. Hawaii, so there goes your entire premise.
Isn’t the much better explanation that the judiciary is much less racist than it was in the time of Roosevelt, specifically with regards to widespread discrimination? We’ve had a few generations of cultural learning that “Japanese internment was wrong”, so it should be no surprise that the courts aren’t totally cool with that ruling anymore.
Your Wikipedia link to Korematsu v. United States includes a lengthy section detailing how the courts have been distancing themselves from the ruling since as far back as the 80s, and the ruling has been considered “not precedent” since before Trump took office.
5/6 in the majority were nominated by Roosevelt, the 6th was promoted to CJ by Roosevelt. The better explanation is that the court has always been partisan and was acting partisan as it always does.
@Eigengrau
Or at least a different kind of racism. They are still fine with discriminating against ethnic groups that have more interest in and/or ability to do certain things. Like Asians with regard to college admissions.
Isn’t that case still pending?
Do you really think that Korematsu was a well respected precedent likely to be cited as still binding by a unanimous supreme court in any case that touched on it up until January 20, 2017? Is that your actual understanding of the world?
Welcome to another episode of It Can’t Be That Simple, Right?!, the game show in which a contestant states their prosaic counter-interpretation of a complex problem, and members of the studio audience try to coax them down into the Dunning-Kruger trough!
Tonight’s contestant is rahien.din, who has done some cursory reading about Baumol’s cost disease! Let’s take a look…
—
So, I was reading more about Baumol’s cost disease, and it strikes me as… kind of simple? Here is the encapsulation on wikipedia :
I am not sure why this is considered so arcane or weird.
If a certain job sector has increased productivity, then that just means it has an increase in its output without an increase in its costs. That means that people in that sector have more money to spend. When they increase their spending, that increases demand. Prices increase in the presence of increased demand.
This is the entire idea of classical economics. Price is determined by supply and demand. But supply is not the same thing as effort. Sure, the violinist has not increased her productivity or effort per se, but the invisible hand doesn’t care. If there is more money floating around in the economy, then she can certainly raise the ticket price for her concerts, regardless of how much effort she exerts or how “productive” she is. Everyone seems so worried about “cost disease” but it’s just demand curves in action.
Or another analogy : when the pilot pushes the throttle forward, the engines increase their motoric productivity, and the flight attendants do not. But it isn’t some mystery why the flight attendants start moving faster relative to the ground. (If they do not, consider assessing the cabin pressure.)
So ultimately there is some kind of conservation-of-economic-share phenomenon at work. Sure, you can increase your productivity, which will initially increase your share of the economy, but when you spend that extra money the demand curve will end up increasing everyone else’s share and thereby decreasing yours. So the ultimate result of increased productivity is not increased economic share for the same effort per unit produced, it is decreased effort per unit produced at conserved economic share. And that’s an important purpose of innovation.
The related conjecture is : if we could adequately quantify effort, we would find that Baumol’s cost disease is mostly an artifact of an incomplete economic description.
We should be more concerned when job sectors do not experience a rise in salary that parallels the rise in more productive sectors – either too little or too much. But we would have to use Baumol’s cost disease in order to detect that. IE, Baumol’s
cost diseasecost effect should be quantified as the baseline (or control) for salary growth, so that we can tell when job sectors are not rising in salary in the expected way.—
You heard it, folks! Buzz in when you’re ready – it can’t be that simple, right?!
There are fewer violinists today than when they got less money, and not due to a lack of supply, so supply vs demand can’t directly explain it.
You need to add at least one extra step where the more productive factory worker drives up the price of houses, food, etc; which then means that the violinist simply needs a higher salary to be able to afford basic necessities.
Another explanation is that increased incomes create more surplus and that violinists can capture part of that extra surplus, especially if they have alternatives.
For example: we have a factory worker Bob and violinist Mary. Mary and each Bob earn 100 gold. Mary gets her income from 100 factory workers each giving her 1 gold for her music. Mary and Bob live in the same city, in a house that costs 10 gold.
Due to increased productivity, all factory workers start earning 1000 gold. They buy bigger and better houses, on more land, that cost 100 gold. Now Mary can no longer afford the house she had in the city. However, if she moves far away to a house that still costs 10 gold, she is too far away from the music hall to be a musician. So for the factory workers to still be able to enjoy the music, they have to pay Mary more than 100 gold (in total), so she can afford a house close enough nearby. The factory workers have to pay part of their extra income to Mary, just so she will be able to make the same music for them.
If Mary can do factory work, then her choices are not merely restricted by needing the bare necessities (or minimum wage law), but she has options. While she might have been willing to work as a musician for 100 gold if the alternative is a factory job for 100 gold, she might not be willing to be a musician for 100 gold if the alternative is a factory job for 1000 gold. She might be willing to work as a musician for 500 gold, though. So for the factory workers to still be able to enjoy their music, they have to pay Mary 500 gold (in total), rather than just 100 gold.
The willingness by the the factory workers to spend that extra money on Mary determines how many musicians keep existing. Historically, we’ve seen that some low productivity sectors disappeared, although that was often because high-productivity alternatives were developed (recorded audio is the high productivity variant of musicians and dish washers are the high productivity variant of maids).
@Aapje,
That was really good.
Thanks!
Thx, although one addendum: where I said ‘disappeared’ at the end, it should be ‘greatly reduced in size’
Random thought, weaving together a few of the threads on this post.
What do America, modernity, and Christianity have in common, at least compared to other cultures?
For one, a greater focus on individualism. For another, a more acrimonious and intractable abortion debate (or association with it). The typical explanation for the latter, at least on the right, is that the US Supreme Court imposed the decision leaving a lot of people unhappy with it or at least the process.
But perhaps another more fundamental reason is that both Pro-life and Pro-choice positions are outcomes of individualism. The only difference is whether the unborn counts as a person who has rights. And perhaps whether “autonomy” trumps “life”, which is again individual rights coming into conflict.
I wonder if the debate would have the same salience if the locus of concern were instead the family, tribe, religion, or nation. Or at least if it would be framed the same way. Instead, the issue might hinge on if additional people were of the right tribe, or were overall beneficial to the group.
For all that the mainstream right is portrayed as racist, you have to get very fringey–and secular–before you find anyone thinking abortion is good because it hits minorities more. Instead, the high abortion rate among minorities is used to attempt to argue those groups onto the pro life side.
Conversely, “abort for the environment” isn’t a mainstream left argument even among itself, even if they generally think populous industrialized nations are a risk in a serious crisis.
I see plenty of “Don’t have kids for the environment” propaganda. Method of not having kids left up to the reader, though.
There is some of that, and I wasn’t sure how to reconcile it with my theory. Possibly the left is more collectivist than the right (but global, not local); possibly they keep it vague because choice is paramount.
I don’t think I’m comfortable generalizing about collectivism at the level of broad political alliances. There are collectivist and individualist strains of both leftism and rightism: fifteen years ago, the dominant narrative on the Left starred a coalition of scrappy individualists opposing the collectivizing forces of economic globalization, cultural censorship and fundamentalist theology. Not so much anymore, but I don’t think that depends on anything basic to ideology, more on which way the wind’s blowing.
Or on what we’re arguing about: the left position on gender assumes an individualist framing, for example, but the left position on guns assumes a collectivist one.
This is probably one of those “Twitter =/ real life” situations. I see a lot of it too, but also, every far-left person my own age who I actually know in real life either already has kids or is proactively planning on doing so.
I have met people who say they don’t want to have kids for the environment, and say the only acceptable method of becoming a parent is adoption.
But I have deep suspicions that they are child-free people who just want to have a seemingly un-selfish reason not to have kids, rather than “kids are gross and noisy, I don’t want any responsibility”.
Yup, I also know some of those people and this is my impression too. I do not think they are bad people because they don´t want children, but their need to rationalize their own self-interested decisions by higher moral principles is annoying.
The proposal usually comes from rich, over-educated people with an environmentalist bent. It is not US-only; there have been many Guardian articles supporting AOC’s comments on the matter. I have met some of environmental anti-natalists myself; they generally support adoption as a way to parent for those who want to, ignoring the actual difficulties of adopting a baby.
Rich, over-educated women are much better informed than the general population about contraceptives, men of that category are much more likely to use them, so abortion is probably not the main method.
I’ve heard a reasonable amount of “abort for the environment” rhetoric, but I live in a fairly weird far-left bubble so it’s probably not representative.
The debate might not, but I’m pretty certain that activity would. Women seek abortions because they don’t want children/pregnancies. The framing of the debate only changes this behavior at the margins. The individualist debate is therefore simply the most honest framing.
I don’t know, this seems somewhat constrained in perspective. You can find many women in the Bible praying for children (okay, at least 2), possibly because they really wanted to raise children or have children take care of them, but also because having children was a large part of a woman’s social status.
Conversely, women in Communist China were encouraged to abort if having subsequent pregnancies. The morality and use of the practice was not tied up so much in whether a woman wanted to be childless or thought the child deserved life, but in how the child served society.
You’ll never find a society where someone pays no heed to their own comfort or desires, but think the ability and sanction to put those forefront is quite variable.
No, that’s how policy is framed. Not having actually read it, Jing-Bao Nie’s Behind the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion purports to tell a very different story about how people actually feel about it. For example (not from the book):
(Source)
It’s one person, but the perspective here is… not exactly alien to an American perspective.
Okay, good source.
To add onto this, yes, the social pressures and policy framing and whatever else definitely affect behavior and desire for children on the margins. But the fundamental question abortion is, and has always been, “do I want a baby (and everything else that comes with having a baby),” not “should I have a baby?”
Not quite. The question of abortion is “Do I want this baby, now?”
And anyway, while that may be the question people contemplating it ask, the number of people who contemplate it will depend on how the people generally see their duty to each other, family, God, etc.
Sure. Like I said, framing does work on the margin. But I think that the magnitude of the effect is much less than you’re suggesting. The brute facts of pregnancy – specifically, the incursion of virtually all costs of pregnancy by individual women – make it very, very hard to program people away from those sorts of considerations.
I don’t think this is true in many cases. Many costs? Yes. Most costs? Yes, often. All costs? Only in particularly problematic pregnancies. (If you’d said risk rather than cost, you’d be on firmer ground).
In a dual income home, the income is reduced by the net income of one salary for at least six to twelve months; typically in marriage (especially fruitful ones) income is shared and so the husband’s QoL will diminish as much as the wife’s will from this loss of income. And the husband will probably be performing a number of tasks for the wife’s comfort. Not all husbands will be more attentive to a pregnant wife, but that’s definitely a woman’s responsibility to discern prior to marriage.
Likewise, the disruption of marital relations will impact the man (if he’s worth husbanding). You might think it is nit-picking compared to constantly having to pee and no longer being able to see your toes while craving pineapple tacos, but don’t sell short the burden of having to work twice as hard and go without sex.
In a tribe or village, I would expect other allied or related families to pick up the slack of what the woman is unable to do.
But all that aside, I think abortion is very rarely about pregnancy. Abortion is usually about parenthood, which is a much more communal endeavour in some societies.
This may be splitting semantic hairs, but I do believe that the woman incurs virtually all costs, even if a man (or tribe) steps in to share the burden. Ultimately, they’re inconveniencing themselves for the woman, while the woman is being inconvenienced by her pregnancy (the fact that pregnancy is, in central examples, a result of her actions doesn’t mean that she now gets to take a break from being pregnant, or that she can pass the buck to somebody else if something happens, like everyone else can).
But sure, let’s agree that abortion is mostly about the child, not the pregnancy. I think you’re short-selling the costs of motherhood here. It might take a village to raise a child, but humans are also not eusocial creatures by any stretch of the imagination, and going from “not-mother” to “mother” is a really big deal in almost every society I’m aware of.
Sure, nature declares that a woman’s life often changes far more after sex than a man’s. There’s various social technology for dealing with this equitably, which has various other considerations.
In the modal case, a pregnancy produces costs shared among a man and a woman and to a much lesser extent other kin. In the worst case, a woman will bear all the burdens herself.
Didn’t intend to; was just trying to respond to you point you raised (pregnancy). Motherhood is of course a huge change.
Maybe I was being too literal and should have motherhood as a ‘cost of pregnancy’? I didn’t realize that was your intent, but again, the woman can often arrange matters to be insured against these costs.
But I really don’t think we’re arguing about anything anymore. Just picking nits.
I don’t understand this. Abortion is all about the pregnancy. If someone doesn’t want to be a mother they can give up the child for adoption. Right?
I think MacIntyre had it right: without a classical notion of telos, there’s just no rational way to ground moral obligations. Hence we should expect moral debates to prove intractable.
I don’t want to debate the NY Times or anything, just want a basic check if one of my definitional beliefs is because of my bubble growing up, or if there is an alternate bubble out there, or if some prominent people recently are just missing the boat in terms of meaning.
If someone asked me “What is American Exceptionalism?” I’d answer that America is considered different because it was the first modern country to be deliberately established as respecting individual freedom as a limited government deriving it’s powers from the people. To expand, I might add that I attribute much of the United States’ success over a couple of centuries to keeping true to that somewhat unique origin.
Until the last year or two, I’d never heard of American Exceptionalism as a philosophy that the United States was automatically more correct, or better than everyone else. And while there was a vague economic component in the sense that economically the U.S. has done better economically under it’s “system” over time than many other places, I might have attributed that to comparative economics, but never to something unique about America that another country couldn’t replicate if the people elsewhere acted similarly.
And then recently I’ve seen articles which make no sense to me using the definition I literally grew up with. I didn’t read these before, I just did a search and grabbed a couple of results (so I don’t think this is cherry picking something unique), but here’s an example:
I’m pretty puzzled by what “its exceptionalism” is supposed to refer to in that quote. It seems pretty twisted.
Just to try and keep this balanced politically (because that’s not my purpose), here’s Putin attacking Obama:
That’s much closer (it at least makes sense), but it sounds like he’s reading in an implied superiority complex which isn’t present in the Obama quote he’s replying to.
I almost suspect this is just one of those terms which are defined by someone’s opponent for them, so they use it to mean whatever they want to object to at the time. Is it actually that meaningless?
Realizing I’m just a single data point, specifically, was anyone else raised/taught/learned somewhere that American Exceptionalism meant something the same or completely different than I was? If so, feel free to add where.
The first quote might just be using it to mean difference between the US and other countries—that is, America is doubling down on the things it does differently. It does seem like a bizarre use of the term.
I think its pretty meaningless term now. I personally most often heard of American Exceptionalism in a neo-conservative sense. Under that theory America is not just an unusual nation in it is the old constitutional democracy with limited powers (although Switzerland is an older democratic federation IIRC)-it is a “shining city on a hill” and “the last best hope of man on earth” to quote two Reagan speeches. It isn’t just a normal great power but an empire of liberty with a unique moral mission. Additionally, a uniquely right wing economic systems (aside from Eugene Debs no real socialist\labor movement in the US unlike most of Europe) and high church attendance dating from the Great Awakening helped round out the exceptionalism. These were all good things from the rights perspective and deviations from it are bad.
I remember National Review and others on the right making a big deal about how Obama didn’t believe in American exceptionalism. He was moving us closer to Europe. See this article, for example. https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2010/03/08/exceptional-debate/
The unabashedly capitalist “American gospel” and high church attendance were also part of the exceptionalism. But the moral sense of mission seems crucial to that article. America has “a unique role and mission in the world: as a model of ordered liberty and self-government and as an exemplar of freedom and a vindicator of it, through persuasion when possible and force of arms when absolutely necessary.”
Apparently Canada and the UK don’t get to play role under the theory of American exceptionalism. Sorry UK and Canada despite stuff like the magna carta, ending the slave trade and fighting Hitler in 39 national healthcare and low church attendance means you aren’t a city on a hill. Okay. That was unhelpfully snarky but I think its an important point-American exceptionalism lately isn’t deployed to explain why America is different from Czarist Russia but why 21st Century American capitalist democracy is different from 21st Century European capitalist democracy, including other British successor states like Australia or Canada that the US seems very similar to.
I’ve always thought that “American Exceptionalism” was a thing invented for its self evidenceness. We were winning easily and obviously, and thus created this phrase. I dont think it existed in 1776 or 1865 as examples of times that dramatically changed our republic.
As a country, the United States is exceptional in its ability to transform humans into useful humans. Most places fail at this. That is the only exceptional thing I would accord to us.
Yes.
Sadly, I think what Nornagest says is true.
Well mostly. Sometimes, people randomly redefine it to supposedly mean something they think is positive and then criticize others for not doing that. It’s a very versatile bit of rhetoric has no substantive meaning.
For NYT, AE seems to mean roughly “how dare the elected representatives do the opposite of what we’ve told them to do!”.
For the rest of us, AE is the belief that in the Land of the Reee you somehow have more liberty than in the rest of the world. Examples of exclusively US liberties include:
– the liberty of being taxed even if you move elsewhere
– the liberty of your money being taken from your wallet by a policeman (Civil Asset Forfeiture)
– the liberty of losing your home to whoever wants to open a business on its spot (Eminent Domain)
etc, etc.
None of those are exclusively American. We might do it more or worse than other places, but we aren’t the only ones.
And you forgot such wonderful liberties like
– the liberty to get arrested for mean tweets
– the liberty to get SWATted for homeschooling
– the liberty to pay extra tax for being a member of a church
– the liberty to redo referenda until you get it right
Did a double-take scrolling past this post because I got swatted the other day and we homeschool, then realized it isn’t about me. It was pretty weird for a second, though.
Does swatting mean something different in the homeschooling context or do you actually mean your house got raided by SWAT?
I thought getting swatted for homeschooling was more of a German than an American thing (except for cults who homeschool, in which cases homescholing is not the number one issue). Any specific case?
I think that’s Gobbo’s point, adding to the tongue-in-cheek list of ‘liberties’ from eigenmoon to point out similar examples that occurred elsewhere.
Right. The “liberty to pay extra tax for being a member of a church” is aimed at Germany, for instance. The last one sounds like it’s aimed at the UK, although I don’t think they actually went through with a second referendum, a bunch of folks were just calling for one?
Yeah Randy & Nick have the right of it. Maybe I should have been more obvious (or not posted at all, since it was fairly snarky) but the point is a bunch of cherry-picked potshots don’t prove “overall liberty” being any better or worse than other 1st-world countries
(@Nick the last one was referring to EU referenda, Ireland specifically)
There is the American Exceptionalism expressed in the Gettysburg Address:
And then there’s a more sociological American exceptionalism, that seeks to answer other questions like “why does America have so many guns” or “why does America not have universal healthcare” or “how is it in the past 50 years only Americans have walked on the Moon?”
I haven’t read the full text of the Gettysburg Address since like eighth grade, and now I think it’s wasted on eighth graders. Damn, that’s a good speech.
Eighth-grade Nornagest will little note nor long remember what we say here…
Fact check: Mostly false. 3.5 Pinocchios.
Right, as a young conservative my conception of the term was that the uniqueness (and some, but not all, of the success) of the US derived from particular cultural factors. Free enterprise, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, separation of powers, a largely Christian but unusually tolerant populace, representative government, etc. These factors drove integration and innovation and constrained, or at least slowed, the tyrannical impulse of government. We were not the only ones who could adopt them, but by having a fresh start we could do so more easily than other nations entrenched in artistocratic systems.
However, there’s another understanding of the term. The right can get it mixed up in manifest destiny and divine providence and see us as having a right to an empire, usually because our ideas are superior. The left will paint that–and the negative results of colonization and expansion–on the term even more broadly that it is even used and suggest a strong racial aspect to the use of the phrase which I’ve never seen personally.
And then, if America was not economically and militarily successful, it’s questionable if the term would have purchase even if we had kept a largely unique focus on individual freedom, so all the factors that brought that about (see last OT) are at least tangentially relevant in any case.
Yeah, this.
The far left will criticize the empire building aspects of it, colonialism, slavery, etc. And it’s a solid critique! I agree all of those things are bad, and we still do too much of most of them. The only one that’s almost totally dead in the U.S. is slavery. There are some rare true cases of slavery that get stamped out when caught, and there are probably a few debatable edge cases that have some similarities with slavery but aren’t nearly as bad.
The center left on the other hand, will randomly vacillate between the far left critique and embracing the whole empire building thing and advocating intervening in random countries by bombing or invading them. Usually under the guise of saving some oppressed group, which is the same as the typical right-wing interventionist justification just with a little bit of variance in where intervention may be favored at any given moment.
Agreed, and inasmuch as AE is that, it deserves criticism, but I think AE does or at least could extend above that, not justifying imperialism, but justifying the American nation, contra the NY Times series that attempts to re-frame all of US history as a racist enterprise.
I think a lot of the debate thread here is leaving out the religious element here – a huge swath of the American population believes that the US is ordained by God to carry out a special mission in the world. This has always been the most visible and potent, if not the most mainstream, part of American exceptionalism, and I would say your conception of it is a bit white-washed as it were – it was never something so banal. Of course like all things its mind-killed by politics now, but if you move past the hot takes you still see this religious trend as a dominant theme.
That the Americas (collectively, not just the United States) are a choice and blessed land before God is written into the scripture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).
The wimi article is enlightening here. The first paragraph explains everything:
(Emphasis added)
Also, if you’re worried that the term has changed recently, you could read the 2012 version.
Worth noting that this is approximately the same view expressed as Barack Obama.
I remember it being a minor “controversy” in the right-wing talk radio sphere when at one time, while President, he was asked whether he believed in American exceptionalism. His answer was something like “Yes, of course, in the same sense that the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism and the Japanese believe in Japanese exceptionalism.”
In red tribe land, this was not an acceptable answer. Their view of American exceptionalism is that it expresses some sort of objective fact about the nation itself that exists independently from your own personal attachment. That saying “I love it because it’s mine” is roughly equivalent to saying “It’s only good because I’m here, and if I were somewhere else, it would be worse and that other place would be better.”
I think I’ve come closer to the Sailer/Obama view on the matter (there’s something you can’t say everyday). Not entirely; many aspects of American culture are more conductive to human flourishing generally and should be adopted by others. But many are just more conductive to the flourishing of the Americans living here. That is, if you are raised in a culture, it’s probably going to fit you better and you can rightly be happy and even proud to be a part of it. Americans should be open about what we think works well for us, but cautious about what we try to coerce other societies to adopt.
Part of it is also the old truism (which might or might not still be true) about the US being a nation based on creed rather than ethnicity.
I believe NYT is using it to mean “The belief that America is better than any other country, and therefore can do no wrong.” It’s not a totally unreasonable characterization of some people’s ideas of AE, but isn’t exactly a steelman.
My own understanding of American Exceptionalism is this:
If you read a lot of history, American history just /looks different/. It breaks all the patterns you’re used to.
And usually in a good way. Traditionally most nations can be modeled as amoral self-interested agents, who annex all their weaker neighbors.
But America does lots of surprising things like fight its major wars for moral causes rather than national self-interest, divest itself of potential colonies because they don’t want to be subject peoples, and the process of keeping them in line would have gotten too bloody.
I remember reading that when Putin meddled in the Ukraine, it send his approval through the roof. At first this totally disoriented me, because I’m used to American-style politics, where bullying smaller neighbors gets you in trouble, but of course, that’s very much not the norm. In most of the world, and the rest of history, gratuitously throwing one’s weight around is the kind of politics that gets 100% approval.
(I don’t need these examples rebutted. I’m aware of the many exceptions to American Exceptionalism. If it’s a real phenomenon, it’s one of magnitude.)
There’s mundane explanations for most of the phenomenon. There’s been general moral progress throughout history, and in fact, America’s golden age can easily be modelled as an incremental improvement on Britain’s.
Also, the abrupt founding of the nation creates a dramatic break, which makes America’s unique traits stand out more. (Usually change is either gradual, or abrupt and temporary)
But, there are also unique circumstances that may have made America legitimately more exceptional than to be expected.
-Early adoption of Freedom/Capitalism/Democracy
-Unusually educated (and religious?) founding population.
-Abundance of free land to settle, working as a safety valve for social pressures.
Another one is “revolution that didn’t immediately devolve into massacre.”
Maybe I’ve been reading too much Chomsky, but it strikes me that many Great Powers have viewed their actions in strongly moral terms (Chomsky says all). The people on the other end often have a different perspective.
The wars with Mexico and Spain are clear counterexamples. We were pretty into expansion/imperialism in the 19th century, and got out of it at around the same time everyone else did.
One can argue all of our wars have been mainly about self interest (as we perceived it) and moral considerations were mostly post-hoc justifications. Was concern for the Korean and Vietnamese people really our main motivation?
Yeah, strongly disagree with the notion that the US has ever gone to war for altruistic reasons, just to help others.
That’s part of the sales pitch, but it has never been sufficient without being accompanied by a very strong claim of self-interest. Even our current ridiculous boondoggles are sold mainly as “fight them over there or they’ll come here and do 9/11 again” much more frequently than they are sold as “we need to make Afghanistan safe for girls to go to school and gays to get married”
@Matt M
Are you including the Civil War in that assessment?
Yes, far and away, not even close.
Lincoln fought the civil war because he wanted the tax revenue from the south. He said so in his inaugural. He didn’t give a single iota about freeing the slaves.
And the official narrative is that the south fired the first shot anyway, so it was just a proper response to a war started by someone else
I’m not Matt M, but I think the same assessment applies to the Civil War. The South seceded because it disliked the Republican stance on slavery, but I really, really doubt Lincoln would have banned slavery absent the war. And the war initially was to maintain control of the U.S.
Lincoln didn’t ban slavery (and even then only in territory the North didn’t yet control) until two years into the Civil War.
If the South had immediately rolled over, slavery probably would have lasted quite a bit longer. Maybe even as long or longer than it did in Brazil.
@Matt M
My understanding is that Lincoln was personally opposed to slavery, though it’s true that he was a free soiler rather than a radical abolitionist. This was his public position, and probably his private one on the eve of the war.
The notion that saving the union was motivated by a desire for tax revenue is just bizarre. Does any historian argue for this position?
I don’t need to consult any historians. He said it himself in his first inaugural. Made it clear he didn’t care about slavery, but would go to war over any refusal to pay tariff duties.
Ah, the past. When men were men, women were women, and speeches were such a wonderful guide to actual policy positions.
Matt M taking the position that Lincoln didn’t care about freeing the slaves. I’m sure this will lead to a really enlightening discussion, and all the participants will be very glad they engaged.
“We’re not firing you for [objectionable/illegal reason], we’re firing you for [legal cause for termination that we would never actually fire someone for].”
Lincoln was neither the first nor last to put a spin on the reason the nation needed to go to war.
@Matt M
The context of the first inaugural is that three (I think) states have seceded, and seized federal buildings (post offices, courts, armories, etc). Many others are considering secession (others had held conventions and either voted *not* to secede or had decided not to vote). He is trying to take a conciliatory position, hoping that cooler heads will prevail.
Yes, he sort of lays down a “red line” for when he will use force against the rebels:
Now observe that at that very moment federal facilities were occupied (though he ultimately does not act on that until Sumter). And I’m pretty sure the South Carolina wasn’t paying their “imposts and duties” at that moment.
Keep in mind he’s framing everything in terms of his oath and the traditional powers of president as set forth in the Constitution.
I’m not a historian, but I think they’ve read this speech, and other stuff by Lincoln too, and nobody holds your position.
Direct quotes from the Wikipedia summary:
Many northern politicians (including Lincoln) obviously were against slavery, but the idea that the war was fought to maintain territory and income (I dunno why he’s leaving out territory when that’s obviously crucial) is more accurate than the idea that the North invaded the South in order to end slavery and that the war was fought for altruistic reasons. Which is the question he was responding too.
The South may have seceded because they didn’t want slavery to die off (all signs were that if they were tied to the North, it would in a generation or two)- Southern politicians said as much themselves, but the North didn’t invade in order to free slaves. That was more a benefit of winning.
The South seceded for explicitly evil reasons, but the North’s retaking the South was decided by other considerations. It’s not like Republicans were about to ban slavery in 1860. They were more about containment and gradually strangling the institution until the slaveholding class decided to kick off a war. And if the South had ended slavery and attempted to sue for peace in the last year or two, I’m pretty confident the North would have finished the job and still retaken control.
Even post-war, the Radical Republicans didn’t last long enough against the moderates and Democrats to keep African-Americans enfranchised. Which considering black voters were almost the only way Republicans had of getting any votes in the South shows how little whites thought of blacks.
@quanta413
I don’t think that take is particularly incorrect, but it is a much less strong statement than the one that sparked this discussion:
(Emphasis on the part that people are taking issue with).
Slavery wasn’t the primary reason for the North going to war is defensible and probably even correct. It certainly wouldn’t have been played up publicly as the primary reason because that would not have been a popular reason to invade the South. @Matt M’s claim about Lincoln is somewhat stronger and probably requires more support than what has been offered (I doubt the additional support for the claim exists).
You don’t think this is evidence for my claim?
I mean, sure, it’s possible that he’s lying about that as… some sort of clever trick to make people think he’s neutral on slavery when really he’s absolutely against it… but this gets us into “you’re still crying wolf” levels of conspiracy mongering.
He himself said that he:
1. Didn’t believe he had the legal authority to end slavery
2. Even if he did have that right, was not inclined to use it
The fact that Lincoln didn’t feel like he should use the office of the Presidency to forcibly impose abolition on the South doesn’t mean that he didn’t care about ending slavery, it means that there were other things he valued more, like the norms of republican government and coexisting with his fellow Americans. You thesis is essentially that a President doesn’t care at all about a thing unless he does everything in his power to get that thing, which is not at all how people work. The available evidence and the consensus of historians is that Lincoln was an abolitionist, though a fairly moderate one was content with slowly strangling the institution of slavery rather than getting rid of it immediately.
These are some of the exceptions I’m aware of, but am inclined not to consider as dealbreakers. Like I said, it’s more about quantity than quality.
Part of our disagreement might come from the fact that I’m grading on a curve. Power corrupts, and as soon as a country is able to act with impunity, I fully expect them to start abusing their power.
Every group applies a dollop motivated reasoning when it comes to justifying why weaker groups with possessions of value have it coming to them. America seems to stand out for its (relative) restraint. IIRC, the war with Mexico was a decisive victory, but all the US demanded afterwards was the disputed region, plus some scarcely-populated extras to the west. Technically they were probably in the wrong supporting Texas in the first place, but by the standards of the time, all this isn’t painting too damning a picture.
My impression is that colonialism was distinctly less popular in America than the rest of the world. Above I was alluding to the Philippines, which was won in the Spanish-American war, but was already being transitioned to autonomy before WWII, because painting the map one’s own colors just wasn’t holding the same appeal in America as it was in Europe. cf. The Monroe Doctrine, which is self-interested in its own way, but clearly distinct from the Empire-building in fashion at the time.
Vietnam was fought based on a mistaken, but not unreasonable, belief that it was the best way to fight communism. Fighting communism happened to coincide with national self-interest, but even that’s a nice place to find oneself, morally.
All that said, you make a good point that some of this might be a consequence of vantage-point. Since I’m living in an American era, their values and justifications are much more persuasive than those of past polities.
Disagree. American policy looks very little like British/French/German in that era. You have two data points which more or less bracket the era of imperialism. During that time, the European powers were doing imperialism pretty much constantly. We did it 1.5 times, because the Spanish-American war is really confusing from an imperialist perspective. Yes, we took the Philippines and Puerto Rico, but we didn’t take Cuba, probably the richest prize of the whole thing. Business opposed the war, which was most strongly supported by those outraged over Spain’s conduct in Cuba.
Erm…
Yeah, try asking some American Indians what they think of that argument. If there are any left in your area to ask, that is.
The United States of America is objectively, absolutely exceptional in such things as creating vast quantities of wealth, technological innovation, saving the world from the forces of darkness, exploring strange new worlds, exporting popular culture, and creating broad networked communications systems that allow us to debate what “American Exceptionalism” is. Also, for about a century or two(*), the United States of America adopted and promoted a moral code of e.g. democracy and human rights that most of the Western and/or Industrial world would belatedly take as its own. Almost everyone who uses the term is going to roughly agree with this definition of the content of American Exceptionalism.
There is not so clear a consensus on why America has become as undeniably exceptional as it is, with answers ranging from “only because they’re big powerful bullies” to “Deus Vult!”. But I think there’s a central core based on things like early adoption of democratic government with strong respect for individual liberty, a market economy at every scale from family farms to ginormous industrial conglomerates, meritocracy instead of aristocracy, welcoming and assimilating multicultural immigrants into an initially Western European population, having poylochromatic Tribes working together, an open frontier for the dreamers schemers misfits and malcontents, oceanic borders for convenient trade and defense, and being just plain big.
As a prescription for the future, “American Exceptionalism” is going to depend heavily on whether one thinks the past causes for exceptionalism will remain in force or e.g. have been destroyed beyond repair by the Evil Other Tribe. If you expect American Exceptionalism to continue, then you are probably going to want the world’s economy and defense-against-the-forces-of-darkness infrastructure to be designed around a central core of Team America, and maybe moral leadership as well. If not, you’re going to want to start implementing the necessary patches. If you think American Exceptionalism is faltering but not doomed, then as an American you’re probably going to want to place a high priority on fixing that. Probably by running the Evil Other Tribe out of power wherever it is to be found because they’re the ones what wrecked that “poylochromatic Tribes working together” part.
If you’re a foreigner who thinks that American Exceptionalism is faltering but not doomed, then maybe you want to give it a hard push instead.
* Largely dependent on whether one will allow “…except for slavery”, or insist that this disqualifies everything about that century.
I’ll mostly grant your definition of American Exceptionalism, with the caveat that to a great degree this is Western Exceptionalism, with the US as the largest and most powerful (especially this century) representative of “the West”.
I’ll also grant that the US is exceptional to a degree apart from the rest of the West. My best guess is that this derives from the specific time and circumstances of its founding — deriving from arguably the “best part” of the West (Enlightenment England), with tons of open land and limited legacy institutions to overcome, but a very nice set of legal traditions from England to build on. Plus the generic optimism that comes from high levels of success since our founding, mostly due to our great size, natural resources, and isolation from threats. Plus *maybe* genetic and cultural selection due to being a nation of immigrants.
I do fear that we’ve somewhat “lost our mojo” recently (maybe ever since Vietnam, with small exceptions for Reagan and the late 90s tech boom), and I interpret part of Trump’s “MAGA” appeal as deriving from this sense. It’s too bad he’s such a terrible vehicle for addressing it! (I see him mostly as a symptom of our decline, not an antidote.)
In my bubble, “American exceptionalism” refers back to quotes from well before its independence, with motifs like “a City on a Hill”. I’m too lazy to look up the actual quotes this morning, but the context is religious. America is the New Jerusalem. It is the nation favoured by God – succeeding to the role of Israel in the Old Testament. The authors of these quotes are Puritans and later members of their derivative sects. But the ideas continue to be expressed and expanded to the present, becoming secular as well as religious. And the Mormons have their own version, different in detail but similar in theme.
Part of American exceptionalism comes from it being founded on a set of ideals to an extent not seen in other nations, which were mostly founded on the singular ideal of “we were the people who’ve lived here all this time”. The Colonists had lived in the Colonies, too, of course, but not as long (as we’re often reminded), and there was an unusual amount of arguing about what an ideal government ought to be, and there also seems to have been an unusually high number of Philosophy of Law wonks living in the Colonies at that time.
The result is manifest to this day, in the oldest formal constitution in force, under which major parties have handed power over to each other routinely, without major popular rioting, for more of the nation’s history.
Accidents of geography and history turning the US into the leading superpower tend to coalesce the notion as well.
I don’t know of anyone who says the US is the best, and can back it up with numbers – other than military strength and economic bloc size – but I do believe a lot of people consider the US to have the highest overall potential. The US looks like a jack of all trades. It doesn’t currently have the best sedans or the largest collection of seeds or the tallest building, and it doesn’t always have the fastest supercomputer, but if it really wanted to, it could produce any of those. Often because of aforesaid military and economic power. The US isn’t as old a democratic federation as Switzerland, but Switzerland can’t project its democracy as far. The US has fewer individuals than China, but more individualists. The US has less economic freedom than Singapore, and yet it takes more immigrants than any other nation, and makes them more prosperous.
The US is more adaptable. It isn’t as united on many issues as many other nations, but instead provides a framework for resolving conflicts faster, mapping out the points of consensus, and acting on them. Bismarck once observed a “special providence for drunkards, fools, and United States of America”. Walter Russell Mead attributes this to the US employing multiple approaches to any problem, hot-swapping them as needed. The US wasn’t just John Winthrop’s city on a hill; it was also Lincoln’s defense of “of, by, and for the people”, Edison’s inspiration and perspiration, and Will Roger’s unorganized politics.
The president of the United States has disappeared. He was in the White House last night and went to bed in the evening as usual. But some time during the night he just plain vanished. Staff could not find him this morning, and a search of the grounds and a quick audit of the security systems showed nothing out of the ordinary.
Now what happens?
Some of us may prefer the version in which the president of the United States suddenly and inexplicably breaks into seven pieces.
President of the Untied States?
I don’t know about you, but my mind immediately went to “horcrux”.
Is this a Seveneves reference?
No, it’s a JoJo’s reference.
I like it more as a Seveneves reference. The seven pieces of Trump slowly tumble around a center of mass, with smaller pieces crumbling off and raining down on the American people.
Very good! Now all we have to do is come up with cutesy names for the seven pieces.
The Secret Service is not to keep him safe from us; it’s to keep us safe from him. Trump rips and tears his way through the DC swamp, lobbyists and EPA officials alike falling to his rage. At dawn, the city wakes, forever changed, to his corpulent orange body filling Lincoln’s seat on the lawn. At noon, the SWAT team takes a shot. At sunset, the bomb falls.
The true nature of the curse of the US presidency is revealed to the public by Alex Jones. Everyone drops out of the US presidential race except Kamala Harris, who then launches a brutal and vicious campaign in partnership with the WWE against Ted Cruz, who announces his candidacy immediately. Luckily, it’s possible to keep the public safe in the interim by surrounding Pence’s bedchamber with young women in order to keep him contained. Racing against time, the Congress passes an amendment in October 2020 to appoint a random person sentenced to life imprisonment as president, so that they can keep him locked up without violating any human rights. The next president of the United States is the Son of Sam, which makes everyone upset. Angela Merkel is elected to the newly-created office of Chancellor and immediately imposes austerity.
Thanks Obama.
Has Pence indicated a willingness to continue the trade war if he took over?
I would be unimaginably disappointed if he didn’t confusedly wander into a Dallas bus station six months later with his shirt on backwards on no recollection of what transpired.
Put out a call for any bad enough dudes to mount a rescue mission.
He can’t be lost in New York, he’s from New York.
It’s too bad the NYC subway doesn’t have exit fares, otherwise we could do “Donny on the MTA”.
Officially/Best-practice, the 25th Amendment gets invoked and the VP at least becomes Acting President until something more formal or permanent is decided.
Over the next 24 hours after the disappearance of the President is noted, DC goes into a complete shutdown. Other Secret Service officers outside the Presidential Protection Division are brought in to investigate the Agents, Uniformed Division personnel, and others in the White House that night. When that proves insufficient, agents from the FBI are brought in to investigate everyone else. Every piece of camera footage that covers anything that could contain a clue is brought in in an expanding circle around the White House, and every person and the owner of every car in that footage is questioned. Roads are blocked off, and the DC Metro shut down. There are a couple of incidents where SWAT style raids on vague evidence of people potentially involved turn ugly due to mistakes.
Pence is taken from the US Naval Observatory to a secure location, where he is sworn in as acting President. A short time later, citing conspiracy theories, he is brought back to the Capital, and security around the Naval Observatory is beefed up considerably, including FBI Hostage Rescue and US military Special Forces units. National tensions escalate, and both sides blame each other. Conspiracy theories multiply. Civil war erupts.
Millennia later, evidence finally comes to light revealing that aliens teleported the president to Uranus as a prank, the United States of Earth respond by having the USE Space Force send the USES Grand Inquisitor Cocaine Mitch to glass the offending alien homeworld to show them what we think of their sense of humor. The USEMC claims the resulting slag pile, and per tradition immediately starts drilling for oil.
Edmond Hoyle is in the Poker Hall of Fame, even though he never played a game of poker in his life. He was the leading expert on card games in 18th-century Britain, while poker was a 19th-century American invention. By then “Hoyle” had become a generic name for books on card games much like “Webster’s Dictionary” or “Roget’s Thesaurus” but it’s still a trifle odd to talk about playing “poker according to Hoyle.” A later writer called the notion as ridiculous as citing “Fulton on Diesel Engines.”
Who else gets cited anachronistically like this?
Hoyle is also the name of a brand of playing cards. Relation, I presume?
Founded in America in 1927, probably named after Edmond Hoyle but not otherwise connected.
Newton?
Newton believed in God, and thought that God was necessary for the planets to stay in their course. As far as I know, the idea of a clockwork universe where God maybe started the whole thing off but has no role in its unfolding is a post-Newton idea. But when people talk about a clockwork universe, they often invoke Newton.
I was thinking more along the lines of crediting Newton with something Faraday discovered (I hope nobody does this), but that would count.
It’s not exactly the same thing and gets into ideological controversy, but I have repeatedly seen claims that Adam Smith supported things he didn’t support, most commonly public schooling, progressive taxation, and anti-trust policy.
I cover some of that in an old blog post.
Y’all might be interested in the Babylon Bee’s take on Portland law enforcement.
It’s frustrating to read if you imagine the author or would-be readers sincerely ask themselves why the police don’t intervene against Antifa.
Snopes has fact-checked the Babylon Bee multiple times(Yes, they “fact-check” satirical sites) and now they are just rolling with it.
Snopes Rates Babylon Bee World’s Most Accurate News Source
Snopes Introduces New ‘Factually Inaccurate But Morally Right’ Fact Check Result
Ocasio-Cortez Appears On ‘The Price Is Right,’ Guesses Everything Is Free
Snopes Strikes Deal With Netflix To Provide On-Screen Fact Checks Of Fictional Shows, Movies
Under Mounting Pressure From Snopes, Babylon Bee Writers Forced To Admit They Are Not Real Journalists
Snopes fact-checks satire sites because gullible readers think they’re real, not because Snopes thinks they’re real. The amount of hatred that gets flung at Snopes is unreal.
No, Snopes has always fact-checked urban legends that got their start from people believing satirical articles. Directly fact-checking the site is something Snopes doesn’t do for The Onion, for instance. And they suggested that what the Bee was doing wasn’t really satire. They’ve since changed that article to a rating of “Labeled Satire” and reworded it somewhat less harshly
Of course, they still heavily imply that while the Bee claims to be satire, we can’t really be sure that they aren’t deliberately trying to mislead people with *banned term*!
Which part of that (either version) was wrong?
The blood feud that’s been raging between Snopes and the Bee is one of the most ridiculous/entertaining things on the Internet…
But has Snopes fact-checked any of the Bee’s articles about Snopes?
(And then the Bee can post a story about how Snopes is fact-checking Bee articles about Snopes, which the Be is now writing about in clearly the most accurate way, so Snopes will have to fact check that…)
Does the latest salvo fired count as that?
It’s actually more serious than that. The Bee is considering legal action against Snopes, who has tried to get them demonetized a couple of times. The site owner talks a bit about it in the WSJ.
Fact Check: The Babylon Bee claims there is no organized, armed force in Portland that can fight back against Antifa. Also that the head of the Portland police is named Outlaw.
Result: Mostly true. While the Portland Police technically consist of an organized and armed force that has the capability to fight against Antifa, they do not have the political will to do so. And yes, her name is “Outlaw”.
Is antifa going to be this year’s war on Christmas?
Yes, Virginia, there is an Antifa. It exists as certainly as violence and anonymity exist.
The war on Christmas was exaggerated to fit a narrative, not invented out of whole cloth. What I meant is, is the right-wing media playing them up to be a threat of some kind? That satire piece makes it sound like they’re supposed to be scary, and I think LMC said something kind of in that vein once. I’m a left-winger in Portland, OR who attends the odd protest, I might have more first-hand experience than anyone here, and the idea of them being scary seems a little far-fetched… but then, so did the war on Christmas, so here we are I guess.
@dick
Given that Democrats are having a war on Nazis, the entire populace of whom can comfortably fit it a small movie theater, I am not sure that “having a war on an imaginary enemy” is the stone a person in a glass house wants to throw.
Given that antifa just did a mass shooting in Dayton, especially not now.
I will take that as a yes.
@dick
Ah, you understand me perfectly then. You are just acting as if this is something that only right-wingers do, rather than something that is always done by everyone.
In shocking news, person not afraid of their own sides goons! More at 11.
Just because the right wing does it, doesn’t mean you have to. Just because the left wing does it, doesn’t mean you can throw it back in my face. I’m not “the left”, and you’re not “the right”. We’re two people talking, on a forum that’s ostensibly devoted to not doing the dumbest things the media do. Even if (or maybe especially if) both sides do it.
I criticized a simplistic meme, therefore I must believe the opposite of it? This is a really disappointing response. I don’t think of you as that sort of commenter.
I mean, I guess I am afraid of antifa, and I’m also not. When they’re in front of me, like if I’m out somewhere and a group of people with masks on shows up and tries to stir shit up and provoke a violent response, yes, I’m afraid of that. I don’t want to get gassed. But as a movement, no, they’re not scary at all. They’re vastly outnumbered and uncoordinated and don’t accomplish anything except getting people to dislike them. Is this not how right-wingers feel about nazis?
When I asked if the right-wing media was playing up antifa as a threat, I was actually asking. I mean, it’s not a foregone conclusion. They could’ve portrayed them as, say, pathetic and impotent. They throw milkshakes at people for chrissakes.
Uh, if you didn’t want to be interpreted that way, then why did you say you weren’t afraid when you go to protests with them? How is it “disappointing” to read what you said that way? Alternately, if the protests you were speaking of never had antifa, why are you talking like you have any direct experience with them?
Yep. If we could come out of this otherwise pointless squabble with a general agreement that right-wingers are correct to feel that way about Nazis, that would be an accomplishment of sorts.
The reason antifa gets any real coverage at all is because, in certain places, they act in a legal grey area where one could plausibly argue they are acting under the color of law. Berkley, Portland, and some other places have managed the situation very poorly. Obviously its not 1950s cop-Klan levels, but in my lifetime it is completely aberrant behavior.
The reduction of a nuanced topic in to two sides who each have their own thugs.
We’re discussing right-wing media articles portraying antifa as a threat. I assume they are not doing that in the sense of “a threat to the other, more peaceful people at the rally.”
Perhaps, but the protesters in recent Portland scuffles (on both sides) are doing their best to be as annoying and provocative as possible without getting arrested. Don’t pretend that’s a straightforward problem for the police to handle.
I admit it was dickish, and I should have phrased my point more politely.
But apparently you get my point. I’ve actually said on SSC before I feel this way about both Neo-Nazis and Violent Communists. But I didn’t say it by saying, “I went to hang out with them while signalling I was vaguely adjacent, I don’t see why anyone is worried”. I said something more like “I’m very worried if I end up in a dark alley next to them, but they are pretty easy to avoid and pretty marginal so I’m not worried day-to-day.”
Them or someone pretty damn adjacent beat the crap out of Andy Ngo for trying to film them at a protest, and at Berkeley a few years ago some poor guy who just happened to be nearby got pepper sprayed and then hit for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was around the time Milo was originally going to speak, and a protester just hit this guy because “he looked like a Nazi”. Because he was wearing a suit. Also he was a Syrian Muslim. But accuracy of targeting is not really the point of the sort of person who engages in this.
The difference between left-wing street thugs and right-wing street thugs is I expect the government to (and it largely does) crack down like hell on Neo-Nazis and those adjacent when they try to get violent. Almost no one likes them. But a lot of authority figures in more left-leaning towns are less inclined to crack down. More charitably, in general they are less willing to crack down; less charitably, they are less willing to crack down on people who attack their political enemies. And there is a disturbing amount of excuse making about it that makes me less than confident that antifa is truly as marginal as neo-nazis are.
It’s not like there’s no historical precedent for violent activists being excused or clucked at and then laundered into positions of authority in the U.S.
EDIT:
See examples above. They are, and it’s well documented. I’ll give you links if you like, but it shouldn’t be hard to find from my description.
It’s hard to handle if you want the government to behave in a way comporting with libertarian principles. But the U.S. government at any level almost never behaves that way anywhere, so I don’t believe it’s out of a sudden change of heart when it happens to occur rather than out of convenience.
Missed my edit window, but this phrasing could be improved to be somewhat less inflammatory although less punchy.
To be something more like “I went to hang out across the street from them while signaling I was closer to them than to their enemies…”
I think you’re bending over backwards to read this stuff in the most argumentative way possible. I don’t think it’s worth hashing out further; if you re-read what I’ve already said, imagining it was coming from someone you know and respect, I feel like my meaning would come through. Or maybe the problem is me. At any rate, I asked if the right-wing media is playing up antifa as scary, and I got my answer.
It wouldn’t have changed anything if someone I know and respected said it. My filter is more removed around people I know so it might have been worse. You should see some of my rare arguments with family*. It’s usually not my most graceful and charitable state. Or usually theirs either. That’s why I mostly argue with anonymous strangers here. It’s a bad habit, but a lot of the temptation to be particularly bad is reduced in the proper forum.
As you noted, I usually don’t respond in a particularly crude way. But it would be inaccurate to say I’m particularly temperate either. Rather, I try to ignore poor posts for an argument but occasionally I slip and respond in kind.
My sources are the NYT and Quillette. I’ve seen some articles in the Washington Post too. The NYT and WP are certainly not right-wing. The NYT framing was more along the lines of “you shouldn’t commit violence even if your heart is vaguely in the right place” than “be afraid of Antifa”, but since I don’t share those beliefs obviously I don’t take that spin from the events. And since I lived on campuses for a decade, the lesson to me was more obviously “I hope these idiots don’t spread because I’d hate to be punched while crossing campus”.
Quillette is mostly left-wing heretics so their take is somewhat more aggressive about it.
Like yeah, I have no doubt the right wing media doesn’t like Antifa but I don’t read them, and you wouldn’t have to have read them to find out any of what I said. Mainstream news organizations covered it.
*Actually you shouldn’t
When you start a sub-subthread by asking “Is antifa going to be this year’s war on Christmas?”, you’re not exactly creating an environment where interpretive charity is likely to flourish.
Why not?
In theory, every right-winger here knows that the right-wing media (like all media) sometimes does silly things for clicks and tries to gin up controversies where they aren’t. I would’ve thought the War on Christmas would be a pretty uncontroversial example of that. Am I wrong? Anyone here think that everything Fox said about the War on Christmas was defensible? My assumption is that no one does.
But in practice, when I mention it, it’s not taken as a reference to a time when the right-wing media exaggerated a threat, it’s taken as an attack on the right-wing media for doing that. EchoChaos said that explicitly – “You are just acting as if this is something that only right-wingers do, rather than something that is always done by everyone.” I didn’t say that, but it seems like I don’t have to.
I take your comment to mean that, if I had only been more verbose and less flippant, if I had typed all of this out with some disclaimers and qualifications, it would’ve been read more charitably. My experience here suggests otherwise – trying to force charity through careful wording is a mug’s game. Take the thread about Pizzagate a couple of OTs ago. Conrad compared Pizzagate to the Mueller stuff, and I wanted to argue that that was unfair, in the sense that, even if you thought the Mueller stuff was all smoke and no fire, for Pizzagate there isn’t even smoke. So I wanted to refer to the fact that the Mueller findings were not nothing, but I wanted to phrase it as weakly as possible, to avoid making a claim about that scandal that would derail in to relitigating it. I rephrased it several times before posting, trying to make sure what I said about it was so unobjectionable that no one would dispute it. What I went with was, “his underlings considered it.” No one could argue that, right? I thought. Underlings refers to hundreds or thousands of people, and doesn’t imply Trump directing them, or even being aware of them. Considering a crime isn’t even illegal.
In the end, none of my careful phrasing mattered; Conrad reacted exactly as if I had just said “Trump colluded with Russia.” Worse, this kind of over-careful phrasing can be counter-productive: when you try to think several moves ahead and account for all contingencies, you can end up obscuring your meaning. I’m probably guilty of that, even in this comment.
This seems to happen over and over, forever. I don’t know what the solution is. It may be “find another forum.” I am trying to just avoid discussions that I think will devolve, with some success. I didn’t engage in this OT when Matt M accused #metoo of not really being about combating sexual harassment, for example. But, believe it or not, when I asked if antifa was going to be this year’s war on Christmas, it was really genuinely just a question I was curious about the answer to. And like I said, I got it.
And I think you’d be right. But antifa as a serious threat is not uncontroversial. When you assert an equivalence between, on the one hand a subject of legitimate controversy that you are allegedly trying to engage in civil and charitable debate about and, on the other hand, something uncontroversially ridiculous, something is going to give. That something is going to be civility and charity, because that’s what you weren’t offering when you said in essence “your beliefs are equal to this ridiculous belief”.
When I say charity, that’s not a euphemism for civility or niceness. I sounded derisive towards the idea of antifa being a threat worthy of national news reporting because I am. Not the most civil thing I’ve ever said maybe, but not exactly provocative, for this place. Doctor Mist responded as if I had said that antifa doesn’t exist, but I didn’t bitch about that either – it’s not what I meant, as I clarified, but it’s not out of left field either. It was the suggestion that I was accusing the right-wing media of being uniquely bad (from EC) and that I’m okay with thugs as long as they’re on my side (from quanta413) that I bitched about.
dick-
“As you clarified”. Um, yeah, I’m sure it was all just a big misunderstanding.
The thing is, dick, that once you got around to making your actual point, it was a reasonable enough one that you wouldn’t have needed to force charity through careful wording– had you not already, though flippant and insulting* wording, antagonized them into withholding the level of charity they’d ordinarily bring.
I like making the snarky throwaway joke at least as much as the next guy, but once you go that route you should follow through and actually throw it away. If instead you change your mind and decide you’re going to make the Big Serious Point after all, now you really are stuck with the disclaimers and the paragraphs of throat-clearing and the rest of it. (There’s also an element of “know your audience” to all this: compared to other clever-dicks-playing-with-ideas fora I’ve been on, this one’s a bit on the starchy side.)
*What John Schilling said, basically. People who got upset about a War on Christmas were being silly; people who get upset about Antifa are merely worrying too much.
(About Antifa)
I’m not sure if they do accomplish anything more, but they could. To the extent that many people on the left see what they are doing as “carrying things a bit too far, but …” and people on the right see violence in response to theirs in similar terms, they normalize the idea that violence against your political opponents is not an unambiguously bad thing.
Combine that with the fact that, in many jurisdictions, the people who are supposed to have the job of preventing violence are sympathetic to one side or the other of the culture war/political conflict, and you have the potential for a pretty serious breakdown of civil order, a situation where a fair number of people correctly believe that they can get away with beating up their opponents as long as they do it in the right place–somewhere the police are on their side.
I took the point of the Bee piece to be that the Portland police could and should prevent such violence and didn’t.
Antifa got an event in NJ canceled by threatening to burn down the venue it was to be held in. They may not be a particular threat to one’s safety if you’re not actually holding a public right-wing event, but they’re certainly a threat to one’s ability to speak. The sponsor is apparently going to be holding it in Philly instead, but since they now can’t announce the venue ahead of time, I imagine they’ll have trouble attracting an audience.
I agree with David’s point–the danger of antifa is normalizing political violence–something that’s more likely because most people in the media are (very broadly) on the side of the antifas, and because both left and right media have an incentive to inflate their numbers and importance for their own reasons.
If the left has thugs visibly busting heads and kicking asses of people on the right, with some measure of tolerance from the police in some very liberal cities, that erodes the norm against political violence. When various opinion leaders make excuses for them, it erodes the norm still further. Eventually, the right will similarly have thugs doing that stuff in conservative cities–there’s certainly no *law* against the gay pride rally in this town, it’s just that if one shows up, a bunch of thugs stage a riot and beat up the participants.
One reason this is extra-bad is because the police and military are much more likely to be on the side of the right-wing thugs than the left-wing thugs. It’s not hard to see ways this could go really badly for everyone.
Sure, that’s one interpretation of what I said – that people think antifa are scary are just as dumb as people who thought the War on Christmas was. Another interpretation would be that the media is exaggerating the danger of antifa, like they did with the war on Christmas. What do you call it when there are two ways to interpret something, and you pick the most insulting one?
That could happen. One sign would be if the mainstream left was responding positively. It seems obvious to me that they’re not. I don’t know anyone on the left who approves of antifa, the word is essentially synonymous with extremism. Anyone on the right who disagrees with this, please ask yourself whether you’re in a position to know what the left really thinks.
This is exactly what I’m saying is a gross exaggeration. Antifa and their opposites (Proud Boys and their ilk) have butted heads like half a dozen times in Portland, and AFAIK the head-busting and ass-kicking has so far been limited to one dude.
As for the police taking antifa’s side, I understand why someone far away relying on media reports might think that, I just don’t think it’s true. And lest that be misconstrued, I am not saying “antifa are the real victims here”. I’m saying, this is a messy muddled he-said-she-said, and if it looks one-sided you ought to ask if you’re only hearing one side. And the reason you’re only hearing one side is that the other (for example) is not being pushed by the mainstream media, despite said media allegedly being in the bag for the left. Which brings us back full-circle to why I’m not worried about antifa normalizing violence – because the left doesn’t really approve of them.
@dick
Between approval and rejection there is a middle ground: tolerance.
We know that antifa violence was being organized from within Google, due to the screenshots in the Damore lawsuit. Google didn’t seem to have fired these people for that. I have fairly high confidence that if Proud Boys would be organizing things within Google, they would be fired.
Google is one of the handful of tech companies who together have immense control over our digital lives. Like Facebook, who banned Proud Boys last year, but didn’t ban antifa.
When those in power are seen as very biased and as oppressing their outgroup, it breaks down faith in ‘the system,’ public debate, democracy, etc.
In the 70’s there was a period where large parts of the left, including even quite smart people who later rose to some prominence, decided that justice was not possible within the system. This resulted in over 2,500 domestic bombings in just 18 months.
My worry is that increasingly, the moderates on the right will have no good response to violent people on the right who argue that things are so rigged that being peaceful is not an option.
Your claim that the information from your link is kept out of the mainstream media is false, as the NYT covered it.
