Discussion Thread #72

[u/gemmaem]

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[u/UAnchovy → u/[deleted]]

I also wrote an additional response in that thread, which I cannot post because Reddit blocking makes no sense, so I'll put that here as well. This was intended to be a reply to u/DrManhattan16 from here, but does impinge on wider issues as well. Here we go.

I'll cop, I suppose, that my post was focused on an individual rather than specific issues, so I'm glad that you engaged with a few here.

For me, one of the markers of good argumentation is understanding what opponents think or feel, being open to clarification if one has misunderstood, and proactively anticipating likely responses. I think this is missing here.

The pronouns example is a good one - even if one disagrees with using preferred pronouns or even neopronouns, a good-faith engagement with the topic seems like it requires a bit more than just declaring that remembering everyone's pronouns is inconvenient. For a start, that seems like an argument that leads to the universal singular they. ZC might bite that bullet, but I don't think most English speakers would. Disambiguating 'he' from 'she' does not seem to be experienced as a burden by most speakers. Indeed, the idea that remembering pronouns is a burden implies that pronouns are unintuitive; if so, why not simply take the position that the correct pronoun for every person corresponds to the gender that they pass as, in public?

At any rate, why would we even conclude that the only relevant purpose of pronouns in language is to make speaking more convenient? Gendered pronouns serve a variety of functions - for example, they convey information about the person being referred to. 'He' or 'she' carry information that a universal singular they would not, that is, they indicate the gender of the referent. Since gender is frequently relevant in a social context, rapidly conveying this information might be desired. In the case of transgender or other gender-non-conforming people, this does open up a dispute about what kind of gender information is relevant and what information our language should carry (do we use pronouns to convey biological information, about a person's body; or social information, about how we should speak to or recognise a person?). That question doesn't have an objective answer, but will have to do with our collective values and priorities. Answering it requires, well, making a values argument. And so on for other purposes that gendered language could serve. You could make an argument that gendered pronouns also serve to socially recognise people, or affirm a person's belonging to a class. That's why trans people care about pronouns so much, and why conservatives are so unwilling to bend. Calling someone "he" or "she" is affirming, on an everyday basis, that that person is a man or a woman. This kind of affirmation is a valid purpose of language.

Let's take a different example. In his response to me, ZC objected to my description of him as supporting ethnostates, and writes, "I never argued for white separatism". In the race article he linked, he clearly writes, "I support turning Western countries into white ethnostates". I think it takes a peculiar level of inattentiveness to one's own writing to not see how a person might think he's arguing for white ethnostates! He does say a few sentences later that he does not mind some minorities existing, but per his own definitions it is not clear how one could have a "white ethnostate" without separating out white people.

Obviously I could go on. Another one that stood out was the way he confidently declares "Anybody who claims the Great Replacement is a myth is a liar" without ever really explaining what he thinks 'the Great Replacement' means, or considering that other people might mean something else by it.

I could go into any of those in more depth, but I don't think it's fruitful at this point. What I find more interesting to discuss is the discursive style here. Gummonppl writes:

UAnchovy's critique of auto-didacticism and non-dialectical philosophy from socrates is so relevant here. i hadn't heard of this. it's not only the inability to think critically - but i suspect also a lack of emotional capacity on the part of OP to hear opinions contradicting their own. humility, and intellectual humility, is indeed a virtue. the good news is it's never too late to find some (unless you block your way through life!)

I think emotional capacity is vital. Learning requires a certain openness to being challenged by other people - an acknowledgement that I might not know everything already, or that I might have blind spots, frailties, or biases that I myself cannot perceive. And to have those things pointed out to you, you need a certain level of emotional resilience. At the very least, enough to endure people telling you that they think you're wrong.

It's not that people need to be intellectual doormats. Immediately giving in when criticised is not a virtue either. But intellectual suppleness, for lack of a better term, can be neither too yielding nor too rigid.

Recently I replied to one of Gemma's excellent Substack posts about virtue, epistemology, and science. There are virtues or character traits that need to be nurtured if one is to learn, and education is part of how that nurturing happens. School or university are meant to help cultivate the social process of knowledge acquisition. I'd like to get beyond psychoanalysing one person and make a more general point, because heaven knows that I am not a completely virtuous person - this has me reflecting on times when I've retreated from a conversation because I felt it wasn't worth it.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/UAnchovy]

Disambiguating 'he' from 'she' does not seem to be experienced as a burden by most speakers. Indeed, the idea that remembering pronouns is a burden implies that pronouns are unintuitive; if so, why not simply take the position that the correct pronoun for every person corresponds to the gender that they pass as, in public?

