07mk
7hr ago
This is why I included a parenthetical in a bracket in the other comment, to clarify the type of perception of lack of agency is involved. Eg slaves in USA in 1850 were known to lack agency, but that didn't confer any particular social or political capital. But that has only a little in common with how Arday was perceived or treated.
07mk
8hr ago
That's fair; "definitionally" is wrong in my previous comment. But I do think that people subconsciously seeing you as lacking agency is sufficient for having social and political capital, just not necessary. There are other ways to accrue social and political capital such as by being a charismatic politician with a popular message, but in this case, going towards people who bought into a popular ideology that mandated to them that they perceive people like Arday as lacking agency seems to have been the method.
07mk
9hr ago
Is it their social and political capital? Or is it that people subconsciously see them as lacking agency?
I'm not sure how "people subconsciously see you as lacking agency [(in a way that makes it morally obligatory for them to appease you)]" isn't basically definitionally "having social and political capital."
07mk
9hr ago
i assume whoever has reported this has confirmed with the police/coroner/hospital
One of the many very depressing parts of the story is that, even if this assumption were correct (I believe it's more likely than not to be correct, but also depressingly, not by that much), it wouldn't allow us to gain much extra confidence in the claim that Jason Arday was found unresponsive and then declared dead.
07mk
9hr ago
I’m 100% reading the biography about this.
I'm holding out hope that we'll see a Forrest Gump-style biopic about his life that takes all of his claims credulously, even ones that are mutually contradictory. Ending needs to be completely unironic in presenting him as an innocent victim of online bullying which was made up completely whole cloth by a racist racist who racistly targeted Arday for his race. I hope AI will be good enough that some random shitposter (e.g. me) make a truly Hollywood-level version of this using a few $20/month subscriptions within a few years, since I don't think Hollywood itself is likely to take the mantle (though a hilarious result that would make no one happy is if Uwe Boll decided to ride his right-wing wave from that vigilante film to create his Arday biopic).
I also wonder, though, if there would be copyright issues around Arday's claims about his life; these obviously aren't factual, but are they "statement of fact (which are false)" that can't be copyrighted, or are they copyrighted fiction that Arday's wife and kids now have a right to? If and when the donations from their adoring fans run out, perhaps they could get by on royalties from such a biopic (I'm presuming that he was supporting them financially)?
One big elephant in the room that some have already mentioned but which I think isn't being mentioned enough is the possibility of a post-credits sequence or sequel revealing Arday drinking margaritas with Epstein and Kenneth Lay at some fictional country that only rich people or those with connections know about. Given the lack of visual evidence (questionable even in the best of situations today due to AI and CG, and Arday's situation isn't the best) or reports detailing his death or body, I'm putting off my judgment. Blindly trusting people who go, "This is totally legit, believe me" is how this whole affair got rolling, after all.
07mk
10hr ago
A little bit of a generational gap I feel sometimes is when I watch streamers/YouTubers playing singleplayer games with multiple save slots using one and exactly one slot for one playthrough, overwriting the previous save each time, without consideration for how they might want to re-load a previous save to get to a better state or that that one save file might corrupt itself and force a complete restart. Then I remember that modern games are overwhelmingly made such that it's impossible to lock yourself out of significant content or to soft-lock yourself by having too low-HP or something, and that corruption on modern SSDs/HDDs is so unlikely that the expected value of using staggered/rotating saves is negative from just the extra time wasted for no gain.
But I can't break myself out of such habits. Even today, the risk of such things in modern games on modern hardware aren't zero.
07mk
11hr ago
I recall reading some short story either by Scott Alexander or linked from his site that had this sort of thing as a premise, except it was present/near-future with anthropogenic global warming as the rationale; in order to reduce carbon emissions, people were being sent the message from pop culture and educators and mainstream media of how responsible and cool it was to go into suicide booths, which exist all over the place, at least in the city in which the protagonist resided. IIRC, it ended, 1984-style, with the protagonist deciding that walking into one of those suicide booths was the really cool thing to do and doing so.
07mk
11hr ago
The analogy to a tech worker prompting Claude, I suppose, is that the worker should not be praised for his coding skills. That part was outsourced to Claude, in the same way that the construction worker outsourced his muscles to the earthmover. But the worker is nonetheless doing some kind of work.
I'm not sure how else to think about it. Claude is essentially just a crane, but instead of digging dirt or moving rocks better/faster/more safely/etc. than a human can by hand like a crane, it produces useful text better/faster/etc. than a human can when typing out each word letter-by-letter. The human doesn't get credit or compensation for their biological strength to move those rocks, he gets them for manipulating the crane - the tool - that does the physical moving. And so the human doesn't get credit for choosing the individual words or the sentence structure of Claude's output, but rather gets them for manipulating Claude - the tool - that generates the useful text, by his choice of prompt.
