The main thing I’ve learned from watching Masters of Sex has been a better understanding of the fact that allosexuals care waaay more about sex than any reasonable human being should.
I mean, every time Bill Masters talks about how he wants to cure sexual dysfunction to “save marriages”, I’m like “???”. It honestly seems really strange to me that someone would end a relationship because their partner isn’t able to have sex with them. It parses to me like “I’m sorry, honey, but I married you for your singing voice, and this sore throat bullshit has gone on long enough.” Like, sure, you do you - but I’m kinda sorta judgin y’all.
Also, like, people keep cheating on their spouses??? Why??? I can’t imagine promising to only sleep with one person and then breaking that promise, because I can’t imagine wanting sex more than I want to follow through with an “Um, sure, whatever” - much less faithfulness-including marriage vows. (I’m poly because I can’t stop falling in love with people; not because I can’t stop fucking them.)
All in all, Masters of Sex is a fascinating look into a world where people care about how frequently they stick organs in orifices. I recommend to anyone who’s as confused about that as I am.
Optimization thinks strongly-reactive-gray-asexuality-ish-ish-ness is the Objectively Optimal™ type of sexuality (to which The One Which Watches The Watchers responds: “subjectively, you one-example-generalizing fool!”) because it results in really low amounts of time spent on sex-related things (I kind of get where people’s interest in such stuff comes from because pre-HRT I was more allo-ish, but it felt like an unpleasant compulsion which is hijacking my brain to waste time on pointless things instead of the meaning of life or something like that) but allows great quantities of diversity of experience and positive novelty when someone who fits the criteria is like “hey, want to do X?” and I’m able to respond “okay sure” for a wide variety of activities ranging from hugging to things-that-accidentally-break-ribs.
So yes, very definitely confused. Unfortunately Masters of Sex is like 36+ hours and Optimization is screaming “you could use those hours writing your way to world domination instead of trying to comprehend the arcane customs of a weird species” so I’m going to do that thing instead.
Okay. I guess other people have stronger feelings against Internet communists than I do.
My own feelings are kind of - puzzlement mixed with lack of understanding. Part of it is that I *still* don’t really know what communists believe beyond “overthrow capitalists, seize means of production”. In particular I don’t have a good feel for what people think true communism looks like, and when I ask I get answers anywhere from “Cuba” to “a bunch of loosely connected utopian farming communes”. I’m not sure what the difference is politically between a communist state versus an ordinary democracy or an ordinary dictatorship, except in the form of vague generalities like “the Party works for the good of the people” (just put that in the constitution and I’m sure it will come true).
Ownership of the means of production doesn’t seem that important to me. It seems to correspond to the stock market (owners of stock control companies capital and receive companies’ profit), but last time I tried to calculate it out if all stock were distributed evenly among the population, it would mean $6000 “profits”/year/person in the United States. Add in all CEO salaries and it gets up to $6400. That’s a lot of money, but it’s only about half the poverty line, and it would barely increase the average worker’s salary by 10%. Is the difference between inhumane oppression versus the glorious golden future really just earning $50,000 vs. $56,400? And that’s assuming that the transition to communism doesn’t decrease wages or profits in any other way, like by hurting the economy or making companies less ruthlessly profit-seeking and so decreasing stock dividends. But without the whole means-of-production/worker-owned-company thing, communism just seems like a more dictatorship-prone version of Sweden.
Finally, my meta-political stance is caution and empiricism - I have some political stances, but more important than enacting them is getting a framework where they can be tested, made sure they’re not dangerous, and enacted if and only if they work. Communists don’t seem very good at testing their ideas in contexts less irreversible than a giant revolution that destroys everything that has come before. The exceptions I can think of are a few communes - most of which have failed - and a few worker-owned companies with a mixed track record. In other words, I’m not sure what incremental communism would look like, or what it would mean to move in the direction of communism other than “stockpile armaments and wait for a chance to shoot people”. And the few examples of giant-revolution-communism I have to go on are either horrible bloodbaths like Maoist China or places like Cuba with some detractors and some proponents that nevertheless if you’re trying to help the poor and ensure equality of opportunity seem inferior to the best social democracies.
And my other complaint about communists is that I rarely see them talking about any of these things, either explaining/debating their solutions or being properly worried at not having any. Whenever I see them they’re either going on for the zillionth time about the whole thing where the proletariat need to seize the means of production, encouraging general agitation and discontent, getting angry at people for trying to solve things incrementally, or talking in incredibly dense post-modern jargon about issues that seem a thousand levels removed from the real world.
This is what I mean when I say communists aren’t my out-group: I have so much trouble placing them ideologically and seeing them as a coherent movement that it’s hard to have strong opinions about them.
At the very least I consider communism an useful error message. It arises from discontent in society and while its proposed solutions to the problems it identifies are debatable, I find many of the problems themselves at least worthy of noticing. As a psychiatrist you are probably familiar with the patient who says they are in excruciating pain caused by an alien implant in their neck, and just because there is no implant to remove doesn’t mean the pain is just as imaginary; and even the most uncharitable interpretation of communism would be basically the political equivalent of that thing.
One of the reasons you don’t have a clear idea of what people want is that “communism” is an extremely diverse label containing a huge number of different and sometimes diametrically opposed ideologies. Stalinists, libertarian communists, and anarcho-primitivists won’t get along at all, and their utopias will be dramatically different. Also, one of the main ideas of communism (or so I’ve understood; my familiarity with the theoretical material is admittedly very limited) is the abolition of states as well so “what a communist state looks like” is kind of similar to asking a gay couple “which one of you is the man?”. In practical terms, the Zapatistas and Rojava are probably the closest to what communists actually want (or at least the communists worth considering; stalinists, maoists etc. seem to throw tantrums about the latter but ideologies whose supporters haven’t updated after tens of millions of deaths can be safely ignored as far as I’m concerned).
Ownership of the means of production is not just about money. (But for a lot of poor people $500 a month is a really big deal.) The basic idea that people work for themselves instead of someone else is very attractive for many (if not most), and there is also evidence suggesting that it might make people more productive as well. Companies with employee stock ownership plans, more worker participation in management etc. might be more productive (haven’t scrutinized the data but studies usually argue something like 5-10%), and even people like Paul Graham agree with the basic ideas behind socialism in the workplace (bosses, hierarchies and investors tend to suck and it’s more awesome to own one’s own work) in essays like this or this. In addition, if workers are also the owners and they hire their own bosses it would (in theory) solve some issues in misaligned incentives as they could balance the monetary value created by management with the immaterial value destroyed by the actions management takes to extract more productivity from workers at the expense of their well-being. In other words, it’s not a question of $50,000 vs. $56,400 but a question of $50,000 and bosses and hierarchies and no freedom vs. $56,400 and having genuine participation in one’s work; a difference which seems like the difference between a really good employer and a median employer, and the impact of a really good employer on a person’s happiness seems to be pretty big. Basically, the communist ideals are less “government bureaucracy for everyone!” and more “startups for everyone!”; whether or not it would be realistic in practice is another question I won’t start addressing in depth here. But having seen it firsthand, Silicon Valley is awesome, and it makes a lot of sense that people would want to give everyone the things that make Silicon Valley awesome.
I agree that their lack of empiricism is most communists’ biggest weakness in both theory and practice. I’d argue that if people want to do practical communism, the best way would be to accumulate capital to workers in legal ways so the state doesn’t take it away with its guns. In other words, by having worker-owned businesses, especially worker-owned businesses that seek aggressive growth, especially in sectors which are the most critical for a self-sufficient society (food production, minifacturing, tech) and thus would allow the communists to discouple their basic needs from the wider capitalist system while also getting material feedback on how communism works in the real world, without depending on bad ideas like “let’s replace our entire production system with something that hasn’t been tested because we predict it will only work if it is never tested in a smaller scale, and without backups so we can’t roll back if the new system sucks”.
ETA: Stuff I forgot to mention:
Under this kind of communism, BART workers would gladly automate their jobs away to get more free time because they would be the ones reaping the benefits.
Also, there are other forms of capital than just dividends; for example real estate is one really important source of income for rentseekers instead of value creators.
I am not responsible for the outcomes of assuming actual communists agree with this; while I’ve tried to stay within the rules of fair steelmanning, I’m certain some of my beliefs are leaking through (wrt things like revolutions) and making the result fall somewhere between “right in the goals and wrong in the implementation” and “burn the heretic”. But this is the strongest simple description of what communism might actually be about I can produce, and it’s noticeably more specific and sensible than, and at least as substantiated as, the stereotypes most people operate on.
Do any of the transhumanists in the room have a non-handwavey solution to overpopulation? I still haven’t seen one.
One solution would be to universally agree that the resources of the universe shall be split among each currently living person and everyone’s descendants, forks etc. shall only be allowed to access those allocated to their ancestor-at-the-time-of-splitting or voluntarily reallocated to them by their owners. Defectors will get destroyed.
It would be totally unfair to the innocent children of several generations of transhuman Quiverfulls, driven to subsistence level while those who don’t have any children enjoy unimaginable wealth and that’s the entire point. It would directly incentivize keeping one’s descendants as few as possible because maintaining a larger population requires more food/space/whatever just for survival, which is then not available for other productive uses, and minds that have greater per capita resources available can grow larger; one human is smarter than the equivalent carrying capacity consumption in rodents, and a single planet-sized computronium brain is smarter than the same planet tiled with individual ems.