However, as the NYT briefly notes, the police sergeant from your link behaves pretty much the same with the left wing activists he also communicates with, although the left wing activists seem more paranoid than the right wingers, which may or may not indicate that the former aim to break the law.
My understanding is that it’s completely normal for the police to be chummy with moderate protest leaders, to for example:
– clarify what the police will tolerate
– give information about the reasons for arrests to prevent people believing and acting on false rumors
– keep counter protesters away from protesters, by coordinating where protesters move
– trying to get the moderates to exclude extremists
The police typically seem to employ (not necessarily sincere) prosocial behavior to get more cooperation, which can be interpreted as manipulation or cooperation, depending on your bias.
Of course, with free speech being a constitutional right, having the police act in ways that allow the expression of free speech seems perfectly acceptable and arguably even their duty, if that ‘cooperation’ is content-neutral and focused on reducing crime.
That the cooperation with right-wing protesters results in an investigation, but not the same cooperation with left-wing protesters simply seems validate the criticism that this content-neutrality does not exist in Portland right now, at the level of the mayor.
I started this thread by asking if the media was pushing antifa as a threat. You, from thousands of miles away and relying only on media reports, have concluded that the police coordinate with both sides, but only their coordination with the left constitutes a threat. That seems like an answer.
Waging the war on noticing must be difficult when you’re trying to get people to not notice what’s on all the major news sites. Almost as hard as trying to get people to not notice blockbuster films and the marketing campaigns associated with them.
Extremely random but I’m sorry I had nowhere else to put this: my brother gave me a PlayStation Classic last Christmas and I finally decided to take Final Fantasy 7 for a spin. A few hours in and I got to the exact screen where I had stalled out as a kid — I knew it right away, I recognized it. It wasn’t a boss or anything, it was just a pre-rendered screen where I couldn’t figure out how to progress to the next screen. And then, surprisingly to me, I still couldn’t figure it out. I spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out how to get through it before using a strategy guide.
I honestly find that kind of weird and amazing, that I have the same blind spot 22 years later for this screen which AFAIK no one else ever complains about.
Was it like a giant wall or something? Graphically the game could be pretty busy, with somewhat obscure interactive elements at a few points in the story.
Anyway, now that the hardest part of the game is behind you, enjoy the classic.
“Obscure interactive elements” is definitely a fair way to describe the game, though not sure this screen merited this much trouble.
It’s at 4:45 of this video — I didn’t realize the bar is what you have to cross to get to the other side of the screen: https://youtu.be/PPKAAfHxC3E
(And LOL to “hardest part of the game”)
It’s not exactly a difficult game.
Oh that fricking bar. Easily the worst single task of that game. Took me FOREVER the first time and I can remember panicking trying to figure it out, running into that stupid animated house enemy over and over. Just looking at that video makes me remember the song that plays in that scene.
Oh, that part? I don’t watch videos b/c I’m stuck on satellite internet. I vaguely remember that, but mostly b/c I once spent ages on that screen racking up kills to try and get Meteorain early. Not worth it.
As far as obscure video game checkpoints go, the worst I’ve encountered is in Phantasy Star IV, where you’re told “the Psycho Wand is the key to beating Zio!” Who’s otherwise invincible. Now, the Psycho Wand is an equipable weapon for Rune, physically the weakest character in your party at that time. The game developers made it so hitting Zio with the Wand physically does, in fact, cause him normal damage. About forty points, IIRC, and Zio has roughly 3000. I spent ages trying to kill that SOB by having my wizard whack him with a stick while the rest of the party struggled to keep everyone alive for turns and turns and turns. Even when I hyper-leveled, I never got close.
Fortunately, the internet was a thing when the game came out, so I looked it up and discovered I was supposed to use the PW as an item, thereby knocking down the magic barrier and causing him to take damage normally. Nothing in the game suggested I was supposed to do that. Alas.
Racial differences in theosophy.
Teal deer: black people (SSA, Australoids and some South Indians) are most closely related to giants who lived with dinosaurs. Cro-Magnons, Native Americans, “Turanians”, Semites and East Asians evolved in Atlantis. Indo-European speakers are divided into five sub-races, and soon a sixth sub-race of Aryans will start being born in California (followed much later by a seventh, because evolution works in tidy mathematical cycles).
Following up on a recommendation in OT102.25, which was approximately forever ago in internet years, I’ve checked out Roma from the library and started it with my daughter. It looks quite promising.
I feel like it’s one of those movies you have to force yourself to watch all in one sitting or you’ll never finish it.
Oh, sorry, I’m referring to the novel by Steven Saylor. Should have been more clear since the movie was referenced down thread.
No relation to Steve Sailer?
Glad you are enjoying it! Coincidentally I am now reading the sequel, Empire, which is working less well for me than Roma did. I think the smaller timespan (just Augustus to Hadrian) is a part of that.
If you enjoy Saylor, I would definitely also recommend his mystery novels starring Gordianus the Finder, who is employed to look into mysteries and to dig up dirt by Cicero, Pompey, Caesar and other bigwigs of the late Republic. Start from Roman Blood and continue in order of publication.
When You Order Coffee with an Irish Name Can you handle this? My name has seven silent letters.
So “Deiseach” is perhaps pronounced “Dawn”? After watching that video she could probably convince me it’s pronounced “Ekky-ekky-ekky-ekky-z’Bang, zoom-Boing, z’nourrrwringnmmm”.
Why is it that most romanization systems suck so much ass? Is it because of selection effects, where the people who usually end up making the early attempts have weird opinions on english alphabet pronunciations as well? It feels like there are always much superior and obvious substitutions that have been utterly bypassed in favor of silent letters and unconventional+non-intuitive pronunciations.
Irish orthography is an example of when preserving etymology is favored over phonetics. It’s lots of fun for historical linguists.
Much of English’s weird spellings are remnants of older forms of words. Also just because a sound-letter pairing seems unintuitive now doesn’t mean it might have been when it was penned.
But this is no excuse for fucking Wade-Giles.
Irish orthography is actually relatively well behaved. The trick is it has to write 40+ distinct phonemes with just 18 letters and 1 diacritic.
And the “control” key sticks when you type ‘h’.
(Unix joke. ctrl-h is a backspace.)
It’s worse than that in the case of Irish orthography in the Latin alphabet, as it dates back to the 8th century and may actually slightly predate attempts to write down English in the Latin alphabet. And the English in question at the time looked like this:
It’s funny to me that romanizations of Chinese made by Westerners in the 19th and early 20th century were so atrociously bad that eventually the Chinese themselves were like, “Screw this, we are going to tell you how to write our language with your writing system.” The resulting Hanyu Pinyin is pretty good. The one thing you have to keep in mind though is that it’s a romanization not an anglicization, the Chinese specifically built it in such a way that no speaker of any given Latin alphabet language would have an advantage over others. So you have to actually learn the sounds that each letter stand for, but it’s actually pretty easy as most of them are pretty close to the English version, with a couple exceptions. Once you do though it’s pretty easy to read and pronounce Chinese words without completely butchering them.
Honestly, I think “custom alphabet” might be superior than the usual romanization. Bopomofo or kana do away with the common ambiguities of how vowels and consonants behave in context. Meanwhile, even I default to the bad english-assumption incorrect pronunciation when I see “Yang Xiao Long.”
The standard Greek romanization was developed by Germans for Ancient Greek. Once you know that, it makes a *lot* more sense.
That is a funny video 🙂
And this is with the modernised, simplified spelling – before the revisions of orthography of the 40s-70s, the traditional/classical spellings were such things as “Seaghan” for what is now spelled “Seán” and “Toirdealbhach” for what is, um, still spelled like that but pronounced “Turlough”.
Matters are not helped by there being three main dialects of the language and that pronounciations vary – so “Siobhán” can be pronounced “Shoon” (and sometimes spelled “Siún”) in one area or “Shiv-awn” in another. Or in a third manner, from the Connacht dialect, as spoken here.
I have to ask—how do you pronounce your username? I’ve long guessed “day-shock” or “die-shock” based on the apparently UK-accepted pronunciation of Taoiseach, but that differs from the Irish pronunciation of the name anyway, it seems….
Here’s an interesting story about some of the failure modes of shunning as a punishment for sexual misconduct.
Mark Halperin was fired and shunned after sexual misconduct allegations from a LOT of people, but just came out with a book featuring interviews with many prominent democrats. When Halperin’s victims complained, the dems basically said his shunning was so complete that they forgot that he was accused of anything.
Bad reporting in that article is bad.
Of all the people who have come out and made statementsexplaining why they participated in that book, no one explicitly says they forgot what he did. Under the most generous readings of their statements, maybe one or two of them (Ben LaBolt and maybe Kathleen Sebelius) could be kind of said to have forgotten about it. Everyone else seems was aware of what he did, but didn’t think that much of responding to an email.
Thanks – on review, three of the seventy-five people interviewed for the book said they were unaware or insufficiently aware of the allegations, several others said other stuff, and nobody said they forgot. 🙂
Focusing in on these guys, I thought some of these responses were WAY more idiotic than if they actually had shunned this guy so hard they forgot about him. At least 3, maybe as many as 5 (depending on how you parse their responses) people who’ve been interviewed pretty much had the response of “Yeah, I know Mark Halperin is terrible, but speaking to him gave me an opportunity to demonstrate how much I hate Trump, and that’s WAY more important than continuing to shun this monster.”
This explanation makes much more sense. It’s also pretty typical
Q: “Why isn’t X shunned for Y actions?”
A: “Because X’s other Z actions benefit us more than maintaining the shunning for Y actions.”
Fill in with whoever X for whatever reason for shunning Y and whatever reason to stop shunning Z for whatever group you do or don’t like.
Halperin is such a waste of oxygen that I was actually gleeful to see him #MeToo’d, as it meant we’d be rid of him and his worthless “insights” for good. Or so I thought. If Democrats are welcoming him back into the discourse with open arms, then it’s obvious that #MeToo is over and nobody has learned a damn thing.
Men learned not to be alone with women, but I don’t think that was the intended outcome.
As a manager, I’ve always been a firm follower of the Pence Rule (the Graham Rule first). This proves how much smarter I was retroactively.
Isn’t there a difference in motivation between the Graham-Pence rule and this? Graham was talking about avoiding even the opportunity to sin; as a reaction to #MeToo, it seems more about avoiding false accusations of misconduct than the potential misconduct itself. Unless I’m reading one or the other wrong.
@BBA
The motivation has always been both. Accusations of sexual impropriety had brought down many preachers before Graham. It is possible 100% of them were true, but not necessary.
If you thought #MeToo was ever meant to be anything more than a weapon to be wielded against the enemy, you need to update your model.
And here I thought that the 5 million+ people posting about it were actually making a statement of some sort about abuse.
Yeah—to take the minimal proof that Matt is wrong here, the original Shitty Media Men list was shared among women in progressive media spaces, so the folks they were naming were mostly if not all fellow progressives.
0/3
I’m just mad that it’s not being wielded against the enemy this time. Or maybe, that some people wouldn’t recognize their enemy even if he grabbed them by the…whatever.
So there is something that confuses me. When i am shopping and i see someone handing out free food samples, i always take one, unless the product is something i already know i don’t like. There have been times places like Costco have as many as six sample stations and you bet your ass that i’m sampling every single one, regardless of whether or not i have any intention of buying the product. Free tasty snacks is always a win in my book.
Now i also work handing out free samples, and the majority of people just walk on by or say, “No thanks” when i offer them some. The first time i did that kind of job, i thought engagement from 1/3rd of people was weirdly low, and guessed maybe the product was unappealing, but it turns out no that’s actually on the high end. Do people not like free food? It’s free food! Do they think they’re doing me a favour? Because it really doesn’t feel like they’re doing me a favour. Standing there waiting for people to show interest is mind-numbingly boring and i am starved for any kind of human interaction. Now i do get to take any extra sample product home, so i do benefit a little from people refusing, but i’d happily take home less stuff if it made it easier to get through each shift, and people interacting with me does make it easier.
I think most people believe that if they take the food, they’ll feel obligated to buy some, and rather than saying, “My feeling is stupid and it can go jump in a lake”, they refuse the sample instead.
I almost always decline free samples. I’d say my logic is something to the effect of “I don’t enjoy grocery shopping, I am here on a mission, and you are distracting me from the timely completion of this bothersome task.”
Basically, you delaying my shopping experience is a cost that is not worth the benefit of a small bite-sized sample of food I may very well not want to eat anyway.
Two McMillion is right about why people refuse it, I think. I don’t get it personally; I’m happy to try free samples. I am actually open-minded, after all, and I could be persuaded to buy the product if it were really good.
I’m reminded of a related phenomenon, free trials for paid products. How many people think something like, “I shouldn’t take this 30 day free trial, because I’m definitely not renewing it at the end”?
I’ve seen it done for media subscription services. News and TV and stuff.
I think most people’s logic is the exact opposite. More like “I shouldn’t bother with the free trial because I’ll probably forget to cancel it at the end!” (assuming the free trial auto-renews, which all of them do these days)
This for subscription stuff. I’ll never remember to cancel, and I’m too lazy to use one of the clever ways you can make it auto-cancel either.
Yup. I did get the YouTube subscription to watch Cobra Kai; I think I canceled the same day.
Also, once you put in your credit card info once, you are more likely to charge it again on a whim, despite how trivial typing a few numbers is. This is the reason for games with microtransactions to have one or two intro options that are basically loss leaders.
I think the more common reason is “I shouldn’t take this 30 day free trial, because I’m
definitely not renewinggoing to forget to cancel it at the end”Or, secondarily
“I shouldn’t take this 30 day free trial, because
I’m definitely not renewing it at the end” they are going to make it a nightmare to cancel and I’ll end up getting billed despite my best efforts”Trials make a lot more sense to decline unless it is something you definitely will get some good use out of for the reasons above.
Yeah, that’s definitely more on the minds of some. A friend of mine did a r/changemyview on that practice, arguing it was morally wrong for companies to have default auto-renewal on free trials. The reflexive contrarians of cmv of course lambasted him for ever signing up for a free trial of a product he didn’t already intend to buy, how dare he.
I find the consumer side of the question more interesting, namely, whether I trust myself to remember that I signed up for the thing 30 days down the road. I actually got burned this year by my National Review subscription—I subscribed for a two month deal or something, and then it auto-renewed like ten days before the deal was over, for a $60 one year subscription. Like hell I’m ever subscribing to NR again after that little trick.
But a magazine subscription needs a certain amount of lead time to send you the next issue.
Granted, if the auto-renewal was not made obvious when signing up it’s practice.
It was a digital subscription, and when I say two months I mean two months from the time I signed up for it. I could dig up the discord chat of me complaining about it for the exact details, but I don’t want you folks to see that sort of language from me. 🙂
ETA: Okay, sparing you the choice language: it was a 12 week subscription that they renewed (for a year) 5 weeks in.
Oh right, of course. Did I just out myself as over 30?
I won’t name names here, but I was once doing a consulting project for a large telco/cable company who was looking to find ways to improve their customer satisfaction scores.
“End auto-renewal of promotional offers was a common suggestion.” Then they’d bring out the slide that showed that they made about $200M a year in profit from people forgetting to cancel their “free” HBO subscriptions. Ended the conversation pretty quick.
I appreciated the way Netflix handled this: three days before my free trial auto-renewed, I got an email saying, “Hey, your subscription is gonna autorenew in three days”.
Seems like this would be easy enough for other companies to implement.
Easy, but very expensive.
A reason Ive used to avoid using free trials is “what if I need to use this in the future?” It held me off from getting a free trial to Amazon Prime until very recently (which I obviously forgot to unsubscribe from!).
Fun fact: Amazon’s customer service is nice enough that if this happens, and you contact them and say “Hey, I meant to unsubscribe, I just forgot” they’ll refund your money so long as you hadn’t actually used prime shipping since your free trial expired.
@Matt M, Clever! (though what does one expect from Amazon). Probably only a tiny handful of people will do this, so you get almost all of the benefits of autosubscribing people while keeping up your customer service reputation.
How many people think something like, “I shouldn’t take this 30 day free trial, because I’m definitely not renewing it at the end”?
I don’t take those up because too many companies are “if you don’t cancel at the end of your free trial, we will charge you for the full subscription” and I am liable to not remember “okay, today is day 29, better make sure I go onto the website to cancel or else I’m on the hook” and then it’s a hassle to try and get the subscription cancelled.
If I really need it, I’ll buy it. On the other hand, if it’s a genuine free trial (no “give us your credit card details to download, we swear we won’t charge you until the 30 days are up”) then yeah I’ll try it. But like I said, most products now are on a ‘buy before you try’ basis.
I’m more with Matt M, though a large part of it is that I’m often not in the mood for whatever samples are being offered. I’m also a picky eater, so “already know I won’t like” is a pretty large category.
Also, when the sample is pretty good, there’s often a line or crowd for the sample.
Sometimes I’m genuinely not hungry (thanks to caffeine) to the point of not wanting free samples.
There may also be a cultural/status thing around free food, where going for it is associated with being an unsophisticated kid (and so you grow out of the impulse) or less classy to get free food when you don’t need to.
I won’t take samples if it is definitely something I don’t like. I guess maybe I would also pass them up if I was already super-full or if I was really in a hurry, but I’m not all that sure about either of those. Outside of that, if you’re offering free samples you bet I’m taking one and the idea that people pass them up is crazy to me.
Specific to Costco, when I was younger and would go with my mom hitting up all the sample stations around the store was like half the point of going!
Edit: I did think of one other thing that might make me decline. If it is something really dry (like, I don’t know, pretzels) and I’m not going to have anything to wash it down with I might pass that up as well. But only might, and generally if I’m in a place with free samples I’ll probably have the opportunity to buy some kind of beverage at some point along the line.
I used to always eat free samples, but now I only do sometimes. I have problems with overeating and I’m prone to gain weight if I don’t pay attention so now I try not to reflexively eat any food on offer. So I’ll take free samples if I’m hungry or if it looks very appealing, but I try to override my instinct of “must… eat… free… food”.
This is definitely useful information as a consumer who doesn’t want to abuse the system.
Dennis Prager has mentioned a ‘shopkeeper law’ in the Talmud (or some obscure commentary on it, don’t quite remember), where you are forbidden from taking up the store owner’s time if you have no chance of buying from them–like if you are going to buy from Amazon, but want the unaffiliated brick and mortar store to give you a demonstration first. (I don’t believe the Amazon reference is in the original Talmud.) I wouldn’t state it so strongly, but I think it’s useful consideration.
By analogy, if I know I won’t buy your product, I’m a little hesitant to take the sample. I know in most cases the person handing it out doesn’t care, but I don’t want to waste product that the store has set aside to advertise with. If it’s destined to be tossed out or given away in any case, that’s not really a consideration. Striking up a conversation with the lady passing out the dumplings is probably fair recompense for her time.
But honestly, in most cases since I am open to persuasion if the product is amazing, so I’ll go ahead and take one, and if I’m shopping at Costco that usually means four or five since the kids are tagging along. The most common reason for not taking a sample is if there is any wait whatsoever for it. Since I often see a line, I’m surprised you have trouble giving away your goods; maybe it’s a regional thing?
The way product sampling works, at least with my employer, is i actually buy the product that is to be sampled. Normally they mail an envelope to the store with a company card that i can use, but if the envelope is missing i can charge it on my own card and get reimbursed. So by the time the product hits the sample cart it’s already bought and paid for.
It’s possible it’s a regional thing, but it could also be a consumer demographic thing. The jobs i work are not actually at Costco, so the customer demographics are probably different. What’s more Costco has free samples on a regular basis, whereas at the stores i work for it’s more irregular. Perhaps Costco costumers are more comfortable taking samples because it’s a normal part of the Costco experience, whereas they are more uncomfortable at their grocery store chain because it’s not a normal part of the store experience.
@Lillian
Another thing to consider: outside of Costco, it seams that most grocery stores schedule product samples during days of the week and times of the day which are more busy.
Usually if I shop on off hours on a week day, the store is quiet and I would not mind pausing to get a sample, but none are on offer.
On the other hand, if I need to pick up something on the weekend when the store is busy, there is a person giving out samples, but I am already frustrated by the number of people, and just want to buy the stuff I specifically set out to get, so I can GTFO as soon as possible.
I would guess 40% of it is “I don’t want to stop what I’m doing and interact with this person”.
I don’t know how sample stations work in US supermarkets, but in Sweden, most samples were not manned. But most samples were cheeses – so you just took a piece of that fancy cheese to see if it’s actually good. It also removed the psychological pressure of buying, and the high trust levels meant people just took one bit (or two, if it was actually delicious). But then, Swedish supermarkets also have free bananas for kids, and many supermarkets have a free water dispenser (so you can taste pretzels to your heart’s delight). They also occasionally gave samples of some exotic fruit they wanted to introduce.
So the only reason not to taste a sample was because you weren’t interested. In manned stations, it may be because you’re trying to avoid the guilt-tripping/sales pitch.
In Spain, I haven’t seen many samples, although in supermarkets, they tend to be manned; in every farmer’s market, they will almost always give free samples of honey, cheese, and ham.
I saw free fruit for kids stations in Portland grocery stores. I don’t think I’ve seen one since 2015, though.
My local grocery store has them, but they have no trash can next to it so basically every trip I come home with either banana or tangerine peel in my pockets.
Tell your kid(s) to dispose of their own darn banana peels. Then watch people slip on them.
Maybe I should take some string and scissors so they can trail them behind while the walk and lay traps for people who are about to pass us.
For sufficiently introverted (and not hungry) people, one morsel of free food might genuinely not be worth the inconvenience of interacting with another person.
I hate free samples. I never take them, never want to interact with them in any way.
Basically, you’re not giving stuff away for my benefit. If whatever company/manager or whatever has decided to use it’s resources to procure something to give for free and employ you to hand it out, it’s only doing so because it thinks that this will result in them making more money. I hate those kind of traps and refuse to participate.
That being said, I’m also the kind of weirdo who refuses to interact with salespeople in stores, reflexively mutes or skips through advertising and shuns popular brands. My sensitivity for this particular facet of modern life might by dialed up a smidge too high.
True for us as well.
And one reason why I don’t think I am cheating Costco by taking a sample of something I have no intention of buying, which is usually the case, is that I assume part of the reason for the free samples is to make shopping there more attractive — and I am buying other things.
It’s like a time share presentation or an investment company dinner. They know that you’re probably not going to buy, but they are willing to give you a snack for the opportunity to get you to try.
I’ve probably bought 3-5 things as a result of 10 years of eating samples, but I get the trade – they get my attention for 30 seconds, and I get a little paper cup full of Cheetos.
@Aftagley
It’s only a trap if you are prone to impulsive buys that you regret afterwards. It’s far less of a trap than offers that automatically lock you into something, unless you opt out later.
That’s why. When I’m in the grocery store, I can tell when someone is interested in me, and I instinctively want to avoid them. If you really didn’t care, like you’re sitting down almost out of sight behind a table and I could have the sample in my hand before you even noticed I was there, I would MAYBE take one. But being desired is WAY too high a price to pay for free food.
Btw, my grocery store has cheese samples that are left unattended, and I take one of each every time. Basically, I think your job is worth it to your employer, because if ANYONE has enough interest in your product to want to talk to someone about it, it’s worth it to have you there for them to talk to. But few people want this, which causes the job to be dehumanizing to you.
…Umm, what? How is “being desired” a “price” to be paid? Have you considered that maybe it’s a good thing to brighten a lonely person’s day?
I’ve seen other people here who, while they phrased it differently, seemed to me to engage in the same behavior for similar reasons. In such a setting, humanity is discomfiting. It’s like a voice in the back of your head telling you to wake up.
So, hypothetically, if you were walking and came upon a turtle which had been flipped over on it’s shell and could not right its self….would you help it?
@Gray Ice
Is the salesperson more like a flipped turtle than like a Jehovah’s Witness?
The cost to me of making someone else happy can be higher than the happiness they gain. Or my happiness may be lower than theirs at the start, so helping them may improve overall happiness, but at the expense of greater inequality.
@Gray Ice
At the grocery store? If you’re simply so curious about me personally that you want me to enumerate my response to any possible scenario, I’m afraid I’m going to have to go back to sleep now.
If I am shopping shortly after breakfast or afternoon coffee (meals on which I eat sweets), I will refuse samples of savoury foods. If I am shopping shortly before lunch or dinner, I will refuse samples of sweet foods (cookies/desserts). These “rules”, plus being a moderately picky eater, account for refusing more than half of the samples I am offered.
Because if you take the food, the demonstrator’s little face lights up and they watch hopefully to see if you’re going to take the product off the shelf (conveniently the stall is located beside the shelf their product is on) and yeah I might like and approve of your expensive organic oil but no way can I afford to buy it, and then I have to feel like I’ve stomped on your hopes and dreams when I don’t grab a box or jar or bottle of whatever.
Now, the people who just chomp and run are perfectly right that there isn’t any obligation, that there is no reason to feel like you are cheating by taking the free sample. But the way most of us have been raised to be polite, it feels vaguely wrong, like grabbing the biggest slice of cake or something.
And sometimes I’m just not interested in the product, so even if it looks (and is) good quality, I’m not going to consume even a free sample of something that doesn’t appeal to my tastebuds.
Not something I have ever observed in a couple of decades of shopping at Costco.
Yeah, very rarely do the people giving samples have any more stake in whether you end up buying a product than the cashier or the guy stocking shelves. They aren’t getting paid on commission and they don’t have stock in Tyson’s or whatever.
Now if you’re at a farmers market type deal where the person giving the samples is also the owner/sole employee offering you a sample of their local honey hoping you’ll buy a jar I can kind of see it. But even then, they know not everyone who takes a sample is going to buy…that’s baked into the marketing strategy.
@acymetric
That would make a big difference to my attitude toward taking samples which is currently the same as that of @Deiseach for exactly the same reason(s).
What evidence do you have for your statement? My life would be more comfortable if I believed it were true.
Speaking as someone who works giving out samples, while i am going to give you the sales pitch it’s because it’s my job to do so, and also because interacting with people relieves the boredom. However i don’t have any particular stake on whether or not you buy the product, it doesn’t affect my pay or prospects for future jobs in any way, and i’m not even expected to try to pressure you into making a purchase. The job is to hand out the samples, recite the selling points, and tell you where to find it and at what price in case you’re interested. That’s it. Also the way this whole thing is set-up is that i’m a contractor, working for a contractor, working for a company’s marketing department. So there’s a lot steps administratively and legally separating me from the actual store selling the product.
Ventrue Capital – an acquaintance of mine works for the company that supplies demonstrators to Costco. He’s paid hourly. They screw around with his scheduling, but that’s normal for low-wage jobs these days – they don’t get feedback about sales effectiveness from Costco.
@Lillian and @Anthony:
Thanx, you made my life significantly more pleasant, and I hope @Deiseach‘s as well!
My family refers to these as “grazing stations”.
I go one step further. Not only do I like taking free food samples, but I take every flyer that someone is handing out, even the crazy ones. It’s free reading material and at the very least, it’s good for a laugh.
When someone hands me a flyer, it’s like they’re saying “Here, you throw this away!” – Mitch Hedberg
I love the ambiguities of English.
“Sir, I need some of those for other people!”
“Too late, sucker, you said ‘free’! They’re all mine now. Take that, Junior High Bake sale committee.”
There is actually a law (at least in California) regarding free newspapers, where it’s illegal to take more than one at a time. This
preventspunishes newspaper wars where rival papers would take all the free papers of their competitor and trash them.Dude, that’s what libraries are for.
Well then librarians should step their game up! When was the last time you saw one of them handing out nonfiction on the corner?
If someone is handing it out on the corner, I wouldn’t presume it qualifies as “nonfiction”
Touche
I don’t know about you but I can’t read a book if I’m on the bus or if I’m waiting for someone or situations like that. It’s like a magazine but much shorter.
I have a hard time reading books on the bus too. I generally read something on my phone instead. Usually news or something like SSC rather than pamphlets, though.
It’s not common for me to get pamphlets but when I do, they’re usually more interesting than the news or whatever.
@Wrong Species
Isn’t that why they invented smartphones?
The ones they hand out here are typically for political parties, restaurants/bars/events or religions like Jehovah Witnesses. None of these provide more than a minute of interesting reading, followed by a burden to get rid of that unwanted pamphlet and a feeling of displeasure at the waste and pollution of pamphleting, that one is encouraging by participating.
I just checked, and my local library has nothing by Jack Chick.
UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.
I enjoy free samples if they’re unattended but I tend to avoid them if there’s a person handing them out. Partly because I don’t want to be pressured to buy something, and partly because I just don’t enjoy social interactions with strangers very much.
For me there are three main reasons for refusing a free sample: first, I avoid eating if I am not hungry as a matter of discipline. Second, I prefer to brush my teeth after every meal, and that might not be possible soon after taking the sample. Lastly, I might simply not like/want what is being offered.
Maybe they are not interested in eating or buying the product you are offering.
Maybe it’s “free and tasty” but is it healthy? And is it really tasty? And does it require them to interact with a stranger who is hideous and awkward (haha)?
I used to feel bad about taking samples, because I am a cheapskate and have absolutely no intention to buy the product. But then I listed to a podcast where they talked about Costco free samples (the history of it and stuff, it was a light piece) and at the end they said that Costco keeps doing it because it works: the products they offer samples on see significant increases in sales. Somehow knowing that Costco isn’t losing money on samples got rid of my guilt. Now I take every sample I see.
I mean, I took every sample I saw before that. But now I don’t feel ashamed about it.
Maybe it’s because I went to grad school, but I’ll only turn down free food if it is seriously unappealing. And I feel no guilt about not buying any of the thing I tried a sample of.
I’d guess the typical reason (certainly mine) is that I’m there to buy groceries, not to eat. I don’t make a conscious decision each time I pass a kiosk that I’m going to walk by without taking a sample; I just filter them out.
Think about it this way: everyone likes saving money, right? So how come they don’t stop and read every single discount price posted on the store shelves? They’re walking straight by free money! And it’s not like they have to buy the item, but they should at least read the price, right? Imagine how long grocery shopping would take for someone who did that. Likewise consider that you are not the first person they have ever encountered offering free food.
Of course, if I’m at the store to buy cheese, certainly I’ll read the sale prices for cheese. And if someone is offering cheese samples I’ll probably take one. Aside from that, you’re just taking advantage of the fact that the grocery store is large and I can’t teleport to the sections I need.
I was looking at macro models to forecast the 2020 US presidential election. The two models I could find (Ray Fair, TrendMacro) didn’t seem correctly structured (trying to forecast the wrong things).
Anyone have time to build a better one?
My inclination is to model the state-level change in popular vote share to make state-level forecasts, then impose an Electoral College layer on top of that.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time (am already over committed), but I could provide some guidance on data and feedback on results/methods.
From reading critiques of these models, it seems like almost everyone makes the fatal simplifying assumption that uncertainty isn’t correlated between states, which leads to extremely overconfident predictions. If your model gives Trump a 40% chance of winning Pennsylvania and a 40% chance of winning Ohio, his chance of winning both is much closer to 40% than to 16%. So if you don’t want to try to dig into inter-state correlations other than the ones that fall out of your macro model naturally, probably a better simplification is to assume correlation coefficients of 1 everywhere.
Congratulations! Motte and Bailey has ascended to meme form!
That’s well done and punchy. I look forward to it being bastardized and misused.
Meanwhile, Vox leaps to the defense of the project. My favorite paragraph:
youdontsay.gif
Really? Academics, journalists, AND politicians? Why, they never agree on matters of racial politics at all! Whole lotta diverse opinions among that set!
God, I hate Vox so much. Of course they frame conservative criticism as hating black people. They don’t bother to mention the economic historians who criticize the idea of slavery being foundational to capitalism as nonsense.
Oh, that’s some nice weasel-wording. “Largely earned praise” means they want to ignore the academics yelling blue murder about the sloppy research and misuse of other people’s data, and by linking criticism to those damn dirty
hippiesconservatives, they’re asking their readers “You’re a nice kind normal human being, right? You’re not one of those disgusting conservatives who only yearn for the good old days of owning other people?”Keep right on keeping on, Vox.
I haven’t read the original NYT piece (paywall restriction) and have only formed a mental image of it via hot takes from both sides. Is it worth checking out?
My Hot Take: If you’ve got a bit of money to spare and don’t already have the books I’m about to recommend, resist the urge to read the NYT series. Unless it’s better than any journalism that has ever occurred, you’d be better off buying an actual long form popular history on African Americans since the NYT isn’t going to do a better job of covering the past than a history book. For example, Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Life Upon These Shores” or “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross” are both well done.
Seconding @Aftagley’s request for a summary/overciew. I don’t have a NYT account (and I’m not about to send them any money*), but I’d like to know if the series is any good. Fiskings also welcome, naturally.
*Obligatory disclaimer: Most other media sources are terrible, too.
You can bypass the paywall quite easily (I use Firefox + NoScript + uBlock Origin)
@Aftagley,
A few days ago I read one of the NYT “project 1619” pieces:
and it detailed a lot of history that I’ve read before, but to me the most intriguing part of it was the author working out why her parents and grandparents had been both (relatively) oppressed yet patriotic, and how African-Americans are uniquely rooted on this continent and cut off from ties to any other “old country”, the bitterness in the piece was obvious, as was the pride.
I’m not sure if I’d recommend reading it though, as I have a hard time imagining a reader having re-actions other than boredom (“I’ve heard this stuff before”), defensiveness, or tears – depending on one’s leanings.
Hey guys, this article got silently changed, too! The paragraph now reads:
Seems like the critics are right that history is being rewritten 😛
More from America’s Finest News Source.
Note: This template actually originates with Noah Smith back in February.
Economist Guy Standing battles nominative determinism.
English masculine names often shift feminine over time. I suspect Guy is less vulnerable to this trend.
Would it be woke or un-woke to re-write a gender flipped version of Boy Named Sue?
Wouldn’t work. She wouldn’t have to get mean, because the other girls would stand down for her #bravery.
Instead of a fist-fight, when she finds her mother, the mother gives her a lecture on the fluidity of gender identity, at which point she sits down, and everyone in the pub claps.
Claps, wipes tears from their eyes and then calls their transgender child and tells them how much they support and love them for who they are. Said transgender child then becomes a scientist and cures hate.
Instead of a fist-fight, when she finds her mother, the mother gives her a lecture on the fluidity of gender identity
“I called you George after my favourite character in the Famous Five” 🙂
Shel wrote a very, very unwoke sequel to boy named sue that deals with gender issues to some degree, but not in a way anyone would/should be proud of.
Probably wouldn’t work. What’s a gender-flipped version of “girl’s name for a boy”? Sam and Robin have already gone to being largely, if not solely, female; same for Alex and Charlie. Pat is unisex and you have all kinds of surnames used as first names for both sexes that mean you don’t know if a “Harper” is a boy or a girl. Terri/Terry, Leslie/Lesley, Danni/Danny and Evelyn/Evelyn the same way with male and female versions that differ only in spelling or pronunciation. Shirley used to be a boy’s name until the popularity of Charlotte Bronte’s novel with a heroine called by that name (her parents were expecting the birth of a son not a daughter and had the name already picked out) changed the balance. Billie is now used for girls as well, it could be short for Wilhemina but it’s just as likely to be Billie from the start, and that led to the Dr Who companion called Bill (even though she’s a girl): “The character’s name was in fact inspired when Moffat overheard David Tennant, who portrayed the Tenth Doctor, offhandedly call out to Billie Piper by the name Bill on the set of “The Day of the Doctor” in 2013.” See also Fred out of “Angel” (could have originally been Frederica but who knows?)
You could have a girl-with-a-boy’s-name but it would need to be a very masculine one and even then it could be abbreviated to something unisex. The only way I’ve seen it going “girl’s name adapted as boy’s name” is Dana Andrews, where Dana is an Irish female name, and I don’t know where his family got the idea for the name (his full name seems to have been Carver Dana Andrews) – though if I go by Wikipedia, one version of it is from Hebrew and they could have got it out of the Bible. Besides, Americans pronounce it “Dane-ah” not “Dah-na”, and seem to think of it as “Dan with an ‘a’ on the end”, thus a man’s name.
Did you even read the OP? The title is obviously “Girl Named Guy”
Joshua?
E: also, Richard, John, Diego, David, Anthony/Anton/Antonio, Howard…
The only Dana I have known is male.
I’ve known women called Mike and Phil, but those are definitely men’s names normally (Philomena aside, nobody’s named that). For the gospels, there’s female Matties and Markies, but not Lukies as far as I know. But not so many Lukes at all. I think Johnnie is still male too.
Oh no! My culture has been appropriated! 😀
Again!
I recently posted a question about the actual practical value of “don’t burn bridges with companies” for lower-income people, I.E. something like “If a person is nasty when they leave a job or is unpleasant with a HR person or something, is there any practical downside or is that just a truism we say?”
I’ve noticed with posts of this kind, there’s typically a significant percentage of people who post something equivalent to “we aren’t going to give you permission to shit on some poor underpaid HR person’s neck, you sinful wretch”, even if the phrasing of the question makes clear it’s not something you do or the question is meant in the abstract. There was much less of that here than in other forums I’ve asked similar “is bad behavior X discouraged for practical reasons or just virtue/habit reasons”, probably because the general audience here is more used to abstract questions, but there were still some pointed/hinting replies here and there.
Is there a name for this “I know you are really just asking for permission to be a bad person, because I can sense you are terrible” type of reaction? Jumping to conclusions seems too broad, and assuming the worst doesn’t seem to fit quite right either.
Side note: I’m not saying this reaction is all bad or even usually wrong, I’m just curious if it has a name.
Thing is, when you phrase the question “is there any downside to ripping the face off the person telling you that you didn’t get the job?”, it does sound like “can I shit on some poor minion’s neck?” rather than whatever abstract point you were trying to make.
This is because most of us recognise that the person telling us “Sorry, you’re weren’t successful” is in the majority of cases not the decision maker. Yelling at them does nothing; for your abstract point, it may not mean any negative consequences for yourself (hence “burning bridges is a myth”) but in practicality, the lack of negative consequences is because you did not take out your frustrations on the people with power to do something about it.
Now, if you go yell at the Vice President in charge of this national division about it, then there may be consequences. But few to none do that. So while you think you are only asking “is it really true ‘burning your bridges’ is a bad idea”, what you are in reality asking is “can I be abusive to someone who wasn’t responsible for not hiring me” and as you see, the verdict is “no, don’t be an asshole”.
Right, this exact thing you are doing. Is there a name for it?
Less sarcastically:
I don’t scream at HR people. But the part where you go “There’s no way he’s asking this abstractly; he’s a bad person, he’s looking for excuses, I’m better than him and must correct him” immediately assumes I am.
In real life, especially if you are poor, the “don’t burn bridges” advice is often issued in every hiring situation without thought. So it comes up in situations where a hirer is being legitimately abusive, and where there isn’t an HR person (say, when the owner of a small company hires for the company himself/herself).
The idiom also comes up when someone is being fired for questionable reasons, or being fired from a workplace with legitimate problems by people so entrenched in the culture of the workplace and so immune from social consequences within it that they’ve long since been able to ignore any wrongs they do, and immune from their consequences.
So it’s possible for curiousity about the practical underpinnings of this to come up if, say, a person is listening to advice be given to a friend to give his 2 week notice no matter when leaving a workplace that consistently lied to him about promotion potential to eke extra hours/work out of him when it puts his new job and initial footing at his new job at risk so that he doesn’t “burn bridges”. Especially if this advice is given as an absolute, as if God himself had laid down the law on the matter.
It’s also possible to be given a piece of advice that is verbally structured in a way that implies a practical motivation, as “don’t burn bridges” is, and while following the rule for virtue/moral reasons still question the practical underpinnings.
So I’m in a situation where I’ve burned bridges I think twice max over 20 years of labor; once, without yelling at any time, I forced a hirer to call me and apologize over a horrifying hiring process(I posted on this in the last thread) and once where a company had a non-compete they made employees sign, didn’t issue promised copies of during employment and wouldn’t detail the restrictions of after so some 200-some employees weren’t sure what kind of related companies they could work for afterwards and I forced the issue.
Neither of these were “can I be abusive to somebody for not hiring me, just to be an asshole, just ’cause I’m a bad person” but this is the only place you and others will go with it. And in both cases “don’t burn bridges” advice was issued to me as an absolute truth, as “let the employer keep the details of your non-compete from you and be unable to work in that field ever again; you wouldn’t want to burn bridges, after all”.
So again: Is there a name for it when you ask a question in the abstract, state it’s in the abstract, and people go “I know what this is; he’s asking permission to be the worst person possible; without evidence, I must now treat him as the worst person possible and correct him”?
I think it’s just a natural human instinct. We tend to assume that when someone is asking if something is okay it is because they want to do it themselves and are restrained in some way.
To be fair I never asked if it was OK in a virtue sense in the initial post. The phrasing of the advice is practical (you don’t burn bridges because you might want to walk over them later) and I was asking if it’s really practical advice for poor and poor-ish people with generic job skills.
@benjdenny
I completely understand. It’s just a human reaction to believe that people really are asking because a social convention is preventing them from doing what they want rather than asking a practical question.
The answer to the practical question, as far as I can tell, is “no, it won’t really affect you unless you’re in a small industry where names are well known”.
Granted. For the record, I hate this reaction; I think it’s at least slightly related to why Scott has to have anonymity to an extent, and ask people not to reprint his stuff real widely. “He’s talking about race or politics in a certain way; that must mean he’s asking permission to be a racist or the worst kind of political” is a bad and common take, in my view.
I think I agree with the your take on the practical side. The result of the last thread and this is my view changing into something like:
1. Late callbacks are a thing if an employee doesn’t work out, but for the most part lower-SES workers don’t have a huge practical motivation to not burn bridges.
2. Many people (not all) who give the advice are working from a prior that 1 isn’t true, and from a mental model that “burning bridges” is always equal to “unjustified yelling in retaliation for a normal, reasonably justified application rejection”
3. Many people who give the advice de facto believe that future job prospects are the only variable here, I.E. there’s no consideration of the value of confronting a bad player either in terms of the mental well-being of the confronter or in creating an environment with some level of consequences for the confronted.
That’s not refined, but I think that’s my priors on that moving forward.
I think “don’t burn bridges” is essentially just a super practical form of advice meant to convey something like “The odds of this benefitting you are much smaller than the odds of it harming you.”
Let’s say there are three potential outcomes of burning a bridge. Positive (your complaint is well received and motivates the company/person to change for the better), neutral (you feel a little better at the time, but long term, nothing changes and no one retaliates against you in any way), and negative (word of your bridge-burning gets around and other employers black-ball you).
The probability of the neutral (nothing happens) case is almost irrelevant here. The point is that the odds of this working against you are much higher than the odds of it accomplishing anything legitimately or meaningfully good (assuming that “I feel better for a minute because I got to yell at someone” does not count as meaningful)
@Matt M:
Yeah, my initial question wasn’t about what the phrase meant; it was whether the premise of “There’s probable downsides to burning bridges that are significant that outweigh the upsides” was as true as usually represented.
My stance is that it perhaps isn’t, and that “I feel better for a second because I got to yell” is an oversimplification that puts 100% of the potential wrongs done on the employee/potential employee, especially considering that “don’t burn bridges” is applied to everything except leaving with a smile like nothing bad ever happened. The same rationale, if applied to protesting, would say “never protest; classy people just work within the system and you wouldn’t want to piss somebody off just so you could have fun holding some posterboard.”.
No it doesn’t, the only thing it does is put 100% of your behavior on you and your decisions. General advice like ‘don’t burn your bridges’ can’t be highly specified to ‘don’t burn your bridges, but this is the exact line at which an employer has gone to far and doing something is no longer burning a bridge but standing up for yourself’, and you are using that lack of nuance that is inherent in generic advice to try to make people who disagree with you look unsophisticated.
Don’t shoot the messenger?
I think there’s an element of this in the situation where it’s just an HR person and you can’t/won’t find out how to contact a higher-up.
I’m a little conflicted about this, because one of the purposes the company has for the HR person is so they can insulate themselves from any consequences; it’s only the HR person who would face any wrath, after all. So functionally there are situations where the restriction a blanket “don’t say anything to the HR person, they aren’t the decision maker” means you can’t criticize at all, in any way, and the company will never face any words it doesn’t like.
That being said if it really isn’t something the HR person had decision power over, I totally get that yelling at a low-paid functionary isn’t classy and you shouldn’t do it.
In the broader sense, I think there’s a lot of options that aren’t “scream at the poor HR person”, and “don’t burn bridges” is in my experience often applied broadly to “don’t do anything but meekly take everything in every situation, in case you might need a job there later or reputation”. So I don’t think don’t shoot the messenger applies as broadly as I’d like.
For the record, I think I initially misunderstood what you were saying, and you edit helped me understand where you’re coming from.
I think you’re right, there is a lot of distance between “scream at the poor HR person”, and “don’t burn bridges”
This is a bit of a digression, but this conversation makes me think of the financial help guru/radio host Dave Ramsey. When I was 18 or 19, I knew nothing about finances. I found him very knowledgeable and helpful. 10 years later, I find a lot of his advice to be overly simplistic, or in some cases just plain bad.
His recommendations aren’t perfect but for someone who hadn’t developed an intuition yet, they were a lot better than guesswork. Once I developed my financial intuition, I was better served to leave him behind.
I think “Don’t burn bridges” is a decent heuristic for a lot of people. There are times when you can break that rule… but I think that the average person is well served by following it.
I don’t think that’s a digression, I think it’s super relevant, honestly. That’s probably going to change how I think about this quite a bit.
If you yell at the HR person, wouldn’t that make the job of the HR person marginally worse, therefore making it marginally harder for the company to hire HR people, therefore costing the company marginal money?
No, I am not assuming you are a bad person, I am saying you phrased your initial query very poorly. You started off asking about burning bridges but as an example of doing that quoted yelling at the person on the other end of the phone.
You tell me: does “if I yell at the person on the other end of the phone, am I the asshole?” fit into the category of “questions which assume the answer ‘yes'”?
No, unless you assume the other person on the phone is always right and the person yelling into the phone always wrong, or unless you are categorically against yelling.
My experience has not been that potential employees are universally the bad guys and potential employers universally non-abusive. It also hasn’t been that consequence and criticism free environments always foster good behavior.
Yes. I am categorically against yelling. Definitely so in a professional environment, probably so in a personal one as well?
Yelling is a terrible way of convincing anyone of anything. You’re never going to get your way just because you get louder. When you yell, you’re just doing so to try and make yourself feel better and the other person feel worse. Screw that.
benjdenny, you’re saying “No I am not asking for permission to be abusive, why does everyone think this is what I am asking” and then you go on to talk about how yelling into the phone is not always a bad thing and the only people who object are those categorically against yelling.
Can you see how people might get the impression that yeah, you want permission to be a dick?
I mean, if you make like 90 un-argued assumptions in the argument like you do and then hope somebody won’t catch them, sure. Let’s cover what we have to just, like, ignore:
1. My initial question was phrased entirely as a “is there a practical backing for this?” query. In that scenario, using “screaming on the phone” doesn’t function as a “is it OK to scream and moral?” thing; it functions as an example of something that completely burns a bridge. It’s not the only thing that burns a bridge, but it’s one that clearly does.
2. You are setting up all yelling as abusive; again, this assumes the other person being yelled at is some combination of A. Not a party with any power or authority in the situation and B. Innocent. Again, your premises are all built on “The potential employee/employee is always wrong here; the Employer is a flawless human. The only scenario I will contemplate is one where the employee is completely unreasonable in his anger and lashing out at an innocent, powerless HR person”.
3. Getting an impression that someone might want to be a dick is also proof they are a dick, and it’s super cool to then go “you are a dick who wants permission to be a dick! I’m sure of this because I thought it might be so!”
Put another way, your argument dies if any of the following are true:
1. It’s possible to ask if something has a practical, utilitarian benefit without planning on doing that thing. Since we are in a rationalist blog’s comment section where this happens a lot, you’d think you’d consider this to be a possibility, but nope. Everyone who talks about the intelligence gap is also a racist; everyone who talks about the practicalities of communism is planning to overthrow the proletariat and wants permission.
2. It’s possible for an employer/potential employer to do something to deserve being yelled at
3. It’s possible for a person to use a colorful example of something like “burning bridges” while not implicitly denying all other examples exist
You’re premise seems to be I’m a crazy rogue agent who, in his mid-30’s, has decided he wants to have temper problems but for unexplained reasons just can’t until he gets permission from commentors on a rationalist blog.
Again, just to be clear: You’re premise is that anybody who asks about the utilitarian value of an action is planning on doing that action, and that this is clear and undeniable. I think just that, alone, is enough for me to adopt the norm of not taking you very seriously.
What’s it called when you start off a conversation with a broad term but you really want to get into non central, possibly not even related, examples which you are holding in your back pocket for ‘winning’ the argument? Is this another form of the Motte and Bailey?
If you think responding with counter-examples when somebody goes “This is entirely screaming at HR people for fun, like a baby” is unfair play, I don’t know that I can productively convince you otherwise.
I do not see this as an accurate representation of what happened. As I see it you posted asking a question about burning bridges and it soon became apparent that there were several different definitions for what that could mean. A couple of people said you shouldn’t do X, which fairly clearly showed that multiple readers had an impression that the phrase ‘burning bridges’ meant something different to different people, with at least several people taking it in a very similar way but in a way that was very different. You then pivoted to examples where the employer was mistreating the applicant and there was some moderate discussion and some talking past each other and then it was over.
Until now when you posted this and basically accused people who pretty clearly had a different starting definition of the phrase you used of being intellectually dishonest because clearly your definition must be correct.
Here’s what I was replying to:
That’s not “we are talking past each other and have different definitions”. That’s “You are asking for permission to yell at people, because you want to be an asshole; don’t be an asshole, asshole”.
So yes, when somebody comes in and accuses me of a motive I don’t have and claims that’s the only motive really possible, I’m going to bring up counter-examples. And yes, I’m accusing you of intellectual dishonesty for ignoring that “we have differing opinions of the definition here” and “There’s only one motivation for asking this, and it’s bad, and you are lying about your motives so you can do a bad thing” aren’t equal statements.
This is what you posted in the beginning of this thread
Show me where a “significant percentage of people” responded with something remotely like this originally. Consider that if you are going to start a discussion with hyperbole and name calling then that is likely where the thread is going to go.
This is directly after the part you quoted; It both says I had little of this problem in this particular discussion, and that I have this discussion or others like it in other forums. You leaving out a part that says “this wasn’t a big problem here” and then immediately saying “prove that this is a big problem here like you said” is dishonest.
Alternative view: The decision makers put layers of sympathetic people between them and the people they affect exactly in order to protect themselves from the anger of those affected. Going along with that is giving the decision makers exactly what they want; authority without responsibility. Better, instead, if it doesn’t harm you and you can’t reach the actual decisionmakers, to rip the middle layers a new one — this may get back to the decisionmakers and make their life a bit harder, or it may make it harder for them to hire such protection in the future.
This is where a lot of my conflict is. I don’t yell at HR people for this reason, but I’m also very unsatisfied with “You should do whatever they best like because they have human shields” as a solution.
I once shouted at a gate agent over flight delays and before I began, I literally gave a disclaimer somewhat similar to this: “I understand that these delays are not your fault, but, the airline has placed you here for the purpose of interacting with customers, and that makes you the vector through which my anger must be expressed, so I am going to let you know quite clearly how angry I am, in the hopes that you will the communicate to your superiors up the chain of command how frustrating this experience is for customers.”
I have some strong sympathy for this. “If you don’t want to be yelled at, don’t work for a shitty company”.
Unfortunately, there are lots of ways to engage in retribution with the people who don’t have authority in the situation. There are very few ways to engage with those who have the authority. As you noted, the folks in charge like it this way.
I’m not certain how to change this in any meaningful way which doesn’t involve prison time.
I’ve burnt a few bridges in my time. I sometimes respond to “sourcers” (internal recruiters) with specific reasons why I don’t want to work for their current employer, rather than either simply deleting their message or sending a polite “thank you for your interest but I’m happy where I am right now”. On one memorable occassion I expressed my opinion of a planned policy change to my boss’ boss’ boss at the top of my lungs, in an all-hands meeting. (Didn’t get fired for it though.) I expect to give an accurate critique (though abbreviated) of my current employer when I retire from my current job, but that’s in part because I’ll no longer require references, and in part because I think they might actually want to improve.
Mostly though, I “leave for a better opportunity”, or similar, and the worst I’ll say is something like “I want to try a smaller/larger company for a while” – when I mean that size-related dysfunctions at my about-to-be-ex-employer have been driving me crazy, leading to a highly focussed job hunt. It’s safer.
I didn’t answer the original question, because I’m not in the relevant demographic. But now I’m posting to add my bit of detail to forms which “burning bridges” may take, without involving yelling at some random working stiff, not in a position to change policy.
This is why “Asking for a friend” was invented.
Imputing motives.
Good lord, this went so sideways with Deiseach deciding I’m 24-7 hitting HR people with a bat to resolve my inner demons I forgot what the thread was originally about.
That’s pretty much exactly the phrase I’m looking for and I’m embarrassed I forgot it existed. Thank you.
After reading all the meta-discussion, the phrase that came to me was “assuming bad faith”.
Can anyone explain to me what Baudrillard was talking about with the Tasadays in Simulacra and Simulation?
So I was trying to read Simulacra and Simulation and I got lost somewhere around the time he started talking about the Tasadays. The Tasadays, as near as I can discover, were a isolated tribe which was discovered in the 1970’s and then anthropologists decided not to investigate them. Baudrillard thinks this actually killed the Tasadays or made them simulacra/fake or something and I just got lost. Can someone explain this section?
Probably not.
With snarkposting done, I haven’t actually made it all the way though any of his books, but looking at what seem to be the relevant chapter, I think he’s saying that ethnology is the image he’s been talking about. But it’s weird, because I think this makes much sense if he’s actually talking about ethnography and not ethnology. Anyway, I think he’s saying that ethnology is the process of creating an image. For his stages:
it is the reflection of a profound reality – the ethnologist profiles the Tasaday
it masks and denatures a profound reality – the ethnologist observes the Tasaday changing in response to exposure to the outside world, and pretends that the ethnology he’s composed is representative of the “virgin” Tasaday anyway
it masks the absence of a profound reality – the ethnologist returns the Tasaday to the forest, imagining that by doing so he’s preserving the existing Tasaday culture, despite the dissolution he’s already personally overseen.
it has no relation to any reality whatsoever – the ethnologist establishes rules to protect the Tasaday from further contamination, as though they will change the reality. “Antiethnology” is established: the science of never learning more about the Tasaday
it is its own pure simulacrum – antiethnology ascends to prominence, becoming the object of the field of ethnology. The interest the Tasaday hold for ethnologists is no longer their actual character, but their “protection,” an institution totally divorced from the Tasaday or the study of them. The science of ethnology, therefore, ceases to be defined by the study of primitive cultures; instead, it becomes the mechanism of control of the culture in which it exists.
I think he’s also arguing that this actually does also kill the Tasaday, but I’m not sure that actually happens, and I’m tempted to say that Baudrillard is actually creating a simulacrum of ethnology in the text. Fucken gotem.
That was reasonably helpful, thank you. I get the feeling I don’t understand what ethnography or ethnology is in any meaningful sense, much less how Baudrillard is using them.
Crikey, this is taking me back to when I was a child and the Tasaday were a piece in my English textbook. So far as I can remember through the mists of time, the Tasadays were supposed – upon first encounters – to be this perfect Noble Savage trope made flesh, an undiscovered tribe living in real Stone Age conditions in the modern world. Naturally, all the anthropologists lost their minds over this and there was debate about “are we contaminating them by interacting with them?”
Later on, I think it came out that the story wasn’t quite as simple – the Tasadays weren’t a lost Stone Age tribe who had never been in contact with white people or the modern world before. There was some suggestion this was a fake or a hoax, but the narrative of the time-capsule tribe was quickly dumped. That could be what Baudrillard is on about – the reality of the Tasadays, whether genuine tribe or not, was over-written by all the ideas and narratives of the ‘discoverers’, back to Rousseau’s Noble Savage, and our idea of the Tasaday (as pristine uncontaminated Stone Age tribe) became the accepted reality rather than whatever the true situation was.
Wikipedia has the gist of it:
How did you decide to read Baudrillard?
I recently gave up on him and I’m thinking of reading Guy Debord instead, but I haven’t yet.
PS, here is the passage
I wanted to try some postmodernists and his name kept coming up. Probably watched too much Cuck_Philosophy on Youtube.
I read the Consumer Society. It’s slow and dense but good, although I’m a sucker for any anti-consumerist message. It’s definitely more readable than Simulations.
Are there any South African TV shows that are good on the level of “The Wire”? Anything close? (They don’t have to be crime dramas.)
With the caveat that I know I’m not answering the question on two axis, District 9 was set in and partially produced in South Africa. I liked it.
I’m watching The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time in several years and remembering how good it is. Along with some of the other movie discussion below, that’s prompted my question: How would you edit the Hobbit movies to make them not suck?
Here’s my approach: First of all, considering how much shorter the source material is than LOTR, there’s no way it should be a trilogy. My plan cuts it into two movies. The second high level point is reexamining characters that were added to the movie without being in the book (although perhaps are still Tolkien canon). Tauriel (female elf with red hair) will get cut entirely–the romance sub-plot with one of the dwarves is a distraction; Radagast will get much less screen time but probably still appear in a few places; Azog the defiler will be kept on as one of the villains with some modifications as discussed below.
