JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
9d ago
Gender dysphoria is a genuine medical condition and even you write a the perfect rationalist takedown of the “trans cult”, it wouldn’t change anything for the average trans person.
You put several claims into one sentence:
- There is a genuine medical condition called "gender dysphoria"
- It's the same condition "trans cult" is concerned with
- The concerns of "trans cult" are purely medical and only go as far as medical necessities for the above-mentioned condition go.
- "Average trans person" is the person who has the genuine medical condition above, and in fact, every person that declares oneself "trans person" is automatically suffers from that condition by virtue of that declaration
- There is no other way to treat this condition except by accepting the demands of "trans cult"
- The treatment above is a necessity for an "average trans person" and without it they would suffer objective grave harm
Obviously, some of these claims could be true without others being true at the same time. I could probably grant you 1 and maybe a part of 2, but others are in no way a given.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
Which "combat"? There's no "combat" between a narco-boat in the middle of the sea and a drone flying a mile overhead. If anything, the "combat" began is when the drone operator identified the target, and it ends when the target is destroyed. Saying it in a fancy way doesn't change anything.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
I note you aren't claiming that they use the word Jews when hating them
That's good, because I said it at least twice :)
It's easy to believe that Muslims do, but then I also don't really count them as leftists.
Why not? They certainly vote for the same candidates and policies other Leftists do, and participate in the same party, so who are they if not?
In an event that wasn't targeted against specifically Israel, right? Right?
Exactly. They couldn't care less if a particular Jew ever been to Israel, what opinion they'd have on Israel and what influence on Israel beating up and throwing out of campus of this particular Jew would have (none). They just hated the Jew.
Again, I define antisemitism as the phenomenon of hatred against Jews as the whole group.
That's a bad definition. If you hate all the Jews but the one, then you aren't antisemite? If you have all the Jews but Naturei Karta, then you aren't antisemite? Nah, you still are. People are always inconsistent, even Nazis allowed some select Jews to serve in the army and governmental functions, at least for a while. If you're looking for a cop out where you can rule-lawyer some definition of "antisemitism" that excludes people that don't hate every single Jew, then you'd need another word to that describes the same phenomenon, because the word "antisemitism" will cease to be useful. This btw is a common leftist failure mode - they imagine if they all agree certain word means something, then it becomes reality - like, they call themselves "liberals" and "progressives" and automatically all the nice things that used to be associated with these words attach to them. Of course, in reality exactly the opposite happens. If you call antisemites by any other name, that name will start to mean "antisemite".
The simpler explanation is that most leftists today hate Israel
They do, of course. Because there are a lot of very uppity Jews in there, who arrogantly refuse to behave like the leftists would like them to. But now, as you correctly point out, this also aligns with the Left's embrace of Islamic radicalism, which also conveniently hates the Jews. The match made in hell.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
I was assuming by now everybody knows what it's about because of how much hype was surrounding it and the accompanying NDA battles. Maybe I was wrong. Also, Wikipedia article gives a pretty good description of the factual side, so I decided to concentrate on my own take, rather than duplicate it. I understand it may make this review less useful for people that are interested in the factual side and couldn't care less for my personal impressions, that's ok too.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
Egoism? If I'll be dead, I am not very concerned what the policies would be then.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
In no leftist circle I'm present in are Jews every mentioned negatively qua Jews.
In some circles they use the z-word. In some, they don't bother anymore. Both sides though know it means "the Jews", and both sides are ok with it. Now defining precisely may be a bit complicated, but I'd say AWFUL crowd would mostly be like "oh of course I don't have Jews, it's just about Israel policies!" while the Muslim and other "historically oppressed" parts would be much more open about what it is about.
Should a leftist go "Jews amirite" there, I have no doubt that they would be promptly expelled
Just as university students who literally denied Jews from entering the campus and physically attacked them were expelled, and so did the organizations supporting them?
of their disproportionate presence among Israeli
lolwut? "Disproportionate" to what? Did you expect Israelis to be Chinese instead?
