If Mort Divine ruled the world

[rms]

Weird right? No one has a problem with the overrepresentation of black athletes in football and basketball. In fact to do so is apparently racist. I mean, I'm not bothered by it, but I am not a member of the equality religion.

I saw something on the Sam Harris reddit that cracked me up but obviously isn't perfect in its representation.

 

[Dak]

That pretty much nails it.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2001323873521259/permalink/2046862682300711/

This video is everything.

 

[rms]

dude is gonna get sued

 

[Dak]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691817305917

In the finite-horizon repeated Prisoner's Dilemma, a compelling backward induction argument shows that rational players will defect in every round, following the uniquely optimal Nash equilibrium path. It is frequently asserted that cooperation gradually declines when a Prisoner's Dilemma is repeated multiple times by the same players, but the evidence for this is unconvincing, and a classic experiment by Rapoport and Chammah in the 1960s reported that cooperation eventually recovers if the game is repeated hundreds of times. They also reported that men paired with men cooperate almost twice as frequently as women paired with women. Our conceptual replication with Prisoner's Dilemmas repeated over 300 rounds with no breaks, using more advanced, computerized methodology, revealed no decline in cooperation, apart from endgame effects in the last few rounds, and replicated the substantial gender difference, confirming, in the UK, a puzzling finding first reported in the US in the 1960s.

No surprise.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

I missed this the other day.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/opinion/karl-marx-at-200-influence.html

Well, racial and sexual oppression have been a central fulcrum point of class exploitation since the foundations of the capitalist economy in the 1600s. It hasn't been added to it. It was built upon it. Limiting myself to the American sphere, the fallout from and sequence of Bacon's Rebellion and the Glorious Revolution to the creation of the Virginia Slave Codes articulate the development of racial oppression and its relation to class exploitation quite well, and regarding sex, one could point to a number of examples, from women's financial and political disenfranchisement until only relatively recent history to the Factory Girls who supplied the first cheap factory labor in the US in Lowell, MA in the early 19th century. So yeah, he's way off the mark there.

I was planning on going out grilling and drinking in the park with friends on Saturday for Cinco de Mayo. I didn't realize Marx's birthday was the same day. Maybe I'll bring some cake, just for you Dak

 

[Dak]

Well, racial and sexual oppression have been a central fulcrum point of class exploitation since the foundations of the capitalist economy in the 1600s. It hasn't been added to it. It was built upon it. Limiting myself to the American sphere, the fallout from and sequence of Bacon's Rebellion and the Glorious Revolution to the creation of the Virginia Slave Codes articulate the development of racial oppression and its relation to class exploitation quite well, and regarding sex, one could point to a number of examples, from women's financial and political disenfranchisement until only relatively recent history to the Factory Girls who supplied the first cheap factory labor in the US in Lowell, MA in the early 19th century. So yeah, he's way off the mark there.

"Exploitation" across all sort of categorizations of humans is prehistoric in origins. It's only under conditions of capitalism we have begun to even marginally reduce exploitation. This popular leftistperspective of exploitation as emergent and endemic with market theory appears to me as an ignorance of history before the Wealth of Nations, or something. "In the beginning, Adam Smith encoded exploitation as a new precept of market relations".

I was planning on going out grilling and drinking in the park with friends on Saturday for Cinco de Mayo. I didn't realize Marx's birthday was the same day. Maybe I'll bring some cake, just for you Dak

 

[Einherjar86]

"Exploitation" across all sort of categorizations of humans is prehistoric in origins.

You're naturalizing exploitation.

The point isn't whether capitalism causes such ills or whether they occur "naturally," and you're right that we've reduced the amount of suffering in the world. The point is that modern capitalist society produces the capacity for reduced suffering while also systematizing suffering. It encodes exploitation as part of social reality despite providing the means of ameliorating it. These means weren't available to your supposed "prehistoric" examples, and so it doesn't matter that "exploitation" existed in prehistoric times.

And if I'm being hyper-critical, it makes very little sense to call prehistoric suffering "exploitation" due to the contextual semantics surrounding that word. Again, you're apologizing for exploitation by naturalizing it.

 

[Dak]

You're naturalizing exploitation.

The point isn't whether capitalism causes such ills or whether they occur "naturally," and you're right that we've reduced the amount of suffering in the world. The point is that modern capitalist society produces the capacity for reduced suffering while also systematizing suffering. It encodes exploitation as part of social reality despite providing the means of ameliorating it. These means weren't available to your supposed "prehistoric" examples, and so it doesn't matter that "exploitation" existed in prehistoric times.

And if I'm being hyper-critical, it makes very little sense to call prehistoric suffering "exploitation" due to the contextual semantics surrounding that word. Again, you're apologizing for exploitation by naturalizing it.