First movie: It’s a Dangerous Business, Going out your Front Door
This movie will be their journey from the Shire to being the prisoners of the wood elves. The party stumbles into various perils in an episodic manner, and gets rescued by Gandalf’s intervention, Bilbo’s growing courage and skill, or luck/fate. Although the dwarves will still be somewhat bumbling (as they are in the book), the comic relief should be toned down–no one should forget that the dwarven exiles can be dangerous. One crucial aspect of my edit would be that none of the three big bads (Smaug, Azog, the Necromancer/Sauron) appear in the first movie. They’ll be mentioned in hushed tones to build suspense. Here’s an outline:
– Skip the prologue with elderly Bilbo writing his book
– Start with the party at Bilbo’s
– Keep the episode with the trolls
– Radagast can show up and mention the Necromancer, but it should just be a mention; skip showing his discoveries in the forest and especially skip him driving his sledge
– Rather than getting chased into Rivendell by orcs, the dwarves will just dispatch a warg scout or two then arrive there less frantically
– Keep the discussions in Rivendell
– The party will end up in the Misty Mountains more-or-less as shown
– Keep Bilbo’s encounter with Gollum, and his desparate escape from the caves
– The Great Goblin will still mention Azog’s bounty on Thorin
– The dwarves will still be shown making a fighting retreat, but it will be shortened (and any slapstick ways of dispatching orcs are definitely getting cut)
– The party gets ambushed by orcs (but without Azog being present) and rescued from trees just in time by the Eagles
– Keep the scene with Beorn
– Mirkwood and the giant spiders will remain more-or-less as shown
– The first movie ends with the dwarves being captured by the wood elves
Second movie: The Lonely Mountain
This movie will be less episodic than the first one and will involve a few key arcs rushing together to a climax (and also making it clear that this is a prequel to LOTR). These arcs are the way in which everyone covets the treasure in the Lonely Mountain, the relationship between Bilbo and Thorin, and a growing awareness that evil is stirring in a way that hasn’t been seen for most of the third age. Although this movie will cover most of what was in The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies there is enough that can be cut (especially the action scenes that were on rails) to keep it to a reasonable length. Here’s an outline:
– It will start with the dwarves languishing in the wood elves’ prison
– Flashbacks while in prison will set up the context: the dwarves being driven from the Lonely Mountain by Smaug and their battle with Azog before the gates of Moria (both these scenes were originally in An Unexpected Journey, iirc)
– Show Azog meeting with the Necromancer
– Thranduil, the wood elf king, negotiates with Thorin, giving the first glimpse of how coveted the dragon’s treasure is
– Meanwhile, Gandalf is investigating the Nazgul tombs
– Bilbo helps the dwarves escape in barrels. There is no running battle down the stream.
– They meet Bard and get smuggled into Laketown.
– The politics of Laketown also show how coveted the dragon’s treasure is.
– Meanwhile, Gandalf explores Dol Guldur and encounters the Necromancer/Sauron
– The dwarves travel to the Lonely Mountain and discover the hidden entrance more-or-less as shown (except that they don’t leave part of their party in Laketown)
– Bilbo’s discussion with Smaug definitely stays in
– There is no orc raiding party on Laketown, but Azog’s army starts marching for the Lonely Mountain
– The attempt to kill Smaug with molten gold definitely gets cut
– Smaug attempts to destroy Laketown but is shot down by Bard
– With Laketown a smouldering ruin, Bard leads the people to Dale
– The plotline with Thorin, Bilbo, and the Arkenstone stays as-is
– Gandalf gets rescued by Galadriel, Elrond, and Saruman, but this gets less screentime than in The Battle of the Five Armies
– The intrigue in front of the Lonely Mountain with elves and men laying seige to claim a share of the treasure stays in
– The actual battle of the five armies can be shortened (especially by taking out the sandworms, because we aren’t on Arrakis).
– The duel between Thorin and Azog stays in
– Legolas going off in search of Strider can stay in
– The epilogue with Bilbo back in the Shire and Gandalf talking to him about the ring stays in, as it sets up LOTR nicely.
The best thing is to make it as a single movie. Jackson was trying to tie it into LOTR and I can see why, because of Bilbo’s ring, but really the simplest thing is best: There and Back Again, Bilbo sets out on an adventure that he doesn’t particularly want and it turns out to be a lot more important in the long run than anyone could have guessed.
Leave Azog out of it completely, this just brings a distracting element into it. Reduce the part of the Necromancer, yes you need to explain why Gandalf is always disappearing just when they need him most, but you can do this in short scenes of the White Council meeting to discuss what is going on in Mirkwood. I like Radagast but I agree about the rabbit sledge being silly. You can start off with the light-hearted opening and then gradually let things get darker as they go on. Keep Mirkwood and Thranduil but don’t introduce Legolas or Tauriel or any romance sub-plots and don’t do Scarface Thranduil.
Smaug is good as is, agreed about leaving out the molten gold nonsense. Battle of the Five Armies doesn’t need to be extended epic and I disagree about Thorin duelling with Azog, I didn’t think this added anything to the original story of the King and his nephews dying in battle as tends to happen when battles are fought. The Moria side-story was a distraction because it only worked if you were familiar enough with the books to realise the importance of Moria and all the rest of it, but for someone who only knew the LOTR movies it was too much information crammed in with a lot of other information to be absorbed. Leave Moria out (I’m sorry to say).
It doesn’t need to be complicated more than it is, if you stick to one movie. Trying to make a trilogy did stretch it out too far and that’s where all the padding came in. If you do it right, you can still break everyone’s hearts in the end with Thorin’s death. And then finish up with the comedy of the Sackville-Bagginses trying to grab Bag End and Bilbo’s unexpected return from the ‘dead’ to send us all home with lifted mood.
The book itself kindof feels like two parts, “there and back again”. The long travel up to the Lonely Mountain and what happened there. Much agree with the rest.
In general, the Hobbit films were trying to be something the original book isn’t. The book was a light-hearted children’s tale that develops into a character drama at the end. It isn’t an epic adventure – otherwise, the dwarves would all be distinct characters, Bilbo would slay Smaug himself, and the defeat of the Necromancer would be a central plot element instead of being mentioned in passing. If you try to gussy things up to make the story an epic adventure (like Jackson did), the central plot will be “stretched thin like butter over too much bread” and then collapse under too much load.
So, I advocate a reimagining of the whole film marketing to a different audience. We won’t have epic CGI action scenes. There will be exactly two armies of orcs – one chasing the dwarves up the fir trees, and another at the Battle of Five Armies (which will be drastically shortened). Let Bilbo have his moment facing the orcs down with newly-named Sting (that’s a great character moment), but don’t linger on it since what really saves them is not Bilbo but the eagles.
Also, don’t linger on it since the film won’t be ending there. I entirely agree The Hobbit shouldn’t be a trilogy. If you can fit it into one movie, excellent.
Or if you want two movies, Movie One (“An Unexpected Journey”) should be the character quest I described. Perhaps it ends with the arrival at Laketown where Bilbo has matured into an adventurer and been acknowledged as such after rescued the dwarves; perhaps it continues further through the Dwarves unlocking the door Bilbo found into the mountain. Movie Two (“The Lonely Mountain”) can be the epic adventure; it doubles back to the White Council in Rivendell and continues through the attack on Dul Guldor while Smaug is slain. It climaxes of course with the Battle of Five Armies and the simultaneous attack on Dul Guldor – which in this version could be more epic.
If you want a third movie, make it about young Aragorn, perhaps following the fan film The Hunt for Gollum. Alternatively, make a standalone Scouring of the Shire, which I really want to see.
Oh, I agree to cut Tauriel, but instead make some of the dwarves female. It’s very possible in canon, I like it, and audiences will like it.
A) the best moment of the real movies was That’s What Bilbo Baggins Hates.
B) Both the Hobbit and stealable/unused parts of LotR have quite a lot of songs or singable poetry. (“Water Hot” is a favorite of mine.)
C) everything is better as a musical.
The solution is trivial.
We already have a good film adaptation of The Hobbit: the Rankin/Bass animated version. If you’re desperate to do a remake, a live-action shot-for-shot remake of that would be a reasonable choice.
Have you heard this medley?
I have; I quite like it. (Some of Hollens’ stuff is…I don’t even know why I dislike it, but it bothers me on some level, while still being attractive music.) But this one is just great fun.
Here’s a couple of good videos detailing how The Hobbit films were basically screwed over by industry politics. It points out how there are some parts of the first film that were in the spirit of the book, when it emphasized the camaraderie between all of the Dwarves, as the meat of the story is about how Bilbo eventually comes into his own among them. So the focus of the edit should be on that, and re-frame all of the pretty people as outsiders, rather than as potential co-protagonists. If there is to be a Tauriel-Kili romance, it should only be in service to highlighting Kili’s relationship to the other dwarves, and not really about the romance in and of itself (much less any elf politics nonsense).
Yeah, her analysis is quite good, imo.
With the very big caveat of my having only watched part of the first live-action Hobbit movies before walking out of the theater, I’d say:
1) Screen the 1977 cartoon instead.
2) Have a few extended slow motion scenes of Evangeline Lilly as “Tauriel”, maybe with some smooth slow jam R&B as background music.
I think that should suffice.
> 1) Screen the 1977 cartoon instead.
If I owned an independant cinema, I’d totally be showing all the original disney films that they’re gratuitously remaking right now.
So there was that time L. Sprauge de Camp and Lin Carter wrote a Conan novel whose Macguffin got conflated with a magic item from Marvel’s Submariner comic.
Comic books are weird.
Comics generally get weirder when they metastasize out of their normal settings into other universes. That’s how you get stuff like Doctor Who crossing over with Marvel, or Superman/He-Man comics.
Also, the whole Roxxon story is pretty weird. It’s fascinating how this one oil company gets turned into Marvel’s all-purpose corporate boogeyman, for everything from pseudo-Fox News to fracking.
True.
Oh, by the way, He-Man segues us into the issue of the Conan copyrights.
See, a few years after the Conan paperbacks (L. Sprauge de Camp & Lin Carter posthumously collaborating with Robert E. Howard), the copyrights and trademark were held by… somebody, and Roy Thomas at Marvel Comics paid to license them (this is how Thoth-Amon and his Cobra Crown got mixed up with the Submariner’s Atlantis and Roxxon Oil). This was 1970. De Camp & Carter wound down their involvement with Conan around 1977 with Conan of Aquilonia, a collection of short stories set chronologically between Howard’s The Hour of the Dragon and their own sequel about King Conan sailing from Aquilonia to the New World. That same year, a company called Conan Properties International came into existence claiming to hold all the Robert E. Howard copyrights and trademarks. In 1984, they sued toy corporation Mattel for creating He-Man while holding a license for Conan movie figures.
Despite not being able to prove a lawful transfer of intellectual property from whoever held it prior to 1977, CPI is still around trying to license Conan and engaging in lawfare as recently as 2018.
I’ll admit, this kind of stuff makes me think you might be right about copyright law holding culture back.
Turns out a lot of stuff from before 1964 is not actually under copyright, and there’s a list.
Are there any other general science publications that are pitched at the same level as American Scientist? Scientific American seemed to have that level of sophistication in the 1950’s and 60’s, but took a nosedive somewhere in the 80’s and has only partially recovered.
Science (the journal) is good, if you’re comfortable reading research articles.
Right, looking for something pitched below Science/Nature but above SciAm/Discover. American Scientist is at that level, just looking for something additional. The Science/Nature features/news sections are a bit like that, I guess.
Nautilus?
I like Science News. Used to subscribe to Scientific American, but agree with your opinion.
Re: woke Hollywood, I think it would be illuminating to ask why they’d never make an adaptation of Orlando innamorato/furioso.
The strongest man (Orlando) is played for laughs, which is a successful formula these days (see Hulk, Thor).
The most important magician is the Emperor of China’s daughter Angelica.
Orlando feels entitled to her love, which the narrative repudiates by pairing her with a common Saracen soldier, Medoro (discovering this is why Orlando goes furioso, stripping naked, throwing a hapless peasant’s donkey a couple of miles, and accidentally aiding Charlemagne’s cause by killing many people after swimming the Strait of Gibraltar rather than before).
The strongest warrior after Orlando is the woman Marfisa, who was shipwrecked as a baby, nursed by a lioness, captured by slavers, sold to a Sultan of India in a Persian slave market, and reacted to his attempted rape by killing him, taking over his kingdom, and using it as a power base to conquer six other Indian kingdoms from. She Never Wears Dresses, a principle that’s vindicated when she relents for her friends and is forced to fight a Saracen king who tries to claim this pretty lady.
It flirts with LGBT themes when Marfisa tries to live up to the knightly gender role by taking a lady to serve (she’s not really L, as shown by the fact she takes an ugly old woman and male knights laugh at her misunderstanding of knighthood, telling her knights only fight for what they find attractive) and when Cupid makes the Princess of Spain fall in love with the Christian lady knight Bradamante (her fraternal twin brother later learns about this and takes her place with the princess).
Needless to say, it has a diverse cast spanning the Old World.
So what’s the problem? The narrative expects us to sympathize with the Christian paladins. Supernatural entities from the Bible show up and Islam is depicted as false and bad (insofar as you can call it Islam when the Spanish and Middle Eastern characters worship Mahomet, Apollyon and Termagant).
Also, there’s the problem that if a studio did make this and it was a hit, it’s in the public domain so anyone could make sequels, toys, etc. That freedom is anathema to entertainment corporations. The need to create new things to keep up with changing attitudes to what’s offensive is good for this handful of corporations (and bad for people, who’d benefit from a shared body of traditional high culture).
Asking why Hollywood would never make an adaptation of a culturally obscure renaissance poem doesn’t seem particularly illuminating to anything except our own preconceptions.
Culturally obscure? Those two are the most famous works of Renaissance fantasy fiction.
And the basis for two of the Fletcher Pratt/Sprague de Camp novels.
Yes, I’m willing to call them culturally obscure in the context of 2019 US culture.
I must be in the top percentile for old literature geekiness (in the broader population) and I had never heard of it until LMC started mentioning it on here.
Calling something, “the basis for two of the Fletcher Pratt/Sprague de Camp novels” doesn’t exactly work against the idea that it’s culturally obscure.
Well I read them (years ago)!
Also (in a sidways way) for Ariosto by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro,
Dude, this was part of the Western canon until late Victorian times or perhaps when CS Lewis was born*. Bulfinch’s Mythology (mid-Victorian) treated it as the third leg of Western poetry/romance/whatever after Greek mythology and King Arthur. It was one of the canonical works of fiction Gustave Dore illustrated.
It’s still assigned reading in Italian secondary schools.
*Lewis wrote ” “Our oblivion of these poets [e.g. Boiardo and Ariosto] is much to be regretted, because it robs us of a whole species of pleasures and narrows our very conception of literature.” So we can place the oblivion somewhere between Bulfinch and 1900.
Okay, but it’s still culturally obscure in 2019 United States culture.
OK, so my complaint collapses to “2019 United States culture is degenerate compared to 1860s United States culture.”
Fair enough! Although our death metal is far superior.
Serious question here: I’d be willing to bet that more fiction has been created (and successfully preserved) in the last 50 years than in the entirety of human history previous. How is it “degenerate” that people prefer more modern fiction when older fiction makes up a tiny fraction of the options available to them?
That the last 50 years have failed to cull the 90% of everything that is crap is an argument against it, not for it.
I’ll give you that one. But “crap” is a subjective judgment. Vertigo is arguably the greatest thriller movie of all time, but it bombed when it originally came out. If it had been released in an analogous medium ~200 years ago, we’d probably have never heard of it today.
@broblawsky:
You may be right, but that also means 49.9% of fiction available to people is more than 50 years old. If people are picking all their fiction from the recent half, they’re not developing a well-rounded mental life.
I think it’s an interesting question when fiction passes through the Sturgeon Filter (the fish-trap of culture?). Are 90% of films people watch from the 1980s trash compared to the few we watch from Hitchcock’s era?
It’s also an interesting question how many works of the past X years you (the general you) think are equal to the Western or world literature canon before that cutoff.
And you have to read it in the original language as well right? Otherwise you are just a Philistine.
@baconbits9: Nope. Look at the conservative attitude toward literature in Johnson’s Britain: poets were expected to produce translations of artistic merit as well as original poems, because lack of universal access to many great books was strongly felt.
@LMC
I think your complaint actually collapses to, “2019 United States culture is insufficiently reverent towards 1860s United States culture.”
(INB4 “isn’t that what I said?”)
@broblawsky
That’s not a big deal, really. You’re actually admitting, with your last point, that truly good works are being consigned to the dustbin of history. Yet somehow we survive! So I think we’d get by just fine without Vertigo.
Art might not be necessary for human survival, but that doesn’t mean its loss isn’t a tragedy.
Time has a habit of doing that (though also plenty of worthwhile stuff falls by the wayside).
There was plenty of crap being produced 100 or 200 years ago. We just don’t read it today.
@broblawsky
So go mourn the 95% of stuff you’ll never have the opportunity to read. Seriously. Your Vertigo argument is blatant status quo bias.
@Enkidum
I don’t see what you’re getting at here. I agree that time does that, that’s my point; it filters out most of the crap, so reading the stuff that survives means reading better stuff, on the whole. I also agree that plenty of crap was published back then. It’s broblawsky who believes that something has changed, namely, that we preserve what we create better today than ever before. But it follows therefore that we’re preserving all the crap that in past generations would have been consigned to the dustbin. That’s a bad thing, not a good thing.
We only preserve the crap to make fun of it. There’s a whole brand of youtubers making a living out of digging out the weirdest, most obscure crap and then tearing it down in the public place for everyone’s saddistic pleasure.
These poems falling into American cultural obscurity happened long before any inkling of wokeness was ever dreamed of. And that cultural obscurity is what actually matters.
You’d be hard pressed to see Hollywood adapt Ivanhoe or The Ballad of Sir Roland ever again. They’ve been burned by the last Beowulf adaptation, so the thing now for period dramas of that age is original characters. Vikings, The Outlaw King, etc.
Besides which, what makes you think any adaptation that does happen won’t be woke’d up? Doesn’t the whole Wheel of Time business show that source material content is no obstacle?
And Beowulf had more cultural relevance because it was reasonably common required reading for high school English courses within the last couple decades (don’t know if it still is).
I’ve never been assigned Beowulf. I’ve seen him show up in a couple of old computer games (Lords of Magic), and he was also in a nonfiction picture book using Star Wars as a springboard for introducing kids to old mythology.
I saw the movie in English class, even though we weren’t assigned it. I also read portions of it later but haven’t read it through.
I was assigned Beowulf in the mid-Nineties, in middle school. In translation, of course, and it was a pretty loose translation too.
Class of 2010, and I had Beowulf in high school.
I read Beowulf in high school in the late 90s. Just small parts of it, I think; I recently bought a copy and it’s much longer than I remember.
I think the cultural relevance of Beowulf is greatly exaggerated. Part of the book was lost in a fire a few centuries ago, which means that there was likely only one copy at the time. This was a *very* obscure work that became well-known simply because it is (by English standards) very old.
I just meant cultural relevance in the sense that more people are at least aware it exists, and have possibly read it. In contrast to some of the examples given further upthread which hardly anyone has read or heard of. Not that it was a timeless tale that still rings true today.
Agreed that this is mostly because it is very old, which is the main reason why it is not uncommon for it to be assigned reading.
Sample size of one, but I had not heard of this before. I’m an electrical engineering student but I read about history as a hobby; classic literature not taught in high school or mentioned in pop culture is a clear blind spot for me.
The only ways I heard of Orlando Furioso were that it was reprinted in the Ballentine Adult Fantasy series and it’s part of de Camp’s Incompleat Enchanter series. I could be wrong about the latter– wikipedia says it’s got the Faerie Queen, but the de Camp stories were about getting into the wrong classic story.
Oh, and wikipedia reminded me about Sturgeon’s “To Here and the Easel”.
Anyway, we’re talking about things that I saw in the 60s and 70s, and that most sf fans (let alone the rest of the public) haven’t heard of.
This being said, there’s a chance– not a major chance– that someone will decide Orlando Furioso offers a good starting point for a movie or a mini-series.
First the Faerie Queen and then the Orlando Furioso.
The reason I read the deal Camp & Pratt “Harold Shea” stories that riffed on the Carolingian romances that @Le Maistre Chat mentions is because they were listed as part of “Appendix N: INSPIRATIONAL AND EDUCATIONAL READING” in the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide, which (as mentioned upthread) re-tellings of are in Bulfinch’s Age of Chivalry which is really common.
Frankly I’m way more familiar with those works than the anime, video games, and Marvel movies usually discussed (and I’ve really been feeling adrift and culturalry isolated among other ghosts haunting me lately).
Don’t worry Plumber; I’ll hang out and talk about that stuff with you!
So, Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser. I have the first six short story collections in two volumes and enjoyed them. I’ve been warned away from the seventh, The Knight and Knave of Swords, on the grounds that Leiber got hit by the brain eater near the end of his life and ended the series with some meandering Excuse Plots to show off the Mouser’s kinky sex life.
Thanks @Le Maistre Chat,
The Knight and Knave of Swords has some good bits, but you were well warned, there’s bits of what I think are now called “squicky” in it, and now is where I mention that I met a very frail Fritz Leiber at a bookstore in the early 1990’s, I’ve been feeling very sad and clinically nostalgic these past few weeks, and to justify my life to myself I’ve thought of the famous and infamous I’ve met, plus those I’ve known well who’ve met the famous and infamous, making me two or three “degrees of separation” between both Ronald Reagan and Joseph Stalin, the full list is unlikely to be believed but not bad for someone who never attended a University and who’s Dad was in jail the day he was born.
This doesn’t seem to be something studios object to in practice: see e.g. all of Disney. If it’s a hit, it’s a hit with your distinct aesthetics, which means merch people can’t legally copy.
I also don’t buy
as an actual blocker. This is also true of, for example, Arthurian legend, and that gets remade constantly. Typically I think adaptations just deemphasize the Christianity and remove the Islam (the latter being pretty easy since as you say the original source material was mostly just making it up anyway), or use a D&D-style “no monotheisms, just monolatries that give you magic powers” interpretation. You can also patch it more interestingly by giving the Islamic elements the Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy treatment (they’ve been turned into twisted caricatures by baleful Christian magic) or copying the way Neil Gaiman’s Beowulf treats the source material’s depiction of Christianity (the story as we know it was told by pagans who don’t really get it and also are lying to cover up their sins, here’s the real story).
The Matter of France is just not a set of myth anyone in the public cares about, and thus anyone is willing to adapt in modern media form. This was true even before woke Hollywood. This was true even when a bajillion films were being made about the Matter of Britain.
Even in France, all our modern retellings are taken from the Matter of Britain (I mean this is fine — we wrote half of it anyway). You’ll find plenty of stories and tv skits and books about king Arthur and Merlin and Excalibur and the quest for the Grail. But Charlemagne and Roland and Durandal and the Carolingian empire are strictly historical facts you learn about as such in school and then promptly forget.
This reminds me of how, apparently, India processed their national trauma over the 2006 train bombings by making a bunch of films about Indian expats processing their trauma over 9/11.
And more people probably know about the likes of Durandall and Cúchulainn from anime than anything else at this point.
There’s something to be said for how nations sometimes project their mythological veneration onto other cultures.
Heh, good point. I only learned about Cúchulainn and Bluebeard from hearing folks talking about that series.
I read my roommates Beowulf in college because I recognized the name from Final Fantasy Tactics.
Play enough FF and you can identify the names of various gods from all sorts of ancient legends and polytheistic religions!
Just don’t expect the real Gilgamesh to be anything like FF’s version.
The Shin Megami Tensei games are also good for this; I especially like the Persona series. Well, 3, 4, and 5; I wasn’t into Playstation yet in the days of Persona and Persona 2.
[META: Sorry to call anyone out and make a top level post out of context, But this conversation seems fruitful/interesting enough to me that it’s worth a new thread]
@watchman
I think this is the root of our disagreement, I would make the claim a (I’ll taboo the word baby) “developing human” is alive in every way the word could be used. I don’t understand how a late stage “developing human” couldn’t be described as alive.
It isn’t self aware:
Neither is a pine tree, self awareness isn’t a prerequisite for life.
It is dependent on its host:
So is a parasite. Parasites are considered alive.
It is alive, but in the same way the mother’s appendix or liver is:
It is a genetically unique, and separate organism.
It’s not able to reproduce:
So is a tadpole. Sexually maturity is not a prerequisite for life.
I mean… If you wanted to say a “developing human” should be treated with the same rights as a parasite, cockroach, pine tree, or tadpole, I think that is arguable, but to say its “not alive” just seems facially wrong.
So, you have successfully identified the root location of the disagreement, but you are embedded enough in the pro-life rhetorical position that you’re missing the pro-choice equivalent.
You are correct that the quote said the word “living”, but they are not claiming that the “developing person” isn’t alive. They are claiming that the developing person isn’t a PERSON yet. See -> “to do harm to a living PERSON to the benefit of a potential PERSON is clearly wrong”
Pro-Choice people, like pro-life people, agree that human persons are special and important and deserve rights that animals (not persons or humans) and corporations (not humans) and do not receive. BUT. Strong pro-life people say that an egg becomes a human person the moment it is fertilized by a sperm cell, whereas strong pro-choice people say that a “developing person” becomes a human person the moment they are born (which, by the way, has some theological justification in the Torah, IIRC).
Thus, the pro-choice position is saying that “developing persons” are not people, and it is crazy to engage in harm TO A PERSON (the pregnant woman bearing them). They are consistently applying the principle that the rights of people trump the rights of non-people.
Am I correct in thinking that you are a “strong pro-life” person who thinks that fertilized eggs are people?
Trouble there is watchman (probably mistakenly) used the ambiguous word “human” rather than “person”.
Human can refer to the species homo sapien, which an individual belongs to regardless of the development stage.
It can also refer to those factors of homo sapiens that set them apart, which various individuals may not yet or no longer possess.
Whether that abrogates all that individual’s rights is the crux of the moral debate.
Yes, the original comment was ambiguous. I was trying to steelman it, should have clarified.
Except that original poster explicitly contrasted “living person” with “potential person”, implying that a fetus and its mother are both persons and the difference is that the mother is living and the fetus is something other than living.
That’s a very poor choice of wording if the intent was to argue that a fetus is a living not-person, and while I would bet that it is just poor wording, it’s hard to fault souleater for addressing what was actually said.
I wasn’t trying to fault souleater, I was rather trying to clarify the ambiguity in watchman’s statement and then explain the pro-choice position behind it since I thought that was what souleater was asking about. I should have been more clear that I did think the original comment was an ambiguous representation of a common position.
Overall, No. I don’t think that correctly characterizes me. But Pro-Lifers say I’m Pro-Choice, and Pro-Choicers say I’m Pro-Life so YMMV.
I think that Americans are ill served by the Pro-Life/Pro-Choice dichotomy. I think that fertilization and birth are both poor metrics to decide who deserves the rights of personhood. Generally speaking I think the death or abortion of any living creature is a shame, and would rather we had fewer if at all possible.
I think a fair compromise would be
Government Funded implantable/IUD birth control. free. unconditional.
If not using birth control, abortion is legal in the first trimester
If using birth control, abortion is legal in the two trimesters
reasonable exceptions apply.
It’s not perfect, and I’m slaughtering some of my sacred cows here.. but I figure its a compromise most people can live with.
“Overall, No. I don’t think that correctly characterizes me. But Pro-Lifers say I’m Pro-Choice, and Pro-Choicers say I’m Pro-Life so YMMV.”
What are your views on this, OOC? (Ignore political constraints)
Most Americans do in fact fall somewhere in the middle, since there’s a group of 40-60% that support 1st trimester abortions but oppose 3rd trimester abortions, depending on the poll. The positions I labeled “hard pro-choice” and “hard pro-life” are both <20% of the overall population, but that's where all the rhetoric and heat goes.
"I think a fair compromise would be
Government Funded implantable/IUD birth control. free. unconditional.
If not using birth control, abortion is legal in the first trimester
If using birth control, abortion is legal in the two trimesters
reasonable exceptions apply."
Overall I'd be on board with something like this if an offer was on the table, but there are two flies in the ointment. First, how would you handle the inevitable restrictions and wait times imposed on abortion by red-leaning states? Their modus operandi is to delay, increase the expense of, and reduce the availability of abortion, even at the expense of causing a 1st trimester abortion to become a 2nd or 3rd trimester abortion.
A potential way around this would be to add "and abortion is a medical service which must be provided by any hospital that accepts federal funding of any kind, including tax-exempt healthcare plans", would you be comfortable adding that to your proposed compromise? And for women who needed to save up the money to afford the procedure, would they get an extension until they had the money under "reasonable exceptions apply"?
The second is, the first trimester is *very* short / subtle. It's easy to miss. Does "attempts to get an abortion the literal second they realize they were pregnant, which wasn't until week 14" count as "reasonable exception"?
> I think that Americans are ill served by the Pro-Life/Pro-Choice dichotomy.
Of course they are! Because Moloch!
It’s a lot easier to be successful in a political movement if you are able to paint your opponents as opposed to life or opposed to choice.
I don’t think it’s actually as simple as “Because Moloch”?
The two extreme positions are actually the two most simple and internally-consistent ones, and the big mass in the middle that is ill served by the Pro-Life/Pro-Choice dichotomy have preferences that would be very hard to actually put into law clearly and unambiguously. It’s a problem where if you think about it a lot you start being pulled towards one pole or the other, I think, unless there’s a giant camp of very thoughtful people in the middle who never get around to publishing think-pieces online about it.
@Hypoborean
That reminds me of the phenomenon where people who get serious about their beliefs become more extreme, not more moderate.
That it translates to political beliefs just as well as any others.
Abortion is a special case, because the democratic process was usurped.
There is no incentive for any extreme to compromise, because it won’t help them get what they want, nor is there feedback from voters to tell them that the public support isn’t there to get what they want. Politicians can stake out whatever position they want without fear of having to deliver.
I believe most European countries have legal rules in the middle, with no restriction on first term abortion, significant restrictions on third term.
@EchoChaos
There’s definitely a trend for more informed voters to be more ideologically “extreme” but in aggregate that’s more because they are better sorted to their side’s overall basket of positions (people in the middle often loosely hold a mix of “hard left” and “hard right” positions.
I think abortion is an unusually polarizing case.
I think there was ambiguity in his statement.
If you think a debate on “Is an 8.5 month old “developing human” a person or not” is a stronger position for you, I would be willing to engage with you on that instead. What is the intrinsic difference between an 8.5 month old “developing human” and a baby?
Do preemies count as People right away or do they have to wait until they’re 9mo from conception?
As soon as they are physically separated from the mother, they count as a Person.
A premature baby is a person because it has been born. Birth is the dividing line, because it’s a natural and unambiguous Schelling fence.
I get it has some value as a schelling fence, but does the baby really care if it’s in or out of the uterus when its terminated?
I think there’s some logic in the UK’s legislature, which puts the dividing line around 22 weeks, which is the earliest we are able to keep premature babies alive.
It is not natural nor unambiguous unless you are going to bite the bullet and say that cesarean sections don’t count as birth or agree to ban all abortions for development that put the fetus past the bare minimum of being able to survive out of the womb with medical assistance.
@Lambert
If the baby isn’t a person, whether or not it cares isn’t relevant. We kill livings things that aren’t people all the time.
@BaconBits9
Neither of those things logically follow? It’s very easy to define birth as “the moment a fetus is entirely outside the mother’s body and still alive”* or something similar, which means Cesareans still count as births and you can still kill fetuses up to week thirty-whatever.
*And I believe that is the definition that is used in English at the moment, since people who were born by Cesarean were (a) *BORN* by cesarean and (b) still have birthdays.
A women is full term pregnant, you slip her a poison that stops the infants heart but does little harm to the woman. Is this simply assault? Do you expect the general public to treat it as such, or to treat it strictly like killing a pet?
How do you mean? The proposed Schelling point is, “If it’s Homo Sapiens and it has a beating heart and it is outside of it’s mothers’ body, it is a Living Person with the right to keep on living. Otherwise it isn’t”. A Caesarian Section is a medical procedure performed on the mother’s body which, at its conclusion, results in a second Living Person. It thus has exactly the same moral significance as a vaginal delivery.
A late-term abortion is a medical procedure performed on the mother’s body that does not at any stage involve a second member of H. Sapiens with a beating heart outside the mother’s body, so there are by this standard no moral issues beyond “Is this thing you are doing to the mother’s body, something the mother consents to your doing”?
I think you are missing the point and insisting on trying to frame the debate as, “is a member of H. Sapiens at a particular developmental stage a living person?”, when the traditional Schelling point of “birth” is meant to sidestep that entire question. It’s a living person if it is outside the mother’s body, not a living person if it is inside the mother’s body, even if it is at exactly the same developmental stage in both cases and independent of how long its heart is expected to continue beating once outside the womb.
This is at best a mediocre criterion if the goal is to avoid killing “people” at a too-advanced stage of fetal development. But it’s a very good Schelling point if the goal is to draw an unambiguously clear line between fetuses that can be destroyed at maternal whim and people that can’t be deliberately killed. And since the whole point of this debate is that we want to put people in prison for murder when they kill innocent babies, and for that we need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt all the elements of the crime including “was the alleged victim a living person?”, the appeal of this formulation should be obvious.
@baconbits9
“A women is full term pregnant, you slip her a poison that stops the infants heart but does little harm to the woman. Is this simply assault? Do you expect the general public to treat it as such, or to treat it strictly like killing a pet?”
Sorry, what’s the context for your appeal to “the general public”? I thought we were talking about differing moral frameworks and their internal consistency, not appealing to the confusing, mixed, and hard to interpret views of “popular opinion”.
In a framework where personhood is granted legally at birth and not before, then yes, that would only be assault. This is still consistent.
In terms of popular opinion, people tend want to treat deaths of late-term fetuses caused by a third person without the pregnant woman’s consent as something like murder, but also tend to want to allow late-term abortions at the very least in cases of rape, incest, and fetal abnormality (depending on the opinion poll), which isn’t consistent with either pole of the debate.
Similarly, the large bulk of the American public is strongly opposed to 3rd trimester abortions done at-will (ie, excluding the conditions above) by something like 80-20, but also strongly in favor of 1st trimester abortions (by something like 75-25, IIRC), with 2nd trimester tilting towards also not allowed, depending on the poll (varies from 60-40 to 40-60 depending on the wording of the question).
All this explains why “pro-choice” and “pro-life” polls purport to get such drastically different results, because if you confine things to high level principle questions it’s easy to word a survey to shift that middle mass towards your side.
If you wanted to try to steelman the position of the general public’s majority position on everything, I think it would be something like “Personhood is conditional on maternal desire for the pregnancy to continue, up until sometime in the 2nd trimester, at which time personhood is only conditional on the pregnancy not (a) having major developmental abnormalities which would likely result in harm to the mother or result in a high chance of a stillbirth, (b) being the result of rape, and (c) not being the result of incest.” I think that’s a mess, which is why I argue in favor of the less popular but much easier to adjudicate “birth” position, just as you are arguing for the less popular but easier to adjudicate “conception” position.
I’d like some sources on the rape/incest one. Fetal abnormality makes a certain degree of sense as they may not be detectable until late term. But the rape/incest case would have had ample opportunity by the third trimester to get an abortion, and is much less defensible.
@eyeballfrog check out:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a27478439/alabama-abortion-ban-2019-reactions/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/24/rape-and-incest-account-few-abortions-so-why-all-attention/1211175001/
There’s a lot of energy behind defending a woman’s right to an abortion in cases of rape and incest, even among groups that oppose abortions in other circumstances. It’s a bit hard to slice out the category of “late term abortions” for this case, since that combination usually doesn’t get banned in isolation, but I’m extrapolating that the extreme aversion to bans on abortions in these circumstances would extend to there.
Support for the rape/incest exception at 3rd trimester is noticeably less than health of mother, but still quite divided. Not really sure what that second link shows–the last thing I care about is the opinions of hand-picked twitter feminists.
@eyeballfrog
52% in 2018 support THIRD trimester abortion when caused by rape or incest, lower than 75% for “mother’s life is endangered”, but higher than any other option including “child born with life-threatening illness”
So, it’s ambiguous but I was at least in the ballpark of right.
You used the term ‘Schelling fence’ and stated outright that birth is a natural and unambiguous cutoff. A Schelling point is something that would be agreed upon by a broad group without coordination, your statements directly imply that birth is broadly viewed as the start of person-hood. The example highlights that birth is only useful in that it is definition-ally easy* and that it skirts the actual moral problem and chooses a technical solution instead which will obviously not satisfy a significant portion of people and will require other technical solutions to paper over the lack of moral solution.
*its not really
Something that would be recognized as unique by a broad group, hence would lead to agreement in situations where coordinating on a common answer is more important than what answer is coordinated on.
There was ambiguity in his statement. Sorry I didn’t make that clear in my initial comment, I thought it was obvious.
“If you think a debate on “Is an 8.5 month old “developing human” a person or not” is a stronger position for you, I would be willing to engage with you on that instead. What is the intrinsic difference between an 8.5 month old “developing human” and a baby?”
The intrinsic difference is that society needs to extend personhood at some point, and birth is a much more defensible Schelling fence than “fetal viability.” The only other Schelling fence available is “conception” and that has a BUNCH of problems (including the fact that if all conceived babies are people the non-abortion miscarriage rate means we lose millions of babies a year to “natural” reproduction and we need to move to artificial wombs ASAP).
Quickening — loosely, the point at which the movement of a developing fetus can be felt by the mother, usually sometime in the second trimester — is a historically significant Schelling point. There are even some references to it in current law, though not many.
@Nornagest
Quickening is highly variable pregnancy to pregnancy and very easy to hide/fake though, I believe? I don’t think its fence could stand up to the modern extreme abortion related scrutiny in the US?
@ Hyperborean:
I don’t see why that’s a problem. Large numbers of people die every year, for all sorts of reasons. “If foetuses are person, then we lose millions of babies a year to ‘natural’ reproduction” (why the scare quotes, BTW?) is no more an argument than “If adults are persons, then we lose millions of people a year to ‘natural’ causes.”
@ Nornagest:
Quickening was significant because absent modern medical technology it’s the earliest point in pregnancy at which you can perceive the infant. Hence it was generally supposed that the period before quickening consisted of the blood and semen in the womb getting ready, until they coagulated to form a baby and, hey presto, quickening. It may have been a reasonable theory given the information available at the time, but personally I don’t think we should be basing our laws on discredited scientific theories.
@The original Mr. X:
“I don’t see why that’s a problem. Large numbers of people die every year, for all sorts of reasons. “If foetuses are person, then we lose millions of babies a year to ‘natural’ reproduction” (why the scare quotes, BTW?) is no more an argument than “If adults are persons, then we lose millions of people a year to ‘natural’ causes.””
I was hoping someone pro-life would ask me about this, because I think this is a very large hole in the “personhood begins at conception” camp that I haven’t seen discussed anywhere.
The rate of miscarriage for a natural pregnancy is somewhere between 25% and 50% (possibly higher; I’m not sure if these figures include fertilized eggs that fail to implant). If one honestly believes that the loss of a 4 week embryo is morally equivalent to the death of a one year one baby, then this has horrifying implications. This means that the revolution in reducing childhood mortality is only half-done.
It used to be, back before we had good hygiene and modern medicine, that more than half of all babies wouldn’t survive to see their 5th year. Successfully getting that under 1.5% (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/MortFinal2007_Worktable23r.pdf) is one of the triumphs of modern civilization, and the thing that has saved the most QALYs of any human technology (even more than the Green Revolution in agriculture). Before these technologies existed, infants dying to disease was thought of as ‘natural’: tragic, but unpreventable and in God’s hands, ultimately.
If we are losing 33% of “babies” before they are born, that means that this number of deaths (~2,000,000 / year in the US, since the live-birth rate is 4,000,000) dwarfs the number of deaths between age 0 and age 55 from ALL CAUSES (~385,000 per year, if my math is correct; https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/MortFinal2007_Worktable23r.pdf)
This means the problem is 5x the number of deaths from all causes below the age of 55, and significantly more than that in terms of QALYs lost.
The scale of the problem dwarfs any other facing our civilization, and could hypothetically be remedied with technologies close to our grasp: artificial wombs wouldn’t have the same chaotic variation in conditions that a biological womb natural does, and the embryo-creation process could also be carefully controlled to ensure that “babies” are not “naturally” killed by missing chromosomes before they are born, as so often happens now. Unlike deaths above the age of 55, which are subject to the forces of aging that are currently still outside our power to avert, a more controlled embryo-creation process using technologies that are small steps from one we already have access to could save 2 MILLION lives a year in the US alone.
So, to answer why I used scarequotes around ‘natural’: if you believe that life begins at conception, natural childbirth is too ‘naturally’ deadly to be morally permissible.
If this seems outlandish to you, here’s a smaller scale primer for your moral intuition:
If a mother decides to give birth at home instead of in a hospital after being told she is at risk of a difficult delivery, and the baby dies in childbirth because of her decision when he would have lived if his mother had been at the hospital, is his mother guilty of negligent homicide?
If yes, that same logic applies to “natural” childbirth for the millions of babies lost to miscarriage every year.
If no, how does that square with the baby being a person?
There is some level of risk that is acceptable in life. Some people are hit by cars and die. Do we blame all parents who put their children in cars? No, but we do blame those who don’t take reasonable precautions, like using modern car seats. And we definitely blame those who increase the risk for their own benefit, like drunk drivers.
Reasonable here basically has no objective meaning, of course.
Someone who has a natural childbirth despite foreknowledge of significantly increased risk of infant death is treating the baby as a non-person without their own interests. This is perhaps blameworthy, depending on the specifics, but there’s a large grey area which doesn’t extend all the way to the risk = 1.0 of abortion.
Someone who has a natural childbirth while getting medical advice, getting optimal nutrition, knowing what to do in an emergency, and getting qualified assistance is not. (Just throwing this out there because there preemptively)
People also die in hospitals from accidents or infection. Someone may make an incorrect risk assessment–or merely one that differs from the experts–without being said to disregard the personhood of their child.
That’s all a nitpicky fighting of the hypothetical as someone who teaches (well, assists in teaching) natural childbirth with our kid’s ultrasound pictures displayed on the shelf. As to the question at the heart of your post,
I would say that the death of the embryo is less morally negative than the death of a baby, but more regrettable than the continuance of a normal pregnancy against the wishes of a woman who invited it there. And also that I am far from convinced our technology is close to the point of replicating the process of human reproduction without embryo destruction or abnormalities in fetal development, and I anticipate a round of thalimide like failure from the first few iterations of artificial wombs, so while natural death of viable (big caveat–some may be naturally aborted due to severe abnormality, right?) embryos is regrettable, I doubt we are close to doing something about it other than encouraging the general health of the reproductive population.
@ Hypoborean
I am not positive I have interpreted you post properly, but here goes.
There is no ‘moral problem’ with death, everyone dies and its not a moral failing, but the nature of our universe. There is a moral problem with murder which is different, citing lots of people (or ‘people) dying is not an argument against calling them people.
You could also flip those same numbers as a justification for the pro-life stance. The harder it is for conception to turn into an adult human the more protected the zygote/embryo/fetus should be, not less.
The odds of even high risk births resulting in infant death are low
Accepting a high risk pregnancy at home vs in the hospital pushes the likelihood of a live birth from 99.95% down to 99.76%, if this is negligence then functionally all parental behavior is negligence. Driving not the absolute safest car on the road? Having a swimming pool? Having tall book shelves?
@Randy-M and @baconbits9
Perhaps I should have put explicit numbers on this to make the analogy clear. Currently, there’s a ~33% chance of a ‘natural’ pregnancy killing the baby, and there are (rare) cases of births with this level of risk.
So, the clearer analogy is, if a mother was in premature labour and had a roughly 1 in 3 chance of her baby dying without rapid access to a hospital NICU (not unreasonable for certain stages of premature birth — baconbits9 your numbers are ONLY for full-term births), and she was aware of this and chose to have a homebirth because it was more natural, and the baby died, would she be guilty of negligent homicide under a pro-life perspective?
That’s the current-world equivalent to someone then choosing to have a ‘natural’ pregnancy in a world with <1% loss artificial wombs. 33% is huge. It's not "using the wrong brand of car seat" high, it's "going drag racing with your child unsecured in the back of your pick up truck" high.
@Randy M
"I would say that the death of the embryo is less morally negative than the death of a baby, but more regrettable than the continuance of a normal pregnancy against the wishes of a woman who invited it there"
Why? What moral standing does the embryo have if it isn't a person? Forcing a woman to surrender her bodily autonomy against her will is an extraordinary request that is hard to justify if the baby isn’t a person. If it is a person, how is its death less sad than that of a baby?
"(big caveat–some may be naturally aborted due to severe abnormality, right?)"
Some of those babies would die in a miscarriage inevitably without human medical intervention, yes. This isn't a problem for a pro-choice perspective, but for a "life begins at conception" perspective, these babies dying is no less sad than a baby "naturally" dying of the measles without hospital care.
"And also that I am far from convinced our technology is close to the point of replicating the process of human reproduction without embryo destruction or abnormalities in fetal development"
If we're dealing with the death of 2 MILLION babies a year just in the US, that calls for radical investment, and I think we're closer than you think, especially with modern CRISPR technologies. In Science-Techno-Gilead where they actually care about this, I'm sure there would be a lively debate over whether the research must produce with minimal risk to test-embryos even if that causes additional millions of non-test embryos to die as the pace of technological advancement is slowed, but our tech is pretty clearly 1-2 Moonraces worth of effort away, so the moral imperative to try if you believe life begins at conception is fairly clear.
@baconbits9
"There is no ‘moral problem’ with death, everyone dies and its not a moral failing, but the nature of our universe. There is a moral problem with murder which is different, citing lots of people (or ‘people) dying is not an argument against calling them people."
I'm doing my utmost not to strawman you here, but does that mean you think there is no moral imperative to attempt to provide medicines to regions stricken by plague?
I'm not disputing that, under a pro-life lens abortion is a greater abomination, since mass-murder is generally worse than mass-death through "natural" means, but that doesn't mean that the second isn't a tragedy, nor that refusing to prevent the second isn't horrific.
I'm not saying that this is an argument for them not being people. I'm asking you, if you believe they are people (which if I understand you correctly you do), why their deaths do not matter to you?
"You could also flip those same numbers as a justification for the pro-life stance. The harder it is for conception to turn into an adult human the more protected the zygote/embryo/fetus should be, not less."
That's very much not symmetrical. Do you not see it? If the fetus is not a person, additional difficulties in the conception process are a concern if and only if they rise to the level of resulting in difficulties in producing people when potential parents desire to do so, and even then it's a minor problem, not a mass death. For most people, this logistical difficulty is not a barrier in having the number of children they desire (differences between actual and desired numbers of children are due overwhelming to economic factors, and in any case are small in aggregate).
Pro-choice people have in fact been responding rationally in this lens, creating IVF technology to help the rare couples who are struggling to have children do so. Note that this is clearly a pro-choice technology, because IVF creates dozens of embryos to minimize expense and then generally destroys the excess.
This is
hypotheticalan analogy, got it. In either case, I think I gave my response to that. Mother is being negligent, gray area, blah, blah.Given that IVF already creates dozens more embryos than necessary, I don’t see this world coming to exist soon.
Has every death ever struck you with the same number of sads? Morality in the real world is a bit more complex. We have different amounts of duty at different times depending on capabilities, consequences, relatedness, many factors. If pregnant with a healthy embryo, doing nothing special until birth will usually lead to a healthy baby. Whereas to save the otherwise doomed embryos, you are demanding we reorder society, upset the natural method of reproduction and all the risk that implies, with resources that could be directed elsewhere.
If a baby is never going to survive outside the womb on it’s own because of some gross mutation, it makes little sense to devote heroic efforts to keep it alive until then. Some number of spontaneous abortions fall into this category. I’m removing them from your hypothetical.
I have no idea what the first clause of this sentence is trying to communicate. I dispute the latter, and feel you did not address my point at all.
Why aren’t Effective Altruists focused on curing all cancer instead of installing mosquito nets?
Tractable problems first. Survival rate for a baby born at 25 weeks is 50%, and that’s not for lack of trying. We’re steadily improving on that, but it’s not an easy problem. We don’t have the technology for artificial wombs, and we are not close.
On the other hand, we do currently have the technology to shut down the Kermit Gosnells of the world, and the good news is we can use it even while we continue medical research.
But I think you already knew why people are focused on practical solutions to problems, rather than solutions out of science fiction.
If you are allowed to present detail after detail then yes you are at some point going to hit ‘probably negligent homicide’*, but yes in general if you are pro-life and claim that a fetus is a person then the mother’s behavior and damage/potential damage to the baby is up for discussion.
*I’m not actually pro-life or pro-choice as I have never figured out a stance that I can hold and defend well enough, though I have moved more toward the pro-life side in the last few years.
@Randy M
“In either case, I think I gave my response to that. Mother is being negligent, gray area, blah, blah.”
A 33% unnecessary chance of death is still a gray area?
“Given that IVF already creates dozens more embryos than necessary, I don’t see this world coming to exist soon.”
IVF is a technology from the 1970s. The pathway towards zero-embryo-death-artificial wombs runs through getting better at injecting genetic material (prechecked for viability with CRISPR) into an egg cell (created from a skin sample induced to move back into a stem-cell state). The parts of this are all available in labs now and just need to be combined and scaled up, hence 1-2 Moonraces.
“Has every death ever struck you with the same number of sads? Morality in the real world is a bit more complex. We have different amounts of duty at different times depending on capabilities, consequences, relatedness, many factors. If pregnant with a healthy embryo, doing nothing special until birth will usually lead to a healthy baby. Whereas to save the otherwise doomed embryos, you are demanding we reorder society, upset the natural method of reproduction and all the risk that implies, with resources that could be directed elsewhere.”
‘Otherwise doomed embryos’ is the same fatalistic attitude that could, and did apply to ‘otherwise doomed children’ in the high disease era. Also, “all the risk that that implies”? You’d only roll out the tech once it worked. You evidently don’t count babies with viability mutations as people, but hte “life beings at conception” Schelling fence does. Overall, this is pretty deep into a tangent here, but my point is that the Schelling fence of “personhood begins at conception” has radical implications that “personhood begins at birth” does not.
“I have no idea what the first clause of this sentence is trying to communicate.”
Gilead is the society from the Handmaid’s Tale, a Christian society ruthlessly oriented around maximizing reproduction to the extreme detriment of women’s rights. So Science-Techno-Gilead is a “life begins at conception” society that follows that through to its logic on the impermissibility of natural birth.
“I dispute the latter, and feel you did not address my point at all.”
See above for my points on the viability of the latter. And what WAS your point, then?
How accurate are your projections about scientific achievements when you are literally describing them in terms of Space Races?
@Jaskologist
In case it wasn’t obvious, I agree that, from a pro-life lens, abortion is a greater evil than ‘natural’ miscarriage. I even said that above your comment:
“I’m not disputing that, under a pro-life lens abortion is a greater abomination, since mass-murder is generally worse than mass-death through “natural” means, but that doesn’t mean that the second isn’t a tragedy, nor that refusing to prevent the second isn’t horrific.”
Where we are in this discussion was me attempting to point out a grave logical consequence in the unlimited position of “personhood begins at conception” which is often overlooked.
“On the other hand, we do currently have the technology to shut down the Kermit Gosnells of the world, and the good news is we can use it even while we continue medical research.”
At a macro level, there’s a significant difference between “having the technology” and “being able to pass a bill and then enforce it.” The pro-life movement has been trying to overturn Roe for nearly 5 decades now. If I’m right, these technologies are actually likely to be achievable before overturning Roe is politically viable, even if the very slight trend towards the pro-life position continues (and since we’re talking about 5 decades here, it’s a bit of a “squint and you’ll miss it kind of trend” … https://xkcd.com/1725/). It would be a classic case of “pulling a rope sideways” where you could actually make progress that wouldn’t be cancelled out.
Also, questionable marker on you using a criminal over current law as a metonym for all abortionists.
“But I think you already knew why people are focused on practical solutions to problems, rather than solutions out of science fiction.”
Where to start on this.
(1) Genuinely no, I think a lot of pro-life people are either unaware of or don’t think through the implications of this, or at the very least are complacent about technology’s ability to fix it.
(2) I wasn’t actually saying I thought pro-life people should focus on this instead of advocating against abortion anywhere, I was pointing this out a secondary logical consequence of their position that is underdiscussed
(3) Implication of bad faith much? Thought we weren’t supposed to do that here.
(4) Thinking you can overturn Roe v. Wade has thus far been the opposite of practical
(5) Even if Roe v. Wade is overturned that’s less than half the work, since a lot of states would keep it legal, see famous pro-life writer David French on making this point eloquently: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/in-a-post-roe-world-pro-lifers-would-still-have-a-lot-of-work-left-to-do/
(6) And in fact it would probably prevent even fewer abortions than that, since you can now buy abortion bills online easily https://plancpills.org/need-pills, and that’s BEFORE the pro-choice movement puts serious effort into ramping up a subsidized anonymous online site.
(7) As a result of all of these factors, not only is this underdiscussed it is probably something that the pro-life movement actually should put (at least marginal) effort into. Going from 100/0 to 98/2 has a pretty positive Expected Babies Saved value.
@A Definite Beta Guy
Clarify and rephrase please? I’m unclear on the question.
Can be. Depends on the circumstances. Like, what are the risks of hospitals in the area, how reliable are the statistics, and if we are talking laws, do we want to draw the line there? But mostly I was referring to the prior paragraphs with those terms where I laid out my principles.
But it does have the advantage that the latter is clearly wrong.
I mean, it’s an enforceable legal standard, but biologically, mentally, there’s no bright line distinction between due date -1 and due date +1 in the child’s perceptions or capabilities.
I don’t think they have the same moral claims on us as other people, but do have some.
I’ve made the point here before that positive and negative obligations (what you must do and what you must not do) are different. If there is a baby in you, you are obligated not to harm it; you are not obligated to save it in all circumstances.
Yeah, I think I’m better off not engaging in hypotheticals that lead with this.
That saving these people is not worth fundamentally re-ordering human reproduction at the most basic level, even if it is worth punishing people who take positive steps to harm them [that is, their unborn child] or display unusual negligence.
I think this is a grave display of hubris likely to cause significantly more harm than it is aiming to mitigate in any case outside of a thought experiment. Part of that harm is that I think human pregnancy in the typical–or maybe just ideal–case is a beautiful thing and it would be a shame to lose it. And also that I expect there to be myriad unanticipated factors leading to terrible complications. Maybe a fetus needs to feel the mother’s heartbeat in order to properly develop a circadian rhythm, and the first round is born with crippling insomnia. Biology is stupidly unpredictable like that. Another objection is, contra your Gilead fantasy of Christians trying to tightly control reproduction, this would in fact be taking reproduction out of people’s control and placing it firmly within the medical establishment/government’s control, and that’s a dangerous situation for anyone who fear tyranny. And who knows what the hospitals/bureaucrats are doing to your embryo for it’s own good while it’s growing in the artificial womb. For some reason all your children come out zealously supporting the ruling party. Who’d have guessed it? The enforcement of your extra-uterine birth regime is going to cause a lot of misery, especially among the poor. Or we can just sterilize everyone, right? That won’t backfire and risk the survival of the species. Do we need more reasons?
@Randy M
“But it does have the advantage that the latter is clearly wrong. I mean, it’s an enforceable legal standard, but biologically, mentally, there’s no bright line distinction between due date -1 and due date +1 in the child’s perceptions or capabilities. ”
The latter isn’t clearly wrong. If you think it is, I invite you to advance an argument that’s persuasive in my worldview.
Your talk about brightlines is true at birth and the day before and the day before and the day before etc all the way back to conception, and if we’re talking about “perceptions or capabilities” there isn’t a brightline there either. Hell, it evens runs in the opposite direction! If you are trying to use “human-like-ness” to defend the right to exist, then you could easily unperson severely mentally handicapped people, and children under the age of 6 months (when object permanence kicks in) or 18 months (when children become self-aware enough to pass the mirror test), or…
Whereas, if instead of getting lost in biology, you use the standard of “personhood is conferred by society, and it is in our interest to make that conferral absolute and unconditional at the clearest possible point to defend vulnerable people”, birth is a strong Schelling point that has the major advantage of also not horribly inflicting state power on the bodies of women.
“I’ve made the point here before that positive and negative obligations (what you must do and what you must not do) are different. If there is a baby in you, you are obligated not to harm it; you are not obligated to save it in all circumstances.”
This sort of distinction is no-where near as clear as it seems on paper. Withholding the application of medicine that would cure a disease — not doing harm or doing harm? Taking a birth control bill that doesn’t kill the fetus but causes it to detach from the uterine wall, resulting in you no longer HELPING it with the blood and nutrient supply it needed to grow — not doing harm or doing harm?
“That saving these people is not worth fundamentally re-ordering human reproduction at the most basic level, even if it is worth punishing people who take positive steps to harm them [that is, their unborn child] or display unusual negligence.”
But if the technology existed, and you were choosing not to use it, and fetuses are people, choosing not to use it is unusual / extreme negligence. Technology can move moral benchmarks.
It continues to baffle me that the Team which aggressively protests any semblance of unpersoning/dehumanizing the atypical(& minorities & women) is also the Team aggressively championing literally unpersoning/dehumanizing fetuses.
Like, flip the script and I wouldn’t question it. But the battle lines as-is don’t show much of the vaunted “internal consistency”
Hence why logic and compassion compel me to take the position, despite the obligation to take part in such edifying debates as this. 😉
By “getting lost in biology”, you mean “being grounded in objective reality.” It doesn’t really matter to me if what I find to be true is not regarded as universal consensus, since, first, I still what to hold to what is true, and second, I can’t effect universal consensus much if at all.
If you are just making it up anyway, what’s the point?
The whole “state power over the bodies of women” point is weak given that the state will kidnap or kill you for any number of other violations of consensus. Is being forced to carry an embryo to term worse than going to prison or execution because you smothered your cranky elderly grandmother after she became financially dependent on you? I’d rather be temporarily pregnant (or the equivalent discomfort) than have my life reduced to a cell for ten to twenty years. Yet we the state the power to inflict that punishment on bodies who kill unlovable elderly relatives. Why? Because we recognize their humanity and want to ground our laws on the objective facts of the matter.
I didn’t say it was clear; it’s a spectrum, like almost everything in life is. But it nonetheless is a spectrum with moral relevance.
Indeed. No doubt if my side wins the public debate, I will one day be regarded as a moral monster for not wanting to overturn natural reproduction for the sterile and safe mechanized version in luxury gay space communism or whatever it is kids are on about these days. Now I know what a progressive feels like.
But I think by the time we get there, or perhaps instead of getting there, we could instead direct our resources to determining the cause of these losses and improve the natural method without increasing the fragility of human survival.
@Randy
There’s a difference between objective and meaningful.
How many “Moonraces” are we from a Cure for Cancer, Cold Fusion, AI, etc?
