Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
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User ID: 80
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
It's interesting; I finally met, in the wild, a woman who claimed there were no biological differences in terms of strength, agility, speed, etc. between men and women. I had thought they were just caricatures on the internet, but I guess they really exist. She was in the army and claimed to have 'outperformed' 90% of the men there before she was injured. She was about 5'6 and maybe 120 pounds, so while I'm not too familiar with the army, I'm a bit skeptical of that one. She claimed testosterone had no effect on athletic performance and that literally the only difference physically between men and women is that men have a wider pelvis. Scientific papers describing any effects of testosterone are just transphobic.
This all grew out of the casual [sport] league I played in over the summer that went out of it's way to encourage inclusion of trans players. Man/lady were replaced with 'female-matching' and 'male-matching.' Traditionally, we played co-ed and matched genders on the field, and trans players (100% trans women in this league at least) would match with the gender they identify as. The women on the field were getting absolutely wrecked. Like, every now and then someone would absolutely blast by me uncovered before I realized it was a trans woman and her defender was struggling 10-15 feet behind her before I'd peel off and try to salvage the situation.
It honestly doesn't affect me and all the most strident pro-trans commissioners in the league are female, so I don't particularly care, but this is just...a step too far. There's no way this can be covered up in smokescreens about hormones or whatever else, it's just an immediately obvious fact that this is true. You just need some video footage of trans women absolutely destroying people at [sport] and it's not really sustainable.
I tried the same argument you just brought up as it seemed the most likely to elicit sympathy from a strident feminist, i.e. that it cheapens the accomplishments of female athletes, but she would just say that those female athletes would be as good as the men if it weren't for the patriarchy. Thankfully, people with that point of view are a vanishingly small minority - on my team of very left-leaning players, it was about 13 people arguing with her and her reluctant boyfriend trying to mediate.
Did I miss something in the last 2 years? Why did they declare the "vaccines" to be 100% effective if they were never tested for transmission reduction? (and yes I am putting the term into quotation marks because they don't appear to be what is commonly thought of as vaccines, instead working as a kind of therapeutic with alleged short term effectiveness that must be dosed in advance.)
How, exactly, would you propose to measure transmission reduction in the context of a clinical trial? You enroll a thousand people, 500 vaccine, 500 placebo. 50 in each group get COVID. What next? Do you test whether their cohabitants get sick? Couldn't those people have gotten it somewhere else? You'd have to massively increase your study size to find a signal in the noise, or else try some kind of challenge study.
When you run a clinical trial, to my knowledge (and to be fair I'm not exposed to many infectious disease/vaccine style trials) you need endpoints that focus on the people you actually enrolled. Other papers will try to measure spread at a more macro scale.
And indeed, this is false - the vaccines did reduce spread (I linked 6 studies there with varying effect sizes) early in the pandemic, back when the vaccine actually matched the virus in circulation and (speculatively) the variant in question was much less infectious and more severe. I'd hazard a guess that the updated boosters could also reduce spread, although this might prove to be false given the characteristics of omicron plus some fringe possibilities like original antigenic sin.
What does "vaccine efficacy" mean?
You run into some weird semantic problems trying to strictly define it, and other problems disseminating information to the public through media outlets rather than directly from ID docs. As far back as February 2021, people were saying reducing symptomatic disease. You can also read how the Pfizer group defined vaccine efficacy in their original clinical trial paper, and it's not related to transmission.
Why did some countries roll out a vaccine passport?
It might have made sense very early on. I'd agree that it rapidly became counterproductive and foolish as new variants emerged and the vaccines certainly did not prevent spread. You could maybe make an argument that in some places like Canada the healthcare system was truly getting fucked at some points by COVID patients, although by then the data wasn't even clear that the vaccines had a strong effect against severe COVID anymore as far as I'm aware. Whether these policies persisted due to incompetence, bureaucratic inertia, malice or something else - who knows. You'll find plenty of folks here convinced that they know the answer to that question, so I'll leave it to them.
But if they didn't substantially stop the spread then why are we firing people from their jobs? For their own health?
We probably shouldn't be.
There was also the weird never-before-tried bookkeeping where nobody was considered vaccinated until two weeks AFTER the second dose.
Can you cite the study you're referring to?
Geert Vanden Bossche claims that you should never ever vaccinate during a pandemic, especially with a leaky vaccine because very bad things happen. I don't pretend to know the science but he also claims that this was generally accepted knowledge up until 2020.
How would you know that? The only real comparator that makes sense is Flu, and we vaccinate for that every year; regardless of whether we did or not, annual flu strains have emerged for much longer than we've vaccinated. HIV was a pandemic, but has no vaccine regardless and is a very poor comparator. SARS, MERS, etc never really took off. So we have no empirical data to support that argument.
