#81

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

The fundamental problem with the theory is that all evidence indicates that they are ignorant and stupid, not just in foreign policy but in every aspect of their lives and to presume that they are running some elaborate lifelong con is to assert that the elite really are smarter and better than us.



Why can't it be both? They're ignorant and stupid but with access to such an overwhelming amount of resources and leverage that they can play out their malicious power fantasies on the world stage with impunity and pay an army of little eichmanns to cover for them somehow in the eyes of the public. They're at least smart enough to recognize that the elite status and lifestyle they've been given would evaporate if they didn't aggressively maintain the status quo nightmare.

#82

shriekingviolet posted:

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:
The fundamental problem with the theory is that all evidence indicates that they are ignorant and stupid, not just in foreign policy but in every aspect of their lives and to presume that they are running some elaborate lifelong con is to assert that the elite really are smarter and better than us.


Why can't it be both? They're ignorant and stupid but with access to such an overwhelming amount of resources and leverage that they can play out their malicious power fantasies on the world stage with impunity and pay an army of little eichmanns to cover for them somehow in the eyes of the public. They're at least smart enough to recognize that the elite status and lifestyle they've been given would evaporate if they didn't aggressively maintain the status quo nightmare.


It's very well documented that people with no pressure to understand or interact with a class of people or problems tend to actually not even consider those problems or people as consciously real, so it's not even really a stretch to say many people in elite positions are almost certainly very ignorant and probably psychopathic in some way.

(And you find this out really quickly if you get to know someone who was brought up in that environment.)

I don't even know if they have to be smart enough to understand their own positions, they only have to think that the status quo is the only possible way of doing things, and make inept decisions to try to maintain it, assisted by petit-bourgeois who do actually understand a bit more of the picture, who are in turn assisted by everyone else who knows the score but ends up with no choice.

brb, drinking myself to death, again.

#83
When you say 'they' (the ruling class) are stupid, who exactly do you mean?

The institutional bureaucrats running the IMF NATO state department NGOs intelligence agencies finance institutes military etc are just a bunch of clowns constantly surprised by the failed states they consistently produce for decades?

There are bumbling imperialists but they seem to be mid level managers celebrities and politicians which is I suppose a healthy thing for the empire to have us focus on
#84
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/Afghanistan_Dynamic_Planning.pdf

something like this from 2010 is indicative of the ways in which they are smart and the ways in which they are dumb imo
#85
[account deactivated]
#86

Bablu posted:

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/Afghanistan_Dynamic_Planning.pdfsomething like this from 2010 is indicative of the ways in which they are smart and the ways in which they are dumb imo

what in the world.

#87

aerdil posted:

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Goatstein crossposted this on MPC

i keep forgetting that site exists then when someone brings it up i go and check the top posts

I just completed my first year of teaching. Most of what I'll say in this post won't really surprise any of you racist pieces of shit here on MPC, but it might be helpful if you're considering homeschooling.

I taught 6th graders at a school district that was, until a few years ago, very small and very white. It was the kind of town where the school staff probably went to church with most of the parents of their students. It was known in the immediate area as the place to go for good schools. Like every district I've worked for, the superintendent is a corrupt shitbag surrounded by a small army of ass kissing sycophants. A few years ago they had a bit of a budget problem, so to make some money fast they opened the school district. Before this, they kept the schools white by having staff that drove around and verified addresses; this kept DeShaun's mom from lying about his address to get him in. They removed that requirement in order to get more students and thus more funding. Since the district is fairly close to Dallas, all of those good boys and girls who don't do nuffin but get kicked out of school anyway were able to flood into the district. This was, of course catastrophic.

Immediately the district's test scores dropped. Previously, this district was full of schools that were always Exemplary or Recognized, which means a high percentage of students passing the STAAR test, which is the Texas standardized test. Even the schools that were on the poor side of town did pretty well. With the influx of vibrant diversity, the scores dropped and everybody started panicking. Don't let anybody fool you, either. Those test scores are the ONLY metric anybody cares about.

So when I started teaching, the district was still struggling to handle their newly vibrant student population. We had a discipline system that was created to address the typical problems of a white, small town. I have no doubt it was a terrific system when it was created, but it just cannot handle typical black behavior. I think Pleasureman was the first person I ever heard talk about how whites are inherently high order, while blacks are inherently low order. I knew what he meant, but given control over classes of whites, blacks, and Mexican kids, it's painfully clear.