I mean, sure, but you don’t think it is particularly meaningful that one consensus human person is basically indistinguishable from a similar consensus non-(human person) except for the matter of location?
That seems a fragile edifice to build your consensus on if you find it important to protect vulnerable person like things.
(Feel free to tap out if you need. I appreciate the challenge to my thinking you presented and that’s why I’ve posted so much.)
@Randy M
“Hence why logic and compassion compel me to take the position”
…the position that you selectively quoted to miss that it’s also compatible with infanticide?
“By “getting lost in biology”, you mean “being grounded in objective reality.” It doesn’t really matter to me if what I find to be true is not regarded as universal consensus, since, first, I still what to hold to what is true, and second, I can’t effect universal consensus much if at all.
If you are just making it up anyway, what’s the point? ”
The objective reality doesn’t give you any clear line anywhere from 5 years before intercourse to well after birth. You still need to draw an arbitrary line somewhere, and you’ve not actually tried to explain why yours is better than mine, and you’ve conceded that mine at least has legal and enforcement advantages. And speaking of made up lines:
“I didn’t say it was clear; it’s a spectrum, like almost everything in life is. But it nonetheless is a spectrum with moral relevance.”
That’s another spectrum where you have to place a “made up line”, and handwaving about “moral significance” doesn’t change the arbitrariness of the line.
“The whole “state power over the bodies of women” point is weak given that the state will kidnap or kill you for any number of other violations of consensus….we inflict that punishment on people who kill unlovable elderly relatives. Why? Because we recognize their humanity and want to ground our laws on the objective facts of the matter.”
And the humanity is precisely the point we are debating here. You seem to be asserting that humanity is conferred by having a single copy of the genome in sort-of-working order, even if you are a clump of cells the size of the head of a pin that hasn’t formed its first nerve ending yet.* I’m asserting that only humans are people on the planet, that people get special rights over all other classes of life, and that humans become people at birth.
Pounding the table about “objectivity” won’t make “person” synonymous with “human embryo”, even if it sounds like it does in your head.
*Since there’s no “brightline” between this state and a baby, as you say.
@Hoopyfreud
Yes, well said.
Sure it is. But it doesn’t seem any less stable of an edifice than the ones that say that a slavery contract can’t be legitimate, or that whales are worth less than people, or that parents can gaslight their children but can’t cut their fingers off, or that 16 year olds can (or can’t) have sex, or…
Tying back to an objective fact misses the point. It’s a value judgment. There’s a gap between is and ought that can’t be cleanly resolved by declaring that some strictly defined things are good, much less by declaring that the definition is more important than the goodness.
@A Definite Beta Guy
So, for reference, the Moonrace was under 9 years (1961-1969), and required peak spending of about 2% of US GDP
Cure For Cancer: Defined as afterwards humans nearly never die of cancer, probably impossible.
Cold Fusion: almost definitely impossible.
AI: Assuming you mean “make an artificial general intelligence at least as smart as humans”…>4 Moonraces? We’re missing a LOT of theoretical tools needed to explain how the human brain is so much better at learning from small numbers of examples.
Compared to other ridiculous scientific endeavors, we have been recently acquiring a LOT of the technologies to make artificial wombs possible (CRISPR and induced stem cells chief among them)*
*And CRISPR will be a useful cancer-fighting tool but by contrast there’s just…so many kinds of cancer. It’s an unbounded problem in a way that artificial wombs are not.
@Randy M
“I mean, sure, but you don’t think it is particularly meaningful that one consensus human person is basically indistinguishable from a similar consensus non-(human person) except for the matter of location?
That seems a fragile edifice to build your consensus on if you find it important to protect vulnerable person like things.”
Hoopyfreud already had a good response to this, but I’ll add:
We also hang other, less critical but still important, concepts on physical location -> this is the basis of citizenship and nation states. They are equally arbitrary but, like my preferred standard, still defensible and valuable.
@ Hypoborean:
Well, there’s your problem — you’ve got a false view of human motivation, whereby people (ought to) focus on problems with monomaniacal intensity to the exclusion of all other things. In reality, people are quite capable of recognising the need to balance competing goods. You might as well ask “If you think murder is so bad, why don’t you advocate transforming the country into a massively invasive police state where each citizen is under 24/7 surveillance? That would reduce the murder rate!”
Is it really in our interest to do that? Lots of societies in history have thought it better to withhold personhood from various categories of people, with predictable results.
“Well, there’s your problem — you’ve got a false view of human motivation, whereby people (ought to) focus on problems with monomaniacal intensity to the exclusion of all other things.”
You are very intensely strawmanning me here. I know the conversation’s getting quite long, but in two separate places I’ve said:
“I’m not disputing that, under a pro-life lens abortion is a greater abomination, since mass-murder is generally worse than mass-death through “natural” means, but that doesn’t mean that the second isn’t a tragedy, nor that refusing to prevent the second isn’t horrific.”
and
“(1) Genuinely no, I think a lot of pro-life people are either unaware of or don’t think through the implications of this, or at the very least are complacent about technology’s ability to fix it.
(2) I wasn’t actually saying I thought pro-life people should focus on this instead of advocating against abortion anywhere, I was pointing this out a secondary logical consequence of their position that is underdiscussed”
As far as competing goods go, within reasonable confines people try to reduce the murder rate, and the suicide rate, and the drug overdose death rate, all of which are very small in comparison to the death rate from miscarriage. So, the fact that the pro-life movement is no-where on trying to reduce the miscarriage rate either means that they haven’t thought through the consequences of their extreme position, or their “personhood begins at conception” position isn’t as water-tight as it appears at first glance.
Since the broader dialogue of the discussion is going back and forth on the internal consistency of the “personhood begins at conception” camp and the “personhood begins at birth” camp, this hypothetical is highly *logically* relevant, despite being *practically* remote.
“Is it really in our interest to do that? Lots of societies in history have thought it better to withhold personhood from various categories of people, with predictable results.”
Do you have an example case of an abortion regime being a slippery slope to genocide of people who’ve already been born? The reason why I keep saying Schelling point is because setting the line at birth is naturally VERY sticky. Whereas, we already have a case of a country that banned abortion resulting in a mass-death of women: Romania (https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/16/what-actually-happens-when-a-country-bans-abortion-romania-alabama/).
@Gobbobobble
“It continues to baffle me that the Team which aggressively protests any semblance of unpersoning/dehumanizing the atypical(& minorities & women) is also the Team aggressively championing literally unpersoning/dehumanizing fetuses.
Like, flip the script and I wouldn’t question it. But the battle lines as-is don’t show much of the vaunted “internal consistency””
Two things.
(1) Political coalitions often aren’t internally consistent, which is a messy concept that’s almost without meaning as your scope gets large enough because reality is complicated. When I’ve been talking about internal consistency in this discussion, it’s been relating to the actual positions *on this issue*. That being said
(2) You can make an overarching explanation quite a bit more easily than you seem to be implying. Personhood is a powerful concept that the modern world devotes a lot of time to establishing, defending, and attaching rights to. The stronger the concept of personhood, the stronger the protections for the vulnerable groups included under its umbrella. Having a chaotic, messy, impossible to enforce boundary for when personhood starts weakens the protections of personhood for everyone else.
Plus, the anti-abortion movement was historically founded and is still presently interwoven with a movement which asserts the slightly sub-people status of women in many fields besides this one, so defending women’s rights carries over to this fight quite smoothly.
Oh yes, my mistake — you’ve merely been suggesting that any pro-lifer who doesn’t support completely overhauling society to force women to use an untested technological means of gestation is being hypocritical.
Or else it means that people only have a limited supply of time, energy, and money, and many consequently make the eminently sensible decision to focus on one or two things, instead of trying to get involved in every single cause that might have some relation to their chosen one. Are people who take action to try and reduce the murder rate (by lobbying for better laws, better police enforcement, etc.) being inconsistent if they don’t also spend time at the local hospital trying to discover a cure for cancer?
I think the usual process is more that people convince themselves that “personhood is conferred by society”, work out that that what society confers society can also take away, and then apply that logic to whomever it would be more convenient to kill, both born and unborn.
Peter Singer and the British Medical Journal would both disagree with you.
We also have cases of countries which banned abortion and didn’t see mass-deaths as a consequence:
Ireland’s average MMR from 1985-2015 was 9
That’s worse than some countries with relatively liberal abortion regimes, such as Canada and Belgium (8), Sweden (6)
It’s the same as that of Denmark (9), another European country with a relatively liberal abortion regime
It’s also better than some countries with relatively liberal abortion regimes, such as the UK and Netherlands (11), and France (12)
Malta, the only other European country with an abortion regime roughly as restrictive as Ireland’s, had an average MMR of 13, the same as Singapore, which has a relatively quite liberal abortion regime.
Except when it comes to the right not to be killed just for being a girl. That’s proven somewhat harder to reconcile.
Also, “not being able to murder your own offspring” =/= “sub-human”.
@Hypoborean
1. Do you have any evidence that artificial wombs would lead to better outcomes for embryos and not worse? “Hypothetically” is not very reassuring.
2. Supposing you do, does cost per QALY beat cost per QALY of reducing miscarriages in natural reproduction?
1. Then your embryo-creation process would simply ensure these embryos never exist, not that they come to term. You’re suggesting reducing the miscarriage rate through eugenics.
2. What percentage of miscarriages fall under this category? Sure, deaths are as sad as any other natural death, but if they can’t actually be prevented, then they don’t belong in your “33%” estimate.
@Hypoborean,
As a favor to those of us in the peanut gallery, please use the blockquote tags for excerpts of others’ posts to which you are responding.
“Not like this”
Here are a few possibly useful thought experiments:
(1) Is it morally wrong to unplug someone from life support who is in a coma and is fully brain dead? I’m assuming most pro-choice people would say no. But now suppose we specify that, with high probability, medical advances in the next year or two will allow this person to be revived and return to normal functioning.
(2) A relevant question in (1) might be whether the person’s memories are destroyed. Suppose we specify that they are. Does this change your opinion of (1)?
(3) Does your answer change if the person had previously specified that they would like to be kept on life support in such circumstances and revived?
(4) What if they did not state their wishes, but you know that they *would have* stated that they would prefer to remain on life support and be revived if they had been given the opportunity.
(5) Would you elect to be kept on life support in such circumstances? Do you think most people would?
(6) What if the person in question is a baby who was born in such a coma?
(Full disclosure: I’m philosophically unsure about abortion, but lean towards its being morally wrong, and towards possibly existing future humans having moral status, to the extent that I’m not sure there isn’t a moral obligation to have lots of kids.)
Context: Strongly pro-choice
1) No
1a) I would say that it is still not morally wrong, although it will depend a lot on the cost of treatment. If a family has to beggar themselves to save a life, it is immoral to force them to do so
2) If a person’s memories are destroyed by the process in 1a, there is now absolutely no moral requirement to keep the brain dead person alive. The brain dead person and the hypothetical future person are different people, to whom the family of the deceased has no obligation to create.
3) IFF the brain dead person specified they would want to be revived under the memory-loss situation, it becomes moral to use the resources the deceased set aside for the process in order to maintain the body for the future person to inhabit. Nobody else in this situation has an obligation to expend resources to uphold this beyond what they’d expend on a normal funeral
4) If you can convince the executor of their estate that they would want their resources dedicated to preserving their body for this future person, then sure go for it. Same caveats as 3 regarding other people’s obligations to help
5) No, the cost to keep my body functional for the next person to inhabit it isn’t worth the likely cost
6) The baby has no memories yet, and isn’t a person yet so there’s no moral obligation to it at all unless the parents want to keep it around
Interesting. So destroying someone’s unique memories is not the equivalent of murder, even if these memories will otherwise shortly be instantiated in an individual (indeed, in the person’s original body)?
Or did your caveat about cost imply that you view this as analogous to a (potentially very expensive) medical treatment, which you don’t think people are obligated to provide?
For the others: would it be fair to characterize your view as being that the situation is roughly equivalent to respecting the wishes of the deceased with respect to the disposition of his/her other property? Here considering their body as such a piece of property.
Also strongly pro-choice. Answers:
1a) Not morally wrong.
1b) I’ll steelman this hypothetical to something slightly more realistic of “there’s an experimental treatment that might revive them that has been having positive results that you have to wait to access”…having trouble evaluating this situation since bringing a person back from brain-death is sort of literal magic. The point is, my current working definition of personhood runs from “when you are born to when you are braindead.” If a technology was able to reverse some categories braindeath already, then personhood would be “when you are born to when you are permanently braindead”. This liminal state is hard to evaluate, and would depend a lot on the circumstances.
2) If their memories are destroyed then there is zero obligation. You’d be bringing back a different person in a familiar body and you have no obligation to do that.
3) If the memories are being destroyed, then if that person set resources aside for that to happen, then you should carry out their will faithfully, but there’s no moral obligation to make it happen with society’s resources. If the memories are not being destroyed, then it’s more of an ahead-of-the-curve “personhood extends until permanently braindead” change in definition and they should be brought back.
4) If memories preserved, bring them back, if not, don’t.
5) Depends on the quality of life after being brought back. If my memories are destroyed, don’t bother. If my memories are preserved and it’s a good life extension technology, yes.
6) This falls into the clearer category of “unusual medical treatments able to save a certain baby” and should be done, since there’s no difference between a baby with no memories and a baby with no memories.
With all of these, there’s a cost concern. People in general are not obligated to drive themselves into penury to extend the life of a loved one, and if it’s socialized medicine costs of these vs. other life preserving technologies should be considered. In an ideal enlightened technocracy you’d be cashing all government spending into QALYs gained (including things like infrastructure and art, if you get a method for working out +QALYs from the net enjoyment of not living in brutalist concrete) and then making decisions that way, but that’s probably not possible. But the point is, there comes a point where being able to invest, say, $100,000,000 in infrastructure is worth more than one life (numbers subject to change by GDP per capita).
Basically my high level takeaway is that there is no obligation to instance new people, and I worry that you’re Pascal’s Mugging yourself into a nasty corner by thinking that there is. Human life has value, and all other things being equal more humans are better than fewer humans because human life has value and creates value through technology and art, but also the context in which we are confident human life has value is a thriving culture with the resources to have a robust defense of the rights of personhood, so steady managed population growth as technology and personal resources permit is highly preferable to unlimited breeding to do one-generation util-maximization that likely causes a lot of problems in generation two and possibly thus reduces expected integrated-to-infinity utility.
TL;DR Do have more kids than replacement, but like 4, not 40.
Now that this has been repeated, I will note that I think it is a bizarre conclusion. Obviously it will be the same person with amnesia??
Actually, I’d take the opposite position and argue that people do, in fact, “die” whenever they fall asleep.
On one end of the spectrum, “Never fall asleep.” On the other end, “Uploading to software as an em is immortality.”
First of all, Amnesia is not total memory loss in real life. There may be a loss of certain memories or abilities, or the degradation in ability to form new memories, but it’s not a completely blank slate. Comparing total memory loss to amnesia is not very useful.
That being said, if amnesia were total memory loss I would be comfortable saying that it is morally a different person. (I specify morally here because I recognize that there is use in having a legal definition of “same person” distinct from the moral definition)
Does hangry me die when I finally eat something and settle down? It’s a different mental state!
There’s a huge difference between amnesia and complete and total memory loss. Since this was a drastic procedure that resulted in total brain death for 1-2 years, I was assuming that “memory loss” meant “you have been wiped back to a blank slate”
The new person will have some correlation with the old person because some elements of personality are genetic, but I was assuming you’d be starting with a baby-mind-in-an-adult-body* if you removed absolutely all memories.
*Modulo whatever of the differences between a baby’s mind and an adult mind are a function of an adult brain being larger.
Funny story, i kind of believe this and as a consequence suffer from insomnia because i am literally scared of sleeping. Mostly cope with it the same way i cope with the mind-numbing paralyzing horror at knowing that one day i will stop existing forever. That is to say, i try not to think about it.
Hmm, I think even if I had no memories I would still be able to walk and talk, etc.?
“some correlation” is underselling it, I think. VERY HIGH correlation would be more accurate, since we are going even beyond perfect genetic identity here and leaving all physical aspects the same, relatives the same, etc.
The closest example of a “total memory wipe” we have is extremely advanced Alzheimer’s patients, but even then they still have fragmentary memories.
According to this (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-neurological-sciences/article/dissolution-of-language-in-alzheimers-disease/E74ABB988398B95ACB220CAE7AB6739D), the degree of linguistic collapse tracks the progression of the disease, suggesting that memories ARE tied closely to language. The last stage is “Global Aphasia:severe expressive and receptive language impairment; may be able to communicate using facial expression, intonation, and gestures.” (https://www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/ASHA/Practice_Portal/Clinical_Topics/Aphasia/Common-Classifications-of-Aphasia.pdf)
In the limit of ALL memories lost, then, I think the Alzheimer’s control case gives us strong evidence that all language would be lost.
““some correlation” is underselling it, I think. VERY HIGH correlation would be more accurate, since we are going even beyond perfect genetic identity here and leaving all physical aspects the same, relatives the same, etc.”
Um. What? You’d be trying to train a baby-mind in an adult body (which is different from the baby-body it originally trained in). What are the odds that that very difficult process would produce anything like the same individual? Inability to control a baby-in-adult-form properly could have all sorts of behavioral problems, to the extent that it would be much preferable to just add a new baby to the family if you wanted a “replacement person”
Hmm, that doesn’t seem right to me. You seem to be under the impression that all Alzheimer’s does is erase memories, but that’s not even close to the reality. The fact that Alzheimer’s patients lose the ability to speak in no way indicates to me that the ability to speak is tied to memories per se.
I don’t claim to be an expert, maybe someone who is can chime in? Aren’t memories tied to a specific part of the brain that has nothing to do with the motor cortex for example? I have pretty much zero memories of learning to ride a bike but I have no difficulty riding a bike and won’t as long as my bodily integrity continues. And that goes for many other things.
Again, there are so many differences between an adult mind and a baby’s mind other than memories. Is that controversial?
Anyway, we may be getting a bit off track. I interpreted the original post to mean the person lost all specific memories of their life, not that they were mind-wiped and turned into a baby. Is the reason people were saying it is okay to kill them because they thought it was mind-wiping and, if the person just had amnesia their answers would be different?
By the way, I don’t see any reason to expect it would be a “difficult process”, or that the person would not be even more similar to the original person than an identical twin. Given the abilities an adult has that a baby doesn’t (e.g. muscle tone) I assume it would be even faster, although again we’re wildly off into speculative fiction that’s irrelevant.
Being a thought experiment, one can alter the details a bit, and indeed this is useful to explore your moral intuitions and understand what precisely is driving your conclusions.
In the mainline hypothetical I intended that one would lose all their unique and particular memories — basically what makes that person “them” rather than, say, their identical twin. Whether this extends to things like knowing how to talk or basic facts about the world (general knowledge) doesn’t seem morally relevant to me, but you can play around with it.
Out of curiosity, why use a different criterion for starting the clock than for ending it? Why not brain-life to brain-death? Or birth to, well, whatever the equivalent of ‘unbirth’ is?
Actually, I’m not sure what you mean by “birth”, or why you invest moral significance in it, which is why I can’t generate an end-of-life analogy. If you literally just mean being outside of one’s mother, than there’s no real equivalent; I would have to understand why you invest moral significance in that moment. If you mean some notion of viability, then you have to specify what level of medical intervention you think is reasonable, and then apply a similar standard to the end of life.
Possibly, because there’s no such thing as unbirth? Nor any convenient equivalent.
Birth as starting point has a couple of practical advantages:
1. it’s an unambiguous point beyond which things are evidently and irrevocably different than before (you can’t go from being born to being unborn again),
2. the nature of this difference, namely: the mother is no longer necessary for the child’s continued existence.
Point 2 is key here, because after the child is born you can obey your personal moral imperatives towards the child without implicating the mother in any way.
Let’s suppose that you think there is a moral obligation to ensure the child lives. The mother, on the other hand, does not. There exists a difference in moral judgement and it is not evident – despite what you might believe – which of the parties is correct.
Luckily, we don’t have to choose! If you feel a moral obligation towards ensuring the child lives, grows, etc. – you can take the child and accept the moral responsibility that comes with it. The mother need not bear any burdens that come with doing what you think is right (those are on you, just as doing what she thinks is right is on her). You can go your separate ways, you with child, she without and each proceed according to your moral intuitions.
This is not possible at any point prior to birth as the burden of fulfilling your perceived moral obligations will fall on the mother, who may well not share your moral intuitions. The only way this can be justified is if we assume that you are a “master”, that is: qualified to decide for other people against their wishes, and that’s not a justification I’m willing to endorse (all men created equal, and all that).
Or to put it more bluntly: who died and made you king?
(No offence intended, but I really must emphasize what a big thing it is to say to another: you must do this, will ye or nay.)
With death we have no such neat, unambiguous cut-off point, so I expect the best we can do is “make sure they’re really dead”. Turns out “really dead” is also a bit tricky, so we need to settle on some form of “very unlikely to get up and return to past life”.
Faza yesterday:
Faza today:
ಠ_ಠ
@Faza:
Re: (1) — I agree birth is a clear Schelling point, but I don’t think it makes a lot of moral sense unless you think it isn’t really very morally wrong to kill a newborn (but we don’t because birth is a useful Schelling point). If you *do* think it’s actually morally wrong to kill a newborn, but okay to kill a full-term fetus (say 5 minutes before birth), then I really don’t understand your morality that invests such moral significance in whether the baby is physically inside or outside its mother’s womb.
If I were to try to think of an analogous end of life “Schelling point”, I would probably pick physical death. From birth to death — poetic.
Re: (2) Note that my comment specifically referenced viability. Also note that this is not the same as “birth” — fetuses are viable for most of the third trimester, and even earlier with substantial medical intervention — and viability is a moving target given medical advances.
As to the rest of your comment — it applies equally well to the morality of a mother killing her newborn. Do you accept its implications in that case? This is not much of a stretch — infanticide was widely practiced throughout history!
What if he doesn’t think that every morally wrong thing has to also be illegal?
What if he thinks it’s morally wrong to kill a newborn, morally wrong to kill a fetus, and that we shouldn’t impose the latter judgement by force of law because abortion-five-minutes-before-birth is a thing that is very rarely going to actually happen but the law against it would have very frequent and very harmful/dangerous second-order consequences?
Really, the whole concept of “It is morally wrong therefore it has to be illegal” is probably the biggest source of harmful and dangerous legal consequences.
@JS
Of course you are correct. I’ve intentionally tried to keep my questions strictly focused on questions of morality and moral status, because I’m interested in isolating one piece to focus on. But obviously there are many considerations here, which others have brought up.
For comparison, considered the famous violinist thought experiment, which explicitly grants the question of moral status to focus on questions of the nature of obligations to give up control of one’s body to preserve the life of another.
Personally, while I lean towards abortion being morally wrong, I’m less certain that we should outlaw very early abortions.
@ Faza:
Well, actually…
I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting this answer. So you’re saying there’s a moral obligation to do treatment X to save a person at the cost of their memories if they currently have no memories, but not if they have a lifetime worth of memories?
Okay, but what if they have *some* memories? What if the child was born, lived for time interval X forming memories, and then fell into the brain dead coma. How long would X have to be before there’s no longer a moral obligation to revive them? 5 minutes? 5 hours? 5 years?
Easy — there’s no such thing as a universal morality. It exists only in minds as a result of evolutionary pressure to cooperate in tribes.
Wherever you think your morality comes from, does it have an opinion on these questions?
What I’m saying is that there’s no such thing as morality existing independently of a human psyche. The same way that there’s no such thing as hunger existing independently.
The closest I can come to answering your question is what I would do in those scenarios:
(1) Yes.
(2) No.
(3) No; not relevant b/c I would keep them on life support anyways.
(4) No; not relevant b/c I would keep them on life support anyways.
(5) Yes. Yes.
(6) I would keep them on life support.
For the record, I don’t think I fall neatly into either the pro-choice or pro-life camps, but I’m maybe more towards the pro-choice side? I don’t believe fetuses are ensouled. I’d be fine with abortions up to the point where the fetus is capable of suffering or having an experience, and that’s a question for neuroscience and my answer for what society should accept would change with scientific developments. Right now, that point is between 8 and 25 weeks, depending on whom you ask.
Even if you’re a boring Darwinian intuitionist, it’s more fun if you indulge the thought experiment off the bat.
I believe you, but I can no longer maintain the same suspension of disbelief.
Sounds maladaptive
@Hoopyfreud:
That’s probably an unfair potshot. Having the ability to ignore patently stupid questions is very adaptive in many circumstances.
You don’t get “separate” automatically from “genetically unique”. Genetic chimerism — a condition that leaves a phenotypically normal individual with a patchwork pattern of genotypes — is pretty common.
My background isn’t in biology, and I didn’t consider genetic chimerism. I was wrong to imply genetically unique automatically means separate organism.
That being said, I maintain it is a separate organism in the same sense a tapeworm would be a separate organism from it’s host. I’m not sure under what definition you could argue otherwise.
In the very early phases of development, the closest biological equivalent to a fetus is a tumor, which is also genetically distinct from the host (but by a much narrower margin) and growing rapidly. Both are “clumps of cells”
Those stages of development are called an “embryo”. A fetus has fully differentiated tissues, and has almost nothing in common with a tumor.
@eyeballfrog
Oh, thank you! I hadn’t checked the terminology in depth recently and so had been coasting on the implicit definitions used in the parts of this debate that bubble up in the media.
I didn’t realize that fetus specifically meant post 8 weeks of development. In that case the word I meant to use (and which still correctly applies to my argument) is embryo.
I’ll quote a selection of the points of argument.
All three of the facts I quote below are true about the human foetus. Most are also true about human babies under the age of 6 months.
Depending on the definition of “dependent”, the statement about dependency may be true up to the point of weaning. It may be true up to the point at which the child can turn the raw materials of food into their own meal. It may be true up to the point at which the child is capable of providing raw materials for their own meal without the intervention of parents.
The last item is true of all humans up to the point of puberty. Again, this may, or may not, be later than the point of losing dependence on the parents.
The largest difference between fetus and newborn is that everyone within earshot can hear the newborn cry. Aside from that, the newborn likely has the same lack of self-awareness, complete dependency on parents, and inablity to reproduce.
Which of these is supposed to be a killer argument for either the pro-life side or the pro-abortion side?
Human life develops along a continuum, and crosses the borderline of self-awareness several months after birth. This isn’t a hard-and-fast development point: I get the impression that self-awareness is on a bell curve, and the median is around 6 months.
Another part of the continuum of human development is the ability to move of its own accord, even if self-awareness is not detectable. Human development crosses theat borderline (including breathing-like motions of the chest, thumb-sucking, and other baby-like behaviors) sometime in the second trimester.
Human life crosses the line of detectable neural activity and detectable cardiac rhythm midway through the first trimester of pregnancy.
Each of these stages of development might be a point at which the human life rises to the social status of ‘person’, not to be dismembered or dissolved in caustic chemicals at the whim of another.
Pro-choice arguments tend to assign person-ness at the point when a newborn infant can make its voice heard.
Pro-life arguments tend to shift towards the early parts of the development. But the fuzziness of timing of the stages of human development leads them to push towards the earliest point that can be distinguished–either fertilization of the ovum or implantation of the developing blastocyst/embryo.
The largest difference between a fetus and a newborn is that a fetus is dependant on its host specifically while a newborn is dependent on somebody caring for it, but not necessarily one specific person.
That always seemed like a weird argument to me. If somebody’s dependent on you, specifically, for their survival, that should give you a greater obligation to care for them, not a lesser one.
Plus, it’s all very well saying that a new-born infant can in principle be cared for by somebody else, but what if for some reason nobody else can or wants to care for it (say, because you’re the last two survivors of a plane crash on a desert island, and there literally aren’t any other people around who can look after it)? Would it be moral to kill it in such circumstances, or would the mere theoretical possibility of giving the baby to someone else render such an action immoral, even if as a matter of practicality you know you won’t be able to find anyone?
This is exactly my question with leaving a child naked and without food by the side of the road. It’s theoretically possible some kind soul will pick them up. In a healthy society, even likely.
That doesn’t make a parent who does that any less monstrous.
Agreed.
There is a more meaningful difference though: the mother must somewhat endanger herself to care for and birth the fetus, while parents of a born child need not endanger themselves to care for the child.
Even if it’s too dangerous for the mother to carry to term, the infant can still be removed with a C-section or induced labour, without the need for killing it.
The stronger argument, IMO, is that if you willingly acted to cause someone else’s dependency, you have a unique obligation to care for them that is not shared by random passersby. Prison wardens have an absolute and unconditional requirement to feed the prisoners in their care. Pilots, once airborne with passengers, have an absolute and unconditional requirement to safely land the plane (or e.g. delegate the task to a qualified copilot).
Absent rape, pregnant women get to be that way by willingly doing a thing that they know sometimes leads to pregnancy. Having done so, if they find their pregnancy has advanced to the “baby is now a person” stage (wherever that is), they have an absolute and unconditional requirement to see that baby properly cared for. And prior to birth, that can’t be delegated.
Which is another practical advantage to setting the “baby is now a person” stage at birth, at least for legal purposes. But if you find that sufficiently developed prenatal fetuses are “people”, then you wind up with pregnant women obligated to carry their fetuses to term.
C-section and induced labour also have some risks.
@eric23
As does abortion. I am not up to date on the relevant literature to be sure what the risks are relatively, but risk is a fact of life.
I’ll just drop this here: https://www.stafforini.com/docs/Singer%20-%20Practical%20ethics.pdf
See Chapter 6 in particular (but I would recommend reading the whole thing, it’s an excellent book).
One particularly relevant quote:
A Singer is someone who tries to be good.
I dunno, if there was a magic pig that was about to become sentient, I think it would have a stronger claim to life than other pigs.
Isn’t this the plot of Charlotte’s Web?
James Mackintosh writes,
and Arnold Kling adds
Wouldn’t this logically mean that any positively priced bond would be worth infinitely more than a zero percent bond, ie any bond is worth infinitely more than cash?
The Kling #s are wrong. Using his yields (0.55%, 1.1%, 2.2%) these are the prices of the Austria Sep 2117 bonds:
0.55% 217.26
1.1% 159.82
2.2% 95.99
(these bonds have a 2.1% coupon, so at 2.1% yield, there price would be 100)
If the yield was 0, then the bonds would be 305.97, which is slightly less than double the current value.
Only if you live forever?
Linidsay Ellis on the lack of new classic Disney villains. Villains can’t just be evil, they have to have a backstory.
Depends on how much real estate you want them to have in the story, and the format of the story. Sauron in the LotR films could be just a nebulous figure of evil (and most of the audience probably got him and Saruman mixed up), because he wasn’t really the point.
The Disney villain, however, is obligated to get a fabulous song to themselves, and probably also banter with their minions. So it’s more about what inspires the songwriter to put out a bangin’ villain song or the writers to come up with distinct banter dialogue, and a backstory can help with that. Then they just fall afoul of not killing their darlings, and keeping the backstory in the script, instead of just subtly alluding to it.
Have there been backstory-less villain songs recently on Broadway? Hadestown, maybe? Neither La La Land or Greatest Showman had villains.
Yes, and it was deeply confusing until I finally got it properly sorted out in my head who was who.
I mean, we get Hades backstory in Hadestown. Falling in love with Persephone, being abandoned by her, becoming Plutus the Wealthy One. So of his (I think) 3 songs:
Why We Build the Wall
Hey Little Songbird
His Kiss, the Riot
None of the 3 are about his backstory. The first is the best song ever and is about how he propagandizes the dead to think they’re keeping out the enemy when he’s the one letting everybody into Hadestown in the first place. Probably the best candidate for a “villain song.” The second is a seduction song, pretty villainous. The third is him contending with Orpheus potentially causing a riot among the dead. He’s actually kinda sympathetic in that one
The villain in Hadestown isn’t really Hades. It’s the fates. And their songs are about mocking the characters. Also the audience for being comfortable rich people judging fictional characters.
Is there a website or blog or something that keeps a list of failed replications in psychology?
It’s said that the biggest obstacle to banning assault weapons is the difficulty of defining in words what an “assault weapon” is. However, I think I might have solved it.
“An ‘assault weapon’ is any firearm with the following characteristics:
1) Is semi-automatic [meaning each pull of the trigger fires one round, and the user doesn’t have to perform any mechanical operation after shooting one round to enable the second round to be fired], and;
2) Accepts a detachable magazine, OR has a fixed or internal magazine that can hold more than eight rounds, OR has a belt-feed system, and;
3) Is meant to be fired with the operator’s hands touching two different points on the weapon.”
Criterion #3 distinguishes “assault weapons” from “handguns,” which are meant to be fired with one hand clasped over the other around the weapon’s grip, and which can also be effectively fired one-handed.
Noted that I haven’t listed any cosmetic features included in many assault weapon laws, like bayonet lugs and folding buttstocks.
There’s a bigger problem with your definition, which is why any of those features are meaningful.
Typically, it’s understood that if you’re drawing a category boundary between things that there’s some significance to that boundary. If I have a semiautomatic rifle with a seven round magazine, how is that different in any meaningful way from an “assault weapon” under your definition? It seems no less arbitrary than looking at bayonet lugs.
Why is the category of firearms that you’re actually trying to single out different from any other category of firearms such that they should be regulated differently?
You have to draw the line somewhere. 8 vs 7 rounds is a reasonable boundary, just like 18 vs 17 is a reasonable voting age.
The relevance of semi-automatic operation should be obvious.
Not being a gun expert I’m not sure exactly why two-hand operation matters, but I would guess it allows one to effectively aim at a target more quickly, which is relevant if one wants to quickly shoot many unarmed targets in a public area.
In short I think this definition seems to make a lot of sense.
And what relevance is that and why is it better than lever action or revolver?
The third-most lethal mass shooting in the US was with hand guns.
The shooter swapped magazines 17 times, without anyone stopping him during those reloads.
I think some of those cases will stop as people become more used to mass shootings and react faster. There was a shooter a month (?) ago that was stopped in like a minute.
Why do you have to “draw [a] line” on magazine size? Why not just let people decide for themselves how large of a magazine they want to buy?
It isn’t to me. Can you explain?
As a fellow non-expert, this really doesn’t fill me with confidence that you’re describing a meaningful category of firearms as opposed to just scary-looking guns.
When we come to these kinds of debates, I like to quote Popehat, because I really can’t put it better myself:
It’s actually even worse than this, because in the places where “assault weapon bans” have actually happened, they almost always are written entirely around cosmetic features that fail to make meaningful differences in the operation of the actual weapons.
So we aren’t just speculating that such bans might be implemented stupidly, we are pointing to history that they already have been.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with taking cosmetic features into account. Mass shootings seem to often come from incel-types who are insecure about their value and masculinity, and if making “scary-looking” guns unavailable might decrease the feeling of satisfaction and power they get from shooting, and thus deter a few shootings, so much the better. Honestly I would support a ban on all guns that are not colored bright pink.
@eric23
Your assessment seems entirely based on a stereotype, which seems invented by the media. I’m not aware of any study that found that incel-types are extremely prone to mass shootings.
Most mass shootings are gang-related anyway. Gang members tend to be very masculine. Do you think that they would stop carrying guns if you made them pink?
I’m surprised “incel” hasn’t been added to the autofilter
If you passed a law that all guns had to be pink, it would do very little to discourage gun ownership, but may do a lot to change people’s perception about the color pink.
There’s basically nothing you can do to make guns seem uncool to a huge fraction of young men. Whatever you associate with guns will see its coolness rise due to the association.
Your definition would include the Remington 870 DM and any of the other box magazine shotguns. I’m not sure how terribly widespread these are yet, but they’re definitely out there and growing in popularity.
I can see the argument for regulating high-capacity shotguns, but saying they’re the same as an AR-15 is questionable.
That’s not in fact the biggest obstacle to banning “assault weapons”. The biggest obstacle to banning assault weapons is that a whole lot of Americans really, really don’t want you to do that and will devote great political effort to make you fail at doing that and care about basically nothing else while that issue is on the table. On the other hand, you might be able to apply the word “majority” to people who want to ban “assault weapons”, it’s the sort of majority that disappears as soon as Donald Trump tweets about something else or the news shows a picture of a telegenic orphan in a cage or whatever.
You might as well say that the biggest problem with paying reparations to African-Americans (or for that matter re-enslaving them) is the difficulty in defining “African-American” in a polyracial world whose birth records aren’t reliable that far back, and go off on a tangent involving genetic testing to determine who is or is not properly “African”. And no matter how effective you are at developing a test for reliably distinguishing 50+% antebellum African origin or whatever, you’ll change the political debate not one whit.
You’ve just renamed “semi-automatic rifle”, minus a few exceptions like the M1 Garand, and modulo all the tricks people would pull to get around it (e.g. a rifle intended to be fired one-handed. Extra grip sold separately). The problem isn’t that the category of “assault weapon” is hard to define; the problem is it isn’t really useful except in divide-and-conquer gun ban tactics.
In that case, perhaps all semi-automatic rifles should be banned? Does anyone actually need a semi-automatic rifle for any socially accepted purpose, or can pistols and non-automatic rifles satisfy those needs?
No.
Semi-automatic and automatic are very different.
Defending one’s self and one’s family against government tyranny is considered a socially acceptable purpose by ~50% of the US population.
I would be interested to know what sort of scenario you have in mind here. Are you and your rifle, or even your entire armed family planning on fighting off a police raid? That sounds hard, unless you are living in a fortified building. And even if you managed to win an initial encounter, the government can double down and keep doubling down a lot longer and harder than you can.
Don’t get me wrong, I can think of scenarios where credible armament can make the difference in dealing with small-time criminals or hooligans. But against the government? For an individual or a small group? That sounds like a taller order.
@johan_larson
The reason that the recent Bundy standoff went so relatively well is that well-armed groups in compounds like the Branch Davidians successfully did damage to the government in direct conflict, which means that the government has modified its method to not directly confront anymore.
Note that winning was not necessary for this to occur. The Davidians lost rather horribly, but it meant that future groups able to credibly put small arms fire against the government aren’t attacked anymore.
Wasn’t the damage mostly PR damage by forcing the government to escalate to deadly force which some observers later felt was unjustified? The deaths of a few agents seems relatively inconsequential in and of itself, though that would change if this became a regular occurrence. But consider also the militarization of police due in part to them fearing for their lives from armed populace.
@Randy M
PR damage is damage.
Militarization is more due to the drug war. It occurred far too late to blame on how heavily armed Americans are.
Provided the victim is sufficiently sympathetic to the public.
Okay, but the point was, there are other ways for the government to adapt to armed resistance than increased deference. And the kind of armed resistance necessary to turn back tyranny will get that escalated response.
@Randy M
That’s what Reno thought. Koresh was a cult leader who was probably sexually abusing young girls. He is just about the least sympathetic possible person possible and yet the government got a PR loss.
If you take a PR loss to “cultist pedophile”, you don’t use that tactic again ever.
It’s a very special worldview where “forcing the government to change its tactics to more effectively deal with radical antisocial groups” counts as victory, let alone a victory for the proponents of gun rights.
@Machine Interface
I am sympathetic to neither Koresh nor the Bundys.
However, government declaring those opposed to them as “radical antisocial groups” and eradicating them is a time-honored method of tyranny. If Americans being armed prevents that even for those we all agree are awful, that is a major win for us.
Did any individual infantryman storming Normandy expect to defeat the entire German army?
No. They expected to make an individual contribution that would assist in the overall effort, quite probably at the cost of their own life.
That’s how resisting a tyrannical government works. Whether it’s a foreign one or your own doesn’t really change the math all that much.
Koresh is the definitive example of why some people do, in fact, need stockpiles of military grade weapons.
johan_larson-
Speaking only for myself, who supports the second amendment but does not own a gun, I don’t think most people seriously imagine that an individual is going to hold off government tyranny single-handedly, at least not for very long. But if, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the populace to rise up against government tyranny, it will be really helpful if the populace has weapons and knows how to use them. Moreover, that danger to potential tyrants might well make it unnecessary ever to do so.
With regard to tyranny, owning a gun is like voting. It works (only) if enough people do it, and take it seriously.
All of this PLUS the fact that ceding the right to the government to categorically ban something creates the framework that expedites the rise of authoritarianism.
If “radical antisocial groups” means people who want to go off into the middle of nowhere and mind their own business(*), and the government’s previous tactics were “Respect Mah Authoritah or DIE!”, then yes, forcing the government to change its tactics is a win for anyone who values anything resembling liberty.
Forcing the government to reconsider its position of killing those insufficiently respectful of its authority, would seem to be a central example of the kind of victory gun-rights proponents have been seeking since 1775.
* In the case of Koresh et al, there’s at least a semi-plausible case that Koresh had gone off into the wilderness to mind the intimate business of unwilling children, but the Texas authorities specifically charged with that had investigated the issue and concluded it was unfounded, ditto the one about Koresh killing rival cult leaders. They used the radical law enforcement technique of knocking on the front door and saying “we really need to talk about this”, with good results. The Federal authorities who kicked down the door and threw in grenades only retroactively invoked allegations of child abuse as an excuse for their actions.
This. I worry a lot about the implications of the second amendment being abridged/ignored, just as legal precedent. Even putting aside all of the “the second amendment is what guarantees our freedoms in the sense that so long as we’re armed, the government will be afraid of us and won’t abridge the other ones” talk… the second amendment is about as explicitly defined of a protection as exists. It’s right there in the bill of rights. SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.
Any legal ruling that allows something like “except if we really think not infringing it would be scary” that can be applied to the second amendment can just as easily be applied to any other amendment or right you think you have.
If they can take away that one, they can take away all the other ones too. If you think the bill of rights deserves to be taken seriously, this is a big deal. If you think it’s just a polite suggestion that we can easily ignore so long as the President assures us that it’s really important we ignore it, then fine…
I mean, if we’re quoting the bill of rights, I’d like to highlight the WELL REGULATED part.
On it’s face the 2nd amendment is ambiguous and your chosen interpretation of it has only been case law for around a decade.
Well regulated is not describing the right to arms, but rather the militia, which is composed of all able bodied adult males. The militia is only mentioned as a background justifying why the right to bear arms is mentioned.
Also “regulated” does not necessarily mean “restricted by the government.”
MY interpretation of the second amendment is that each and every gun law is an unconstitutional infringement. All of them. That was, in fact, the favored interpretation, up until the southern states decided that they needed to somehow restrict blacks from being able to defend themselves with weapons, and gun control in the US was born.
@Aftagley: it’s hard for the populace to form a militia, well-regulated or otherwise, if you ban guns appropriate for soldiers.
@Matt M:
Cite? By how long does this predate the “make it illegal to own a machine gun without a license, then refuse to print license stickers” law?
@Aftagley
The militia is well regulated. The right to bear arms is not.
Edit: Ninja-ed a lot.
Sure, maybe now those two clauses are treated as unrelated to each other, but I disagree with that interpretation. Furthermore, if you look at US V. Miller it’s clear that at some point the dominant thought was that the second amendment gave citizens the right to bear arms only in the context of their ability to participate in such a militia. Quote from the opinion of the supreme court:
It’s clear that for a long time the consensus was that owning guns that did not make sense in the context of having a regular militia was not allowed. Thus, implicitly, at some point the federal government believed it had the capacity to regulate what guns could be sold.
@Aftagley
I sincerely doubt that is the way that the left wants to go in that interpretation as the current infantry light weapon is the M-4, which is a select fire short barreled rifle.
Given that, it would be illegal to ban the ownership of such items. This is SUBSTANTIALLY less regulation than we have now.
Look, none of this is the point.
The point is that if they can come up with bizarre semantics games to ignore the bill of rights on the 2nd amendment, they could just as easily do so with the 1st amendment. And they could even more easily do it with implied rights (such as the right to privacy, which is the justification for protecting abortion).
That is a valid reason to care about protecting the 2nd amendment, even if you don’t give a single crap about guns yourself, and even if you think the private ownership of guns is actively bad/harmful.
Only if your framework is “the militia has to have access to the same exact weapons as the regular army.” I’d argue that since the drafters of the constitution were vehemently opposed to the idea of a standing army, it’s not useful to speculate how they’d want their militia’s armed in relation to anything else. The ability to well regulate our militia gives the people’s representatives in government the explicit authority to regulate.
I don’t see why it would be too far out of line for the federal government to pass a list of weapons that are allowable for the militia and restrict the sale of weapons that aren’t on that list.
Hell, while we’re at it, we could chose to exercise are power to regulate the militia in terms of assessing potential applicants’ (read, prospective gun owners’) mental stability, criminal history, etc.
edit: @MattM
That’s only the case if I agree with your interpretation of the 2nd amendment. If I don’t, then the slippery slope doesn’t exist.
No, this is still the wrong way of looking at it.
Your logic is only correct if you believe the second amendment is completely unique among all other amendments/rights in being overly vague and not explicitly protected. You have to believe that it is the only amendment where clever judges have enough wiggle room to “interpret” it in a wide variety of ever-changing ways.
And I’d suggest to you that we already have ample evidence to disprove this. See also: We can regulate speech if it’s “fire in a crowded theater” (but actually it’s literature speaking out against the military draft). It’s worth opposing that sort of abridgement of the first amendment even if you are totally in favor of the draft!
I’m more on the pro-2A side here, but this isn’t a good history of the amendment. Federal firearms laws date to the mid-1800s — when there was an attempt to ban repeating handguns cheaper than the powerful and costly Army and Navy revolvers — and local regulation was common quite early. The NFA was passed in the early 20th century, and IIRC was billed as disarming Al Capone types. Laws targeting Bowie and other fighting knives, too, were very common in the first half of the country’s existence. Firearms laws post-1960 do have a lot to do with race relations, but that’s only part of the story.
Amusingly, though, those early laws generally sought to pass 2A scrutiny by banning weapons that weren’t thought to have military uses.
They, of course, did at one point decide that they could abridge the 1st Amendment using this exact logic–anti-war leafleting was equivalent to “shouting fire in a crowded theater” and could be banned on those grounds, text of the amendment be damned.
Right, because the rest of the Bill of Rights is completely clear and unambiguous. That’s why they explicitly defined what counted as excessive bail in the 8th Amendment and set out explicit timelines for prosecution in the 6th.
Do you have a cite for that as a Federal law, or serious proposal? There were definitely State laws to that effect – in the reconstruction-era South, when the previously nigh-universal sentiment that every free man had the right to be armed and that this right was indeed protected by the 2nd Amendment suddenly sprouted an “…except for the darkies, nobody ever meant for them to be armed, and if we can’t enslave them we’d better make sure they don’t have guns” clause.
Well, in some parts at least. And maybe some Southern senator tried to introduce that bill at the Federal level so that Yankee factory owners couldn’t sell handguns that colored folk could afford, but if that’s all you’ve got, then I am unimpressed by your precedent.
Contra the stereotype Hollywood created when it was rather more Red tribe, local gun laws could be strict in the post-Civil War American West. (Which is rather less relevant than the South for the racial motivation being proposed.) Unfortunately I’m not familiar with the legal theory behind this: the 2nd and 14th Amendments existed but we’re talking about local laws in a time when some of these places were in states and some in territories.
There is literally an entire group of people that think free speech has been “weaponized.” I really don’t understand how people cannot connect the dots that many of the same people that want to ban “assault weapons” also want to ban “Assault speech.”
And that since “Assault Weapons” has expanded to include ALL SEMI-AUTOMATIC RIFLES in some nations ALREADY, that “Assault Speech” is going to expand in the same way.
What do you mean by “such a militia”?
Because if you’re thinking “National Guard”, that’s not it. The
militia is, by current statute(*) and common law, basically the entire collective body of the population capable of bearing arms in the national defense – including defense against local tyranny. The Federal Government can regulate this body collectively, it can prescribe training standards, it can call some or all of its members to arms in time of war, and some of this is discussed elsewhere in the Constitution.
But it by definition cannot dissolve the militia (short of genocide), and by law it cannot disarm it. If the government chooses to call up or allow only a fraction of the body of the population capable of bearing arms for service in the National Guard, then the whole body nonetheless remains the Militia. And their right to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, period. That’s the law. Arguing “We are only prohibited from banning weapons if the subject of the ban is part of the Militia, and since we have banned them from having arms they cannot bear arms in defense of the nation and so they are not part of the Militia and it is thus OK for us to ban them from having arms”, gets you nowhere.
Per Miller, you can ban or restrict people from owning arms that are not at all suitable for the collective defense of the nation. Per Heller, individual self-defense gets added to that list. So if your reason for banning a gun is that e.g. mass harvesting of waterfowl is ecologically unsustainable and therefore we can’t have punt guns outside of licensed collections, OK, fine. But if your reason for banning a gun is that it is a Deadly Weapon of Battle and War, then you’re squarely in Miller/Heller protected territory, even if the person who insists they have a right to own it isn’t wearing a uniform.
* The present statute excludes women, unless they have enlisted in the National Guard, so I suppose you might be able to sneak in an “assault weapon” ban narrowly applied to female civilians. I double-dog dare you to try it.
Well, um, that’d certainly be one way for the government to elect a new people.
My point was that cults with guns have had the effect of already priming the US government to find better methods to deal with groups they want to neutralize. In effect, what I am saying, if ever there is an armed insurrection, the insurrectionists have already lost the element of surprise because the government has already developped tactics to deal with insurrectionists.
Basically armed radicals have made all future armed resistance less effective by vaccinating federal forces.
QED, people should never resist tyranny or oppression by any means, because doing so would teach tyrants to counter the means of resistance.
Or is the plan that all outgroups should refrain from resisting oppression, so that the first time your ingroup feels oppressed you can resist with the full element of surprise. In which case, oh hell no we’re not doing that.
Where does this “should” come from? I believe I make no secret of my deep moral anti-realism. Yet so often I see people deriving “should” statements from my observations. This is weird.
As for the point at hand, I simply observe that no other government on Earth is better prepared to quash rebellion than the US one — armed cults of lunatics have trained it so. This is not an argument for giving out your guns. This is just pointing out that “I need my guns to resist” is nonsensical, because come a revolution, the government already knows how to deal with armed, uncooperative groups — and that’s of course ignoring that come a revolution against a tyranical government, a lot of these armed groups will be recruited to fight for the tyranical government. The US hasn’t made itself safe against Bolsheviks, it has homebrewed them and armed them.
This is putting you solidly in You sound like an Evil Robot territory, though given the user name that may be deliberate. And I don’t feel like explaining why, but do understand that your phrasing most consistent with non-robot humans making normative “should” statements, and if that’s no your intent you should maybe phrase things differently in the future.
I mean, that’s fair? I have much lower empathy than average, I don’t believe in free will and have a total lack of terminal values or prescriptive views. I know “you sound like an evil robot” is the normal, default emotional reaction when talking to me about anything politics or philosophy-adjacent.
I just assumed regular contributors here were already familiar with those quirks of mine.
“Need” isn’t an appropriate criterion.
As Nybbler says, “need” has got nothing to do with it.
To amplify: We’re having a parallel discussion on the ethics of abortion, a practice which may or may not result in the deliberate murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent children every year, and our best bioethicists can’t come to even an order-of-magnitude estimate of the true death toll. Maybe it’s zero. We’d better hope zero.
But the entire issue, and consequent risk, can be completely eliminated if women stop having PiV except when they are ready to have babies.
So, does anyone actually need recreational sex, for any “socially accepted purpose”? Need it badly enough to risk maybe killing innocent babies over it? And what if red-tribe and blue-tribe societies disagree with which purposes are considered “acceptable”?
Or maybe you’d free society in which people can do the things they want to do, without having to prove that they need to do them.
> Does anyone actually need a semi-automatic rifle for any socially accepted purpose
Does anyone actually need a Koran for any socially accepted purpose?
Does anyone actually need a pet lizard for any socially accepted purpose?
Does anyone actually need a car with more than 80 HP for any socially accepted purpose?
Does anyone actually need liquor for any socially accepted purpose?
Is there any other aspect of life you would be willing to subject to the whims of “need” and “socially accepted purpose”? I claim that one of the key elements of a liberal society is to tolerate other people doing and having things they don’t need and which aren’t socially accepted.
Yes x 4
You don’t need a murder weapon unless you are part of the army and deployed.
@JPNunez
Wait so only combat medics can perform abortions?
“Murder weapon” meaning a weapon capable of killing someone? That covers all firearms and a lot knives and hammers.
If you mean “weapon whose only use is to kill someone,” that doesn’t describe semi-automatic rifles, most of which are used for hunting animals and similar purposes.
Yeah, I don’t think most game hunting is done with older mechanisms like bolt-action. You don’t hunt deer with assault rifles or submachine guns, but you certainly do with vaguely defined “assault weapons.”
Are you telling me people did not hunt before gunpowder?
So all those tales about the hunter gatherers are actually about just the gatherers?
Humans used to hunt fucking mammoths.
The only purpose of an assault rifle is murder.
Unless you accept the death-of-the-author theory of manufacturing guns.
@JPNunez
Assault rifles are already heavily restricted in the United States. I point to the Popehat diatribe above. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.
If you mean “semi-automatic rifles”, then there are lots of socially accepted purposes that they are used for that do not include murder.
Homicide, perhaps, but murder?
You think the manufacturers would be pissed if a killing was found to be only manslaughter?
(and yeah, death of the manufacturer. I take it as a point of pride that a good proportion of the objects within an arm’s reach of me have either been misused or were designed for maximum general-purpose hackability in the first place.)
Bolt action actually is pretty common for deer hunting, as is lever action — the classic deer rifle is something like a Remington 700 or a Winchester 94, depending on the terrain you’re hunting in. Semi-automatic isn’t uncommon for hunting more generally, but you usually see it for boar, predators, or small game (the latter often in rimfire), where quick follow-up shots are important.
You don’t need a murder weapon even if you are part of the army and deployed. The US Army at least isn’t in the murder business, and is generally quite intolerant of murderers in its ranks.
Also, you don’t need to be taken seriously here if you use clearly inappropriate perjorative terminology in an attempt to short-circuit rational debate via emotional manipulation. And you won’t be, so please go away.
What about all those people that have assault weapons that don’t murder people? I assume you mean assault “weapons” and not assault rifles.
Clearly they are meeting some need that does not involve murdering people.
Anecdotal, but this is my experience having grown up spending my weekends at a hunt club during deer season and with several friends/family members who still hunt. Most of them own semi-automatics, but they almost always use bolt-action for deer hunting. Couldn’t say why, exactly, other than maybe a feeling of authenticity?
@JPNunez
As pointed out, “assault rifles” are already heavily regulated, and are very, very rarely used in crime.
Assuming you mean “assault weapons” (though as also pointed out elsewhere in the thread, that term is actually pretty meaningless in firearms terms), then there are certainly other uses besides murder. Hunting, as pointed out. And saying that you can hunt by other means is stupid–we can sharply reduce road deaths by banning cars, and pointing out that people got around long before the invention of cars doesn’t make this proposal less dumb.
Shooting competitions are another, and note that the linked Wikipedia page is about only a small subset of shooting sports.
IIRC, the simplicity of bolt-action mechanisms lets you make them higher-quality, to tighter tolerances and with less backlash/play for the same price.
So if you know you only want to fire once every few seconds, bolt action gives you better accuracy and reliability.
@Lambert:
You and Nornagest are correct about deer hunting and the tighter tolerances on older, non-semi-auto mechanisms.
Mea culpa for using the adjective “deer.”
Also, the primary purpose of actual assault rifles is to scare the crap out of people you’re in too much of a hurry to kill and don’t actually need to kill.
This doesn’t work if the people you need to scare figure out that the thing you’re scaring them with can’t kill them, but the military can get away with a pretty high noise:death ratio and noise is easier to make in a pinch.
So, that is a point of similarity between assault rifles and “assault weapons”: Ability to scare the crap out of (some) people with relatively few actual deaths.
@JPNunez
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multigun
It’s as valid a sport as any other.
Assault rifles are made for killing.
Not all killing is murder.
You are the one who is lying, intentionally, to try and advance your political goals. Knock it off.
Less of this.
If multigun or whatever event has to go away, not gonna shed a tear tbqh.
Not all killing is murder, but if you are not a deployed soldier, there’s very little killing that is not murder to be done with an assault or semi auto rifle.
I doubt hunting _needs_ a semi auto. Shotguns served people well for a long time for this.
Maybe peeps should stop comparing owning rifles to owning a pet lizard.
Guns are indeed made for
murderkilling, because without them some people can kill easily and others only with great difficulty if at all.@JPNunez
What? A blue tribe person doesn’t care if a red tribe activity has to be lost in order to achieve their political objectives? This is truly unexpected.
In all seriousness, I strongly hope that the blue tribe uses your confrontational and uncompromising attitude on this issue, because your position is a political loser even in MA.
@Echochaos true, true, I hope at some point the general opinion will change in favor of just getting rid of private gun ownership altogether.
@JPNunez: “The only purpose of an assault rifle is murder”
@JPNunez, next post: “Whether they are actually used to kill is irrelevant”
Keep dancing.
“Murder”, here, is a dysphemism. The term “assault rifles” is military, and it refers to rifles intended for use by the infantry in war. So yes to killing people, no to “murder” (though it can be used for that, as guns have no way of discerning the user’s purpose). Furthermore, you earlier made the stronger claim “The only purpose of an assault rifle is murder.” Even without arguing over types of homicide, this is false. Assault rifles can be used for anything any other rifle can be used for, including putting holes in inanimate objects (e.g. target shooting) or in animals (hunting). This goes for both real military select-fire assault rifles, and their semi-automatic cousins such as the civilian AR-15.
However, the argument over the type of homicide is in fact the more important one, because the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting or target shooting. It’s about arms which are useful against humans. An argument that a gun is good for killing people makes the argument for its protection under that amendment better, not worse.
Earlier in the same comment, you referred to the AR-15. The AR-15 is not an assault rifle since, unlike the military version of the design (M-16), it does not have a fully automatic or burst fire mode.
If you want anyone to take your arguments seriously, you need to be clear whether you are talking about assault rifles, such as the M-16, or “assault weapons,” a much fuzzier category that often is applied to the AR=15. Assault rifles are designed to kill people. The AR-15 is mostly used for other purposes, hunting or target shooting, and is no more suited to killing people than lots of other semi-automatic rifles.
If you deliberately confuse the two categories, anyone paying attention will conclude that you are being deliberately dishonest.
