Keep up the pressure

Twitter these days is a joy to see. Liberals crying and moaning. And our people gloating and keeping up the pressure. Never let down people. In a war initiative is everything. Never give the enemy any breathing time. Break their morale.

Some examples.

https://twitter.com/paxdickinson/status/798191723776122880

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/797968450429693953

https://twitter.com/ramzpaul/status/797919224320565248

And then of course there's stuff like this:

https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/796376195088551938

The smarter leftists are deep in self-reflection, constantly wondering "how did I get this wrong? How did we all miss this?".

I thought a new slogan to say to these people.

Check Your Signaling.

Yes, Shlomo. You lost your bets because you were busy signaling. Every time you say something stupid we'll be there to tell you: Check your signaling. Because we know. We know you're full of shit. And the thing is, we know you know it too. You're a smart guy. You just need somebody to remind you. To shame you on your fawning to the elite. To shame you on your greedy status-seeking. To shame you on your signaling.

The Left is getting ready to spend 8 long years signaling how "people are afraid", shitting on Trump day and night signaling how they are the protectors of blacks, mexicans, sexual deviants and every kind of fucked up people. They are not doing this because of any belief they hold. They are doing this because they want status. They signal holiness in order to make money and get attractive mates. That wouldn't matter if that's all they did; but then every once in a while they get in a position of power and they have to make good on their signaling by implementing leftist policies; leftist policies that are harmful to everyone; even themselves. Do white leftists really benefit from all the leftist policies of the last 50 years? Of course not! They are wrecking Western civilization as a whole. Matt Yglesias got beat up by black thugs and sent to a hospital. Plenty of leftist women have been raped and assaulted. Look at Germany! They don't do it because it's good for them long term. They do it because it makes them look good short-term.

Behavioral economics is some academic claptrap that leftists came up with to justify arbitrary government intervention. The gist is that humans are stupid, full of biases, and government needs to help them for their own good. And you know, they have a point. Humans have a bias to signal holiness, even when its harmful for them. Well, we, out of charity and love for humanity, will help them out of it. We will help them Check their Signaling, making them shut up, so that they don't hurt themselves down the line.

Remember, this is very important. Don't think it's just talk. Talk is very important. Stop the signaling and soon enough they'll stop their evil-doing. Call them out. Every single time.

[…] Keep up the pressure […]

You know, the thing about boiling human behavior down to self interest is that you can just keep moving the goal post as you want to support whatever you want. It is a rhetorical device. Someone does something wildly self harming - well it is for short term benefit, not long term, or long term benefit, not short term, or because it helps their cousins (as per the seflish gene,) or it helps their national gene pool etc. You get the idea.

Surely all animal behavior serves a purpose.

[…] Source: Bloody Shovel […]

Rhetoric is pretty damn important. Check your signaling.

That's a delicate philosophical point. "Purpose" is usually reserved for anticipated effects of intentional activity, and is used as an active verb for this reason. Animal behavior has certain effects which are beneficial to the survival of the individual or group. To what extent can animal behavior be described as intentional? Difficult to say. Remember ethology and fixed action patterns. On the other hand, what with the new data on human cognition that is coming in, it becomes harder to support the notion that our motivation and intention mechanisms fundamentally differ from other higher mammals, though our mechanisms have much more information to act upon. So I'm going to sidestep this question and instead remark that "self-interest" is indeed a rather squishy concept. Were the million Britons who died at the Somme motivated by self-interest? It is certainly possible to explain their behavior by reference to status with local peer group etc., but at that point "self-interest" loses all explanatory power. It does serve as an indispensable reminder to avoid uncritically taking words and actions at face value.

"Check your signalling" is brilliant. I intend to use it. Right now I am feeling like any invocation of "check your privilege" should be immediately met with it.

My point exactly.

To designate humans as mere animals and to attempt to devolve all considerations to mechanistic forces is precisely the liberal project. This is what Hobbes was doing with his theory. It is again a rhetorical device not supportable or realistic. People have just been reinventing the same crap for 400 years now. Self interest can just be reorientated to where you want it - And bingo! I am correct! Sure. As for rhetoric, firstly, signaling is bullshit on stilts. Secondly, yes rhetoric has a place, but if you buy into your own rhetorical ploys and substitute them for reality, then you are a fool.

Put up a workable alternative or shut up.

Yes.

Was the Qoheleth part of "the liberal project" when he designated humans as mere animals? "For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other. Yea, they have all one breath, so that man hath no preeminence above a beast, for all is vanity." (Ecclesiastes) And such is both supportable and realistic. See: "The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death." (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015)

If alt-righters want the nice white ladies of the world to believe crime stats, they need to stop peppering their presentation of said facts with words like "nigger" or "fucking Jews." They would instead take a cue from people like Amy Wax or Steven Pinker who have risen to Ivy League professorships while spouting inconvenient facts. Masters of rhetoric, both.

Scholar.google shows 3010 results for "evolutionary purpose" (with the quotes,) so spandrell's use of the word is acceptable shorthand, (unless he wants to get published in Nature.) You are correct about the research on human cognition; Thomas Metzinger work on the "myth of the self" has greatly interested me. Life itself is, like chemistry, is a subset of physics. Its origins may well be explained by the fourth law of thermodynamics called the “Maximum Power Principle”(MPP.) Jeremy England at MIT is at the forefront of this research today, building on the work of Howard Odum and Alfred Lotka. Jay Hanson has put together an accessible essay on the subject here: http://dieoff.org/

President Obama endorsed Larry Wilmore's use of the Latin word for black at the 2016 White House Correspondent's Dinner, at which the nice white ladies and fucking Jews screamed with delight.

[…] Trump, but let’s not lose our heads. Related: Keep up the pressure. Related: Draining the swamp. Related: Don’t worry about Trump reversals yet. Related: Go bold, […]

I don't agree with the alt-right, and I have read your blog mostly for the interesting historical posts, and the very occasional interesting critiques of progressivism. And I have to say, this post disappoints me. You are smarter than this! You are falling into all of the same intellectual traps that progressives do; right now you are literally no better at arguing than the leftists that you hate. Basically, your theory of mind is shit. Its just so easy to think that your enemies do things for stupid reasons like signalling. Its so powerful! Everything is signalling! In fact, its too powerful. Its like when conspiracy theorists say "they must have been in on it too!". That can be applied to literally every piece of evidence against a conspiracy theory. Similarly, someone does something you don't agree with, and you can say "they are just saying that to signal piety". It has no counter. It could apply to literally everything I can think of. And that's why I know its bullshit. So come on, man. Stop this shit. Use a bit of intellectual rigor. And the most basic bit of intellectual rigor is believing that your enemies actually believe most of what they say that do. If you don't believe that, well, you aren't a serious intellectual, like you seem to think you are. I guess I expected too much from you.

“Maximum Power Principle”(MPP.) Jeremy England at MIT is at the forefront of this research today, building on the work of Howard Odum and Alfred Lotka.

Seems like garden variety crackpottery, together with "energetics" etc. The Wikipedia page for MPP does not even mention previous work on extremal principles in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, which has not seen much success so far.

Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi.

Rhetoric is important. And I don't see how it follows that I must assume my opponents are rigorous and believe what they say. They come up with unfalsifiable crap all the time that makes it exhausting when not impossible to argue with them. Not that it isn't important to disprove many of their points, but as you deplore I am more interested in rhetoric these days. Trump is too, and he's doing nicely isn't he. I'd also rather win than be right at this stage.