The Origin Story
Since this seems to be a thing, here’s how a promethea acquired a social life:
> Be born to the shittiest R-tribe shithole that ever R’d
> feelsbadenbie.png
Depression +1
Self-esteem -1
> Be too good for school
> In other words, have your childhood completely wasted on trivial bullshit because nothing is a worthy challenge
> Not even being the best in [redacted] even though you thought you totally sucked in it; others simply sucked even more
Achievement unlocked: Less incompetent than everyone else
Cynicism +1
> First experience with pornography: /d/ and /u/ on 4chan
> sm0lethea gets extremely unrealistic expectations about future sexual parters, such as “they might be really pretty lesbians, some of whom have penises”
Lesbianity +1
> Finish school one year younger than most, thus being too young for some [redacted] awesome stuff. Finland: not even once.
Cynicism +1
> Go to university at 17 because you didn’t have the opportunity to finish school several years earlier than most
> A surprise ADHD and anxiety disorder appears
Depression +1
Self-esteem -1
> Find LessWrong back when the sequences were still fresh
> Be so jelly
> Nonetheless manage to win free utility by realizing you’re not a man while still young, androgynous and neotenic
> Can pinpoint the exact location of “The 12 Virtues of Rationality” which made you basically be like “okay I know where this is heading so I might as well go there straight away”
Lesbianity +1
> Doctors gonna doctor
> In other words, bullshit gatekeepers
> Get your own meds illegally
Cynicism +1
Depression -1
Will to Power +1
> Customs steals your meds
You have acquired the following item: Criminal Record
Achievement unlocked: Fight da power
Edginess +1
> Yell at doctors until they give you meds
> It’s not very effective
> Buy meds on the street
Edginess +1
> Get a private doctor who only cares about money to give you meds
Cynicism +1
> Find a person, who due to her lack of known tumblr presence shall be simply called E, on the internets
> She’s in America, neither has money to fly across the pond
> Agree to have cuddles when either has money and opportunity
Lesbianity +1
> Go change your name
> The state be like “lol nope”
> Forge some documents to change your name
> The state be like “okay then”
Cynicism +1
> Go change your legal gender and have your gonads cut off
> State-sanctioned monopoly clinic is like “lol nope, not ryal wymyn ynough”
> (Previously on state-sanctioned monopoly clinic: “of course you can tell the truth, it won’t hurt you”)
Depression +1
Cynicism +1
> Yell at people online
Edginess +1
You have acquired the following item: Fan Club
> Wait, what’s that, how did this happen
> Yell at some other people
Will to Power +1
You have acquired the following item: Political Following
Depression -1
Self-esteem +1
> Wait, what’s that, how did this happen
> Find yelling at people less interesting now, read from its downsides on SSC
Edginess -1
Achievement unlocked: update on evidence
> Go back to state-sanctioned monopoly clinic, yell at them and threaten to sue them, and the state, and everyone
> Suddenly extremely cooperative
> Get a lot of scaremongering about how nobody will let disgusting enbies change gender or be operated even if they have the mandatory doctors’ letters
> Find out nobody outside the GIC gives a shit or even knows the difference between F64.0 and F64.8 and they were just bullshitting you as always
Cynicism +1
> Get random message on the internet
> It’s E, she has money and opportunity and is coming for the cuddles now
> No contact in over 2 years
> No activity in my account in over 2 years
> She’s nuts
> Her coworkers think she’s nuts
> She thinks she’s nuts
> There’s a pretty strong consensus on that
> She’s a quantum physicist, a rocket scientist and a silicon valley programmer
> I’m a NEET
> nopressure.png
use Fan Club
use Political Following
use Criminal Record
> Somehow she’s impressed by my stories
> Wait, what’s that, how did this happen
Self-esteem +1
> Read stuff on SSC
> “But as a proud black transgender triracial inverse bisexual anti-monogamite…”
> There apparently is someone like that, lemme check them out this sounds entertaining
> Wow
You have acquired the following items: GWWC Pledge; Basic Comprehension of Yiddish; Knowledge of Your Obvious Nemesis; No Regrets
> E comes to visit
