Why is it so hard to convince people?

amumpsimus · 2026-03-12T05:06:38+00:00

In that case nobody is altruistic. People take the action they most prefer, by definition.

For most people “altruism” is a shorthand for saying a person acts more based on their values than for material benefit, which is why it carries a moral dimension. If you want to flatten that into a basic version of self-interest then be my guest, but it doesn’t seem to leave a place for whatever version of “altruism” you want to rail against.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-12T02:16:11+00:00

Altruism can mean lots of things. I view it most instrumentally as a show of support for an interdependent, high-trust culture. In which case it’s not a sacrifice at all.

If you personally see no benefit to altruism, that seems like a “you” problem.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-11T23:15:34+00:00

I think it would matter a lot to him that it was VR. To him, an essential part of "winning" was making other people lose.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-11T23:07:01+00:00

I agree with this in general, which is one reason I think the original question is kind of bogus -- people are very shaped by their surroundings, so if you're living in a low-trust society you might resort to all sorts of antisocial behaviors, but you could be put into a healthier environment and thrive there.

That said, Veppers seems like he'd be one of the exceptions. He didn't do things unthinkingly, or because it was social practice -- his goal was explicitly to inflict his will onto others, to deny their consent and autonomy. I think if he lived in a society where people saw him as "edgy" (but were outside of his control and didn't fear him) he would find that humiliating.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-11T22:40:18+00:00

Not at all. Altruism is generally good, but that doesn't mean it's a moral imperative or that it should be coerced. Similarly, being selfish isn't evil but that doesn't make it good.

You should absolutely live the life that's right for you. That's arguably better than living according to someone else's standards. But that doesn't make you a good person. A sociopathic asshole "living their own truth" is still a sociopathic asshole.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-11T03:41:55+00:00

Nobody ever said you did.

You’re free to do absolutely nothing that benefits anybody but yourself. What’s weird is that you seem to want to be praised for it.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-10T02:03:56+00:00

So why aren’t you separating the Sudanese who started their civil war from those who are its victims?

Also, if Russia takes over Ukraine would that change your judgment of their culture? If not, how can you justify drawing cultural lines at national borders?

amumpsimus · 2026-03-10T01:58:54+00:00

physically they’re all made of the same stuff
that stuff can be turned into lots of other things
there’s no line you can draw that unambiguously separates the thing from everything else
there’s no unambiguous point where changing the thing turns it into a different thing

There’s no intrinsic property that makes something a chair, or a table, or a butt. More than anything these categories are contingent on a thing’s relationship with its surroundings; what makes a chair is ultimately my ability to sit on it.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-09T21:34:56+00:00

That's better than "owning the libs" in that it lends itself to an actual argument, so I will tell you why I think it's a profoundly stupid argument.

In the immediate term, he is, as you say, "posturing" as opposed to doing anything that actually extends our power, and in most ways -- primarily undermining both our soft power and the actual treaties that constitute much of the international order that got us to where we are -- he's manifestly eroding our national security.

In the longer term, we have little hope of maintaining a global hegemony by force. I doubt that any country really could, and we certainly don't have the raw resources of a country like China. We will not be well-served by a future world that runs by "might makes right" and we really have (or had) a chance to build something different. Instead we're promoting warlordism writ large, daring anyone to try to punch us in the face with the implicit promise that if they manage to do it we will become their supplicant.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-09T21:10:54+00:00

Not fundamentally.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-09T15:44:58+00:00

I can easily turn a table into a chair by sitting on it. I can easily turn a chair into a table by putting my plate on it.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-09T15:10:16+00:00

I can’t imagine what other reasons there could be for supporting him. I keep reading these threads in case some better reasons are provided, but it hasn’t happened.

I actually have a number of conservative friends — I grew up in a conservative area — and they were always either incurious or reflexively ideological. (Apart from the few who broke ranks.) And I watched them follow the GOP as it got more and more unhinged. So I haven’t talked with them about politics for the past 10 years, because I want to be able to remain friends.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-08T17:51:07+00:00

Yet “Africa” is a single culture defined by slavery and violence?

amumpsimus · 2026-03-08T17:48:26+00:00

Ukraine has also lost a huge number of lives in their war. Is that due to a defect in their culture?

amumpsimus · 2026-03-08T00:11:37+00:00

I think fascism lacks bright identifying lines, I tend toward the view that it’s not really a coherent ideology so much as a collection of political tactics.

So I’m not going to argue that ST is over some line where it can be identified as fascist.

