HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
No bio...
User ID: 179
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2mo ago
I am curious though, do you happen to know what the reason is why some of the ophthalmologists you're familiar with choose not to get LASIK? I thought it was a pretty safe procedure if you're a good candidate for it.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2mo ago
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
Which ones? I've literally never ran into one. Safari blocks them by default, I really doubt any website would risk cutting off the entire Apple ecosystem.
It's been years, but I recall it being more common when attempting to login or make purchases. I don't remember exact sites. However, googling the phrase (including quotation marks) "Your browser is blocking third-party cookies" reveals many people struggling on various platforms to do various things, including Google and Microsoft, and receiving that error message.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
If you're not blocking 3rd party cookies at this point, you're kind of asking for it.
Too many websites cease to function properly without 3rd party cookies, unfortunately. Yeah, in principle I could troubleshoot each individual case (is the website or content distribution network down? Is it a script that I'm blocking? Is it because I'm using a lesser-known browser? Is it a 3rd party cookie issue? Is it my antivirus software?) But I'll probably more likely say fuck it and close the tab in frustration.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
it would be an act of insane hubris to imagine that you could know better than him.
Would you still feel this way if you discovered that God said raping and murdering strangers for fun is always good?
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
You're new around these parts aren't you? Which isn't a crime at all, we could certainly use new arrivals, but just about anyone who has been here for more than a few weeks knows my clear stance on the CW aspects of the topic, such that I don't feel an explicit need to rehash them.
I've been around for years and have maybe ~1000 comments between here and the old subreddit. I definitely wouldn't have felt comfortable challenging a top-level post's suitability if I was new.
I know your stance on AI and why you think it's always CW (believe me, I have a very cozy relationship with the minus button to the left of your name, despite the fact that I think your non-AI contributions are very high quality), but I don't think everyone has to acquiesce to any given person's conception of what is suitable.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
As an aside, why do people agree to appear for adversarial Congressional hearings like this? I see this happen quite often.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
But many regular posters insist that it's absolutely groundbreaking and will have serious CW implications
Except those supposed implications weren't mentioned in the OP.
I guess that's what it comes down to, though. When you think AI is going to be some godlike superdisruptor of everything, it's CW all the way down. I see it as just another technology and am pretty sick of how half of the output from places like ACX are devoted to this technology. But then I also see it in a non-CW context in the CW thread and it's defended on the highly disputable grounds that anything super important is CW or something.
I'll be honest, it rings similarly to the progressive trope of "I'm bringing up this political topic in this nonpolitical forum because everything is political, don't you people get it?!" No, trans issues are politics, no matter how important you think they are. Justice for Palestine isn't reproductive justice, no matter how important you think the two are. And new versions of LLMs aren't CW no matter how important you think they are. Everything isn't everything, and words have meaning.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
I'll probably get hate for being a buzzkill with this, but, what's the culture war angle for AI posts like this? I get that the broad rationalist community is interested in AI, and certainly there are times when AI and culture war intersect. But I don't see how this is in principle different than posting a top-level CW roundup comment about a new operating system, phone model, GPU line, medical technology innovation, or crypto scandal.
The above data plotted, for whatever that's worth.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
If you care about your family, then you probably don't want your kids to grow up to marry their siblings or cousins. You want them to marry members of different families. Loving your family necessarily implies that you want your grandchildren to have fewer of your genes than your children, and for your great-grand-children to have fewer of your genes than your grandchildren. The long term health of your bloodline depends on it being mixed with other bloodlines. Trying to keep your bloodline unchanged for generations is a profoundly bad idea. Also, it's probably impossible without significant coercion. People generally don't want to marry their family members unless they are forced to do so.
Genetic problems from incestuous relations is a problem. There is no comparable problem for people of one culture interacting with people from that same culture.
If your ancestors had been effective at doing this, your culture wouldn't exist.
And I'd probably care about whatever culture I would have ended up having. Just like if I was born into a different family, I would care about the family I was born into and not the one I have in the reality we live in.
