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At this point, nearly every industrialized country has total fertility rates below replacement levels. The US is doing better than many 1.7 births per woman. The situation is much worse elsewhere, with both Italy and Japan at 1.3, and South Korea at a disasterous 0.9. All of this is a problem because it tends to make the population top-heavy, with relatively few working-age adults supporting a relatively large pool of retired seniors.

Anyone care to make some predictions on what we will see countries doing to fight this trend?

I think it's a no-brainer that we will see a lot of money thrown at this problem. Pre-school child care will probably become highly subsidized. Quebec, Canada, for instance has a program where child care costs parents only CAN$9.10 per day. I also wouldn't be surprised to see subsidized housing for young families, although I don't remember seeing it yet. Medical fertility interventions like IVF might also be subsidized.

I also expect immigration to be permitted, and even encouraged, in many places. In some cases that may be temporary imports of labor though guest worker programs, but in other cases it will involve permanent residents.

Finally, I expect to see retirement ages pushed up. Retirement at 65 will probably become something of the past.

But what else might we see? And will any of this work?

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Subsidize minivans, haha.

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They'll simply import a billion Chinese to replace us. Chinese work hard and don't question authority, they make far better citizens than we do.

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China's TFR is 1.2, so they have it worse than most of the West. I wouldn't be surprised if they started restricting emigration within the next generation or so, when the problem really starts to bite.

Anyone looking to cover this problem with immigration really needs to be a fan of Africans, since that's where fertility tends to be the highest right now. There are also a few places in Asia (like Kyrgyzstan) and South America (Bolivia) with high TFR, but they are small.

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Africans can't fix the problem, because large scale, unselected african immigration can never have a positive fiscal impact. America needs more Americans - that is, people with the same distribution of characteristics as the American population or better. Unselected African immigrants will, in aggregate, only ever be a fiscal drain, even ignoring the myriad negative externalities they will almost inevitably bring.

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We could legalize housing, and undo many of the other little things that each make parenting just a tiny bit more expensive and annoying. ("Car Seats Are Contraception," that sort of thing.)

Get rid of the expectation of higher education so people can get started on their careers and families four years earlier. Already seeing a little bit of that.

Coming at the problem from the other end, throw money into anti-aging research and then tell all the oldsters to get back to work.

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>We could legalize housing

The most "YIMBY" countries of the world, in Asia, have the lowest fertility in the world.

Not only does it not help things, but population density seems to strongly predict against fertility: https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/fertility-questions-the-role-of-population

>Get rid of the expectation of higher education so people can get started on their careers and families four years earlier.

What do you mean "get rid of" as if you're talking about a government policy that can be repealed?

This is a massive cultural change that nobody can will into existence over any reasonable time frame.

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>This is a massive cultural change that nobody can will into existence over any reasonable time frame.

The best time to plant a tree was a hundred years ago. The second best time is today.

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> What do you mean "get rid of" [expectation of education] as if you're talking about a government policy that can be repealed?

Some jobs have some kind of education as a legal requirement. Makes sense for a surgeon, but much less sense for a hairdresser. The specific rules vary from place to place, but generally, formal education is usually required for many kinds of jobs. Software development is a huge *exception* in this aspect.

This also makes it more difficult to change profession, once you decide that the choice you made when you were 18 perhaps does not fit your current personality and situation. For example, once I seriously considered that maybe it would be better for me to walk away from software development, and become a plumber or a carpenter instead. No more meetings and Jira tickets, flexible working hours, doing something useful and relatively well paid using my hands while perhaps thinking about some open-source project I would do in my free time. How difficult could it be? I mean, there are YouTube videos for everything, I could start by doing things cheaply for the most desperate customers and gradually level up... Ha-ha, nope. Instead, it would be hundreds of hours of formal training (not even available in my city, so I would have to relocate or commute a lot), then a few years of practice working for someone else until I am finally allowed to work independently... nope, I am too old for that. (For the contrast, consider a former plumber who wants to become a software developer instead. If he has the skills, he could literally start the job tomorrow.)

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Japan has no shortage of housing, and high school isn't even mandatory there. 1.26 fertility rate.

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Well, it... okay, that's a fair point. We should do it anyway though, it certainly can't hurt.

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The problem in Japan and South Korea is that while they let women get educated and work, they make it difficult for women with children to work outside the home. A lot of young women take a look at those options and say yes to the job and no to the kids.

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Did you have some sort of proof of this? Some data? Surveys?

Sounds reasonable but it's also very easy to just say as a reason.

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It probably doesn't help that Japan requires workers to stay late at the office and then go out drinking every night.

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My last suggestion would also fix the Social Security problem. And George R. R. Martin might even live long enough to finish Game of Thrones (admittedly this one's a reach.) Though on the downside we'll never be rid of Trump and Biden.

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There is, of course, one solution that is almost sure to work that nobody wants to consider or even mention. The root of the problem is that many women are pursuing careers, and are either too busy or are simply unwilling to have children (to be more precise, enough children to exceed replacement rate). This was obviously not a problem in the past.

Unfortunately, it seems that allowing women agency is not sustainable. But would any country actually be willing to reverse all of this social progress for the "greater good"? If the GOP does end up taking full control of the US, I could see them doing it. They're already being pretty gung-ho about the whole abortion issue. But I don't see it happening in any functional democracy. Though, all these western democracies do seem to be on the verge of collapse anyways...

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<quote>There is, of course, one solution that is almost sure to work that nobody wants to consider or even mention</quote>

I'm not sure the post actually proposed a solution? Only identified a problem.

