ghatanathoah

[ghatanathoah]

E happened. Tobias in Hork Bajir morph held a blade to Hitler's throat when he realized who he was. When he realized Hitler was a nobody in this timeline, he decided not to kill him. However, then someone shot at him, causing his blade to slip and kill Hitler.

B was what didn't really happen. At least one of the alien dog androids worked on the pyramids, but he was just a day laborer who was infiltrating Egyptian society to observe it. He didn't design the pyramids or assist with their construction any more than any random human laborer did.

Pop quiz! which plot does NOT occur in Animorphs?

A) local teen does brain surgery on her alien friend using a slug for help

B) dogs built the pyramids

C) Atlantis is real and the people there want to kill you

D) a hawk caused the extinction of the dinosaurs

E) the kids went to another timeline and killed Hitler

F) a random kid at school pushes someone's cousin down a hospital elevator shaft and then gets trapped as a rat

G) girl vomits up alligator

H) god is a gamer

I) gay alien centaurs

J) kids infiltrate the CIA and borrow explosives from the government

K) a child almost dies of rabies while his friends are shrunken and fighting mini enemies inside of his body

The answer is.... L) none of the above. All of these things happened in Animorphs.

[ghatanathoah]

"Leave the kids alone" is not something we can all agree on because leaving kids alone is called "child neglect." If you believe that some kids will develop gender dysphoria, that transition is the only reliable treatment for gender dysphoria, and that transition is more effective when done younger, then it is medically irresponsible to not tell children about transitioning if you suspect they might be gender dysphoric. It would be like not telling a juvenile diabetic that insulin exists.

"Leaving kids alone" only makes sense if you think that gender dysphoria is something that activists force on children through propaganda and social contagion. If you do not believe that, if you believe that gender dysphoria is something that just occurs in some people, then "leaving the kids alone" means "don't give kids access to this treatment for this thing that is making them miserable, don't even tell them that the treatment exists." Which is evil and neglectful.

I agree that the term "genocide" is inaccurate in this case, but being more accurate doesn't exactly make conservatives look good. Gender dysphoria causes depression-like symptoms when it is not treated through transition, so they're essentially causing innocent children to be clinically depressed. "Conservatives are making sick children sicker and making it harder for them to treat their illness when they reach adulthood" isn't "genocide," but it's pretty terrible.

What's going on here is that conservatives have no theory of mind. They are so sure that their ideology is correct on the topic of trans issues that they literally cannot imagine that anyone disagrees with it. So they imagine trans activists must secretly agree with them that there are no trans children. Since trans activists' behavior makes no sense if they don't believe that, conservatives impugn sinister motives to their seemingly senseless behavior. The idea that trans activists might genuinely believe what they are saying is rejected out of hand since it disagrees with the ideology.

Try to take your ideological blinders off for a moment. Imagine a world where some people, including children, are trans. They were already trans before they ever heard of the concept of transgenderism, they just didn't know it. If they transition they will live more fulfilling lives. Even if you dispute that that world is our world, do you understand why someone would want to educate kids about transgenderism if they believed it was? Do you understand that the only motive they have is for children to grow up to be happy, healthy, and fulfilled adults? In other words, the same motive you have. All that differs is their factual beliefs, not their motives and values.

My personal position is that theyfabs aren't real in the same way trans people are and that they frequently shove their way into trans spaces and demand that everything be about them but even so actually picking a serious fight about it and trying to kick them out of the movement is a bad idea politically. We're at the point where conservatives fully want to commit genocide against us - weakening our coalition by infighting with the annoying cis women who declared themselves our allies for status points is stupid. We just have to hold our noses and accept them for now

this seems like the same logic as "better to have them in the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in" which also never works. they aren't your allies! they're redirecting the efforts and resources you have available away from where they are needed, and they do not contribute any of their own. having them around hurts you and doesn't help you.

[ghatanathoah]

This is the plot of “Time is the Traitor” by Alfred Bester.

the "came back wrong" trope except like... they didnt. like this mad scientists wife died, and so he studied necromancy, brought her back, and she came back and it all worked. like she came back exactly the same as she was before with literally no difference. but the scientist guy is like "oh no... what have i done.... shes Different now!!!! she came back Wrong!!!!" and shes just like. chilling. reading a book. cooking dinner. shes just so so normal but in the guys mind hes like "oh shes soooo weird" but shes just normal

[ghatanathoah]

Conflict and Mistake theory are theories of governmental and institutional dysfunction. They provide different explanations for why the government and similar institutions are functioning suboptimally. They are not theories that encompass the entirety of human psychology and endeavors. 

Mistake theory does not assert that everyone all wants the same thing. It merely asserts that people not all wanting the same thing is not the primary cause of dysfunctional governance. Conflict theory does not merely assert that conflict of interest exists, it asserts that it is the primary cause of dysfunctional governance.

When I assert that Mistake Theory is correct, what I am asserting is that people being irrational and not knowing everything is a major cause of why the government frequently fails at the goals it sets out to do. I am asserting that the competing theory, that the government is dysfunctional because bad people have taken over it and are using it to exploit people, is mostly false, though it may be true in a few instances.  I am asserting that people being more rational would get rid of the government doing tons of harmful and destructive things, not rid all society of all conflict. 