At this point, I am convinced this conversation with you is not worth my time, sorry.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
If you're saying that cultural mixing is always bad, then why do you want to preserve "your" culture?
Because it's my culture. Just like I would care about a different family if I had been born in a different family. I wasn't, so I don't.
Yes, all cultures came into being by mixture/corruption from various forces throughout history. So what? If I was a member of those cultures pre-mixture/corruption, I'd probably have advocated resisting that change. I wasn't, so I'm not. I'm not, because I don't care. I don't care, because I'm not a member of those past cultures.
I don't understand what's so complicated about this. I feel like I'm explaining to a Martian why we humans care about our families more than we care about other families.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
That system, which is what we have and has existed for a very long time, is not communism. The government telling a paper mill that they can't set up their mill in the middle of a residential neighborhood does not make the system communist, so it certainly doesn't make it so when it comes to regulating where houses can be built. If you want to advocate some new understanding of the word "communism" that means something that no one else means by it, you can certainly try to do so, but I doubt it will catch on.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
Gotchya, sorry I misunderstood. Your point is certainly well taken.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
The fact that people are lamenting inflation in the last few years does not mean that they would be against all policies that would cause inflation. The inflation of the last few years is regarded by people on the right as an unforced error with no significant beneficial trade-offs. Just pure loss. By contrast, substantially reducing immigration - even if it resulted in slightly higher grocery bills - would be a substantial benefit (from their perspective) worth the tradeoff.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
It does mean those arguments are uncompelling to THEM, however. Because it means having to condemn their own ancestors, which lots of people are unwilling to do.
But so what? So people don't condemn their ancestors when they should. Now what? Doors open, come one come all?
If you want the current polity to actually limit immigration, that's what you have to contend with. From my perspective if the US decides to limit or not limit immigration, that is largely up to them. If they want to go with the nation of immigrants myth that they are emotionally invested in, that is entirely their right to do so, whether I agree or not.
Believe me, I acknowledge what I have to contend with, and I lament it.
The presence of an unrepentant thief who says, "thievery should be punished, but not me, I'm one of the good ones" does indeed call into question his motivation to make that argument. Largely it's what the non thieves think that should hold most sway. The thief by his very nature is unable to be objective about it.
Right, so forget him and look at his actual argument. You seem to not want to look at the actual argument and only focus on the person making it.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
"Integration" is inherently give-and-take. Unlike your example with the house, you don't own your culture alone, it is shared, and so the extent to which it demands conformism is shared too.
And I advocate for other people who share my culture to agree to keep it from changing in a negative way, and that includes preventing too much immigration.
Would it be fine to start dressing and talking differently after being born there?
Yes. Just like I don't think people who are members of totalitarian ideologies should be allowed to immigrate to the US (and indeed they aren't, I don't think Americans who are members of totalitarian ideologies should be punished for it.
Residents of a country have more rights and freedoms in that country than people who aren't residents of that country.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
Yes, the problem of there being insufficient housing to house all these immigrants is a separate and solvable problem from the problem all these immigrants, I agree.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
If you support housing communism at every level, then you do you. But you will get the standard results of communism.
Can you please explain to us clueless readers of your exchange with firmamenti how the hell people advocating for their interests, such as electing representatives to enact preferable zoning policy, constitutes the government owning the means of production?
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
Obviously from my perspective I don't consider immigrants to necessarily be Americanized. Some more than others, sure. But it seems true to me that a Canadian immigrating to the US tilts America's culture more towards the non-immigrant American population than if that person had not immigrated.
It's like, if you had the following ten numbers: 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (average = 7.2; median: 9), adding another 9 moves the average up to 7.36, which is closer to the median than not adding the 9, even though the 9 is on the low end of the high cluster. Think of the numbers as some metric of "Americanized". Obviously this is a toy example where the numbers are made up, but it's there to illustrate the point.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
No, but it does challenge the moral authority somewhat. I'm an immigrant to the US, so if I am unhappy at immigration (generally) then I am at least somewhat hypocritical. If I had the courage of my convictions I would go back to the UK.