But, assuming you're referring to this page (since you didn't actually link to anything), what do you want to do in this counterfactual world? Let everyone get COVID and then his hope is that children generate sterilizing immunity? Moreover, why wouldn't a population where 50% have natural immunity and the other 50% are spreading the virus behave any differently compared to a population where 50% have vaccine immunity and the other 50% are spreading in terms of variants emerging? His argument would hinge on natural immunity restricting transmission whereas vaccination did not, which as far as I'm aware, is not the case.
Children have an amazing innate immune capacity to generate sterilizing immunity. From a public health viewpoint (herd immunity!), it is therefore critical that we leave the children alone. But protecting our children from C-19 vaccination is also critical from an individual health viewpoint as vaccination with these non-replicating vaccines will prevent adequate education of their immune system. This is because spike (S)-specific, non-neutralizing antibodies (Abs) that are continuously recalled by the circulating Omicron (sub)variants will steadily outcompete their innate Abs and thereby prevent the child’s innate Abs to instruct the immune system on how to discriminate ‘self’ from ‘self-like’
It's just false; the half-life of antibody titers for both natural immunity and vaccinations is much too short for anyone to maintain sterilizing immunity for long. For a while, the antivaxx crowd latched onto original antigenic sin (OAS) and argued that natural immunity would be better, but the last time I looked at the data coming out, OAS was a larger problem for people who were naturally infected with the alpha variant as opposed to vaccination, with T cell responses being the wild card. We don't have a counterfactual world where we tried Geert's approach so he can claim he was right until the end of time, but most of the evidence points away from his model.
It feels like the push for the vaccines was a huge motte and bailey. They never really prevented transmission, that was the bailey. And the motte is that they make the infection less severe, which in theory is a falsifiable hypothesis, but I'm not convinced.
The rationalization for vaccines was a huge mess of idealogues on twitter, the media and talking heads on TV pushing their favored ideas with about as much exposure to scientific data and literature as the two sources you give.
Meanwhile, Florida's AG is fearmongering about vaccine side effects (scroll down to 'Florida man' section. I think Zvi is a bit dismissive of myocarditis because other papers have shown it is a side effect, but why Florida tried to do this...I don't know) and it seems like significantly more Republicans died of COVID (although I'm a bit leery of politically-charged population scale studies like this). Even John Nolte repeatedly argued that the mRNA vaccines were a triumph, and the anti-vaxx movement was orchestrated by the left to try and kill old Republican voters.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
In the event that you're genuine and not a troll:
Then I come here for a dose of sanity, and I have to dig DEEP into the replies before I find anyone positing the plainly obvious: that if you say your political opponents are child rapist election stealing perverts, some section of the population will actually believe the literal words you are saying and "take action".
And ironically, you believe your outgroup are political extremists out to get you and yours leading you to 'take action' by buying a firearm and joining your local John Brown society. Political extremism is a huge problem, but tell me exactly how you're any better or how characterizing your outgroup as 'they would kill me if they could' is any better?
Maybe I'm just having a little moment and will regress to mean in a couple weeks, but this particular incident has shifted me from "no" to "They would if they could" regarding conservatives in this country, at least temporarily.
Do you not see the profoundly self-defeating hypocrisy involved in responding to accelerationism and domestic terrorism with veiled threats of your own? Let's pretend for a moment that you're actually a relevant target for political extremists in the same way that Nancy Pelosi, third in line for the presidency, is. Do you think that fedposting and flashing your guns are likely to bring down the temperature and decrease the likelihood of domestic terrorism in any meaningful way?
If you're really concerned about any of these issues, put on your big boy pants and try having a real conversation with people instead of fedposting massively inflammatory and uncharitable takes. You're harming the causes you claim to champion, and making all of our jobs that much harder.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
You... do know this is primarily a reactionary forum and is consequentially going to have a right-wing skew (thus be a bit more concerned about traditional purity, per Haidt's Moral Foundations) to it no matter the actual leaning of the participants, right?
I don't know who you are or how long you've been around, but it's pretty frustrating to hear you say that. Mere months ago we were being told (by - wonder of wonders! - Naraburns) that actually, the forum is politically balanced, and liberals were too thin-skinned and used to dominating online spaces:
I have audited moderation, AAQCs, and (using your data!) the demographics of the sub itself. I have never found any evidence of an anti-left bias. I have found copious evidence of the absence of a left-wing bias, which many left-wingers appear to interpret as an anti-left bias. Part of the problem, I assume, is that it is much easier to write polemics than it is to write constructively; even when writing constructively, we tend to respond to criticism, which is itself a sort of polemic. And part of the problem is that, as one of the few rational platforms that permit right-wing viewpoints at all, we do seem to have something like an "overrepresentation" of the right here, though it is perhaps inescapably difficult to say for certain...After all, I'd conducted multiple audits in response to users whining about anti-left biases, and simply never found any evidence.