Acknowledging is not apologizing for it. However, I will say that the lengths to which some people in the US go to to strain material oppression/exploitation, in often the most hyperbolic of terms, out of some of the most both historically and even presently luxurious living (looking at global poverty/living conditions), is what gets more dismissive responses to there even being a problem. Throw on top of that, imo, really bad, recycled policy proposals for improving the situation of those in lower SES situations, and the whole potential for dialogue is torpedoed from start to finish.

 

[Einherjar86]

The way you phrased it is an apology. Your comment implies that modern social exploitation is just a part of life, thereby implying that there's nothing we can do about it. And you may be right that we can't ameliorate all exploitation, but your phrasing makes it sound that we shouldn't even do anything about the exploitation we can ameliorate. That's an apology.

 

[Dak]

The way you phrased it is an apology. Your comment implies that modern social exploitation is just a part of life, thereby implying that there's nothing we can do about it. And you may be right that we can't ameliorate all exploitation, but your phrasing makes it sound that we shouldn't even do anything about the exploitation we can ameliorate. That's an apology.

Maybe that's your reflexive interpretation of anyone pointing out that exploitation has prehistoric origins, and maybe such a point has been used as support for ignoring exploitation. That's not my purpose, and is beside my original charge that plenty of "SJWs" say things like "white people invented slavery" or capitalism created slavery or that wage work is inherently slavish etc etc. That sad thing is that the people who do need help are probably least likely to get any as long as they are maintained as little more than semantic totems for ingroup-outgroup ideological shibboleths, whether from the angle of that Marxist professor or from Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.

 

[Einherjar86]

Maybe that's your reflexive interpretation of anyone pointing out that exploitation has prehistoric origins

Literally everything has prehistoric origins. I just don't see the point in even making the comment as a response to BO's post, since it's an effectively meaningless remark. Even making the comment carries apologetic implications in what it elides, i.e. that exploitation has prehistoric origins as much as computers do, or fruit smoothies, or congress. There's nothing useful there.

 

[Dak]

Literally everything has prehistoric origins. I just don't see the point in even making the comment as a response to BO's post, since it's an effectively meaningless remark. Even making the comment carries apologetic implications in what it elides, i.e. that exploitation has prehistoric origins as much as computers do, or fruit smoothies, or congress. There's nothing useful there.

I said why, and it is useful when there's a strain of thought that says oppression is not prehistoric in origin, but originated with capitalism. Forms of noble savagism. I don't see the point in trying to compare to modern technology though. There is actual prehistoric/historic style slavery on the earth today, but how many people are using axes made from chipped rock?

 

[Einherjar86]

I said why, and it is useful when there's a strain of thought that says oppression is not prehistoric in origin, but originated with capitalism.

Who says this? Where are you finding these straw men? Can you find me someone who genuinely believes there was no exploitation under feudalism?

I don't see the point in trying to compare to modern technology though. There is actual prehistoric/historic style slavery on the earth today, but how many people are using axes made from chipped rock?

Actually, there isn't prehistoric-style slavery on earth today. There's slavery, but it's misleading to compare it to slavery in ancient Sumer. Or even in ancient Rome, for that matter. In fact, modern technology has facilitated the evolution of slavery--so it makes perfect sense to speak of the two together.

People like to flatten slavery as a catch-all that simply translates into the stamping out of personal liberty, but this is a very modern and post-Enlightenment definition. Transatlantic slavery and other modern varieties are very different from the ancient forms of oppression that preceded them.

 

[rms]

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/france-delete-verses-quran/559550/

Rather than calling for absolute violence, Oubrou said the Quran advocates for a “defensive combat, against aggressors, within a historical context.” For instance, one verse says, “Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture—[fight] until they give the jizya [tax] willingly while they are humbled.” The Quran, like many scriptures, is internally inconsistent on this and other matters. Oubrou argued that the problem is not religion itself—it’s that through radical, literalist interpretations of the Quran, “delinquents use the religion as a veneer for cheap crimes.”

radical interpretations...

 

[Dak]

Who says this? Where are you finding these straw men? Can you find me someone who genuinely believes there was no exploitation under feudalism?

Well I assume you want academic quotes, not tumblr/twitter quotes from freshmen sociology majors, so in that sense it is a strawman. But:

Actually, there isn't prehistoric-style slavery on earth today. There's slavery, but it's meaningless to compare it to slavery in ancient Sumer. Or even in ancient Rome, for that matter. In fact, modern technology has facilitated the evolution of slavery--so it makes perfect sense to speak of the two together.

People like to flatten slavery as a catch-all that simply translates into the stamping out of personal liberty, but this is a very modern and post-Enlightenment definition. Transatlantic slavery and other modern varieties are very different from forms of exploitation that preceded them.