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I read it as going back to keeping women barefoot and pregnant would increase fertility rate. Could be an incorrect interpretation though.

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but that's not really a solution unless you say how you would achieve it.

'have more babies' is not a solution unless you say how you would actually get people to do that.

perhaps I can read between the lines, and guess that the proposed solution is to roll back equal rights, but if that's the case than I can toss it out, since that is not a feasible solution.

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I did take it as rolling back equal rights.

With …

> Unfortunately, it seems that allowing women agency is not sustainable

and

> If the GOP does end up taking full control of the US, I could see them doing it. They're already being pretty gung-ho about the whole abortion issue.

… being my clues.

I don’t think it was meant as a solution, more of a lament at the perceived direction of the GOP agenda.

Another clue is anomie’s user name suggesting an anticipated breakdown of moral and ethical standards.

The tone seemed ironic so I didn’t give it a literal reading and that’s why I alluded to a Margaret Atwood dystopia in my comment below

But I should let anomie speak for themself.

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Not sure where you are going with this but I don’t think we’re at defcon Margaret Atwood just yet.

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Say what you will about Nicolae Ceaușescu, but his fertility program ensured that he didn't have to worry about post-retirement life...

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The other one is cutting senior social support and letting the problem take care of itself.

This also works a lot faster than the other suggestion.

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...That doesn't even do anything to solve the problem of declining population. Also, old people can vote, and some of them have a lot of money and power. And also there's the obvious fact that everyone becomes old eventually, and thus have an active stake in this. Even ending democracy might not be enough to get rid of support for seniors.

At least with the gender issue, most of the male population would be happy to enforce the patriarchy themselves.

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There's a list of things I'd *like* to see them do. But I'm guessing the current industrialized-nation governments are not going to do anything effective, just pile on more of the same stuff that hasn't worked so far and probably never will.

Until a number of factors including but not limited to a top-heavy population pyramid lead to economic catastrophe. Which I suspect will increase TFR by reducing the *relative* cost of child-raising and removing some of the tempting alternatives.

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Have you been talking to the Nybbler again, John?

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Germany or Sweden seem to do much more when it comes to subsidizing families/children, yet families have less children than in the US for example. Is does't seem to be a lever we can use.

I would say the best chance of actually changing this trend is economic growth / technological change, in the way that we all work far less in the future (and therefore have more time). Another big impact could obviously come from artificial wombs, where women would no longer have to face any trade-offs. Life-extending medicine could also have an impact on demographics (because less people would die over a certain period of time).

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Since 2009, Sweden's TFR actually seems to have tracked the American TFR very closely until the last year or so. https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/sweden/usa?sc=XE26

One could always argue that the TFRs would be even lower without those generous policies.

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Since 2009, Sweden's TFR actually seems to have tracked the American TFR very closely until the last year or so. https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/sweden/usa?sc=XE26

One could always argue that the TFRs would be even lower without those generous policies.

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Random thought: Christian Bale was drastically miscast as Patrick Bateman, he's too good-looking.

Patrick Bateman is a man who spends a lot of effort on his looks, but I don't think he's working with particularly good raw material, so he doesn't wind up looking like a movie star, just like an over-groomed average looking dude. I think that the deep sense of insecurity that Bateman has is not really compatible with natural good looks. Maybe he should look a bit more like Pete Campbell from Mad Men; not bad looking but not exactly lighting up the room with his smile.

He feels to me like an 1980s version of one of those guys who tries way too hard on Linkedin, but since it's the 1980s and there's no Linkedin he just murders people instead.

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I haven't read the book, but...

It works for me. I don't think I have personal experience with Bateman's particular type of psychopathy, but my impression is that it doesn't depend on looks. Whatever it is about him that reads as "insecurity" is more like a gaping internal void that can never be filled; no amount of success or status will ever be enough.

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I get to look at the semi famous face of Vincent Kartheiser - Pete Cambell - every time I stop for a beer at the corner bar. He shills for the joint in a photo because he was born across the river in Minneapolis. I think they might have paid him a few bucks too. Looking at his Wikipedia page I see he dropped out of school at 15 to ‘make money.’

They also have photos of a couple of baseball hall of farmers because they played high school ball at the Catholic school across the street.

No photos of Christian Bale though. Just a sign that says ‘No WiFi. Get drunk and talk to each other.’

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I thought the exact opposite: He was too well cast. A great actor is by definition a form of psychopath, a charming camouflaged thing. The outcome was a cartoon of a cartoon-- one too many layers deep.

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OC ACXLW Sat April 20 Childhood and Education Roundup #5

Hello Folks!

We are excited to announce the 62nd Orange County ACX/LW meetup, happening this Saturday and most Saturdays after that.

Host: Michael Michalchik

Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com (For questions or requests)

Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place

(949) 375-2045

Date: Saturday, April 20 2024

Time 2 pm

Conversation Starter:

Childhood and Education Roundup #5 by Zvi Mowshowitz: A wide-ranging discussion of various topics related to childhood and education, including bullying, truancy, active shooter drills, censorship, woke kindergarten, tracking, homeschooling, the impact of smartphones on children's mental health, and more.

Text and Audio link: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a7YuB25vu35ajfxS2/childhood-and-education-roundup-5

Questions for discussion:

1) The article cites a study that finds bullying has lifelong negative effects, including lower subjective well-being, increased mortality risk, and reduced job prospects in adulthood. However, Zvi expresses concern that the study's controls may be inadequate, as bullying is often a function of the victim's social status and response. How can researchers effectively control for these factors to isolate the causal impact of bullying itself?