> Proves to be an actually existing person
Lesbianity +1
> On the second morning we’re discussing importing me to SF
> Programmers make how much money over there
You have acquired the following item: Future Prospects
> SF is also the place where all the cool people live
> They are actually existing persons
> I am going to be where the cool people are
> There is only one rational way to respond to this situation
> nopressure.png
> Stories are currency, right? I’ll just bargain for popularity because they seem to be worth something
use Knowledge of Your Obvious Nemesis
use Political Following
use GWWC Pledge
You have acquired the following items: Tumblr Account; 2 Party Invitations
You have gained the following superpower: Assertiveness and Confidence
Self-esteem +1
> justasplanned.png
> Go to SF
> Meet the people
> #it me everywhere
You have acquired the following items: Social Life; Place That Feels Like Home; Immigrant Status
You have gained the following superpower: Programming Skills
You have lost the following attributes: Depression
Self-esteem +1
> Return to Finland
> Illfare state bullshit everywhere
> Desperate to get back to SF ASAP because everything is better there
Will to Power +1
You have leveled up the following superpower: Programming Skills
5/5 would recommend to everyone
3 months ago · tagged #user's guide to interacting with a promethea #bitching about the country of birth #it me #where did all these brainclones suddenly appear from · 10 notes · .permalink
How I found rationalist tumblr/a social life, the long version
rusalkii:
severnayazemlya:
ilzolende:
rusalkii:
[disclaimer- I’m in a really weird easily excitable mood right now, this is written really weirdly. Will probably be very embarrassed about this later.]
Kira finds link to Slate Star Codex that some person put in a list of their favorite blogs.
It might’ve been in the comment section of Wait But Why, might have been on reddit.
Kira goes, “hmm, sounds cool”.
Kira reads a few of Scott Alexander’s posts.
Kira goes “!!!!”.
Kira binges a good half of his archives.
Kira reads the comments.
Kira goes “Oh my god a comment section that doesn’t make me want to wipe humanity from the face of the earth”.
“who are these people and where have they been hiding for my whole life?”
Kira obsessively stalks SSC’s comment section for maybe a month.
Kira finds LW, the Sequences, and HPMOR.
Kira is useless for the next two weeks, can be seen reading her Kindle, ranting at her Kindle, and threatening to throw her Kindle at a wall.
Kira develops obsession/special interest in anything related to rationalists.
Kira finds Ozy’s blog, Scott’s twitter, figures out he has a tumblr, finds his tumblr, finds Ozy’s tumblr.
Goes ”!!!!! I can talk to these people!!!“.
make a tumblr.
follows rationalist blogs.
lurks
lurks more
lurks some more
“this Alison @sinesalvatorem person sounds really cool…”
“wait a minute I can talk to her”
“this is a thing I can do”
“wait no that’s scary”
“form letters. She has form letters. I can do form letters.”
Kira sends form letter.
Kira freaks out because that’s embarrassing.
Alison responds.
“!!!!!!” thinks Kira.
a few days later:“oh my god she likes me?”
“is this flirting? I think this is flirting”
“how do I flirt back oh my god this stressful”
“wait. did that work. are we actually dating? For real? In real life? Wait, so this means I’m gay. And poly. OK, that’s a thing I can do.”
“!!!!!!!!!”
Kira proceeds to be extremely surprised by this for the next month or so.
Kira then realizes that she can talk to other people.
Kira also realizes that it’s probably a good idea to actually post original content, because people who do that are much more interesting and then people are more likely to talk to me.
@inquisitivefeminist sends me a message!
I effortpost at @socialjusticemunchkin and we talk!
I send the most awkward hello of all time to @sdhs-rationalist. We talk. And then we talk more. And then we meet IRL. And then I figure out that hugs are possibly the best thing yet invented.
@ghostofasecretary sends me a message!
@ilzolende talks to me! @pistachi0n sends me a message! @segfaultvicta talked to me! I talk to @futureresearcheralex! @somnilogical sends me a random heart and puns about replies in my direction! Other people who I might have forgotten talk to me!
Suddenly I have a social life, which I’m still confused by.