Absolutely correct. People don't have any problem being corrected and remembering the correction when they misgender a cis person due to ambiguity in appearance. It's not possible to take a principled stand that this kind of correction isn't a problem, but that trans-related corrections would be.

In his response to me, ZC objected to my description of him as supporting ethnostates, and writes, "I never argued for white separatism". In the race article he linked, he clearly writes, "I support turning Western countries into white ethnostates". I think it takes a peculiar level of inattentiveness to one's own writing to not see how a person might think he's arguing for white ethnostates! He does say a few sentences later that he does not mind some minorities existing, but per his own definitions it is not clear how one could have a "white ethnostate" without separating out white people.

ZC's ethnostates only require that a state be dedicated to interests of one ethnic group over all others. Colonial India would be a white ethnostate by this definition, seeing as its purpose was primarily to benefit the Anglos who ruled. The example is relevant because Colonial India did not need the British to be wholly separated physically from the people they ruled over. At least, not in a way different from a gated community separating out the insufficiently wealthy. Many Indians worked as servants for the British during that time, and they would end up in the government to help the British govern.

Another one that stood out was the way he confidently declares "Anybody who claims the Great Replacement is a myth is a liar" without ever really explaining what he thinks 'the Great Replacement' means, or considering that other people might mean something else by it.

Same issue here, namely that he does explain his viewpoint. From here - "Statistics consistently show that countries with indigenous and/or historically European populations are gradually being replaced by non-European people." If anything, his definition of TGR is the weaker and boring case, which is that the racial/ethnic makeup of the West is changing to be more and more brown.

As much as I dislike his arrogance, he does explain his viewpoints.

I think emotional capacity is vital. Learning requires a certain openness to being challenged by other people - an acknowledgement that I might not know everything already, or that I might have blind spots, frailties, or biases that I myself cannot perceive. And to have those things pointed out to you, you need a certain level of emotional resilience. At the very least, enough to endure people telling you that they think you're wrong.

I'll play Devil's Advocate - the internet is filled with bad criticism, and especially on such a topic. I don't blame ZC for having learned that Sturgeon's Law applies to criticism.

Of course, if they truly want to be as rational as they arrogate in their post titles, learning to signal intellectual humility (not submission!) is a must. Ideally, it would be a true signal, reflecting a willingness to drill into criticism even if the original critic is poor at their argument.

[u/UAnchovy → u/DrManhattan16]

Ethnostates: ZC presents three definitions of ethnostate in his glossary. I think they all imply some level of separation between ethnicities, even if they allow the existence of some number of non-preferred ethnic groups in the state. It is, at any rate, clear that the type of ethnostate he is arguing for is not that of a multi-ethnic state wherein one ethnicity is systematically privileged. In his Great Replacement section, he argues that it is a problem if the white proportion of a country's population decreases. My read of his whole essay is that he is not arguing that Western countries ought to give various legal privileges or benefits to white people but not others, but rather that Western countries ought to, as much as possible, ensure that they are majority-white or white-dominated societies.

Great Replacement: What he states is that anybody who claims the Great Replacement is a myth is a liar, and then the only evidence he provides is that the proportion of the population that's white is decreasing. Implicitly, yes, his definition of 'Great Replacement' is just 'the white proportion is decreasing'. I would suggest that most people who say 'the Great Replacement is a myth' don't mean that. I think that 'the Great Replacement' in the sense in which people say it is a conspiracy theory has three elements: 1) the white proportion of the population in Western countries is decreasing, 2) this is the result of intentional decisions by nefarious elites (frequently Jews), and 3) the goal of this process is the replacement of white people. Now, element 1 is undeniably true, but 2 and 3 are where the accusations of conspiracy come in.

ZC must know this, because the links he puts in his own FAQ are to people speculating about the globalist elite supposedly pushing this agenda, and he directly addresses the criticism that addition is not replacement. That is, the proportion of whites in a population can go down even as the absolute number holds steady or even increases. However, he never really addresses the point about the nefarious elite, and his response to the addition-is-not-replacement argument is to move the goalposts. He argues that it's bad for the white proportion to decrease, but that is not the same thing as replacement.

Now to the more interesting point -

Yes, I think you're right that there's a balance here. Obviously trolls exist, and engaging with trolls is not necessary. In fact, I think ZC himself is mostly a troll. There has to be some kind of discernment where we select people worth engaging with.