Meaningful differences =/= semantic differences. It's like the Capitalization of the Holocaust. It privileges one atrocity versus others because reasons related purely to academic/political power. And we aren't really ever talking about modern slavery anyway right? Like, you know, actual slavery, not sweat shops, not US welfare receivers, not Reservation-living Native Americans (to list a variety of groups who are not well off yet not slaves in a traditional sense of the word). I know at this point your reaction is to believe this is an apology. It's not. The TAST was morally vile - just as morally vile as all slavery prior and post. But for some reason the TAST must have some sort of Original Sin quality about it. This is irrational.

 

[Einherjar86]

Well I assume you want academic quotes, not tumblr/twitter quotes from freshmen sociology majors, so in that sense it is a strawman.

Find me a tumblr/twitter quote that substantiates that its poster believes there was no exploitation under feudalism.

Meaningful differences =/= semantic differences. It's like the Capitalization of the Holocaust. It privileges one atrocity versus others because reasons related purely to academic/political power. And we aren't really ever talking about modern slavery anyway right? Like, you know, actual slavery, not sweat shops, not US welfare receivers, not Reservation-living Native Americans (to list a variety of groups who are not well off yet not slaves in a traditional sense of the word). I know at this point your reaction is to believe this is an apology. It's not. The TAST was morally vile - just as morally vile as all slavery prior and post. But for some reason the TAST must have some sort of Original Sin quality about it. This is irrational.

There are meaningful differences between slavery in ancient Rome and contemporary sex trafficking. I could begin to enumerate them, but do I have to?

Establishing a meaningful difference doesn't mean that one is somehow worse than the other. Meaningful differences =/= evaluative differences. The Holocaust isn't the same as chattel slavery. That doesn't mean one is somehow less atrocious than the other.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Yeah I don't see what makes it any more modern than the kind of slavery practiced largely by Arabs (and sometimes Vikings and other European groups) for centuries prior to America's colonization. Biggest difference would seem to be that Europeans didn't castrate slaves for use as servants in their harems. It ultimately all boils down to finding the easiest form of power to utilize (manpower) and putting it to use in the production of items beneficial to those in the ruling class. It always makes me laugh when people say slavery and women's disenfranchisement were *necessary* parts of capitalism when their decline in use was always accompanied by superior economic motivators (e.g. skilled labor) and facilitators (industrialization) and greater expansion of capitalist governments worldwide.

EDIT: irt Dak

 

[Dak]

Find me a tumblr/twitter quote that substantiates that its poster believes there was no exploitation under feudalism.

I can't, because no one even mentions feudalism and slavery in the same breath, unless to call Southern slave owners feudal (which are those saying slavery isn't capitalistic), or those saying capitalism is feudal (no understanding of differences in property rights). Type in Slavery by itself and you get a ton of TAST related stuff and/or modern plight of US blacks. Put in Slavery and Capitalism and it's the same. Put in slavery and feudalism and almost nada other than what I mentioned.

There are meaningful differences between slavery in ancient Rome and contemporary sex trafficking. I could begin to enumerate them, but do I have to?

Establishing a meaningful difference doesn't mean that one is somehow worse than the other. Meaningful differences =/= evaluative differences. The Holocaust isn't the same as chattel slavery. That doesn't mean one is somehow less atrocious than the other.

What are the differences to the victims? Sheer number? No, the Holocaust isn't the same as chattel slavery, that wasn't my point. I was pointing out that the Holocaust isn't meaningfully different to other genocides, like chattel slavery wasn't meaningfully different to other slavery. Was the scale larger within a context? Sure. Were particular technological means different? Sure. Was the rhetoric nominallyt different? Sure. And?

While you could fill volumes with differences in contextual differences, my point in saying it's not radically different is in asking which would you rather be the victim of? I can't see any reason for picking one over the other.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Jesus. How can't you see the difference between the Holocaust and other genocides or Western chattel slavery and the slavery which preceded it? I'm not entirely surprised considering that it's coming from you, but goddamn is your persistent contrarianism taxing.

It's ok to accept the consensus sometimes. I promise it won't make your dick fall off.

 

[Dak]

Jesus. How can't you see the difference between the Holocaust and other genocides or Western chattel slavery and the slavery which preceded it? I'm not entirely surprised considering that it's coming from you, but goddamn is your persistent contrarianism taxing.

It's ok to accept the consensus sometimes. I promise it won't make your dick fall off.

There are differences, just not difference with a Capital D. There's too much assigning of mystical significance to things. It's a very human thing to do but it's not exactly an academic practice (in terms of the academic ideal anyway; in practice academics are just as prone to it as anyone).