2) Zvi discusses the case of "Woke Kindergarten," a controversial program implemented in a San Francisco school district that included materials with questions about abolishing work, landlords, Israel, and borders. The article also mentions that test scores in the district fell, with less than 4% of students proficient in math and under 12% at grade level in English. While the article does not directly attribute this decline to the "Woke Kindergarten" program, what does this case suggest about the challenges of implementing politically charged curricula in early childhood education, and how can schools ensure that educational content is both age-appropriate and academically rigorous?

3) The article presents data showing a substantial increase in homeschooling rates in the United States following the COVID-19 pandemic, with many families continuing to homeschool even after schools reopened. Zvi interprets this as a strong endorsement of homeschooling by families who tried it. What factors might contribute to this sustained shift toward homeschooling, and what implications could this have for the future of public education?

4) Citing survey data and time-use studies, Zvi argues that excessive smartphone use among children and adolescents is associated with reduced sleep, decreased in-person socializing, and worsening mental health outcomes. He critiques claims that the evidence is inconclusive, arguing that even the possibility of such significant negative impacts warrants serious concern. How can parents, educators, and policymakers navigate the trade-offs between the benefits and risks of youth smartphone use in an evidence-based manner?

5) The article discusses the potential benefits of student tracking and ability grouping, citing a study that found the introduction of flexible teacher pay in Wisconsin led to improved student outcomes by incentivizing the recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers. However, Zvi notes that tracking remains controversial, with some critics arguing that it exacerbates educational inequities. How can schools design tracking systems that maximize student learning while ensuring all students have access to rigorous, high-quality instruction?

Walk & Talk: We usually have an hour-long walk and talk after the meeting starts. Two mini-malls with hot takeout food are readily accessible nearby. Search for Gelson's or Pavilions in the zip code 92660.

Share a Surprise: Tell the group about something unexpected that changed your perspective on the universe.

Future Direction Ideas: Contribute ideas for the group's future direction, including topics, meeting types, activities, etc.

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A possibly very stupid questions: Isn't Popper today more or less unimportant for social sciences like psychology? As you might know, every Psy student is taught about Popper: His critical rationalism is the key to our field. We don't validate theories, we falsify them. And for good reason: no matter how many white swans we find, we can never know, if all swans are white. If we find only one black swan, however, we can say with certainty that not all swans are white. Now, in the actual science, we find neither white nor black swans - at least not with a high degree of certainty. Small sample-sizes, failed replications, tests based on probability, internal or external validity, etc. make it questionable, what color the swans really have. And this discussion, the discussion about the real color, seem to be much more important than arguing that a black swan would be of a higher quality than a white one. What do you guys think?

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Teaching "about" something doesn't make people actually good at it. Sometimes people answer the questions correctly in test, and then don't apply them in real life anyway. (I think there were experiments showing that courses on ethics or critical thinking do not make people actually more ethical or more critical thinkers.) Perhaps this could be improved by designing the course differently, with an emphasis on examples from everyday life, both professional and free time... rather than just "this is what Popper thought on the topic". I am not sure.

Probably more importantly, I do not think that Popper correctly describes what scientists (even in STEM) actually do. I think he proves too much... at least the version of him that most people on internet use, which probably lacks most of the original nuance.

Basically, Popper (as used by most people) seems completely one-sided. He argues against any feelings of certainty, ever; his approach is pure negativity. On one hand, sure, you should never be literally 100% certain about something; there is always a possibility of new evidence that will disprove things you thought were true. But he takes it too far, as if there is nothing positive a scientist could ever say about a theory, beyond "it hasn't been falsified yet". From that perspective, a theory that is supported by thousands experiments is no more certain than a crazy hypothesis I made up just now and no one had an opportunity to test it yet. Neither has been falsified yet... and according to (the popular interpretation of) Popper, that is all anyone can ever say about a scientific theory.

But we all know that this is *not* how actual scientists behave. They take certain things, such as gravity or evolution or relativity, as basically true. They may be open to re-examine them critically, if something new and surprising happens. But normally, they just treat them as true. Whenever a journalist reports that the speed of light has been experimentally exceeded (that used to happen quite often a few years ago), a scientist simply ignores that, because he knows that's pretty impossible... and usually a few weeks later it turns out that it was instead a mistake at some calculation. To act otherwise would be a waste of time. For most practical purposes, scientists act as if relativity has been validated.

A crackpot whose life mission is to prove that "relativity isn't true" will quote Popper every day.

Scientists should be open to the possibility that a new fact can make them reconsider the existing theories. They should even actively be looking for possible disconfirmations of the existing theories... of course, not all of them all the time; after the theory has been here for a while, most of the time they should just use it as a tool to derive new useful results. It is okay to take "all swans are warm-blooded" as a fact (unless something extraordinary happens).

The problem instead is that in fields such as psychology, the proper degree of certainty in existing theories should be much lower than in physics. Because there is less experimental evidence, few replications, small sample sizes, often people not even considering alternative explanations of the observed data, etc. Those are the actual problems. Falsifiability is a red herring, in my opinion. It is a one-sided weapon against all feelings of certainty, whether deserved or not. The problem is jumping to conclusions too soon, not making conclusions as such.

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I completely agree! Popper is totally overused. His basic point (there could always be a black swan) is good and important, but in the scientific reality coming to a good valuation of a theory and deciding, how good an empirical study actually was (was that swan really white/black?) is much more relevant. Popper should be named in an introduction to the field, not as a user manual.

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Is it actually true that 'sanctuary cities' policies against cooperation with ICE mean that they protect people suspected even of heinous crimes like raping children?

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I am sure there is at least one tweet out there saying that it is true, and I am expecting you to post it here as a fact.