Most black students, simply put, are not fit for classrooms designed for white children. The white classroom, the white teacher, and the white students all want some order. They want quiet when they try to work. Chaos isn't enjoyable for them. That isn't to say white kids don't like cutting up and cutting loose, but if they are expected to learn, they want to do it in an organized fashion. Black students, on the other hand, cannot understand why they can't talk over each other. They don't get why they can't talk over their teacher. They don't understand why they're getting in trouble for yelling in class. They're upset that they can't sing, or dance, or listen to music loudly. Sitting there, being quiet, is nearly impossible for a lot of my black students. Part of this was their age, but the majority of my white and Mexican students were able to control themselves, even when they were bursting with energy. Blacks just think you're a weirdo for not wanting them to rap a little in the middle of a lesson.

To kind of give you an idea, here is what a typical class might look like. I had to monitor the hallways in between classes (more on this in a bit), so I had to start each class outside of my room. I give students a small assignment to work on before the lesson starts. When I walk in, out of 30 students, maybe 20 have completed the assignment and are talking quietly with their friends, or are working on it. The remaining students are usually the black students. They're doing a variety of things. Most common is yelling at each other in conversation. They yell over each other, they yell at each other, they yell across the room. They sit in small groups, yelling at each other, usually with one repeating something over and over at the top of her lungs, something like "OH MY GAH! OH MY GAH!". Some of them are up and chasing each other around. A lot of times they'd be dancing or singing. I'd get them under control and start handing out discipline, to a chorus of "What? I didn't even do anything! I was just talking!"

So I'd start the lesson. During the lesson, the black students are shouting out. I found that there is no real way to stop them from shouting out answers or opinions. If you get a lesson they really enjoy, they'll only shout enthusiastic answers, but they will shout out.(Tip : If you can relate your lesson to a recent horror movie in any way, black kids will like your lesson) You can write them up all day every day for it, but they just can't help themselves. If you do get them to raise their hands, they can't do it without going "Ooooooo oooo ooo ooooooo!" while they wave their hands and stand up. Usually, though, they'll just start having a loud conversation that interrupts everybody else. When you call them on it, they argue that they weren't doing anything but talking. To a black kid, talking loudly during a lesson isn't anything bad. The chaos and noise of these conversations is normal for them. If you've ever been around groups of black people, you know what I'm talking about. That conversational order, that process of listening and talking, is mostly foreign to them. They want to talk, at the same time, getting louder and louder.

This wasn't just my low scoring kids, either. I had black girls and boys who were meticulous with their work, high scorers, good readers and writers. Intelligent kids. They still did this, though, all of the time. It's a cultural thing, and it is completely incompatible with classrooms that you or I would learn in. The lack of future time orientation is another big problem. More than once, I would address a black student directly. "If you do that one more time today, I'm going to call your parents." A lot of black parents are fond of belt discipline, and their kids would tell me that. So I'd give them a few chances, then tell them I'd call their parents. They'd still do whatever I'd told them not to. I'd tell them I'd call their parents, and they'd start crying, hysterically, knowing they were going to get "a whuppin." I'd ask them why they continued acting up after I'd told them I'd call their parents, and they'd always answer "I don't know.". And they didn't know. This would happen to the same kids, over and over, and they'd never learn to stop before it got to that point. It was mind boggling. I had white and Mexican kids that I'd had to threaten to call parents once all year. After that, when they got close to that point, they'd shut up and sit down quietly for the rest of class.

Another fundamental difference between black students and white and Mexican students is the way you have to talk to them. I learned that with white kids, you can be gently firm. Mostly they'll correct their behavior. If you get too sharp with them too fast, it gets them really upset. If you get harsh with them, they assume they made a huge mistake. Black kids, on the other hand, are used to being talked to in a loud, commanding voice. You try gentle firmness with a black kid, and he or she will assume you're weak and unfit to lead them. I had one girl tell me she wasn't afraid of any man that wasn't black. I found that if you get a little loud, a little harsh, they tend to listen. We had a great black female teacher who was aces at getting black kids to listen to her. You could hear her yelling from down the hall. So sometimes I would be a little louder and tolerate less nonsense from the black kids, because that's what they responded to. My principal pulled me aside and told me I was being too harsh, despite the fact that I wasn't even close to as loud and demanding as the black teacher. It was my job to let the black kids run roughshod over me, I guess, in the interest of acting like a good, neutered white.

