FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
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User ID: 1739
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
9d ago
So you're saying that refusing to let students enter common areas that they have a right to be in is not harassment, but recording video in a public area (as is your right) is harassment?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
11mo ago
I think that it is inevitable that AI will get used for TV and film screenwriting in the future. Not to completely replace writers, but to make it so you can get by with half or a quarter of the writers you used to have, with each of those writers using AI as tools to produce a lot more than they could before.
I'm basing that off of GPT-4, the tool we currently have: even if text generation AI doesn't get significantly better than GPT-4 its still going to increase writer productivity.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
8mo ago
The only thing that could make the current race entertaining is if Biden or Trump randomly drop dead,
Man, at this point I'm hoping Trump will randomly drop dead.
Well hoping is a strong word. I don't wish anyone dead, I don't think Trump deserves to be dead, I would be horrified and outraged if somebody killed him. It's just that I'm a Republican and I want to win. Trump seems to me to be just about the only Republican running who could possibly lose to Biden. A huge chunk of the country hates the man, and while he has a passionate fanbase a significant section of Republicans are tired of the Donald. I've never voted for a Democrat in my life and I'm not sure I'll vote for Trump if he ends up the nominee (not that I'd vote for Biden, I'd just throw it away on a protest vote for DeSantis or leave it blank). I voted for Trump in 2020 but all the talk of the election being stolen without the goods to back it up has soured me significantly. I want Republicans to win, but you don't rock the boat of democratic legitimacy like that. You could break America that way. I think a lot of Republicans feel the same way.
The way things are going Trump is probably going to be the nominee. And if he is then I think he's more likely to lose than not. The only way I can think of that would change the outcome is if Trump keeled over. It doesn't seem likely though: he may be old, but he's certainly spry. According to the SSA Actuarial Tables a man Trump's age only has a 4.9152% chance of dying in the next twelve months anyway.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
9mo ago
That reminds me of the book The End of the Spear, which is in large part about the conversion of the Waodoni indians in South America to Christianity. Prior to conversion they were infamous killers: nobody entered their territory because it was well known they would probably kill you. They famously killed the missionaries who came to convert them. What's interesting is that after the missionaries were killed, their wives continued the mission. As women they were not seen as a threat and were not killed, and they managed to fairly rapidly convert the entire tribe.
Here's an excerpt from the book's introduction. Steve Saint, son of the slain missionary Nate Saint, is recounting how he and members of the Waodoni took a group of students from the University of Washington on a trip into Waodani territory. After several days travel the students are resting at a Waodani village, among some of the Waodani people when one student asks where the famously violent tribe that killed the missionaries in 50s was. When told that the Waodani were that tribe the student was incredulous:
It was apparent she wasn’t going to accept my word for it, so I suggested she ask the Waodani themselves. “Just ask any of the adult Waodani here were their fathers are,” I suggested. I told her how to say “Bito maempo ayamonoi?” which means, “Your father--Where is he being?” She seemed to wonder what this had to do with her question, but she picked out one of the Waodani men who was enjoying our English gibberish and asked him. He answered simply “Doobae.” I explained to her that the word means “Already.” His father was already dead. I added “Did he get sick and die, or did he die old?”
The warrior snorted at my ridiculous question and clarified with dramatic gestures that his father had been killed with spears.
“Did he just say what I think he said?” the girl asked. “Was his father speared to death? Who would do such a terrible thing?” I informed her that the only people I knew of in Ecuador who had speared anyone in the twentieth century were Waodani…
One of the other students picked a Waodani woman and asked her the same question. Same answer. After one more try with similar results, two girls in the group asked me to ask Mincaye’s wife, Ompodae, the question. From the whispering I overheard, I gathered that they were sure someone as loving and sweet as Ompodae couldn’t have been traumatized by something as horrible as the vicious murder of her father. But Ompodae answered, “My father, my two brothers”--She counted them on her fingers--”my mother, and my baby sister…” There seemed to be more but she stopped there. “All of them were speared to death and hacked with machetes!” Then she pointed at the oldest warrior in camp, who was quietly sharing a stump with one of the male visitors. “Furious and hating us, Dabo killed us all.”...