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No. Remove your tin foil hat and take your meds.

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Apr 17Edited

Do people have strategies for getting a good night's sleep for the nights they really need to? While I have sleep issues usually, they get especially bad when I have something big coming up/on my mind, which means I e.g. go to most interviews fairly exhausted and perform more poorly than I would otherwise. This is on my mind because I just had an interview on literally zero hours of sleep.

I'd like some technique/failsafe to try in situations like this to ensure I get a good sleep. I've tried a lot of the more standard advice like staying off screens and using melatonin which mostly hasn't worked but I'd be interested in hearing things that worked for other people in my situation. I'm fine with medication, but only if it actually leads to me feeling refreshed/alert in the morning and doesn't only knock me out for a while. If it helps for giving me advice, I tend to have issues both with falling asleep and with staying asleep, although my issues with falling asleep become especially acute before a big day.

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A Benadryl in a pinch always works for me but I’m logy the next day.

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I tend to cycle through 3 strategies:

1. Read something that's just kinda boring. For a while, Moby Dick was my go-to. I love the prose, but it's a style of writing that's hard to get in sync with in this day and age. Forcing myself to keep reading it was a good way to exhaust my brain.

2. Watch something kinda boring on my phone. This goes against most advice but it works for me (sometimes). Right now a good go-to is the Halo adaptation on Paramount. I like it just enough to keep watching but sometimes I find myself waiting for something actually interesting to happen and that's when I get sleepy.

3. The real trick, the one that usually works. I tell myself - and I actually believe it - that if I can't sleep, then just lying still with my eyes closed and thinking calm thoughts is a good substitute for sleep. I just try to do that as long as possible, and tell myself that it doesn't actually matter if I fall asleep if I can keep doing that instead. Almost invariably, I fall asleep.

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I do something similar to #3: I lay perfectly still with my eyes close and don't move except for breathing and swallowing. I've never gone longer than 15 minutes before falling asleep no matter how awake i am.

It sounds so dumb, but it works. It's also way harder than it seems. You don't notice how many small movements you do all the time until you try to not do them. There is also a meditation/mindfulness piece to it: you'll get little itches and things all over and all you can do is focus on them and hope they go away. It often seems like your body will create this little irritations almost to "check if you are awake" - they will happen more frequently the closer you get to sleep.

I'll warn that I first learned of this as a technique to encourage lucid dreaming, which many people dont want. Its never produced lucid dreaming for me, though I have had lucid dreams by chance.

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As far as reading goes, advanced math tends to work well as well. Or anything that requires mental effort.

The problem I've found with this is that you can be really sleepy while reading, and then instantly become non-sleepy once you stop reading and get into bed.

As for the third, that's a neat trick. I doubt I'd be able to delude myself into making it work, but it's a cool idea.

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I've been pretty satisfied with CBD. As I've gotten older it's been harder to get through the night without waking up. Eating 5 Mg of CBD (in a gummy) before I go to bed have improved my sleep patterns considerably. However, not all the brands of CBD gummies I've tried have been equally effective.

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Stay up late the night before. Then you'll be really tired the next day.

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Sadly enough, for my most recent interview, I had also slept poorly the previous evening. Usually that is enough for me to sleep better the next evening, but this time it wasn't.

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I'd recommend the opposite. If there's a chance you are going to miss a night's sleep - have as much in your sleep bank as possible in the week leading up. Knowing that also takes the pressure to fall asleep on the big night off a bit which sounds useful as a sleep strategy in itself in this case.

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This makes sense. Sleep is most elusive when you really need it, really want it.

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I've tried this, with mixed results. The most regular outcome is that I do sleep better on the second night, but not by enough. My body wants 8-9 hours, if I did nothing I might get 4-5, and by reducing my sleep the night before I end up with 6-7. So two nights in a row with 6ish hours instead of 8 and 4 - mixed results at best.

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This doesn't work for me. When I stay up, my regular bedtime just gets later and later.

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Don’t worry about it. Twenty year olds don’t even need sleep. You can sleep when you are 40. ;)

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I don't have anything that works all the time, but a number of things that increase the probability of a good night's sleep: Most powerful on eis 30 mins or so of cardio in any form done earlier in the day, cardio that's intense enough to get me really sweaty. Another powerful one is to get in the habit of using the bed only for sleep & sex. If you read, watch movies, talk on the phone, browse online while in bed you associate bed with relaxed wakefulness. Relaxed wakefulness is just want you don't want if you're lying in bed trying to go to sleep, right? So do all those winding down things like movies and internet browsing in a chair or sitting on a couch. If you're bothered by noise, use earplugs (I recommend the Macks silicone ones) and a white noise machine. When it comes to drugs I find that benedryl 25 mg or so works well, and does not give me a hangover. Benzodiazepines work extremely well for many people -- but watch out, because you can develop a tolerance, so don't use the stuff more than once a week.

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One thing that works for me is long academic discussion podcasts like The Dissenter or Mindscape. Stuff that’s interesting enough that I would want to listen even if I wasn’t trying to sleep, but not so important to me that I’ll object if I doze off in the middle of it.

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There's a technique I learned from an online post that works decently well for me.

First, and this is probably well known to you, don't try to relax. Because trying to relax is just going to keep you awake. Instead, try to focus on seeing with your eyes closed. Keep your eyes closed but otherwise make an effortful try to see something in the blackness. It will seem slippery and weird at first, but keep trying. Eventually you'll catch a glimpse of something: dark shapes moving in the blackness. If you try to look at them too hard they'll slip away, but that's okay. Keep looking.