But I happened to have a moment to check your work, and all I can say is--what? Unless the vote tallies have shifted quite a lot since you did this work, I find your tally for November 15 to be nigh incomprehensible, to the point where I am inclined to simply disregard the others without further audit.
But based on the criteria you provided, I once again find no particular anti-left bias in this space--though I do worry that claiming there is a bias, in a comment that (due to the high effort nature of gathering the data) few users are likely to challenge on the particulars, is one way to encourage anti-left bias, and discourage leftists from posting here. At minimum, you seem to think that many comments I coded as "other" are in fact comments that would discourage leftists from posting here. That seems like you indirectly claiming that leftists are simply too thin-skinned to abide even the slightest disagreement. I do not think that is true, but if or when it is true, then I think it is the foundation of the sub, rather than the users or their posts, to which such people actually object.
You're the second person I've seen this week saying something to this effect. But we've gone from a mod calling us 'users whining about anti-left biases' to 'of course this place leans right you fucking idiots' so fast I'm getting whiplash.
For the record, I think Naraburns is a good mod.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
Tucker and DeSantis are some of the early attempts to get controlled opposition out in front of this distrust, but they won't be the last.
Are you suggesting that Tucker and Desantis are intentional establishment plants meant to lead the new right astray, or am I misunderstanding the use of controlled opposition? If you believe this, who are the genuine leaders or influencers of the new right?
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
Wait I thought you were JB?
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
Well, whatever, the rules are made up and the points don't matter.
Remarkably absent from both your post and the replies are the fact that Republicans control the Virginian house of delegates and the governorship, so this has about as much chance of passing as the Illinois bounty law. Even if Democrats had slim majorities in both houses and the governorship, I'd be shocked if something like this could pass. The far end of trans rights is generally a losing issue for democrats and, by extension, taking children out of their parents control makes the majority of people in both parties uncomfortable.
The cause is the Tribes, Blue and Red, and their manifestly incompatible values. Blues/Reds do not Like Reds/Blues. Contrary to arguments presented here for years, we do not share values, moral intuitions, a workable understanding of The Good. The Culture War is not about mistakes, and people are not going to come to their senses any minute now and realize all this was just a whole heap of silly goosery. The Culture War is a conflict. We cannot all get along, because we have lost the fundamental capacity to agree on what "getting along" consists of.
The virtuous cycle of Conflict theory:
Step 1: Find blue person doing bad thing
Step 2: Equate blue person with entire Blue tribe
Step 3: Claim entire Blue tribe wants to hurt me and mine
Step 4a: Spend a lot of time on the internet talking about igloos <- You are here
Step 4b: Hurt blue tribe
It may be difficult to believe, but some people genuinely care about the wellbeing of Trans kids and think they're happier living as their chosen gender. I would be absolutely shocked to find that Guzman is so monstrous that she's primarily motivated by a desire to cause you suffering, and even if she were, the idea that the broader Trans movement was conjured up to harm you both beggars belief and smacks of hubris. Your attraction to Conflict Theory isn't for the truth value, rather you need it to justify your own behavior and hatred:
We're saying that we consider the people so labeled, the officials supporting them, and the section of the public providing their ideology to be a direct, serious and immediate threat to our children.
You'll reject any arguments I make to the contrary that Blue tribe is Out To Get You while ignoring or defending any Red tribe transgression. You've surrounded yourself by yes-men who will trip over themselves to fellate you regardless of what you write, and be outraged that my reply is anything other than happy seal noises.
According to your model, half of your fellow citizens represent a serious and immediate threat to your children. So, what comes next? No more AEO excuses for hinting darkly rather than speaking clearly.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
This is probably old news to most of you better-rounded individuals, but read this the other day about the Roman Senate and was tickled. Transcribed from 'A Day in Old Rome':
Opening the session: Taking the Auspices
Gravely this official company seats itself in the curule chairs; gravely Varus casts a handful of incense upon the altar before the Victory, and a cloud of fragrance fills the hall. Then Varus, a tall and very majestic figure, signs to the senators; "Bring forth the chickens!"
Not a lip twitches in all that sedate audience as two attendants appear upon the platform setting down a small coop containing a few barnyard fowls. The consul rises and stands beside them next to him takes station an elderly senator also wearing the praetexta and holding a staff with a peculiarly shaped spiral head, a lituus -- the badge of office of an augur, lawfully entitled to proclaim the will of the gods. In a dead hush the servitors pass a small dish of grain to the consul who carefully scatters the grain within easy reach of the chickens. The latter, carefully starved since yesterday, snap up the grains eagerly. The even devour so fast that the wheat drops from their bills, a most excellent sign. The augur bends forward intently, watching their action, the motions with his staff: "There is no evil sight nor sound!" he announces in solemn formula.