I am also asserting something that I think goes beyond Scott’s original thesis. I am asserting that when it comes to governance, ordinary people can usually be modeled as all wanting the same (or at least similar) things.  Obviously in their daily lives people want all kinds of different things for themselves and have conflicts of interest with others.  But people are not self-interested when it comes to voting and other attempts to influence the government.  They want the government to do good* things that benefit the country, even if it is against their personal self-interest. The primary reason the government does not do good things that benefit the country is that voters are irrational, and mistakenly think that harmful policies benefit the country. If voters were more rational, they would press for better policies, and governance would improve.  

Note that my assertion only applies to voters. Because a single vote has but small odds of swinging an election, voters tend to vote a way that makes them feel like a good person, rather than in their self interest. Politicians are capable of being corrupt. This is because they have much more power to effect things than voters. That being said, politicians do listen to voters, so if voters demanded more rational policies, politicians would implement them.

*Obviously the definition of “good” government is somewhat debatable.  But as I asserted earlier, humans have a common moral framework with other humans, so there is a shared belief that the government should be fair, improve the economy, spend money efficiently, etc.

every so often I remember that stupid “conflict theory” discourse and it makes me want to activate my hyperbeam attack

[ghatanathoah]

It’s true that people are often able to convince themselves that what is in their personal interest is also what is morally best.  But it is flat out wrong to state that the confusion lines up with personal self interest 100% of the time.  Protectionism is something supported by lots of people who are not employed in the industries that its benefits. This is because they sincerely (and incorrectly) believe it benefits the country.  People who are harmed by the high price increases that tariffs create often still support them because they think they benefit the country.  And even when it does line up with self interest, the people involved are usually deluded, not lying. Their delusions are self-serving, but the fact that they feel the need to have self-serving delusions at all indicates that there is one part of them that knows what they are doing is wrong.

Genocide is a terrible example of a genuine conflict of interest because the perpetrators of genocide are deluded and irrational. They commit genocide because they falsely and irrationally believe that the group of people that they are attempting to exterminate is exceptionally evil and immoral.  For example, Hitler falsely and delusionally believed that Germany had been “stabbed in the back” by Jews during World War One, as well as a host of other conspiracy theories about how Jewish people were harming Germans. He was not lying, he really believed those things because he was a delusional madman.

All these conspiracy theories were false. Genocide did not advance the interests of the Germans. Even if you look at it purely from German self-interest and ignore its victims, it didn’t do anything beneficial. Instead it squandered resources slaughtering harmless innocents, resources that could have been used to fight the Allies instead. It prompted an exodus of Jewish scientists who otherwise could have worked on weapons for the Wehrmacht. In order for something to be a genuine conflict of interest, the two groups’ interests have to actually be in conflict in real life, rather than in the delusions of madmen.

In their masterful ethnographic treatise, “Virtuous Violence,” Fiske and Rai show that what inspires humans to commit violence is usually morality, not self-interest. Humans usually commit violence towards other humans because they believe failing to commit violence would be morally wrong, self interest alone is not motivating enough to overcome our peaceful natures. Even when people do commit self-interested violence, they usually need to come up with a rationalization for why doing so is also morally right. If people were more rational, they would more often see through those rationalizations and have greater difficulty convincing themselves that conflict and violence are the right things to do.  They would be less likely to fall for delusions demonizing people and groups.

every so often I remember that stupid “conflict theory” discourse and it makes me want to activate my hyperbeam attack

[ghatanathoah]

It’s possible to think of instances of diametrically opposed interests, but it is also fairly easy to think of failures or rationality and understanding. For example, people who support vaccines do not have different interests than anti-vaxxers.  They both have an interest in being healthy. They just disagree over whether vaccines make you healthy or not, because anti-vaxxers are irrational and wrongly believe vaccines are dangerous. 

The question is, which theory more often describes the conflicts existing in the world we are in, conflict theory, or mistake theory?  It seems obvious to me that mistake theory does, especially for large-scale political conflicts.  

Why do I think that? In “The Myth of the Rational Voter,” Bryan Caplan established that for large-scale political conflicts, the odds of you personally affecting the result are low.  So rather than siding with the side that most advances your self interest, it makes more sense to support the side that makes you feel like a good person for supporting it.  So most people in political conflicts are not fighting over the interests of themselves or their ingroup, they are fighting over what policy they believe will make the country or the world a  better place, even if it harms them personally.  This means that the majority of disagreements are over empirical beliefs about what policies are good for the country or world, and what policies are bad for it. For example, proponents of free trade and protectionism both believe their policies will make the country prosper. The difference is not that they have opposed interests, it is that one side has a mistaken belief about the causes of prosperity. This is true for the vast majority of policy conflicts that Scott described in his initial post.

every so often I remember that stupid “conflict theory” discourse and it makes me want to activate my hyperbeam attack

[ghatanathoah]

Or, contrariwise, imagine you were a brilliant person who noticed that the majority of human beings shared a lot of common moral values. Even if they had different terminal values in terms of what sort of life they each personally wanted to live, they had broadly similar notions of what a fair and equitable way to adjudicate between those different values was. Most people care about things like fairness, equality, and justice, even if they interpret those ideas in slightly different ways. Because of this, a large number of conflicts are probably big misunderstandings that could be resolved through compromise and ingenuity if only people were smarter and better at understanding each other.