This would mean that as long as the resource boundaries are initially enforced long enough to solidify such differences, the breeders can’t catch up and will most likely be the ones who get wiped out if the agreement is broken. Therefore posthumans would be incentivized to be growers instead of breeders, but also to maintain the balance as a long-term survival plan if they nonetheless are breeders.
If we growers initially outgun breeders, we can unilaterally enforce this if we can cooperate until the incentive landscape turns around; and thanks to transhuman decision-theoretic reasons our commitment to maintain that deal, even when it would be in our own interests to break it, can be trusted.
okay maybe this is just me but like when you’re deep inside of a good book but forced to put it down for a bit does the outside world seem weird and soft and like you find yourself thinking in the author’s voice and even after you’re done with the book there’s like this “book hangover” where you’re still in the writer’s world and seeing the characters and hearing the narrator and stuff feels… different ….
thinking in the author’s voice
This is actually how I get myself to write most of the time! I’ll read something by an author whose voice is similar to my own, and that’ll almost immediately get things flowing.
Other people do this “thinking in the author’s voice thing” too!?!! [excited screeching]
After I read Thing Explainer my head began to use simple words for all things when talking to itself without making noise. Even for very complicated things. This was not a big problem and in some ways having my head talk to itself in that way makes explaining complicated things to other people easier. It was also pretty fun.
The one after eight out of ten. Would have my head talk to itself that way again.
I ALMOST CLIMBED INTOA REFUGEES WINDOW WITHA MALT LIqUOR FOURTY BECAUSE THE PREVIOUS NIGHT IT WA A PARTY ROOMAND I GUESS ONCE THE PARTIERS LEFT, IT BECAME A REFUGEE FAMILY’S ROOM
“WELCOME TO CANADA I’M THE PARTY BRIGADE HERE TO GET YOU RIGGITY RIGGITY WRECKED!!” Prat, 2016
jdlkfgj
I witnessed some other fun shit that weekend as well
like someone in a MLP gilda suit being literally dragged off by 5 kids down the hall while the gilda costumer looked around confused and startled as the kids were screaming excitedly.
i was also walking around a bit in my kigurumi/onesie of prat and a group of syrian women and their kids stopped me to take a photo with the kids who were LOSING THEIR MINDS AND SCREAMING, unable to stand still for the photo, one was behind me the whole time stomping on the tail of my kigu
basically all weekend the kids ran around like it was goddamn disneyland until as late as midnight and the mothers hung about like “8DD?!?” not sure how to make of the situation but laughing to eachother over it.
I can only fathom what it’s like to flee the besieged suburbs of aleppo, spend a year in a turkish refugee camp, then be shipped over to cold, rainy ass Vancouver Canada only to encounter a sort of celebration with costumed idiots at the airport hotel you are checked into on arrival.
Certainly a WELCOME TO THE WEST culture shock, if anything.
Like the rest of the internet, I love lol furries jokes, but this is honestly super fucking adorable and heartwarming, and I’m glad people were nice for the kids, because they definitely need it
@inquisitivefeminist There are many reasons why you need this thread in your life.
Meanwhile, on this goddamn continent:
“Go back to your war-torn country and shoot some brown people, that’s what I fantasize about every day and you could get to live the dream you’re so lucky!”
“So the reason they’re coming here is that they are less likely to die in Europe than in Aleppo? So if we make Europe just as violent and dangerous as Aleppo, they won’t come here, right? Because that sounds like such a brilliant plan and it’s not like this continent has a track record of nationalism going horribly wrong every time it’s tried or anything like that.”
“Our national pride is how we once accommodated over ten percent of our population in refugees; people of a different religion and speaking in a strange language, women wearing scarves on their heads, into a country that was extremely poor by modern standards, and in which people’s livelihoods strongly depended on the zero-sum distribution of land. But now our modern, prosperous society will collapse into ruin if one tenth of that amount arrives because this time they’re brown instead of white.”
“Okay, we’ll grudgingly let you in, but we won’t let you work. If you acquire a permission to work, we won’t let anyone hire you because nobody may be hired below the union rates and our taxes make it too costly for employers to hire low-skilled people. If you manage to get hired against all the odds, we’ll blame you for stealing our jobs. If you don’t, we’ll blame you for stealing our welfare. Have fun trying to survive the odds we’ve stacked against you!”
I think if I were to fully alieve it I’d have to change a lot of my behaviors, but I found this essay pretty persuasive.
I disagree. this person wants less open discussion which makes me suspicious of their views immediately. the argument rests on several emotional concerns, namely that the author feels they aren’t making progress in arguments enough (I.e. winning), that they feel a compulsion to correct others, and a compulsion to make others uncomfortable in those arguments as a punishment for questioning their world view. the comments section is enlightening as to what community we’re dealing with, and the author’s primary example is the “32 types of anti feminists” comic being made by “a jerk” who “insults [the author’s] friends”.
one thing that immediately jumped out at me:
one of the main reasons I get defensive is because I think some groups
actively strategize to push their opponents out of the Overton Window
and turn them into despised laughingstocks. When it works, it means I
either have to be a despised laughingstock or spend way too much mental
energy hiding my true opinions. The alternative to letting these people
have the final say is defending one’s self.
speaking as someone who’s views exist almost entirely outside the overton window, and who regularly gets hate-mail for my political views, may i just says that scott can cry me a fucking river.
moreover, essentially all political debate is on some level an effort to shift the overton window, and inherently, doing so will result in people being pushed outside it. the idea that this is an illegitimate rhetorical move is absurd.
he goes on to say:
When I don’t want to argue but feel forced into it, I’m doing a very
different thing than when I’m having a voluntary productive discussion.
I’m a lot less likely to change my views or admit subtlety, because that
contradicts my whole point in having the argument. And I’m a lot more
likely to be hostile, because hostility is about making other people
feel bad and disincentivizing their behavior, and in this case I really
do believe their behavior needs disincentivizing.
this admission is incredible. scott is here basically admitting that he isn’t open to changing his view, and is openly hostile, with the express purpose of making his opponent feel bad, any time he feels they are trying to shift the overton window- which, i remind you, is something which is inherent to almost any form of political argument, period.
it’s interesting to finally understand how “rationalists” justify to themselves that they are everything they claim to be against (i.e., irrational closed minded bullies) but i do have to say i’m disappointed that the justification turned out to be so apologetically shallow and inane.
This is kind of an example of what I’m talking about.
Somebody who, every single time I’ve seen any of their posts, has been making really dishonest cheap shots at rationalists uses my admission that sometimes I get angry when I feel threatened, and twists it into “this is proof that all rationalists are irrational closed minded bullies”.
In the old days, I would have felt like I had to defend “NO WE’RE NOT,” and s/he would have kept up “YES YOU ARE”, and there would have been a lot of yelling, and there’s no way I would have convinced this person because they’ve already decided they hate me and everyone like me and this isn’t the sort of argument they’re in looking for truth or understanding.
Now I just block them. Blocked.
(if you’re genuinely interested in understanding my point of view or convincing me of yours, you can email me at scott@shireroth.org, and we’ll talk)
Turns out rationalists really hate the free market of ideas huh
I’m not sure if you’re being serious or not, but I think the free market of ideas is important in that nobody should be allowed to dictate what other people talk about. I also think that a controlled flow of ideas is personally important, especially in the sense not in curating the content of ideas you’re exposed to (which is dangerous and might create an echo chamber) but the maturity of the people expressing those ideas. In other words, getting rid of trolls and keeping signal-to-noise ratio high.
I’m happy for people who want 4-chan to have 4-chan - if that’s what you mean by “the free market of ideas” then they’re welcome to it. I’m just saying that I personally find that a certain style of combative and unproductive argument makes it more difficult for me to have productive debates, that I don’t feel bad controlling and pruning my intellectual environment in order to cultivate the sort of space where I can let my rational-thoughtful side come to the fore rather than my emotional-defensive side, and that I suggest other people try to notice if they have the same issue and do the same if they do.
In fact, I would argue that this goes along with the goal of a genuinely free market of ideas. I find that when there are really horrible people pushing a view in an insulting and hateful way, that makes me not just less likely to agree with them, but less likely to be able to fairly evaluate their position even when it’s expressed by other people who are more convincing than they are. Take away the feeling of personal attack and it’s a lot easier to give the other side a fair evaluation.
It’s ironic to see people talking about the “free market of ideas” and not noticing that overton windows are basically cartels, monopolies, and captured regulations. The whole point of the overton window is to shut some products outside the market, not because they’re not worth buying (if they were, they could prove their badness on the markets) but because people don’t want others buying them.
