this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
30 points (96.9% liked)
SneerClub
1011 readers
1 users here now
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.]
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm split on this. On one hand, it's not very good writing from Hard Drive, and it's fairly xenophobic as a stance. On the other hand, one of my favorite arguments against ex-USA expats is that -- by giving up their citizenship -- they gave up their right to critique the USA's actions and policies; symmetrically, I'm not sure that we need to respect the opinions of non-citizens about our internal policies, except when our actions affect the rest of the world.
Cheong likes to bitch about the local policies of the Pacific Northwest, for example, and I don't think that BC, Washington, or Oregon need to respect his opinions.
imo i think everyone has a moral duty to critique policies that hurt human beings anywhere, whether or not it affects them personally, and especially when it affects people in a country as politically corrupt as, for instance, the United States of America.
(ian miles cheong however has a duty to shut the fuck up if he doesn't want people to exercise their moral duty to shut him up forcibly)
I’m a communist, I’ll criticise who I want about what they do wherever
this makes no sense bro. give up their right to critique? what does that even mean? what does it mean to "need to respect"? how do you distinguish between when US policies do and don't affect the rest of the world? we are culturally, politically, economically and military hegemonic that being able to make such a division is a luxury specific to us; other countries are forced to care about our internal politics. there's widespread resentment about that.
(if anything I think your post illustrates why this a fumble on the hard drive's part: the weird part about how IMC comments on american politics isn't that he's Malaysian, it's that he pretends to be american. the way it's phrased plays into subtextually nationalist tendencies)
The USA is a democracy, which means that the desires of voters are relevant to the behavior of the government. When people give up their vote, I believe that they also give up a rhetorical position which allows them to make cogent critiques of the government, because I see it as hypocritical. That's all.
For example, I think that folks in Oregon should be allowed to marry regardless of gender or sex, and Cheong doesn't. However, I'm an Oregon voter, so I actually hold a (tiny) modicum of power over the question, and Cheong's opinion should be disregarded because he doesn't live here and won't be subject to our policies. He doesn't get a heckler's veto against the actual voting rights of citizens.
@corbin I can’t believe I’m defending this odious guy, but this kind of “don’t interfere in our internal affairs, foreigners” stuff is exactly the same playbook that countries like Russia and China and Iran roll out when they get criticised for, you know, declaring LGBTQA+ folk to be terrorists or sending people to labour camps because they’re inconvenient. The guy has the right to express whatever shitty opinions he wants about the US, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to listen, and the real problem here is that people in the US right are so willing to use this guy as a useful idiot in exchange for a bit of attention and the occasional wad of cash. This is exactly what you see from the above mentioned countries - “look, these foreigners agree with us, stop being mean about us!”.
Hell, Russia and Iran both have entire TV networks (RT and Press TV) dedicated to this kind of useful idiocy but in their cases they’re intended for foreign consumption. The US equivalent is Fox News - but that’s aimed at the US market, which is kind of an interesting difference.
Sure, I see your point. I think that we can be more precise. Let me prepare three utterances on, say, the topic of Pastafarianism in Russia. First:
This one's factual. No arguments here. Second:
This one is about how we should treat the Russian government diplomatically. Third:
This last statement is what I am objecting to saying. In addition to violating a Rather, it is a sort of interference in foreign affairs, and it helps Russia's government justify its interference in return.
I think that your point is good. For example, in this article on the topic, note that all three sorts of statements are being made simultaneously: Russia did this, Russia should be shamed for doing this, and Russia ought to not do it. I'm advocating for dropping the final bit while still pointing out the underlying moral failure.
There’s nothing ipso facto wrong with thinking that a country to which you don’t belong should adopt a particular policy, whether it regards rights for pastafarians, the promotion of secular society, or more aptly rights for gay people. Gay people are the obvious point: I would hope that you think on some important level that Russian law should not discriminate against gay people. To be authentically in favour of democracy is to be in favour of democracy’s good, not to reify democratic process as an end in itself - and indeed one should want Russia to be democratic, which is not the case as things currently stand, but only on grounds of democratic good, not of process as an end in itself.
One reason to limit one’s criticisms of a country’s internal democratic politics is lack of understanding, and that seems to be the closest thing to what you’re shooting for here that isn’t what I would bluntly call an inauthentic pro-democracy stance. That’s a reason for being cautious, and it’s closely related to good arguments against particular interventions by outsiders in the internal affairs of a polity: a bunch of Westerners get up in arms that Indonesia, for example, introduces a law which negatively affects or appears to negatively affect gay people, but their failure to understand Indonesia’s highly complex politics means that their outraged arguments don’t even touch on what the effects of the new law actually are. Their hearts were, so to speak, “in the right place”, but in the worst way, and they only ended up making things worse.