I want to point out that most of the behavior of the black kids wasn't malicious or mean-spirited. I had a lot of smart and sweet black kids who acted like this, but again it's a cultural thing. I liked a bunch of these kids, and recognized them as decent, but they were wholly incapable of existing within the framework of what I consider a normal classroom. Not to be a corny, backpedaling faggot, but I also had several quiet, smart, well-behaved black kids. They got a lot of shit from their peers, though. The black kids would sneer "Oh, she never get in trouble" or "she always good" to the really good black students. They'd try like hell to get the good kids to act foolish, and ridicule them for not joining in. Again, not to be a corny faggot, but it takes some kind of guts for an 11 year old to reject that kind of peer pressure.

Our hallways were also a mess. All of the black kids would group up and essentially block the hallways, yelling at each other, dancing, chasing each other, or just standing there rapping or singing. They made it mandatory for teachers to go into the hallways and break up these groups, which would break up and immediately reform down the hallway. Again, calling out the students and applying discipline resulted in screeching "I didn't do nothing! You gonna write me up for TALKING!?" (Answer : yes). The students were supposed to have a two minute passing period, but another holdover from the white days was no late bell. So you'd have black kids saunter in ten or fifteen minutes after they were supposed to be in class. Of course, when they walk in late, all of their friends yell out "Ohhhh you late!" and they argue back and forth, and once again I'm wasting class time calming everybody down because there was some minor distraction that turned into a full scale yelling conversation about who was late, who was in the bathroom, and was she taking a boo-boo? Oh my gah, she was takin a boo-boo! When these kids started up, you could see the rest of the class just hang their heads and slump in their chairs. They hated the bullshit as much as I did.

Our administration was caught in limbo. Almost all of the repeat offenders who were getting detentions, in-school suspension, and going to alternative school were black, many were Mexican, and few were white. In an equality-focused and diverse school system, this presents a problem on paper. We normally had a ten step process to wind up in alternative school. With problem minorities, this was often ignored until they had racked up 15 or more. I was told, off the record, that this was to make sure that when the parents came in screaming racism, they could show them that their students had been given far more chances than they should have been. This lead to situations where a student would get three or four office referrals in a day, and the administration would group them together and talk to the student, deciding to make the referrals not count as discipline infractions. Meanwhile, one of my students, a white girl, got into a shoving match with a boy. First big infraction, immediately sent to alternative school. Admin was eager to get some whites in there to bolster the numbers so we didn't look racist. One black kid, who was a notorious troublemaker, only had to serve three days of his 30 day stint in alternative because his mom complained and everybody backed down. The kid was immediately in trouble again, but never got sent back to alternative school. School administration wants nothing more than to avoid rocking the boat.

So, to boil down this gigantic post, a handful of vibrantly diverse students can essentially hold a school hostage. If you have gutless administration and education geared towards a white standard, a lot of black students will be unable to handle it. This is bad for the white kids and the black kids. When I worked in majority black schools, the staff was able to work better in the chaotic environment. They were allowed to do things that we couldn't, like play music. Playing music seems to help a lot for whatever reason. I thought it was insane to see teachers playing R&B while they tried to teach. I get it now. Black kids don't do very well in quiet, orderly classrooms.



wow this post

anyone here have experience like this person can confirm or deny these claims?

#88
lol.
#89
lol somehow i missed before that he admitted they had staff drive around to check black student's addresses to verify they lived in the district. thats some full-fledged white supremacy in full action right there.
#90
When I say they're ignorant and stupid it's like how any individual fish is ignorant and stupid but a school of fish can move together and react in complex and coordinated ways. Computer models v prove that these movements are possible with just a few simple rules like staying within a certain range of other fish and avoiding danger. Individual fish that vary too much from these rules are at greater danger of predation. Similarly, everybody following simple presuppositions like "America is exceptional" and "military force can and should be used to make the world better" you get highly coordinated thinking and those who do not accept these principles are excluded and very unlikely to drive policy.
#91
nice game theory, nerd. go watch some adam curtis
#92
My favourite metaphor for the inept empire theory is New Coke. They famously sold a shitload more coke than usual when they changed the formula in the mid 80s, because everyone had to try it, then everyone got real mad about it and they brought back the old coke and sold a bunch more. Conspiracy theories started going around afterwards, that it was all a plan to get lots of attention and sell more coke. The CEO said, "We're not that dumb, and we're not that smart".

If you think about it, that would be the most honest response the head CIA guy or whatever could give if you asked them if they made ISIS. The point is that they are responsible, and even if they didn't foresee exactly how everything would pan out, the result fits their needs really well, so what's the point in fretting about whether there was a meeting at some point where someone laid out a plan for exactly how ISIS is right now, and everyone in the room voted for it?