(Abolishing any and all overton windows would be an elegant solution if the market of ideas didn’t have material consequences from some ideas inflicting things upon nonconsenting bystanders. Ideas like “let’s use violence to stop people from doing things to their bodies we don’t like” would be far easier to dismiss if their carriers couldn’t use violence to enforce them, and the choice between pushing holders of anti-autonomy ideas into despised laughingstocks and having them brutally enforced upon oneself is pretty simple for people who perceive themselves in such situations. Intolerance of others’ tolerance of neoreactionaries seems very firmly correlated with vulnerable positions where one has similar ideas already inflicted upon oneself, or believes one could end up in such a position.)
when buying an apartment in China the buyer pays the capital gains tax owed by the seller, a quantity that is intrinsically unknowable until after the transaction has taken place, thus leaving the buyer on the hook for an unspecified sum and making two apartments advertised at the same price potentially cost completely different amounts.
yes, this is a call out post for the real estate market, which should be ashamed.
As you value your life or your reason, keep away from libertarian Facebook.
Libertarian Facebook: the only thing right-libertarians and communists alike can agree on. (And everyone in between as well. I wouldn’t be too surprised if some immigrant billionaire created libertarian Facebook just to unite humankind against a common adversary which assaults their minds and souls with horrors previously barely imaginable.)
You can tell that fatphobes are full of shit because I have never not once been criticized for my unhealthy weight even though my weight probably poses a lot more of a health risk than the average overweight person’s
This hasn’t been my experience, for what it’s worth. Every time I go home a significant fraction of the people I interact with confront me because they’re concerned about my unhealthy weight, and a larger fraction ask my parents if they are doing anything about my unhealthy weight. Strangers at parties will frequently insist I eat more food because I am unhealthily thin in their opinion. I can expect a concerned comment about my unhealthy weight with near certainty if I go to a dinner party with strangers.
And of course if I lose more weight it will be legal to forcefeed me to return me to an appropriate weight, and as far as I can tell there is nothing I can do, short of ‘don’t lose that much weight’, that will stop this from happening.
Obviously the solution to this is “stop accosting anyone with concerns that their weight is unhealthy; mind your own business; never talk about anyone’s weight ever.” But it’s not true at all that people are currently that respectful if you’re underweight. They aren’t.
You are significantly smaller than I am, and people who are forcefed are even smaller.
It seems plausible to me both that invasive douchebags feel entitled to offer their opinions on the health of very thin people and that invasive douchebags have an inaccurate idea, influenced by cultural fatphobia, of what level of skinniness is correlated with health problems.
More evidence for the inaccurate idea hypothesis: I stopped hearing comments about my weight the instant people began to misgender me as female instead of male, and I hear this isn’t exactly uncommon. To my knowledge, one’s clothing and hairstyle don’t influence the health outcomes correlated with one’s weight, while they do influence the invasive douchebaggery outcomes correlated with cultural full-of-shit-ness.
Okay, I take back what I said earlier. Trying to find a political solution to earthquakes sometimes works.
If only earthquakes were as affected-by-human-decisions everywhere.
(I’m curious: If people wanted to use the tax-on-externalities solution for injecting oil extraction wastes into the earth’s effect on earthquakes, how would that be implemented? Earthquakes have a nonzero base rate and vary a lot per year naturally, AFAIK.)
Calculate the expected yearly earthquake damages on the base rate and sum it over time; injectors pay for all damage exceeding the accumulated base rate sum.
For example, if the base rate was estimated to be $1M a year, four years without earthquakes followed to two quakes of $3M each would mean that the first one goes in the base rate and injectors owe $2M to the earthquake damage compensation fund after the second one.
my transness doesn’t feel like “I am nonbinary.” I don’t really know what that would mean.
It feels like “I want to be nonbinary”. It feels like reading about intersex conditions as a teenager, desperately searching for one it was possible that I had. Like reading genderswap fanfics because the thing I wanted most in the world was to wake up in a boy’s body and be okay with it and have everyone acknowledge me as both. Like staring at myself in the mirror and pressing down on my breasts so they would go away. Like every time I hear myself called ‘they’ it feels like I’m getting away with something. Like when someone said “you know, you’re going to have a pretty narrow friends group if you’re only friends with people who don’t mispronoun you” thinking “if that’s all I have to pay to get to be nonbinary I am lucky.”
I want to be nonbinary so hard that I bootstrapped myself into actually being nonbinary.
So much this.
In fact, I literally cannot separate my transness from transhumanism because “I want to take control of my body and my social context and customize them to better match what I want instead of what I was given” doesn’t contain any joints to carve reality by. Why would one set of chemicals and modifications that improves my brain, senses, and body, be categorically different from another set of chemicals and modifications?
(The fact that in finnish the words for “trans person” and “transhuman” are one and the same is kind of interesting and convenient although there is no deep etymological meaning to it; “person” and “human” just usually translate into the same word.)
Ever since I saw the film The Warriors, I haven’t been able to shake the idea that gang culture– even real world gang culture, Casa Nostra and the Yakuza and all that shit– is essentially a LARP with insanely high stakes.
I was amused to read that the Mafia revived an old custom of hand-kissing because they all liked The Godfather so much. No, really.
“Fake it ‘til you make it” taken to its logical conclusion.
Also, I’m pretty sure an awful lot of people are essentially LARPing their way through life, usually just with lower stakes and less interesting aesthetics. Parents who feel it’s more important to keep up the appearance of caring than to actually do the substance; environmental activists who are willing to sacrifice everything for their cause as long as “sacrifice everything” doesn’t mean cutting their hair and putting on a suit; politicians who sacrifice the interests of group X by doing stuff that’s only seemingly pro-X; feminists who do feminism-associated things without regard for the consequences; ineffective altruists; the entire Motherfucking Theresa business/scam; a lot of cis people’s genders; etc. Even in surprisingly high places one will find people who got there by simply playing the role.
Then there’s those of us who play on the meta level and consciously seek the role of the munchkin…
This is actually my biggest criticism of feminism and paradoxically it gets me labeled as an anti feminist.
I’m… a radical feminist deep down (if frequently more in the breach…) but people seem to think that “radical” just means “loud”.
I’m not a radical person, I just support radical ideas.
I should write the specifics into a post of their own, but basically most of the issues with feminism are issues with inconsistently and insufficiently applied feminism; so yes, it needs to go a lot further, including but not limited to, going further recursively.
I agree with this. In particular, I would like to see feminism go very far away.
Say, Mars by 2035, Galilean moons by 2050, maybe we can throw in a Venus flyby somewhere in there….
Non-feminists take the Earth, feminists get to keep the rest of the Solar System? Sounds like a damn good deal to me.
One of the things I mean when I say that I’m an environmentalist is that I have an innate preference for the world as we were born into it, for the flora and fauna that are here now. Respecting that means not trying to change it in major ways. Likewise, I believe that human beings are not in need of radical overhaul, improvement, or augmentation. As we are now constituted, we are plenty good enough.
Uh…you sure about that?
Maybe he is for his purposes, but some of us have a desire to live more than a century, as well as severe acne, a chance of being a carrier of colorblindness, nearsightedness, and a family history of being short and overweight.
Things promethea literally doesn’t understand: this kind of people. Sometimes I wonder if they have actually ever inhabited a real physical human body and brain. Other times I’m really frightened that all evidence points to “yes” and that means we have cishumanists walking among us, and most significantly voting on whether we are allowed to do things they disapprove of (usually: “no way in hell, but we’ll throw you in there just for daring to attempt it”).
This is actually my biggest criticism of feminism and paradoxically it gets me labeled as an anti feminist.
I’m… a radical feminist deep down (if frequently more in the breach…) but people seem to think that “radical” just means “loud”.
I’m not a radical person, I just support radical ideas.
I should write the specifics into a post of their own, but basically most of the issues with feminism are issues with inconsistently and insufficiently applied feminism; so yes, it needs to go a lot further, including but not limited to, going further recursively.
The fandom is divided between people who think you are an Evil Manipulative Slut and your Intense Stans, who write a bunch of meta about what a complex character you are and complain about how People Undervalue You Becaue Transphobia. There are long forum threads about Is Ozy A Good Person and most of the arguments lack nuance ("Ozy is evil because sex!" "No Ozy is a perfect oppressed angel!") Also there's a lot of Discourse about whether it's okay for straight girls to say they're gay for you.
I would like to establish firmly that it is okay for straight girls to say they’re gay for me
it is also okay for straight guys to say they’re gay for me
What I mean by this is that I do not do my homework; I miss deadlines at work because I’d rather play games than do the work; I have projects I’m excited about but instead of starting them I scroll aimlessly through tumblr. I have occasionally failed to turn in important assignments because I didn’t do them because I didn’t feel like it.
My whole life I’ve thought of this like a personality trait. I can’t do things unless they’re interesting because I’m lazy. I tend to get in trouble with jobs and at school because I’m lazy. I hated the personality trait, I wanted to change it, I aspired rather desperately to be a hard-working person and caused myself a great deal of pain trying to imitate one, but I was still thinking of it as some sort of fundamental tendency, some sort of fact about me.
This post reminds me of how, from the inside, sleep paralysis feels exactly like “I’m too lazy to move and I could if I tried harder”. And then I wake up and it’s like, no, I was literally paralyzed.
