Gugabe
1yr ago
I mean NFTs are more in the 'new speculative good that might experience some adoption but probably not but you never know' category compared to the short squeeze cargo cult where it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how the market works. Equivalently dumb things have bubbled as NFTs.
Gugabe
1yr ago
Gender dysphoric individuals exist, but it's fairly arbitrary how the rest of society chooses to class them. 'There are people who feel that they are a different gender to their birth gender' is factual, everything beyond that is open to interpretation.
Gugabe
1yr ago
Autism cures are a weird subject in my view, since it depends where exactly you sit on the spectrum.
Which of the following needs a cure?
Somebody with severe life-impacting autism who is happy day-to-day as a result of simply not comprehending their condition and having relatively simple needs & wants. Their perceived quality of life might actually drop if 'cured' from a POV of pure day-to-day happiness.
Somebody with largely high-functioning autism who's prone to depressive episodes due to their social difficulties but can nonetheless fundamentally function in society. Probably most people in the Motte with a diagnosis.
Somebody who's a borderline genius savant, who's accomplished great feats in their preferred discipline, but who is nonetheless incapable of functioning in broader society. Your Paul Erdos or whatever.
Especially acknowledging the spectrum is broad and that there's tons of points between these three. My experience of most 'cure autism' groups is that they're focused expressly on reducing the incidence of the first group of people who are totally unfit for society. Meanwhile as somebody in the second group, who comes from a lineage of other people in the second group, it does feel like a peculiar form of erasure. I've been able to parlay the trade-offs from being high-functioning autistic into professional and personal success, and whilst I'd love some sort of 'everything remains the exact same in terms of intellect and skills but suddenly my brain parses social cues intuitively' trade-off, I suspect that wouldn't be the case. Without even getting into the societal level trade-offs of 'alright we've cured autism, but suddenly we're running low on iconoclastic disagreeable genius inventors'.
I can't really remark on Deafness, and I'm sure there'd be similar arguments to be made that whilst Deafness is clearly a disability, there's a certain attachment to the culture of Deafness that exists, but I feel that Autism is fundamentally different since there's more of an associated trade-off than with most conditions.
Gugabe
1yr ago
Which layer of caretakers? The immediate family are the chief 'victims' from that POV, though it does raise a question of whether paid assistants can be considered to have downsides.
They're doing an ostensibly unpleasant job, but they're getting paid etc.
Gugabe
1yr ago
I'll be fairly surprised if the monarchy survives the decade. Charles nowhere near as endearing/feature of everybody's lives.
Gugabe
1yr ago
He's already 73 and it's a largely ceremonial role. I'm sure he'll be a bit more outspoken, but can't really see it turning into much in practice.
Gugabe
1yr ago
obscure fetishes you find on /d
I mean if you've got a super-obscure fetish it's not like you're commissioning Rembrandt to do the already-available art. In my meandering experience most niche stuff trends towards being low quality anyways, and the inherent... super-specialization of fetish probably goes a long way.
If I'm into pale girls wearing red high heels and a police uniform, the current situation probably means I can get police uniform or red high heels but AI art is gonna let me layer in all the levels of fetish.
Honestly it's kind of concerning seeing how much internet communities have already done for sexual dysfunction and getting overly fetish-focused.
Gugabe
1yr ago
I mean my point is that the 'competition' for obscure fetish art really isn't anything great, so the AI's got a lower barrier to entry into the marketplace.
Gugabe
1yr ago
The ending beat of the movie where Wakanda puts resources into fucking Compton after casually ignoring centuries of African issues in Africa is high comedy, though.
Gugabe
1yr ago
British productions, AFAIK, get skewed a lot by the 'London is the whole of the UK' attitude you frequently see from the BBC so it's far more representative of the % of London with African backgrounds than any sort of a reasonable breakdown of the whole country. Combine that with imported American idpol and it explains why every historical show is so skewed.
Gugabe
1yr ago
Bunch of songs came out on the theme of BLM, but then again it's not like there isn't already significant over-representation of that theme amongst popular music anyway.
Hard to really do a protest song for COVID without getting absolutely nuked from orbit by the media.
Gugabe
1yr ago
Cobra Kai fine but it said 95% of what it needed to say in the first season.
Gugabe
1yr ago
Honestly it's shocking how sticky some of this stuff is, even if the vast majority of people have just moved on with their lives.
Got asked to take a RAT test to attend a 29th birthday celebration in which nobody is immunocompromised or over 30. Some people just seem to want to live in COVID zero mode forever.
Gugabe
1yr ago
Oh I'm gonna take the RAT test as a respect to their cultural beliefs but the fact that it's even a conversation is amazing to me.
Gugabe
1yr ago
My take on this has always been that there'll be some skewering movie that comes out in 5-10 years about this period, and it'll mark the quiet transition of intelligentsia opinion into a 'Iraq WMDs' kind of an issue in which everybody pretends they secretly didn't believe all along.
Gugabe
1yr ago
Yeah. I mean worse players have managed to ride the pine for a couple seasons, but a combination of him being super-specialized and outspoken meant that he probably lost out on that kind of role.
Gugabe
1yr ago
Anything resembling lockdowns, mask-wearing during any sort of physical activity or absurd location like a restaurant.
Gugabe
1yr ago
The teacher example's got a lot to do with the proximity to the age of consent, though?
Then again I'd feel differently about like 3 different hypothetical situations of
50-something CEO sleeping with fresh, 20 year old Intern in first real job
30-something middle manager sleeping with mid-twenties graduate who is their direct report
40-something senior middle manager sleeping with middler middle manager who's also in their 40s.
Gugabe
1yr ago
It generally makes it difficult lines to tread. I'm in a management position, and feel like I can be a lot more hands-on and mentoring with my male graduates/juniors than I can with females. Not that there's anything wrong with the latter, but even a small % chance of it being a career/financial/reputational landmine means I've gotta be cautious.
Gugabe
1yr ago
But on the other hand, if even a few percent of 6,300 nuclear weapons work, that's still a lot of nuclear strikes. So let's not be too brave about denouncing their arsenal.
I mean that's really the core point, especially since there's a difference in failure between 'Their nukes are good to a 100KM radius not a 10KM radius' or other stuff that's gonna not really change the core calculus
In my dating apps experience, putting anything other than 'left' in politics was putting the difficulty on Very Hard.
Which is funny since like 99% of the time in actually matching/talking/meeting girls their own political beliefs were like 60th percentile Left or it just didn't come up.
I feel like on dating apps there's a certain Strawmanization of political spectrum where 'Right = Super fascist' and 'Moderate/Apolitical/whatever = Hiding Super Fascist'. Like how hard is it to just avoid talking about politics for a couple dates until there's enough of a rapport to actually countenance a conversation.
Gugabe
1yr ago
you're so right wing that you can't possibly stay in the closet about it, it would be too obvious, which regardless of your politics isn't a good look, and quite likely maps onto something like "superfascist" anyway.
Agreed the more I think about it. Having enough social awareness to just tick 'Left' on the politics box and 'hide your power level' is a key stumbling block, and also confirms that you're less likely to be a complete pastiche of a raving QAnon-type or whatever overtly, regardless of what your true beliefs are.
I mean it kind of inherently is, due to the overton window for most of Reddit being like 90th percentile Left to 40th percentile Left, which also produces a lot of the 'I was kicked out of the Motte for speaking truth to grotty Right Wingers, but can't possibly be wrong since the rest of Reddit agrees with me' dynamics.
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