My feisty tribal grandmother knew what the question was, so she decided to give an answer. She told how her family had been ambushed by another clan of Waodani. When the spearing was over, only she and another girl...were left alive in their clearing. When she finished her narrative, which I hardly needed to interpret because her pantomime was as clear to the students as her words were to me, she pointed to one of the warriors I was sitting with and stated matter-of-factly, “He killed my family and made me his wife!”
One of the girls in the group stammered, “How could she possibly live with the man who had killed her whole family?” I explained that the other girl who was kidnapped with Dawa was overheard complaining about her family being speared. One of the raiders ran a spear through her, and they left her on the trail to die an agonizing death alone, with no one to even bury her body. I explained, “It wasn’t like Dawa had much of a choice.”
Their society was pretty dang violent, but they took to Christianity in a big way. They were eager for it: a way of life where you weren't constantly in fear of getting killed. The anthropologist James Boster wrote a paper about how Christianity served as a way for the Waodoni to escape the perpetual cycle of revenge killing their society had gotten locked into.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
10mo ago
Gross spending aside, the US has 2.4 cops per 1,000 citizens while the EU averages 3.3. So they have about a third more cops per person than the US does.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
8mo ago
If it's normal homeostasis, it means matching your appetite to your activity.
I can understand controlling what you eat, but how does one control appetite? It seems that taking medications like this is a real way to match appetite to activity, so I'm not sure what the objection is.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
8mo ago
Exercise doesn't seem to reduce weight by much, though of course it will make you healthier overall.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
I think the government/academic jobs vs private sector jobs is doing most of the divide there. As Ghostbusters said, "You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results."
I've worked government jobs (low level ones) and I've worked private sector, and in the government job I just had to do the minimum required and follow the rules and I could be sure not to be fired. Private sector there have been times I've worked my butt off and still went home scared that I'd be unemployed next month because the company went belly up.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
I'll first note that your comment seems to reinforce my point; the idea that staying fit and attractive helps people stay married goes hand in hand with the idea that your partner becoming less attractive is reasonable grounds for divorce. That's much more of a left wing than right wing perspective on marriage. But you're right! We should find some actual data and check.
Pew found that when it comes to the statement "Couples who are unhappy tend to stay in bad marriages too long" 69% of Democrats agreed compared to 41% of Republicans. That divide gets wider the further to the right or left you go: for Republicans that described themselves as "conservative" (as opposed to "moderate" or "liberal") only 35% agreed, compared to 76% Democrats who described themselves as "liberal".
Of course that's just stated attitudes, what about actual divorce rates? A study from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia found that for people who had ever been married at all 41% of Republicans had been divorced compared to 47% of Democrats. They also found that 57% of Republicans are currently married, compared to 40% of Democrats.
Another study found that the divorce rate was higher in red states than blue states, but they also noted that the marriage rate was much higher in red states than blue states which may account for it. A smaller percentage of divorces among a larger number a marriages may mean that Republicans divorce more per capita, but divorce less as a proportion of all married individuals.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
10mo ago
I'm opposed to student loan forgiveness, but I'm one of the people who would have benefited from it. So maybe I can provide some light on who would benefit.
I have a bit over $10,000 in student debt that I acquired getting an MBA (I went through undergrad debt free, got the MBA because my work wanted me to and was willing to pay for a third of the cost). My wife has over $20,000 in student loan debt, and started out with almost $80,000 in debt. She got that pursuing a career as a licensed professional (I won't say what profession because I don't really need to, but you need a masters degree, you need to get licensed, and the average one of these makes around $65,000 a year and the really successful ones make about twice that).
Between the two of us we bring in around ~$125,000 per year. So we're not poor by any means. We have a house, two cars, can afford to go on vacation, etc. We will definitely be able to pay off the debt over time without falling into penury. If forgiveness had gone through, the main result would be getting it all paid off faster so we could free up that money for other expenses: savings, home improvements, luxuries, that sort of thing.