So in a case where someone's being judged for their ability to order words in a way that's useful to humans, then they ought not be praised at all for using Claude. But if they're being judged for their ability to produce text that's useful for some goal, then they ought to be praised if they type in the proper terms into Claude that generate the text that is sufficiently useful.
The trouble I see here is that lots of people are looking at Claude (and genAI in general) and deciding, "Wow, I can generate useful text/images/video/etc. so well with it" and a bunch of other people are hearing, "Wow, I can take credit for having skills to manually put together useful text/image/video/etc. so well with it" despite them not sounding like each other.
07mk
12hr ago
Human groups are unequal for a million different reasons. Expecting outcome equality between two groups should not intellectually be expected. Even without HBD, Thomas Sowell made a great argument for this with tons of examples.
The problem here is that we have a very strong, very powerful movement that is committed to equalizing all those million different reasons. And they're, IMHO, morally correct to do so - but even those who disagree could probably at least understand why someone would believe that equalizing those things is more fair and that we ought to make the world more fair. And if we were to equalize all those other non-HBD reasons, then only the HBD results will stand out - this is observed in countries where there is more equality in opportunity between men and women, which tend to have greater skew in males preferring "things-"oriented work and females preferring "people-"oriented work. Which will demand non-HBD explanation, thus leading to more and more "bigotry of the gaps" to battle via overt identity-based discrimination. This is where we are now.
So, from what I can tell, the "we don't need HBD to stop ridiculous DEI cases (like Arday)" experiment has been run, and it has failed.
07mk
5d ago
Wokeism = Secular Christianity. Scoop out the Holy trinity and you get the logical conclusion of championing the meek, the downtrodden, the oppressed.
This isn't true, though. Wokeism has a lot of similar principles, but it also attaches to it its own set of faith-based claims about reality. That's what makes so many people call it a religion (including myself, as far back as 2015 back when it was just called "social justice" - though, quite honestly, this should have been obvious even as far back as the late 00s, by my estimation), rather than merely an ideology. Its core tenets rely irreducibly on faith to support claims about how certain individuals are oppressed by other individuals in society.
07mk
5d ago
“Alternative ways of knowing” have next to zero impact on the vast majority of progressive politics.
I'm not sure how one could even quantify this to enough of an extent to support such a statement. Perhaps you could come up with a way of measuring things such that this is true, but you'd have to be counting the stuff they have in common with virtually every other movement - akin to how humans, chimps, and mice share like 90%+ of the same DNA or something - because whatever sets apart progressive policies pushed by the typical/powerful modern progressive from bog-standard liberal is certainly mostly a consequence of "alternative ways of knowing." I.e. personal revelation, which is never called that but rather often "lived experience," based on the idea that we can judge the veracity of someone's claims about reality based purely on their identity, which is what holds up all of the stuff about "white/male/cis/etc. privilege," which itself holds up almost all of the specific policies that the typical/powerful modern progressive pushes for.
People can and do argue any number of progressive policies—police, borders, reparations—on the boring ol’ grounds of facts and logic. That doesn’t change when some jackass decides to mock mathematics for being too white.
Correct. I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment, though. Some progressives still exist who are still committed to facts and logic. Sadly, they have about a homeopathic level of impact and influence in modern progressive politics. I fantasize that many of us exist, and that we're just cowards who try not to be noticed lest we be cut down, but that's probably just typical mind fallacy + wishful thinking.
07mk
5d ago
I especially understand not being able to tell Japanese and Chinese and Koreans apart, since I can’t really do that either, although I’m told that people from those countries have little issue with it.
I haven't lived in Korea for too long for my experience to matter, but my experience with Korean relatives who live (and only ever lived) in Korea is that this is a lie we like to spread out to the rest of the world because it makes us feel superior. We have less issue, but it's a stretch to say that the issue is little.
07mk
5d ago
I'm a little skeptical of this, mostly because I've never seen it in action.
I've very skeptical of this, but I think what would make sense, given AOC's other stated beliefs, is that she genuinely drank the Kool-Aid in believing the messaging that men take hot women less seriously and thus adjusted her behavior. Though I'd personally guess that, if any of this was intentional, it wasn't consciously so.
07mk
5d ago
I saw someone post on Twitter that Jewish hatred is always balanced and at any given time one group hates them and others love them.