#as you can see Ii am unreasonably excited by people talking to me #and also just unreasonably excited right now #this is why you don’t drink coffee kira #people come talk to me I’m vaguely less weird than I sound here #or more weird #i’m not entirely sure #notes for my future biography
I wouldn’t call it unreasonable to be excited by people talking to you. I used to think I was just an introvert and I spent an entire year having basically 0 friends/friend-like acquaintances, and all the social contact I get from the LW Diaspora has been really amazing for me too.
one of the posts i have decidedly not been meaning to write for ages because writing at all is probably unvirtuous is b. about that
it’s actually about “introversion doesn’t really real and if you think you’re an introvert it’s probably just that for whatever reason you find the people around you too cognitively taxing to be worth the effort of interacting with them, and the reason is probably either anxiety or thedish distance, except anxiety is fed by thedish distance.”
So I have no idea what thedish distance is, but as anecdata supporting the rest of your point: Since I’m currently on a terrible caffeine high (because I never learn, apparently), all my social filters and inhibitions are completely down, and I have been absurdly social. Talking to multiple people at once, completely invested in all the conversations, really excited about every single one, not frantically re-reading everything I write worried that it’ll make me look bad, etc. That’s the only reason I was even able to make the original post at all, because I wasn’t worrying about how people would see it. So yeah, conversation right now are unusually easy for me, and if it was like this all the time I would be the most extroverted person I know, assuming an abundance of interesting people. And my entire post up there was me being really really excited about finding so many interesting people, so I doubt that would be a problem.
“Anxiety has fallen asleep at the wheel, send all the messages RIGHT NOW”
3 months ago · tagged #it me #user's guide to interacting with a promethea · 65 notes · source: rusalkii · .permalink
ozymandias271:
“The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.”
–Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
3 months ago · tagged #it me #at least a lot closer than most options people recognize #i never said my ideals and goals were consistent without post-scarcity economies #so the obvious solution is to build the post-scarcity · 24 notes · source: ozymandias271 · .permalink
socialjusticemunchkin asked: Hi! I noticed your post on pop radicalism and it really resonated; as it happens I'm exactly the kind of a person who actually tries to build and test some alternate institutions and systems. I also really like things that *seem* like hyperbole but I put my money where my mouth is and thus I have no choice but to actually live it and be the change I want to see instead of just talking about it. As a result I thought introducing myself a bit more personally might be a high-EV decision for both :3
exsecant:
socialjusticemunchkin:
exsecant:
I like where you’re headed with this. Would you mind telling me about some of your alternate institutions?
By EV, you mean expected value, right? I was thinking electron-volts at first, and it took me a few minutes to come up with something that makes a little more sense. :-)
Yes, expected value.
I’m basically working on stuff to substitute the state where it fails to serve the people it claims to serve.
I’ve seen firsthand the failures of the traditional welfare state, and creating some kind of mutual economic security mechanisms to replace its humiliating means-tested benefit schemes would be a really big deal. I don’t trust the state to handle the upcoming issues with automation-induced unemployment in any reasonable way, so I obviously must do it myself, and the faster I get it going the better prepared it will be.
Traditional welfare has a really big problem with incentives, structural unemployment, lack of dignity and feeling of self-determination etc.; traditional religions and extended families demand comformity far in excess of what’s reasonable, and restrict entry and exit in ways that expose people to risks of abuse; traditional workplaces have no place for people whose productivity isn’t high enough. Hacking that into something that can credibly guarantee people their basic needs, a sense of dignity and belonging, and opportunities for growing stronger and more productive, without imposing burdens to dogma, authorities etc. while still solving the problem of incentives would be very useful.
While I obviously don’t know what form it would ultimately take, I think it could be visualized as a decentralized network of small communes and individuals sharing common ideals; that unconditionally help other members but expect a reasonable contribution in return (and have some ways to enforce that if mutual solidarity is broken), while running their own businesses and offering other opportunities for contributing internally that aren’t restricted by the broken rules of state bureaucracies; and the system is backed by capital in minifacturing equipment and investments to supply people those basic needs as cheaply as possible and provide a stable source of income for things that need to be bought from the markets. And that system is enclosed within a shell of a corporation, a co-operative, or whatever is needed to interface the internals with the external society while minimizing the burdens of taxation etc. and giving it some high-level coordination mechanisms wherever those are needed. Solidarity, Inc. or something like that. At least this describes the general weirdness-space where I’m searching for solutions.