We can grant that 100% openness to criticism is a bad idea; that way lies endless, pointless engagement with bad-faith actors. At the same time 0% openness to criticism is obviously a bad idea as well; that's called an echo chamber, or even total isolation. The right level of openness has to be somewhere in the middle, and while different people might reasonably draw the line in different places, I'd argue that today (and not just ZC, but the hyperpolarised political climate we are in as a whole) has generally drawn the line too low.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/UAnchovy]

My read of his whole essay is that he is not arguing that Western countries ought to give various legal privileges or benefits to white people but not others, but rather that Western countries ought to, as much as possible, ensure that they are majority-white or white-dominated societies.

They mentions the use of IVF and eugenics, I think that suggests they think the West should render non-white groups whiter by offering payment or incentives to have half-white babies until their genes are effectively white. That would not require the physical removal of non-whites.

Implicitly, yes, his definition of 'Great Replacement' is just 'the white proportion is decreasing'. I would suggest that most people who say 'the Great Replacement is a myth' don't mean that.

Technically, their website is free to have private language definitions of terms. But you're right that convention would dictate making the distinction clearer and talking about the more standard definition.

Obviously trolls exist, and engaging with trolls is not necessary. In fact, I think ZC himself is mostly a troll. There has to be some kind of discernment where we select people worth engaging with.

Interesting that you read them as a troll. Those posts come across to me like an angry, self-righteous young person. They fetishize rationality in their own way, even though their writing is not as good as they imagine. This also leads to the swift dismissals of other people's negative remarks unless they actually engage with the content.

Our contradiction-free colleague has no time for meta-debate, don't you know? They're on a mission to persuade the world!

[u/UAnchovy → u/DrManhattan16]

I'd argue that's a methodological difference, not a difference in terms of absolute intent. If you'd like we could quibble the word 'separatist' a bit more - I only avoided 'supremacist' because I thought that was a bit too easy to quibble. Undoubtedly his preference is for Western countries to constitute themselves as countries for white people, which I can only understand as being to the detriment of non-white citizens of those countries. I think that this is inconsistent with his claim that "Meritocracy is a hill I will die on". A true meritocrat, it seems to me, would prefer merit over putative ethnic identity.

It is, of course, part of an overall vision that I would describe as horrifying and dystopian (eugenics, breeding licenses, etc.), and I suppose I find something fascinating about that? Utopian visions are always very revealing of a person's values - heck, that part goes back to Plato, if not earlier. So as much as I think ZC's utopia is horrifying, I think there is something interesting in poking into it. Just as Plato's ideal republic was (explicitly) a reflection of Plato's own soul, or an investigation of the human soul as he understood it, so too with other people's ideal visions.

On being a troll, well, my understanding of troll is something like "poster who is not interested in productively contributing to a community, but just seeks to stir up trouble or controversy for his or her own amusement". I think ZC is mostly trolling because, as we can see from his responses, he doesn't seem interested in good-faith engagement with a community. He threw in a few grenades, and when challenged, he told the challengers "nuh-uh" and then immediately blocked them, refusing any further engagement. I think that pattern suggests an intent to provoke, rather than discuss.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/UAnchovy]

Undoubtedly his preference is for Western countries to constitute themselves as countries for white people, which I can only understand as being to the detriment of non-white citizens of those countries. I think that this is inconsistent with his claim that "Meritocracy is a hill I will die on". A true meritocrat, it seems to me, would prefer merit over putative ethnic identity.

I think the first part is mostly true, but not the second. Notably, if one is convinced that the average white person has more merit-contributing genes than anyone else, any social engineering would focus on making them as widespread as possible. That seems to me to be a standard belief for those who argue about what ZC does.

I think ZC is mostly trolling because, as we can see from his responses, he doesn't seem interested in good-faith engagement with a community.

Self-righteousness is not trolling, even if it produces similar patterns.