A very forward-thinking person who noticed this, might be rather frightened of an Unfriendly AI. After all, human beings have a shared evolutionary history, and therefore shared human values. A badly programmed AI might completely lack such shared values, and therefore have genuinely different goals that could make it much more dangerous and unreasonable than other human beings.

You would not notice any tension between these beliefs because one flows logically from one another. You would certainly not be bothered by someone trying to trap you with an inane “gotcha” that radically misrepresents your thesis.

Then you could put forth the idea that there are some people who suffer from severe paranoid delusions and think that their opponents are evil mutants with totally different values, instead of believing that they are, in fact, other human beings like yourself. You can call these poor, misguided individuals “conflict theorists.”

I personally think that when Scott came up with the conflict vs mistake framework he was a bit too nice to conflict theorists. He actually tried way too hard to make their point of view sound like it made sense. This has never been my experience. Whenever I talk to a conflict theorist I get the same icky vibe I get from when I talk to someone with paranoid delusions.  The typical conflict theorist has virtually no theory of mind when it comes to politics. They don’t have any understanding of what their opponents think and believe, they just sit around in armchairs making up nonsense about how their opponents are all evil inhuman mutants. Trying to think like a conflict theorist makes me feel physically dirty. 

Scott actually made a follow up post where he tried to engage with conflict theorists on their rhetorical terms. The problem is that you can only take the principle of charity so far. Eventually you need to admit that one theory describes reality more accurately than the other. And it is pretty clear that mistake theory is a generally accurate description of the world, while conflict theory is a paranoiac’s fever dream.

Scott isn’t the first person to notice this either. Other people have devised similar theories before him. For example, Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions” is a masterful work published back in 1987 that argues that liberals and conservatives don’t have different values. They just have different implicit ideas about how the world works. For that reason, they conflict because they believe that policies will have radically different consequences. One group believes a policy will help people, the other that the same policy is harmful.  It makes a lot of sense, people who hold very different beliefs about the world will act very differently, even if their goals are identical.

every so often I remember that stupid “conflict theory” discourse and it makes me want to activate my hyperbeam attack

[ghatanathoah]

Forget about copyrighted superheroes inspiring diverse media sometime within your future lifetime.  They’ve already done it in the present day. This year is the year that “Brightburn,” “The Boys,” “Doom Patrol,” and “Umbrella Academy” were released on TV and in theaters.  Season 3 of “Legion” premiered this year.  And that’s just in movies and TV, comic books and prose have been doing weird takes on superheroes for decades.

Copyright has not prevented copyrighted superheroes from inspiring diverse media.  It’s barely slowed it down.  It’s true that copyright and trademark place some restrictions on the kind of stories you can tell about Superman.  But that only applies to a character literally named “Superman” with his very specific character design and backstory.  You can tell an incredible variety of Superman stories as long as you change his name and make a few tweaks to his background and costume design.  There are stories about “Supreme,” “Homelander,” “Samaritan,” “Hyperion,” “Omni-Man,” “The Plutonian,” and “the Sentry,” that are just as diverse as the Greek Myth inspired stories. Even though the character isn’t literally called “Superman” we all know who he’s supposed to be.

Even DC comics itself has joined in, there are a whole range of comics about alternate universe Supermen that incorporate him into every possible genre.  And while it does play conservative with its most well-known heroes, starting in the 80s and 90s DC published all sorts of weird, experimental takes on its lesser-known heroes, that’s basically what its “Vertigo” imprint did for the first decade of its existence. Alan Moore’s “Swamp Thing” is a horror masterpiece, Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” is a classic of urban fantasy, and Grant Morrison’s “Doom Patrol” is one of the great works of modern surrealism.

Even the big tentpole movies have had to get progressively weirder and tell more diverse stories to avoid boring the audience.  The most recent Wolverine movie was a cyberpunk Western. The MCU has inserted superheroes into space opera-comedies, political thrillers, sword and sorcery, and many other genres. 

And in terms of benefiting creators, there has been a revolution in creator-owned comics that started in the 90s and shows no sign of slowing down.  While creator-owned superheroes like Spawn and Hellboy aren’t quite as popular as franchise characters, they do get adapted into movies and TV as well. There are many comic book writers today who build a following working on franchise characters and then use their following to launch their creator-owned series.  It’s a virtuous cycle.

Human creativity can both survive and thrive, even in an environment full of corporate IP franchises. And give media corporations some credit, they are often more willing to experiment and take risks than you might think. 

The result is a cinematic common culture increasingly reduced to Marvel sequels and other genre remakes and reboots and spinoffs.

I mean it’s been said a million times before, but this is actually the default state of human culture and the second half of the 20th century was the weird outlier.