In more general terms, I expect it to require a combination of social engineering, business, and technology to create a system where incentives (when considering the known quirks of human psychology) are aligned towards stability, growth and co-operation.
David Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom pointed out that most workers could afford to simply buy out owners in a few years of sustained effort (in reality it wouldn’t be that mathematically neat as the increased demand for capital would drive prices up, further enrichen the initial owners, and possibly loop back into raising the prices even more); and after I got over the despair of “why the fuck has everyone on the left been ignoring this incredibly obvious solution forever just because it doesn’t look like the revolution they are looking for” I decided that I’m going to build something to solve the problem of people sitting on their asses, voting, and whining, instead of actually preparing for the post-labor future.
There’s the obvious problem of people barely able to provide for themselves even now, and who definitely can’t afford to invest, and hacking that is important as well. Regular forms of work severely restrict the ways people can create value to capture, and a lot of people are suffering from chronic hypo-opportunititis. An internal system without taxes, minimum wages, psychologically damaging environments etc. but instead an universal atmosphere of growing stronger and contributing in some way, even if the outside economy doesn’t appreciate it, would probably alleviate those issues substantially. Fostering social bonds makes it easier to support those who need it without having those who support them feel resentment towards “moochers”. Easy access to credit would help with the current situation where poor people can get desperate from even small debts because they can’t ever actually pay them, and if the system is built on a strong base of capital it can afford to absorb some inefficiencies to be more humane.
But what do the monetary contributors get from this? I’ve identified some interesting loopholes in the tax and pension laws of Finland which basically allow anyone to boost their wages 25% at the price of becoming ineligible for pensions (nobody born after 1980 is ever going to get any pensions anyway so it’s practically free), with some perfectly legal accounting tricks. Building a system to consistently deliver those returns would be worth solid cash, and I’m expecting a lot of countries and economic systems to have similar unexpected sources of exploitability hidden somewhere. Then there’s the opportunity of providing bureaucracy-resistant safety nets which many people with irregular incomes would probably gladly take. Then there’s pure altruism, community, being involved in a movement that’s going to Solve big structural problems instead of just talking about how they will be solved once idea X is pushed through the democratic political machinery or enforced with a revolution (I’m totally going to try to discredit the “our revolutionary discussion club celebrates its 50th anniversary of never getting shit done” style of activism), and the investment base I’m expecting to build (with the implication that people who start contributing early will get a bigger slice of the pie later once their jobs get automated away and they turn into recipients).
Basically, libertarians say that “the free market will figure out some way to make the poor not starve” and leftists protest that “it hasn’t happened yet, how on earth would it happen then” and here I am, being the free-market messiah rejecting the traditional political tug-of-war and pushing forward an extraordinary effort on the question of “how do we make it so that poor people don’t starve even if states fail and utopian revolutions fizzle out”. (It was really weird to realize that I was headed straight towards the magical three question marks between “1. Free markets” and “3. Poverty and destitution are solved” without consciously thinking of it that way; all I wanted to do was to do better than the government.) I’ve literally had an anarchist tell me that if my plans succeed history will probably remember me as an anarcho-capitalist (I don’t do labels. Boxes don’t work and words don’t feed people. All I care about is results.) and that they’re going to help me with making that happen anyway. Weird things happen around me.
Then I’m also the person who made the system in Finland de facto recognize that gender is self-determined when it comes to conscription and thus a person who’s legally male can still be exempt if they consistently insist that it’s simply not true, without needing any official papers “proving” it; and the person who forced the system to allow non-binary people to change their legal gender without pretending to be the other binary option.
And then there’s my practical transhumanism. Actually taking control of my body and brain to do whatever I want (at least within my financial and technological constraints). When someone says “nice body” I could honestly answer “thanks, I made it myself”. And I’m totally in favor of eliminating gender as we know it, and actually working towards it. If I ever had children I’d put them on puberty blockers until they could give informed consent to a puberty of their own choosing, medically controlled to produce exactly the desired results regardless of what they are. Because I’m not going to have children, I’m just going to show the world that there are options and that being restricted to two boxes shows an absurd lack of imagination.
(Also, you mentioned your disappointment with people who share your political philosophy; and I’d be interested in hearing out what it actually is because it’s not obvious. Of course, I’m having some predictions because I always try to predict and model most things, but I’d like to get some feedback on my calibration.)