I think our case isn't that unusual. There are a lot of people who, like my wife, paid way too much for a degree that gets them an income well above the median.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
8mo ago
The difference between DeSantis and Gavin Newsom is that DeSantis has shown himself to be competent at governing. Things have been going pretty great for Florida in material terms during his tenure, while California is more of a basket case than ever (that 2021-2022 Florida was the fastest growing state in the union for the first time since the 50s, while California lost population over the last two years says a lot).
On the other hand, being a competent governor doesn't mean that you can run a competent presidential campaign. We'll see what happens when the primaries start, but as a DeSantis supporter I've got a bad feeling about his chances.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
9mo ago
In my experience (reading guides to writing by successful authors, or listening to interviews on the subject) there are two types of professional writer out there: those who hate writing, and those for whom writing is as easy as breathing.
The first type (the Haters) are people like Freddie DeBoer, Larry Correia, or Roald Dahl. They are more likely to look at writing as a job like any other: it's hard, and it takes commitment and work and discipline if you're going to have any chance of being successful. Dahl would write about how writing was exhausting:
The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.
I am in this camp myself: writing is hard to do. I'd rather be doing other things. When it comes time to write, (proper writing, not shooting off a comment on The Motte) I find just about anything else more attractive, like doing the dishes or weeding or finally cleaning out those gutters. For these writers the difficulty of writing is something that must be overcome.
Then there is the second camp (the Breathers) who have no idea why the first type are writers to begin with. This camp includes C. S. Lewis, Andrew Klavan, Scott Alexander, and Isaac Asimov. These are the type of people who, when asked how a young writer can start writing, would reply in either frustration or confusion that if they're not writing already then they're not really writers. Writers write, it's what they do, and it's easy. They couldn't not write if they wanted to. Lewis would hardly ever edit his books, getting them just the way he liked them on the first try. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers on earth, writing over 500 books and scads of short stories, essays, articles, etc. As for Scott:
On the other hand, I know people who want to get good at writing, and make a mighty resolution to write two hundred words a day every day, and then after the first week they find it’s too annoying and give up. These people think I’m amazing, and why shouldn’t they? I’ve written a few hundred to a few thousand words pretty much every day for the past ten years.
But as I’ve said before, this has taken exactly zero willpower. It’s more that I can’t stop even if I want to. Part of that is probably that when I write, I feel really good about having expressed exactly what it was I meant to say. Lots of people read it, they comment, they praise me, I feel good, I’m encouraged to keep writing, and it’s exactly the same virtuous cycle as my brother got from his piano practice.
That's just how it is. I would say the Haters become professional writers because they have ideas they want to share and stories they want to tell and writing, while difficult, is the best way they can express those things. The Breathers become writers because that's just what they are. If they weren't publishing books, they'd be one of those guys who constantly edits Wikipedia.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
The devil.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
20d ago
If you told me Bolsheviks in quiet camp positions had a weekly routine of murdering women and children, then yes I would doubt it.
You would be wrong to doubt it. Over 1.5 million died in the gulags, and over a twenty year period citizens were regularly snatched out of their beds, taken to the basement of the Lubyanka, and shot in the back of the head. At least 700,000 Russians were executed between 1936-1938 during Stalin's Great Purge.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
While the consensus is that God knows the future with 100% accuracy, there is not Christian theological consensus on predestination, election, or free will.
In the Evangelical tradition I grew up in the position I heard the most was that the Bible commands us to choose certain things, which means choice is possible. And that the Bible says God knows all things, including the future. Like most Evangelical theology, how to square that circle is left as an exercise for the reader.
The Calvinists, quite famously, believe God chooses who will be righteous and who will be damned from jump. We have no ability to choose salvation or damnation. Many Calvinists believe that we do have free will, but our choices are based on our desires and characters and God choose to give us particular desires and characters that will constrain the choices we have available.