Eventually you'll start seeing dream imagery. These will be vivid images, but you aren't actually seeing them with your eyes. Keep focused on trying to see them, on examining the images that come up. At this point you'll be on the edge of sleep, dipping into unconsciousness. You might bob up and down on this border for a while, but when you bob up into consciousness try to stay focused on seeing. Watching for the next dream image.

Eventually you fall asleep.

It is not a perfect "works every time" technique, but when I can't sleep it's my go to and it is fairly effective. I used it last night, which was a pretty rough night for me, and I'd say it took about 15-20 minutes to work. Your mind will want to wander, but just keep herding your attention back to watching for images.

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> It will seem slippery and weird at first, but keep trying. Eventually you'll catch a glimpse of something: dark shapes moving in the blackness. If you try to look at them too hard they'll slip away, but that's okay. Keep looking.

This sounds like the start of a creepypasta.

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Not going to lie, some nights my subconscious will generate a stream of frightening images. I learned how to deal with that from listening to an interview with a guy who does guided psychedelic psychotherapy. He said that most “bad trips” happen because you start to experience something disturbing and then you mentally flinch away from it. But trying to run away from a frightening thing your own mind conjured up is as pointless as trying not to think a thought: as long as you’re trying, you’re thinking about it. So the key is to not flinch away, to look it straight on and then go through it. If you do you may find something better on the other side. I have found that this works with the sleep technique as well, though it can be difficult.

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This is my go-to technique, either learned from you or another ACX or DSL poster sometime last year/two years ago(?) This alone has potentially made lurking around this whole community a net positive for my cumulative amount of sleep.

One other advantage: it has made it much easier for me to fall asleep even if my environment is not totally dark. With a little bit of ambient light, it is easier to attend to the phantom images I see when my eyes are closed.

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We definitely got it from the same place, though I can’t find the source offhand. It was a link to a blog with a long post about it, someone must have put it in the comments a few years ago.

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Do most people not put a second pillow on top of their head? That generally mitigates light issues.

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I haven't seen a lot of people sleeping, but that isn't something I've observed.

For most of the year, it would be too hot for me to cover my head with another pillow, even partially.

One of my children does cover his eyes with a blanket that he claims is for light reduction.

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Have you experimented with sleep podcasts at all? I particularly like The French Whisperer. He has a ton of content free on Spotify. Works both for falling asleep at bedtime and if I wake up in the middle of the night. YMMV of course but maybe worth trying.

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Moderate exercise in the early evening, enough that I feel tired, but not enough that I'll be sore in the morning. Maybe followed by a warm shower, even if I also plan to shower in the morning.

Doing some things like dishes, cleaning, and sorting, which require a small amount of effort, and have clear end-conditions, so I feel like I've accomplished goals and am done for the day. Not things like studying or long-term projects which leave me feeling like there's always more to do.

Tiny amounts of alcohol, mostly smelled and slowly consumed, not enough to produce any real effect, but enough to trigger some of the pleasant associations in my mind.

Pleasure reading with a physical book, of something I enjoy that I've read before, in low warm light. I have a dawn simulator that also works in reverse, as a dusk simulator. But I can also turn the overhead dimmers all the way down, and turn on a side-lamp that has an old 40-watt incandescent bulb.

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It's probably very individual. I get a good sleep after an exhausting workout, but my wife can't fall asleep after one. Sometimes white noise really helps, but not always. Same for reading in bed.

One thing I'd strongly advise against for this purpose is alcohol.

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The German left trying to ban a popular political party, to "save democracy" or something:

https://archive.is/Vk14X

(WaPo: Once wary of extremist violence, Europe now fears extremism in politics)

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This is not new, and also not really 'or something'. From the text you shared:

"Germany’s constitution does allow for parties that “seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order” to be banned, but the hurdle to do so is extremely high. The country’s Constitutional Court has done it only twice — with the Socialist Reich Party, a successor to the Nazi party, in 1952, and the Communist Party of Germany in 1956."

I don't know if 'militant democracy' is the established translation (of 'wehrhafte Demokratie'). 'Fortified' (or: able to defend itsself) sounds to me like it'd represent the original concept better, though maybe it doesn't sound better in english ;).

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Okay, and AfD cannot be remotely described as seeking to do this, which means that efforts to abolish it are not in any conceivable sense actually concerned with "saving democracy". So uh, yeah, the "or something" was actually very generous. Because really, these efforts are being conducted by anti-democratic lunatics.

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Nothing in your comments here so far has indicated that you're well familiar with the AfD, with the inner-German debate on banning the party or with the respective procedures. Please feel free to add relevant information on any of those.

As you can read in the article you posted, while 'lunatics' may any time demand anything "the hurdle to do so ((ban the party)) is extremely high", and the process is taken quite seriously. In the past 20 years, efforts to ban another extremist-right-wing party failed two times, for very different reasons.

As far as the AfD is concerned, in three of the German states their state-wide party organisations are classified as 'definitely right-wing extremist'. This is in contradiction with your verdict of 'cannot be remotely described as seeking to do this'.

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There was an interesting essay I read a few months back about how the mechanism for keeping actual dangerous far-right parties out of power in Germany was for the milquetoast establishment center-right party to move right _just_ enough to steal whatever issue they were harping on, and that worked beautifully for decades. It only fell apart once it was somehow decided that certain positions, immigration restriction in particular, were beyond the pale, and instead they would just suppress the far-right parties and somehow the voters who wanted those policies would just fade away. We're seeing that fail now, as it always does.