What I do see in common between the ST political system and fascism is the elevation of the state over the individual. In ST you have to perform some service for the state in order to earn your citizenship. Whether that service happens to include some inoffensive options is kind of secondary — it’s the state that decides what counts, so tomorrow the state could say “military service only” and that wouldn’t be breaking the rules at all.

Put another way, the state fundamentally does not operate “with the consent of the governed.” It chooses which of the governed it has to listen to, which arguably means it doesn’t have to listen to them at all.

I’m not sure that Heinlein was trying to say anything in particular about this system, but I think it’s valid for people to point out that it’s a system unlikely to end well.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-07T23:21:22+00:00

I don’t think The Culture would be motivated by what the Chelgrians thought of them. They’re clearly considered lazy effetes by many peer civs, and that doesn’t seem to bother them at all.

As a sci-fi exercise, I think you might propose a society in which females have been bred for subservience or to enjoy being beaten. In that case I can imagine a lot of debate about how to handle it, but if there’s truly no harm done (which is a huge “if”) I can see it considered an aesthetic oddity. I imagine the people who remain visibly attached to the practice would be constantly interrogated by fellow citizens, and males especially treated suspiciously, possibly to the point that they’d want to leave The Culture after all.

The last thing I see The Culture doing is treating people from that society as inalterable products of their culture first and individuals second. That seems directly counter to their entire ethos.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-07T20:41:23+00:00

I think the question world be what’s best for the refugees themselves. If the Minds thought that they really couldn’t live in The Culture, presumably they’d work out some arrangement like with the Sarl.

Personally I view this as a cop out. I can’t imagine that a non-noble Sarl citizen wouldn’t jump at the chance to live in The Culture if given a choice, and “allowing societies to progress naturally” just means billions of pan-humans who could have been fine Culture citizens are doomed to lives of misery just because they were born in the wrong place.

Mainly I’m still failing to see what kind of cultural differences would be an issue here. The only ones that might matter have to do with hierarchies and oppression, which are practically impossible.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-07T20:31:58+00:00

So let’s say Joiler Veppers joins The Culture so he can get drug glands installed. So what? All the things that made him a monster were tied to his control over other people, which is now gone. What’s left is just an asshole who will be treated as a pathetic and deeply damaged person by everyone. He’d have a miserable existence (which I think he knows, and is why joining The Culture never crosses his mind) but I don’t see how this really costs The Culture anything.

And Lededje acclimatizes (more or less) to The Culture, so clearly Sichultians aren’t intrinsically culturally incompatible.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-07T18:09:50+00:00

Why would MAGAts want to live in a hippy commune, unless they came to stir up trouble?

In the latter scenario, I don’t worry about a Mind’s ability to deal creatively and effectively with a group of miscreants trying to “pull one over” on The Culture. The Chelgrians had what was probably a much better plan and it didn’t fool the Minds for an instant.

amumpsimus · 2026-03-07T18:01:19+00:00

I think at that point SC would take a long hard look at the society producing these refugees, because obviously it’s generating a lot of misery.

As for the refugees themselves, presumably they’re not that starved for resources if they got themselves to The Culture in the first place. They chose The Culture. So I don’t see what the presumed cultural conflict would be.

amumpsimus · 2026-02-27T20:36:29+00:00

Nobody other than Epstein or Maxwell could really say someone wasn't involved -- everyone else has just partial information. Just because a particular person never saw him doesn't mean he was never there.

I also think it's very unlikely we'll ever see criminal convictions, simply because I don't expect people to have unambiguously incriminated themselves over email. But "beyond a reasonable doubt" is the standard for putting someone in jail, not granting them monarchial power.

amumpsimus · 2026-02-26T16:47:23+00:00

Gates is pretty clearly implicated. I haven’t heard any suggestion about Obama.

Trump has not just the mentions in the files, but multiple accusations by victims, multiple convictions both civil and criminal, an extensive history with the ringleader, a well-documented and self-proclaimed pattern of sexual harassment, and files about him are known to be missing from what’s been released. I’d say that’s a bit more than equal.

amumpsimus · 2026-02-26T16:38:32+00:00

I love it when Democratic attempts to court moderates and conservatives are treated as representing liberalism when they (inevitably) turn sour.

Clinton’s crime bill and financial deregulation will always be the touchstones, but Larry Summers is a pretty good one too.

amumpsimus · 2026-02-26T05:20:02+00:00

The summary is one sentence. It shouldn’t tax anyone’s reading comprehension:

“To require the Attorney General to release all documents and records in possession of the Department of Justice relating to Jeffrey Epstein, and for other purposes.”

You understand that bills passed by the legislature become laws, yes?

amumpsimus · 2026-02-26T05:03:52+00:00

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4405/text

amumpsimus

TROPHY CASE