The whole point of the article is that Chomsky represents the limits of acceptable left dissent. You can talk about the US fucking up Iraq to get the oil, but anything much beyond that is too wacky to consider, in spite of all the history and facts.
#93
its funny given how much of chomsky's early career was based on criticizing the "reasonable leftist" bounds of dissent on vietnam and american intervention broadly, or at least he gives this impression in his work
#94
That's his Brand, yes.
#95
I think it's better to assume that the ruling class know more-or-less what they're doing. Of course, lack of a dialectical material analysis means they can never be truly accurate in a way that communists can. I avoid saying that the ruling class is stupid because it often comes off like we could vote in a smarter group of liberal politicians and everything would be ok. Safer to be direct and say that the ruling class (whether smart or stupid) do not share our goals and never will. Also the internal contradictions of capital will always lead to results which appear irrational or 'stupid'. These are systemic problems, not character flaws. In liberal discourse you see the same kind of charges against 'greed' too, which are equally unhelpful imo.

Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 ()

#96
I wonder would we have better leftists if people were shown parenti as a first step towards radical politics instead of chompsky
#97

Petrol posted:

My favourite metaphor for the inept empire theory is New Coke. They famously sold a shitload more coke than usual when they changed the formula in the mid 80s, because everyone had to try it, then everyone got real mad about it and they brought back the old coke and sold a bunch more. Conspiracy theories started going around afterwards, that it was all a plan to get lots of attention and sell more coke. The CEO said, "We're not that dumb, and we're not that smart".

If you think about it, that would be the most honest response the head CIA guy or whatever could give if you asked them if they made ISIS. The point is that they are responsible, and even if they didn't foresee exactly how everything would pan out, the result fits their needs really well, so what's the point in fretting about whether there was a meeting at some point where someone laid out a plan for exactly how ISIS is right now, and everyone in the room voted for it?

The whole point of the article is that Chomsky represents the limits of acceptable left dissent. You can talk about the US fucking up Iraq to get the oil, but anything much beyond that is too wacky to consider, in spite of all the history and facts.


*hammers on the green plus sign repeatedly*

#98
today's big post is how he went to an AI research conference

3. A lot of people there were really optimistic that the solution to technological unemployment was to teach unemployed West Virginia truck drivers to code so they could participate in the AI revolution. I used to think this was a weird straw man occasionally trotted out by Freddie deBoer, but all these top economists were super enthusiastic about old white guys whose mill has fallen on hard times founding the next generation of nimble tech startups. I’m tempted to mock this, but maybe I shouldn’t – this From Coal To Code article says that the program has successfully rehabilitated Kentucky coal miners into Web developers. And I can’t think of a good argument why not – even from a biodeterminist perspective, nobody’s ever found that coal mining areas have lower IQ than anywhere else, so some of them ought to be potential web developers just like everywhere else. I still wanted to ask the panel “Given that 30-50% of kids fail high school algebra, how do you expect them to learn computer science?”, but by the time I had finished finding that statistic they had moved on to a different topic.
#99
i can see why he has fans who think he's a genius because he has just the slightest glimmer of common sense in the face of breathless dorko horseshit. in the land of the blind, the flatworm with specialized cells that can vaguely detect the presence of light is king

Edited by le_nelson_mandela_face ()

#100
every last one of these guys attract and keep their followers by saying various obviously true and banal things that are disallowed in mainstream liberal discourse, then saying, "now I'll explain why things really happen", then saying various obviously false and banal things that are also disallowed in mainstream liberal discourse, mixed in with a few more obviously true things in the form of, "of course, (false thing) is why (true thing), but people can't handle talking about it." it's the structure of every article, blog post or book these guys write. they exist to convince angry loners with no attention span that they are geniuses, it's like the mirror image of liberals with social anxiety who claim they have autism but that's okay because that means they're also human computers if anyone would just give them a chance.
#101
what i find a little sad is when the guy doing it is obviously a formerly intelligent person who has given up on thinking things through out of frustration with other people, like the guy behind The Last Psychiatrist. people like Slate Star Codex dude, you get the impression he just needs something like building model spaceships or some other nerd hobby to get his hands off the keyboard.
#102
there's a not inherently stupid concept i think he made up called the "motte and bailey." basically it means that in debates people like to argue the most extreme manifestations of their ideology, but retreat into safer spaces when challenged, only to return to extremes when the threat subsides. imagine a godbeliever rattling off a litany of christian dogma, then when challenged saying "well all i mean by God is the potentiality of eternity" or somesuch pomo crap, then returning back to Jesus rising from the dead to save us from Hell or whatever. this is, according to Alexander, evidence that they are dishonest and can't even logic like le him - which is why it's interesting that, when challenged or playing to the normies, he says well "AI Risk" just means the threat of large-scale unemployment due to automation, then returns to talking about how it's imperative that we come up with a comprehensive system of ethics to program into the inevitable omniscient computer god
#103
why wouldn't he do whatever he complains about if he thinks his imagined opponents do it all the time, it's free real estate. pretty much everyone within liberal ideology who tries to extract logical fallacies from context and hold them up in order to debate-club-style "win" arguments in front of an imaginary panel of judges does exactly that, see game theory twitter breakdown dude, who posts a whole bunch of logical fallacy penalty call memes, or all those new atheist guys. they figure they might as well because they see themselves as persecuted by people who do whatever it is they're complaining about and so they attempt to practice their own pinky-out version of guerilla tactics.