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> somehow decided

... is not a very clear term. The far-right was strenghtened when the center-right party being in government decided to let in several hundred thousands of refugees mostly from Syria. The original and most influential decision was taken, when refugees who were already in Europe were both mistreated and being actively pushed westwards by the Hungarian prime minister.

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I think there is something to it, though the way this is described sounds more like a narrative / good story, than the actual events. A couple of far-right parties tried since re-unification, but could never establish themselves. The current far-right party started as a mix of right-wing/libertarian/very-far-right persons and over the years, the latter won the internal fights (although there are still *some* differences among regions). The party also gained enormous momentum, when we had many refugees enter the country in 2015/2016, under the government of a conservative chancellor.

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What would have been or would currently be the right strategy against the now popular far-right party, is a matter of much debate. What is not in doubt is however, that

a) this party is much stronger in the eastern states of the country and

b) the multiple crises of the past years (Covid-19, war in Ukraine, related energy crisis and inflation) have also contributed to a growing number of people overall dissatisfied with 'the state' or 'the democratic/ mainstream parties'.

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Large parties do that anyway -- copying popular policies from small parties. That's how the UK conservatives became greenish, when they were.

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LOL, those are amateurs.

In Slovakia, in recent elections, the ruling party realized that the war in Ukraine will be a divisive topic, so before the election it split into two parts-- one strongly pro-Russian and anti-Ukraine, the other strongly pro-Western and anti-Ukraine -- both got a lot of votes, and after the election they de facto merged again.

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This is an interesting take. Do you have a longer source or text on when and how exactly this happened?

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Sorry, I have no longer text that would describe it all together.

Fico's position on Ukraine is documented on English Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fico%27s_Fourth_Cabinet

> Robert Fico is widely seen as pro-Russian, and his government has stopped militarily supporting Ukraine, saying he "will not send one bullet" to Ukraine. Fico has been opposing sanctions against Russia, with his standpoint on Ukraine being compared to that of Viktor Orbán. In an RTVS interview, Fico questioned Ukraine's sovereignty and independence, claiming that Ukraine is just a US puppet, sparking outrage in both Slovakia and Ukraine. He has also stated that Slovakia will veto Ukraine's NATO membership, and has pushed for a peace deal, even if Ukraine suffers territorial losses. His words regarding Ukraine have been described as "heartless", "vulgar" and "disgraceful".

Pellegrini described himself as pro-EU and pro-NATO. I don't have a good link, because it was a very recent thing and only aimed at voters in Slovakia before the election. I assume he will probably not mention it again (until maybe right before the next election).

And, as you can see on the linked Wikipedia page, today they happily rule the country together.

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Thanks for the information.

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Honestly? I'm not even upset. That's brilliant. Regardless of how much I disagreed with their position I'd be honored to be led by people that devious.

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I don't think they actually have a position, other than "steal as much money as possible". They certainly do say a lot of things, but practically everything is like this, saying whatever their polls suggest most people want to hear (which is typically some form of "social democracy", except this time this one question was too polarizing to have a single best answer) and then doing their own thing regardless.

The same thing will happen about Ukraine -- as long as EU or NATO offers some money they can steal in return for sending some weapons to Ukraine, they will. Otherwise, they will not. It's as simple as that. The story they will tell their voters... either they won't mention it at all, or they will say that someone else would have sent the weapons anyway so at least it meant more jobs for our people. Slovakia is a small country, so on any issue they have the excuse that they were forced to do so by the big bad Europe, but at least they were clever enough to derive some benefit for our people.

I also admire the skills (and I am deeply disappointed that the opposition is sorely lacking them) on the technical level. But the money is really missing in the economy, things are slowly falling apart, to do anything important you need to bribe someone connected to the governing party, and young people are leaving the country.

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Okay, I guess I was too flippant, that does suck. In the US we're so starved for even remotely functional leadership that any foreign leader capable of speaking in complete sentences looks like Metternich to us.

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Incredible

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Hm, I posted on comment on Rootclaims blog (https://blog.rootclaim.com/covid-origins-debate-response-to-scott-alexander/) which was actually very friendly and constructive but it seems like it didn't get through moderation. Did this happen to anyone else?

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Scott, Is it possible to make every 4th open thread have a ban on linking to personal substacks or yt pages? would be a fun experiment to run.

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Once upon a time, linking to personal webpages was a reportable offense.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-283/comment/18019038

Wish it would still be enforced.

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There's been way more of it lately. Feels like too much to me. I'd prefer it if there was some rule of thumb like not more than twice a year.

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I guess I can't really blame new posters for self-promotion when the top of the page reads, "Post about anything you want."

I searched out that old "twice per year comment" about two weeks ago, intending to link it (and the general policy*) on the next Hidden Thread, hoping it might help other long-time readers who want to police the comments. (You're doing God's work Shaked Koplewitz)

*https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/register-of-bans

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I have to say, I really like the "symbolically banned for one day for interacting with trolls" policy. I wish that were enforced more consistently, even though I might eat a few myself. But Scott is probably doing the right thing by spending more time with his family, and less time policing trolls on his corner of the Internet.

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My big fear in the move to Substack was that working for pay would cause Scott to experience the Over-justification effect. So I try not to complain if he avoids unpleasant chores.

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From past experience here: a huge proportion of people skip over any header text of an "Open Thread", including unusual rules that apply to that thread.

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I think we just need a general rule, something like don't plug your blog more than twice per year. Then the group here would need to remind posters who violate it, because Scott was never good at staying on top of that or on top of reports of incivility, even before he became the father of twins.

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Elementary school age children in the passenger seat of cars with advanced airbags (that is: airbags with a weight sensor that are supposed to deactivate for small passengers): is there a real risk here?