Someone who thinks their ancestors moving to the US was wrong, but does not at least attempt to move back to their ancestral nation is similarly displaying some (lesser!) level of hypocrisy.
I'm an immigrant to the US as well. I understand the argument, but I don't think it's compelling. If I think the tax rate on my bracket should be higher, am I a hypocrite for not donating to the IRS? I don't think people are necessarily hypocrites for availing themselves of legal avenues to better their lives, even if they recognize that it would be better if policy were to change to preclude that option. This is one reason why I don't mistreat immigrants, even though I resent their presence and wish more than anything else that they weren't allowed in: they were following the law.
There's also the self-serving argument that I think my presence in the US actually decreases the amount of cultural change the US is going through as a result of immigration, just given how thoroughly Americanized I am compared to the median American (which is weighed down by the 14% who are foreign-born, and mostly not from Canada like me or the UK like you). But of course I'd say that, and of course you shouldn't believe me. It also doesn't matter.
The point is that a polity has the right to decide who can immigrate, and the failure of the founding stock to limit immigration to X,Y,Z groups does not compel the present polity to permit further immigration. And the fact that some people may be hypocrites or some people are unwilling to bite the bullet and say that their own Irish/Italian/German ancestors should have been forbidden to immigrate does not mean arguments against immigration - even voiced by those descendants of past immigration - are uncompelling.
The presence of an unrepentant thief who says, "thievery should be punished" is not a good argument against his proposition.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
Obviously some change is inevitable. That doesn't mean that we should favor any and all change that we have the power to mitigate. Unless you think immigration as it currently exists produces precisely zero additional cultural change compared to a world with no/little immigration, then we have the power (through curtailing immigration) to mitigate some of the inevitable cultural change.
I'm so perplexed by this line of argument that keeps popping up in immigration debates which is essentially "This thing [cultural change or immigration specifically] happened in the past, therefore it's a good thing, or therefore we can't/shouldn't do anything about it".
The reason we're speaking a language without gendered nouns is because Viking settlers "corrupted" English.
Do you think the communities that were ravaged by the Vikings - the men killed, the women taken as sex slaves, and the land occupied by essentially murderous rapist barbarians - would have had a thing or two to say about whether that "change" was desirable? And most important: If they could have stopped the Vikings, should they not have?
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
Because they're coming to a new country and signaling that they don't intend to integrate. They intend to change the culture to conform to their way of doing things. How do you not see that as profoundly disrespectful and hostile? It'd be like if I invited you into my home and you recognized that I do things certain ways - no shoes indoors, toilet seats stay lowered, lights stay off when not in use - and you disregard it and do what the fuck you want. Except, unlike in the analogy, I can't kick you out once you got here.
No wonder you're confused about why some people are anti-immigrant.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
4mo ago
The argument is that all "natives" were immigrants once.
But that statement does not entail either 1) that it was a good thing that the ancestors of current natives once immigrated; or 2) that further immigration is desirable.
How does one go about finding a "Dr. House" kind of specialist for very treatment-resistant conditions? Specifically, a psychiatrist. Money is no object.
I'm having a four-month-long episode of severe anxiety and panic as a result of getting off of an SSRI I had been on for 25 years. I was totally fine before getting off of it. Getting back on the medication has not gotten me back to my prior normal. My psychiatrist has tried many different adjunctive medications and either nothing resolves it or I get intolerable side effects. My psychiatrist today described my prognosis as, quote, "poor", on account of repeated medication failures.
My ideal vision is a team of multiple experienced psychiatrists, ideally who specialize in anxiety, who can spend a few hours reading about my case and consulting with each other about what might be going on and what might help. I just have no idea how to find such a thing. I'd also be happy to see a single psychiatrist if only I had some way of knowing whether they're especially brilliant or perhaps specialized.
Any advice - even wild speculation - about how to find the care I need would be appreciated. I'm pretty desperate.
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