Yes. So much to both of these. I call the general insight behind it “clockwork people”; instead of magical free-will machines people are essentially deterministic patterns that are only able to respond in certain ways. Thus, it’s useless to assign blame and praise for the fictions of vice and virtue and things are simply about understanding and using the patterns to achieve the desired outcomes. I may still get emotionally-angry at something and have a low-level desire to assign blame but that’s just another manifestation of the same pattern and nothing more. It results in a weird mix of tranquility and frustration at the understanding that one’s options in any situation are limited and even the options one can select from those are limited by the same things, and thus it’s kind-of-like-okay to achieve suboptimal outcomes as a result but simultaneously it’s like “imagine if you could somehow unlock ‘free will’ for yourself; it would be like an IRL godmode or at least noclip and the only thing that’s keeping such superhuman powers out of reach are just the bounds of flesh and bone and the laws governing neurons and it’s so close but so far away”.
Then there’s the unending hunger for agency, the things that bring one closer to this impossible dream and there’s something quite exquisite in the pain of loss when one knows that something that does it is a Dangerous Forbidden Technique because it has exponentially increasing downsides or limited use in any specific amount of time and thus the powers are right there, and one can taste the apotheosis every now and then but most of the time it’s just that much out of reach.
TL;DR: “We’re all puppets, but I can see the strings.”
(Then Doctor Manhattan was promptly ruined by something trivially ridiculous because Moore isn’t intelligent enough to consistently and credibly model someone on that level. Intelligence, upwards and outwards of oneself seems like a pretty hard limit, and trying to pass as that from below/beside may seem believable to ones on one’s own, but is transparently cargo-cultish to ones on the other level. In fact, exactly like awareness of sleep paralysis functions. There are no coincidences.)
Can anyone explain to me why all the candidates (on both sides) are so obsessed with preserving American manufacturing jobs? Even if that ship hadn’t sailed decades ago (there’s only so much one can do to reverse globalization and technological progress), factory work is dangerous and soul-crushing and has all kinds of environmental effects. I’m not saying I have a better solution here (except probably service sector growth is going to be key), but I can’t believe this is the thing we want to preserve.
Increased redistribution is obviously important. And that’s step one. But I don’t think it’s a complete solution - there’s always going to be a significant subset of the population who derive a lot of self-worth from supporting themselves and their families. But the fact that the economy is shifting drastically should be an opportunity to create ways to do that that don’t suck.
Workerist ideology is a thing. And it ain’t unfounded or completely deluded.
The thing is, manufacturing workers had, in the glory days of the labour movement, won certain (cultural, identity) etc things that most service industries’ workers had never conquered because of their relatively weaker bargaining positions and greater coordination difficulties.
People want dignity. People want pride. People want to feel like they have a position of power, that they are not easily crushed. The real solution would be for the service sector to advance, to become less associated with humiliation and disrespect, of course - but you really, really can’t blame people for the cultural nostalgia. Most everyone who’s been poor and humiliated can understand the allure.
Russia never had independent unions, but heavy manufacturing industry workers also had power, importance and the same kind of class pride here, a sense of social stability and respect that is the opposite of “class mobility” ideology. And it was a good deal for them. Something everyone ought to have.
The dignity of the working class is important. It makes for a stark difference in individual and community well-being. Most liberals and libertarians seemingly cannot understand this. Reactionary/nostalgic socialist idealization of the 20th century is not the answer, but it’s important to retake that ground - for everyone this time, not just the chosen (and white, male etc) labor aristocrat elite.
Right now, nobody really seems to alieve in the dignity of service work. That is a major fucking problem. It’s why Uber doesn’t even bother to inform customers that drivers are deactivated at 4,6. Service work is normalized as a position of utter powerlessness.
The service industry lacks dignity because people perceive their situations accurately. They’re pawns of a system they can’t win in, forced to alienate their labour in exchange for survival on others’ terms, their livelihoods subject to decisions far away by political powers and corporate towers. They have no alternative, no power to bargain with, and their chance to tell bad customers to fuck off is determined by the whims of their employers, many of whom are quite whimsical indeed.
Now if there only was something that could prove to these people, in pure material terms instead of political gestures we all know to be vacuous and filled with the same stuff as the silently despairing servicariat’s souls, that yes, you deserve to exist independent of the surplus value someone else can extract from you; that you are more than an inconveniently embodied and thus materially needy servitude to someone more lucky; that you may negotiate your own terms and genuinely reject work which you do not consent to; that it’s your inalienable birthright as a human being to be entitled to a livelihood.
In other news, what’s basically the finnish grey tribe caucus is publishing a draft proposal which basically summarizes as “We could totally afford to give people an unconditional $1000 a month, look upon our calculations ye mighty and despair!” while the Party Formerly Known As The Communist Party is pushing for something like $1200 (the details tend to be more vague but the spirit is the same).
Yes, this is so. And yes, basic income in even one country would be great…
…but I frankly don’t believe in it succeeding now. Seems way, way too good to be true. I don’t know why, but it just breaks disbelief.
I feel like someone at the top, at least someone invested in the current state of the service sector, is going to catch on that this spells outright social revolution, and do their best to crush it.
That’s what they said about the 8-hour day. That’s what they said about ending the war on drugs. That’s what they said about every substantial reform ever. Is it guaranteed to happen? Hell no. Is it reasonable that it nonetheless might have a decent chance at succeeding somewhere and catching on, given its inherent advantages and the current momentum it’s enjoying? Yes.
Can anyone explain to me why all the candidates (on both sides) are so obsessed with preserving American manufacturing jobs? Even if that ship hadn’t sailed decades ago (there’s only so much one can do to reverse globalization and technological progress), factory work is dangerous and soul-crushing and has all kinds of environmental effects. I’m not saying I have a better solution here (except probably service sector growth is going to be key), but I can’t believe this is the thing we want to preserve.
Increased redistribution is obviously important. And that’s step one. But I don’t think it’s a complete solution - there’s always going to be a significant subset of the population who derive a lot of self-worth from supporting themselves and their families. But the fact that the economy is shifting drastically should be an opportunity to create ways to do that that don’t suck.
Workerist ideology is a thing. And it ain’t unfounded or completely deluded.
The thing is, manufacturing workers had, in the glory days of the labour movement, won certain (cultural, identity) etc things that most service industries’ workers had never conquered because of their relatively weaker bargaining positions and greater coordination difficulties.
People want dignity. People want pride. People want to feel like they have a position of power, that they are not easily crushed. The real solution would be for the service sector to advance, to become less associated with humiliation and disrespect, of course - but you really, really can’t blame people for the cultural nostalgia. Most everyone who’s been poor and humiliated can understand the allure.
Russia never had independent unions, but heavy manufacturing industry workers also had power, importance and the same kind of class pride here, a sense of social stability and respect that is the opposite of “class mobility” ideology. And it was a good deal for them. Something everyone ought to have.
The dignity of the working class is important. It makes for a stark difference in individual and community well-being. Most liberals and libertarians seemingly cannot understand this. Reactionary/nostalgic socialist idealization of the 20th century is not the answer, but it’s important to retake that ground - for everyone this time, not just the chosen (and white, male etc) labor aristocrat elite.
Right now, nobody really seems to alieve in the dignity of service work. That is a major fucking problem. It’s why Uber doesn’t even bother to inform customers that drivers are deactivated at 4,6. Service work is normalized as a position of utter powerlessness.
The service industry lacks dignity because people perceive their situations accurately. They’re pawns of a system they can’t win in, forced to alienate their labour in exchange for survival on others’ terms, their livelihoods subject to decisions far away by political powers and corporate towers. They have no alternative, no power to bargain with, and their chance to tell bad customers to fuck off is determined by the whims of their employers, many of whom are quite whimsical indeed.
Now if there only was something that could prove to these people, in pure material terms instead of political gestures we all know to be vacuous and filled with the same stuff as the silently despairing servicariat’s souls, that yes, you deserve to exist independent of the surplus value someone else can extract from you; that you are more than an inconveniently embodied and thus materially needy servitude to someone more lucky; that you may negotiate your own terms and genuinely reject work which you do not consent to; that it’s your inalienable birthright as a human being to be entitled to a livelihood.
In other news, what’s basically the finnish grey tribe caucus is publishing a draft proposal which basically summarizes as “We could totally afford to give people an unconditional $1000 a month, look upon our calculations ye mighty and despair!” while the Party Formerly Known As The Communist Party is pushing for something like $1200 (the details tend to be more vague but the spirit is the same).
so there’s this article arguing that feminists ought to focus some energy and effort on interventions in developing countries, as small allocations of resources can do a lot to improve the lives of women (and fight gender inequality) there, and that it’s a shortcoming of current feminist praxis that those problems are neglected in favor of attention-grabbing but much less tractable ones that mostly affect wealthy women.
the first response:
The author does not seem to understand the point of feminism. The reason that “tractable and important problems affecting poor women in poor countries” are not on the feminist agenda, is that they generally affect men to a similar degree. <…> Feminism is not simply about harm suffered by women, it about harm caused by an oppressive relationship of men to women. So feminists don’t protest against earthquakes, which kill thousands of women every year, because there is nothing gender-specific in an earthquake. Pornography, on the other hand, is very strongly gender-specific: most of it depicts women, in a way that feminists consider to be a harm, and it is largely made by men, for the benefit of men
The response is some of the deepest bullshit I’ve seen in quite some time. Even working from the assumption that feminism means reducing inequality instead of harm, material improvement in poor people’s situations tends to be really good at resulting in such effects. Also, #notmyfeminism on the pornography argument; it’s nowhere near that simple, especially when access to porn seems to be pretty good in reducing many harms feminists care about.