A mutter of relaxation passes around the Senate. The servitors carry out the chicken coop. The consul shakes his great draperies around him with studied dignity and turns to the waiting assembly. "Affairs divine have been attended to; affairs human can now begin."
So, say I were a chariot mogul being coerced by the courts into buying a carrier pigeon business. Could I hire a catspaw to sneak in and feed the senatorial augur-chickens the morning of the trial such that they aren't interested in the grain, or even poison them to delay my trial?
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
Well the results for 2022 have just been released and people who answered "not at all" for trust in mass media is at 38%. This has been characterized by the talking heads, and many rationalists as "a crisis of sense making" but I don't really see it that way. Sounds more like healthy skepticism if you ask me.
And with that in mind I think the fact that trust in the media seems to break pretty cleanly along class and partisan lines (70% of Democrats having a fair amount of trust or greater in the media vs less than 14% of Republicans) explains a lot.
They asked the wrong question. Conservatives have just succeeded in redefining the term 'the media' to only refer to outgroup institutions, but that doesn't mean ingroup institutions don't exist. It's safe to bash 'journalists' and the 'media' because to them it categorically excludes their preferred sources of news.
Conversely, if your question was 'Do you expect Libs of Tik Tok/conservative talk radio to report facts fully, accurately and fairly' your Democrat and Republican numbers would flip.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
by breaking the law. Wonder why you omitted that?
Because I expected you to be able to parse 'illegal immigrants' as...well...doing something illegal.
I've long theorised that the solution to ivory tower liberals virtue signalling about illegal immigration is to give them some actual skin in the game, instead of letting them escape all the negative consequences of their ideology inside their walled communities. It seems the governor agrees with me, and that the theory was sound. I applaud this action and hope that next time he sends 500. And then 5000. Until the message sinks in. You do not get to ruin our towns from your gated communities with no consequence.
Massachusetts has about as many illegal immigrants (250,000/7,000,000) per capita as Florida does (720,000/21,000,000). Neither share a border with Mexico. Tell me again what consequences Florida is suffering that Massachusetts isn't? Moreover, the majority of illegal immigrants settle in metropolitan areas which vote blue even in red states like Texas. The vast, vast majority of those voters obviously don't live in gated communities. Those that do, do not unilaterally decide policy; Obama and Clinton and so on respond to the desires of their voters.
The message won't sink in, because the hypocrisy that you think is there just isn't, not because you haven't shipped enough illegal immigrants to Massachusetts.
People need to be held directly responsible for the consequences of their advocacy. Foisting it off on border towns and other people far away, ensuring there's no cost to you directly, is immoral.
Our tax dollars (which I understand are still the vast majority of funding for border security) pay for federal agents and facilities in Texas, so I do indirectly bear that burden. If anything, blue states contribute more in federal taxes than reds.
I've said it's regrettable that border towns have these issues, and if there were a robust way to mitigate the effects on them I would support it. But as I've said, even under Trump there were still large numbers of illegal immigrants at the border. Your sponsorship proposal wouldn't stop illegal immigrants from illegally ignoring it any more than they do now. The only real solution I can see working is developing those nations to the point that they don't want to come here anymore; look at how the number of illegals from Mexico has dropped as conditions have improved, and those from other countries has increased as conditions there worsen.
A great man once said feeble minds discuss people, mediocre minds discuss events, and great men discuss feeble and mediocre minds. As befits my station (see: flair), I will endeavor to do the first two.
Yesterday, Ron Desantis proudly shipped 50 illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. See Breitbart and Fox News’ takes as well. The individuals were supposedly offered a plane ticket to Massachusetts, without being told they were being sent to a small, isolated island unprepared to receive them as part of a political stunt. Amusingly, not sharing a border with Mexico, Desantis actually had to source his illegal immigrants from Texas. I suppose rustling up 50 of the 772,000 homegrown illegal Florida Mans was too difficult, or may have upset some core constituency, who knows. The only shelter in Martha’s Vineyard has room for 10 and is obviously not equipped in the way that Boston, New York or DC would be and the plane ticket to those places would have been much cheaper.
Also of note: see the Fox News article for the Florida legislature’s $12 million ‘immigrant relocation program’ Own The Libs/Desantis for President fun.
I can stomach a border wall and even see the necessity, despite disagreeing with what it represents. I can sympathize with people living near the border and dealing with crime and drug cartels. But manipulating impoverished people seeking a better future and treating them as nothing more than chattel to score political points and ‘own the libs’ absolutely turns my stomach. Which, judging by the Breitbart comments and replies I expect here, laughing at my pearl clutching is absolutely the point. You want me to be mad, you want me get up on my soapbox and bleat some self-righteous Soyjak lines about muh poor illegals so you can get mad right back and it feels good.