Okay, wow. I am going to need some time to think about this, but here are my quick first impressions:
Are you sure you didn’t just reinvent the kibbutz, except without the socialist jargon and shared property? Actually, wait a minute, a kibbutz without shared property is a totally new and exciting thing. Sometimes it just takes a slight design tweak and a new marketing strategy to make an existing thing go from okay to legendary!
I haven’t done much in comparison to you, I guess. I’m currently in the stage of figuring out what it is I want to make, how to do it, and who else will be on the team that does it with me.
My disappointment is pretty much exactly what you’d expect–people talk about how they should create gradual change by creating new institutions that out-compete current ones, and then they do 1 of 3 things. Either they continue writing about their revolutionary new systems and taking no steps toward actually trying them out in a situation where there’s a chance they might fail, they create systems that only benefit themselves and their close friends and never bother extending them to anyone else, or they create “resource vortexes” that take in donation money and do barely anything with it. I guess those 3 kinds of failure are common for any type of charity, including ones that are in favor of high-speed systemic change, but it’s particularly annoying when it comes from “my team.” I may not be Social Entrepeneurs Georg, but hey, at least I don’t go around inventing systems and publicizing them as solutions to every problem ever, then refusing to actually do anything that determines whether or not those systems will advance society.
Okay, I can definitely see the parallels to kibbutzim (especially the more modern ones) so finding out what they succeeded at and what failure modes they’ve been subject to is definitely relevant. I suppose “pluralist outwards-oriented free-market kibbutzim, with modern decentralizing technology, as a startup, as a post-welfare survival system” describes it reasonably well.
Aligning the incentives and figuring out the necessary psychological mechanisms to stabilize it is the crucial part, but the technological and societal situation I’m expecting to be operating in is also different.
Then there’s also The Plan For Taking Over Substantial Parts Of The Global Economy which is more dramatic but also [classified information] and synergizes very neatly with this. Then there’s single-handedly fixing healthcare for poor people, which also synergizes well. (It’s kind of embarrassingly simple: instead of costly and inefficient end-of-life care, focus on prevention, treating chronic conditions early, and adopting new technology faster than the FDA allows; saving huge amounts of $$$$$ and improving both the quality and span of people’s lives. It can’t be implemented in a currently existing healthcare system because it doesn’t look good at all, but with the right application of contracts and data and unconventional insurance/risk-pooling it would be a reasonably efficient option for making “patient pays” not be horribly expensive and inhumane.)
The 3d-printed kibbutzim coordination mechanism could be used to implement these kinds of measures, and it could also provide people legal assistance against oppressive policing, buy people’s debts for the market price instead of nominal, and be all kinds of “If the world is controlled by hypercorporations, at least this one is genuinely friendly”. All in all, it’s interesting how “assume welfare states will fail in 30 years and the government won’t be there to help anyone anyhow, and labor will be mostly displaced from the productive market; how will people survive then” feels like it unleashes a kind of an exhilaratingly desperate creativity. “It’s impossible, now shut up and do it.” I can’t just say “oh, let’s pass law X and it’ll solve itself” like most people do. I can’t just say “we’ll just have a revolution” like some people do. I can’t just say “well, looks like a dystopia is inevitable” like most of those who’ve gotten this far do, because despairing is not a solution. I can only actually solve it. And even if the assumption I’m starting from is flawed and the solution is not that desperately needed, I’d still give people something better than the illfare state.
In fact, that’s what it’s about. Most people don’t try to solve things, they try to look like they’re doing their part. Some who want to change things a bit put pieces of paper in boxes. Others contact their representatives. Those who want to change things a lot become revolutionary discussion clubs. At most they do a desperate regular effort and become lobbyists or terrorists. Very few people seem capable of thinking outside the box labeled “outside the box”, and willing to do even extraordinary and unexpected things to actually solve problems. All of those failure modes are related to losing genuine ambition and being content with just putting up an appearance and effort instead of creativity.
Also, I now notice that my question was ambiguous; I was actually asking about your political philosophy.
3 months ago · tagged #social entrepreneurship georg #it me #ambitious trans girls · 8 notes · source: exsecant · .permalink