It's easy to find breathless warnings that allowing your child into the front seat before they are thirteen is dangerous, but I was unable to find much in the way of actual data. A few studies from the 90s back when the problem with airbags and children was first being investigated, but nothing about modern cars.

Does anyone have any good data?

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I havent seen any about airbags, though i read a blog post a while ago about how car seats for kids above like 5 don't really reduce injuries (can't find it now, sorry). I'd like to see some data on front seats and airbags too.

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Perhaps a pressure sensor in the lower half of the front passenger seat would solve the problem, combined with the weight sensor in the seat itself. Either that, or make the kids carry a hundredweight sack of potatos on their lap! :-)

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Banned for this comment.

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Makes the whole 'global celebrations of Oct 7' look kinda silly now, doesn't it?

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Hello Hammond. Not exactly sure what you mean by that. I tend to agree with you and others who prefer Europe closes its borders.

https://substack.com/profile/198296034-hammond/note/c-50060425

I just feel we should extent the same to the natives of Palestine who also did not welcome refugees from europe and in hindsight were probably correct to do so.

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Yeah, how's that rejectionism working out for them?

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It's really the soaring height of scum and villainy to pick a politics that you don't like, a downtrodden people who advocate for and/or support it, and then smugly ask "And how is X working out for Y?", before sauntering off cockily.

What's funny is how utterly symmetric and ideology-neutral this is, it's one of the most low-effort celebration of evil that someone could possibly do.

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Uh huh. So seriously though, how's that rejectionism working out for them?

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Cartoonishly vile and moronic, even by the standards of the pro-Israel camp.

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Glenn, as a Pro-Palestinian on your side I'm not pleased with a lot of the phrasings you use in this and other post. Let Me Explain Why (^TM).

Nearly 4 months ago I wrote in reply to a certain Pro-Palestinian commenter who was (and substantially more than you) quite aggressive and displayed very uncharitable behavior [1], in order to advise him/her on how to gradually back off from some of this behavior, this commenter was banned about 3 weeks later. I'm not saying I'm pleased he/she was banned or that I'm hopeful that you will get banned, I'm just saying that, had they listened to even a subset of my advice, they would probably not have been banned, and there would be another Pro-Palestinian voice here, which is ultimately a good thing for Palestine and Palestinians, however indirect and minor the effect of posting walls of text on a textbox hosted on a shitty server is.

Being banned on ACX is **hard**, I was banned twice here before under different (unrelated to Palestine/Israel) usernames and believe me when I tell you, I had to **sink** to deep lows to trigger the Benevolent Libertarian in charge of the comment section. The 2 comments I was banned for are some of the cringiest things I wrote since middle school love poems, and one of them still makes me feel guilty at night as it was full of very mean and flagrant insults. When Scott was banning me for this comment that would get you insta-banned by auto-bots anywhere else on the Internet, he said he was "on the fence" on the actual comment, and only banned me due to an **additional** comment that I wrote in reply to someone who reported the original. I'm just saying this as encouragement, you know. This is basically witch land [2]; you have to be an active demon to be persecuted. A persistent, unrepentant, proud demon. Don't be like this.

The link I posted has 7 pieces of advice in a huge wall of text, I hope you will read it.

I specifically want to comment on your use of the term "Zionist". Zionist is, by and large, an exonym, and is a name mostly used derogatorily to refer to people who do not call themselves by this name. I'm not saying that there aren't unrepentant and proud Neo-Zionists in the modern day who dick around and ramble on how important it's to "redeem" Eretz Israel and establish a Jewish supremacy from Gaza to the Galilee and beyond, they do exist. I'm just saying that the word "Zionist" is a rhetorical trick where you group those scum with less evil people who *merely* think that Israel should stick to its current border but also fully support the war in Gaza, and **then** group all of those with much better people who think that Israel **is** evil and that it **is** treating Palestinians badly and engaged in an unjust war but that it shouldn't be disbanded or destroyed because that would imply certain things about its Jewish population.

In short, "Zionist" is a so-called "Suitcase Word", a term coined by Marvin Minsky to denote confusing words that mean plenty of very different things, they are confusing because they trick the reader into thinking things that are true of a certain subset of the things denoted by the Suitcase Word and then generalizing those things to all the denoted set.

So, to all the advice listed in [1], here's an 8th (or Shemona, in Hebrew):

(8) Eschew the word "Zionist". More generally, eschew words that your opponents don't use among themselves to call themselves. If it's necessary to call someone a name they don't call themselves, make it clear that it's you calling them this word "Xs are what I call 'Y's, let me explain", don't use an exonym uncontroversially as if it's established facts.

More wall of text follows in the reply.

[1] https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/open-thread-307?r=3evauj&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=45847539

[2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centralized-web/

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I'm fine with skipping the term Zionist, though I did qualify it as "genocidal Zionist." I agree there are more mild Zionists I happen to know them. But it seems when an issue becomes ethnically/tribally related the lizard brain pops in and the guy who is your co-worker turns into a crazed supremacist. Most of the moderate Jews I know in real life and online seem to just reflexively defend Israelis no matter how progressively worse the atrocity is. I call it the deny, downplay, then distract method. It's not always done in this order.

"There is plenty of things to be said against Israel, browsing goddamn Haaretz will give you a lot of ideas, that's how bad Israel is. "

LMAO yes haha. Haaretz isnt perfect by any means but they've done a lot of good.