The Catholic church teaches that we have the free will to either accept or reject the grace of God, and that when God predestined the course of history he left room for us to make decisions. He knows what decision we'll freely make in advance, of course.
C.S. Lewis described the intersection of our choices and God's predestination this way in Mere Christianity:
If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.
…
Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how can I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again, the difficulty comes from thinking that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only difference being that He can see ahead and we cannot. Well, if that were true, if God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today." All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday. He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way — because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.
It's possible that those on the left value being skinny and attractive more than those on the right do. The urban left is more likely to be interested in casual sex with strangers, and more likely to be going from relationship to relationship as opposed to settling down with someone. Also more likely to get divorced and try to find a new partner. With that environment in mind, it is advantageous to maintain your attractiveness so you can continue to attract mates.
In contrast, the further to the right you go the more likely you are to have a culture valuing finding someone to settle down with and start a family. Once you've bagged a mate and said your vows, staying physically attractive is much less important for your day to day happiness. What's more, on the right you're more likely to have broad family and local networks to fill your social needs: people who don't need to find you attractive to be in your life. For the urban left, I can imagine you have to build your social network more from fostering relationships with new people rather than leaning on your family and the people who have known you since you were a kid.
All that is speculative, of course. What I can confirm is that in right wing cultural spaces if someone is fat they'll usually say something like "I love to eat, that's why I'm fat!" or "I know being fat ain't healthy, but eating food is what makes life worth living." It comes from a place of personal responsibility, including the personal responsibility to accept the consequences of your actions and the trade-offs you have made.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
C. S. Lewis wrote about the relation of Christianity to the liberal idea of political equality in a few places. This passage is from his essay "Membership":
I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.
That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple, to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen Filmer would be right, and patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government. But since we have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that “all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. The authority of Father and Husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because this authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin) but because Fathers and Husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interfered with because it is constantly abused.
...
By treating human persons (in judicious defiance of the observed facts) as if they were all the same kind of thing, we avoid innumerable evils. But it is not on this that we were made to live. It is idle to say that men are of equal value. If value is taken in a worldly sense ― if we mean that all men are equally useful or beautiful or good or entertaining ― then it is nonsense. If it means that all are of equal value as immortal souls then I think it conceals a dangerous error. The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value He perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St. Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would have been not divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because He is Love. It may be that He loves all equally ― He certainly loved all to the death ― and I am not certain what the expression means. If there is equality it is in His love, not in us.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
13d ago
I was wondering why my avatar was suddenly an anemic 12 year old boy! Did not expect to find the explanation for that here at The Motte.
There's definitely a non-binary bent to it. I got three options of faces, one of them is boyish and the other two are feminine. I thought maybe trying a slightly bulkier body style would make me look less like a tween, but while my body bulked my head remained the same size, making me a microcephalic.
I don't think I've ever played a game before where I actively hate seeing my avatar's face.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
22d ago
It's about Natural Law. The problem is, moderns confuse the natural in "Natural Law" with natural as in "what happens naturally, what happens in nature, anything that happens that nobody tried to make happen on purpose" and that's the wrong kind of "natural".
In Natural Law, there is such a thing as a human, and such a thing as a male or female human, and these things have certain characteristics. For instance, humans have two legs. Even though some humans are born with only one leg, it remains the fact that the "natural" human has two legs. There is something wrong with a human who is born with only one leg, because humans are "naturally" supposed to have two legs.
By the same token, humans are "naturally" male or female. If you're born with bits that don't match either, then something is wrong with you: that's why we call it a congenital "defect" or "abnormality", we're comparing the condition to "natural" males and females and noting that it does not match. This kind of thing happens sometimes, just like you get humans born with only one leg. So if you surgically intervene to correct the abnormality, you are doing much the same thing as a doctor who removes a tumor (humans are not supposed to have tumors in them) or who performs plastic surgery to repair the skin of a burn victim (humans are not supposed to have their skin all melted off). You are correcting a disease, returning them to as "natural" a condition as possible by medical science.