Also, Paul sounds like a person who’s male with a quite high probability. A male person is using intersectionality to argue that feminists shouldn’t focus on people with a lot of intersecting oppressions and instead do all kinds of wrong-headed stuff that’s way less effective and focuses on women with fewer intersecting oppressions. That’s about as fractally wrong as one can get and I can’t even
I tried to read that article but my eyes keep glazing over every single word. It’s like some kinda illuminati trick or something.
why?
I don’t know! It seems like… not information!
My guess would be that it’s a bullshit filter. It prevents one’s brain from wasting neurons by absorbing completely irrelevant “information” that is found on CVs etc. and apparently this wikipedia article is close enough to those that it activates there as well. Noticing it on myself as well.
So, does tumblr believe in character and character flaws? Because I get the impression that eg. “laziness” is called “executive dysfunction” and viewed as a disability, or there is always some disability that’s the reason why people don’t put effort into work/social stuff/school/working out/whatever and that it’s horribly unfair and wrong that you get fired or flunk or lose friends if you just sit on your butt and do nothing.
And, I understand that chronic pain and depression are real. I understand that some people have some legit reasons. But… I’ve known people who did game the system or con their loved ones into taking care of them when they were capable of taking care of themselves, just… why do work when you can play on the internet all day?
Most of the time the… malingers? They are from better off families who can afford to support them or hire lawyers to navigate the system. Not that I haven’t watched people quit jobs because it was too much work for no improvement over the dole… that sorta makes sense though.
I mean, OTOH, I don’t see anybody running around and saying it’s abelist to ascribe anger issues or most forms of “abusiveness” to character flaws rather than “poor thing can’t help it” causes.
You see that some with personality disorders and relationships though; people making excuses for abusers and saying it’s abelist and mean to cut them off.
I see this too, and I feel uncomfortable as all hell with it.
Because… From an understanding the person standpoint, it matters whether they’re a jerk or just having executive function trouble.
From an I need those reports standpoint, it doesn’t. From a hey if you want multiple partners and want me to feel cared for I NEED to know I’m someplace on your schedule, even if your schedule is a greatly haphazard thing, it doesn’t.
I feel like Tumblr starts in a good place when it says “failure is human; don’t shatter yourself over it.” But tumblr goes so far about that.
I get the vibe from Tumblr sometimes that if you’re not failing at anything and everything, you’re NT, and that means you’re an insufferable perfection-bot who isn’t actually human.
Tumblr ends up with a kind of “Oreo” like sense of “success is betrayal of the community” thing. Its not a bad thing to not struggle to feed yourself and clean up after ffs.
I don’t know, as someone who used to be very “lazy” and is now the polar opposite of that (I regularly get people asking me how I find the energy to work as much as I do), I have a lot of sympathy for people who can’t manage it. Tumblr attributes it to brain problems, but I’d frame it more in terms of bad life circumstances and opportunities.
I don’t buy into the idea of character flaws on a large scale - when you have a big group of people who all have the same problem, there’s something systemic going on. Notice that the vast majority of these people are in university. For me, working on a liberal arts degree with no clear job or life path at the end made me completely give up. I saw it in my classmates too.
I think it’s rare for people to want to do nothing all of the time. There are probably some people who genuinely enjoy it, but for the vast majority of people, doing nothing causes depression.
Once you start failing on the basics of running your life, it’s hard to claw your way back. You start finding ways to justify it - like calling it executive dysfunction
I don’t buy into Tumblr’s approach of “it’s your brain!!” since I think that leads people to avoid looking at their life on a material level and how it isn’t working. Calling it a disability encourages you to feel powerless to change it. But I also don’t think the bootstraps method works. You can only work really hard when you’re in a place where you have something worth working at.
Calling it a disability encourages you to feel powerless to change it.
I don’t know, calling it a disability can get you to finally stop feeling powerless to chance your “choices” (that somehow magically keep being some of the worst, most unpleasant choices for you despite presumably being able to change them at any point). The realization that there is a material reason you keep doing the same destructive thing over and over, as opposed to being the result of “free will” that you have long been seeing doesn’t work as advertised, can prompt you to look for external ways of changing your behavior instead of waiting for your Inner Spirit to shine through. But what’s more, such a realization can get you to stop blaming yourself and accepting that you deserve the pain you’re enduring right now due to being a consequence of your choices. That is a HUGE load off your shoulders that may have weighed you down far more than helped you act.
“It’s your brain”/”you are disabled” can turn an incomprehensible phenomenon seemingly both your fault and out of your control into a physiological phenomenon subject to clear laws.
You can only work really hard when you’re in a place where you have something worth working at.
“It’s your brain”/”you are disabled” can turn an incomprehensible phenomenon seemingly both your fault and out of your control into a physiological phenomenon subject to clear laws.
^ yes to both of this
^ seconding just because those two are really important and obscenely relevant. I’ve seen the change from “no long-term prospects” to “immediately actionable plans to a credibly better future” first-hand and it’s ridiculously huge; almost enough to make one seem like a completely different person.
I think I’ve managed to pin down my particular anxiety with eye contact to “I don’t know what looks natural, so if I try to make eye contact it’ll only look worse/creepier than avoiding it completely”.
Last night it came upon me that I shouldn’t just operate on this theory without checking if it’s true. So, people who actually do the eye contact thing/notice faces: which reads as worse to you, awkward eye contact (which might include staring for too long), or no eye contact at all?
I have the exact same problem. Anyone want to help us out?
From someone who notices faces: awkward. definitely awkward. If you’re really good at face watching, try to time your glances away so they match the other person’s saccades, b/c then eye contact seems seamless and normal.
Depends on the context, I would say. My default assumption with people I interact with might operate so that awkward signals “I’m trying to pass as neurotypical because it’s instrumental for my goals, and I haven’t perfected it YGM” while avoidance signals “I’m uncomfortable with the strange customs of this foreign species, please be aware of it and accommodate”.
Avoidance makes one less threatening if one has that kind of a problem (at least for me; my limbic system prefers people who are big and have testosterone-dominant endocrine systems to err on the side of avoidance and that’s blatantly unfair but until I get bodymods to equalize physical disparities my lizard brain is going to keep being a lizard brain) but otherwise I’d probably recommend that people favor awkward with people who don’t understand; especially if one has any confidence in their ability to learn the rules of natural-seeming eye contact consciously and thus become better at it over time.
Obviously, individual situation matters; if awkward is too stressful it would be perfectly rational to ration it only for the most important situations.
Then again, anything I say about social interaction should be taken with a 200-gram sodium chloride monocrystal because edge cases etc.
please somebody cure mesolexia so everyone will STOP BEING SO FRUSTRATINGLY SLOW
Yes! The mesolexia activists may say it’s just a normal variance in human abilities but they’re ignoring those of us who desperately do want a cure for ourselves (tbh not sure if fully mesolexic myself but definitely on the spectrum). Remember, they are the privileged ones who don’t suffer from their mesability and generalize it upon everyone, impairing our chances at getting our individual needs and desires met!
Mum: Finding hair-dresser that can do braids shouldn’t have to be hard work … send out plea on yr blog and see what yr fan-dom can find ( :
Me: My fandom which has, as far as I can tell, 0 black people?
Me: (I swear this was unintentional)
Mum: yes, but this would be a treasure hunt … who has black friends? or who can acquire black friends fast enough to help Alison with her braids? ( :
Mum: or at the very least acquire information about black people … …
Mum: You’d be helping them broaden their cultural horizons … .
Me: I am putting this conversation on Tumblr.
Mum: oh yr wicked!
Me: Winner gets to add me to their (probably tiny, but growing!) pool of black friends
Hey, I kind of know (we’re working in the same conspiracy together, never met her IRL though because I’m an internet ghost to a lot of people) like one black person who I think has the relevant kind of hair (and who probably knows where to find someone who can braid… so the upper bound for the distance within a suitable black friend-of-a-friend can be found is less than 9000km! Not very helpful but intersectional feminism is actually really useful sometimes. (now that I think of it I could like seriously try to leverage some connections to find someone who’s actually in the right hemisphere at least…)
@sinesalvatorem: I got a personal recommendation from someone suggesting that this place is not only actually in the right hemisphere and even the right region but also “the owners of the salon are two Eritrean women who are renowned in the area for braiding (esp Sesen)”. Does this count as winning?
For those of us who identify as villains, there are two kinds of stories, which I might call Luna stories and Lilith stories.
Luna stories are about the hero realizing that she’s in the wrong. Ozy talks about the ethical principle that you might be the baddies[1]. A Luna story is about self-doubt, and re-examining one’s assumptions, and redemption.
In a Luna story, something initially seems good, and then turns out to be evil.
Lilith stories are about the hero realizing that others are in the wrong. She’s taught a certain system of morality, either by a well-meaning society or by devious abusers, and gradually comes to see through it and recognize its flaws. She casts off what she has been taught about good and evil, and fashions for herself a truer and stronger morality in its place. She makes choices that result in her being called a villain, but we can see that she is a hero in truth.
In a Lilith story, something initially seems evil, and then turns out to be good.