So I guess I won’t do that, although I never know what to say instead. I’m sorry that you hate Obama and Clinton (see: Breitbart article) so much that the thought of them having to deal with poor third worlders is amusing. I’m sorry that you’re so angry about illegal immigration and the libs that we’ve come here. Please, let’s all try to treat our countrymen better and do what we can to dial down the hate.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
I was born right at the cutoff and thankfully my parents held me back. I was more than a full year older than three or four of my classmates, which in retrospect, I think definitely gave me a leg up.
The true takeaway from that chapter in Freakonomics was to get pregnant February-May if your school cutoff is in September, and pray you don't have a very premature baby. Getting pregnant in August-October is the worst.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
I think they deleted it the morning after. I seem to remember some people mentioning it was deleted when they were replying.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
Well, she successfully signaled her opposition to conservatives, slagged off the nation (in their view), and now she winds up in prison for a minor drug charge in Russia, our geopolitical rival.
If our standards for 'deserving time in Russian prison' were 1) signaling opposition to democrats and 2) complaining about the state of the nation, there wouldn't be any conservatives left to post in the Culture War thread. Not to mention what she said:
"I honestly feel we should not play the national anthem during our season," Griner said. "I think we should take that much of a stand.
"I don't mean that in any disrespect to our country. My dad was in Vietnam and a law officer for 30 years. I wanted to be a cop before basketball. I do have pride for my country."
As far as 'slagging off the nation' goes, it's pretty anodyne.
Why wouldn't they be gleeful?
Dunno...some shred of human decency? The same way I'm not gleeful about red triber suffering. The same way that if I were, you would be outraged and calling me out for it.
An analogy might be Ben Shapiro going to Texas and getting a harsh prison term for something that was legal in California. You could bet your bottom dollar that Twitter would be physically heavier from all the glee-tweets.
And you could bet yours that you would be rage-posting about it to thunderous applause. That doesn't mean you need to carry water for people hating on Brittany Griner or that you or twitter are behaving morally in that hypothetical.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
It feels like what would happen if ChrisPrattAlphaRaptor showed up any time you mentioned COVID to disprove you or interrogate you as if you were a collegial equal.
I apologize if you feel like I held the topic hostage or stifled conversation. I can sympathize with the idea that someone might be more knowledgeable about a field but not necessarily share your values or background, and I'm sure if you had access to all the same facts you may reach different conclusions than me. With that in mind, what would you suggest I do? Just lay off the hobby horse for a while? Be less aggressive?
No need to reply if you're uncomfortable, I know this is tangential to your point.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
1/2
Apologies upfront, but this will probably be my only reply in this thread. Not because I don't care, but because I don't have the time to exchange essays and frankly given the timestamps of your replies it's probably best for the both of us.
Assume that I suck to an unbelievable degree at this, and that probably says woeful things about my character, but it's just barely possible that there's some valuable signal buried in the above shit-heap of noise. Then read it again, and if you're up to it, give me a short summary of the argument you think I'm trying to make.
Alright, I read it again. I'm still incensed. I'll expand on why in a moment, but we can go piece by piece.
I did not make sweeping generalizations about a group I dislike.
You did.
This law isn't being proposed because it solves a problem. It's being proposed because Blues hate Reds and want to harm them. That tribal hatred, by no means unique in its character and very much reciprocated by Reds, wants to Do Something About The Bad People.
From the Blue perspective, legally redefining Red Tribe parenting as child abuse is certainly a pretty good way to hurt the outgroup, and options for retaliation are limited and costly. The algorithm is working! And for those who might have concerns, never fear: Guzman's got you covered. '
when people like me use the term "groomer", we are not saying "I really don't like this person." We're saying that we consider the people so labeled, the officials supporting them, and the section of the public providing their ideology to be a direct, serious and immediate threat to our children.
You don't get to open with an angry rant about a law being proposed by a Virginian democrat, pepper it with mentions about blues hating reds and wanting to harm them, wrap it up with 'actually, these people are groomers and I consider them an immediate and serious threat to my children', stuff the same argument you've been making for as long as I've been around in the middle, and claim that you aren't waging the culture war. Out of all the replies to your post, how many were interested in an academic discussion about the finer points of the law being downstream of cultural values versus people wanting to bitch about Thing Blue Person Did This Week? I'd count one for the former, almost everyone else in the latter. While I'm sure my reading comprehension skills are subpar for the local community, everyone is responding to the 'hatejacking,' not just me. You just don't care because the other contrarian, totally-independent critical thinkers agree with your take.
I think I did, in fact, go to considerable effort to contextualize and steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
Your steel-man:
A major politician attempting, within their sphere of influence, to criminalize the way half the country raises their kids is not someone saying something wacky on twitter.
Wow, really? So your half of the country uses pronouns given at birth, which this law would criminalize, and the other half of the country calls their children ze/zir? Literally the entirety of blue tribe has trans children, and the parenting style of >99% of red tribe families with cis children will be criminalized? That's your steel-man?