" conversely, that's how awesome and selfless some Israelis are, to publicly criticize their state and their people"

I agree and I admire them for overcoming the tribalistic impulse although this is an small percentage of the population. I think I'm a lot more moderate on the ethno-nationalism than I was before. Ethnic/tribal conflict seems to be a pretty consistent theme in human history and its unfortunately backed up by dna evidence. There is a phenomenon known as Y chromosomal replacement where one tribes' men annihilate the other tribes. There are other instances of just complete massacres. At the same time, if we are to transcend our lizard brain and be more than marauding tribalists we have to treat laws and norms around human rights consistently, not just shit on them when its convenient, or for our more impressive/pity-worthy ethnic groups. I was a little bit pro Israel before I turned fully against it so I guess I should be a lot more charitable than I am.

Since you are right about the atrocities being undeniable at this point, I think there are maybe a few claims they still make that need to be addressed and maybe this is the one that gets to me the most so it will be my Final Comment whenever I get around to refining it. I see advocates use this excuses a lot online as a way to dodge criticism. The screeching atrocity deniers are so far gone it is not worth engaging with them.

But the tactic I am talking about is to assign Hamas and Palestinians a quadrillion malintent points, and Israels a quadrillion excuses so no matter what an IDF is doing to a 6 year old Gazan girl, Hamas is just always worse by default "because they would do worse if they could and how dare you suggest otherwise". If Israelis don't deny what they're accused of, they'll downplay it "its a rare instant, hamas is worse" or they will just distract you from the issue like carateca here, who clearly does not want incidents being discussed and would rather attempt to rile you up and I supposed I fell into this individuals little trap and wont be doing so.

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I don't think we disagree about anything on the actual matter-of-fact bottom-line which is that Israel is a genocidal state engaged in merciless and unprecedented murder of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. We probably **do** disagree a lot on how culpable each individual Israeli are (my view: Not very much if they're a non-IDF person living inside the green line) and how diaspora Jews should react and believe regarding the war (my view: too complex and half-baked to summarize in a pair of parentheses), and we probably disagree a lot and lots of things related to Religion, Politics, etc.... Regardless, "Israel is killing lots of Palestinians and a lot of rabid Pro-Israel commenters are justifying it" is not a particularly contentious point between the two of us.

My long pair (or triple if you count the December 2023 link) of posts is purely an objection on **how** you present your views, not the actual content of your views.

Imagine you and I are both Christian pastors/preachers, in actual fact I'm an Atheist ex-Muslim but that's why I said "imagine". Both of us are tasked with telling people about the fire and brimstones that Yahweh - the Jews' God that billions of non-Jews are inexplicably worshipping - is going to rain down on them if they don't repent. Imagine that:

- You had the idea of actually finding someone who died of first-degree fire, and presenting their charred coal-black body to the congregation as an object lesson in what would happen to them

- I had the idea of merely touching a burning match with my finger, and then telling the congregation to do the same and contemplate the fire and brimstone that Yahweh will bring on us if we disobey.

If this was true, I might then object to your way of presentation NOT because I'm not a Christian, and NOT because I don't think that the ancient Levantine God is indeed going to rain down fire and brimstone on people who disobey Him, but because it's a really over-the-top brutal way of getting your points across. It's a bad idea to make an example out of a dead body, it's a bad idea to display a horribly mutilated human then argue and make a point (the people who saw the horribly mutilated human will be shocked into non-articulacy and no amount of reasoning or argument will reach through). All in all, it's just a really bad idea of making the point.

That was a bit of an unfair and over-the-top example, but I hope you get what I meant by my posts.

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In certain Hollywood productions there is a cliche where someone who lost a loved one in a war tells another loved one who is fighting a possibly different war "I don't want to lose you too", cue the crying and sniveling and perhaps some sexual kissing. This cliche is very cringe and trite and Hollywood in general is very cringe and facile, posting on ACX is not a war even if you're posting about an actual war and being banned from ACX is not Death.

Regardless, I want to be that someone (minus the sexual kissing): I don't want another Pro-Palestinian commenter to be banned. Your job is... honestly not that fucking hard. There is plenty of things to be said against Israel, browsing goddamn Haaretz will give you a lot of ideas, that's how bad Israel is. (and conversely, that's how awesome and selfless some Israelis are, to publicly criticize their state and their people for all the countless millions to see and for the all the internet to remember, because that's the right thing to do.)

There is a trap that is very easy to fall for when you're angry about an injustice, that trap is to mistake discharging your anger for correcting the injustice. What I mean is: Suppose you saw an Israeli soldier do... whatever the fuck they have been doing in Gaza for the past 5 months, their TikToks speak louder than anything I will write. You get very angry at this clear injustice, who could blame you? What unfeeling piece of rock would not? But then you feel that you have to do something, and Israel is some X thousand kilometers away and it's very unlikely you can get to this particular soldier or his boss or his boss' boss and it's very unlikely you can do something to them when you're unarmed and not an Israeli, so you go to a random Jewish guy in your neighborhood - X thousand kilometers away from Israel - and yell some racist thing in his face, or comment a mean thing under a YouTube video featuring a random Israeli.

What happened here? What happened is that you mistook your own anger as the injustice itself, the injustice that you witnessed in Gaza hadn't changed a single bit by your actions, the only thing that changed is that you are now less angry because you insulted or threatened someone that you perceive as similar to the one who committed the injustice. Those are not the same thing. That's your own ego talking, it's not about Palestine or Palestinians or helpless people, it's about you.

That's enough wall of text for now, I hope you will read it and get something out of it, Cheers.

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You're completely unhinged, dude. Hopefully someday Scott will get around to looking at his report queue, which I'd wager is 90% you at this point.

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Normally Carateca would be banned for this comment, but I just got around to looking at my report queue which was 90% this guy, so whatever.

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