Both of these stories are necessary.
The distinction can sometimes be blurry. But we always must have both.
I’m starting to come around to something like anti-horseshoe theory, where the US is in an uncanny valley between two different ways of ordering a society and they’re both better than what we’ve got.
Take schools. In libertarian utopia, everybody pays whoever they want to to educate their kids. In socialist utopia, everybody in the state pays into a general fund, which funds a bunch of schools, with all of them receiving equal resources. In America, each school is funded by the property taxes of the people immediately surrounding it. People who can afford to pay lots of property tax don’t want to live in districts where other people can’t, so they set up lots of zoning barriers to turn “public” schools into effectively private schools. And in doing so, they don’t just fuck up schools, they fuck up the housing market, they fuck up ease of relocation, they fuck up the national economy.
Or take medicine. My girlfriend needs to get a doctor to blast ultrasound at her kidney stone, but she’s between jobs. In libertarian utopia, she goes to a urologist today, pays them some money, and the kidney stone goes away. In socialist utopia, she’s already gone to her doctor, been referred to a urologist, and had the kidney stone destroyed. But as it is, she has no coverage, and has to wait weeks to find a way to see a urologist.
The uncanny valley is really wide though, as even a “scandinavian socialist utopia” in which it’s supposed to be the latter of those two cases (with a strong emphasis on the ‘supposed’ because the de facto ends up being closer to the middle) falls deep into it when it comes to a lot of things.
Take my life situation. In socialist utopia, I’d be having a basic income I could easily live off while growing my skills, and when I’m making wicked $$$$ I’d pay taxes to fund the system. In libertarian utopia, I’d enter an agreement with my bank/insurance company that they lend me $600 a month to cover my basic living expenses and help me acquire marketable skills, and once I’m selling those the bank would be entitled to some fraction of my income, lessening over time and increasing as my income increases to incentivize them to train me to be really profitable really fast. In the social democratic mess of a means-tested illfare state, I’m literally told by the state to live off my friends or stop training my skills and get a bullshit mcjob instead because without the right paperwork and studying stuff the right and correct and Officially Approved™ and not-promethea-compatible way I’m ineligible for any support at all. Nonetheless I’m obligated to pay obscenely high taxes, to support a system that has mostly just thrown me under the bus repeatedly, unless I route around them which I’m technically not supposed to do even though the state is really wink-nudgeing when it says so.
In fact I suppose this describes my political leanings pretty well; my ideology is something like 90% either-of-those-instead-of-this-bullshit-we-have-now-ism.
Got denied every single form of personal welfare because the social bureaucratic illfare state is unable to comprehend my situation (come on, I’m simply learning skills while ignoring credentialist bullshit, it shouldn’t be that hard to understand even for socdems), and the advice at the social security agency was literally “beg from friends, then take your tax money somewhere more deserving when you start making it”.
The obvious solution is to register myself as a corporation, because corporate welfare is far more generous than personal welfare around here (it wouldn’t be too much of a simplification to say that every single cent collected in corporate taxes goes back to politically favoured businesses in subsidies and deductions; this is defended as “keeping the important sectors afloat” aka they are literally and blatantly taking money from the successful entrepreneurs and businesses and distributing to cronies and unsuccessful ones who serve the bureaus instead of the markets).
If I start a holding company that sells my “unpaid” labour to other businesses and creates profit to its owners, I can not only apply for startup subsidies (basically a modestly-but-sufficiently-sized basic income for 6-18 months!) but also avoid a lot of taxes later on when I actually start earning money and routing it as dividends instead of wages (no payroll taxes for pensions, unemployment insurance etc. for redwashed rentiers; this worker won’t let the holders of political capital steal their surplus value). The risk is simply that entrepreneurs are totally and utterly ineligible for any personal benefits at all (save for rent subsidies which simply mean I’m paying effectively 95€ a month for housing instead of the nominal 320€), which is already exactly my situation so I have literally nothing to lose here (except some money for the paperwork).
Mum: Finding hair-dresser that can do braids shouldn’t have to be hard work … send out plea on yr blog and see what yr fan-dom can find ( :
Me: My fandom which has, as far as I can tell, 0 black people?
Me: (I swear this was unintentional)
Mum: yes, but this would be a treasure hunt … who has black friends? or who can acquire black friends fast enough to help Alison with her braids? ( :
Mum: or at the very least acquire information about black people … …
Mum: You’d be helping them broaden their cultural horizons … .
Me: I am putting this conversation on Tumblr.
Mum: oh yr wicked!
Me: Winner gets to add me to their (probably tiny, but growing!) pool of black friends
Hey, I kind of know (we’re working in the same conspiracy together, never met her IRL though because I’m an internet ghost to a lot of people) like one black person who I think has the relevant kind of hair (and who probably knows where to find someone who can braid… so the upper bound for the distance within a suitable black friend-of-a-friend can be found is less than 9000km! Not very helpful but intersectional feminism is actually really useful sometimes. (now that I think of it I could like seriously try to leverage some connections to find someone who’s actually in the right hemisphere at least…)
Canada is a country north of the United States. They are known for having a low population density and exporting maple syrup. Americans often talk about moving to them when US politics swings right.
Canada is a country north of the United States. She is known for having a low population density and exporting maple syrup. Americans often talk about moving to her when US politics swings right.
Canada is a country north of the United States. It is known for having a low population density and exporting maple syrup. Americans often talk about moving to it when US politics swings right.
Presented for comparison.
It. Definitely it.
(then again my native language uses it for everything and it may be coloring my perceptions of what sounds right but that’s exactly how it should work)
You know what I want to see more of in sci fi? Aliens who deviate from their species’ “norm.”
Like, queer aliens, but queer in alien terms; like, aliens whose typical family unit is a trio comprised of three different gendersexes, but sometimes aliens will form trios that only have two different gendersexes, and they still produce viable offspring, but only of the two parent gendersexes, and that carries a social stigma because each gendersex is supposed to play a separate role in the family unit.
Aliens for whom it is the norm to change gendersex upon reaching a certain age, but sometimes (possibly due to a genetic anomaly) it doesn’t happen, so those aliens either a) continue to present as a juvenile gender despite being a stage 2 adult, b) present as a stage 2 adult despite their physical characteristics, or c) undergo medical procedures to change their body artificially, though the technology in that area is still imperfect.
Or disabled aliens who have prosthetic tails/fins/wings/tentacles/etc. Aquatic aliens who can’t hold their breath for an accepted amount of time and so have to carry around atmosphere tanks. Aliens with degenerative conditions that are slowly losing their infrared vision. Aliens who lack their species trademark color-changing camouflage skin. Aliens who are allergic to common foods on their own planets and are frustrated that interplanetary restaurants don’t take that into account when listing which menu items are “safe” for which species.
Neurodivergent aliens who are not connected to the hivemind, who do their best to blend in and guess what they are supposed to be doing, but who are cast out when they are discovered, only to have their numbers build up enough that they are able to build a society on their own using communication aids such as verbal or manual language.
Aliens who are just different in small ways, like generally all three eyes are different colors, except that rare genetic quirks sometimes cause two or even all three to be the same color. Aliens born with five fingers instead of four. Aliens who are more coordinated with their prehensile toes than with their hands, which is inconvenient when most products are designed to be used with hands, but they manage. Aliens born with vestigial wings instead of just residual bone nubs. Aliens born without horns or tusks or spines.
and okay, so I’m basically arguing for more diverse representation of aliens, but like, if our default mode of thinking is to assume that all members of a species are a certain way, then what does that say about how we view our own species? that only ones who follow certain norms qualify as “human”?
or whatever maybe i just think that thinking about this sort of stuff is cool.