But whatever. Like I said, the rules don't matter, and even if they did, nobody would care what I think.
My best summary of your argument, parts of which I agree with and have made myself:
Laws are irrelevant, what matters are the upstream values of the people writing them, the people voting for the people writing them, the people enforcing them and the people willing to obey them. A group of people with no shared values who hate each other and defect constantly who adopt the United States constitution and system will not become the United States; conversely, if we memory-holed the constitution and judicial system overnight, people in respectable communities here would still put back their shopping carts, mow their lawns, send their kids to school and so on and so forth. There's plenty of happy little enclaves throughout history who lived your Good Life without our laws, and plenty of shithole countries that imitate our system with poor results.
Our values have diverged so far that we can no longer have productive debates, discussions or peaceful coexistence. Life is now a zero-sum game dictated by how best to harm the outgroup. In short, Conflict Theory.
You've made this argument repeatedly with a different event du jour tacked on, usually a bad thing that you cite as evidence to support your worldview. Usually, if you'll forgive the armchair psychology and repeated assumptions about your state of mind, something you're personally incensed by.
Why would you respond to a claim that it doesn't matter if the law is passed or not by pointing out that the law probably won't pass?
Because literally everyone responding to you is hyperventilating about the government criminalizing the parenting of the entire Red Tribe. Because someone needs to pump the brakes, because someone needs to at least culture war in the opposite direction if we have to be waging the culture war in the first place.
Just for the sake of wild speculation, imagine for a moment that I am not actually attempting to radicalize other Reds, incite violence, or generally hate-jacking it over the idea of large-scale death and misery with my fellow rage-monsters. Imagine that I'm actually trying, very imperfectly, to convince you specifically that you're wrong about something really, really important: that some of the core assumptions you and people like you rely on for your political and social reasoning actually have a really big and very hazardous blind spot in them.
I reject what you're saying both because 1) I disagree, and believe in the decency and character of the vast majority of my fellow citizens, including you and your fellow rage-monsters and 2) even if you were right, I'm not going to accept it, shrug and go back to scrolling on reddit while my country burns. I'm going to rage against the dying of the light even as you laugh and say 'told you so stupid motherfucker' the same way I'm raging at you now, I'm going to enlist in the armed forces, run for office, start a goddamn substack, argue on the internet, have a family of 6 or whatever it takes to make the world a better place because we are not just passive bystanders, we are what makes this country what it is. There's always going to be freeloaders, cynics and rage-monsters. Spreading cynicism and conflict theory begets more cynicism and conflict; regardless of the truth value of your statements I believe that you're making the problem worse.
Do you remember what you said years ago when I asked why you still bother to post around here? Perhaps I'm insufferable, naive, self-righteous and overzealous but I prefer my answer to what I remember yours was, which amounted to 'it helps pass the time.' If only I could find it.
If a law like this actually passes and starts getting enforced, will you reconsider the relevance of the above post?
Hardly, and the inverse law already exists in Texas. I can fairly easily mentally model a steel-man where both Texan politicians and Guzman are doing what they think is best for the children. Also, the law doesn't matter, remember?
It would take some truly titanic event to turn me as cynical as you. Like concentration camps, civil war, a real coup or living in Russia.
Guzman is motivated by some combination of political ambition and desire to be a Good Person. For her, "good person" is defined by her tribe, which is Blue. Blue Tribe holds that Red anti-LGBT bigotry causes vast harm and suffering, and that preventing and/or punishing this bigotry helps make a better world, that the world will be a better place when Red hostility to LGBT culture has been eliminated, and that actively working to achieve that elimination is a good thing.
You flip between Guzman and Blue tribe as a whole depending on which is more convenient, and project the former onto the latter to justify you writing off half the country. You're rehashing this conversation. Again, you ignore the majority of values that we do share and catastrophize over the marginal cases of trans children with deeply conservative children. In a country of over 300 million, I have no doubt there are a few hundred cases of miserable trans children and angry parents that you could make a probative mountain to bury me under. I suspect you're less interested in the mountain 300 million people tall where this isn't the case.
Not to say I don't take your concerns seriously, or minimize the suffering of those people, or argue that they should be charged with a felony and thrown in jail. But I'm not about to lose my faith in western civilization or this nation because we don't have a great solution for this problem.
Okay. So what happens when they do dominate? Do you think this is all just posturing, and they'd never really do it because that would be crazy? What happens if they decide that no, actually, they're gonna try it?