If you are being even more pedantic, there was significant resistance (though the degree may be exaggerated) to the adoption of the M-16 as a military weapon because it wasn’t powerful enough. Since at least the world wars, and almost certainly much earlier, military rifles were almost universally much more powerful than the M-16 is.
To a first approximation, the entire design premise of the M-16 was that you don’t need to actually kill everyone if you scare the shit out of them enough so that they stop trying to kill you. But making a lot of noise to scare the shit out of people requires firing a lot of ammunition, and more powerful ammunition is heavy.
There is a fairly common military urban legend that goes something like: “If you kill the enemy, you remove one enemy from the fight. If you wound one, you take three: the soldier you wounded, and two more to carry the litter.”
The round that the M-16 fires is actually illegal to hunt with in some/several states because it is prone to wounding the animal rather than killing it and is thus inhumane. (Or at least someone managed to convince the legislatures of that, although one has some suspicion that the real motive is to ban the most popular hunting rifles for hunting as a back door to a gun ban regardless of whether it may be true.)
It seems like every decade or so the US military looks into adopting a more powerful rifle, when they usually decide it isn’t worth the expense of buying a few million new rifles and drop it early in the process.
It a fallacy to assume that if the military does something it must necessarily be the most devilishly effective murder machine conceivable by the minds of man. It turns out military tactics have a lot of other variables they are trying to optimize.
Pedantic nit: To hunt deer or other roughly human-sized game. It is I believe legal everywhere for e.g. coyotes, hence the AR-15 filling the general rural-utility-rifle role fairly nicely.
We’re being pedantic so I’ll cop to it.
Though I don’t hunt and I am only passingly familiar with the details. But deer hunting is by far the most popular game, and IIRC my state has banned both shotguns (because, mumble mumble, most hunting accidents involve, like… no shit, it is by a huge margin the most popular choice) as well as the .223, which is by far the second most popular choice. Now nobody hunts and I have herds of ranging towards 100 running in front of me on the freeway. My auto insurance company is not amused.
Hence the suspicion that it is really just a back door gun ban.
@Another Throw
> IIRC my state has banned both shotguns … as well as the .223
Doubling down on your pedantic point, I’m doubtful that your state has banned the use of shotguns for hunting deer, and even more doubtful that they would have done so for reasons of safety. In general, the more densely populated East Coast states that are most worried about safety (Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Delaware) allow *only* shotguns for hunting deer. Are you possibly confusing the fact that hunting deer with “buckshot” (a dozen or so round balls) may now illegal in your state, while slugs (a single large bullet) fired from a shotgun are still legal, or maybe actually required?
That isn’t the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that you pick up guns that nobody (except the ban all guns crowd) wants banned like the Mini-14 in the definition.
“Assault Weapon” as defined in the original ban was intending to get guns that looked military because that could be supported while banning all semi-autos wasn’t.
The other problem is that legally distinguishing between “meant to be fired with two hands” is actually pretty hard. Go ahead and look up pistol brace weapons sometime.
I assume that people who want to ban “assault weapons” and understand the problem with defining them are people who would like to ban (at least) all semi-automatic rifles firing cartridges suitable for military use, and are using “assault weapons” for rhetorical purposes. Why would anyone deliberately want to ban semi-automatic weapons with features that make them look military but not equally effective ones without such features?
The mini-14 is a semi-automatic firing a .223 cartridge, so I expect lots of people would want to ban it.
Because Americans are stereotypically okay with Granddad’s ranch rifle but not with “military arms”, so people trying to ban guns have had to figure out how to separate them.
This is the actual Assault Weapons Ban law that was passed in 1994, so any idiocy about this stance must be taken up with legislators.
Maybe the trick is to get a semi-auto, then filigree it, gild it and inlay it with mother of pearl till it looks’s like some prince-elector’s wheellock.
That’ll keep it off the scary guns list.
OK, so it turns out wheellock repeaters are a thing. And I’m pretty sure that with modern technology I can design one that will outperform an entry-level AR-15 across the board…
I’m no expert, but I think you could get around a lot of NFA rules by using separate magazines for the projectiles and the powder.
I’d imagine precision milling would let you make pan-covers that kept the priming powder in and everything else out a lot better than could be done in the past.
On second thought, forget igniters. Forget powder.
UDMH/RFNA hypergolic rifle, anyone?
Now I want to know about the NFA implications of a chain-gun flintlock, firing musketballs at 600 RPM. And where I can buy one.
Gas-phase priming to keep the lock time down to sub-millisecond levels. Calcium carbide / water reaction to fill the primer chamber assembly and touchhole with acetylene; a modest reservoir should suffice for a few hundred rounds, and the ingredients are safe in isolation. Probably stick with smokeless powder for the propellant; liquid-propellant gun development has proven tricky.
But always taking care to fit everything into a fine walnut stock with brass hardware, to get the aesthetics right. Next time someone tries the lame old “Second Amendment was meant for flintlocks!” bit, I want to be prepared.
I think you vastly overestimate how much your typical anti-gun person/activist understands about guns. As EchoChaos points out, the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban is more accurately described as the “scary-looking guns ban”. These are people who can’t understand the difference between automatic and semi-automatic, and who do indeed focus on guns that look military.
That said, I don’t think a military cartridge ban makes any sense either. Is .30-06 a military cartridge? Well, it was developed by the military, but it’s seen extensive civilian use and isn’t used by the military very much these days? .308? It’s basically 7.62 NATO, which is still in use, but it’s also essentially a 30-06 with a shorter case. .223/5.56? Well, more military, but also with a half-century of civilian use, and it’s not like it’s completely unique in the field of ~.22 rifle rounds. Of course, this logic is probably also missed by the gun banners.
As Bean and Echo have noted, most people right now do not consider the stereotypical Mini-14 to be a “military” rifle because it looks like a ranch rifle. The MA Scary-Gun Ban specifically excludes the Mini-14.
HOWEVER:
The Mini-14 can indeed be used in mass shootings, like in Norway, and as all slopes are slippery, the Mini-14 will eventually be targeted for bans, like in Norway. Or as identified in this thread. No one knows exactly how far this slope goes, because most nations are still sliding down it, but most of my liberal friends do not see a purpose for any guns, period, and would not even be comfortable with revolvers. They will tolerate skeet shooting.
The comment I responded to had:
“nobody (except the ban all guns crowd)”
Responses to my comment hinged on the point that lots of people who are in favor of restrictions on firearms ownership don’t understand enough about firearms to distinguish between appearance and function. That is probably true, and fits my point about the rhetorical use of the terminology.
But I expect there are a significant number of people who want to ban at least all semi-automatic rifles using cartridges suitable for military use, and are using the campaign against “assault weapons” as a rhetorical device for that purpose. They are not necessarily in favor of banning all guns. If so, the comment I responded to was not correct.
It is unwise to assume that all your opponents are ignorant fools, even if some of them are.
@DavidFriedman
Given that the vast majority of gun crimes are committed with semi-automatic pistols, not rifles, and that in this thread there are calls for banning all guns, I will suggest that the number of people who want to ban all semi-automatic rifles but no other classes of guns is small.
I believe that “assault weapons bans” are an attempt to move incrementally towards that goal by people who genuinely want to ban all guns by exploiting the fact that most people are fine with Granddad’s ranch rifle but not okay with automatic weapons and are bad with definitions.
Banning the Mini-14 lays this bare, so even Massachusetts didn’t try to ban it.
I do not think my opponents who are writing the laws are ignorant fools. I think they’re smart, politically engaged partisans who have a long-term goal of banning all guns.
Our actual opponents are not all fools, yes, we know this. And our actual opponents have made it quite clear, explicitly so in a few places here, that they would prefer to ban either all guns, or all guns save a narrow spectrum of pure-sporting rifles and shotguns that are not under dispute.
But, this being a democracy or at least democratic republic, they can’t actually do that (or much of anything else) unless they can get a mostly-apathetic majority to offer at least half-hearted support. And the potential members of majority are fools, er, rationally ignorant of the finer details of firearms technology. In order to get them on board, at least in the early stages of the project, our actual enemies have to be seen as proposing to ban Just the Evil Guns that Only Evil Murderers Use. That decision by that potential majority of voters, is mostly going to be made at the level of looking at pictures and pattern-matching (as EchoChaos says) granddad’s ranch rifle vs what they see in Hollywood shoot-em-ups.
Not being entirely foolish, our actual enemies frequently and from their perspective wisely do things like propose laws that would ban AR-15s but not Mini-14s, and not being entirely foolish ourselves we expect them to continue doing so.
Disagree.
The vast majority of the public doesn’t know the actual statistics. They believe what the media tells them (or strongly implies to the best of their ability while avoiding any dangerous fact-checking that might damage their credibility).
They believe that AR-15s and other such weapons are uniquely dangerous and that banning them will save hundreds or thousands of lives. Therefore, they want them banned. And since the media hasn’t told them that handguns are even more dangerous, they don’t want them banned (yet). In fact, the media has presented banning “assault weapons” as a “common sense compromise” that is a win-win because it saves thousands of lives and also is consistent with the second amendment and still allows you to own guns for socially approved uses such as hunting, target shooting, and even home defense! So “I want to ban assault rifles but not handguns” is seen as a reasonable and moderate position that the average non-partisan person is supposed to hold!
This conversation makes my head spin a bit because I remember growing up in the 90s and handgun bans were the main focus of gun control. And why wouldn’t they be? They are easy to conceal and they are involved in a lot of crime. Rifles are much harder to use to hold up a liquor store, right?
Am I imagining that right? Did the focus used to be way more on banning handguns?
You’re not imagining that. And it wasn’t just the 1990s. The Brady Campaign used to be known as Handgun Control, Inc., back around the early 1980s, in the wake of the assassination of John Lennon and the attempt on Ronald Reagan.
@EchoChaos
> I will suggest that the number of people who want to ban all semi-automatic rifles but no other classes of guns is small.
Possibly small, but definitely nonzero. Here for example is a gun-knowledgable person making the case for focusing regulation on semiautomatic rifles: https://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=6094
His suggestion is that semiautomatic long guns should be legally treated the same as fully automatic “machine guns” currently are. While that’s not quite a ban, it’s comes pretty close, and he clearly believes that his position would have significant support among gun owners. Personally, I agree that if your goal is to reduce gun violence, concentrating on pistols makes much more sense, but I wouldn’t assume without proof that an overwhelming majority hold this belief.
But they are not involved in a lot of news stories about crime. What people don’t know, can’t hurt or outrage them in ways that make them want to join a political crusade.
Once upon a time, there were lots of newspaper stories about urban muggers, rapists, junkies, gangs,
reaversroving packs of superpredator youths. That was what brought in the clicks (well, pre-click advertising revenues), and it wasn’t yet Problematic on racial grounds. So, yes, the response in some quarters was to propose banning the handguns most associated with those sorts of criminals.When was the last time you saw a story about ordinary street crime on, say, CNN? Now, audiences are sufficiently jaded that only a mass murder will bleed enough to lead. Or a white cop shooting an innocent black man, which adds a different dimension to the issue. But even without that, the tiny handful of homicides that people talk about are the class where “assault weapons” are at least a highly visible minority of the weapons being used.
And you can’t propose banning more than one sort of firearm at a time without moderate voters starting to suspect you’re planning to ban all firearms.
You haven’t solved it. And, indeed like John Schilling said its actually the easiest thing to solve.
Your definition of “assault rifle” really should be defined as, “convenient rifle.” Semi-auto is a minimum standard for a modern gun that isn’t specialized for extreme accuracy. Eight shots is not some huge amount.
Careful. proyas didn’t say “assault rifle”, but “assault weapon”.
“Assault rifle” is an actual well-defined term, denoting a firearm with multiple fire modes (single shot, semi-auto, and full auto), a shoulder stock, a detachable magazine, and effective range over 300m.
“Assault weapon” is an empirically ambiguous term denoting whatever some legislator wishes to ban.
Or three shot burst.
My critique of the definition remains. His standard simply bans all the nice guns that aren’t sniper rifles (many of which use take mags anyways).
Why try to exclude handguns when they are involved in most gun violence in the US?
Because the average person doesn’t know/believe that.
Because, again, a whole lot of Americans really, really don’t want you to do that. But if you think you’ve got a transient majority that might be able to push through some sort of ban, you may want the marginal advantage of peeling off a few of your opponents whose “I really really don’t want you to do that” is focused primarily on one sort of weapon while you propose to ban another. If it works, you can try to ban the other sort of weapon next time. It’s probably not going to work very well, but if you’re into that sort of thing, salami-slicing will get you a little farther than grandiose over-reaching.
The real problem is you’re trying to ban something owned by 10 million plus people to stop crimes committed by like 15 people using word games.
Now I’m picturing a guy in camo gunning down people in a mall with a semi-automatic rifle loaded with Scrabble tiles.
Or Enter the Gungeon’s “lowercase r” weapon, which fires the letters B-U-L-L-E-T as its projectile.
Now I want a mission to build a gun capable of reliably firing Scrabble at lethal velocities.
Grab a ruler, a Granger catalog, a package of cotton balls, and the phone number for your local plumbing supply. [Redacted weapon making instructions.] Tweak until complete.
Police have learned that the El Paso shooter had nothing against Mexicans; he just wanted the triple letter score for the X.
Too soon.
(Also, he wanted the 50-pt bonus for using all his tiles.)
There’s something I’m finding a bit difficult in this post. Judging from the first sentence it seems that there’s this thing that ought to be banned but we’re not sure what it is exactly. Next comes assigning characteristics to the thing we want to ban so we can identify the them. But surely identifying the characteristics of things ought to precede making judgements about them. Or perhaps you’re saying “these attributes that a gun might possess are bad attributes and therefore we should call a gun possessing these attributes an assault weapon.” If I’m misreading your post, I apologize. That’s not my intention.
That’s not the biggest obstacle. The biggest obstacle is not even Massachusetts can ban weapons as broad as what you define. To get these bans to pass, you need to allow Useful Weapons, particularly Useful Weapons that are not Scary Weapons, because Americans really want to ban Scary Weapons.
If MA can’t pass a law like this, you can’t get the US to pass a law like this.
I echo most former comments and think that this is would be a bad law. However, the lack of focus on scary cosmetic features that often are safety features and focus more on practical elements does make me respect you far more than the advocates of standard assault weapon bans. Also this seems designed to make the M1 Garand permissible which I like and respect.
Why would you want to ban those?
Isn’t most gun crime committed using handguns, due to their conveniece, portability and concealability compared to a big-arse rifle?
And most Americans who want to buy and own defensive weapons buy handguns, due to their convenience, portability, and concealability compared to a big-arse rifle. Most Americans who don’t want to buy and own defensive weapons but who sympathize with e.g. their friend with the violently abusive stalker ex, envision said friend buying a discrete handgun because ditto. So most people either don’t want to ban handguns, or vaguely sort of want to but understand it’s not happening in this generation.
Does the distribution of handgun crimes obey some kind of pareto principle?
I.E. are a disproportionate amount of the crimes commited by say the cheapest 20% of handguns, then would it be possible to set a minimum price to buy a handgun?
I don’t support gun control as such but i’m trying to conceive of the most effective kind of prohibition pound-for-pound, so to speak. My instinct would be that people who use firearms for benign uses are willing to spend more than those who are not, which leads me to believe more expensive handguns represent a smaller portion relative to percent of market of crimes.
Yes.
Denying civil rights to the poor specifically is not exactly a popular position.
The most effective kind would be racial, not based on the type of gun. For a large number of reasons, this is implausible.
Most crime is committed by people who are already prohibited persons and obtain their guns via crime. Adding another law is unlikely to help.
The word you are looking for is “Saturday Night Special“, and various people tried to ban them from roughly the 1870s to the 1970s. It mostly didn’t work because A: the United States is really good at setting up and maintaining black markets to provide cheap contraband to poor folk and B: the people trying to ban such handguns often failed to conceal the fact that they mostly didn’t want poor black people to have guns, which weakened their political alliances.
There doesn’t seem to be much political support for that sort of thing in the present generation, and that’s probably a good thing. If you set up a system where poor people arming themselves in case they feel a need to battle rich people is definitively Criminal, whereas rich people arming themselves in case they feel a need to battle poor people is Lawful, which side do you really want to be on?
Maybe I’m projecting here, but if something is important enough to kill for (or threaten with lethal force for) it’s probably important enough to spring for the second cheapest firearm available as well.
Ah, a return of the old “Saturday Night Special” debate! Everything old is new again.
Edit: Ninja’d by John Schilling
@Randy M
Interestingly, the lowest price firearm, the Hi-Point, has a sterling reputation for durability and reliability.
Where is loses is in comfort and aesthetics. You start losing durability and reliability for a bit going up in price before you get to really quality guns that have all of the above.
This is almost certainly true, but perversely modified by p(need).
Protecting your teenage daughter from a rapist is probably worth buying even a $2000+ customized M1911, and it’s probably worth that if you’re a poor black man but you think it will make a difference. If you’re a poor black man and the odds of your daughter being raped while you are around to protect her(*) are 1000:1 against, then you maybe can’t justify anything more than a $100 Hi-Point.
If, OTOH, you’re the guy who is specifically planning to rape a poor black man’s daughter and you think he might interfere, then yeah, you’re going to pay extra for the right tools.
* Or of said daughter being raped by a stranger she’d be willing to shoot herself rather than an abusive acquaintance that you think she probably won’t.
John Schilling, right; Saturday Night Special laws against cheap guns aren’t going to deter criminals like those that craft them hope, because the criminal knows they need a gun for their purpose, and so will buy one even if the cheapest are removed from the market, even if you can control black markets.
> would it be possible to set a minimum price to buy a handgun
I’m totally in favor of doing that. Right after we set a minimum price as a poll tax.
1. For starters I’m assuming black markets can be dealt with, if not then there’s no reason to bother regulating firearms. Although one could make an argument that the cheaper the weapon the easier
2. Disparate impact arguments basically render any effort to fight crime useless insofar as people of color are involved in it, and there’s probably no way to make an effective deterrence of crime [i use crime to mean something even a libertarian agrees should be unlawful] for whites that does not affect crime prone POC unless you make crime legal for POC but enforce the law against whites solely. [I’m not necessarily against making crime legal for POC though]
3. ‘Denying civil rights to the poor specifically is not exactly a popular position.’ — Except that firearm ownership isn’t perceived of as being a civil right by those who until relatively recently considered themselves champions of the poor.
@RalMirrorAd
Given the facts on the ground in e.g. Brazil, this assumption seems badly flawed to me. And since any serious enforcement is going to look a lot like “stop and frisk”, I suspect liberals will be strongly opposed to it.
“Run, and you’ll die tired”
Best bumper sticker ever. But then, I like rifles.
One question:
if you look at these three pictures, would any be an assault weapon under your definition?
I own at lest one of each type of these. My own answers to those question are concealed in ROT13.
Nyy guerr jbhyq or onaarq haqre lbhe ehyrf. Gur guerr evsyrf ner nyy frzv-nhgbzngvp. Bar unf na 8-ebhaq vagreany zntnmvar, naq gur bgure gjb npprcg rkgreany zntnmvarf. Glcvpny rkgreany zntnmvarf sbe gubfr gjb evsyrf enatr va pncnpvgl sebz 10 ebhaqf gb 30 ebhaqf.
Before you decode my answer, generate your own…and then compare your answer to mine.
Is it what you expected?
I haven’t decoded your answer, but it looks to me as though all three meet his criteria.
Not the Garand. Its magazine holds 8 rounds, and the criteria specified an internal magazine which holds more than 8 rounds.
If the purpose is a ban, I’d think the ideal definition would have to do directly with the damage it can do. If someone invents a weapon that’s just as effective at mass murder but can be easily used one-handed, or doesn’t require a magazine at all, no reason not to have the same restrictions apply. So by internet consensus, I think the proper definition is “any device that can be used to kill 30-50 feral hogs within 3-5 minutes without killing nearby children.” This might end up banning katanas but probably only in the Kill Bill universe, where they should be illegal anyway.
This is amusing in that it seems to imply that it would be legal if it also killed the nearby children
Military-grade two-handed firearms have been really efficient murder machines since the late 1940s, so this collapses into an argument over whether the populace should be unarmed or able to form a militia.
And about katanas…
Hey! Try not to kill any feral hogs on the way to the parking lot!
The biggest problem with an assault weapon ban is that it’s a meaningless concept. The term was coined because “assault weapons” sounds like “assault rifle”, which is a real term that applies to types of military firearms which the average voter (who doesn’t know much about either firearms or US firearms law) thinks are already banned for civilians, and because it has a nicely useful emotional valence. It says to that average person: “These guns are pretty much exactly like these other guns that are ALREADY banned, and you’re ok with that other ban, so you should support this ban.”.
That assault weapons are not in fact like assault rifles, and that there are in fact a fair number of assault rifles in the US a civilian can own completely legally isn’t relevant, because the primary purpose of the term is to allow the drafters of these laws to move the overton window closer towards a complete ban of semi-automatic firearms (to include pistols). Trying to come up with a more ‘reasonable’ definition of ‘assault weapon’ is missing the point of the term.
Brilliant example of journalists being incompetent in the Guardian .
Not only are they doing their standard where Trump leads I follow stuff on the buying Greenland story. They also include this gem of a quote: “a land mass twice the size of the US” to describe Greenland. That’s (according to Google) 2.166 million square km Greenland is twice the size of 9.834 million square km USA.
Now if you look at the glove on your desk (as educated folk of culture we all have one right?), clearly Greenland is not that big. So Phillip Inman, who nicely put his name to this piece, must have got this figure from looking at a map. Which means that we have a journalist opining on world affairs who really thinks the Mercator projection (or something similar) reflects reality, and that Greenland really is half of the North American continent.
Now to be fair, I had the same basic map and misapprehension when I was young. But I had teachers who taught me that you shouldn’t make broad statements on the basis of a picture on the wall alone. Either Mr Inman had less diligent teachers or the Guardian has no time for fact checking. Either way the future of press looks rather bleak…
Only in the winter. Weather’s still rather warm, thank you for asking.
ETA:
In the version I’m reading, it’s:
so presumably it’s been corrected.
I was thinking that if you can find out about the size of Greenland by looking at a glove, the topology of earth would have to be pretty interesting.
It would still be more accurate than Mercator though most probably….
Who put the v and the b next to each other on a keyboard anyway?
They’re already next to each other in your mouth, so it makes sense.
@Don P: I’m not sure I want to know how you’ve been doing your typing.
FYI: it currently (and correctly) says, “a land mass a quarter the size of the US,” so this error was pretty quickly caught.
This is what I see when I click through to the article:
Did it change in the time it took you to write the post? No correction listed at the bottom of the page, either, alas.
Is it just my coding background, or should changes without a change-log be considered a punishable offence?
I have the same background, so I can’t say. But dear God it ought to be universal.
Yeah, that’s unacceptable. I didn’t accept it and canceled my subscription.
Edited at least. Would be nice if the Guardian would acknowledge factual errors being updated though.
Well, it is the dear old Grauniad 🙂
Somebody must have got on to them about the mistake since the piece up now reads (bolding mine):
More seriously, does anyone think that, given the stated concerns about China and rare earth elements, that if this were floated by anyone other than Trump it might be taken seriously? Is it a good idea (if you’re worried about China hoovering up the elements needed for advanced tech and falling behind in innovation if your country can’t get access to them)?
Wait a second, the article is actually about the rare earth metals? I was joking when I brought it up the other day!
I was joking when I brought it up the other day!
Should know better than to joke in this timeline, Nick; now you should be worrying that what you said about the Elder Things might be true – or maybe it’s not the Elder Things Trump is trying to keep under wraps, it’s The Thing 🙂
On a tangent, there have been three versions of the story? I knew about the 1951 original and the 1982 remake (re-imagining might be a better term) but I hadn’t heard of the 2011 ‘prequel’ to the 1982 version, which seems to have sunk without a trace. Keep watching the skies!
He did look at his globe.
In thinking about buying Greenland, I feel sure that Trump has asked his advisors how we would get rid of all that ice.
Either? The story getting published would seem to necessitate both. The first is required to generate the error, and the second is required for it to reach us.
Question about military history and technology:
When did European countries achieve effective military superiority over other civilizations? And what specific things drove this advantage?
this is a hugely contentious issue that is subject to wide ranging debate. The standard theory is probably the military revolution hypothesis, which argues that in the 1500s, there was a military revolution around infantry combat, cannons, and fortresses. It argues that cannons got good enough in the late 1400s to knock down castle walls, and that this had a number of important effects. First, one had to build forts that were capable of resisting cannon, These were were large and required lots of cannon of their own. Attacking and manning those forts led to the need for larger armies and more infantry, which combined with the proliferation of firearms, kicked off a revolution in the training of infantry. And both of these trends were hugely expensive, which led kingdoms to reorganize themselves internally and transform themselves into proper states to extract more cash and make better use of it.
This thesis is, of course, hotly contested. In some versions the revolution takes place over as much as 200 years, which makes it hard to call it a revolution. There are also claims that it reflects the european experience too heavily and ignores the rest of the world, which aren’t exactly wrong. But while not the consensus, it’s probably the scholarly baseline.
But why did the Europeans develop those better canons, and not let’s say anyone who had them before them, which includes almost every sedetary civilisation between the Yellow River and the Nile Delta?
Just a guess, but I suspect better metallurgy.
Which AFAIK is usually attributed to the importance of bell-ringing in medieval Europe. Turns out the skills needed to make a bell that doesn’t break under the strain of being whacked repeatedly are a lot like those needed to make a cannon that doesn’t break under the strain of being fired.
They did. The Ottomans, Mughals, Safavid, and Qing all used cannon. The Qing specifically imported cannon from the West to help them establish the territorial boundaries of modern China, to counter the imported cannon of other Chinese. The Chinese have been using gunpowder extensively since the Song fought the Mongols.
The Chinese defeated both the Russians and the Dutch in the 1600s. Trade had been around for centuries, before the Jurchens even began their conquest. Imagining an immediate attack from Europe might be like imagining the US about to be conquered by Barbary Pirates, or Mexico.
It’s not just the cannon. The Europeans have also gone through an industrial revolution and have a major technological edge over the Chinese, and have spent basically the entire period from the Italian Wars in 1494 to Waterloo in 1815 designing better ways to kill each other. Plus experience in other locations. Plus the Brits are a maritime power, whereas the Chinese fleet was not designed to fight ships of the line. Plus the Chinese never really get the chance to take a breather due to civil unrest through the entire 19th century, so they never get the chance to really dig themselves out of a hole (unlike, say, Japan).
No, I know that all the other people had cannons, and it would be a joke if the Dutch would have been able to beat the Chinese in there own backyard (you are talking about Taiwan right?) But cassender wrote, that the developments in cannons IN europe lead to a different way of warfare. And I asked why that development happned in Europe and not every where else.
I mean during the Opium Wars, the Europeans caputred old Spanish gun’s in Chinese forts, that where casted and sold in the 17th century. So it stand’s to reason that the Europeans were better at making guns since at least than. So why? What lead to a place where the country that inveted both the blast furnace and black powder had to buy outdated guns from some babarians half the world away?
The Europeans have also gone through an industrial revolution and have a major technological edge over the Chinese, and have spent basically the entire period from the Italian Wars in 1494 to Waterloo in 1815 designing better ways to kill each other.
Yes, but the Chinese also spent a lot of time on “new and interesting ways to bloodily unite states that don’t want to be united into one, then burn it all down again and start over”. So it does look like leaning more on the “better technology” end, which just brings us back to the question: the Chinese are smart, they have resources (unlike, say, Japan and its terrible quality iron), why didn’t they zoom ahead on tech? I’ve seen that explained as “fossilised tradition of exams to find the officers to govern the state, and for promotions within that system, meant that original thinking was heavily discouraged, too much emphasis on the arts rather than the sciences, hence only sporadic and individual inventors and scientists popping up and being isolated”, but then that kicks it out to “okay, so why was European society more open to invention and innovation?”
For what it’s worth, Parkinson argues somewhere that the superiority of the Europeans—I believe he is thinking specifically of the English vs the Malays—was the social technology, not the physical technology. The Malays, before firing a cannon, said a prayer that it not explode. The English had non-coms who made sure the cannon were cleaned.
@DavidFriedman
Pretty much what US military instructors tell us about Arab and Persian militaries today.
But I’m pretty sure that difference wasn’t the case in the 16th century, just look at all the magic shit the Landsknechts did during te 30 Years War.
I mean I’m sure there is something right in that theory, so when, why, and how did the split happen. Was it all humanism? I mean, you of all people should know that those weren’t ex novo ideas in Europe so why would it?
I don’t see why it’s a joke that the Dutch would be able to beat the Chinese in their own backyard when Britain went right on to do that a century and a half later. It definitely would have seemed like a joke to an 18th century Chinese leader, though. It would be like claiming the Barbary Pirates or Mexico is about to defeat the US in Norfolk.
However, that can easily happen when you ignore a century of military and economic developments. The equivalent might be if the US won WWII, sat on its laurels, and then gasped in shock when a Chinese supercarrier pops up and starts launching SAMs that utterly blow our P-51s out of the sky. Especially if the US had made a decision to specifically re-engineer the entire fleet for fighting pirates, and we basically are using the Coast Guard to fight a blue water fleet.
There’s nothing written in stone about WHY non-Western nations HAD to be inferior, see Japan. Europe built its Empires by beating the crap out of African polities that had basically no states. It certainly did thrash China for a good century, but a century of military weakness and acceding to some demands is not at all abnormal in history.
@David Friedman wrote:
Someone-or-other once wrote:
On my phone, but The traditional answer to that question has been that the many warring states in Europe created a Darwinian environment that spurred innovation.
This assertion has been challenged by China specialists. They’ve argued that China has plenty of war, but it was war against steppe nomads which drove different kinds of development. They also point out that traditional Chinese wall building methods look a lot like the lower thicker walls used by post gunpowder revolution Europeans, so the advantage to cannon was less.
In the last thread, we talked about what factors made American exceptional, and I think a lot of us felt that having vast open land was an advantage. But that’s really the opposite of the European situation (as least since Rome). Is there a synthesis between the two theories?
Yeah, the synthesis is that American culture is a successful growth from a Darwinian process that received a favorable environment in which to grow. Throwing a bunch of people on a continent by themselves gives you, at best, the aboriginals in Australia, and, at worst, Lord of the Flies.
Wait, so is “American culture” in this sense is an inadvertent reference to bacterial culture transplanted to a new petri dish?
To paraphrase Foghorn Leghorn, “Assay, assay, I’ve never looked at it that way before”.
Yes, essentially. America didn’t grow in a vacuum. It is specifically an English settled society, and specifically modern Englishmen. That society grew out of a very special relationship with Europe, since it was centered on the North Sea but not vulnerable to land attack. So it could benefit from European advances, and was well situated to take part in the commercial revolution, but didn’t need huge standing armies like other states.
If you have capitalism you’ll get better technology without war. Of course, as A definite beta guy points out, you can’t throw just anyone on an empty continent and expect that capitalism will spring up.
@RandyM
The US’s exceptional nature was related to its economics, not its army or navy.
Western Europe’s exceptional in its military/naval prowess which was superior to the US for most of its history (often by design)
I think warfare transitioned from being an organizational affair to a more industrial/resource intensive one. (not that organization was unimportant), and once the US decided to enter the world-stage and take becoming an imperial power seriously their army/navy began to rival the others.
It’s hard to disentangle, though. Exceptional military after the invention of gunpowder (or probably earlier) had a lot to do with industry and research as well, at least if you are comparing them to parts of the world without mass produced firearms.
Which in turn, like economics, has to do with culture.
Well the central and western european states had economies sufficient to manufacture the weapons/gunpowder/ships to have powerful militaries.
North Americans had economies which gave their farmers and laborers unusually high standards of living whilst having little in the way of a standing army for much of its history.
Thanks. Has there been any work taking a strictly empirical approach to this? Basically cataloguing military encounters between western and non-western (but relatively advanced) states and seeing when European militaries started winning most of the time?
Who are these advanced cultures? The middle east (Ottoman Empire) was not militarily great, but held it’s own even in the earliest-twentieth century. China was never militarily defeated at all, and neither was Japan.
India was brought into the British Empire, but this wasn’t a military conquest so much as a political one of a disintegrating Empire (where the British regularly lost battles). And the American civilisations were militarily outmatched (consistent use of iron weapons would have been a good start) and here to the Spanish exploited political divisions.
In general the western powers defeated small states or low-technology military foes. They might never have had a military advantage until the post-colonial period (as Japan in the first half of the twentieth century shows).
Napoleon rolling over Egypt (~1800) and the first opium war (1840) are generally regarded as representing European military superiority over old world civs. I agree the Ottomans were a tough nut, though “holding their own” seems a bit strong to me. As to the rest — I guess I’ll accept “never” as a defensible if unusual position. Though this raises the question of how the Europeans managed to dominate the world in the modern period.
I guess one could argue that the true European advantage lay in naval power, which allowed them to dominate trade routes and hold lucrative colonies.
Two Opium Wars, the Sino-French-War, the Boxer Rebellion, and to the extant that Japan was westernized the Sino-Japanese-War might disagree with that claim.
More than they won? If so why would anyone listen to their political claims?
The Ottomans took Constantinople and nearly took Vienna. That counts as a little more than “holding their own” to me…
@ Matt M
I’m thinking of the 18th and 19th centuries. I agree the Ottomans weren’t militarily behind Europeans in the 15th century.
@Matt M
The Ottomans were also beaten by Great Britian in 1917/18, while GB literally struggled to keep the Germans out of France long enough for USAmerican reinforcements to make a difference.
And the Ottomans had massive German support at the time.
Fair enough. But part of that strikes me as bias in terms of the timeframe you’re looking at. It’s like looking at the graphs of terrorism in the west that start on September 12, 2001.
Yeah, if we ignore the time when they were badass, they look pretty weak. What of it?
This, but even more than this. Seapower is really, really potent, and the European victories in a lot of these wars rest heavily on naval firepower. The First Opium War was won by cutting the Grand Canal, an act dependent on the fire support of the fleet. The same is true in Africa to a surprising degree, too. Probably elsewhere, but I just haven’t gotten around to investigating it yet.
China was absolutely militarily defeated during both Opium Wars. The first saw the foundation of the entire tax system strangled by the British, while the second had an entire European army camped outside Peking. Japan wasn’t because they decided to modernize instead of fighting.
India is complicated, but there were full-scale wars like the ones with the Sikhs. (Although in that case, they didn’t have a big technological edge because the Sikhs were heavily modernized. I’m still not sure how they won.)
Wasn’t a lot of British power over Africans acquired by the Royal Navy roving around when Britain wasn’t at war on a mandate to stop the slave trade? “Hey, you Arabs/locals, surrender your slaves or we’ll conquer this port to force you!”
This doesn’t make it into the official narrative of colonialism, for obvious reasons.
He’s trying to figure out when Europeans became dominant. “The Ottomans were strong in the 15th century but not in the 20th century” is a legitimate point.
@bean
Interesting. Are you aware of historians who have developed this thesis (i.e. sea power as key to rise of the West)? It strikes me as quite reasonable.
Obviously I know about Mahan’s book (I have it, actually! Though haven’t read it.)
To make an analogy — one can consider the historical dominance of two types of civilizations: empires straddling critical trade routes, and highly mobile raiders operating on the fringes of settled areas (Arabs in the desert, various steppe peoples). I’ve heard the vikings thrown into the latter category.
Dominance of the sea in the age of discovery and thereafter would seem to give europeans both advantages. Plus access to abundant land in the Americas. Seems a reasonable theory to me.
That still seems unhelpfully broad. Were the Ottomans strong in 1683? The phrase “sick man of Europe” dates to the mid-19th century (the Ottomans failed to industrialize – and in the years before WWI they were building railroads and a modern navy with German and British help, respectively), so we may be able to fix the time/cause as the Industrial Revolution.
@Le Maistre Chat
I agree. I was just arguing against Matt’s point.
19th century Ottoman seems pretty weak and at the time of Suleiman’s death in the mid 16th century was still strong, so you can narrow it further to that timeframe. The problem is differentiating Ottoman weakness because of Europe’s strength vs their own internal problems.
AIUI, India can be summed up as leveraging an early technological and logistical advantage into a position of hegemony, then using divide-and-conquer tactics to leverage that into actual dominance. Since both period sources and modern ones want to emphasize the ethnic British role (the former from a positive angle, the latter from a negative one), it’s easy to miss from a modern perspective, but almost all the major actions in India during the 1800s were fought mainly by local troops on both sides — the order of battle for the Battle of Chillianwala is representative.
Not as such, no. Maritime history and world history are often curiously divided. Mahan wasn’t looking at that, nor were most of his successors.
@Eponymous
I don’t know any sources, but he is not the first one I heard making that claim.
And it makes senses doesn’t it?
The Europeans might not have ruled the seas in the 16th century. But they sure were basically everywhere already. And beeing everywhere is realy helpful. It’s helps you learn all the best ideas from everywhere, helps you import the best products (columbian exchange and coffein containing drinks I’m looking at you) and let’s you pounce at every one who is weak at the moment.
And if everyone else does not has your naval reach. Well what can they do when you are f**king around in some of their provinces. They can’t reach you, can they?
@Nornagest:
A lot of conservative thought in the Republic of India goes into British divide-and-conquer tactics and their legacy. Lord Macaulay in particular is treated as a villain whose policy of “I feel… that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, – a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” is responsible for India’s Marxist elite and all the harm resulting.
It helps, but it’s not enough. Venice, Portugal, the Netherlands, all maritime powers that couldn’t pass muster. Meanwhile the Austrians remained relevant for quite some time and the Germans were fearsome monsters once they unified.
While Venice was a maritime power, it wasn’t the right kind of maritime power — its power in the late Renaissance was built on its galley fleet, which was fearsome in the Mediterranean in its time but incapable of effectively projecting power outside of it, and vulnerable even within it once naval gunnery become more effective.
Suddenly I kinda wish I knew more about ships after the Hellenistic Era and before ships of the line/”rows of of muzzle-loading cannon on the broad sides, oars obsolete.”
The development of naval warfare between the Viking Era and the Age of Exploration doesn’t get much press, but there was a lot going on. Galleys had serious trouble in the Atlantic as early as the Late Middle Ages, thanks to their inherently low freeboard, but they were the main warships in the Mediterranean and to a lesser extent the Baltic even a couple hundred years after cannon became common — partly because they were working with existing doctrine and partly because cannon were so expensive that it didn’t make tactical sense to concentrate many of them on a single ship. This really only started to change after cast iron started driving the costs down. Still, galleys remained in secondary roles, in calm waters and for coast defense, until the late 1700s, and there were also various attempts at making galley-ship hybrids like the xebec.
@Le Maistre Chat says:
The books you want are ‘Gunpowder & Galleys” and “Galleons & Galleys” by John Francis Guilmartin. Truly fantastic works of military history that cover much of that history.
@Nornagest:
“Between”, he says. I’m not even clear on what made Viking longships different from penteconters. 🙂
Why “as early as the Late Middle Ages” and not before, in Viking and Roman times?
Yeah, this I knew. Galleys were not obsolete for Mediterranean use, were armed with cannon (how many I’m not clear on). They worked just fine at Lepanto and beyond. Cervantes mentions criminals being chained up to serve sentence as rowers, and this is the era the galley slave stereotype comes from.
Cool, I wasn’t familiar with the xebec.
@cassander: Oh, thank you!
They’re both light, versatile warships crewed by about fifty men and with provisions for both oar and sail power. But longships lacked the ram, had less elaborate superstructure, and were clinker-built, making them lighter and more flexible and hence better able to dissipate the energy of heavy seas. But also less scalable to larger sizes — the largest Viking warships were crewed by only about 100 men, a number routinely exceeded by Mediterranean ships as early as the Greco-Persian Wars.
Getting a little outside my wheelhouse here, but I’d speculate that navigational technique made most of the difference. Ships of any type stayed close to land before the Late Middle Ages, which would have minimized the galley’s limitations in range and seaworthiness and also minimized sailing ships’ advantages over them.
Usually three to five heavy cannon, forward-facing in the bow; typically there’d be one very heavy gun in the center flanked by smaller but still cannon-sized pieces. (The galeass, a hybrid development closer to the galley than the xebec, added broadside-mounted cannon aft and sometimes forward of the rowers.) These were sometimes augmented by lighter swivel guns with various placements.
There were political divisions in the Americas, but if you have read at all about the Inca conquest, you know that truly absurd victories were common-place, for example 30 men triumphing over 100,000 without losing anyone. To the point where it’s hard for me to even understand it.
The 100,000 could have just kept sending people in waves day and night until the 30 got tired and died, but this never happened. I think maybe it had something do with the fact that they worshiped a sun god and so didn’t want to fight at night, but still… Even if the 100,000 were completely naked and unarmed (which they weren’t) there has to be a way to use such an overwhelming numerical advantage.
In fact the only Inca victories were when they managed to ambush traveling armies in the mountain passes and crush them with tons of boulders. That happened twice.
They’d have generally one large gun and two or four smaller ones in the bow. The big guns could destroy ships but the primary use was anti-personnel. The number of guns was tiny compared to ships of the line. I seem to recall Guilmartin saying that a couple first rates at Trafalger had a greater weight of shot than either fleet at lepanto.
Unfortunately, I don’t have much to add to the stuff on early naval development. My serious interest starts around 1750. If anyone who does know this stuff wants to write about it, I’d be interested in putting it up.
@Cliff
I see two possibilities. First, that the way the Inca “fought” was very ritualistic and completely unsuited to effectiveness against people trained to actually kill. (A lot of traditional warfare is this way.) Second, that the numbers on their side are grossly inflated. Particularly with the Inca’s lack of a writing system, you’re likely to see excessive numbers thrown about.
Well anyway, my point is that the Spanish were far, far more advanced in warfare than the Incas
That depends on which other civilizations.
By ~350 BC, the Macedonian combination of heavy infantry drilled to fight in close order plus shock cavalry capable of riding home a charge, gave one European country superiority over every other civilization within conquering distance, hence Alexander. And other European countries were pretty good at copying this with local variations, hence e.g. Rome. And from that point forward, Europe pretty consistently had military superiority over neighboring civilizations.
But, post-Roman Europe mostly lost the logistical technology that allowed them to turn that advantage into conquests beyond Europe, or sometimes even defend its frontiers, and didn’t get it back until roughly the sixteenth century.
Also, for most of this period, China had a fairly well-developed military and logistical technology that may have equaled or exceeded Europe’s, but the two were sufficiently distant that this was never put to the test. Well, probably never. By the time European logistics and shipbuilding had reached the point of supporting direct conflict with China, Europe had trumped China’s much-vaunted “gunpowder weapons” by removing the four extraneous syllables and optimizing what was left.
You should play some EU4 to find out
Approximately 1700 according to the game! Ottomans better until then
Wikipedia has a handy .gif showing more or less the same thing. The 18th century has some ebb and flow, but by the time Algeria becomes a French colony in 1830 the Ottoman empire is clearly being rolled back.
And what specific things drove this advantage?
My cynical side, having been exposed to one too many woke postings, says it’s because White People are cruel and vicious and evil and every other culture was just too nice and civilised to stoop to the depths of horribleness necessary to conquer the world *sarcasm off*.
There’s also the slightly too enthusiastic apologetics side that says it’s because Western Europe was Christian. I do think that had something to do with it, but it’s probably a whole lot of big elements that happened at just the right time in just the right place, with a sprinkling of luck thrown in on top.
I read an interesting claim back in college (maybe it was in a Kagan book? Not sure) that the carrack, made sturdy to survive the waters of the North Sea, ended up being able to carry more and heavier cannon than other contemporary vessels because those less-durable vessels could not handle the recoils of such cannon.
If this is true, it would speak to Europe’s ability to project force starting from the 14th century.
Depends which other civilisations you’re talking about.
The New World had essentially no metalworking or intensive agriculture.
This gave Europe a big advantage in terms of being able to outproduce, outspecialise and generally economies-of-scale much of the world into submission.
I suspect that if the Indian Subcontinent or East Asia happened to develop and exploit intercontinental seafaring before Europe, they’d have conquered the Americas and Oceania just fine.
It took a lot longer for Europe to colonise any more than the costal fringes of the Old World.
I’ll suggest 1645.
The critical thing that makes modern armies is command and control structures, and supply structures–everyone in the country X army is fighting under a standardized command structure with standard, GI arms and equipment. The New Model Army is a modern army; I believe it was the first.
The problem is, which Europeans, which other civilization, and which technology?
Dominance over native American was pretty much achieved the moment europeans had ships to get there, while China was only forced to accept Europeans demands in the late first half of the 1800’s.
If there is a culture war going on, why do I not feel engaged? I’m hardly averse to argument. Often I have to remind myself others have valid viewpoints as well. I see certain viewpoints as, if not evil, then severely misguided. Yet I see the culture war and rarely see common sense. I certainly don’t see the need to take up arms.
One side seems to want a strong collectivist state to promote their individual freedo; as long as that freedom complies with groupthink. The other side claims to want a weak state to guarantee that everyone has the opportunity to live life in an approved manner; they then try and claim the mantra of freedom.
I read comments on abortion by libertarians that somehow ignore the fact that they are advocating restricting the freedom of another human over their own body, and the only justification for this seems to be a moralistic consequences of their own action thing: would a libertarian also say we should not offer help to someone who has injured themselves in a hunting accident? Libertarians claim do no harm as a motto then advocate for gun ownership.
Turning my gaze to the other side, I despair of LBGTQ(+) activists advocating a form of government, socialism, which has historically persecuted homosexuality and promoted the ideal family. Race activists seem to be calling for government to define and protect identities, an act for which I can’t find a positive historical example that hasn’t led to persecution and injustice.
I can sit here and snipe at both sides, from the deep foliage of believing in freedom and that government is the enemy (sometimes necessary) of freedom. I can launch attacks from the moral heights of believing it is for everyone to define and change their identity as they wish. But why should i? Is the culture war even relevant to those of us who aren’t ‘conservatives’ or ‘liberals’? Why do most of us put up with people fighting from illogical and partial positions and trying to define our lives?
Maybe I’ve missed my calling. Maybe I should have become a mercenary in the culture wars, a natural liberal leading conservatives; a non-radical paying lip service to the Twitter mob’s cause de jour. For, looking down on this war, it appears the mercenaries not the combatants are the winners. The war eats it’s own commanders and destroys it’s own heroes. And until the watching hoards say enough, the culture war serves only the opportunist.
If one side ever actually “wins”, they won’t tolerate neutrals for long. You’ll be forced to bend the knee to one corrupt ruler or another.
So from the perspective of a neutral, the continued existence of the CW is a net benefit. Team red is the only thing stopping team blue from stomping team grey out of existence, and vice versa. So long as they are fighting each other, they aren’t fighting you.
That perspective reminds me of the Blood War in D&D cosmology (CE demons vs. LE devils)
I dont remember a libertarian willing to restrict the right to get an abortion. What I did see, is libertarians refusing to collectivise the cost of abortions, or obligating doctors to perform acts they disagree with.
The same way, someone injuring himself during his hobby is his problem. I see no issue with giving him assistance, but the cost of healing him is his, and should not be payed by a single-payer insurance, lest subsidising risk-taking or self destructing madmen and taxing careful and boring working men.
My understanding is that while the US Libertarian party has a set stance on abortion, actual libertarians in the US are divided on the issue. This makes sense to me–what stance a principled libertarian takes on abortion should depend on the ontology of fetuses (potentially varying based on their stage of development). The harm principle and the natural law would preclude abortion if a fetus is a person deserving of the same natural rights as an American citizen, (or full person, or whatever), but they would preclude interference in someone’s right to have an abortion if the fetus (sufficiently) lacks those rights. Since the question “To what degree are fetuses persons?” is roughly orthogonal to “To what degree is libertarianism the best principle by which to organize society?”, knowing that a person is libertarian shouldn’t tell you very much about their opinions on abortion, and vice versa.
I’m a libertarian willing to restrict the right to get an abortion!
I recognize that the woman is having her freedoms restricted, and I don’t feel good about that. But when a woman is “8.5 months pregnant though means other than rape or incest”* and wants to abort, either her right to bodily autonomy will be violated, or the baby’s right to life will be violated.
On balance,
I consider the bodily autonomy violation to be temporary, and the right to life violation to be permanent.
I think the woman made choices to create this situation, while the baby didn’t choose to be conceived, so I think allowing the mothers autonomy to be violated is the lesser of two evils.
I don’t feel great about it, but with current levels of technology, there are no easy answers.
*The strongest possible version of my argument
I would support the right of a woman to terminate whenever. If doctors judge the foetus to be viable this could be a caesarean rather than an actual abortion, but the right not to carry another person should be absolute not conditional.
It’s this kind of moral ambiguity that gets me. If you believe the woman has rights then these trump the right of the state to dictate to her what she can do. If you believe the foetus has more rights than the host, then can you also argue that the state shouldn’t give special privileges to other groups who it claims can’t look after themselves at the expense of someone else. The attempt to balance incompatible viewpoints is just incomprehensible. Abortion is fine, whenever (subject to my proviso above), or it is not. And if it is not you’re taking a collectivist position that the body of a woman belongs to society not herself…
The right to not be murdered is a “special privilege” being given to a “group” and not individuals, whom the state “claims” can’t look after themselves? Are you hearing yourself?
Do you think that there is a right for parents to leave their children without food and clothes by the side of the street?
If there isn’t (and I don’t think there is), why would it be any more allowable to kill a child with even less recourse to other charity?
This is difficult to put into practice or to draw from first principles outside of stating that a women ought to be able to choose if she gets pregnant or not. There is a large difference between having a right not to carry another person and having a right not to have to continue carrying another person. The state ought not to mandate that I go to the park and offer piggy back rides to any kid who wants it, but if I go and offer one of my own volition my right to no longer carry the child is tempered by the necessity that I find a safe way to put it down first.
This is a standard situation in most moral codes, you have the right not to work for someone, but that doesn’t mean you have to right to break a contract with someone after agreeing to work for them. To continue to is different than to begin with.
Pro-life contends that the fetus and the mother have the same rights, but that the right of the fetus being violated by an abortion (life) is more important than the right of the woman being violated by restricting abortion (liberty). Pro-choice generally does not dispute that life is more important than liberty, but usually contends that the fetus either does not have rights, or that its claim to rights is subordinate to the mother’s. No side claims that the fetus somehow has more rights than the mother.
Remember, pro-life sees the fetus to be a fully-fledged person. If you would like to understand their position better, take any argument in favor of abortion and use it to argue for infanticide. If the result seems wrong, you now understand why people oppose abortion.
(If you are in favor of infanticide, then fair enough, but recognize that your opinion is a tiny minority. In this case, claiming you don’t understand why people would feel otherwise mostly just shows a massive failure on your part to correctly model the world, rather than any deficiency in others.)
As I understand it, a lot of late term abortions are matters of medical necessity– the life and health of the woman are at stake.
I haven’t seen arguments for and against late-term caesareans for viable fetuses, but that doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Do you mean you would require the woman at 36 weeks pregnant to carry to term or have a C-Section? Because if so, that’s more pro-life than the current rules, more in line with some European countries aiui.
Hopefully Uber is also bound by similar provisions!
People who argue on the basis of bodily autonomy aren’t going to agree to the imposition of C-Section anymore than the imposition of C-Section or vaginal birth.
Nick: Murder presupposes that a foetus has the rights of a living person. As they’re not a living person it might not surprise you to find out I don’t think this position is valid (it’s also over emotive, never a sensible idea).
Echo Chaos. If you choose to have the child it’s your responsibility yes. But we’re discussing foetuses here not children, and choosing not to have the child. Also I do favour adoption of unwanted viable foetuses you’ll note.
Baconbits9: if you’re going to invoke contract here, who is the contract with? The foetus has no standing not being a legal person. Also, I can choose to put the child in the park down whenever and have no obligation if I do keep carrying them to do so for another eighteen years. And I can break a contract of employment you know: indenture is not allowed any more.
All three of you have made recourse to arguments whereby a foetus is accorded rights and actions only available to a living human. You’ve basically made a huge assumption there, without justifying it: I counter that a foetus is not a living human but only potentially might be, and that to do harm to a living person to the benefit of a potential person is clearly wrong. To allow the state to do this seems insane.
S/foetus/n-word, and you’ve got a defense of lynching that is just as valid as your defense of elective abortion. Which is to say, dependent on a claim which is not universally accepted as fact, and so asserting it as an unsupported fact persuades no one and enlightens no one. So what’s the point?
@ Watchman
You are swapping your arguments, your responses here are about the current legal climate, not a justification for that climate which is what your previous response was.
@Watchman
Correct, I am making that assumption. Which is the exact point that souleater is making.
If the fetus isn’t a human child, then abortion is a libertarian position. If it is, then banning abortion is a libertarian position.
There isn’t any moral ambiguity in what he is saying.
Broke: “if we illegalize late-term abortions, they won’t happen.”
Woke: “if we make people bear the costs of their late-term abortions, they won’t happen.”
Bespoke: “if we would just allow children to be bought and sold on an open market, people’s rational economic self-interest would mean abortions wouldn’t happen.”
Alternatively:
Broke: late-term abortions are OK because not allowing them infringes on women’s rights.
Woke: late-term abortions are OK because I don’t trust the state to regulate them effectively.
Bespoke: late-term abortions are OK because fetuses are willing to pay less to live then pregnant women are willing to pay to abort.
You say you don’t particularly feel the need to wage the culture war and that you find much to criticise on both sides, but you seem to have some strong opinions of your own and so far you seem happy enough to fight about abortion.
If you really don’t feel constrained to be a soldier in the battle, why bring that topic up? Why tell us your opinion about it? Don’t fight the wars on here, please!
In general, no more than one right can be absolute. It seems odd that anybody would pick this to be the one.
OK, at this point I just have to say it.
I’m suprised that someone hasn’t come out with a right-to-life argument that explicitly values males more than females. Perhaps to the tune of a (white) woman being 3/5 of a (white male) person.
I’m old enough that in my political experience, most right-to-life folks also opposed:
– contraception
– accurate sex education
– welfare, particularly for unwed mothers
Those positions are *still* all associated with the same US political party/”tribe”.
I’ve known a few respectable right-to-lifers, but most acted as if they wanted to punish sexually active girls and women, and any stick would do to beat them with.
So to right-to-lifers in general – I’ll believe you actually care about the fetus, when I see you providing prenatal care etc. I’ll believe you care about the (potential) mother when I see you providing contraceptives, sex education etc.
If you meerely do nothing to oppose those things, I’ll decide I don’t know your real motives – regardless of what you may claim.
And if you take all the above positions, I’m going to conclude you care nothing for the baby.
@DinoNerd
Christian charities already spend enormous amounts on adoption support.
Christians adopt so many babies that there are effectively no available healthy newborns for adoption in the entire United States and prospective adoptive parents must adopt either older children or go international.
Christian charities provide free pre-natal care in basically any city in America.
As for sex-ed and contraception, those are generally doctrinally disallowed or disfavored.
So unless your criteria is that they must support government intervention, Christians are already doing exactly what you are requesting.
And of course, just because I don’t take on the responsibility of feeding any specific child in the world doesn’t mean I think it should be legal to murder him/her.
And yet they haven’t, not even the ones who make foot-in-mouth gaffes and blurt out uncensored opinions in other contexts.
Which makes your post read as basically: “I am surprised at how poorly my mental model of right-to-life Red Tribe people predicted their actual behavior. Now let me explain to you my mental model of right-to-life Red Tribe…”
A: No, not interested, and
B: Maybe they don’t actually value males more than females.
I call BS. This is certainly not the position of the current Republican Party, and I would like to see some sourcing that it was the dominant position of that tribe in your lifetime. Yes, the Pope opposes contraception, but that doesn’t make it the position of 80% of red tribe.
I bet when we dig down it’s going to be something along the lines of “they don’t want to force nuns to buy birth control.”
@Jaskologist
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_control_movement_in_the_United_States
@Hoopyfreud
I don’t know DinoNerd’s age, but I doubt he was around for the 1873 Comstock Act.
@Jaskologist
The state of Massachusetts tried to enforce a ban on contraception in the 70s. IIRC DinoNerd is an older poster, but he can speak for himself. My point is that acceptance of “universal access to contraceptives” is a fairly recent development.
@ DinoNerd:
If so-called “pro-choice” people are really pro-choice, why is the political tribe which supports abortion also the one that tends to oppose my choice whether or not to own a gun, or bake a gay wedding cake, or pay for my employees’ contraception? Looks like they’re not really pro-choice, just pro-killing, and any stick will do to beat the innocent with.
^ See, I can come up with ridiculous straw-man arguments too! Now what?
Up until very recently, both Dems and Reps were split almost 50/50 (I think less than 60/40) on abortion. So it’s nonsensical to say that pro-life is Republican ideology and always has been. Only very recently has the pro-life movement been substantially more Rep than Dem. By the way, libertarians are about 80% pro-choice.
@everyone – yeah, the comparison with arguments in support of lynching rather caused me to lose my temper.
However, right-to-life people cannot take credit for everything done by Christians.
And requiring that things be done by charities – not government – or not done at all – is no more helpful than the reverse.
There’s also a question of the adequacy of level of support, when combined with preventing alternate ways of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy – or for that matter with one where you’d want to keep the child, if only you could afford to.
I get the decided impression that one of the many reasons the US has a shamefully high rate of maternal and newborn death (presumably even when the child is wanted) is because there isn’t enough prenatal care available over all. And I’d be utterly unsurprised to find it concentrated in place that are difficult for some people to reach, etc..
@EchoChaos
Is the above true, or would you need to insert the word “white” to make it true? (That’s a question, not a snark; google didn’t seem able to find an answer to it.)
@everyone again
In the news today, we have a woman who served time in prison for experiencing a miscarriage. (Charged reduced from “inducing an abortion” to “aggravated murder”.) This wasn’t in the US – it was in El salvador, a country with extremely strong anti-abortion laws. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49406029
We also have a recent case in Alabama, where a woman was charged with manslaughter for starting an argument that resulted in her being shot in the stomach, killing her unborn baby. https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/27/us/alabama-pregnant-woman-shot-in-stomach-manslaughter-indictment-trnd/index.html
To me, these are both right-to-fetal-life in action. And then we also have American lawmaker(s?), who believe that pregnancy cannot possibly result from rape. I.e. if you wind up pregnant, then it wasn’t really rape.