Some people believe that the way the relative sizes and distances of the Moon, the Sun, and the Earth are such that both lunar and solar eclipses just about exactly cover the moon/sun is evidence of God's design. Some people believe that the fact that the ratio in size between the observable universe and a typical human being around the same order of magnitude as the ratio in size between 12 grams of carbon and 1 individual carbon atom is evidence of God's design. Surely the greatest evidence of God's design, though, is that history always conspires to make sure that there's always an equal amount of hatred and love directed at the people who claim to have been chosen by Him.
I'm not sure what the best ways to measure hatred and love are, but I do feel like there probably were periods in time where the former overwhelmed the latter in aggregate, though.
07mk
5d ago
I'd consider the point of being an absolutist to be that one considers the principle to apply absolutely, such that it is just as appropriate to apply to noncentral cases as to central cases.
07mk
5d ago
Oh, come on. Nine sets of scare quotes to say this movement is unusually prone to contradiction?
That's not what I said, nor is it even adjacent to what I said. Every movement - down to a movement of one individual - has internal contradictions. Usually enough to call it a "mess." Not every movement - certainly not every individual - believes in the fundamental principle that logic, reasoning, and valuing empirical evidence are arbitrary bullshit that ought to be discarded if they're not useful for attaining what one considers "justice." What makes "wokes" distinct from many (not all - though most similarly national/international-level movements) movements is that it specifically flouts logical thinking and doesn't see logical contradictions as something to resolve or to address at all. This is, somewhat ironically enough (though not really), quite Trumpian, in the belief that what is true right now isn't contingent on being consistent with other things that one has stated as being true, a sort of lack of object permanence.
07mk
6d ago
Are you saying that anime women look like men?
A good chunk of them do
From what I understand, they're meant to look like cats (not really).
07mk
6d ago
I'm not sure how "notable" these "peculiar ironies" are anymore, sadly. When one of the core, underlying principles that animate everyone in your movement is "logic, reasoning, and empiricism are inventions by cis/white/male/etc. people whose only function and purpose is to oppress minorities," then it follows that holding opinions that are logically contradictory is no vice. In fact, it's pretty easy to argue that it's a virtue, for how it "challenges" the norms of current "hegemony" of "white supremacy/patriarchy" and "queers" reasoning by lionizing "other ways of knowing" over crufty oppressive things like "logic."
Right, and I am saying that just like the tankie's totalizing hatred of "capitalism" (by which he means partly that one asshole boss he hated, partly a media caricature of fat-cat cigar-chomping Gilded Age CEOs), the similarly vague tribalist loathing of "feminism" (=Twitter Karen memes plus that one insufferable lady in HR) is leading people to get the causal arrows very obviously twisted here.
But when the "Karens" are explicitly, overtly saying that they're going into these industries specifically to make them appeal relatively more to females (definitionally appeal relatively less to males), then the causal arrow is very obviously consistent with what I'm claiming.
Furthermore, when we're dealing with an ideology that is specifically unpopular among the demographic we're talking about - i.e. feminism doesn't have a good reputation among young men, relatively - it makes perfect sense that if one had the intent of appealing to that demographic more, then reducing the presence of the totalizing ideology that has taken over the industry is a pretty obvious simple step that's at least worth considering, if not actually trying out.
To use another analogy: if CEO income has increased, and also homelessness has also increased around company headquarters, and both of those things make you sad and annoyed, that still does not mean that "capitalism" is the ideology that "got us there," or that CEO delenda est would restore any meaningful number of homeless guys to happy productive lives in tidy little cottages of their own.
If capitalism was an ideology whose principles and whose strongest, most influential proponents were explicitly, overtly calling for increasing CEO income at the cost of increasing homelessness, you might have a point. But it isn't. The actual specifics of these concepts matter; you can't just swap some labels around an argument, show that that version doesn't make sense, and claim that that demonstrates that the original doesn't.
Furthermore, if someone had a plausible argument for why capitalism necessarily results in more CEO income at the cost of more homelessness, then it would absolutely be incumbent on anyone who wanted to reduce homelessness (or lower CEO income or both) to consider burning capitalism to the ground as one of the steps in a potential solution. Otherwise, they would be obviously an ideologue who prioritizes ideological commitments over actual meaningful goals and thus has no credibility in judging possible solutions.
EDIT: As for that superstimuli and vices business, if you're claiming that such things have some quality about them that makes them immune to margins and trends, and that modern video games fit into that, those are a couple of extraordinary claims. We live in a world where, right now, millions, possibly billions, of people are balancing superstimuli and vices like video games, gambling, heroin, meth, porn, cheesecake, etc. with their everyday responsibilities and also other non-superstimuli entertainment (e.g. chatting with a friend, going to a park, watching a baseball game) in a functional way, despite having near-trivial access to these superstimuli/vices at their fingertips. This points to the idea that superstimuli and vices are things that vast swathes of the population are capable of managing in their everyday lives, such that they're not purely slaves to it, i.e. they can modulate their use of it based on the potential consequences. If they can modulate it, then there will be a marginal effect from affecting their positive/negative qualities relative to alternatives.