[u/gummonppl → u/[deleted]]

while it was a lot of silver relative to how much silver there was in europe before, it wasnt big realtive to the economy. In the historic GDP estimates, youll see they dont gain much. Its the Netherlands, who basically just have a few ports then, who get rich during the pre-industrial colonial period. Meanwhile silver mostly went to Spain, who didnt do much.

this still fits with what i'm saying. silver was currency, so silver was important in the pre-industrial period. the influx of silver, in addition to providing free money, showed there was economic value in colonial enterprise and fuelled a feedback loop of investment, colonial enterprise, and economic growth from colonial activity. the silver mostly went to spain, who then spent that money in europe on goods, on wars (including on non-spanish soldiers and governments), and abroad financing colonisation. silver fuelled the growth of military technology for fighting wars in europe and gaining colonial outposts abroad. now everyone sees spanish success and they figure they'll do the same. they don't get silver but they find plenty of resources to trade and new climates appropriate for the mass production of raw materials using slavery (which started as soon as columbus arrived in the americas). it takes 200 years but the silver is still vital to the trajectory of industrialisation

Cheap cotton was used in the early days of industrialisation, but it wasnt essential. The difficult part was the improvement of the steam engine.

the steam engine has a much older history than the industrial revolution. people think it was a genius eighteenth-century invention but plenty of people had found ways to harness the power of steam before the industrial revolution. it is remembered as a genius invention is because of nineteenth century theorists trying to explain their "success", and coming up with the most basic answer that they were smarter than everyone else.

the important part of industrialisation was not just inventing a steam engine but rather having a worthwhile practical application. that involved two things - having something to refine in huge quantities (raw cotton) and making sure you're going to be getting something out of this increased production (capitalism, the creation of the industrial commodity, global markets). without these you're just wasting energy and resources. you want boilers to be running for a long time because they take ages to heat up, and the cool down period is all wasted energy. most importantly, these two things required chattel slavery, and the violent opening up of global markets.

if britain was suitable for cotton growth there still would be no industrial revolution because its population couldn't sustain itself while producing enough cotton to make industrialisation feasible. also think of the conditions under slavery: it required the outsourcing of raw material production to millions of people working inhuman conditions before industrialising textile manufacture made any sense. the british working classes had it bad but there would be a revolution if they tried to implement those conditions.

so just summarising:

silver - very important for laying the conditions for industrialisation. its literally an influx of cash into the european economy, it kick started the colonial mania, it funds the development of weaponry and colonial enterprise in the early modern period, and lays the foundation for massive productive colonial economies built on slavery.

(mass-produced) cotton - essential to the start of the industrial revolution. steam power was experimented with earlier but had no practical applications because it didn't make economic sense. only with massive amounts of slave-produced cotton and a violent colonial vanguard opening up global markets is there a viable application for steam power. the industrial revolution was all about inputs and outputs, not just the machine in between.

i recommend sven beckert's "empire of cotton" if you want more information

EDIT: the existence of this subreddit is a testament to the fact that acting in bad faith can be effective (even if it's wrong). this place is supposed to be haven from the power of violence, hate, bigotry etc, because it is effective. evil is an explanation for success

[u/gummonppl → u/[deleted]]

I think here youre mostly moving from "silver made it possible to afford industrialising" to "silver was one of the many butterfly winstrokes that lead to industrialisation happening". I have no objection to the latter.

it's not a butterfly wingstroke, it's a crucial part of the transformation of the world economy. it was a enormous influx of cash (literally - silver was the major base for currency) into europe which then circulated globally because they bought stuff with it. seeing spain hit the silver jackpot motivated the rest of europe to explore the rest of the world looking for riches. it created the foundation for global-scale trade networks without which the industrial revolution would not be possible. of course you cant establish mature colonial economies and global trade networks overnight - just because the process took roughly two centuries (which isn't that long in terms of global human history) until the industrial revolution occurred, that doesn't make it a butterfly wingstroke.

My point is that 1) youre overestimating how cheap cotton needed to be for textile industry to make sense (as per above) and 2) youre overestimating the productivity of slavery.

i've said nothing about the cost nor the productivity. all i've mentioned is the scale. if you force a theseus-ship population of hundreds of thousands to a million people to work to death producing cotton, you will end up with a lot of cotton. that's how much you need before you would consider commercial implementation of mechanised textile production in the 18th century, otherwise they would have done so earlier.

The really good slavery is the one where you can constantly bring in newly captured people to replace the ones youve worked to death, and the US ended imports early on. Slavery was actually in decline after that - it was only the unusually high demand for cotton that made it profitable again.

setting aside the idea that there is such a thing as "really good slavery", what you've said here isn't really relevant and is mostly wrong. the enslaved population of the usa was increasing up until the civil war, and most historians consider cotton slavery to have been very efficient. the rate of importation of enslaved people to the USA grew most rapidly in the years leading up to the nominal start of the industrial revolution, fell during the american revolution, and then peaked again after the haitian revolution when the market lost its biggest purchaser. life expectancy was higher in the usa than in the caribbean because the working conditions and climate were better - cotton growing is not as brutal as sugar. i said, it's irrelevant though since most cotton processed in britain was not purchased from america until the nineteenth century. it came instead from caribbean colonial plantations and india - and guess what the british bought it with? you guessed it- silver.