It’s interesting to think about the (many) ways in which the modern “bay-area rationalist techno-libertarian” culture (i.e. Scott Alexander’s Grey Tribe, and to a lesser extent all of STEM academia) is effectively an outgrowth not of the bourgeoisie “entrepreneurial” class identified with the American upper-middle, but rather of the historical-and-present military officer class. Examples:
seeing things in terms of game-theory, negotiations, and logistics—in est, in terms of strategy;
breaking debates down into positive vs. normative subcomponents, and then setting out to solve the positive subcomponent; thus, technocratic politics;
the default assumption of meritocracy, and the belief (against evidence) that organizations with many members from this class will naturally end up meritocratic;
thinking in terms of capability rather than intent or policy, e.g. “the only thing stopping the state from seeing your data is encryption”, or “the only thing stopping nuclear war is MAD”;
the whole notion that while the world is suboptimal on a macro-political level, this is fixable through strength of arms: directly through war, or indirectly through technological innovation. Culture is the thing presumed to be immutable and worked around—an attitude foreign to most every other class, who think of culture as the first and only viable battleground for macro-political change;
an enjoyment of futurism (i.e. speculative fiction, X-risk debates) but also Futurism (the aesthetic of early speculative fiction, of games like Portal and Bioshock, of clean elegant spaceships and “fixed” transhuman genomes.) This is the only class that sees nothing wrong with the concept of a “supersoldier.” (It assumes the advances will turn the crank of genomics tech, which will result in the positive macro-political shifts mentioned above);
the ideal of Heinlein’s competent man, completely autonomous, able to restart civilization from its bootstraps—not quite a Nietzschean übermensch, since the philosophy and beliefs of the “competent man” are mostly irrelevant—it is instead the skill-set that matters, and its concentration all in one (or rather, every) individual;
the drawing of a sharp division between “officer-quality” and “enlisted-quality” people, where the distinction comes down not to acculturation into this officer class, but to potential: raw intelligence and willingness to learn, but not to labor (i.e. the ability to be the “competent man”, and then—having gained the knowledge to do so—the desire and analytical capacity to properly delegate to others who have a comparative advantage in those skills, rather than to do them oneself);
for the above reason reason, the highest likelihood of any class to hire skilled laborers and tradesmen or pay for services, instead of attempting to do “amateur” work themselves. The numerous profitable startups serving exclusively the “rich SV engineer who wants to automate something” crowd can attest to this. (Though, as above, this class first seeks to understand the work that will be done, such that they can then observe and evaluate the performance of the contractor or service. This leads to many a tradesman being “told how to do their job” by members of this class whenever they do something nonstandard);
the scouting for un-acculturated members, with an explicit path to acculturate them, vis. officer training schools, or coding bootcamps. This is one of the few classes (the only?) that almost universally encourages, and attempts to facilitate entry into it. This class doesn’t see people in the other classes as doing something inherently “bad” that must be corrected. Instead, it sees most people as being in their “proper” class, the one that fits them—but sees the “officer-quality” people who are in some other class as being in the “wrong” class, and assumes they will feel much better when “rescued” by this class. (Which is at least sometimes true; many who were bullied in a differently-classed public school do feel “rescued” when they enter a STEM program in university.)
Remember, Silicon Valley was a DARPA project center first, and the startups there are the diaspora. SV and Bay-area culture is military-officer culture.
If you identify strongly with characters like Miles Vorkosigan and Ender Wiggin, it might do to ask yourself how much of that is a feeling of identification with a member of a class you didn’t realize you were in.
Sounds very pattern-matchable and The One Which Watches The Watchers is demanding controls to calibrate for confirmation bias: my prior is for the “STEM class” to be pattern-matchable to quite a lot of the classical classes in exactly the same way. Heck, I’m even pattern-matching it into the land-owning aristocrats of pre-industrial times.
I don’t know which one made me more pleased today: the fact that I was able to afford not only weightless hypertechnology space-metal cyborg glasses (from a local small business even) but also post-apocalyptic mad scientist sunglasses (yes, exactly the ones you’re thinking of; you know, those worn by the person who’s our best hope at getting out of this mess but might kind of have been responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place); or the fact that the optician recognized the IT ME -ness of the latter exactly as quickly as I did. This is so the æsthetic and other people are seeing it too :3
(also, do you have any idea how hard it is to shop for new glasses when the shops have sections “for men” and “for women” but none “for androgynous cyborgs”? I wasted pretty much several entire days looking for something suitable because of this severe suboptimality in the universe)
I am all for basic income, I think it’s a great thing, the “non-reformist reform” that leftists ought to embrace. But.
I’ve been hanging out mostly with techno-libertarian types for a good while now - all wonderful folks, yes, I mean you, y’all just great -
- and I increasingly cannot shake the impression that propping up empty talk of ~basic income~ to every instance of economic oppression and misery is a lot like the internet bolshevik staple of ~we won’t have this problem after the Revolution~. And meanwhile, in the here and now, it is very easy to use it to brush aside lesser, economically Bad suggestions, dismiss ongoing workers’ struggles as misguided, etc, etc.
Like, tell me I’m just being uncharitable and gloomy and ideologically obsessed here. But seeing one post after another ending with “maybe, some indeterminate time in the blissful future, We shall be able to dole out enough for everyone to survive on - after scrapping every current social program everywhere and attaining efficiency and getting rid of Crony Capitalism” - well, it’s enough to see a pattern. I don’t know what it means, but it’s vaguely alarming.
And also… there is never a roadmap or even the most vague sense of how to get from here to there. How to deal with elite resistance to redistribution and capital flight, how to square it with another professed (and likewise worthy) techno-libertarian goal of open borders, etc, etc. There’s rarely anything at all written on this. Again, this is why ~basic income~ alarmingly resembles a hand-wave more than a goal.
After? Who said “after”? The way I use it is as a perfect bargaining chip: You want to scrap the minimum wage? okay sure, as long as we get basic income as a replacement, not as a vague future speculation. Bust the regulatory capture of corporatism (HAVE I MENTIONED IT’S ILLEGAL TO HIRE ANYONE IN FINLAND FOR LESS THAN WHAT THE UNIONS AND BIG BUSINESSES HAVE AGREED AMONG EACH OTHER, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THE WORKER WOULD PREFER A LOWER WAGE TO UNEMPLOYMENT THIS IS A SOCDEM HATEBLOG AFTER ALL)? yeah, we could look at that once we have our UBI. Stop paying people welfare to get rid of incentive traps? a marvellous idea, only when accompanied with the basic income to replace the welfare.
It’s not like we need to attain magical future hypercapitalist efficiency to sustain it; in Finland all it would take is to stop playing the fucking musical chairs with the half a million different forms of welfare (all implications intended) and just give everyone a seat on the couch (THIS IS A SOCDEM HATEBLOG, REMEMBER) and the remaining need for adjustment of the national budget would be smaller than the cuts the current PM is doing. And it needs to be done alongside the other things, not left as a vague promise for the future, and that’s why we’re so noisy about it because it needs to be done RIGHT NOW before the sinking illfare state takes any more people with it. And in a staggeringly surprising display of competence from the normally witless cronyists in our government they’re actually preparing to test basic income soon™ and I’m just chewing through my teeth in anticipation of how they will fuck that one up because so far everything else the government has done has been a gigantic fuck-up (except deregulating the opening hours of grocery stores because even stopped clocks and so on…).
The Greens (basically the coalition of SWPL blues and the local equivalent of SV technolibertarian greys alike, which results in some weird things) have a roadmap. The Party Formerly Known as the Communist Party (after the Communist Party lost all its money speculating in the stock market) has a roadmap. The libertarian wing of the Crony Capitalist Party (because they were left without a political home after the Liberal Party joined the Redneck Party and had to choose the least disagreeable alternative) has a roadmap. Even the Redneck Party (which is nominally a liberal party and don’t ask me why because it hates free markets and gays, loves agricultural and regional subsidies and conservative values, and is like half controlled by a cult which forces women to be baby-making machines by banning contraception and stigmatizing singles, gays, trans people and anything else that stands between them and paperclipping the universe with white assigned-christian-at-birth babies (unsurprisingly, they tend to drop out of the cult just as fast as the cultmothers drop out more so no demographic takeover has happened in the last two centuries but they certainly have been trying)) wants it. Pretty much the only thing stopping it from happening is (aside from the question of how exactly the Popular Front of Judea is going to be named) the Social Bureaucratic Party (THIS IS WHY THIS IS A SOCIAL DEMOCRACY HATEBLOG) which loves equality and therefore is very invested in maintaining the means-tested welfare systems and redwashed rentiers establishing an ironclad class division between the middle class and the precariat.
So if basic income is the equivalent of “after the revolution”, we’re realistically at “red guards, stockpile weapons and ammo; Lenin is returning from exile and the german armies are keeping the state occupied” instead of “the revolutionary club of Berkeley celebrates its fiftieth year of talking enthusiastically about the imminent overthrow of the bourgeois devils”.
Basic income is no more subject to resistance to redistribution than the unholy mess we have now. It’s no more subject to capital flight. Those are completely orthogonal problems, all basic income would be is allocating the tax money the state already takes a lot better in ways which both the (actually value-creating instead of rentseeking) businesses and the (actually value-creating instead of rentseeking) workers would both find preferable, and it would also help those who can’t provide for themselves on the market far better than the bullshit we have now.
I'm doing backend work on this software and we had a discussion on colorblind friendly ui (there's a lot of types of colorblindness) and our project lead just closed the ticket as insignificant and linked to a bunch of articles on male privilege
Okay, we’re having too many collisions here, so here’s the updated Official Rationalist Tumblr Argument Schedule. Please remember to stick to the schedule unless you’ve applied for special dispensation.
non-stop: talk about something you’re talented at, or even just something you can do very quickly and efficiently
Optimizing, seeing opportunities and possibilities and exploring ideas to their most exploitable conclusions.
In practice this turns out most commonly to mean that when I have an audience (one or more people) I am familiar with, or can predict enough, to know their predispositions; in a sufficiently non-prejudiced state of mind; and a suitable channel of communication, I can convince them of quite unexpected things by playing around with the style of what I’m saying while keeping the substance fundamentally the same.
Another, strongly related, thing is that I have quite decent metacognition I’ve cultivated over the years to gain awareness of and access into the deeper parts of my brain. While it’ll always be a work in progress, I’m able to do the same kind of things to myself and self-modify in some pretty promising ways. I’ve tied my sense of self-worth not into any object-level feature but into the highest meta, of seeing promethea as a terrible kludge of deterministic mechanisms and intertwined levers that I should, and most importantly am allowed to, mechanistically manipulate in ways that work without being tied to counterproductive value judgements about them. I can be biased and irrational, I can do political posturing to save face while figuring out sneaky ways to turn things around, I can fail again and again and again and sometimes be even too exhausted to bother trying to improve, and it’s perfectly okay and doesn’t reflect badly on me because that’s what everyone deep down is and I’m already better than most if I at least admit it. On the most fundamental level my utility function is simply playing with the cards it was dealt the best it can to maximize expected value and in practice this turns out to be ultimately pretty well.
say no to this: what’s your biggest guilty pleasure?