07mk
6d ago
Yes, I think enabling this via the use of pseudoscientific language around things like "systemic racism" and "privilege" and all those other terms is the great innovation of Wokeness in updating bog-standard tribalism to a Modern Audience who would reject something that was overtly purely based around selfishness. The gloss of the false claim that The Science - which is objective and universal and True - supports Wokeness is what allowed such naked, self-serving tribalism to appear just not-tribal enough to fit into the egos of people who consider themselves beyond good and evil above all the old tribal nonsense due to their modern, enlightened sensibilities.
07mk
6d ago
Smart people can and do do very stupid things, sometimes quite often, to such an extent that they have a reputation for it. One could accurately say, e.g. Musk behaves very stupidly when it comes to certain things such as politics or ideology, and that he has a pattern of doing so. But to claim that he's stupid means something else, and it's to ignore all the other pieces of evidence around him. And, ironically, accurately noting his intelligence is a greater moral condemnation from anyone who confidently disagrees with his politics or ideals, because, unlike a stupid person, a smart person has no excuse for not reaching the correct conclusions.
07mk
6d ago
I never understood the people calling AOC unattractive, and still don't.
It's the same phenomenon as calling Elon Musk "stupid," which is basically dogma in some parts of the country, including where I live. People, even educated, intelligent people who went to academic institutions purportedly meant specifically to disabuse people of that notion, really love the idea that people they disagree with also have other negative characteristics that realistically ought to have minimal - if any - correlation with conformity to one's own personal set of ethics or ideals. So damn physical reality, since I don't like AOC/Musk, then s/he is unattractive/stupid. To be fair, the latter set of people often openly admit to rejecting empiricism as a tool of oppression by White Supremacists, so they're living up to their stated principles there.
As an aside, I'm apparently in a tiny minority in considering Zendaya not only attractive, but one of the most attractive women in Hollywood right now, but also I do find the "Zendaya is ugly" thing not hard to understand. She has bodily and facial features which are not what I'd consider screaming in femininity.
07mk
6d ago
Wokeness is not extinct: wokeness is dormant, and AOC knows this better than anyone. If she really wanted to distance herself from a permanently radioactive ideology, she couldn't afford to be half this flippant.
Even calling it "dormant" seems to me to be far overselling the state of things. At best, I'd say it's baiting, by creating the appearance of weakness which allows it to gain an advantageous position such that it can impose even greater strength than before. Perhaps one can argue that a key component of what defined "woke" was the appearance of strength and so conceding that appearance is, in itself, a retreat, but I'd say that's pretty weaksauce compared to the very real policies that have been locked in and still influence people's everyday lives just as much in 2026 as in 2021.
07mk
6d ago
The talk about "peak woke" as if it was in the past or "woke 1" as if there was some sort of stopping of "woke" where it would make sense to say that some new "woke" thing is "woke 2" instead of "woke continued" reminds me of the 2024 POTUS election when people were breathlessly trying to establish consensus that there had been a "vibe shift" among Democrats who were finally getting excited again and lining up behind the young(er), energetic Harris compared to the decrepit Biden or calling Walz's insult of Vance as "weird" as some brilliant bit of marketing. I can understand both why people who dislike Woke would have wishful thinking that it has receded and why people who like Woke would want to act as if they're powerless, but I think the fact of the latter should make people in the former highly suspicious that they're falling into wishful thinking. From where I sit, there's more overt pushback to Woke than ever before, but that's akin to there being more pushback to Nazis in 1942 compared to in 1932. it's not an indication of the Nazis' lack of power, influence, harm; rather, it's the exact opposite.
I recently played thru FF7Rebirth and Mouse: PI For Hire (both around 7/10 experiences; former is not worth the hours, latter is barely worth the few hours which were needlessly extended with boring writing) each of which limited one only to 30 or 50 saves, so I had to juggle jumping to different save slots by the last ~1/3 of the game. I just started MGS: Delta (played 3 on PS2 back when it came out, 2x), and I'm already 10 saves in thru the prologue, and I'm dreading this one having a limit as well. It's maddening that any game made these days doesn't have the save limit as "as many as the drive will store" and decides to put in some artificial limiter, as if it were a live service game that depends on arbitrary limitations for monetization.
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