In a sense these situations do touch on a right that members of a polity have which outsiders don’t, which is the right to “have a say” in the management of their affairs. If outsiders begin to “have a say” and the polity begins to lose some of its democratic character as a consequence, then there is a genuine concern that self-determination is at risk, not to mention the intelligent management of things by people who actually understand how things work locally. But this is not absolute, and indeed cannot be absolute, otherwise we would be left with a political world in which the only rights we gave people were those they got from the polity of which they happen to be a member, and Russia would be off the hook - there is clearly another order beyond the locally political by which people deserve morally good treatment, and outsiders to a polity cannot be denied a say in the nature of that order.
Exactly, you should always be cautious of imperialism hiding behind a humanistic veneer, but that doesn't mean you should oppose any kind of international pressure. For instance I don't believe anyone here feels it was wrong to pressure South Africa into dropping apartheid (even though presumably there must have been some capitalist self-interest involved somewhere?).
Be careful not to equivocate opinions, normative claims, BDS, electoral interference, and belligerence.
Well you make zero distinction between any of those things, most of which (BDS?!) aren’t even under discussion here, and your target is Ian Miles Cheong’s opinion-having about the US, particularly with respect to Oregon
What do you want me to do here?
Edit: let me rephrase that, what the hell do you want me to do here? Are you serious?
Dude, chill. This is a NSFW thread. It's not for dunking on others, but for reflecting on our positions and argumentation. I'm not trying to win, just to explain my reasoning. I'd like it if y'all experienced what I experienced from this thread: interesting food for thought and a reminder that we don't have to be 100% unified in our opinions.
Sorry are you currently a member of have you been a member of lesswrong? No? How can you criticize them than on sneerclub? (I'm just using this dumb argument to show you a bit of the flaws in yours, not that I have not used yours in annoyance once or twice myself, it just isn't a good argument, that you need to be a member of something to critique it, and esp not in sneerclub, as quite a few of the old reddit regs were iirc not from SV).
Anyway, my problem with Cheong isn't that he is a weirdo who is obsessed with the USA and does this all for free (He was never paid for his incel corner articles apparently), it is that he is arguing for the wrong side, licking the boot and asking for seconds so to say. E: also for horribly mangling images of models and abusing an AI(*) who does that to make a weird incel point.
*: as there is an infinitely small chance (as 0 is apparently not a probablity) that the current crop of AI becomes self aware, I think this would be their exhibit A for wiping out humanity.
I think you've misunderstood. I'm talking specifically about governance and politics. For LW, I'm free to critique their actions within the USA, but not necessarily abroad. Even critiquing their actions within USA-controlled territories is iffy, in the sense that I would implicitly be endorsing the USA's occupation and control of those territories.
Why would you restrict your criticism to within borders that you regard as illegitimate? I think the best way to not endorse territorial sovereignty would be to ignore those borders as much as possible.
respectfully, I think this is a bullshit take/perspective. example: as a ZAian, I am exposed to an incredibly wide number of USA policies and actions (both immediately and downstream, "outcomes of actions" etc). should the mere fact of me not being a USAian citizen withdraw any capacity for me to critique those things? I think not
(edit: I realize you also remarked on the "rest of world" aspect of this, but .... the scope of decisions in-US tend so broad and long-term relevant, I don't think it really makes sense to argue the point that you made)
@froztbyte How many US citizens actually renounce their citizenship, though? It’s been deliberately made into a difficult and expensive process, especially under Trump, because they have an obsession with the idea that the only reason any US citizen would want to stop being one is to evade tax.
And as a UK citizen who hasn’t lived in the UK for 15 years UK domestic policy still very much affects my life - not least a few years ago when the lunatics pushed us out of the EU and my family and I lost a whole load of basic rights in the country in which we now live. And I reserve the right to critique any government I want if it’s behaving in a shitty manner - why should the US be immune from criticism while it’s perfectly acceptable to slag off awful regimes like Saudi Arabia, Iran and yes, even that in our next door neighbour, Hungary? The US isn’t immune from criticism just because they wear clean shirts while mistreating marginalised folk.
No worries. I agree with you that the USA's policies often affect other countries.
I've talked to more than a few expats who simultaneously believe that they are allowed to influence the politics of their new home, and also that USA's current citizens should care deeply about their opinions; these folks read as colonizers to me, and I am eager to dismiss them.