SneerClub

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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

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America’s premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death’ (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The highlight for me is coming up with some weird pseudoscience justification for why it’s okay to hit your kids.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (22 children)

some weird pseudoscience justification for why it’s okay to hit your kids.

It is to me so weird how often this comes up. A big plot point in starship troopers (the book) was that due to not hitting kids (and a vague handwave at criminals but mostly kids) western democracies fell for example.

Now I wonder how the NRx with their pro corporal punishment stance (which iirc Scott liked) feel about hitting kids.

Im also annoyed at how much words are written about the Collins. Stop promoting these doofuses. (They have come up in sneerclub before) (Late edit: She said she was really unsettled by this interview on twitter Sorry to hear you stared into the abyss Jenny, and I didn't mean this as a personal attack towards you (not that you will read this but yeah))

E: a thing I was wondering about, with the pronatalist technofetishists, who say that both we will all die out by lack of births as old people starve, and who fetishize AGI and robot labour causing a post scarcity world, that seems contradictory, I wonder how the Rationalists deal with this contradiction.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Im also annoyed at how much words are written about the Collins. Stop promoting these doofuses. (They have come up in sneerclub before)

Apologies. First time poster, all that stuff.

The corporal punishment thing is a weirdly Anglophone obsession -- assaulting (sorry, "smacking") your kids has been a crime here since 1977 and the kids seem to be alright as well as having the bonus of being less likely to have grown up surrounded by violence and the threat of violence. In 7 years here I've seen exactly one person hit a child in public (looked a lot like a visiting grandma from elsewhere) and it came as a real shock. The more the Collins types (and, of course, fundie types) try to justify this as "normal" the less normal it appears to everyone else.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Starship troopers was written in 1959 so it predates the ban by a bit at least. (I assume there was already research on it being bad in the works then, as ST goes out of its way to decry the social sciences as fake research, but their moral system which is based on math (never explained in the book, which is prob good as it would be highly contradictory, as going to war to save a few POWs is seen as just, no matter the number of lives lost) is correct. It is a really weird book to read in 2020).

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I've actually read Starship Troopers a long time ago and it's probably not too far out of line politically from other "silver age" SF. Heinlein had a weird career...

FWIW from memory Samuel R Delany (Black gay SF author) wrote somewhere that the realization that Johnny Rico was from the Philippines (he speaks Tagalog near the end) was very liberating for him personally as a form of inclusion. And Heinlein could probably truthfully state the only way he was "racist" was he was against the Bugs but for the entire human race.

The movies' lack of any PoC character whatsoever was probably Verhoven's way of playing with the Nazi imagery.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The movie and the book are a lot closer together than you would think btw. Might want to give it a re-read, esp with what you know now about the common (far)-right arguments. Not that the arguments in the book are good mind you, it mostly falls back on 'this is a science trust us' which is quite weak.

The movie also does have black people in it, in fact the strategic savior of the human race was a black woman. Source (the rest of the propaganda clips also has quite a lot of poc in it, even if the principle cast included none.

And that brings me back to the racism in the book, while it doesn't have overt 'I need to shout slurs at nonwhite people' racism, it contains quite a lot of 'other species/animals/countries (it nicely never uses the terms in a racist way, but it speaks about these groups in similar matters, so it is quite obvious that this just leads to racist bs as we have seen a lot in our times) as in conflict and the one breeding faster (!!!) wins the conflict. It seemed clear to me on which side of the debate about for example native americans vs europeans the book would be (I'm from city X and I say ...).

Other fun fact about the book vs movie. You prob know the 'violence solves more problems bla bla bla' 'what would the cityfathers of hiroshima say' lines from the movie, these are also in the book, but there the argument (due to in part being about animals) is worse.

So long story short, I'm happy for Samuel R Delany that there was some liberation for him which is good (also note that the realization about the non-white people should have come a little bit earlier as the girl is called Carmencita Ibanez (I'm very western European btw, so I might be wrong here as I'm not that great about all the subtleties of various racial interplays in the Americas), also she was apparently a bit of a hussy according to Juan "Johnnie" Rico) esp as it was a different time, and science fiction from that era can be dire (before that it gets even worse!) compared to our current morals, but the book itself is still very problematic (it gets weirder if you interpret the book as being told by an unreliable, slightly dumb nepobaby, which imho the book supports).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

yes, it was deliberate choice (along with using nazi-borrowed uniforms and tons of visual quotes from fucking leni riefenstahl.)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

And for many people, the references whooshed over their heads in low earth orbit.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

now you've got me wondering if it's anglophone imported culture war, or are there some other influences, like catholic church, and to what degree

when corporal punishment was banned in my country in 2010, it was preceded by informational campaign on the state side and intolerable bitching by conservatives. when the law passed, conservatives shut the fuck up about it seemingly forever, it would make sense if it was cultural import that is if they never really held these opinions

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I believe it's true of more or less any country: most people are pro-hitting kids until you ban the practice and it becomes obvious that it's unacceptable (at least in overt discourse). Premier exemple of the educational potential of a law. (And now the right can pivot to racist rhetoric about which demographics don't accept our rules and hit their kids.)

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