Guilt is a counterproductive feeling, one to be optimized away. I suppose this could refer to things I enjoy but might not want to admit out loud for status or political reasons, or to things I enjoy and spend a lot of time doing but would rather self-modify away from or at the very least hack into a more synergistically exploitable form that simultaneously furthens my other goals.
I obviously can’t say publicly what the first things would be because so many people don’t understand these things and giving away such information could hurt me, if I have such things. Of course, even admitting to having such things could be a mistake as well because things can be deduced from even the existence of such information. For game-theoretical reasons the only right way to deal with such things publicly is by making the information content as close to zero as possible. These things might be something that would make group A laugh at me, or they might be something that would make group B scorn me, or they would seriously compromise my credibility with group C, or maybe I don’t actually have such things but think that even ambitious people should be allowed to be unique human beings, beautiful with their warts and all, instead of having to sanitize their entire existence into the flawed and phony perfection of ideological purity and thus am helping such people by placing myself in the same reference class out of solidarity even if I myself might not actually have such flaws. Nobody can know, and I am definitely not telling. The only winning move is not to play. Checkmate, status gamists everywhere.
The second one is easy to answer: pointless political debates with people who are Wrong On The Internet, especially social democrats (a curious combination of the narcissism of small differences and actual fundamental disagreements on deeper facts and values; pretty much exactly the finnish equivalent of silicon valley technoliber(al)tarians yelling at SWPL liberals) and other statists and paternalists and people who say they are egalitarians but whose actions hurt those who are already being hurt by so many other things as well. No matter how little I could actually change things by debating the same things endlessly with people I know are never going to change. That one I’m hacking into aiding in my ambitions as networking with interesting people, gaining PR points and cultivating an image and establishing a personal brandsorry I seriously can’t say that one with a straight face how on earth do people come up with this stuff it’s so hilarious is anyone ever actually serious when they say such things haha wow.
alexander hamilton: what are some things you want more people to know about you? aaron burr, sir: when was the last time you met someone who changed your life? my shot: talk about something you’re determined to accomplish before you die. the story of tonight: talk about some of the best times you’ve had with friends. the schuyler sisters: do you have any siblings? if so, what are they like? farmer refuted: do you ever send letters in the mail? you’ll be back: when was the last time you were dumped? right hand man: who do you look up to most? a winter’s ball: what was the last party you went to like? helpless: when was the last time you had a crush that really hit you hard? satisfied: what has been the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? the story of tonight reprise: do you have any friends who are married? wait for it: what’s something you’re really longing for? stay alive: have you ever had any near-death experiences? ten duel commandments: have you ever been in a physical fight with anyone? meet me inside: talk about a time you got in big trouble with an authority figure that would be enough: do you prefer an eventful or a peaceful life? guns and ships: who is your greatest partner in crime? history has its eyes on you: talk about the best teacher you’ve ever had yorktown: talk about a time you struggled but came out on top what comes next?: are you anxious about the future? dear theodosia: what’s one nice thing you wish you could say to someone right now? non-stop: talk about something you’re talented at, or even just something you can do very quickly and efficiently what’d i miss: do you suffer from fomo (fear of missing out)? cabinet battle #1: do you enjoy debating or arguing with people? take a break: if you could run anywhere for a getaway, where would you go and who would you take with you? say no to this: what’s your biggest guilty pleasure? the room where it happens: talk about a group you would love to be a part of, whether it’s an official group or a group of people schuyler defeated: how do you feel about changing yourself and your image in order to succeed? cabinet battle #2: are you a person that helps yourself, or others first? washington on your side: who is the most important or influential person you’ve ever been friends with? one last time: do you have a hard time quitting things or saying goodbye? i know him: do you enjoy talking smack? the adams administration: talk about a time you’ve clashed with authority we know: do you enjoy gossip? hurricane: what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever managed to make it through in life? the reynolds pamphlet: do you prefer keeping secrets, or being an open book? burn: talk about a time you’ve felt betrayed blow us all away: can you hold yourself back when you hear people speaking badly about someone you like/love? stay alive reprise: have you ever lost anyone? it’s quiet uptown: where do you like to go to think or brood? the election of 1800: do you think it’s important to vote? your obedient servant: how do you feel about passive-aggression? best of wives and best of women: do you prefer sleeping alone or with someone else? the world was wide enough: talk about a time you had to make a decision and ultimately made the wrong one who lives, who dies, who tells your story: how do you want to be remembered when you’re gone?
I suspect ask memes might be a good way to get into the knowing-people-a-bit-better thing, something that’s definitely relevant to my interests.
a lot of SJ is weirdly soft on privileged people. like “oh, cis people have to do a continual process of unlearning transphobia overcoming the social conditioning of an entire society! it is so difficult!” no, actually, not being a transphobe is not that hard, it’s just that a lot of cis people don’t do it
i think this is the first time i’ve seen you criticise sj for not being stereotypical sj enough
MOAR STALINZ PLZ!
The hardest thing about not being a transphobe is that I am a trans person myself and still am 100% confused about why certain things/people are being called transphobic.
If even I, a Smol Oppressed Tran, am confused about What Makes Something Transphobic in a fair number of cases, how exactly is Clueless Average CisJoe supposed to tell?
I’m 100% this too
And moreover I have some beliefs/ideas that help describe my trans experience and the experience of some of the people I know, but are VERY LOUDLY AND AGGRESSIVELY denounced as “gross” and “transphobic” by a vast, representative swathe of the internet ~trans community~.
Fuck that.
The way I personally conceive of these things, the OP and the last two reblogs are not necessarily opposed?
Like, I think there is this tension between versions of SJ that tell privileged people to “just listen to marginalized people” and versions that tell them “unlearn your privileges, educate yourself, level up in non-oppressiveness”
I favor the former versions, because they can deal gracefully with the fact that marginalized people don’t actually agree about everything, and because the latter often turns into this never-ending Mundum-like injunction to become more and more “aware,” which leads privileged people to develop very specific beliefs about these issues and connect these beliefs to their self-worth (”I understand these complexities, so I’m possibly not a piece of shit”), and then get angry if and when these models don’t fit reality (”if your experience doesn’t fit my headcanon, then maybe I am a piece of shit”)
I’m not trying to say the problems mentioned by the last two posters are all the fault of cis people – not that I would know – but I do think the spread of these very complex, restrictive, difficult-to-understand versions of concepts is related to some people’s need for an ever-ascending scale of ways to be more “aware.”
and it is super-weird because while SJ legitimately might not care about (b)-(e) you would think they would at least manage to avoid (a)
Also, it’s incompatible with “not being a dickbag is such elementary stuff that it’s literally the basic minimum prerequisite for being a decent human being, not something you deserve extra credit ally cookies over”. Consistency, how does one do it.
I personally possibly endorse having a distinction between the layperson-accessible low-hanging fruit that should be an obligation to people, and the expert-level follow-the-theory-to-weird-places-to-see-if-there’s-something-there stuff that (e) kind of is about but with more self-awareness.
Physics would be an apt comparison; the layperson needs to know enough to not cause harm via bad policy or shitty decisions, and then there’s the experts who do things like “let’s check out if the universe is actually an 11-dimensional hologram and see what the implications would be for stuff we could engineer out of it, and also if you don’t know what you’re doing just don’t do it because we don’t want people doing really embarrassing amateur quantum physics”.
All in all SJ needs to acknowledge that this distinction is possible and allowable and not everyone should try to be an expert in hardcore intersectionalist gender theory any more than people need to be experts in quantum physics. I suspect a lot of the frustration around (e) comes from people thinking they need to keep track of constantly shifting shibboleths but can’t do it that well, but can’t admit it because of signaling pressures to keep up with the cutting edge and as a result end up sounding like Deepak Chopra when they espouse what’s basically a cargo-cult version of last year’s cutting edge instead of being like “I’m not an expert in this stuff but I trust the physicists when they say nuclear power isn’t actually that horrible” as they should.
It’s probably useful to have some small subset of people chasing theory to weird places just to see if there are some useful insights to be found, but they should recognize that that’s what it is and that it’s a completely different thing from the minimum criteria for a decent human being. Also, this feels like an interesting hack for replacing the stick with a carrot; instead of being just barely decent human beings while everyone else is horribly failing at it the experts could feel like high-status people who are successfully doing something cool and rare while others are okay too, and only the ones who do the Deepak Chopra quantum physics woo equivalent of gender theory, like TERFs, need to be scorned.
[epistemic status: literally inconclusive but feeling like putting some strong intuitions into words and generating important insights]
Convincing social democratic artists whose ingroup and paycheck literally depend on tax-funded subsidies that a libertarian market-based approach is the only truly egalitarian way of funding art and avoid contributing to marginalization. How troll can one get?