I think there's a world where trans people face more acceptance than they do now, that surgery and medicine improve their ability to transition more seamlessly, and where people come around not because blue politicians rammed it down their throat but because they don't feel threatened by it anymore. If there are indeed people attracted to being trans for persecution complex reasons, the total number of trans people goes down. And this is congruent with what I think you were saying above; if trans people aren't viewed as a threat anymore values will change organically and a law like this will have broader majority support.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
I don't have access to a financial breakdown of the kinds of studies that feed into this database so I admit this is somewhat me talking out of my ass, but the sequencing costs involved are pretty low these days. I'd guess the cost of computation might even be comparable to running the SNP panels (maybe 25-50$ per sample in bulk, or even 70-100$ per sample in bulk if you just want full genome data).
The real cost is the army of nurses, doctors and scientists doing more or less unpaid labor for career advancement and altruistic reasons; doing this as a private company would be staggeringly expensive unless your scale is much smaller, and either way, any kind of payout from this data would be dubious. Getting the demographic and phenotypic data to associate with the genetic data is an enormous pain in the ass between IRBs, patients who are unreliable and disinterested in giving you data, making sure you're following all the regulations around PII, etc. Not to mention the fact that half the population hates the medical-industrial complex right now and is unlikely to cooperate on any kind of large scale project.
Ideally, we'd all be genome sequenced at birth and our medical records would be entered into a centralized system where researchers could access de-identified data. The ML folks and data scientists would be able to tease out a remarkable number of associations that we just don't have the power for right now. Although maybe we've just circled back to square one, where that centralized system would decide what you can do with it's data...
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
I don't think there's any impetus in my league; if anything, it's the reverse. Nobody is conservative, if they are they're closeted big city conservatives who still like most of the conveniences of blue tribe society, have a distaste for the homeless/wokeness and hide their power level to get laid. The men in my league don't really care and would probably be happy playing without the women if it weren't for the sizable fraction who want to play with their girlfriends. The women are broadly and emphatically pro-trans and diversity.
Moreover, there's such a broad range of skills at this level that it doesn't matter all that much and the highlight for many people is hitting the bar after the game. I've at times been matched up with players who are as far below me as the women on my team are below the trans women. Amusingly, trans women are the new ringers and I suspect a quietly sought after prize for many a captain; everyone wins!
I don't know where the professional leagues are headed.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
Thanks for the earnest feedback. I'm not 100% certain I follow what you're trying to say, as I don't think I said anything about reds accusing blues of booing their outgroup. Unless you were referring to an older post?
I can try to take what you say to heart, but I suspect so long as I'm going against the grain the response will be fraught.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
Tier 1: Some children of both genders would like to wear clothes and accessories traditionally associated with the other gender. This has been widespread for a long time, or at least I've ready many stories of parents coming home to their young boys dressed up in their mother's pearls. I dressed up as a woman for halloween in grade 6, one or two people did it most years. I'm pretty sure there's a picture floating around somewhere of me wearing my mother's heels, necklace and TMNT pyjamas, although I was too young to remember it.
Tier 2: We should tolerate such behavior. Rationally, there's nothing wrong harmful about men wearing dresses and makeup or women wearing overalls or suits. Even historically, fashion trends have been ephemeral and men wearing foppish or feminine clothes has come and gone.
Tier 3: We should provide a supportive environment for people who feel this way. People should be validated and feel positive about their chosen identities without being shamed by society.
Tier 4 (going to have to try and model this one): Sexual attraction is the ultimate form of acceptance/'passing.' The way we can best support/validate trans or gay children is to validate their attractiveness to the other sex...? Someone would have to explain this one to me as well.
Thing is, most events I've seen are somewhere between 1-3. It's likely that had the event happened, some children wearing makeup, wigs and dresses would have walked across a stage and been applauded and told they were beautiful, brave members of society with bright futures as the 'twerking with stripper poles and dollar bills' seems to have been the vast minority of such events. Mr. Burns immediately dialed it up to 10 the least charitable take and I respect his intelligence too much to think that he's doing anything other than culture warring, but maybe my expectations of someone living in a red bubble are unfair.
For the record, I get off the train somewhere between 3 and 4. If I had to guess I'd say that the worst excesses of #4 are driven by hyper-liberal moms thrilled that their children are brave culture revolutionaries rather than pedophile groomers, but I confess I'm not very close with people in those circles. The closest thing I've seen is parents pushing feminine toys on their boy-tots, only to be heartbroken that they want to play with monster trucks.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
It's official, Hitler happened because they didn't have mods.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
Alas, I've been doxxed. Time to delete my account.
Chrisprattalpharaptor
Ave Imperaptor
1yr ago
A less interesting way, though, is to assert that they are the antagonist because they are a Bad Person, and they do harmful things because that is what Bad People do. This is especially pernicious when the author clearly believes that Bad People really exist in significant numbers, and is building their story as an extended sermon on why you should hate them in real life. This attitude does not, generally speaking, help us to sharpen our moral instincts, but to deaden them. Reflexive moral certainty is not the apex of the soul, but arguably its nadir.