Admittedly, these are not the only – or even the most common – examples of anti-abortion beliefs and behaviour. But they remain relevant.
New pastor at my church has two non-white adopted children. It’s possible you can find minority children for adoption but given that people go to China or Africa for babies, I wouldn’t assume minority children in America are being aborted due to lack of adoption opportunities, despite the higher rates in those demographics.
@DinoNerd
No “white” requirement, but there is a “healthy”* requirement, for a relatively low value of “healthy”.
Walking, talking, being able to become an independent adult, is not required for adoption. Since AIDS became manageable, it doesn’t scare that many people; neither do things like Down syndrome or other survivable diseases/conditions.
Even babies that do not fulfill this really low bar for healthy get adopted.
And if the US ever experiences an absence of US citizens willing to adopt US black babies, there are always Dutch** or other European families willing to adopt a black baby within a clear legal system.
From what I’ve heard, one of the difficulties of placing black babies is the racial preferences of social workers, who find it suspicious and don’t like white kids adopting minority kids (white saviour complex and stuff).
Although I haven’t been able to find clear statistics on how many babies there are, that are actually available for adoption, and their health status, you can look at the babies that are actually available for adoption; if you put <3 y.o. and no health issues as a condition, most agencies won't have available kids for adoption.
The issue that frequently muddles a lot of statistics I have seen, with scary titles such as "hundreds of thousands of kids remain in foster system until adulthood", is that journalists muddle the issue. A kid being in the foster system does not mean the kid is adoptable; most frequently, for younger kids, they aren't, that's why nobody adopted them. And for various reasons, even the most open-hearted Christian family could be more wary to foster a kid than to adopt a kid, unless they intend to make fostering their way of life. By which I don't mean to necessarily make a living out of it; just dedicate a significant part of their family's resources to fostering kids, who come and go.
*Is able to breathe and eat on their own; is likely to survive until adulthood; is not prone to agressive self harm or harming others; can communicate, express love.
**For some reason, I found much more articles about Dutch than other European nations; I guess, like in other such cases, somebody tried it, they saw how much easier it was, passed it through the grapevine, and now quite a few Dutch families have adopted African-American babies.
@DinoNerd
You do not need to insert white. Essentially all healthy babies put up for adoption in the United States are adopted. We have demand that far outstrips the supply. The unadopted pool of children are either older or have some health problem.
As for the rest, you are essentially arguing that you need to be in favor of government intervention in order to be against killing babies. That is not a position I find particularly compelling. That I don’t think I should be required to pay for someone doesn’t mean you’re allowed to kill that person.
Megan McArdle dove into the numbers on this a while back:
That’s not entirely clear; Baird looks to have been a cherrypicked test case and it’s possible “the state of Massachusetts” was just trying to get a clear precedent that they didn’t have to enforce contraception bans any more. But OK, maybe Eisenstadt really meant it.
There’s still a huge leap between “I can find a record of someone on the other tribe(*) trying to do this in 1972” and “In my experience (mostly 1973-2019) most other-tribe people wanted this, and it is *still* associated with the other tribe”.
Jaskologist is right, this is not the position of the current Republican Party and/or “red tribe” generally, and it has not been for several decades at least. To claim otherwise is an indefensible error of fact.
* Except for the slight detail that Eisenstadt self-identified as a progressive Democrat and campaigned for e.g. school desegregation.
@DinoNerd
I would prefer less of this
where you baselessly impugn the people you’re arguing against as only caring about white people. It can only add heat and not light to the discussion, and comes off as quite hostile.
> I get the decided impression that one of the many reasons the US has a shamefully high rate of maternal and newborn death (presumably even when the child is wanted) is because there isn’t enough prenatal care available over all.
Have you done any research in this area. From my limited experience in EMS and clinical rotations, the biggest impacts seem to be:
* People too dumb to know how babby is made. Even those who’ve already been pregnant and given birth several times as adults (seen it).
* People too fat to know that they have a baby inside of them.
* People who like heroin/meth more than they do the health of their child.
Now that I think of it, this past weekend was the first time I’d encountered a woman in this context who was pregnant, knew she was pregnant, and had bothered to seek out pre-natal care.
A quick search shows that you can get a year’s worth of prenatal vitamins for about $15.
Childbirth complications are frequently due to maternal hypertension (frequently caused by being overweight) and maternal diabetes (frequently caused by the same things as being overweight). Also, not being aware of being pregnant so as to know due date and have delivery plans.
There are also differences in how “births” and thus “deaths” are calculated. The US law roughly considers a life to begin at the moment the fetus is expelled from the mother and takes a breath, even if that pregnancy is non-viable. So a miscarriage at 21 weeks with a neonate who struggles to breathe for 30 minutes counts as having both been born and died, even if there was no possibility for survival, given current medical science. In other countries, this would have been recorded as a miscarriage rather than neonatal mortality. Cuba apparently solves its problem by effectively mandating the abortion of all risky pregnancies.
@The original Mr. X
Because the choice we are talking about, is only the choice about having an abortion, since the term is a direct answer to “pro-life”.
Ron Paul is very willing to restrict the right to get an abortion.
For the most part, the kind of culture war skirmishes that end up in the news won’t directly impact your life. Twitter is only relevant if you or someone you know is on blast, which is relatively unlikely, and most newsworthy bits of activism are happening in ways or in places where it is very unlikely to effect you.
The things that you need to be aware of are the shifts in laws, regulations, or institutional norms which these people are pushing. So, for example, #metoo probably didn’t target you or anyone you knew personally but the change in the climate around sexual harassment accusations means that you’d be wise to adopt the Graham Rule. Similarly, the push for affirmative consent standards was a big deal for college students ten years ago but with recent rumblings from the ALA it could be a matter of just a few years before states begin to outlaw sex between neurotypical people.
That’s why these things matter. It’s fine to laugh at activists, but it’s important to remember that the demands of activists frequently end up translating into policy that you have to live under.
What did the American Library Association do?
I messed up the acronym, that should be the ABA or American Bar Association.
And what are they doing now?
I believe that they almost passed a resolution supporting affirmative consent being made (or being interpreted as?) the law for legal cases of rape.
I think it was on the motte reddit that there was some discussion whether or not that changes presumption of innocence or not.
I suppose one of the thoughts that underlie whatever my above post actually was (I just read some bits as poetry which concerned me…) is more a question of why those of us not fighting slow thus though. Why is the ALA (I’m even less sure who they are than Aapje) able to suggest limits on sexual activity without being roundly abused? Why are the moral majority (seemingly misnamed) able to impose their religious understanding of right and wrong on entire populations?
Maybe the question is where is the movement or the institution that tells the extremists to go away and leave the adults alone?
I mutilated the acronym, that should be the ABA or American Bar Association not the ALA which as far as I know has no stance on Affirmative Consent.
These days, those people are known as “conservatives.” Back in the Bush administration you could be a libertarian and not conservative, but they’ve long since been thrown into the pit with the rest of us.
Nassim Taleb coined a term for an old idea, what he calls the “dictatorship of the small minority.” Roughly 8% of the country’s population can be classified as progressive activists, the people who actually care about this stuff. The problem is, they really really care about it while most of the rest of the country is indifferent. Public choice theory tells us that a small group gaining a concentrated benefit can often defeat a much larger group suffering a diffuse harm. So it’s not a surprise that they’re able to push through all kinds of insanity that the general public disagrees with.
Nabil,
From where I sit conservatives, with their lip service towards freedom and refusal to allow basically sensible ideas implementing freedom such as gay marriage are no more a sensible option than liberals. I’m certainly not prepared to hang around in a pit with them, as they are fighting this silly war.
If you’re saying that the culture war has forced every organisation other than perhaps the ALA to take sides, then my question is why? What allows this polarisation when most people are basically not committed to the fight? And how do we use the ALA’s possible neutrality to push back at this polarisation?
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you aren’t the one who decides whether you get thrown into the pit. The people who decide whether you’re a conservative or not aren’t very interested in your self-identification.
See my second paragraph above.
If most people aren’t committed to the fight, but a minority are highly committed, that minority is going to win pretty much by default. That’s how politics works, whether you’re talking about electoral corporate or academic politics.
The ALA has taken sides; like most formerly liberal organizations, they’ve gone woke.
There really are no neutrals. There’s only those who are not (yet) involved.
@The Nybbler
Heh, yeah, I was wondering when someone was going to point this out. Dreher’s mentioned the American Library Association a number of times on his blog.
Seems like a good thing. The culture war has an outsized mindshare on Twitter (as well as with many commenters here). Stay off Twitter, enjoy your life, and you will probably never encounter a culture war artifact in actual life.
That would be a lot easier if not something like 60% of all journalists were on twitter (oposed to <10% of general society) and they claim it is incredibly important to them to a) be on Twitter b) tell us what happens there.
Ergo, what they think of as important news is often not, so you can safely avoid newspapers and news broadcasts.
Structuring your life in such a way as to avoid all content produced by professional journalists working for large corporations strikes me as something that would probably increase one’s net knowledge – if only by failing to take in false information.
I wouldn’t say I structure my life that way, but I don’t have broadcast television nor a pet, so I don’t see much of either.
@Matt M: I try to do that. I haven’t had TV service for most of my adult life, and I don’t have professional journalism businesses in my feed. I will confess to sometimes Googling MSM stories and sharing links here!
I work in a university. A UK one, so not so bad as some, but still a university…
Ha, I was going to caveat my post with “unless you work at a university”, although some are definitely worse than others. I work at a mid-level state university, and there’s not much woke conflict here; I imagine it would be much worse at a liberal arts college.
I saw a post on twitter saying this mindset is like a monk in the early 16th century telling other people that pamphlets aren’t real life. What happens on social media is a precursor to “real life”, not it’s own separate thing.
Monk sees pamphlet nailed to Wittenberg church door
“Oh bother.”
An analogy that uses events we understand with historical hindsight to make future predictions doesn’t seem on very stable ground to me.
Of course, it doesn’t prove anything but it’s a look from the outside view. When Martin Luther wrote the 95 theses, it might have looked like an intellectual and esoteric argument that meant nothing to the average man. But thanks to the printing press, his influence spread wide and the whole Reformation and all its consequences were heavily aided by the invention.
The internet is still fairly new and immature, which is why you might think its not “real”. But its influence is growing rapidly and the things that happen there are starting to affect the world outside of it. It’s often joked that Trump got “memed” in to the presidency and there is certainly some truth there. The internet and its culture is becoming ubiquitous and as time goes on, the idea that the internet isn’t a reflection of reality is harder to maintain.
I’m not sure what “reflection of reality” means. Woke Twitter is not representative of most places or most people you meet (unless you work at Oberlin). Might the world become more like woke twitter? Perhaps, perhaps not. Neither of which seems a reason to waste time thinking about culture war nonsense if you’d rather not.
Woke twitter is normality in universities(students as well as faculty), the media and Hollywood. It seeps more in to our lives through movies/tv shows, HR departments and Antifa protests. When a MAGA-hat customer is kicked out of a business, that’s woke twitter manifested. You can choose to ignore what happens on the internet, but when some new development happens out here, that’s where it comes from.
+1
I’m making plans to move out of Portland because it’s too similar to Woke Twitter. The City Council cares more about their pronouns than law enforcement in neighborhoods poorer than the ones the five of them live in.
From Ada Palmer, who says that information revolutions give a new advantage to fringe positions.
************************
Censorship & Information Control In Information Revolutions
2002 Penguin commemorative edition of 1984 with the title and Orwell’s name blacked out as if censored, a tribute to the book’s unique contributions to discourse about censorship.
An exhibition and video series at The University of Chicago
Why do people censor? For ambition? Religion? Profit? Power? Fear? This global history of attempts to control or silence information, from antiquity’s earliest written records to our new digital world, examines how censorship has worked, thrived, or failed in different times and places, and shows how real censorship movements tend to be very different from the centralized, methodical, top-down censorship depicted in Orwell’s 1984, which so dominates how we imagine censorship today. From indexes of forbidden books, to manuscripts with passages inked out by Church Inquisitors, to comics and pornography, to self-censorship and the subtle censorship of manipulating translations or teaching biased histories, the banned and challenged materials in this exhibit will challenge you to answer: how do you define what is and isn’t censorship?
You guys are arguing as if it’s a binary, but I’d suggest that both of the following statements can easily be true:
1. Current Twitter discourse is not at all representative of popular opinion in general.
2. Current Twitter discourse is not completely and entirely irrelevant, because although the people on Twitter are a minority, they are a highly powerful and influential minority whose opinions are likely the vanguard of what is to come.
In other words, it’s dumb to say “Trump can’t win re-election, because everyone on Twitter hates him.” But it’s far less dumb to say “10 years from now, we will likely have hate speech laws in the US, because everyone on Twitter wants them.”
Similarly, the timeline from “Luther nails the 95 theses to the door” and “Average peasant has their life directly affected by these sorts of things” was probably years/decades (depending on where the peasant lived)
When a MAGA-hat customer is kicked out of a business, that’s woke twitter manifested. You can choose to ignore what happens on the internet, but when some new development happens out here, that’s where it comes from.
This again is asserting more than you can prove. That woke twitter agrees with something doesn’t mean that woke twitter is the cause. I can envision many reasons why a business might want to kick out someone for wearing a MAGA hat, and those reasons are traced to association with Trump rather than woke twitter. It doesn’t take being a member of woke twitter to have an extreme distaste for Trump and those who publicly and loudly endorse him.
It’s also a matter of counting the hits and ignoring the misses. A million trends rise and die on the internet and have no impact on the greater culture. Likewise, woke twitter has a million pet causes and internecine feuds that will never find their way into the larger culture. That at some point one does happen to gain traction is not proof of the internet’s (and woke twitter’s in particular) cultural domination.
I don’t think it is wanting to exclude the political opponent from daily life that is new or twitter facilitated, but feeling as if you are doing something positive for doing so.
If you can turn to social media to get get praise for this action, or have seen such before, then you are more likely to act on that whim.
Another way social media might be encouraging this trend is by training people to block, rather than tolerate, speech that they personally find offensive.
But then, maybe we only think this is a trend because of social media reporting on such stories? It could be there were a lot of Clinton or Bush supporters shunned, but no one to announce this individual action to the world.
I suspect that twitter is acting as a social catalyst. It’s facilitating and exacerbating intellectual trends that began before social media was a thing.
It’s definitely making everyone more fanatical, which may in turn accelerate the pace at which real life is affected.
But at a bare minimum it’s a window into what future main stream culture/entertainment as well as education/legislation will look like. Since, as others have stated, the dedicated minority wins out over the indifferent majority.
I don’t think the point is that the business owner is a member of woke Twitter. Indeed, she might not even know what Twitter is or what “woke” refers to in this context. The point is that the behavior of a business owner kicking out someone for wearing a MAGA hat comes from the same cluster of beliefs and ideology from which “woke Twitter” comes. There’s a universe of difference between having extreme distaste for someone on the basis of their overt political beliefs and having the belief that it’s righteous and good to break standards of common decency and civility in order to deny such a person your commercial services. That latter belief is obviously something that has existed as long as politics has existed (which is as long as beliefs have existed), but in recent history, that belief had been effectively suppressed, and it’s only in really recent history that the suppression has been explicitly fought back against, by that ideology cluster behind woke Twitter. It’s not that woke Twitter is literally from where such behavior comes, it’s that woke Twitter offers a window into the ideology from where such behavior comes.
The point is that the behavior of a business owner kicking out someone for wearing a MAGA hat comes from the same cluster of beliefs and ideology from which “woke Twitter” comes.
That, of course, depends on the particulars of the situation; you can assert it to be so in this hypothetical, but there are lots of other hypotheticals where a person gets mad and kicks out the MAGA hat while maybe only sharing 1% of the beliefs of Woke twitter.
..it’s only in really recent history that the suppression has been explicitly fought back against, by that ideology cluster behind woke Twitter. It’s not that woke Twitter is literally from where such behavior comes, it’s that woke Twitter offers a window into the ideology from where such behavior comes.
This sounds like revisionist history, but let’s assume that you are correct that there was a 50 year interregnum between the segregation of the 50’s and today’s (far less widespread) rejection of norms of commercial behavior (although it seems that conservatives support the right to behave such, if not the reasoning behind specific instances). I still don’t see the justification for the “window into thinking” or “reflection of reality” line of thinking. The most straightforward thing to do would be to ask the person in question their reasoning and beliefs. If there are some similarities between the answers and woke twitter, how does that entail that it is a “window into the ideology” rather than the much simpler case that you will find similarities of beliefs across the vast spectrum of individuals and ideologies.
[Also, that something has happened once or twice doesn’t make it a cultural trend. A MAGA hat being kicked out of a store makes the news because it is the exception.]
Ultimately, I see a lot of metaphors being used, but very few concrete statements. Does woke twitter have an influence on the wider culture? You can get evidence for that: surveys, interviews, etc. If not, does woke twitter signal things to come? There needs to be evidence for that too, if the assertion is being made. Are the similarities between some widespread beliefs and common beliefs on woke twitter coincidental, come from the same root cause, one caused by the other, etc. All of these questions require evidence which I’m not seeing be provided.
I mean, you could make an equally true argument that if some white person attacks immigrants and Jews while spouting off about how she needs to secure the future of her race that rather than believing that it comes from a white supremacist ideology cluster, the much simpler case is that you’ll find similarities of beliefs across a vast spectrum of individuals and ideologies.
And it might even be true! This specific white person might have come up with her beliefs wholly independently of any other ideology. But broadly speaking, when we see people taking on such strong indicators of ideology like talking about “securing the future of our race” or denying someone your commercial services because they overtly hold political beliefs you disagree with, it’s reasonable to conclude that the person is instantiating the ideology. Sometimes people pronounce the first syllable of “shibboleth” like “si” entirely by coincidence, but that’s generally not the best bet.
Clearly it all depends on the details of the case; an 8chan user with a manifesto has clearer ideological ties than, say, a local barista without a twitter account. Which is part of my point: details are evidence, and to support these claims, you need evidence, not just pointing to generic instances or hypotheticals that seem plausible.
Agreed, it all depends on the details of the case, and details are evidence. And when discussing specific incidents, we do discuss details which do amount to evidence. But this conversation isn’t about specific incidents, it’s about the general trend of these types of incidents. The argument isn’t that literally every piece of dumb pattern matching we do is indicative of a real causal link. It’s that we’re noticing lots of incidents where if we drill down to the specific details we see clear evidence of causal links, and that we can predict more causally linked incidents in the future.
>I despair of LBGTQ(+) activists advocating a form of government, socialism, which has historically persecuted homosexuality and promoted the ideal family
You don’t think capitalist governments have done the same?
You have to remember that most governments throughout history have persecuted homosexuality. With this in mind, the question you have to ask isn’t “Do capitalist governments persecute homosexuals?” but rather “What governments don’t? The only governments on Earth that have given homosexuals explicit rights and outlawed state persecution of homosexuals have been countries with free market economies. So it seems the burden of proof would be on those seeking to show that capitalist governments are as hostile to homosexuals as socialist governments.
I think you are confusing libertarianism with being libertine. Social and moral consequences for an individual’s actions are the only way a small or absent state can exist. A place without morality will necessarily become a police state, because otherwise people will just steal all the time because the state is the only entity imposing repercussions.
Does anyone have tips for how to best use time in meetings when you don’t care about listening to the content?
I struggle to take information audibly so even if its a topic I’m interested in, if its not a conversation, I know I’m just going to go away and read about it – listening is just an energy sap. But I also find it fairly hard to completely block out what is being said – its a distraction to normal thinking. Can I do better than spasmodic day dreaming when my employment forces me into these situations?
I have lots of tactics when I’m able to sit with a pen and paper – writing notes and writing for other projects is often hard to distinguish. But any tips for when that isn’t possible – standing room only meetings for instance – where I need to keep my eyes open and can’t look at a phone.
1) Are there any forms of meditation a person can undertake with their eyes open, in a noisy setting?
2) Perhaps with prior preparation – any productive uses of the time? Whether its building some mental agility or something with a practical benefit today (composing an email/thinking through a plan)
3) Games – currently I’ll do some 3 digit multiplication or try and list animal/countries… – anyone have something different they do?
I like to list all the prime numbers starting from 1
I am learning Chinese, so I’ll try listening to the conversation and do translation, or think about how I could respond to the comment using chinese.
Interesting – thanks
Surely you mean starting from 2.
+1
So, starting from 3?
Can you imagine the potential embarrassment of typing +1 now…
If you are often required to attend such meetings, then you could consider to switch jobs.
No job is perfect in all areas. I’m not going to boast about mine but there are compensations to the fact I find it pragmatic to attend some pointless meetings. If I have given the impression it is particularly lacking in freedom, this is in error.
I play video games on my phone. I feel no need to keep up with the pretense that there is a large value in such wastes of time.
During meetings where my attention and participation is unneeded, I usually do two things:
1) Let my imagination run wild. Ponder whatever comes to mind and jot down notes about things to research once I get back to my desk and have computer access. (A few weeks ago, I went down the mental rabbit hole during a boring meeting and became intrigued with understanding how far down I’d have to dig beneath my house until temperatures reached 100 C, and it was uninhabitable for anything but extremophile bacteria.) Understandably, accessing your imagination can be hard in a distracting and boring environment like a meeting room, but try.
2) Think about your to-do list of personal tasks and chores. Get them organized, think about supporting and ancillary tasks you need to do, and write it down (I keep a running to-do list in a Gmail draft). At least something productive will get done.
I look at the clock and factor the number into primes. 2:30:27 is 23,027, and away. I picked that number semi-randomly and that would take a little bit (it might be prime.)
When I was an intern and in large group meetings, I would imagine who would win if the meeting devolved into an all out brawl.
There’s so many additional constraints you could introduce (teams, weapons, surprise attacks) that the scenario can keep you mentally debating all meeting.
That’s decidedly not better than spasmodic day dreaming, though, so no, no suggestions. Just hope is isn’t after lunch, in a warm, enclosed room, with the lights off for powerpoint. In that case I suggest bringing a pen to stab yourself awake periodically.
Bring a legal pad and a pencil or, if electronics are allowed, keep a notepad document open.
Most meetings, even the dullest, have one or two important bits of information that you should jot down so that you don’t forget them later. So you will have some actual notes from the meeting if anyone asks, and you can come up with questions to show that you were paying attention.
But the real value is that you can scribble or type away at whatever else you’re working on. I’ve planned experiments and D&D sessions during boring lab meetings and seminar talks before but to anyone looking it seems like I’m 100% engaged and taking careful notes. You can complete the illusion by asking one or two questions from the useful notes you jotted down.
Publish and Perish, a humorous horror novel, has a scene of mayhem at a meeting that I suspect was at least initially developed at a dull meeting.
Try not showing up and seeing if anyone cares. If you’re called on it, say you were deep into work and lost track of time. YMMV, but there were two monthly meetings in a previous job that I went to twice, decided they weren’t useful, and never went to again. I never got in trouble.
Last thread we had a brief segue on feeling pride for one’s ancestry, triggered by BBA. I appreciate it.
I can completely understand the “radical individualist” position that you are neither proud of or ashamed of your ancestors. It’s not mine, but it at least holds together and makes sense to me.
What I can’t understand is a feeling of net shame from your ancestors. Literally nobody is descended from only people who have been evil/bad for the human race. The Germans have had a rough century, but even then they held the wall for the free world against communism, showed how a society can deal well with tragic mistakes and built the strongest economy in Europe. Not to mention once you go back before then they have the society that brought us Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Leibnitz, etc. Even with the last century, the Germans have been a net positive to the world.
This holds true for EVERY people out there. Africans, Asians, Jews, Southerners, Yankees, Irishmen, etc.
If you think that you are the one descendent of a people who is a net negative to humanity, I will suggest to you that perhaps you have a psychologically unhealthy view and need to seek help. And that help should not be someone who is going to enhance a negative view of yourself over your heritage.
If, like me, you can’t choose radical individualism, look to the good things your people do and be proud of them.
I thought Mozart was Austrian.
So was Hitler.
Austrians are Germans in a broad sense. I’m talking heritage, not nation-state.
Wow, there’s a two-desktop-screens-plus WP article on “Mozart’s Nationality”!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart%27s_nationality
There was an infamous edit war on the Chopin page about his nationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars#Chopin
Elsewhere on that page:
“The article Hummus, along with other articles relating to the Arab–Israeli conflict, is currently subject to active arbitration remedies”.
For a moment there, I thought it was a typo for Hamas, which would totally make sense for having an edit war, but no, it’s plausible that it really is Hummus.
Original sin? It’s been on the individual to turn away from the disobedience they inherited and towards the light for generations. And you don’t get any sign you’ve done it until Judgement day. It doesn’t seem like that new of a concept. Frankly “net positive” to humanity only makes sense now that we no longer live in a “world grown old.”
Christians believe that humanity is placed here to do good and clearly has.
John 14:12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.
Doing greater works than Christ is clearly a net good.
But the goodness of your fore-bearers doesn’t change that you start with a negative balance in Heaven’s ledger (except for Mary, for Catholics). That it’s up to you within your life to choose redemption. The state is the same whether the world is net good or net bad, your inheritance is the same.
Christianity certainly offers a solution – God put his finger on the scale when he died on the cross – Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy as defined by Christ/Godhead is the solution. I suspect the modern solution offered is the same with different terms.
You said what you “can’t understand is a feeling of net shame” and all I can say is coming from a Christian background is I really, really can. Massa damnata.
I think that’s a different topic, though. EchoChaos wasn’t talking about Original Sin, but about whether or not the world would be better-off if a specific race or ethnicity had never existed. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” is different to “All the problems in the world today are caused by white people screwing everybody else over”.
Yeah, original sin doesn’t depend on recent ancestors, just Adam and Eve.
At least the original sin is supposed to apply to all humans equally (minus an exception or two). This is simply the Noble Savage myth.
Not going to name any names, but some people’s ancestors had to be worse than other people’s ancestors. And, obviously, people are going to have ancestors that were much worse than average. And if you’re going to tie your self-worth to your ancestors’ behavior, that’s something you could feel shame about.
I suppose. In the same way one could feel shame about not being the richest man in the world, but “below average” is very far from “net negative”.
More like how someone could feel poor if they’re earning $25k/year and the median income of their social group is $50k.
This is where niches come in handy. In the same way very very few can be high status if we measure on one metric, if we subdivide into multiple groups based on various criteria, we can have many more people feel high status. Ie, Scott is the based at whale-puns among bloggers. Heck, probably among on-line content creators generally. Etc.
You don’t have to look at the net contribution of all your ancestors compared to all others. You’ve got some gem in there somewhere. A good portion of nuts too, of course.
If you go back far enough everyone is related to everyone, so everyone is equally descended from thieves, murderers, fraudsters and rapists. If all ancestry is shameful, none is.
This reminds me of a C.S. Lewis quote (from Prince Caspian):
@Chalid
Sure, but is it knowable which ones? Some cultures have way better record-keeping than others. Just because we know more crimes that were committed by some groups doesn’t mean that they committed more crimes. They (or their enemies) might just have recorded their crimes better.
Is it knowable who were my ancestors? Genealogy only goes so far, especially for most of us who aren’t of blue blood. Is it knowable which modern ethnic group is (partially) the same as some group of perpetrators or victims?
How do you account for power differences in society? When lords commit crimes, are only their ancestors related to these crimes by blood, or also the ancestors of serfs?
What about the impact of technology? Is the Holocaust worse than other genocides because it killed so many, or were perpetrators of lesser genocides who were held back by poor technology and organisation just as bad, for having a similar intent, even if they lacked the means to make it a reality?
It seems to me that most people’s assessment of how bad certain ethnic groups are is primarily a matter of very shitty history, if not outright propaganda.
You can also tie your self-worth to the things that you preserve and celebrate today. The act of arguing that your group has an obligation to live up to an ideal set by your ancestors is arguably itself a moral (or immoral) act of today, not of the past.
These are all equally reasons not to feel pride in ancestry, either.
(To be clear, I do take the individualist position – it doesn’t make sense to feel pride or shame in your ancestors. But I find feeling proud to be about as reasonable as feeling shame – people choose to feel proud because it makes them feel good about themselves, and perhaps because we can tell adaptive lives that promote group cohesion, and not because of some sort of objective assessment of the history.
One possible basis for pride in or shame for your ancestors might be the belief that you have much in common with them. If your ancestors fought heroically, you can see that as a reason to believe that, given similar circumstances, you would. You, after all, have inherited their genes and may well have been reared in their culture. Similarly for other features of their history, positive or negative.
This wouldn’t be a good moment to air my views of the Serbs, would it?
I think “pride” is really the wrong way of looking at this issue. I am not “proud” of my ancestry. Why should I be? I did not contribute to it. It is a fluke of my birth. Entirely coincidental. Similarly, I am not “proud” of the achievements of my ancestors. Again, why should I be? Their achievements are their own – I did not contribute to them in any way.
That said, I do have a lot of gratitude for my ancestors. Their hard work, sacrifice, and achievements allow me to live a life of unbelievably luxury compared to what most of them could ever imagine. I am grateful for that. I am grateful for the things they have created (including myself) and the example they have set. I celebrate their achievements, but they remain their achievements. Now, I must create my own achievements. I must leave the world a better place so that my decedents can one day feel grateful to me.
Is “Pride” not a reasonable thing to call all those feelings?
I am fairly sure that those marching in the San Francisco Pride parade that Scott highlighted aren’t claiming that they were responsible for it, but rather celebrating their achievements and exhorting their colleagues to do more of the same.
I am pretty sure that gratitude and pride are two different things. Gratitude is about what others did, and pride is about what you are.
Even if you are a robot, so that “what your makers did” and “what you are” are kinda the same thing, still the gratitude is focused on their effort and sacrifice, while pride is focused on the outcome. For example, learning that your makers actually worked in much worse conditions than you originally thought, should increase your gratitude, but not your pride, because the result remains the same. On the other hand, learning that by sheer luck they have accidentally chosen the best of the few possible technical architectures, should increase your pride, but not your gratitude.
What you are is a descendant of your ancestors and a member of a culture steeped in history.
Maybe on your side of the pond, I dunno about Americans… 😉
Is this comment any two of true, kind, or necessary?
For a variety of reasons, this is a digression that I don’t think is worth pursuing.
I am trying to help get people past a profoundly negative view of their ancestry.
Its a funny thing. Though I’m only 1/8th Norwegian (though 1/4 Scandinavian) Norway is the country I most “identify” with on an ancestral level. Growing up we’d make lefse, and the Norwegian ancestors where the only ones I’ve been able to track back to the point of immigration to the US. And I guess you could say I’m proud of being “Norwegian.” When I read about WWII and how Norway fought the Nazi’s against unbeatable odds, while Denmark rolled over, I take pride in that (even though neither I or my ancestors had anything to do with it). And yet when I read about Viking raids I don’t feel any shame that my ancestors were murderous, pillaging, raping, slavers. If I feel anything it’s pride that Vikings were so good at seamanship and such tough warriors!
I don’t know why. Its the same feeling a get from team sports: I take pride in the Seahawks when they win, even though I have nothing to do with it and the only reason I root for them is where I grew up. It’s fun.
I’m sure you didn’t do this intentionally, but your comment is basically an ad hominem. I don’t know, and don’t want to know, if what you’re saying is true or not.
Because
a) Someone says “x” and you’re saying “aren’t you one of those dreaded “Ys”? ” is pretty much just outgrouping them.
b) Comments like this encourage people to defend white nationalism, and that’s not something we do here. Those conversations belong in r/theMotte
I want you to know I feel dirty having to defend someone accused of white nationalism. But the SSC comment section is one of the only places on the internet with high quality dialogue, and your comment jeopardizes that.
He did it intentionally. It’s not the first ad hominem I’ve received here.
To be fair, he accused me because I am.
Well now I feel super dirty… I specifically said I didn’t want to know.
I’m finished commenting on this thread for the reasons I described above.
To be charitable to broblawsky, it may be that answering this in the affirmative would elevate you in his esteem, as holding a view out of love for your own is surely superior to holding it out of hate for the other.
@Randy M
I doubt it. In my pre-banning discussion where I noted that I have black family and Latino friends and love them dearly, it didn’t manage to salvage me in anyone’s eyes.
To be fair, “but I have a black friend” is a typical response of people claiming to not be racists.
It’s weird, but I actually am a little grateful that he isn’t going to try to gaslight us about his beliefs.
@JPNunez
a: And it’s a good defense against racism at some level. That’s why liberals have had to define racism down.
b: Having black family is a substantial amount more commitment than black friends.
@broblawsky
That seems unnecessary. I’ve been pretty open about my beliefs. I don’t bring them up because that was specifically something that was worth banning in Scott’s mind and this is his place, so I follow his rules.
Which is why I find it annoying when people add bonus stuff that I must believe. I am perfectly willing to say exactly what I believe. If I say I don’t believe something, I don’t believe it.
@EchoChaos: I can understand not wanting to rehash what you believe due to Scott having leveled a temp-ban for it. That said, I think I can see where you’re coming from. I myself wouldn’t support the phrasing “It is important for majority-white countries to remain that way”, but I certainly see the value of ethnic chauvinism. “Right-wing” countries in the EU don’t frame their opposition to the EU’s top-down immigration demands as white nationalism, but “we don’t want one Muslim more than we already have. We’ll take the Christian refugees (because we’re a nation of Christians).” When I see that, I internally cheer for the plucky underdog standing up to the unaccountable SJW Eurocrats. And I say “ethnic” rather than “religious” because presumably the rightist Party in Hungary wants Christian refugees to learn Magyar and integrate, especially as actual church attendance becomes a less important social glue.
An ethnicity can include any genetic line. If you think all European countries should stay mostly-white because of IQ studies despite loving your kin of African descent, that’s getting into a weird area I won’t support.
It isn’t an ad hominem. EchoChaos is a supporter of white nationalism. He’s admitted here, before he was banned. Unless he’s changed his mind about it – and I doubt it, based on what he’s saying here – it isn’t an ad hominem to use a label that someone proudly wears.
And while this comment might not be kind, I would argue that it is true (because EchoChaos has previously admitted it) and necessary (because some people might not be aware of what kind of things EchoChaos supports), and therefore within the bounds of acceptable discourse here.
That’s not how Scott defined necessary. This is how Scott defined necessary:
Ask yourself whether your post passes that test.
“Ad hominem” isn’t synonymous with “insult”. It’s an attack on someone’s argument by appeal to their personal traits, real or imagined. If you’re saying someone’s argument is suspect because they’re, say, a Communist, then it’s ad hominem even if they are in fact a Communist and have written a dozen books about how Marx is way cool.
I actually think it does contribute something to the discussion: sentiment like that in the OP is how white nationalists (and similar groups) justify their policies. Some of the people in this thread were, it appears, unaware of this. If you think it’s unnecessary, I respect your point of view, but I think it was worth posting.
I didn’t actually attack EchoChaos’ argument. I just asked him if it was part of the ideological foundation of his white nationalist beliefs.
broblawsky , bud, everything is within bounds of acceptable discourse here if done politely and in good faith. I quite dislike the thinly veiled shaming of Scott for his virtue of allowing civil debate about basically anything (short of incitement, within the commenting guidelines, as long as it doesn’t get him in trouble, etc.).
It is actually possible that some white nationalist and similar groups have some measure of legitimate justification for their policies. That doesn’t mean anything they propose is worth doing once all the myriad downsides are taken into consideration, but saying “Hey, don’t not hate your heritage; Nazis didn’t hate their heritage!” is pretty garbage argumentation.
I would still ask what relevance you think his other beliefs have to do with what he’s saying here. Why should anyone care, for the purposes of the discussion at hand, whether he’s a white nationalist or not?
I’m not trying to “shame” Scott, and I don’t like your implication that I am. I’m not sure how you even inferred that from my comments.
I didn’t call anyone a Nazi. The only label I used is one the OP openly admitted to. I just asked if this is part of how EchoChaos justifies his white nationalist beliefs, or if it is (to his mind) part of an unrelated set of ideas. I’m pretty sure that it’s directly linked, based on similar things I’ve seen. I thought it would be useful to illustrate how that connection works.
Very well, I’ll withdraw that if you are averring that, to paraphrase, “some people might not be aware that these ideas are within the bounds of acceptable discourse here” was not meant negatively.
But in the broader internet, views of a blog’s commenters are often attributed to the host under the assumption that the host will not allow views he disagrees with to be posted; Scott has faced this problem himself. This was the innuendo I inferred from the quote I bolded above.
No, you didn’t, but you did say “sentiment like that in the OP is how white nationalists (and similar groups)”. If you don’t think Nazis are similar groups to White Nationalists, I’ll cop to being the one to Godwin myself here.
Frankly, I don’t think your original question was out of line, except for the fact that Echochaos may be hesitant to bring it up because he was asked not to do so so often in the past.
But it would have been a better comment if you had just gone ahead and plainly stated your objections, like “I find that only taking the good from the past to identify with is a way that nationalist groups gain sway among those not otherwise committed to an exclusivist ideology and I don’t care for this argument for that reason.” This has the advantage of both not making it personal, and actually going ahead and expressing the counter argument to the one you find dangerous.
Agreed. The original post as-is smells strongly of Just Asking Questions™
Ah, I see the misunderstanding. The thing I was saying was “within the bounds of acceptable discourse” was my comment, not EchoChaos’. I don’t consider it to be my job to police content here; I was just defending my original decision to ask EchoChaos about his post. I suppose my response was ambiguously worded, though.
That’s fair. I’ll try to be a bit more expansive in the future, when possible. Thank you for making such an excellent point.
@souleater
He definitely did it intentionally. He’s been trying to bait EchoChaos by asking EchoChaos questions that EchoChaos is not allowed to answer under penalty of ban.
@Scott Alexander
If you’re going to have a rule that some people can’t talk about a specific ideology they have, you should also have a rule that other people can’t pointedly question that person about that ideology.
I wasn’t aware that EchoChaos isn’t allowed to advocate for white nationalism under penalty of banning, but if he is, he probably shouldn’t make posts like this. It really seems like skirting the rules.
Should I be proud of my nation/people? I think that’s like asking, should I be proud of my family?
If we are measuring families by their moral or creative accomplishments, mine is nothing special. I mean, perhaps it’s better than the average family, but there are surely millions of other families out there better than it. If you can even measure such things.
But what I think “being proud of” my family really means is *wishing to associate* with my family. And I do wish to associate with my family, and they wish to associate with me. Having a close loving family is a good thing; it makes all of us happier and more secure and stronger.
I think the same is true of “being proud of” my nation. It means wanting to take part in and contribute to the mutual solidarity of the nation. It does not imply a judgment of the nation’s accomplishments.
I’ve got a book with my family’s genealogy from 1637 (when the first of us arrived in the new world) to the end of the 19th century. Lots of the short bios read like they’re trying very hard to make a fairly ordinary person sound impressive. But near the end, it talks about what some of them were doing in the 1860s, and I noticed that several wore blue, and not a single one wore gray. Probably mostly indicative of the fact that they were a bunch of Yankees, and many hadn’t moved out of New England, but still, I felt good about that.
The Hugo Awards. None of my favorites won, but neither did any of the things I really hated.
Stats and such
There were only 3,097 ballots cast. There were 1800 nominating ballots.
The works which didn’t get quite enough nominations to be on the ballot are listed at the end.
Bah, missed my chance of winning a Hugo! I knew I should have written some fanfic for AO3 beforehand.
Hey, maybe it’ll win next year too.
Also, “Semiprozine” is such a funny term. When does it get FDA-approved?
My feeling is that writing for AO3 in the future still gets you a tiny fraction of a Hugo, but I don’t know whether people would agree with me.
What’s interesting to me in that list is how far away from SF fandom I’ve fallen; out of all those names, the only ones I recognise are Mary Robinette Kowal, Gardner Dozois and Ursula LeGuin, and I’ve never read any of Kowal’s work. Save for AO3, where I occasionally fossick for some fanfic fixes, but I find the tags nearly impossible to navigate and can never get the filters to work correctly, so I’m constantly frustrated by “Agh, no, I don’t want a six-universe crossover romance coffeeshop AU, whatever happened to good old wholesome murder and mayhem fic?”
Sic transit gloria mundi!
EDIT: Whoa, from that stats link, this is some intriguing thumb on the scale work:
Whit the what the who now? What are these “aspects other than the fictional text” that are primarily noteworthy? It would be nice if you told us what the criteria for you deciding to add them in for an award were! Haven’t the Sad and Rabid Puppies matters taught them by now that this kind of “we’re deciding who we’re nominating and awarding prizes to on our own criteria not in the rules” jugglery is a bad idea? I don’t object to AO3 being nominated or even winning, but if everyone thinks it won for being a fanfic site, then be upfront that yeah, this is why or no, these are the other reasons. Don’t cloak it in this kind of “it sorta looks like you guys are bending the rules to get your pet causes aboard” explanation that doesn’t explain anything.
I’d assume they mean the technical aspects, the code, the UI, the management/moderation structures, etc. AO3 isn’t winning for the actual content on it, it’s winning for all of the things that make hosting that content happen.
They might also be referring to other things that the Organization of Transformative Works (OTW) does, including hosting journal articles on fandom and their legal work to protect fanfiction from IP action.
btw you can now exclude crossovers in a fairly easy way. Excluding coffee shop AUs is still harder. And AO3’s culture (founder effects) is such that most of the fics there are relationship-centered by design. Building up an original character antagonist that would be a guest star in canon is too much work. Even the canon continuation epics are more interpolative than extrapolative, taking the existing ingredients and filling in every bit of the gaps, whereas canon (especially for TV) will be constantly adding new ingredients instead.
The SpaceBattles ecosystem is where fic tends to be more plot-centered (and so actually include canon-typical murder and mayhem).
What to do if you don’t like coffee?
Going out for a coffee is seen as a default choice for people who want to get acquainted or spend some time talking. Hopefully, if someone suggested going for coffee, I would be able to resist the literal-minded instinct to say that I don’t like coffee (unless I actually don’t like the person). So what should I do instead? If I accepted, went to a coffee shop, and ordered nothing or only drank water, how
many weirdness points would that expendweird would that be seen as? Or were I to suggest a social outing myself, what’s an equivalent alternative?“Luckily” I am unsociable enough to have never encountered this problem that I recall, but it’s good to be prepared I guess?
I usually order tea. Never seen a coffee shop that doesn’t have tea. Or do you hate tea also?
I’m not into tea, but I also haven’t tried it recently. Unlike coffee, which I am confident in my dislike of, I don’t have that much evidence about tea. So maybe I can try to cultivate a taste for it.
Also, there’s a big range for tea– not just a variety of teas made from tea leaves, but also fruit/herbal teas.
Aapje,
That joked probably a bit unnecessary. Anyway, the drinks aren’t made of tea, but they’re brewed as tea is, so I think the label is fine.
Yeah, sorry. In hindsight, it was in poor taste.
I reported my comment, feel free to do the same.
As Nancy Lebovitz said, there are plenty of them, and cultivating a refined tea palate will allow you to enjoy a coffee shop at the same time as enjoying something you like.
Ask for tea? Or drink literally anything else?
You will be “that person that drinks tea/cola/cacao when everyone is drinking coffee” instead of “that persons who doesn’t want to hang out”.
I have this problem. I don’t drink tea, coffee or alcohol. (I’m aware the last is hardly a replacement for the first two, but “do you want to go for a drink” is as common where I’m from as “do you want to go for coffee” so the same problem applies.) But I agree with those above; you’ve just got to order something else, as un-weird as possible. When we’re “going for coffee” I have hot chocolate. When we’re “having a cup of tea” I have fruit tea. When we’re “at the pub for a few” I order the cheapest soft drink and make it last the whole evening.
Dates are the most awkward part, because it’s kind of not a great vibe if the other person is drinking alcohol and you’re staying sober, but I realise I’ve strayed quite far from the initial question now so let’s not get into it.
Spending the whole evening on one cheap soft drink might come across as cheapskate? Would you counter that impression by tipping generously?
More to the point, I like alcohol-free beer. Often the only non-alcoholic, non-sweet drink beside water.
Ah, true enough. I guess in my circles (non-US, mostly student friends), coming across as a cheapskate isn’t that bad. I’d certainly do worse if I was trying to socialise with American middle-class professionals.
I’ve not tried alcohol-free beer, but if it tastes anything like beer I wouldn’t like it. I wonder if another solution would be to buy mineral water. Avoids alcohol and sugar, and is probably sufficiently over-priced to signal affluence.
They’ve got alcohol-free Radler* now. It’s 50/50 beer and lemonade**.
If that’s too close to pilsner/lager, there is also Radler with wheat beer (weizenbier/hefenweizen). Wheat beer is way different in taste to other beers anyway and may even suit you on its own. It’s available in a alcohol-free version.
Where in the world is
Carmen Sandiegofion?* Lemon shandy
** So you can even make it yourself, for extra hipster cred. The bartender may also be willing to mix it for you. Giving directions to the bartender on how to make a drink can come across to a date as having leadership and competence.
A soda (i.e. sparkling water) with a lime garnish is the classic non-alcoholic drink at a bar. Looks like a G&T. Bartenders all know the deal. Tip as if you were buying regular drinks.
Trying to eat healthy, and with a slow caffeine metabolism that makes it not a good idea to drink coffee after noon, so I have the same problem. I basically ignore it and just grab whatever I feel like. I probably get more eyebrows raised when I order decaf then when I just get water. But the point is, the understanding is that you go to the coffee shop for the conversation, not for the coffee, so it’s not really an issue.
But if it makes you feel more relaxed, next time you’re in a coffee shop just browse the selection for a few minutes. There are plenty of things you can try – tea, bottled tea, fresh juice, milkshakes, coffee/decaf with enough extras to basically be a milkshake, frappe… and god knows what else they have these days.
Also, for the record, I absolutely love going to the coffee shops alone to work or read.
Depends on what you actually dislike about coffee.
Personally, I find the taste rather bitter and rough, even for higher quality stuff, although I like the aroma. However, ordering something like latte or cappuccino seems to fix the issue for me. It wouldn’t necessarily be first choice for a drink, but I do actually enjoy one once in a while.
I strongly suspect this is just an acquired taste, like alcohol, bitter chocolate or spicy food
I rarely drink caffeine so tend to go for hot chocolate or one of the cold fruit drinks all coffee shops seem to do. No one seems to think this is odd.
Mostly staff at coffee shops are helpful, so you could always ask them what non-coffee drink they recommend. If you’re worried about impressions, this looks like you’re engaging with the culture of the coffee shop, same as if you’d done the same in a bar with unfamiliar beers (also, if you’re worrying about impressions, stop it: the worry creates a worse impression than your actions….).
Do you ever worry people judge you for getting a hot chocolate?
It’s my default choice if I’m happy I’m on the higher status end of the meeting – like an unimportant salesperson is taking me out. But if the situation is closer to equal I wonder if I come across like a little boy (I’m not even youthful). I wonder if I’d worry about being seen as a little girl if I was a woman or if I’m just calling hot chocolate non-manly. Hopefully this is purely my hang-up.
Not worried
I could be wrong, but I’d bet people don’t care one bit what you drink
I think you’re overthinking things. Also the stuff you say about status comes across really weird and unhealthy to me.
But yeah just drink whatever dude, no one cares
Back before I drank coffee I would order hot cocoa. Most coffee shops make it, and they usually make it in a way fancier way than I would at home, with whipped cream and chocolate shavings and so forth, so it was worth the $3 or whatever.
It’s an acquired taste. So start acquiring it. Being 100% serious here, I used to have this problem. Start out using a ton of cream and sugar and it won’t even taste like coffee. Cut back from there until you’re used to it. Problem solved.
What was the problem again?
I used to not like coffee, tea or alcohol. but I was concerned I would end up in a social situation where it was socially expected and I would look weird.
Instead of trying to find alternatives, go out once a week and get a small coffee with extra cream. I hate Starbucks, but I find Dunkin Doughnuts to not be too bitter. The extra cream should make it bearable while you develop a taste for it.
I think your impressions of the weirdness of not drinking coffee are off. If someone offers coffee. Just say, “I don’t drink coffee.” It’s not uncommon for people to not drink coffee. If they read anything into this then they are being the odd ones.
I think I’d suggest actually saying “I don’t drink coffee,” rather than “I don’t like coffee,” though.
I neglected to mention that I also don’t drink sugary things. So hot chocolate, coffee with sugar added, and fruit things are all out. There’s still diet cola, but I usually avoid drinking it from fountains as I figure there’s like a 1 in 5 chance that they accidentally put in the regular version instead (anyone got a study on this? 🙂 ) I suppose I could risk it once in a while though…
That makes tea an even stronger option, then.
Not sweet tea, though.
Diet soda is even worse than regular soda, so don’t drink it. Go with soda water or something.
Why do you say that? It’s absurd.
The conclusion I’ve heard a lot is that with diet sodas you drink more of it because the artificial sweeteners lack whatever it is about sugar that makes you feel full
I’ve also seen (although I can’t say for sure this is true) that some of the artificial sweeteners can still cause diabetes related problems due to their similarity to sugar structurally, and also that some artificial sweeteners just aren’t terribly good for you.
“Diet soda is worse than regular soda” may or may not be true, but it isn’t exactly an uncommonly held fringe position.
Plausible, but so what? Diet soda hydrates and, to many people at least, tastes good. Those are absolute virtues that are hard to saturate. It’s about as cheap as any beverage gets, for people trained to think that even plain water has to come in disposable brand-named plastic bottles. What’s the fundamental badness that is being magnified by “you drink more of it”?
As I’ve seen it, the assertion boils down to:
* Diet < Regular for calories per unit volume
* Diet > Regular for calories per unit satiety
So if you’re trying to lose weight, switching to diet can be worse
Even if you aren’t, diet is also more expensive since the above implies
* Diet > Regular for $ per unit satiety
There’s also tangential arguments that can be made like certain artificial sweeteners being not good for you, more carbonation being bad for your teeth, producing more waste, etc etc
It’s no better than regular soda on any of those criteria though, which is the point of comparison under discussion
Diet soda has typicaly less than 1/2 calorie per 12 oz. This page claims it’s actually 0.028 calories for Diet Coke. It doesn’t matter how much it sates or doesn’t sate you, you’re not going to drink enough additional Diet Coke to make up for the 139+ calories difference (per 12oz) between it a real Coke.
Yeah, Diet Soda is clearly better if you are focused on calorie intake. If you are looking at the other negatives of drinking soda, diet is at least as bad or possibly worse. How much worse, weighed against the benefit of fewer calories (and I guess the increased amount consumed if that part is true) gets you some kind of answer as to which is “worse”.
Restating my question to LMC from last thread, which got buried:
What are the most irritating instances of wokeness in bluckbuster-level media since the Ghostbusters remake? I’m not talking about interviews, or the directors’ Twitter feeds, or the NYT Film Crit coumn; I’m asking, what are the absolute preachiest examples of textual or intertextual (in dialogue with other cinema/games/literature, not with the media complex) progressive didacticism with real money or honors behind them of the past 3 years? A good point of reference here is God’s Not Dead (though obviously it fails the “blockbuster” criterion).
Men in Black: International, both in general and particularly the little lizard guy asking Tessa Thompson “Are you my queen?” and her responding “Only in the sense that all women are queens ^_^”
But what if this is the actual answer?
I’m all for suspension of disbelief and immersion and all that, but at some point it becomes really hard for me to enjoy watching Captain America punch dudes when I know, for certain, that the actor playing him hates and despises me.
Have you considered renouncing your support for Thanos.
Does Stargate: SG1 count? probably not, but I want to share anyway
Capt. Carter: I’m an Air Force officer just like you are, Colonel. And just because my reproductive organs are on the inside instead of the outside, doesn’t mean I can’t handle whatever you can handle.
It was really out of left field, nobody made any sexist comments beforehand, and it just seemed cringy and uncalled for. The character got a lot less “I am woman; hear me roar” after the pilot episode. but that writing was just awful
I thought that was more character development than being preachy. She has a chip on her shoulder about her gender and proving herself. Her dad, also an Air Force officer, wanted a boy, even named her “Sam,” held her to high standards, etc.
To be fair, everyone considered that was a terrible episode and terrible writing, I don’t recall anyone going “Yay feminism strong independent woman!” after watching it, the comments I saw were along the lines of “this is over the top and makes Carter sound like a neurotic harpy”.
That the character got better development and never again did the “I am a Woman!!!!” speechifying was, I think, direct response to this.
Also, the show itself makes fun of that line in several later episodes, so they themselves are aware of how bad it was.
The quote in the the scene in question doesn’t at all look out of left field to me. The men in the room are being dicks to Carter, and O’neill in particular makes it abundantly clear that he holds her in contempt and doesn’t want her on the mission. She assumes it’s because she’s a woman and gives her prepared speech defending her right to be there, which note a couple of the guys roll their eyes at, and O’neill clarifies that he doesn’t give a shit about her being a woman, his problem is that she’s a scientist rather than a soldier. Frankly i thought O’neill got the better of the exchange, so it wasn’t so much “I am a woman; hear me roar” as Carter making an ass of herself because she has a chip on her shoulder.
Disney Star Wars (in particular The Last Jedi), X-men Dark Phoenix, MiB international (I didn’t watch it, but the trailers are woke as f*ck), Captain Marvel (or so I’ve heard, didn’t watch it either).
Plus various instances of blackwashing and pinkwashing (Ocean’s eight, female Thor, black Ariel, black female James(?) Bond), which may or may not be necessarily woke in their themes but contribute to the overall trend of boo white men.
None of which have been made yet, so we can’t know what “textual or intertextual progressive didacticism” they may contain and are just going on what the twitterverse et al are saying about them. Fails the OP’s test. But, OK, in a world where marketing drives story rather than the other way around, these may at least be warning signs of progressive didacticism to come.
And to build on that, the idea of Natalie Portman playing Dr. Jane Foster as the mortal who steps up to wield Mjolnir when the lovable but dimwitted Asgardian beefcake can’t, has the makings of a great story. One that plays off the strong points of the first two movies, and for that matter the original comics. I might go see a movie showing that story, even though I’m officially done with comic-book superheroes.
But, first, almost nothing that would make that a story worth telling, depends on the new wielder of Mjolnir having ovaries. And second, given that they’ve done away with “Thor” being the superheroic pseudonym of Dr. Donald Blake, no character played by Natalie Portman has any business being called “Thor”, any more than Gwyneth Paltrow’s character was called “Tony Stark” when she armored up. “Thor” is just a proper name in this universe, and it’s the proper name of exactly one person.
So, every tweet or bit of marketing hype about a “Female Thor” gives this movie two strikes before it is even released.
I think that in fairness to Hoopyfreud, wokeness is a lot less progressed in movies than in other media. I hear it’s gotten pretty obnoxious in the comics, for instance, but that’s secondhand, I don’t read them.
I disagree. Thor (both the original Norse god and the superhero) is an archetype of warrior-like masculinity. This is why he’s portrayed by a tall, muscular, full-bearded man. Why didn’t they cast a short, scrawny, neckbeard actor? In terms of internal plot consistency it would have made no difference: Thor’s strength and powers are superhuman, and in no way commensurate to physical size. Yet it wouldn’t have looked right: the archetype of masculinity has to look like a hypermasculine man.
Enter petite, premenopausal, Natalie Portman as “Thor” (or whatever the title for the Mjolnir wielder is supposed to be). What archetype is she supposed to represent?
Which reminds me– Superman doesn’t need to be muscular. I have a mental image of a small, thin, arthritic old man holding up an aircraft carrier between his thumb and forefinger.
Indeed. If you think about it, in terms of internal consistency, it would even make more sense for Superman to be scrawny. How often does he get to exercise his muscles to their maximum strength?
Yet, like Thor, Superman is an archetype of masculinity, hence he needs to be represented as a hypermasculine man.
Scrawny nerdy sidekick. That, not the ovaries, is what makes it interesting. The same story with a muscular, athletic dimwitted female action hero wielding Mjolnir would be decidedly less interesting.
In a sense, in terms of realism at least, characters like Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, and Thorette, are still plausible in the sense of “super powers are why they can beat up men 5x their strength.”
If you’re looking for unrealism in superhero films, look at freaking Black Widow. No powers whatsoever. Not even that big or muscular. But can beat the hell out of 20 large dudes at once because she’s… really well trained? (As if the villains are just random dudes off the street or something)
Isn’t that pretty par for the course for any “super-secret-agent-spy” type character in any genre, male or female?
Agents of Shield had a character, Mockingbird, I think, who was good at clearing a room of bad guys because she brought a pair of batons.
I mean, that wasn’t quite as silly as the show’s ultimate badass being a slightly Asian woman, but it was kind of funny how a feminine action hero had the weapons of a junior high cheer team.
@John Schilling
Who bashes her foes with a hammer? I dunno, it doesn’t sounds like a very compelling premise.
@acymetric
Yes, and it’s overused to the point that the best modern examples are parodies.
A character established in one archetype, being forced or allowed to step into a very different one, generally makes for a better story than just having an archetype be an archetype.
“But can beat the hell out of 20 large dudes at once because she’s… really well trained?”
How does that compare to the plausibility of Bruce Lee in the movies?
Also, Modesty Blaise had a little club she concealed in her hair and used it very effectively.
It generally makes a worse story because it takes more skill to handle. An archetype can be written decently with less skill so will be on average less terrible than a more complicated plot.
They’re both ludicrous, and so if I’m going to buy it I’d rather buy it with a side order of Scarlett Johansson in tight black leather. YMMV.
There is no level of training that will allow any plausibly non-superhuman hero or heroine to defeat more than two(*) generic half-trained mooks in hand-to-hand combat, unless the latter are constrained by geometry or authorial fiat to take turns fighting the hero one-on-one. Almost nobody uses the geometry solution in cinematic combat, so the audience is stuck with extreme suspension of disbelief.
If the question is reframed as whether a superbly-trained but not superhuman waifgirl (or scrawny guy or whatver) can defeat large muscular males one-on-one, then that’s plausible up to the level where the large muscular male has about the hand-to-hand training/skill average barroom brawler or infantry soldier. If we’re expected to believe that the 200-lb muscular guys are in any way experts but the 100-lb girl is winning because she’s somehow more expert, then no. Bruce Lee’s extra 40 lbs and Y chromosome do give him a real edge there.
* And two is a stretch, but not completely ridiculous for extreme disparities in skill.