it's why i'm pretty stoked that the milo style rightist Nazi nerds are still hung up on this "i'm the rational one" business, they are usually fucked whenever they step outside the liberal playpen because they fantasize themselves winning arguments instead of fights, delivering stunning bon mots to mass applause by all their former classmates because most of them got punked a bunch back in school. if they manage to shed that and get hungry it'll get more serious. like when they start to align the stalker shit with actual lack of care about getting caught out themselves it will be a big escalation.
#104
looking at the thread and the wider idea of bounded and policed left-wing discourse i was reminded of this from today



he's talking about Phil Greaves's apparent wholesale conversion to Pizzagate believer and he throws that in there apropos of nothing, "isis=cia", which could be used as a rhetorical shortcut for all sorts of things, from insane certainty that one has undeniable proof that the CIA is currently actively guiding ISIS operations and the Rothschilds' mind waves won't allow people to believe you, to various nutty to reasonable levels of suspicion that the group was infiltrated and allowed to perform terrorist acts instead of disrupted out of them during some point in the past, to the banal fact that Western intelligence agency gun-running helped turn political unrest into a civil war in Syria by funneling arms to Daesh.

"Pizzagate" on the other hand refers to a specific insane certainty: that the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign for President of the United States doubled as an occultist ring of gang-rapists of children as discussed through secret code in their business emails, and in Phil Greaves's specific case, a further insane certainty that the restaurant where that guy showed up and fired a gun into the air was the secret Satanic temple at the center of it all. "Pizzagate" could not be used to refer to, say, the banal fact that a lot of connected and wealthy people rape kids, go on "sex tourism" cruises to rape kids in other countries, etc., and get away with it for years because their influence and money buys silence.

So in the latter case you have something that is very easy to categorize and break down as a specific group delusion, and right after it you have an out-of-nowhere dig that is really nothing more than a public reminder that it's rude to think that any part of the U.S. government plans out its lies when it wants to start a war. it's like a little check mark saying, in 1964 I would have 100% believed the Tonkin Gulf incident and denounced and mocked the leftist papers that got much closer to the truth than anyone else, then later said "everyone" was fooled and we all needed to do "soul-searching" about it.

Edited by cars ()

#105
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/steve-bannon-books-reading-list-214745

Moldbug, who does not do interviews and could not be reached for this story, has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary, according to a source. Yarvin said he has never spoken with Bannon.


I take this with a grain of salt (given why offer some relatively obscure NRx writer the time of day when you've got the genuine techno-fascist article in Thiel wielding influence in the White House), but I guess hey free publicity for Moldbug?

Edited by wasted ()

#106
i've sent some emails to Bannon on occasion when i knew he needed my input, at one point several of them over a span of 30 minutes. it's no big deal.
#107
[account deactivated]
#108
there's a lot of debate on what constitutes a "cult" and i just came up with an excellent working definition: if your ideology inherently includes messianism with polygamy/polyamory, it is a cult
#109
also buttmad former forums poster "thug lessons" has entered a left subgroup of the techno-mastubatory sphere under the guise of "accelerationism" which in this context means "capital manifested as technology is the only thing that matters and regulations are inherently worthless"
#110
The co author of Manufacturing Consent died today, his last article was a look at 100 years of anti USSR/Russia fake news from the NYT (quoting hibernating poster golden lion tamarin in it)

https://monthlyreview.org/2017/07/01/fake-news-on-russia-and-other-official-enemies
#111
scott alexander referenced this review on he blog in the context of all the mean words said against him without considering their validity but i will take it because he apparently read the whole thing and is by transitive property slightly less moronic
#112
you should have been meaner
#113

Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:

you should have been meaner



g-goatwife??