I think the above is pretty general. Where it gets specific is that Progressive media doing the above is absurdly widespread and prominent, to the point that it is probably inescapable. I don't remember much that I read in the old days that worked this way, as straight-up advocacy for bigotry. That really does seem to be a... novel innovation.
Diana Moon Glampers, steelwoman extraordinaire, would like a word. As would Emperor Jagang and his group of nihilistic-rapist-socialists who literally hate life and beauty. The infantile POTUS in powers of the earth as well, whose name escapes me.
I think you're conflating two issues, which I suppose I did in OP as well. Not every book on that list is like Iron Widow. Octavia Butler and NK Jemisin have both written fantastic books that I've enjoyed; Parable of the Sower in particular is amusingly pro-2A and nevertheless popular. But it still begs the question of why the slate has been dominated by women unless the people running the Hugos would argue that women are innately better at writing scifi, or if it's some form of restorative justice, just how long they want to keep it up.
The second issue is that some books are indeed political dumpster fires. But as I said, I'm not convinced that progressives have a monopoly on publishing trashy media.
As for the Hugos themselves, the problem you're pointing to was identified years ago, and people of good conscience tried to do something about it. They were crushed, leaving the field to bad-faith actors of both tribes. Actions have consequences.
It's hard to imagine Vox Day as a person of good conscience, although I sympathized with the sad puppies. I'm not sure I would trust any of the groups to recommend me books at this point, which is surprising given how consistently good the awards were from the 1960s all the way through the early 2010s.
Here’s a list of the Hugo award winners this year:
Best Novel: Arkady Martine
Best Novella: Becky Chambers
Best Novelette: Suzanne Palmer
Best Short Story: Sarah Pinsker
Best Series: Seanan McGuire
Best Graphic Story: N.K. Jemisin
Best Related Work: Jane (Charlie) Anders
Best Artist: Rovina Cai
Omitted: Best film/tv series and short/long form editors.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg may never (posthumously) see 9 female justices on the Supreme Court. Perhaps she can rest easier knowing that women more or less swept the Hugos this year. And more or less in 2021. And 2019. And 2018. And almost did in 2017. One has to wonder why modern men are so bad at writing science fiction.
I’ve read virtually all of the books on this list prior to 2019, and my recollection is that they are by and large apolitical. Characterization is often sidelined or nonexistent (I’m looking at you, Asimov), there’s some downright weird...social interactions for lack of a better word (Well, rape my lizard!) and the prose is quite often trash. But where it shines is imagining a society reformed by new technology: a space elevator, FTL travel, psychohistory, nanotech, the metaverse (back when we just called it cyberspace), cyberpunk, biopunk, cypherpunk, spice melange and precognition. The best read like instruction manuals for scientists and entrepreneurs to aspire to, the bad were unapologetically sexist and the worst, presumably, have been lost to time.
Looking at the 2022 Hugo list, I’ve only read Iron Widow (I’ve been on a China kick and a scifi adaptation of Wu Zeitian’s story sounded interesting) and the series by Becky Chambers and Ada Palmer. The former was…unpleasant. Some choice quotes:
I could keep going, but at a certain point I’d be quoting the entire book. Literally every scene that isn’t her fighting in a mecha is more of the above. The main character getting fucked over by her father. By the men in the military. By her lovers. By her copilot. It’s just not readable unless you’re the one being pandered to. She did take her book jacket photo wearing a cow onesie though, so that was pretty cool. Not that it would ever win an award, but I had a similar reaction to The Powers of the Earth with anti-woke libertarian propaganda, and the hypercapitalist Randian rants in Terry Goodkind.
Where Iron Widow is a blasting foghorn wokening our feminist impulses, Becky Chambers is a bit more laidback. I'm still struck by the aimlessness and victimization of the protagonist who just kind of meanders her way from misadventure to misadventure and whose only (?) skill is polylingualism. There's no overarching goal, no training montage or development, no tech wiz hacker bro. The emphasis is on home, belonging, learning about other cultures and refuting the nasty intolerants who disapprove of human-AI or interspecies-lesbian-human-reptilian-nonmonogamous relationships.
I have to ask myself; was I, in turn, being pandered to in the previous eras of scifi in the same way that different demographics are being pandered to now? Am I just primed to like things featuring men or manly women set in space, or that feature nanotech and computers at the expense of character development or good writing? And honestly, the answer is probably yes. There probably is some cosmic Ginsbergian justice to Woke sci-fi taking over traditional awards ceremonies. I don’t think there is a principled, objective stance where William Gibson is a better writer than Octavia Butler and it’s not like we read any of these books because the prose and mechanics of the writing are top tier. Perhaps we’re fated to live in our own little cloistered media bubbles that tell us what we like to hear.
But then…can I at least have my own awards convention so that I know which books from this year aren’t utter crap?
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