Also relevant is the fact that in these fights, Black Widow typically appears to be approximately as effective as Captain America, Iron Man, et al.
So the relevant comparison isn’t Bruce Lee, it’s actual superheroes with actual powers, who she fights alongside without becoming a liability.
I’ll give them credit for usually showing BW as being approximately as effective as Captain America iff you spot her two pistols and the ability to stay out of the fight until she is in a position of tactical advantage.
Enter petite, premenopausal, Natalie Portman as “Thor” (or whatever the title for the Mjolnir wielder is supposed to be).
The female name version of Thor is Thora, which means everytime someone talks of the new female Thor I get the mental image of Thora Hird.
Plausibility is typically set up in world for fiction. Old kung fu movies often had an antagonist with a bunch of students who get in conflict with the protagonist. Some movies would be less realistic where the protagonist would just beat up unlimited numbers of the students before earning a showdown with the antagonist, but regularly they would be set up as honorable combat where all fights are one on one between trained fighters, which aids in a lot of the realism while also allowing for better villain development.
More to your point however is that a lot of the classic stars, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, even Tom Cruise, did a lot or all of their own stunt work (even I think Stallone and Arnold did a ton) which creates a level of grounding given that many of them were actually accomplished martial artists. You can set up establishing shots where Bruce Lee beats up a bad guy, or even 2 or 3 without the need for excessive, reality warping special effects, and then when he goes to fight later you are ready to accept that next level of badassery from him. Female stars can’t generally do this, certainly not as easily or convincingly, which creates a much larger hurdle to overcome for them.
They’re comic books. Black Widow is in the same space as Batman, Robin, Hawkeye, etc – their trope is that a sufficiently trained martial artist can take out any number of normal gunmen. (There’s a really nice bit in the Watchmen comics where a paunchy Nite Owl and an out of practice Silk Specter get their groove back by beating up dozens of thugs).
On the unrealism scale, I rate it as somewhat more realistic than allowing Mr. Fantastic to lift things with 30 foot long arms or allowing the Hulk to gain mass when he transforms, so there’s that.
If the archetype is “costumed freak who beats up other costumed freaks in the name of Good triumphing over Evil”, then no, not really. That one starts out with “terrible” as the baseline and has to work its way up through e.g. extraordinarily good writing.
Your suggestion just turns it into ‘weaker costumed freak beats up much stronger costumed freaks’.
They already had Fem-Thor in the comics. It’s relatively recent, but it’s not like they are pulling this out of nowhere.
It’s recent enough that she is specifically uber-woke in the comics. She gives feminist speeches. That’s not a fantastic counter to Fem-Thor being woke.
It’s worse; there’s a villain that surrenders to her out of female solidarity.
I don’t know enough about this villain to rule out her basing her villainy on radical feminism, but since she attacks her partner in that scene, it seems unlikely, and therefore a pretty egregious out of character author tract.
@Randy M
That page is breathtaking, and not in a good way. I particularly love the implication that female superheroes, who have been in comics for eighty years, are only today doing something so brave that even the villains have to bow to them.
I don’t know enough about this villain to rule out her being basing her villainy on radical feminism
That was a Powerpuff Girls villainess back in 2001 – Femme Fatale.
Even aside from the ridiculousness of the villain surrendering out of feminist solidarity… how bout Thorette then turning right around and bashing her in the face with her hammer after she has already surrendered.
“Get your enemy to surrender without a fight, then violently assault them anyway!” seems to match pretty well with my perception of what the SJW movement is all about, but it’s kind of shocking to see them describe themselves that way!
Also amusing that such a woke page still drawn with a perspective putting the villainess’ butt front and center.
@Matt M
Reading the tracts to encourage the true believers is always enlightening.
I think if people want to have their complaints of “overly-woke” media taken seriously they need to be careful not to extend it too far. It can’t just be “anything with a strong female lead” or even “gender/race flipped characters”. Those things far predate “wokeness” (and some of the examples of such would seem to be the opposite of woke in their implementation). It seems to me that for it to be a problem it needs to be using that kind of thing as a ham-handed morality lesson for it to be any kind of issue. Otherwise its just a casting/production decision.
Worth remembering that TV/film has been doing ham-handed morality lessons based on whatever was deemed the appropriate morality at the time for as long as it has been around, and that at different points (and varying depending on who was running/writing things) those lessons have been more friendly to the values held by the people complaining about wokeness now. It is a pendulum.
Short version: “Too woke” is going the way of “microaggressions”, where the people trumpeting it apply it to everything and normal people start losing interest as a result.
I agree with the sentiment of the first paragraph, but the issues are a bit more complex than this. Part of the backlash* is that there is a trend of ‘lets take this successful franchise and give it a female lead’. The decisions are not particularly woke, they are more or less cash grabs, attempts to squeeze out more money from an existing franchise. However this does imply some level of ‘we can get more with a female lead than from a male lead’ and will also in some situations (like a female Bond) require switching some prior to now essential characteristics of the lead.
These movies are intentionally walking a fine line, they want to keep the large, existing fan base because its a cash grab, while also trying to draw in a new demographic. It is difficult to both say ‘it doesn’t matter if a Jedi is a man or a woman’ to the original fanbase** and then turn to a different demographic and pitch it as ‘we have a lady with a light-saber isn’t that great?’.
Further complicating things is that it is primarily protagonists that are going to women, and the selection of previously successful franchises. Antagonists are generally still men which (intentionally or not) sets up a male vs female dynamic in a lot of scenes where the woman is good and the man evil, and the end result (in universe) is woman bests man in a man’s world, making it hard to reconcile a viewpoint of ‘women are just as good as men’ when the implied viewpoint is ‘women are better than men’.
This combines with the second point of using successful vehicles to launch female leads, as far as I can tell no one is trying to launch a ‘Sharon the Duck’ remake using a female POV to fix the issues that caused Howard to be a flop, or ‘Jane Carter’ and using the prior flop as an opportunity to totally reinvent the world. Making it a successful franchise puts the audience in a familiar setting which makes the shifts in tone/storytelling/approach noticeable which requires more skillful writing and storytelling to get past (instead of the less that is generally applied to sequels).
None of this is about being woke directly, but the emergence of a new culture gives studios a demographic to target which gives a lot of these movies a feeling of being woke rather than (in many cases) direct wokeness.
*As it appears to me
** There is a lot of generational stuff here as well, Disney (for example) is trying to appease the 45+ year old crowd who grew up on Star Wars, and also bring in a new generation that they can milk for cash for the next 40 years. This actually takes skill to do.
Are they? Or are they simply assuming that this crowd will turn up, so long as the thing is called “Star Wars”, no matter what woke dreck they fill the movie with?
IMO that’s not even an incorrect assumption. It even applies to me! I’m going to go see 9, no matter what. And I really can’t imagine 9 being bad enough to dissuade me from 10. Maybe if they did several really bad ones in a row I could lose my fandom, but so far even stuff like Phantom Menace and TLJ haven’t risen to that level of awfulness to actually push me away yet…
They made TFA as a direct mirror in a lot of ways as ANH, they brought back iconic pieces (the falcon), and in general the view is that there was tons of fan service in the movie.
Is that what old fans actually want?
I thought the fact that the Millennium Falcon was in the movie was incredibly lame and pathetic, tbqh. Same with “this entire plot is the exact same as ANH.”
Was that really designed to appease/appeal to me? If so, it missed the mark completely. And I can’t imagine I’m unique/alone in thinking this…
I thought the intent was the opposite, actually—to draw in a new generation of fans by replicating the plot of the first, successful, movie. I was certainly disappointed by the carbon copy plot, and so were all my friends who were Star Wars fans, but my anecdatal impression was that TFA did all right among the younger crowd.
It appears to be pushing someone away, TLJ made $300 million less in the US and 700 million less world wide than TFA, and Solo made half of Rogue One.
@baconbits9
Yeah, I for one don’t plan to see Episode 9. If I do, it will be because I’m dragged there unwillingly.
Though there is one upside to seeing it—trashing the film with y’all when it comes out. 😀
(ETA: Since I was happy with Rogue One and thought Solo was okay, I am willing to see more of the spinoff films.)
And how do you know those losses came from hardcore older fans and not newer casuals?
Everyone in my “nerd friend” group has seen all of them, and has no intention of stopping.
I have no idea, but I disagree with the split of ‘hardcore older fans’ and ‘younger casual fans’. Most of the people who went to see The Phantom Menace were older, casual, fans who remembered Star Wars fondly and liked it but hadn’t made fandom a part of their identity outside of that, because most people aren’t hard core fans of Star Wars (or any X you put in there).
Yeah, this I can agree with; the thing is, that’s not a particularly… anti-woke view.
If a male hero beats up a female villain then you’re glorifying violence against women, and this is
a sinproblematic.If a female hero beats up a female villain and the female villain looks attractive, then it’s a catfight, male gaze, sexual objectification, etc., and this is problematic.
If a female hero beats up a female villain and the female villain is ugly, then you are implying that ugly women (e.g. your average Twitter warrior/Buzzfeed “journalist”) are evil, and of course this is problematic.
Therefore villains have to be of the disposable gender.
Can we test this theory? Was anyone at the time, or since, criticizing e.g. Maleficent for this?
My view is not that there needs to be more female villains, its that there is always a tension when trying to appeal to old fans and draw in new fans. You have to keep elements of the old universe which makes it very clear the elements you are bringing in to draw the new fans, which is hard to do well. The piece you linked thinks we need more female villains because (besides the whole ‘I like those characters, give me more characters that I like) of old timey rules that are currently holding back women.
I didn’t see it, but the wikipedia write up doesn’t cast Maleficent as evil to be overthrown in the traditional way
Maybe that movie changed the character that appeared in Cinderella, but Maleficent has the advantage of being both beautiful as a faerie queen and ugly as the dragon she is slain as.
@baconbits9
Heh, I didn’t see it either, so I didn’t realize it might be a poor example. If someone has a better one, do share.
@viVI_IViv
I dunno man. It seems like every time we’ve had a female villain that’s not horrifyingly shallow recently, the woke contingent has gone gaga over her.
Have seen it, decent but not great flick, and can confirm that the eponymous Maleficent was not the villain of her own film. Even at her antiheroic “worst” she was always clearly contrasted with the true villain of the tale, and she went full-on Romantic Hero by the end.
Yes, the straight-up villain was a white male, who had no problem doing violence to the white female (anti)hero. But that’s probably not so much an example of woke political storytelling, as of being faithful to the central premise of “What if there were another side to the Sleeping Beauty story?” The original has a white female absolute villain and not much room for any other active character who isn’t a white male, so any “other side” that keeps the original cast has to have a white female not-absolute-villain and will almost certainly shift a bunch of thematically-necessary villainy to a white guy.
First link:
“She is, unfortunately, overly sexy, which is a typical play for female villains. ”
Second one is Cersei, who is killed by falling rocks, which are caused by the female hero becoming a villain, who is in turn killed by the male hero in one of the most disappointing season finales ever.
And even before that finale the character was controversial, GoT managed to get away with it because it was the largest show ever, but nobody today, with all the “sensitivity reading” committes, would write a villain like Cersei, or a story like ASoIaF.
Third article is responding to some controversy about the female villain.
Anyway, even if a few exceptions exist, writing a female villain is walking on a minefield.
I haven’t yet seen convincing evidence that “sensitivity reading” has gained much ground outside the YA literary scene and a few small corners of fandom. YA fiction is apparently a hellhole, I’ll grant, but it’s a fairly small one, and one with some unusual incentives to grapple with.
@viVI_IViv
You somehow moved the goalposts in reverse order, so, from back to front:
It doesn’t count if there’s controversy.
It doesn’t count if there’s a minor controversy and it’s popular and based on something previously written.
It doesn’t count if the author thinks ANYTHING AT ALL COULD BE BETTER ABOUT IT.
Are you literally only going to admit feminists aren’t opposed to villains who are women if nobody ever says even the slightest bit negative about one?
I’m under the impression that most fantasy, speculative fiction and a good chunk of science fiction published in the last 5 or so years is now considered YA.
Can you point to a recent Western fantasy with rape, incest, prostitution, people mocked for their disabilities, racial animus against human ethnic minorities, etc.?
I’m not sure if there’s mocking for disabilities, but all the rest appears in Tom Kratman’s Carrera series and John Ringo’s Posleen series.
@viVI_IViv
You realize that for the first season of Supergirl, the most popular femslash ship was between her and her sister? That the Frozen incest ship Elsanna is popular? Or the notorious Wincest ship of Supernatural? Or the way people supported the portrayal of sex work in Killjoys? The popularity of the Hulu show Harlots? Or the continued veneration of the Kushiel series? Or how a whole lot of recent fantasy YA is precisely about dealing with racial animus against human ethnic minorities (Court of Fives and Baru Cormorant for good examples, and so many more Sturgeon’s Law ham-handed bad examples)?
And for female villains, the celebration of the Liv version of Doc Ock in Into the Spider-verse, the praise for the Wonder Woman film going with a lady villain, the Snow White and the Huntsman films, the excitement over casting for Ursula in the Little Mermaid remake, Michelle Yeoh’s evil Georgiou in Star Trek being popular enough to get her own spinoff, the list goes on and on.
Seriously, sometimes it’s embarrassing to see the perceptions of the entertainment industry here. 90% blindspot.
No. For example, I don’t think any of the entries in Nancy Lebovitz’s recent summaries of the 2019 Hugo nominees were considered YA.
It may be true that YA is now mostly science fiction and fantasy; judging by shelf space at my local Barnes & Noble that is probably the case. But not the reverse, and in any event “YA” is a distinct publishing and marketing category that has little overlap with traditional written or media SFF. If YA has ‘sensitivity readings’ as a matter of course, so be it, but that’s not going to affect “Star Wars”. Well, not yet.
The Hugos have added a YA category, but the Hugo panelists weren’t required to read it.
I think I was the only one who read any of the YA nominees (a year or so ago)– it was Children of Blood and Bone, and I was asked to say a little about it. I liked it fairly well.
Would we see Modesty Blaise and Willy Garvin as an example of woke fiction if they were being written now instead of when they were? Modesty is the hyper-competent leader, Willy the hyper-competent follower emotionally dependent on her. But it’s being done that way not to make a political point but because it works as a story.
My first novel features a female military order, the one part of its society that wasn’t modeled on real history. The first encounter between my male protagonist and one of the leading female characters consists of her saving his life.
I didn’t do it that way to make a political point–on the contrary, my reason depended on a traditional view of male/female roles. That view sees women as vulnerable people to be protected, which increases the emotional effect of situations where women are at risk. Having women as warriors provides lots of opportunities for such situations.
Would we see Modesty Blaise and Willy Garvin as an example of woke fiction if they were being written now instead of when they were?
I don’t think so, but it’s a good question to ask. Modesty’s backstory explains why she’s hypercompetent (it was be that from a young age or die) and Willie’s relationship to her is chivalrous – it’s the Queen and her Champion knight, where in this instance the queen is as battle-capable as a king. Both of them have been marked by their lives to date, which is why they’re adrenaline junkies who can’t settle down to live quietly on the profits of crime, but they’re aware of this and try to use that for good ends. There is definitely suspension of disbelief required for each novel where Modesty and Willie just happen to turn out to be excellent in a particular martial art/have taken up a hobby which is vital to the success of the plot, but the newspaper cartoon strip origins make that suspension easier to achieve – you know what you’re reading and where it came from and make allowances for that, and beside Modesty and Willie are engaging and charming (and not always right, they make some bad mistakes at times).
The stories are certainly not woke as regards Willie’s womanising and the general 70s attitude to sex and women and race, but that’s all part of the historical value 🙂
Willie’s relationship to Modesty doesn’t strike me as chivalrous in the usual sense. He needs her to keep from falling into utter depression.
The one thing she’s got that he doesn’t is the reliable ability to keep going.
The notable unwoke thing about the series is occasional nastiness about black people. Sorry, details not memorized.
Which is why I didn’t mention Wonder Woman or Ghost in the Shell. And of all Disney’s Star Wars, I think that Rouge One is the best one and the least woke.
If it occurred occasionally and in any direction, I wouldn’t mind. But this is not the case.
As I said, it doesn’t necessarily make a movie “woke” per se, but it’s red flag for the movie being an attempt to a quick cash grab based on woke marketing, which usually correlates with poor quality: it’s Ghostbusters, but female! Girl Power! It’s Ocean’s eleven, but feminist! When the best you can say about your movie is that it has women/minorities, then probably not much creative thought went into its production.
MiB International was not preachy at all. If anything it just carries on the recent trope of “buddy cop” movies where the Murtaugh is replaced by a brainy chick (see also Castle). I’d say it’s less subversive of gender stereotypes that Thompson’s other role with Hemsworth in Thor: Ragnarok.
Captain Marvel’s preachiness was mostly in the way Brie Larson marketed the movie rather than the movie itself, which had a few “girl power” tropes but other than a couple of on the nose soundtrack choices was never particularly annoying about it. The bigger problem with Captain Marvel is how overpowered she is by the end.
Given that the OP’s question was explicitly about the movies and not their marketing, the fact that you’ve not seen half the examples you give suggest you’re answering a different question.
black female James(?) Bond)
Is that really going to happen, though? There’s always speculation on who is going to be the next Bond, I really think this is just mischief-making (the only attribution I’m seeing is to “an anonymous movie insider”, which is the equivalent of “friends close to the star” or “sources close to the prime minister” used in stories which are floating wild speculation). I’m confident the next Bond will be a white male and probably an American actor, though as usual there are all kinds of wishful thinking.
IIRC, they’ve announced that the next “Agent 007” will be a black woman… which I think is an incredibly cynical attempt to have their cake and eat it too, in the sense that they’ll get their adulation and headlines and free publicity from the Woke Media, while simultaneously being able to say “Now now, calm down you white supremacists, we didn’t change James Bond at all! This is a different person entirely and it makes perfect sense that they would represent the diversity of modern England, etc.”
There are black male actors who could play James Bond quite effectively, though if they play up Bond’s womanizing, there will be complaints it’s a blaxploitation movie.
There was some buzz about Idris Elba as a possible Bond a while back. I think he’d do a good job; if he’s playing as typecast he’d be more Craig-style than Brosnan-style, but IMO that works better anyway. (I realize others feel differently.)
I can’t see a female 007 of any ethnicity working, though. You can do a good spy movie starring a woman, but the Bond formula requires a leading man.
Bond is a male wish fulfillment character. Idris Elba would work if the market is color-blind enough for the actor’s race to not become a wedge issue (Street Fighter fans never make hay out of Dudley, a black boxer who chooses to live as a Victorian gentleman stereotype – contrast woke people fretting over whether white kids should be able to get away with dressing up as the Science King of an imaginary African country invented by two Jewish New Yorkers). A British East Asian James Bond might work better, for mercenary reasons.
Female British super-spy is inherently a different character. Just like no sane person would do Tarzan AKA Joan, Lady Greystoke. There are Jungle Queen characters instead.
I’d say Bond’s a couple steps down from Dudley in terms of ethnic marking. Dudley gets away with his schtick partly because his whole franchise is incredibly silly and partly because he’s not a legacy character, but Bond doesn’t need to be a gentleman in the first place, not in the sense of belonging to the gentry. He needs to be an old-fashioned kind of dude, and he needs to be at least a bit of a womanizer — I would have said more than a bit, but Craig downplayed that substantially and got away with it. He needs to be calm and polite, yet clearly capable of extreme violence when called for — a soccer hooligan Bond wouldn’t work. And he needs to be very British in his speech and mannerisms. Within those bounds, though, there’s a whole lot of latitude: compare Craig’s nearly sociopathic Bond with Brosnan’s playboy schtick with Connery’s “just a job, ma’am” attitude.
I’m betting they don’t make hay out of Dudley because Dudley is an original character. James Bond is not.
As someone who has liked Elba in everything I’ve seen, including Heimdall, I think he’s not quite right for Bond. Not because he’s black, but because he’s too built. He looks like he could take Dave Bautista in a straight-up fight, rather than barely getting by until he gets resourceful with an environmental hazard.
That, and I have a hard time visualizing Bond with a beard.
Now, if Broccoli & Co. wanted to create a spin-off featuring Elba as an OC, that could be good – it could very easily be even better than yet another Bond.
…and Batman wasn’t dark, until he was. I think Casino Royale revitalized the franchise by reinventing the character and not slavishly adhering to the canonical conventions, and I don’t see why that shouldn’t continue.
@dick: Batman was really dark for about a year at the beginning of his existence, which is how post-1985 dark takes justify themselves.
I have a couple of trade paperbacks with Golden Age reprints, and the change is pretty stark. I think it was Batman #1 (1940) that had both him machine gunning mentally zombified (i.e. NOT dead) men to death from the Batplane and, in a different story, cracking Adam Westian jokes when he beat up the Joker (who himself was a dark murderous figure until a bit after WW2 ended).
Sneering is not a substitute for argument.
Admiral Holdo being revealed to be “right” in Star Wars Episode 8 wins it for me.
I don’t hate the movie anywhere near as much as others here, because while the plot and pacing were awful they weren’t noticably worse than Episode 7 and if anything were an improvement on the prequel trilogy. So I was willing to suspend my disbelief for most of the stupidity, like the Canto Bight shaggy dog story or the hyperspace ramming. It’s just dumb fun, so while I’d prefer it if the film made any sense I still felt like I got my money’s worth.
The thing that completely pulled me out of the movie was Holdo. We’re supposed to accept that a high-ranking officer in the Resistance we’ve never heard of before and looks like she should be reblogging articles on why Slave Leia is problematic on Tumblr, who spends her entire time onscreen berating and mocking the male leads while refusing to explain her very simple plan, is actually in the right and should never have been questioned? No.
She had hours, possibly days depending on how far away Canto Bight is, to pull an Adama and say “we’re going to a new secret base but I can’t tell you any details yet.” But no, it’s more important for Rian Johnson to show us that men need to shut up and listen than to actually have a pivotal character earn any audience sympathy or for the Resistance to show any military aptitude whatsoever.
Yes, of all the things wrong with TLJ, that stands out to me as the most infuriating. There’s just no reason for her not to tell everyone the plan to begin with, since she has to tell them all eventually anyways when they abandon the ship. The plan also fails horribly, and is revealed to have been rather stupid to begin with (a decloaking scan? That’s it?). Then the narrative wants us to see her go out with a heroic sacrifice by hyperspacing through the Supremacy. (From a narrative standpoint, this is a tragic sacrifice–the inevitable deserts of her own failure.)
It’s a truly baffling narrative decision for several reasons. For one, the obvious lesson is to not listen to women. Holdo’s plan is terrible and gets nearly everyone killed. Even if you argue it would have worked if not for the botched hyperspace tracker plan, that was Rose’s idea. Further, the narrative works perfectly fine if it succeeds. Make it so Holdo’s plan all along was to send people out on cloaked escape pods then hyperspace through the Supremacy to cover their escape deal a heavy blow to the First Order fleet. (The “I’m going to kill myself so you can escape” part is a much more reasonable thing to keep secret if we need Po to learn to listen to women.) The Resistance regrouping at the base, down but not out and inspired by her heroic sacrifice is a more effective ending than “we have 12 people and the Millennium Falcon, which is apparently everything we need”.
If I felt like defending TLJ, most of the criticisms I could come up with rationalizations for. But not this. There’s no level on which it works.
I’m definitely convinced this was terrible writing. I’m not totally convinced it was motivated by wokeness.
Thought exercise: reverse the genders of Holdo and Poe. I expect the anti-woke crowd would then be complaining about how woke it was to portray the male leader as so incredibly inept (as well as too arrogant to listen to anyone around him or even explain what his plan was).
Truly awful writing, but not a symptom of “wokeness” as I see it. Just a symptom of Rian Johnson making a pretty bad movie.
I (partly) disagree. As Holdo defenders will point out, the most direct reason Holdo’s plan failed is that Poe et al. went off half-cocked. This is a bad argument, of course, because it’s Holdo’s fault they did, but it’s also of a piece with a certain kind of “strong woman leader” writing which I think they were going for here.
There’s something else going on, too, which is that Poe and Finn are supposed to learn that reckless plans and sacrificing yourself are bad
unless you’re Luke or Holdo. This is also bad writing because it’s incoherent, but I grant you it’s not a woke thing.The wokeness part comes in where the narrative seems to treat her as unquestionably right. Leia explains to Po how Holdo had a plan all along, and Po keeps acting like he learned a lesson from this. At no point does anyone even suggest that Holdo should have done something different. While I realize that this can still be explained without wokeness, the ham-handedness of the rest of the movie’s feminism (e.g. the ridiculous scene where Finn keeps getting in front of Rose) makes it hard to believe this had nothing to do with it.
Reverse the genders and I would expect all the bad writing complaints to remain, but with few complaints from the anti-woke crowd about that particular plot point and probably some complaints from the woke crowd about the problematic mansplaining of male Holdo.
Male Holdo obviously should have been Admiral Ackbar.
Not just Holdo doesn’t tell Poe her plan, which was unwise but arguably justifiable in a paramilitary organization, but she insults him from their very first interaction: she rubs in his face his demotion and tells him that “his type” is the least that they need in that situation. This was unprofessional and denoted poor leadership skills.
She comes across as the stereotypical bossy middle-manager lady drunk with power who stirs up drama for the sake of drama, which would make her an interesting character if the point of the story was to illustrate the perils of dysfunctional leadership, instead they make her right all along and have Poe learn the important lesson of blindly following orders and never distrust authority, which was totally what Star Wars has always been about. /s
I disagree. There’s a difference between having a character who is considered inept in-story, and having a character who does things that are obviously inept to the audience but is treated by the story as competent.
This. The wokeness comes from them insisting this obviously incompetent person is, indeed, hypercompetent. If everyone mocked her at the end, then there is no wokeness.
Problem is, I don’t watch a lot of new Hollywood movies. I stopped paying to watch Star Wars after Rogue One (I eventually saw TLJ for free). Like everyone else, I didn’t see Ghostbusters 2016, so I can’t tell you if there was any wokeness outside the “Buy a ticket or you’re a misogynist!” marketing campaign.
The most irritating level of on-screen wokeness from my small sample size is Disney’s Star Wars. It starts as early as Ep7: Rey gains all the Jedi powers before she even meets a Jedi, because she’s a girl (since we can infer for Dolyist reasons that this universe probably supports transgenderism, one wonders why Anakin didn’t start identifying as the woman Annie Skywalker to become more powerful). Any coherent world-building about how supernatural powers work in this universe (intense training from an early age and some pseudo-Buddhist stuff) is all straw.
Rogue One is an interesting case, because the female protagonist is good: Gin Bear shows how a woman can be strong without effortlessly defeating everyone. But the galaxy has gone strangely woke around her: the Good Rebellion needs help from the desert planet of Jeddah where all women have to wear headscarves or veils to succeed in its plots against the all-white Evil Empire, so Our Hero puts on a headscarf and goes there, recruiting a very spiritual Asian man and other random POCs along the way. This United Colors of Bremerton business is quite bizarre when you’re used to George Lucas’s style of filling in supporting roles and backgrounds with aliens.
Ep.8 takes the cake though, with more Rey, Admiral Gender Studies being above questioning, the director making Rose Tico’s actress look like a fat Japanese boy, and the Canto Blight subplot where we’re told that the only way to become the richest people in the galaxy is selling weapons to the Space Neonazis and they free animals while ignoring the human slaves.
Other: blackwashing has reached the point where I find it inherently offensive. I supported colorblind casting back when Michael Clarke Duncan was the best physical match with acting talent for Marvel’s Kingpin, but we’ve accumulated a large enough sample size from Hollywood and the BBC (their Iliad series was a particular offender) to see that it’s actually just white characters going to utterly average black actors for wokeness points.
You are trying way to hard on this one. It is almost hard for me to believe you’re serious.
Were you also annoyed that Lando wasn’t filled in by an alien instead? The “main crew” has always been almost exclusively human, the only exception being Chewie. I suppose Yoda in the prequels was prominent enough that he would qualify, maybe. The fact that a couple of them were Asian in this movie doesn’t seem unreasonable at all. Regardless, there were definitely aliens prominently involved in the skirmishing on Scarif.
No, of course Lando is fine. C’mon. You can have any racial mix you want for the major humans so long as the universe around them still feels like George Lucas’s. The wokeness problem is that the Rebel forces in Rogue One consist of Gin, the spiritual Asian man, the forgettable POC pilot, one droid, Forrest Whittaker coded as a Muslim terrorist and the whole desert planet of veiled women. I honestly don’t remember aliens on Scarif fighting for the Rebellion.
The OT always had Chewbacca as a main character. Ep.1 had, um, Jar-Jar, and as you say that trilogy gave an increasingly central role to Yoda.
Wasn’t the male lead a white guy? While I do roll my eyes a bit at a “let’s check all the race boxes” cast, by itself it’s fairly unoffensive as far as wokeness goes.
There were at least three aliens featured at least as prominently in Rogue One as any of the Rebel Aliens were in the OT. This includes what I believe might have been the first alien Rebel pilot depicted on screen (in fighters, we did see the Mon Calamari piloting command ships) other than that guy flying in the Falcon with Lando in RotJ (although he wasn’t piloting). Aliens have never been a part of the main protagonist crew except for Chewie.
Pao (U-Wing pilot)
Bistan (gunner for Pao’s U-Wing)
Admiral Raddus
I would need to go back and watch, I feel like I’m missing a couple (I’m pretty sure there were some aliens among the round reinforcements as well).
What do you think of Into the Spiderwerse so far as wokeness is concerned?
I haven’t seen it so hard for me to really comment on it.
Gut feeling with limited knowledge: different universes/continuities where the characters within each universe may be very similar or wildly different from each other is a comic book plot from before I was born, so it is hard to attribute it to modern day wokeness.
The threading UI leaves me unsure if you’re addressing me, but I found the diversity there completely convincing. Miles Morales isn’t a blackwashed Peter Parker, he’s a Latino with African ancestry whose dad is named Jefferson Davis (!) and he becomes Spider-Man II. Spider-Gwen is a cool “What If?” that fits the multiverse premise.
I suspect that if you think too hard about Star Wars inevitably you get to the conclusion there’s some human supremacy thing going on in that galaxy; obviously, the Emperor is a human supremacist and builds his army out of humans, and there’s coincidently a bunch of humans on the resistance (probably a splinter off the human supremacist society), although they have a bunch of aliens here and there. On top of that there may or may not be racism among the humans.
My favorite fan theory was that Star Wars originally is a story about mainly alien social insects, and that we cast the insects as humans, and that’s why the empire stealing the rebel princess, and Jabba showing off Leia chained is such a big deal. Of course the new movies do away with this possible interpretation.
Long time ago, galaxy far far away.
Space Paleonazis.
Now I want to see Space Paleolithic Nazis. Evil fair-skinned cavemen whose only technological advantage is sewing cool uniforms, until they encounter an alien flying saucer.
Palpatine’s empire: first reich
First order: second reich
The new Star Trek is particularly bad, trying to hammer home the message that straight white men are evil and shouldn’t be trusted. The only good straight white men so far are the characters that show up from the original series. Of course you can’t make Spock or Captain Pike evil, but you can do it for every other white man that shows up.
As much as I think other commenter’s frustration with woke media is way overblown, I don’t think that Hoopyfreud’s challenge here is quite it, either. Divorcing stories from their broader context is a double edged sword that can strongly affect how a story is interpreted. For example, anime has swaths of shows that, in isolation, seems like a feminist representation paradise. So many female protagonists! Homosexual subtext! Non-white cultures! Celebration of femininity over masculinity! But in context, that same anime is actually pandering to middle aged guys who are happily objectifying the girls in the story.
I actually experienced this rather directly, with the show “Sora no Woto/Sound of the Sky.” It’s a post-apocalyptic world, following an all-women military squad at the edge of civilization. There are themes of PTSD, war-mongering, learning to not just survive but thrive, the melancholy over lost arts and sciences. But also, lol cute girls doing cute things in the military just cuz the prospective Bluray customers don’t want to see any dick on their screens.
The first time I watched the show, that broader cultural context loomed large, influencing the Doylist view on all of the storytelling decisions. I rated it 5/10.
Years later, I rewatched it without that broader context shadow, as anime had moved away from some of those trends. Same show, I now rate it 7/10.
______
For a few years I thought Moloch was SSC’s most important post. These past few years, I think that “All Debates are Bravery Debates” is SSC’s most important takeaway. Even the most cringe-inducing pandering story has someone out there passionately recounting how it saved their life, and I can’t really begrudge them that. I see stories decried as too woke in places, and on other sites, people are talking about how they cried in the theater for the feelings the film invoked in them, seeing very personal events on the screen that they related hard to. I’ve strongly felt those things myself.
This whole community arose because they thought that some fiction could be drastically improved if the protagonists thought more like themselves, starting with Harry Potter. This whole community exists because of the desire for preachy representation. So yeah, I can’t muster much sympathy for these “oh no look at all of these baileys in Hollywood” threads. SSC commentariat’s track record on talking about storytelling is almost always like a standard deviation below the level of discussion not just on other topics, but on other sites that do have more of a focus on media.
[ten minutes of screaming]
I think that you have your history backwards.
The capital-R Rationalist community predates Yudkowsky’s stupid Harry Potter fanfic by several years, starting on the Overcoming Bias blog, and while Scott’s blog here began as a LessWrong colony it very quickly attracted a larger userbase very few of whom identify as Rationalists.
I don’t think we’ve ever had a poll on HP:MoR but I’m willing to bet that only a minority of posters have read even one chapter of it and of those only a minority enjoyed it.
I’d stand by my statement in a causal manner. Maybe HPMOR wasn’t the first root, but much of what came after wouldn’t exist if HPMOR hadn’t made LW so much more known, including the creation of SSC separate from LW.
As for liking HPMOR or not, again, it’s about what its existence enabled. Who is here because of Unsong, or Northern Caves, or Luminosity? The representation point (people here want more fiction where the protagonists think as they do) also still stands, given the continued admiration of Worm.
I dunno, this seems like you’re retreating to motte to me.
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean people like preachy representation, just that they wouldn’t be here unless a Yudderfly flapped its wings in the right way. Ergo they deserve scorn for hypocritically disliking preachy representation”
HPMOR is not the end-all be-all of ratfic. But a whole lot of ratfic wouldn’t have been written if HPMOR hadn’t shown them it could be done. A lot of ratfic may indeed be written in reaction to HPMOR’s faults.
Just because a lot of people like The Good Place now and dislike Seinfeld doesn’t erase Seinfeld’s importance in sitcom history.
Ok but how does that support “SSCers need to STFU about Hollywood”?
The gnashing and wailing of teeth about forced diversity in Hollywood sneers at the concept of “representation matters.” Oh, no, how DARE people tell stories where the characters think more like how they themselves think! But also, storytelling would be so much better and avoid certain common writing pitfalls if characters frequently thought more like how I think!
Let people like things. Threads here about how great the latest trad military ratfic scifi are welcome. I highly enjoyed Worm and parts of HPMOR, and do wish there was more competence porn TV and film out there. I also had a great time watching Crazy Rich Asians this past weekend, and am so glad that the director didn’t let the leading lady get whitewashed, as that would drastically impact the themes of its story.
SJ has overstepped its bounds in certain areas, doing real harm. But these threads about the supposed missteps of Woke Hollywood are just…horseshoe theory in action. And this community should be better than that.
Admit that it’s just a good old fashioned low stakes fanwank, instead of some Important Crusade.
Uh, if you’re a black woman and you want to write a character that thinks like a black woman thinks, that seems entirely reasonable. It also seems like it’s reasonable to suggest that the best way to do this is not to declare that a character previously defined as a Male Norwegian God is now a black woman, but rather, to write a new character that actually is a black woman.
(Bolding mine)
I’ve never actually seen this criticism, though. The criticism that I’ve always seen is more along the lines of “characters that look like how they themselves look like.” Conflating “looks a certain way” and “thinks a certain way” in an explicitly racial/sexual manner is also something that’s often criticized.
Generally, if there’s criticism directed at how fictional characters think (or behave, as caused by their thoughts), it’s generally orthogonal to whatever culture war issues or pointing out actual real problems in the character development which has nothing to do with whether or not the character is thinking like some type of person IRL.
@Matt M:
I’m in the “more speech good, defining a canon is for suckers” camp for that. The current perceived issue with demographics-bending existing characters is this sense that there can only be one true interpretation, but that’s a function of IP law and owners keeping a tight lid on the number of portrayals.
King Arthur portrayals have run the gambit on demographics bending, from black Guinevere to lady Arturia to roman Arthur to black Lancelot to high school AUs and whatever pleases you, because it’s just the latest adaptation that will come and go.
Sometimes you fall in love with a particular character, and imagining them with a demographics-bending tweak is more compelling than making an expy. For example, consider an Asian American Bruce Wayne wherein the Wayne family is tech startup new money rich. There are so many new stories that can be told, seeing how this ripples out to other parts of Batman lore.
This doesn’t mean that Bruce Wayne should always be Asian. More stories, not less.
The other reason that people advocate for demographics-tweaking existing characters is that this IP law culture has entrenched certain characters into the public consciousness permanently, and new characters just can’t compete. If someone comes up with a black woman billionaire vigilante, she will never exceed the decades of legacy that drive Batman’s popularity, because that history doesn’t disappear. Mulan or Tiana or Moana will never dethrone earlier Disney princesses as the go-to image for what Disney Princess means.
But you can make Starbuck a woman for a whole generation. You can have Joan Watson and Jamie Moriarty. You can have Samuel L. Jackson be Nick Fury and Eartha Kitt be Catwoman.
@lvlln
Yes, and the criticism from the pro-representation side for this is “this character that looks like me doesn’t think like me, because the character is thinking per a stereotype, and I am not a stereotype.” A female character who doesn’t act all that different from the male version their character used to be is novel in Hollywood storytelling, when the legacy is The Token Smurfette.
For anti-representation people to ignore that the drive for representation is rooted in seeing perspectives that aren’t commonly on screen is ironic, if those people also keep pushing for fiction the characters act smarter than the stereotypical character intelligence.
And there are certainly lots of criticisms based around writers writing what they don’t know, resulting in cringe-inducing portrayals of people unlike themselves. For example, “wow, the portrayal of nerds in The Big Bang is really horrible, and could have been avoided if they had real nerds on the writing team pointing out when what they’re writing is a caricature.”
Hence the push for “own voices,” which I have mixed feelings about, but the concept certainly has a motte.
I still don’t now how true this is. Continuous reinvention of existing IP is, I’m fairly sure, something that turns people off of comics more than it turns them on. Nothing matters because nothing lasts, and even the response to Miles Morales is muted because we all know, deep down, that Peter Parker will be back one day, and he doesn’t get the girl forever, because no real change is allowed.
AG,
All that is fine as your own personal opinion. It’s a perfectly valid opinion that you have every right to hold.
Of course, the opposite opinion is also valid, and you should appreciate that when someone chooses to expropriate an existing character rather than create an original one from scratch, they are going to face pushback from fans of the existing character.
But I think “representation” falls flat as a justification for character expropriation for this very reason. You can increase representation without expropriation. Lady Brienne can become the role model for young girls who want to look up to strong warrior types without anyone having to re-cast a female Lancelot or whatever. Yes, new/original works have a tough road ahead to dethrone established franchises, but its not impossible.
I’m not remotely a Spiderman fan, and that storyline pisses me off.
Well sure, that would be ironic if that were the case, but much like your theoretical criticism about “characters think more like how they themselves think,” I’ve seen no indication that such people – or anyone, really – push for fictional characters to act smarter than the stereotypical character intelligence. First of all, I think such pushes come from across the spectrum in a way that is orthogonal to the whole “representation” issue, but second of all, all the pushes I see are for fictional characters to act about as smart as the stereotypical character intelligence.
Obviously there’s some autocorrelation there with how fiction itself shapes how much intelligence a “stereotypical character” has, but there’s also input from reality which helps to anchor that somewhat, and all the pushes I’ve seen are situations where the fictional characters’ behaviors differ wildly from that predicted by the stereotypical character intelligence.
There’s also the issue that whatever the drive for representation is rooted in, the fruit of that tree is so far removed from the root that it’s largely indistinguishable from a fruit that’s growing from a wholly different tree of a different species. From my observations of the words and behavior of people who are against forced diversity/representation, it’s not at all ignoring the root, but rather it’s noticing the disconnect between the fruit and the root. It’s generally the people who are trying to sell the fruit who either ignore or are (charitably) just apparently oblivious to or (uncharitably) denying this disconnect.
@Randy M:
You just sold your marriage to the devil? How does that even work, ontologically? He gets your marriage license and you and your wife lose all memory of ever being married? Does the devil also buy mismatched socks if he gets to wipe your memory of ever having owned those socks?
@Matt M
I’m not opposed to backlash against expropriating existing characters. For example, I’m sympathetic to people who disliked Arrow because it was actually a Batman show, and their Oliver Queen wasn’t like the comics at all. I hope they eventually get another adaptation with a proper swashbuckling Oliver someday. (And in the mean time, they can keep enjoying the DC animated renditions, which are pretty good.)
But raging about The SJ Menace ain’t it. You can complain about how Heimdall didn’t really have anything to do in the Thor films, but his race really genuinely had no impact on the character or the world-building. Similarly, the Wheel of Time adaptation could become incoherent because of their casting. Or they might change the world-building to account for that. We won’t know if the casting move will result in bad writing or not until the show comes out, so we can see the execution.
I’d prefer that people acknowledge these concerns are just about at the same level as concerns over brunette Frodo and blonde James Bond.
@lvlln
The whole existence of ratfic is about writing smarter characters. The codification of the Idiot Ball trope. The very prevalent sub-genres of “Naruto/Shinji/Harry grow a spine and curb-stomp everyone,” often literally tagged with things like “features smart!Naruto,” and the Harry Potter variants having accidentally reinvented The Count of Monte Cristo while they were at it. Aforementioned loathing of Big Bang Theory. The CinemaSins/How It Should Have Ended/X Things Wrong With Y ecosystem of media criticism revolving about “why didn’t character do this smarter thing instead? it is a plot hole.”
Hoopyfreud created this thread to challenge representation naysayers to provide examples of woke blockbuster baileys. They haven’t provided nearly enough examples to show that it’s outweighing the mottes. For every film listed in this thread, I can list so many more that I feel improved from taking an overt approach to diversity. I’m very much enjoying the fruits right now, and I don’t think that the cases where it’s gone too far (mainly YA publishing) are in danger of moving the Sturgeon’s Law dial in mainstream media.
@Hoopyfreud
There’s a balance, sure. But the results speak for themselves, with which characters getting adapted first for solo films?
AG,
But this is where I see it as something of a double-edged sword.
Yes, Heimdall being black had very little impact on the character, the world, or anything else. So why should the anti-SJ crowd rage against it?
On the other hand, Heimdall being black had very little impact on the character, the world, or anything else, so why did they even bother going out of their way to make him black in the first place?
Like, if the supposed benefit of diverse casting is that it exposes you to different worldviews, thought processes, etc. (as you earlier claimed), then this only works if it actually does impact the story in a meaningful way.
And I think even the anti-SJ crowd realizes this and is sensitive to it. There’s one argument going on that is “Don’t change the story,” but also a completely separate one which is “What exactly is your motivation for replacing whites with blacks in a way that doesn’t even change the story, if not SJ politics?”
Now don’t get me wrong, the most likely answer is probably something like “Idris Elba was available and is really popular and we wanted to put him in the movie.” I do consider it quite unlikely that his casting was a key step in some secret Antifa plot to overthrow fascism in the USA. But you can see how, if that sort of thing keeps happening, it might start to raise eyebrows…
Yes, I’m not familiar with ratfic, but I’m somewhat familiar with stuff like CinemaSins, HISHE, the “Idiot Ball” trope. In all but a few rare exceptions of those, I notice that they call out fiction for having characters who are not as smart as the stereotypical character intelligence (or inexplicably not as smart as they’ve been firmly established to be previously). They’re not calling them out for not having characters who are as smart as them or who aren’t smarter than the stereotypical character intelligence. It’s not about wanting characters who think more like oneself, it’s about not wanting characters who belong in Idiocracy to act as major plot points in non-Idiocracy works of fiction.
Yes, I agree. I think that the lack of female villains in cinema, for example, is a bad trend. I think that there are common narratives in media that are bad. I think that “cute girls doing cute things in [a band/a rural village/a hamster suit]” is like 50% of why Miyazaki was right all along. But at the same time, I’m not going to blame (((the studios))) for the state of anime in 2019. It’s the stereotypical NEETs’ fault (with apologies to non-stereotypical NEETs).
There’s nothing wrong with K-On existing. It doesn’t (and shouldn’t) make me mad. The demand for it makes me mad. It’s gutless, insipid schlock with nothing much to say, but that doesn’t make it an attack on my person or identity. Now, you take a story like Re:Zero, and there’s a whole bunch I can say about why it’s bad in the sense that its portrayal of women is straight-up degrading (if you want to interpret it as anything but escapist emotion porn for lonely men). But the same just… really isn’t true of mainstream entertainment. Or where it is (and it is sometimes; there are movies out there that actually go out of their way to make fun of men), it’s not central to Media Culture.
My point is that people who complain about Hollywood being “too woke” are, as far as I can tell, complaining about the existence of stories that don’t cater to them specifically, singling out 20 (generously, as far as I can tell from this thread) productions from the last decade and holding them up as emblematic of an industry that produces a few hundred a year, reading too much Twitter, or using movies that are actually bad as a way to bash their outgroup.
And this just seems straight-up correct to me.
Yeah, I pretty much agree that the complaints about woke Hollywood are basically Chinese Robber Fallacy.
But my point with the anime is that one’s actual evaluation of the story is influenced the marketing. For example, the whole thing about Rey as a Mary Sue is predicated on interpreting Star Wars through the heroic adventure lens. But Star Wars could easily be interpreted through other lenses (an action shounen structure, a sports film structure, a heist/caper structure, a band film structure), in which Rey being a prodigy has no bearing on her quality as a character, because her character archetype changes based on the story framework you choose to view it through. “This is a story about cute girls doing cute things” vs. “This is a story about soldiers dealing with heavy themes, who happen to be all girls.” aren’t mutually exclusive.
Just look at how there is every possible reaction to Evangelion. Some find it an insightful look at a group of broken people, a sharp portrayal of depression and prickly relationships. Some people are repulsed by the actions of these broken people. And some just decide to fap to the girls the creator designed as a rebuke to their fapping to cartoon girls. “The actual text of NGE is anti-sexualization” isn’t mutually exclusive from “NGE didn’t do any favors for the industry’s sexualization problem.”
How are we to evaluate Fight Club?
This falls into the old ‘every interpretation is valid’ nonsense. Rey was introduced into the 7th movie of a franchise that was aggressively branded and marketed as THE NEW STAR WARS MOVIE, so the interpretation of how she acts and how she is written is more valid within the context of what we expect from a SW movie than it is from some other genre. You can argue against Rey being a Sue, but you can’t argue against Rey being a Sue by invoking the fact that genres outside of SW exist.
But the text of NGE isn’t a shitty harem comedy. “Not fixing the problem” isn’t the same as “contributing to it.” And viewing stories (especially stories like Fight Club) through the lens of the best-fitting archetype seems like a good way to reliably miss the point (TM). I’m not saying that reading the film in a particular way is bad, but that you always have to ground your reading in terms of what actually happens. You have to make statements about what a work means, not just point to a genre and say, “it’s an example of that.”
Yes, the marketing shapes it. The framing shapes it. But ultimately it’s what’s on the screen that matters, and someone who gets perception-shifted into thinking that Captain Marvel is basically the SCUM manifesto (or that NGE is an example of waifu culture) has only their own uncritical consumption to blame. With apologies to LMC for the callout, how the fuck can you come away from Star Wars thinking that
The text doesn’t support the reading. There’s no contextualization that supports it. Conversely, there’s no contextualization, even among the genres you listed, where Rey actually has a full character arc’s worth of development. But “girl MC has character development only slightly more convincing than Android 16” doesn’t justify the rest by half. Every interpretation is valid, sure, but it has to be an interpretation.
Quite a motte you’ve erected here. I propose a law: any defense of wokeness will eventually devolve into nilhistic postmodernism.
@viVI_IViv
Speaking of, “it has to actually be an interpretation,” less of this, please. Substantively engage with what other people are saying or go away, but don’t make vague sneering noises. The only word you said that follows from what you quoted is “postmodern.”
@baconbits9
This is exactly my point to Hoopyfreud, that the marketing and branding matters to people’s reception of a text.
(That said, I think that the Star Wars films have always been hamstrung by sticking to a mythological branding, when its stories were already branching out into other genres in the EU and the prequels. TLJ, Rogue One, and Solo were all clearly going for other things. Even if TFA appeared to be returning to the Hero’s Journey well, it was also way more of an ensemble sports-like film than A New Hope. TFA was more like Pacific Rim than A New Hope, and Pacific Rim was explicitly working off of the sports film template.)
@Hoopyfreud
Yes, things still have to be rooted in the text. It’s not really an interpretation of the text if the thing wasn’t actually in the text. I’ll concede that the NGE example is off track.
Still, Death of the Author isn’t a required thing. Someone’s experience with/interpretation of The Matrix can change because of how both of its creators have come out as trans.
Defending Rey’s skill curve as “Rey could be a prodigy” is something you could do if you are a writer. But the Star Wars writers did not do that. If you have a prodigy, you have to give them context. You can have Sasuke, but he needs Naruto, the effort guy. You can have L but there are adults all around to contextualize how much of a genius detective he is.
So I’ll return to what I think is the actual problem and how it addresses your complaints about anti-SJ complaints. The complaint, in its average (not a strawman or a steelman) form is that SJ writing in Hollywood is, on the average, lower quality because they sacrifice the parts of storytelling and substitute social justice. Then if you call it bad you get called a bigot.
So yes there is a good Star Wars 7 where Rey is Goku, but then we probably want a Krillen and Master Roshi. Yes there is a Star Wars 8 that is a play on a sports film (although I will say I don’t really see this), but then it needs a training montage and a pump up speech that turns the tide.
@Clutzy:
Agreed. When bad storytelling pattern-matches to IdPol dogma, the cable suspending my disbelief may snap and instead of evaluating the imaginary setting, I’ll start thinking about how this is a corporate product made by rich people who hate me.
Yeah, my problem with these threads is, like Hoopyfreud, it’s all Chinese Robber Fallacy’d to hell. LMC outright admitted that their sample size for woke blockbusters is near zero.
Besides which, the counterfactual for non-woke films isn’t “miraculously good pulp fiction,” it’s the Bayformer films. It’s “Dwayne Johnson does yet another meaningless piece of action fluff.” It’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. SJ writing isn’t uniquely worse than regular bad writing. It’s just one particular expression of it. SJ writing isn’t moving the dial on the Sturgeon’s Law percentage.
Complain about bad writing. There’s no need to pretend like it’s a special Crisis In Hollywood.
People do! Bayformers et al get raked over the coals all the time for being dumb pulp. But when you complain about dumb SJ pulp then it’s a scandal (see: TLJ, Ghostbusters)
I don’t care if SSC rakes TLJ or Ghostbusters over the coals for bad writing.
I do care if they try to make a SJ Boogeyman Grand Narrative about it based on false perceptions of the industry.
@AG:
But I think it would be deceptive to deny that TLJ does fit into a Grand Narrative about the sort of people who populate Hollywood.
The whole Rian Johnson “subverted!” thing isn’t an apolitical writing style having nothing to do with Rey’s omnipotence, Admiral Gender Studies, et al. One of the things Jonathan Haidt talks about is how progressive and conservative brains have different reactions to hearing that word while hooked up to scanning devices, with progressive brains having one of their most positive reactions to “subversive.”
Then your problem isn’t with SSC or really any of the critics of TLJ/Ghostbusters, your problem is with defenders of those films. Plenty of people have been fine critiquing bad movies for years. Red Letter Media’s whole thing was mocking Star Wars Prequels for not understanding story structure. But then, suddenly the same critiques become sexist when its a female protagonist. Thus people naturally re-categorize. That is SJ writing is a subset of bad writing, one that SJWs try to pretend is good writing.
My problem is with defenders of those films, but there aren’t any here. My problem is also with people claiming that “SJ writing is a subset of bad writing,” especially when they claim that it’s a strict subset, and also that the concept of “subversion” makes something SJ writing. Ideology is a bad defence of poor criticism no matter whose it is.
Its like that saying about families. “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Also I don’t really understand the rest. Most critiques of SJ things begin with, “this is bad” or “this is overrated” and evolve towards critiques of the SJ elements because when you did into them it appears to be the most likely reason for various bad choices made in the film.
An example of what you would be talking about is the movie Coco. It was a fine kids movie, like a 6-7/10, it was 30 minutes too long, the child narrator portions were horrible, and the soundtrack was nothing special. I wouldn’t call it SJ writing, just a person telling a kids story they wanted to tell, but the media coverage around it was heavy SJ oriented. With people pretending it was some sort of masterpiece.
I don’t watch nearly enough film to know if its a major trend in Hollywood overall, it does seem to be a significant trend among major studio productions, particularly long running IP.
I mean, fair enough, but the entire premise of this thread is comments like LMC’s about the unbearable wokeness of Hollywood. I agree that they’re (thankfully) a minority, but I’m still talking about them.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me personally the issue is less with the SJ films themselves so much as the way the broader media treats them. Bad writing + notSJ gets the panning it deserves. Bad writing + SJ gets trumpeted to the heavens (so brave!) and critics are are all just a bunch of dogwhistling [misogynists|racists|*phobes].
Good writing + SJ does exist and that’s fine. I like apolitical good writing better, personally, but I don’t begrudge it’s existence. What I hate is the media jamming anything SJ – good or bad – down my throat and excoriating anyone who doesn’t like it.
@Gobbobobble
Also, good/decent quality + anti-SJ gets panned, if not ignored altogether.
Probably the “all female action pose” in the big final fight of Avengers:Endgame.
It’s not deeply offensive or troubling, it just kind of sucks. I can’t imagine anybody was excited or thrilled by it and it killed the pacing/tension of the big final battle of the culmination film of the MCU. That’s how a lot of wokeness feels in movies, at least for me, just visual/story choices that detract from the movie.
I can’t say I’ve seen anything terribly offensive but it’s not hard to identify and avoid them. Just searching for 2019 Oscar winners, the big winners look like:
“Green Book”, racism in the American South
“Blackkklansman” Spike Lee comedy? on the KK,
“Roma”, drama about a minority housekeeper in Mexico?
“Bohemian Rhapsody”, Freddy Mercury!
All interesting subjects for movies but I’ve seen enough “woke” cinema to know how they will be shot and framed. Heck, I’m pretty sure I know all the major plot moments for each just based on the trailer. Why would I view these?
Take “Green Book” for example. Could be good, could not, but without seeing it I know who the bad guys are, who the good guys are, and what Viggo Mortensen’s character arc is, because there’s not that much allowable variation in any of the above. I can’t honestly say it’s more irritating or preachy than “God’s Not Dead” but without a substantial social/cash incentive, I can’t imagine watching either.
” I can’t imagine anybody was excited or thrilled by it”– this is probably more about the limits of your imagination than whether other people might be enthusiastic about something.
Probably, it’s a big world and Marvel is good at their craft.
Some people find Dove beauty ads inspiring, it must work because they keep doing it but I can’t understand it.
Roma is not a woke film. Why don’t you try actually watching it?
Time & probability, mostly.
I’m totally willing to accept that “Roma” is good, “the Favorite” is also good and that got an award, but I have no trustworthy way to distinguish “Roma” and “the Favorite” from “Green Book”/”generic woke movie”. If 75%+ of movies are, not bad but just limited/boring, and it’s hard to distinguish the good from the dull before watching, you just kind of stop watching movies unless people make strong recommendations.
Agree with this as well.
If your film looks woke and sounds woke and is loved by the woke, you can’t really blame the anti-woke for not watching it…
@Matt
I have literally no idea what made you or blipnickels think that Roma is “woke” other than the fact that it’s about Mexico and has Mexicans in it. I’m not saying that AcKSHully it’s about race for you, but what you do have is an incredibly lazy discriminator that replicates that prejudice.
It’s not that Cuarón deserves your eyeballs on his work, it’s just that you should understand that you’ve basically declared that you’ll play as defect bot against him unless he makes movies totally disconnected from his personal history. If you’re going to culture war that hard, you should at least take responsibility for it.
I think defining “not seeing this guy’s movie because it looks like something I wouldn’t enjoy because it’s probably woke” as “culture war that hard” is as silly as arguing that remaking live action Aladdin with an Arabic-looking cast was woke (which we had last thread). Just in reverse.
False positives happen, but movies are not important. Personally, I’d miss at least 4 good movies on release to avoid sitting through a bad one on release. Although very few movies appeal to me anyways.
For me, a first approximation is “if it won a major film festival award – especially Cannes – it’s not going to be the sort of movie I’ll enjoy.” There are exceptions so recommendations can overrule this, but as a general rule, film festival films (not “movies”, those are for proles) are Oscar bait dialed to 11 in terms of pretentiousness, preachiness, and lack of a coherent story in favor of mumble mumble exploring a medium mumble handwave emotions mumble mumble. Doesn’t quite match “woke” but it’s in the same ballpark
(Not to dig at people who enjoy film festivals, I just don’t find it worth my time. To the point where when a trailer cuts to those iconic gold leaves I start backing away slowly)
It’s less this, and more guilt by association in the sense that it was nominated for an Oscar and was generally praised by the class of people who love things I hate and hate things I love. (the fact that the professional critic class loves it might very well be related to the fact that it has Mexicans in it, but it’s hard to be certain)
Is that fair? No, not really. But I have plenty of other things to watch that aren’t nearly as guilty by association.
@Matt
If it is, fair enough, but that’s not what the comment you agreed with indicated. Either way, it’s entirely reasonable to “blame you” for it. Your heuristic is literally “avoid things other people like and complain about them being too woke because other people like them.”
@ Hoopyfreud
Besides what I expect of any movie focused on race/class that wins an Oscar?
Let’s say I want an awesome Indian movie.
If I look to the Oscars or anything that got a US release, I get something like Water. My eyes glance over the plot and go “imperialism, widow, feminism, ‘…contrasting the widows’ oppressive existence as outcasts. The film seethes with anger over their plight…'” I mean, maybe that’s not 100% uncut woke but it’s sure woke-ish.