In contrast, lets look at a male to female sex change operation. The genitals are surgically removed, and a kind of pseudo vagina is made. This is taking a physically healthy and "natural" male and turning it into a defective and unnatural male: a male with no penis, no testicles, and a hole where a hole shouldn't be. What's more, it removes some of his "natural" capabilities, such as being able to sire children. From a Natural Law perspective a sex change operation like this is completely analogous to cutting off someone's arm or leg or nose: you're maiming them, turning them from "natural" humans into unnatural and defective humans. Under Natural Law it may be acceptable sometimes to maim a human in the pursuit of a greater good: for example, amputating a limb that is badly infected before the infection can kill the patient. In that case the amputation is still an evil, but it is an evil that is allowed because it is in the aim of preventing a worse evil, death (a dead human is about as far from a "natural" human as you can get). This shouldn't be confused with consequentialism, because Catholics are not consequentialists: they call it the "principle of double effect". The doctor's goal is to save the patient's life, not to maim the patient. If the doctor could save the patient's life without amputating his arm, then the doctor would do that. This is different than if a BIID individual came to a doctor asking for the doctor to amputate his limb: in that case the whole purpose of the procedure is to maim the patient, there is no scenario in which the doctor would not amputate the arm if he could, since amputating the arm is the whole point.
(You could argue the actual point is to cure the individuals BIID symptoms, and if the doctor could cure the BIID without amputating then he would. That might be permissible under Natural Law, but it leads us naturally to the question of whether there is a non maiming way to cure BIID or not. If there is then the principle of double effect doesn't apply).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
The thing that I took away from SMTM that seems most important is that something weird is going on, and it's getting worse despite our best attempts to fix it. People are getting fatter and fatter, and as a society we've been putting more and more resources into not getting fat. This does seem mysterious, and I do think something more is going on then just "food is cheap and corporations make food taste great".
Until someone figures out what that thing is definitively, though, the best I can do is employ willpower to try not to get any fatter than I am now.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
I can see an argument for saying that the obese are people with a chronic disease tautologically: arguably being obese is a disease, and it's certainly not an acute condition (nobody gets obese overnight, and nobody stops being obese overnight). Of course if you take that perspective then I'm not sure how you can square it with "fat pride." Nobody goes around being proud of having multiple sclerosis, or saying that goiters are beautiful. And the fact that it is a chronic disease does not absolve someone of responsibility for acquiring that condition: cirrhosis of the liver is another chronic disease that is almost always the result of personal choices.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
The "I know this will cost me my political future, but I'm not going to subvert the Constitution" Mike Pence.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
9mo ago
I concur. I used to go there regularly, but I dropped off some time after 2016 because it went from somewhat left to extremely left. That's also when Leah Libresco stopped writing for them.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
9d ago
My intuition is that people should not be allowed to turn public spaces into de facto designated areas, only de jure ones. And keeping people out of areas they have a right to be in because you disagree with their politics, or don't like the way they look, is harassment if anything is.
If we're concerned about confrontations then the protests themselves should be discouraged, because that's how confrontations begin.
This is not purely self imposed: there's a reason it's the West Coast cities, and that's because they have to comply with the whims of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2018 the 9th Circuit ruled that enforcing anti-camping ordinances (better known as "rounding up all the bums") was cruel and unusual punishment, unless the city provided some kind of shelter that the homeless could go to. Since then lower courts have expanded the ruling considerably in a wide variety of ways that chalk up to making the homeless unpoliceable. In 2022 the 9th Circuit doubled down, ruling that the homeless can participate in class action lawsuits against cities that impose criminal or civil penalties on homeless.
Have the pro-homeless NGOs made hay out of this situation? Yes. Is there more Seattle and the rest of the west coast could do? Sure. But even in conservative Anchorage, Alaska (where it gets down to -20 F on the coldest winter nights) has a serious homeless problem, and that problem is named the 9th Circuit.
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