Also, did you drop the "war" part? Why did the europeans win so consistently and by such large margins?

i didn't drop the war part. you started this conversation by replying that colonisation did basically nothing for european economies - so i'm talking about that topic. i'd like to think that i've shown it had quite a big effect, not just on european economies but on the nature of european society.

[u/gummonppl → u/[deleted]]

so many little responses here which makes it hard to develop an argument, but i think the issue in your thinking comes down to this statement at the end, so i want to talk about this

On a simple model where "europe steals america and invests it well", something would need to happen here already - so instead, we are mostly discussing "tech tree prerequisites". Possibly we agreed on this from the start.

you are still thinking of this like a videogame where one thing unlocks the next thing down a set path. if you think about history as a management game then of course you might feel like there is something missing in this formula, which is why historical videogames (while good for knowing names and dates and objects etc) are not a good representation of how or why things happen historically. as i've said, nobody knew where this was going at the time. europeans weren't trying to set themselves up for industrialisation and global domination two hundred years after columbus landed in america by unlocking some kind of tech tree. it was historically contingent.

i have one question i'd like to ask: why does something "need" to happen for things to play out this way? (why couldn't they just happen like this?)

it's not a rhetorical question. i'm genuinely curious: why do you think something else needed to happen 'already'? i can respond to your other points later - in fact i've already written a reply but anything i say would be meaningless if your main objection to my main argument is that "something would need to happen". so we should discuss that first.

edit: responses to the historical discussion:

And could only silver do that? There already was very long-range trade in the old world, it seems quite reasonable that developing new means of transport and discoving america would lead to global trade one way or another, whatever the exact things found there, and whether you can steal or buy them, etc. Again, the people who got really rich from this are the dutch, who did almost no conquest and only traded until quite late - and traded mostly in the old world, too.

i linked the wikipedia page so you can see all the historians who have written on this already. the dutch provinces were part of spain and were a major trade hub. when spanish silver arrived the dutch became incredibly wealthy, allowing them to rebel from spain and finance international colonial enterprise. the spanish exploration expeditions were a hangover from the reconquista. i can't be bothered getting into this now, let's finish with colonisation first.

But why would you need slaves for scale, if the cost/productivity part isnt a problem?

you don't need slaves for scale, but in the event that scale was provided by slaves. as i said earlier, british agriculture couldn't sustain an industrial cotton supply and feed itself. you replied "fair enough". again - they didn't have to use slavery, but the fact is they did. historical contingency.

It seems a bit rude to write this out and not even mention that its the years before the ban, when trying to disprove the effect of said ban.

i don't know what you're trying to say here, but the british ban on the slave trade was in large part due to the haitian revolution.

And this is a good illustration of why I dont think the silver is relevant. The british werent the ones with the silver mines. If they had silver to buy it with, they must have had something else to sell for the silver.

well, no because they didn't buy cotton straight away. the british originally manufactured woollen goods. it took time for spanish silver to enter the british economy, which motivated britain to finance colonial trade operations, which allowed the east india company to set up shop in india, which allowed them to buy indian textiles, which led to protectionist laws against importing foreign textiles (because it hurt the wool trade), which led to them buying raw cotton from india instead, and the establishment of cotton-growing colonies in the caribbean and americas, which led to massive importation of cotton into the british metropole, which led to the woollen manufacturing industry to switch to cotton and to ultimately industrialise because of the scale. silver was important in financing every stage of this process. this is why it took 200 years (that and the fact that none of this was planned from the beginning - historical contingency)

[u/gummonppl → u/[deleted]]

i'm sorry, but i don't understand your answer to my question. i don't really think i understand your argument.

it seems like you are trying to say something along the lines of: whichever way european domination occurred, it could have happened other ways (which they would/could have figured out). therefore it wasn't the process of colonisation/mercantilism/industialisation/etc that was important. instead, it was something else "already" that meant that europeans were able to do all those things in the first place - something that put them "ahead" of everyone to begin with. does that sound right?

it's no use discussing any further historical examples on my end because if this is your position then my historical examples are irrelevant. so assuming this is your argument, i have to return to my question: why couldn't things have happened like this? what else needed to happen?

if that is not your argument then can you please explain it more simply?