If I go to top grossing Indian films I get Baahubali 2: The Conclusion. My eyes glance over the plot and go “Murder, king, lust, revenge, ‘…plays like a shotgun wedding between Ben Hur and Kung Fu Hustle.'”. Dude, I’m sold.
I may not perfectly understand why one got a theatrical release and an Oscar in the US and I’ve never heard of the other but I’ve seen this happen often enough for it to have predictive validity. I know movies like “Water” are chosen and “Baahubali 2: The Explosioning” are excluded. And culturally speaking, I’d bet significant sums of money that “Water” is more woke and acceptable to Western audiences and “Baahubali 2: Super Phallic Poster” is problematic and I’ve yet to see a problematic foreign film get a US distribution no matter how many awards it wins.
Or if you want a more artistic example, look at Red Cliff. It might not be true !art! but it’d compare well to anything Hollywood put out in the past couple years. I’m not sure why it never got a push in the West but it’s portrayal of women is…it starts at complicated and kinda degenerates from there, especially Cao Cao.
I could speculate on why this is but I really don’t know. All I see is that the only foreign films that get shown in the US are, by accident or design, woke-ish, and those that aren’t woke-ish have difficulty. Without having done any research, I’d predict that the winners of the Hong Kong Film Awards or any other foreign film awards are dramatically less woke than winners of the Oscar’s Foreign Film award.
Again, I’m not entirely sure on the causality here, but as factual matter the foreign films shown in the US aren’t representative of foreign media, they’re a curated sliver deemed appropriate/profitable/woke for US audiences.
Foreign Film != woke
Foreign Film in US theatre = woke
So “Roma”, not as a foreign film, but as a foreign film in the US, even without the Oscar, would get predicted as woke. Add in the Oscar and subject matter…
@blipnickels
I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about. Leaving aside the fact that Water didn’t win an Oscar, here are the Best Foreign Language nominees from last year besides Roma:
Capernaum, in which a slum kid tries and fails to forge documents to allow him to migrate to Sweden, and which has a pretty negative take on Lebanon in general.
Cold War, a black and white Polish film about artists under the whip of the Soviets.
Never Look Away, a German film about a man’s (unknowing) relationship with the Nazi doctor who ordered the execution of his aunt.
Shoplifters, a Japanese film about a poor family of literal shoplifters whose family disintegrates over the course of the movie.
Shoplifters won the Asian Film Awards, Asia Pacific Film Awards, the Japan Academy Prize, and the Mainichi Film Awards
Never Look Away didn’t win anything; reception was mixed, with some being “meh” and some being enthusiastic.
Cold War swept the European Film Awards and took a few other European film awards home.
Capernaum won a lot of European awards, and as far as I’m aware Arabic-language or Middle Eastern awards don’t really exist.
I feel like “woke” is turning in to a euphemism for “left of center” around here. I mean, the Oscars foreign picture category snubbing Bollywood blockbusters is not recent.
Not for the first time, I wonder how much the discourse would be lifted by just taboo-ing all vague ideological category terms entirely and forcing people to explicitly type out whatever it is they mean in a particular instance – e.g. “the sort of people who like high-brow cinema” or “the sort of people who vote Democrat” or “the sort of people who apply critical theory in their daily lives” or whatever.
@dick
That seems sensible, let’s give it a try.
Woke is super-blue. I doubt I could give a specific definition but blue things are Sweden>USA, wine>beer, coastal residence, the New York Times, California Pizza Kitchen, watched GOT instead of Big Bang Theory, post-graduate education, slavery is the original sin, etc. These are cliches but they’re also predictably valid.
I left out the other Oscar nominees because I thought they’d be a little too strawman-y. Capernaum is the story of an impoverished Lebanese boy trying to escape to Sweden for a better life played by a literal Syrian refugee. Cold War and Never Look Away are about artistic struggles under totalitarian regimes, one involving literal nazis. Shoplifters I’m honestly unsure about, no idea how woke it is, I’m probably 50%-50% on it and Roma now.
I expect these to hit the woke/art house/super-blue movie tropes I’ve seen 100 times before. I expect the lead to be sensitive and destined for great things but oppressed by an immoral government as they struggle to find their true selves, probably helped by a quirky friend and/or lover. All endings will be bittersweet, all villains will be the local authority, and all heroes will be oppressed.
This is bad and boring and greatly limiting to the kind of stories that can be told and are told, foreign or domestic. I’d rather watch things that aren’t trapped in these formulas.
There are woker things out there, I hate-watched Dietland on a recent flight, but it’s obviously not for me and why should I butt in on someone else’s fun? I knew it wasn’t for me from the promotional material alone. If something gets an Oscar win, it’s probably trapped in woke/super-blue themes, I’m probably going to be bored, and so I don’t watch. I take the same general attitude towards tumblr.
Maybe woke means something different, if there’s something genuinely worse than Girls, I’ll gladly tag out and be left to my ignorance.
@blipnickels,
Red Cliff is a really good movie, although I wouldn’t call it artistic exactly. It’s certainly incredibly well-made but at its heart it’s a blockbuster and not an art film. It’s the sort of film that ought to win awards but not the kind which actually wins awards.
Compared to Hollywood movies the film wasn’t particularly feminist, but it was hardly reactionary either. For example, Lady Sun is ahistorically turned into a master ninja who can knock out horses with pressure point attacks and fights alongside the men in battle. It’s reminiscent of Arwen in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: John Woo made her as “badass” (cartoonishly masculine) as he could get away with without completely mutilating the story.
Roma didn’t get screened in the US because it was woke. It got screened in the US because its director has Hollywood connections. Alfonso Cuaron directed Harry Potter 3, Children of Men, and Gravity.
Foreign films have a hard time getting screened in the US period because of the lack of connections to market the films and get enough revenue to cover costs. As such, anime is one of the few places increasing in screenings, because they’ve been building in-roads to make screenings worth it financially.
No it isn’t.
Treating your outgroup as a pastiche of cliches is fine, if you’re making fun of them to your ingroup, but not when you’re talking to them.
Green Book is an interesting example in that it seems to attract derision from both extremes, but acceptance by the non-radical moderate class.
The far right sees it uber-woke, in line with your description. The far left sees it as “whitewashing history” and covering up the true horrors and extent of racism. Moderates see it as a heartwarming story of racial togetherness or whatever.
Well shoot now I feel like I should see it
I agree it was distracting. Nevertheless, it was one of the few moments that got applause in the theater when I saw it. (Another was Stan Lee’s scene.)
Really? I mean, that scene was the dumbest thing in the movie. It had the same problem as Jorah Mormont saving Daenarys in the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones: Why on earth are these specific characters in this specific place at this specific time, given the geography of the battleground and the deployment of forces? Why is Okoye there instead of leading her troops from Wakanda or managing logistics for them like she’s supposed to be? This is girl incompetence, not girl power.
Both of these scenes were so bad they jerked me right out of suspension of disbelief. The GoT one was really frustrating because the whole Winterfell battle was so poorly edited that I had zero spatial awareness of the characters during the battle, and Jorah’s magic teleportation through enemy lines was the crowning moment of that problem.
It’s not impossible to make those scenes hang together, but the writers and editors didn’t even put a minute of thought into the locations of the characters and the events occurring around them, and therefore didn’t put in the necessary work to set it up.
That was actually the 4th-to-last – is that anteantepenultimate? – episode of the series. I think it’d be easy to confuse that episode and the penultimate episode, because they were both episodes centered around large battle sequences featuring leaders organizing their armies in ways that were optimized alright for looking flashy on screen but poorly for defeating the opposing army.
Hahaha, exactly.
I could justify maybe 4 heroines there without men: Captain Marvel, the Scarlet Witch (her brother and robot date are dead and she hasn’t established a position with the sorcerers), the younger Wasp (Scott was elsewhere on the battlefield using different powers, and as I recall, her dad wasn’t in the battle… due to Michael Douglas’s age?), and Rescue (Tony was off doing the most important job and she doesn’t have any other super-friends). Having every hero who happens to be female drop what they’re supposed to be doing in an army of diverse contingents to pose with Girl Power Face behind CM? That’s just incompetent narcissism.
@lvlln
You’re right, I did make the exact mistake you surmise. I knew I should have checked.
Holy shit no it wasn’t. It wasn’t even the dumbest thing in that fight scene. Having all of the female heroes in the same time and place for like 3 seconds was unrealistic, but only in the “Batman’s cape gets longer or shorter as required to frame the panel” unrealistic. I mean, yeah, they didn’t put any effort in to explaining why all the women were in the same place, but that’s the same amount of effort they put in to the swaparoo at the end that actually won the fight.
For my money, the dumbest thing in that scene was Thanos doing a judo throw on Captain Marvel. And the dumbest thing in the movie would be the part where half the population disappearing and then unexpectedly returning five years later doesn’t lead to riots and starvation on a global scale.
I mean, yeah, this is what ruined Endgame for me: not anything woke.
I haven’t seen Spider-Man: Far From Home because they decided the world-building of this setting – the main selling point as early as 2010! – has the value of garbage.
I don’t see what’s so dumb about Thanos’s judo throw, though. He’s a Titan, and so should be able to throw the mass of a human woman a significant number of miles. She can fly, but that takes reaction time, and a successful martial arts move takes you by surprise almost by definition.
She’s the most stupendously powerful being in existence. She can fly faster than light. Thanos had (I assume) the biggest, baddest warship in the galaxy, and she defeated it without apparent effort in literally one second. By all rights she should’ve just picked him up and flown him in to the middle of the Sun.
@dick:
Ah, I see your point. She’s a space character who can fly under her own power at the speed the plot, which is FTL. Taken logically, this makes her stupidly stupendously powerful and Thanos shouldn’t have been able to land a hit.
Yeah, I agree with that assumption. This is problematic for all future appearances she makes, as any starship she chooses to fight should last literally one second.
Good for me, I guess. that the idiocy of the “half the universe’s population disappears for 5 years, then reappears” event means I’ve checked out of future Marvel movies.
@dick
Ehhhh, I still think the power pose was worse. I wasn’t being hyperbolic in the slightest about “jerk[ing] me right out of suspension of disbelief.” I literally jerked up in my seat at that scene, and only barely kept myself from screaming “What the fuck?!” at the screen*. I mean, it was just so gratuitous.
The judo throw didn’t affect me because I hadn’t seen Captain Marvel, and considering only what was within the four corners of Avengers: Endgame for her character it wasn’t wildly out of line. I mean, if she was that OP compared to everybody else, why didn’t she just blow through his lines, skip all of the hand-to-hand with his minions and just twist off Thanos’ head and play hacky-sack with it in front of all his troops?
I agree with the unreality of the consequences of bringing everybody back–and commented on it while leaving the theater!–but for me I had seen that coming before even walking in to the movie so it was baked in already. I mean, most of the writing on these things doesn’t think through the implications of the world that well, so it was something that was easier for me to suspend disbelief. It wasn’t much different to me than how, say, Tony Stark doesn’t get turned into jelly by any impacts while in the Iron Man suit, despite the fact that it doesn’t make the stops any more sudden and won’t decrease the G-forces on his body.
* Because I was at home for the GoT scene, I really did yell that. Though it didn’t quite have the jerking up in my seat effect, because I had already spent that bullet on some of the characters watching their obstacles get breached and just staring at it with a gormless look on their face, even though they had some things–that I can’t recall now–they could have done about it.
@CatCube:
Because, according to an old argument, it’s literally impossible to write a coherent story about a character that powerful. She can’t do that even though the established rules say she could, because then there wouldn’t be a conflict. This is why Superman has Kryptonite and why it’s a common thing for a new writer handed the character to establish how de-powered he’ll be.
(The best take on this was the DC Animated Universe, where they showed him needing a spacesuit to survive in space and, as his ability to maneuver in space was very limited, Professor Hamilton modifying the baby rocket’s interior to fit an adult. They still had him no-selling the god of tyranny’s ability to erase you by looking at you, though.)
Wait, what do you mean they didn’t put any effort into explaining the final swaparoo? I thought that was telegraphed really well beforehand and the shot was framed and choreographed in a clear way to show what Iron Man was going for. Establishing in Infinity War that Iron Man’s suit was nanomachines (and therefore basically magic) and in Endgame that the new glove was basically just a modified piece of Iron Man armor set it up so that if Iron Man ever touched the glove with his suit on, then manipulating it to move the stones around as he wished was basically trivial. And given the context of that scene, the moment Iron Man’s armored hand touched Thanos’s gloved one, it seemed pretty obvious what was going on.
Now, the fact that Tony Stark let Thanos pose for a second and say “I am inevitable!” before putting all the stones in place and snapping his own finger was unexplained, but of course that kind of thing was a major problem throughout that entire fight.
I used to be bothered by this kind of thing. Now I don’t think it matters much.
A couple years back, I watched the The Aztecs (old Dr Who). I was fascinated by some fundamentally different aspects of storytelling from that time, most of which I assume were inherited from theater performance and not (yet) shed by television.
For example:
– the villain literally monologues his plan to the camera, for the benefit of the audience
– characters of all stripes have “asides” where they discuss their plan loudly enough for the audience to hear, but in “hushed” tones so that we know the other characters aren’t supposed to.
Sometimes, the storyteller’s job is to convey information to the audience, and we should in general be ready to roll with that. Sometimes, their job is to put something cool on the screen, and we should roll with that, even if it’s someone else’s “cool thing” or fanservice and not our own.
If Hawkman was so keen to sacrifice himself on the death planet, why didn’t he just put on the glove and undo the snap as soon as he had it? If the infinity stones are so powerful, why didn’t the Avengers use some of them to get the others? If the power glove Tony made has nanites that can move the stones around, why couldn’t it just fly wherever he told it to go? I could, to quote the most annoying character in the franchise, do this all day.
They did establish that his suit is a deus ex machina that can plausibly do anything at any time, but that’s not an explanation, that’s just cheating. Telegraphing it would’ve been, like, a scene before the battle where Tony is working on the glove, and he swaps some practice rocks from one hand to the other, and someone walking by says, “neat trick”.
See, I thought when they showed the glove transform – requiring shifting the stones around – to fit Hulk’s hand, that along with showing Iron Man’s suit constantly readjust and transform during his fight against Thanos in Infinity War was all the telegraphing needed. It wasn’t quite as obvious as, say, if the Infinity Stones were actually data and Tony plugged a USB stick into Thanos’s hand to CTRL-X/CTRL-V it out, but I thought it was almost that obvious, given the setup of what the technology of the Iron Man suit and the man-made Infinity Gauntlet were made up of.
I feel like if they showed Tony actually swapping a practice rock beforehand, that would be way too overt and obvious; you might as well have a freeze frame, Robert Downey Jr. turn to the camera and say, “Hm, I wonder if this ability might come in useful at some future climactic moment?” and wink, for how much it would take me out of the movie.
As with Paul Brinkley, that moment drew applause in my theatre. It also led the lady next to me to exclaim, “Oh hell yeah! She got a bad ass bitch squad.”
A lot of that movie was straight up fan service. That one didn’t land for me either, but it wasn’t *my* fan service. I did squeal like a little girl when Steve Rodgers picked up Mjolnir and beat the hell out of Thanos.
I think that sums it up pretty well.
Batwoman comes to television this October. It features an out lesbian, played by someone deemed not gay enough by the Twitterati, who is then cited as saying some pretty cheesy woke lines in the trailer IIRC. It makes me glad I don’t follow either Twitter or TV very closely.
My bird’s eye view says we have yet to reach peak irritation, though.
Are ritalin or adderal worth taking occasionally as a performance enhancer? I’m a programmer and I use modafinil – though I am very averse to being dependent on a drug, so I use it infrequently. But I like having it in my toolkit.
I find it hard to focus on code for long stretches of time, or to digest whitepapers with dense mathematical notation. And I feel like I need to be a little better here, both for my career and my self-actualization. I don’t think that a doctor or a psychiatrist would give me useful advice, because they approach things from an excessively risk-averse “do no harm” angle – understandable why they do so, but does not produce the best advice.
(I read scotts’ article on adderall risk but didn’t get a strong sense of yes/no)
The question is, what else can you do to become more productive. Taking stimulants to be productive is dangerous, because they don’t teach you how to be productive without them, and they are addictive. Being able to do much more on them is part of why they are addictive.
I think the interesting question is, how is your relationship to your job (I assume you work as a programmer, but it still applies if you are a student or whatever)? Programming for long stretches of time is hard, even more so if you have to do the modelling on the fly, there is no modelling, the modelling is bad, etc. That’s why things like partner programming, splitting a program into subtasks etc. exist – it does make your life easier. Also note that even the best productivity techniques do not work in an environment that has no use for your productivity – if the project you are working on is not reasonable enough or too chaotic, you’ll go back to procrastinating in no time.
Reading mathematical texts you have no familiarity with is the same, it can be normal to only digest one page per day. Take the following advice with a grain of salt: Many computer science papers contain a lot of bullshit math that is not necessary for anything. Sometimes it is better to not ponder over CS math for too long.
“Taking stimulants to be productive is dangerous, because they don’t teach you how to be productive without them, and they are addictive.”
Would you apply this to caffeine?
Sure.
I could take substantial amounts of caffiene regularly to wake me up, but I don’t for the above reasons.
It’s a sliding scale of risk from caffiene to meth, but you do hear every now and then about teenagers getting hooked on red bull.
Yes, but you may get addicted. It’s hard to use them only occasionally.
The short answer is that if modafinil works for you, you should stick with it because the big advantages are on its side.
I’m not sure what your question is.
Are you looking for a the right tool for the job? There are subtle differences which you can only learn by trying them. But on the whole modafinil is just better. Amphetamine makes you feel productive, so make sure you assess your work when sober. (same with modafinil, but less so)
Or are you worried about physiological tolerance and you hope to avoid that by alternating different drugs? How often is “occasionally”? If you’re taking modafinil once a week, just stick with modafinil. If you’re taking drugs every day, probably alternating with amphetamine is better than modafinil every day. But maybe alternating with sobriety is even better.
———
Amphetamine is good for executive function. A lot of people with ADHD report that modafinil doesn’t do much for them.
Another advantage of amphetamine is that it has a short duration and faster ramp up. Most people who use it to work take it multiple times a day. If you have a limited task, you could just take one dose, whereas taking modafinil is committing to being on it all day. Amphetamine interferes with sleep. Most people find that modafinil does not interfere much with sleep, so if you decide to take it late in the day, you can still get a full night’s sleep. But if you find that it does interfere with sleep, that limits your flexibility of using it and may suggest amphetamine.
The main problems with amphetamine are overconfidence and addiction. The fast ramp up contributes to addition. The subjective feeling of being wired probably contributes to both problems. Whereas modafinil has much less of a subjective effect.
I am diagnosed with ADHD and have had prescriptions for several forms of amphetamine. Because of unrelated medical issues, it’s extremely difficult to get my dose right. I have found that, in doses not potent enough to make me “high”, both amphetamine and caffeine(!) actually tremendously improve my ability to “sleep at will”, and improve my quality of sleep as long as the dose lasts. In fact, one of the things that has made therapeutic use of amphetamine difficult for me is the fact that the *withdrawal* phase comes with insomnia; I take a dose, and for 3-6 hours I can be “productive OR sleeping”, followed by 9-24 hours of “neither productive NOR sleeping”… (This is a minority outcome, but at least one of my friends had a similar experience.)
My personal recommendation: if you’re going to take amphetamine, take as little as possible. If you “feel it working”, it’s too much. If you really *need* amphetamine in order to be productive (as I do), it shouldn’t take much at all to get you where you need to be. Also, watch what you eat and drink near your dose; acidic foods reduce its potency, while alkaline foods increase it.
Starting yesterday, my ad-blocker began blocking the ads on SSC. I didn’t update it or change anything.
Did anyone else have the same experience? Does anyone know how to make this not happen?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/08/14/open-thread-134-25/#comment-788668
@Nick posted that he was having this issue in the last OT (.25).
Edit: Ha, too slow.
EasyList has this:
##.widget_arvins_ad_randomizer
and your HTML has this:
<li id=”arvins_ad_randomizer-2″ class=”widget-container widget_arvins_ad_randomizer”>
Eeyup. Nice catch. It looks like it was just added.
Interesting. As far as I know I’m the only person who uses Arvin’s Ad Randomizer (Arvin made it just for this blog).
Would it be hostile to change the name of it or something so that it’s not on the list anymore?
I’d say it’s more futile than hostile, as whoever has added it to EasyList will simply do so again. Maybe you could detect the presence of an ad blocker and show an opt in button.
Perhaps this question is worth asking in a more prominent place.
This is the guy who maintains EasyList and added the SSC filter.
I looked at EasyList’s policies and it looks like they have no exceptions for acceptable ads. Per eigenmoon I don’t think you’ll have much luck fighting with them.
However, Adblock Plus and some other adblockers abide by standards set by the Acceptable Ads Committee, which has inclusion criteria and a form for asking your site to be whitelisted. I think that might be the way to go?
Thanks, I’ve submitted a request for them.
Yep, my AdBlock Plus is also blocking the ads.
uBlock Origin, having the same experience. (Also, didn’t even notice that until I saw this comment.)
Intriguingly, my ABP was blocking the ads, but it said “0 ads blocked on this page”. Odd.
Yup, ublock is blocking the ads too
I have Adblock Plus installed. With it turned on, the sidebar ads have disappeared. When it’s turned off, they come back.
Has anyone ever tried writing a screenplay before? I’m wondering if there’s a cheap, easy way to format one properly. It seems like it should be an easy thing to create, but I couldn’t find a template online that wasn’t expensive.
I’ve written several screenplays, although most of them were written for assignments while I was in film school. There’s a software, Final Draft, that a lot of people in the industry use; it does most of the formatting work for you. But I’m positive there are MS Word templates out there for free somewhere. Or you can look up the format and create your own, which is what I did for my fiction manuscripts.
I have written a screenplay for a short film (didn’t go anywhere, but at least it’s a thing I completed). While Well… above has good advices, screenplay formating is really not that hard and tedious to do by hand, I found.
I agree. Even without using “styles” it’s not all that hard in Word. The part that requires finesse is in knowing what to put and not to put in scene descriptions, how to describe things in enough detail without stepping on the toes of actors/art directors/foley artists etc. When we were in film school we got assigned Syd Field’s “Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting” and it was actually pretty helpful.
Edit to add: if you’re writing something you personally are going to produce/shoot/direct/etc., I recommend going with a tabular 2- or 3-column script format instead.
Find a copy of the old CeltX desktop edition; they are still floating around somewhere and are free. Alternatively, learn John August’s Fountain markdown language.
I am a development executive. Final Draft is the industry standard, is expensive, and is terrible. There is no earthly reason for you to use it (the script may have to end up there eventually if your film actually makes it into production, but that is very much a bridge to be crossed when you come to it). Fade In is cheaper and better. Writer Duet is free, and I have heard good things, but have no personal experience. I would start by trying Writer Duet.
Is your whole life just people pitching you shitty ideas while you are trying to eat lunch?
I’m relatively new to this – I’ve been doing development work freelance for 18 months or so, and don’t officially start my full time job as the one-man English language (I will have a Spanish speaking counterpart at some point) development department for a new indie feature production company till the start of next month (though I’m already doing a lot of work for it).
To date, the level of “I read this book/heard this story/had this thing happen to me that would make an amazing film” from random acquaintances in social situations has been… non-zero, but tolerable. No doubt as time goes by it will get worse and my tolerance will get lower.
Would you be interested in writing an effortpost about what the work of a development executive is actually all about? The profession has been portrayed on screen, but those takes are probably not accurate.
@johan_larson:
Having also seen some of the fictional depictions of filmmaking and also worked in the industry, I would say most takes are not so much inaccurate as they stress one aspect over others to make an artistic point.
For example, Jean Luc Godard made a movie about making a movie, and the opening scene was just a POV of a bunch of checks being written and torn off the checkbook one after the next.
@johan_larson
I could certainly do that at some point, though I’ll probably be too busy with work this week. I think it would be fair to say, though, that my experience working for a very small company based in the UK (there is an LA office, but it’s focused on Spanish language projects; the English language stuff is
based here, even if it ultimately shoots over there) is in all probability highly atypical. Apart from anything else, I do a lot of things which aren’t technically in my job description and I’m pretty sure would not be part of the work of a typical Hollywood exec. And I have no formal training and literally don’t know a single other person who does my job (the closest would be friends who are dramaturgs in theatre) so I really can only talk about my own experience.
“It turns out that enforcing a peace treaty looks an awful lot like war.”
This is a sentence that occurred to me a few days ago while discussing arms agreements and the Treaty of Versailles with my dad. He responded very positively to it, so I figured I’d bring it to you guys for second opinions and wordsmithing.
I think the original formulation was “It turns out that enforcing a peace treaty looks a lot like a war”. I also thought of phrasing it as “It turns out that the enforcement of a peace treaty can be easily mistaken for war”, since “easily mistaken” seems a little stronger than “looks like”, but on reflection I think the more casual tone works a lot better — the clipped attitude is kind of incompatible with “it turns out”, anyway.
So if anyone has ideas on improving the wording, let me know. Discussions of the statement itself, and its truth value or lack thereof, are of course also quite welcome.
sic pacem para bellum
Well, it can also look like “police action”, or “occupation”, or a lot of other actions short of military action, but fundamentally, yes. Treaties are an aspect of law, and the bedrock foundation of law is the credible threat of force wielded against those who violate it.
The bit where it gets hazy is that in the real world there are lots of ways to force someone to accede to your will against their own will without using physical violence. Economic leverage (the threat of privation or even starvation), Social leverage (the threat of social isolation/ostracism, or in other words the use of emotional rather than physical pain), etc.
Also note the libertarian comment on how taxes are literal robbery, because if you don’t pay them nice men with guns come and take your house away. It’s similar because it’s both literal truth (that’s what actually happens) and yet not quite so. Partly because in practice it doesn’t get there, and also because taxes do solve a cooperation problem that kinda needs to be solved.
@Kestrellius
Only if very many people don’t accept the peace treaty, in which case, it may very well actually be an edict imposed on people who never sat or had (true) representatives sit at the peace table.
If few people don’t accept it, enforcing it tends to look like policing.
Versailles was a rather specific case in which the losing side:
1- Didnt think it was losing
2- Was more than able to resume figthing and actually win if the war resumed one year later and all the American and British went home to mind their business
Belgium and Northern France were devastated, Germany was almost pristine, and the eastern front was safe. Ruthless occupation and backbreaking sanctions (which, unfortunately, didnt happen) were the only ways to prevent the germans from yet another war of agression.
The alternative that didnt require so much enforcing, would have been to continue the war and rampage through Germany, pillaging everything to bring them up to the level of devastation their past and future targets suffered. Which would have been pretty damn evil, considering the amount of carnage it would have caused to both side.
Agreed. Compare this to say, reconstruction in the South, which “looked like war” in the sense that union soldiers were still physically present and bossing everybody around, but did not “look like war” in the sense that men were lining up and being killed by the tens of thousands.
There is, in fact, a difference between physical presence and implied use of force (if necessary) and, you know, actual war.
Other than the part where Germany was starving and cut off from all critical imports. I don’t know how the situation for industrial inputs looked compared to WW2 (anyone?) but I rather doubt they could have restarted the war easily from status quo. They may have not had battles on their territory but intact forests don’t win wars, logistics, gasoline, ammo, and millions of well fed young men do. They certainly didn’t have the first or the last and I’m doubtful about the middle two–anyone know?
I think the point was that, after a year’s interregnum, Germany’s young men would be well-fed again and her strategic reserves could have held a war’s worth of gasoline, rubber, nickel, tin, etc. Germany’s undamaged economic base, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and a year hypothetically free of blockade, embargo, sanctions, or reparations would have made this somewhat plausible, as is the bit where France has a much harder time recovering.
Brest-Litovsk and Lenin et al also mean Germany wouldn’t have to worry about an Eastern Front in a hypothetical WW1.1, but they also wouldn’t have the Ottoman Empire and probably not an Austro-Hungarian Empire to guard their southern flank.
If WW1.1 is just Germany v France and Belgium, probably Germany wins and possibly the no-longer-starving German people would have been up for another year of war to accomplish that after a year of R&R. But the bit where MorningGaul proposes that Britain and the United States would sit out WW1.1 seems questionable at best.
And also moot, since the whole point of Versailles was that the UK and US didn’t want to get dragged into another Continental war and so dismantled the Second Reich and chained down Germany with enough reparations and other sanctions that it would be at least a generation before they got a Third Reich up and running on a war footing.
No, on several levels. First, Germany was really tired of the war. Look at the events of late 1918. The navy in open mutiny, the Kaiser abdicating, Germany’s army collapsing. This is not a country that can go back to war. This is a country with war on the streets. Second, Britain and America weren’t just going to go home. Britain still has all of the interests that drew it into the war in the first place. America had convinced itself that its participation was important, and that took a few years to dissipate.
Enforcing anything on another sovereign nation is going to come down to war.
A peace treaty is basically spells out a list of actions that the losing side must do or not do to avoid renewal of conflict.
I’ve had a similar experience when thinking how a company going thru bankruptcy looks a lot like what would happen if it weren’t for bankruptcy laws.
I think the biggest difference, in both cases, that while the results are similar, at least one side (or both) are following a script. This makes every ones actions predictable, and less likely to result in drastic shocks caused by misunderstandings and over reactions.
Does anyone know how expensive matchlock revolvers were in the 15th-17th centuries?
Matchlock revolvers existed during this time period, and the most common explanation that I’ve seen for why they weren’t common is the expense of buying and maintaining them. This makes a lot of sense, since each one was essentially unique and required a skilled gunsmith given the poor quality tools and materials of the time. But I’d like to know how expensive that was, and the internet is failing me.
The problem is that too many of them still exist, so whenever I search the results are dominated by auctions talking about how much they’re worth to collectors today.
Edit to add: Here we go: Cromwell at War: The Lord General and his Military RevolutionGoogle books page 39:
search terms: harquebusier pistol cost
These appear to have been flintlock pistols.
—–
This Ebook is freely available from Google Books: “Cromwell’s Army: A History of the English Soldier During the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and the Protectorate”
page 124 footnote 4 puts a likely high-end cost (as a pistol is likely cheaper than a musket):
Google search terms: cost to equip musketeers
Reading the chapter on Cavalry led to searching for “cost to equip harquebusier”, https://howlingpixel.com/i-en/Harquebusier which has some recent footnote referenced books that might list the price of a pistol.
The book “Ironsides: English Cavalry 1588–1688” might list the price, but Google books limits searching inside the book.
The question was specifically about revolvers, which were obviously more complicated and expensive than standard matchlock weapons; the question is how much more expensive? And to my mind there are also questions as to whether expense was the real reason they were uncommon; they would surely be a pain to reload, and if they were sufficiently unreliable the theoretical increase in RoF might not be worth all that much in practice.
Okay, but revolvers of any kind weren’t invented until the 16th century, and Nabil is claiming they existed during the 15th-17th centuries. I assume he meant pistol.
It seems like I was off on the date, I thought that revolvers were older than that but it seems like the earliest examples were made in the late 16th century.
But yes, I was interested primarily in revolvers rather than pistols generally. That said I appreciate the info you provided.
Beyond the question of cost, is the question of what utility you are buying with that cost. And with a gimmicky matchlock revolver, the answer is “not much”.
The great advantage of the (expensive) wheellock, and its successors, is that they allowed a firearm to be kept ready for immediate use. A matchlock requires that you have at least a minute or so of advance warning that you are going to be involved in a gunfight. And if you have a minute’s advance warning of a gunfight, the winning strategy is almost certainly to notice that you can run about three times effective musket range in a minute, and decline the invitation to a gunfight. At very least, you should go and get an Army’s worth of friends to make sure the fight goes your way.
So about the only time you’re ever going to use any sort of matchlock, is when you’ve got an Army’s worth of friends at your back and you’ve decided that yeah, today is when you’re going to settle this, and your damn fool enemy is still standing there thinking he’s the one who is going to win when he should obviously be running away and trying to find more friends.
In which case the fact that your personal firearm can fire five shots and then take five minutes to reload when everyone else’s fires only one shot and then reloads in one minute, while still of some advantage, is greatly devalued by the fact that everybody has several times five friends watching their back while they reload, and with Army-like discipline can take coordinated shifts shooting at the enemy while their colleagues are reloading and there are always a good fraction of an Army’s worth of firearms ready to deal with contingencies.
Repeating black powder firearms are actually less useful in formations than for individual use, because having a bunch of people fire at once creates so much smoke that you can’t see the enemy anymore. That’s why they had volley fire under direction of a commander: so the smoke could clear between shots.
For army use, you also really want rifles, not pistols, as to have range. The issue with black powder revolver-style mechanisms is that they produce sparks. So if you put it into a rifle, the hand forward of the revolver is going to receive nasty hot sparks. And that is actually the best case, since black powder revolvers have a relatively high risk of accidentally firing two chambers at the same time. So having a hand forward of the mechanism is really not what you want.
Some early revolver-mechanisms didn’t rotate around the axis of the barrel, but horizontally, like the Genhart rifle, but this means that you have chambers (that may accidentally go off) pointing in all directions, including back at the shooter.
pistols were used in military contexts, but by cavalry, not infantry, and with debatable degrees of effectiveness. I could sort of see a use for a matchlock revolver firing a bunch of lot of shots as the cavalry charged, but I strongly suspect that people firing multiple rounds one handed from the back of galloping horse would be so inaccurate as to be basically useless.
I believe the norm was to ride up within pistol shot of the enemy, stop the horse, shoot the pistol, and ride back out of range before the enemy could retaliate. Reload and repeat. Reasonably effective against pikemen, or musketeers you can catch with their muskets empty. Not so much against musketeers disciplined enough to keep one rank loaded at all times, or against cavalry closing fast with pointy sticks and no need to stop before they skewer you.
And if there’s any merit at all to a “matchlock revolver”, that might be the application for it. But it’s fairly narrow.
Any revolver seems dubious before the development of caplocks because of priming. Even if you have flintlock/wheellock ignition, you still need to make sure that the priming is in good shape after the gun revolves. I don’t think that’s trivial, particularly if you leave it primed for long periods. Or an auto-priming mechanism, which is worse.
Off topic, but the collection of ancient firearms at the Met in New York is beautiful and well worth visiting if you’ve not seen it (Nabil – you’re in the city right?)
Since we’re off topic now: Didn’t you like pack up and move to the East Coast last year? I take it you’re in the area now? How do you like it? Did the move work out?
I did! I like it quite well. I’m posting a lot less because I have way better things to do irl. Today I’m just bored and have nothing else to do while I watch my movers pack up my enormous collection of books and liquor (headed from Brooklyn to my new co-op in lower Manhattan!)
I would highly recommend my action to anyone who wants to live in a major city and has had trouble with the West Coast.
Glad you’re happier, Andrew.
Yeah, although on my last trip to the Met I spent most of my time looking at the paintings. I haven’t been to the weapons and armor section since I was a kid. I should probably go back now that I have more ability to appreciate what I’m looking at.
Plus my girlfriend will be thrilled since we haven’t gone on a museum date in a while now.
Weapons and armor and paintings are all very well, but the Met has what I think is one of the two best collections of historical jewelry in the U.S. — the other being the Walters gallery in Baltimore.
I haven’t seen that; I’ll look it up next time I’m there (since it’s PWYW with a New York id, that’s very easy to do…) Is it under some particular label/gallery, or should I just find “Jewelry?”
My other favorite section is the Asian art, especially the enormous collection of Chinese watercolors. I don’t know if it’s world unique, but I do know I like it. (I also enjoy the musical instrument collection, though it’s a bit small and doesn’t have a ton to say.)
As a general rule, I’ll prefer to look at any section of a art museum that’s not oil paintings to any section that is (and watercolors are barely an exception.) My favorite stuff is all statues, artful objects (like the guns!), and what I think is called decorative art (the Chicago art institute’s enormous and wonderful collection of furniture and practical pottery comes to mind.)
I tend to find museums interesting for what I can learn from them. The Art Institute in Chicago, for instance, has a renaissance painting which includes a fairly simple three legged chair. I’ve made a bunch based on that. Given my medieval interests, I tend to look at paintings to see if they contain relevant information.
But I also find historical jewelry, especially migration period, aesthetically pleasing. The screen backgrounds of both my desktop and my laptop are (different) pieces from the Sutton Hoo dig.
I don’t remember how the jewelry is classified, but it should be easy to find.
Any thoughts from the Go crowd on whether correspondence games should or shouldn’t stop the clock on weekends?
I’m thinking we should not stop the clock on weekends. Go isn’t work. You shouldn’t need a two-day break from it every week.
I think the “we need to stop the clock” thing should be more robust, at least – It’s more likely someone couldn’t do it during the week than the weekend.
I’m talking about a specific setting, and whether we should use it in challenges within the group. Try creating a custom correspondence game, and you’ll see a “Pause on Weekends” checkbox.
Right, I get it; I don’t think they should pause for weekends either. I’m just saying tool itself is poorly designed, too.
You’d like to be able to specify what days of the week the clock is running?
Yeah. Or even “just weekends” as opposed to “just weekdays” would be an improvement if that wasn’t possible.
The really important vital issues that AI will work on – deciphering Victorian engineers’ bad handwriting 🙂
Once they crack this, they can then move on to doctors!
Ach weel it’s Brunel isn’t it? He’s like the steampunk Elon Musk.
In some ways he was the anti-Musk; Musk takes huge risks, while Brunel over-engineered everything.
Well after the firth or forth time your bridge falls down, who wouldn’t get a little more careful?
You might be remembered for a very long time.
Tangent: “Isambard Kingdom” sounds like a place in Middle Earth.
To me, it sounds like more like something from a high fantasy anime. It’s something about following up the proper noun with Kingdom that appears badly transliterated.
Speaking of indecipherable handwriting, J.R.R. Tolkien is another with notes no-one can read. Do this software could lead to Christopher Tolkien releasing more books…
And Isambard is, I think, ‘iron beard’, so Isambard Kingdom would be dwarfs?
They should just hire people who are good at reading scribble. Same way the MET Police have face detector humans. Seriously there is a massive variance in this ability among humans.
They do, but it’s labour intensive and expensive for a nonprofit trust.
John Baez has created a test for identifying physics crackpots: http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
If you haven’t read it before, it makes for amusing reading.
I suggest adding a 38th item to the list:
38. 50 points for demonstrating a lack of understanding of the established theory that your revolutionary theory is supposed to replace.
In other words, if you’re going to claim that quantum mechanics is a sham, you had better know how to diagonalize a Hamiltonian. Crackpots may compare themselves to Galileo, but the relevant difference between the two is that Galileo and Copernicus understood the geocentric model of the universe very well, while crackpots for the most part have an understanding of physics that is derived from popular science books. Those that want to get rid of special relativity, for example, tend not to know what the space-time interval is.
I’m guessing that this rule applies to fields besides physics as well. In the case of biology, the main group of crackpots seem to be creationists. From what I have observed, most creationists have a very limited understanding of what evolution is and how it actually works.
In fact, though this test may give many false negatives, I can’t think of a single case where it incorrectly identifies a non-crackpot as a crackpot. Can anyone think of a true scientific revolutionary who didn’t understand the theory they were overthrowing?
Kind of related: Sean Carroll giving advice for “crackpots” to be taken seriously. His number 1 piece of advice is to understand the field you’re… ah… contributing to.
I’d suggest the test works for history as well…
My simple rule for situations where I find myself saying “The simple solution to a problem that plagues many people is X” is to wonder why no one else has thought of it, and suspect strongly that it’s been tried and there was something wrong with it.
Which leads me to wonder “how unique is the problem I’m dealing with” and awful lot.
This drives me slightly bonkers at work when we have comments on some of our projects proposing “easy” fixes to some problem we’re having–fish passage projects at dams attract these types of things.
We (me and the rest of whole team including fish biologists, engineers of all types, almost all of whom have worked on previous fish passage facilities) have spent about 50% of our working hours on this subject for the past six years. You just found out about how fish passage facilities work 45 minutes ago when you started reading this document. Do you really think you’re going to find something that easily solves the issue with a quick Google search?
Speaking of which, I’m sure you’ve seen the Fish Tube videos. Someone on Twitter remarked that it was a carpal tunnel.
Someone elsetwit also noted you have to be careful to put the mouth of the tube where bears can’t get to it, otherwise it becomes a very expensive Pez dispenser. (That’s funnier if you know Spanish.)
The fish gun is interesting, and may have some limited uses, but I think the Twitter threads I’ve seen are overselling it. Avoiding stress on the fish is really important, especially when you’re near where they spawn. The fish bios talk about how they have to be careful when operating our trap-and-haul facilities, because the females are so ready to lay their eggs that they will disgorge them with anything above minimal handling, and when you’re talking a facility with a return of a few hundred adults, that matters.
If you’ve got a dam with a forebay that doesn’t vary much it’s hard to see how the maintenance and fish stress downsides overcome the upsides of a conventional volitional passage ladder. If the forebay has very wide swings that mean you’re running a trap-and-haul ladder, this thing will be shooting the fish into the air where they may fall hundreds of feet into the reservoir.
This system will be most useful in run-of-the-river projects where the forebay doesn’t vary much, it’s not near the spawning grounds so fish stress is less important, and you don’t have room for a volitional passage ladder. Which isn’t nothing, but it’s not a game-changer.
The other Tweets regarding bears is not as joking as they think. Hunting is very difficult and energy intensive; anywhere that is a guaranteed catch will attract predators, and they’re generally clever.
The critters we need to worry about where we are are sea lions. The cleverest try to get through the navigation locks and sit at the ladder exit which is, as you note, a Pez dispenser for them. The most common way they try to get through in the lock is to hide under the tows. The next common is to sun themselves on the barge and get off once they’re above the dam. There’s apparently one video kicking around here that I haven’t seen of a sea lion climbing the upstream gate when the lock chamber is full and jumping over into the forebay, though if that’s true it’s certainly not a common way for them to get past the dam.
Normally, they just sit in the tailrace, where they still have an advantage because the anadromous fish are funneling into the ladder entrances. The fish are oriented on flow, and we design the system to create currents that attract them to the ladders. 90% of the flow used in a fish ladder is passed in at the bottom couple of pools to create this jet. That’s the one thing that hasn’t been apparent to me from the fish tube videos–how are they attracting fish to their entrance pool?
Two factoids about American politics that I consider striking, especially together:
1) Since 1940, the “Date and 8” law has correctly predicted the outcome of 18 of the 19 presidential elections: if the year is 0 or 4 mod 16 the Republicans have won, if it is 8 or 12 the Democrats have. In C code, the formula
Election_winner == (year & 8) ? Democrats : Republicans;
has been correct in every year from 1944 onwards, except for 1980 when Reagan beat Carter.
2) Since Grover Cleveland won the presidency in 1892 and lost it in 1896, it has only changed party twice in 4 years once – when Carter won it in 1976 and then lost it again in that 1980 surprise.
This suggests to me that American politics is really strongly thermostaticat the presidential level – you could practically save yourselves the costs of all that electioneering and just buy a calendar instead.
Any theories as to why the Senate and Congress don’t show any similar tendencies?
If I were feeling more energetic, I’d take a fourier transform of this chart to see if it showed something similar, just not centred on 0…
(Incidentally, this xKCD is probably obligatory here…)
Didn’t Bush Senior also lost it after one term?
Yes, but he was preceded by 8 years of rule by a president of the same party. Similar things are true of LBJ and Ford.
Russian rulers roughly alternate between bald and hairy since Nikolai I (1825). Perhaps Russian politics is strongly thermostatic at the hairiness level.
For Catholics it’s a “fat pope, thin pope” rule.
I think this “date plus eight” law is really running on the “the incumbent wins if they’re going for a second term”; since incumbents now can’t run for longer than two terms, and two terms seems to be about as long as the public will tolerate one party in power, then it’s no surprise that “Party A wins the presidency; four years later President A runs again and wins; eight years later it switches to party B”.
I think that’s also why the Senate and Congress are different; if you like your congresscritter (or they’ve built up a strong local machine) you can keep electing them to office until they’re carried out in a coffin. Retirement tends to be handing over either to a family member or a hand-picked successor, and the seat is unlikely to switch parties unless there’s some huge scandal in Party A at local or national level, or Party B brings in a really hot new candidate who promises the sun, moon and stars. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez overturning Joe Crowley, despite the myth-making peddled in the media, was not some bright-eyed first-timer ‘I was just a bartender’ winning in a grassroots revolution (that would make a fantastic Movie of the Week, though, and I’m surprised someone hasn’t tried putting the ‘scrappy underdog with the help of a rag-tag bunch of ordinary folks beats the big party machine candidate’ story onscreen, at least for TV), it was a very carefully calculated and carried out campaign by big hitters behind the scene, and AOC was one of the few successes*. AOC had a tougher fight against her Democrat colleague for the nomination than in the actual election, since this was Yellow Dog Democrat territory:
*Justice Democrats ran 78 candidates, 31 made it through or won primaries, 7 were elected out of those – including the other members of The Squad, and 6 of those 7 seats were previously held by Democrats, with only 1 of the Justice Democrats alumni taking a seat from a Republican. Hardly the Big New Blue Wave movement it was spun as! And I see Chakrabarti, who seems to have impeccable instincts as to when precisely to jump ship before it sinks beneath him, has resigned as AOC’s chief of staff to concentrate on the
boondoggleurgent project to save the American economy and the planet:Looking into my crystal ball, I see taskforces. Lots of taskforces, meetings, conferences, flying here and there to talks and urgent confabulations, and plenty of spending government money on keeping them all in the style to which they are accustomed. Maybe not so many green new jobs to replace traditional industry, but for sure lots of consultants taken on board to draw up plans for any that could happen, you never know, if the technology is invented and all the former automobile assembly line workers and coal miners learn to code…
Counterpoint: LBJ, Ford and Bush the Elder all lost while incumbents; the unifying factor is that in each case they had been preceded by a president of the same party.
“Individual incumbency advantage plus coincidental noise” is not an absurd explanation, but party incumbency advantage withering over time fits the (admittedly far too limited to draw meaningful conclusions from) available data more closely.
LBJ wasn’t the Democratic nominee in 1968.
So he wasn’t. I stand corrected. But my point about Ford and Bush the Elder still stands with 2/3rds of its original strength.
To be fair to Tatterdemalion, LBJ losing in the primary and dropping out is even more strongly in favor of that idea. He would’ve gotten killed in the general had he run.
He would’ve gotten killed in the general had he run.
Perhaps literally.
Please fix this code for every presidential election.
I am a scientist who mostly writes code. Data analysis, numerical simulations, engineering calculations for designing things, code for programmatically controlling lab equipment, that sort of thing. It often doesn’t feel like work, and I can get into the zone and be pretty productive. When my job consists of these things, I feel that I am good at my job.
About a year ago, I finished my PhD thesis. It was an absolute slog. I am proud of it, but it took a loong time. I struggled a lot with procrastination and frequently achieved nothing for a whole week at a time, instead browsing reddit or obsessing over organising my finances or some other thing like that. However, I eventually developed good routines and got it done, and by the end of it I thought “Huh, maybe I have conquered my poor writing motivation. Maybe next time will not be so hard”.
It is now next time: I am trying to write a paper. So far it’s been a week and I have achieved almost nothing, instead spending most of my time on reddit or searching for small programming tasks I could be doing instead. This isn’t what I predicted, and it seems like if I am not writing frequently, the proctrastinatory habits come back. I also thought that the previous procrastination problem might have been due to feelings of shame that I had so much work to do and had been taking so long, and that with the pride that I have now that I have completed it, I would no longer have the underlying anxiety that led to that. I do feel less anxiety now without the thesis hanging over me. I am definitely a happier person – but it now seems like the difficulty writing was not about that.
I am starting to wonder if I should think of it as a psychological problem to be addressed via drugs instead of lifestyle changes (though I am still open to lifestyle changes). Since writing is a “sometimes” part of my job (though a very important one), perhaps I could try taking modafinil or similar, only when I need to get writing done. Another alternative is to try and make writing a more regular part of my routine so that I maintain good habits. I know all about breaking down the task into smaller chunks, “aversion factoring” and all that kind of stuff, and it helps, but I still feel like I have a problem after these techniques are applied.
Writing is a super important part of my job, and I do not feel like I will be able to continue as a scientist unless I resolve this problem one way or another. Of course, I don’t *have* to be a scientist, I could be a scientific programmer or something instead where I don’t write any of the papers or grants. But for now I want to see if I can be scientist. This is still my preferred career.
a) Does my situation sound like the kind of thing that modafinil helps with? I’m probably going to experiment with it and find out.
b) Where’s a good place to get modafinil (I am in the US)?
c) Should I talk to a mental health professional? I have always wondered if I would be diagnosed with ADD if I were to do so. But since the coding parts of my job come naturally to me, I often forget for long stretches of time how crippling the procrastination can be when the work that needs to be done doesn’t involve coding.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong with you and you just find writing papers difficult and tedious?
Yeah, there’s a lot of bullshit and inefficiency in the academic publishing process that gives me nagging feelings of meaninglessness. It’s also a skill unto itself that gets easier with practice, both for reading and writing it.
OP, consider things that might imbue it with more meaning: regular meetings where you work with another human on it, talking through the content with others, etc.
I’m sort of the opposite of you, I guess; I would gladly narrow my work down to the just the parts I enjoy. I can’t give you advice on doing things you hate, but I would definitely think my first step if I were you would be to try and quantify what it is about the thing you hate that holds so much value that you feel like you have to do it. If that value is legitimate and high, I get it, but if not I don’t understand why you’d want to stick to it when other avenues of success are an option.
+1
benjenny said this:
To that I’ll add, never do anything you hate.
I’d say try to arrange your life not to do stuff you hate. Some stuff you hate may be mandatory–if you need a root canal, the fact that you really hate root canals doesn’t mean you should refuse to have it done. (Though you might seek out a doctor that will knock you out first.)
If you need a root canal, you will not hate getting a root canal. You will want to get a root canal.
@HowardHolmes
That’s not how most people work.
I don’t think it is a terribly outrageous claim, unless you have a high tolerance for what can end up being significant tooth pain while you avoid your root canal.
Howard – I will hate getting a root canal. But I will hate the alternative *more*.
@Anthony
At the moment you have a root canal, it will be the thing you most want to do out of all the options you have. Hating and liking are just words on a scale. If you hate A, but hate B more, it is the same thing as saying you like A and like B less. The relevant point is that at any moment in time you will always be doing what you most want to do, and you will never do anything you do not want to do.
What kind of scientist are you? If you have decent chemistry skills, it’s quite easy to make (you’ll need benzhydrol, sodium thiosulfate, 2-chloroacetamide, hydrogen peroxide, and formic acid as a solvent)
But modafinil might just help you be more focused, while still procrastinating. It improves alertness, not willpower. I’d suggest also using some way to block Reddit on your computer (it’s quite an attention trap).
I also don’t like writing scientific papers, which is part of why I never finished my PhD. That said, I think I’m happier not doing scientific research for other reasons too.
If you need help here, I’d suggest therapy rather than drugs might be more useful. If it works you’ll haveva lasting behavioural change, rather than requiring chemical aids to perform tasks.
But are you sure this is the correct job for you to be doing? Failure to focus can indicate not an issue with you but that you aren’t engaged with your work.
I’m not sure if I am a good person to get advice from, because while I am a similarly situated scientist (I’m a computational materials scientist and enjoy it, I got my PhD a few years ago, I write papers at the expected intervals), I am reading SSC right now to avoid writing a paper.
For me, I find the most difficult part to be starting a writing session. Usually, once I’m 15 minutes into a writing session I get sucked in and make good progress. Therefore, for me, the key is to force myself to get started and stick with it for 15 minutes. If I do that, I’ll make progress until I have to stop due to a meeting, hunger, or tiredness.
If you’re like me in that way, you just need to figure out how to sum up the willpower to get started. Sometimes I disallow myself “random browsing time”, because what starts out as spending 2 minutes reading a blog post becomes a whole morning of browsing. Sometimes I just start with the easiest paper-related task at hand (updating a figure, fixing formatting). It doesn’t have to be the highest priority task, just the “gateway drug” of paper writing.
I don’t do it anymore, but I used to have a policy of internet free afternoons when I was writing my thesis. In the morning I’d do anything work related that required the internet (looking for references, answering emails, etc). Then in the afternoon I’d unplug my ethernet cable and not use the internet. Especially at the beginning, I can’t tell you how many times I’d open a new Chrome tab for blog/news site/etc by reflex, only to see that the page wouldn’t load.
Thanks for the comments everyone.
I do still think this is the right career for me for the moment. I like being in the thick of science and the variety of stuff I get to do. I could be a software developer but I think I would be less engaged with the content of what I was doing if it was not science-related. Also when I go on massive coding binges I sort of become a robot and neglect my mental and physical needs and stop being able to socialise normally. Being able to switch to something else (some electronics, some physical construction of something or other) is great. I am mostly in favour of the ‘don’t do things you don’t want to do’ approach, but I think it’s unreasonable to expect to be able to find a job that is solely things I want to do, particularly one with job security.
I’ll probably try modafinil (I’m a physicist, not a chemist, so I’m not about to make it myself) anyway, but will also continue trying all the tricks and self-reflection people usually advocate for solving procrastination. There are aggravating factors like having to get up earlier in the morning than usual lately, that could be relevant.
Do you find writing talks easier than writing papers?
Absolutely, a thousand times. I think it might be something about the lower level of formality and lower expected precision – if you brush over something in a talk that’s OK and expected. Also there are no reviewers deciding whether my talk is accepted or not, and I do not have to anticipate their criticisms.
Or maybe it’s just that I don’t plan my talks word for word and can talk off the cuff pretty well – if I imagine in my mind that I had to prepare them word-for-word, it seems a lot more intimidating. And putting some pictures and dot points on the slides doesn’t feel like the same kind of painstaking job as choosing how to write something.
Or maybe it’s something else altogether, but definitely talks are easier than papers.
So the obvious thing to do is to start with your notes for your talk, then extend it to the text of your talk. (When I’m preparing a talk, I find it difficult to write out all the words. But once I’ve given it, sometimes to an empty room, I’ve chosen the words and it’s easier to write them all out on paper.) Now you have a paper. Maybe not a publishable paper, but probably more useful than the final version will be. Triage the modifications. Make a list of what you think you have to add or change. Show it to your advisor and ask which ones you really have to do. Have people read it: their confusion will be motivation to add relevant material.
[edit: sorry, maybe much of this was covered in the exchange with AB]
I’ve tried modafinil (prescribed), and it did not noticeably improve my work ethic, or my ability to focus. All it did was give me four nights of unpleasant dreams, which is one of the reasons I stopped. It actually negatively impacted my ability to work.
You didn’t ask for this, but some comments about writing that might be helpful.
I find paper writing is easier if you’ve developed ahead of time the basics that you wish to convey. Sitting down and trying to write from a “cold start” is hard for me, so I often spend time daydreaming about the paper before trying to write it.
For example, often there is something really cool that you want to convey. There must be a reason you worked on this problem, so what is it? Try to impart that motivation to the reader early on in the paper. This can be a good “hook”, and it can jumpstart your writing process.
Another suggestion is that you shouldn’t feel overly-constrained by the expectations some people have about scientific writing. It’s okay to be interesting at the expense of formalism, if used judiciously. I recently read a paper where the author justified a problem by referring to her doctor’s scheduling algorithm.
Another enjoyable aspect of writing is to anticipate what a reader might be confused about, and explicitly engage with it. Even phrase it as a question in the text, and then answer it. Be careful not to come up with straw men, but even they can be useful if you label it as such (to let the reader know that a naive approach fails, for example).
Finally, and this may not be the case for you, but word-smithing/tightening up the language in a paper can be fun. It doesn’t feel all that different from, say, writing “good” code, or a clear, concise proof, or designing a useful plot of data. That is, it doesn’t have to be viewed as a chore. So you can start by writing the broad strokes (which may be total garbage language-wise), and then gradually tighten things.
Good luck with your paper.
Thanks for the advice and good wishes!
I totally endorse that people should be freer with their writing, but so far I have had a bad experience where my writing style has been criticised by reviewers as being a bit too free in this way (with the paper in question being rejected), so I am paranoid and a little resentful about feeling coerced into a more rigid style. And since I don’t have many papers to my name yet (and I am not anonymous to the reviewers), I feel like I don’t have the sort of reputational capital to be that free (yet). Perhaps after a few better publication experiences I will build confidence (and reputation) and no longer be as intimidated by this aspect.
I do think it will be fine in the end, drugs or not. Thanks for sharing your experience with modafinil. It’s what I considered reaching for because it helps others that I know study, and it is low in side effects (though nightmares don’t sound fun). But others’ issues studying aren’t identical to my issues writing, so I could totally see that it might not help me.
I’ve been doing a lot of this type of daydreaming for this paper, and it obviously contributes to progress, and I should count it as such mentally instead of feeling like I’ve made no progress. The paper will happen :).
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood?
or
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
or any of the other variations of would and could.
*ZOT!*
I’m looking for loudly and violently argued justifications, not an answer. 😀
Correct
A woodchuck would chuck all the wood, if only a woodchuck could.
I agree!
So you believe the woodchuck wouldn’t be limited by its stamina, but by its interest in chucking?
Mighty strong claim you’re making there buddy.
Woodchucks
1) Are pretty tough
and
2) Show little interest in wood, since they cannot eat it and do not live in it.
So yeah, I think while a woodchuck would have plenty of wood-chucking stamina (if indeed it could chuck wood, which it cannot) it would be pretty uninterested in chucking wood.
I think we need an experimental psychologist here, with mazes and food.
We could determine at which point the woodchuck is so annoyed at chucking wood that even extrinsic motivation can’t compel it to chuck any.
The woodchuck is not necessarily the limiting factor on the throughput of the overall process. It is not yet known how many knots a Nazi would see if a Nazi could see knots.
Wasn’t “Nazis who see knots” the main subject of those 1950s-60s men’s pulp covers?
As much chucked wood as a woodchuck could chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
How much cood could a coodwhuck whuck if a coodwhuck would whuck cood?
How much code could a codewright code if a codewright could write code?
How many boards would the Mongols hoard if the Mongol hordes got bored?
42 board feet.
Six pounds of flax.
How much fresh fish fries free at the fish fry if Fry fried free fresh fish?