JarJarJedi
10d ago
She maintains that instead of doing bad things, companies should just say they are going to do good things, and then actually do them! And does not comprehend that she is part of the problem.
And she never does the work to explain what "good things" actually are. Either she assumes it's obvious to everybody, or she doesn't bother to explain it. For a person in charge of doing the very same good things, essentially hiring herself for the position, it's quite disappointing.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
When Israel lies about civilian casualties in Gaza, and antisemites tell the truth
But that's not what is happening. Nobody has a reliable count of civilian casualties, and Hamas - which is the only people who have anybody on the ground - are notorious grotesque liars. It could be Israel's figures aren't accurate either, but that doesn't mean Hamas' Arabian Nights type tales are true. As for the rest of antisemites, they don't have any other independent sources, so they either use Hamas numbers or pull them right out of their asses.
That's, like, really bad and stuff, for Israel.
If by "that's" you mean antisemites lying about Israel (and as we already established, they can not but lie) then it may be bad, but it's inevitable - they will always lie about Israel, that's their nature as antisemites. It's just a fact of life, you can't avoid it.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
When Israel makes the antisemites correct about one thing, they risk making people look at the rest of their thoughts. It's a very bad dynamic for the Jewish People.
I am not sure what "one thing" do you mean, but it does not matter - I am rather set back by the argument itself. Are you saying if the State of Israel, over all its, admittedly short, but still multi-decade history, commits a mistake, that validates the views of antisemites that all the Jews are evil, secretly want to (or already do) rule the world and it would be better for everyone if they were exterminated? Because that's what the "rest of their thoughts" are. I mean, yes, that's horrible for the Jewish people, but this does not look good for any other people either. And, may I ask, is this the criteria that applies to everyone, or specifically for Israel alone - that if they ever wrong then everything their enemies ever said about them is true?
JarJarJedi
11d ago
If the Democrats go too far with supporting rioting/insurrection/terrorism, they might get rolled up in a big way by the FBI.
Might they though? So far I am not seeing much evidence of that. Antifa had been destroying Portland for several years now, and periodically flaring up in Seattle, LA and other places. No noticeable FBI action. Sure, they grab a couple of worst offenders here and there but no systemic effort of "rounding up" anybody, and of course not even talk of going higher and investigating the vast feeding NGO network that enabled them. Of course, I don't have any visibility into the FBI internals, but past experience does not give much reason to suspect anything is happening. Especially as FBI rank and file know that if they slow-walk it, Republicans would do nothing to them - worst thing, they may force them to early retirement, with full benefits - but if they cross the Democrats, the next time the Dems come to power the retribution would be ruinous. Unless one is a determined ideologue with nothing to lose, it's clear which strategy is the smarter one.
If nuclear war happens
I don't think it makes any sense to discuss that.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
I literally watched a clip of Fuentes yesterday explaining how The Order is everything, and if some stupid assholes worry about their rights and freedoms, its nothing, and The Authority of the Powerful State must reign supreme, maintained by the overwhelming power of violence, and if your little individual freedoms get trampled, screw you. I'm not sure what would be a disagreement between him and Joseph Stalin by now. The color of the flags?
JarJarJedi
11d ago
In fact the models do not seem to be capable of differentiating on their own between success and pretend-success.
Of course! If there were a way to evaluate the quality of the result, the hyper-smart people earning billions of dollars would think about a thing as trivial as inserting "if the result is of low quality, try doing better" at the end of the AI pipeline. If we, as the end users, see low quality results, it is a hard evidence that their best effort at evaluating the quality of the results are failing. Otherwise they'd build a perfect AI chat and move from billions to trillions.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
dabbled in some antisemitism in addition to trans-furry whatever leftism.
Antisemitism is now completely fine with the left, and has been for a while. If one is skittish about it, they may use the z-word, but many don't even bother anymore. Not that it ever had been entirely out - Marx had been a rabid antisemite, for example - but there were times when it wasn't much talked about. Those times are completely past us. Now any leftist can embrace hating the Joos, and the peers would only cheer.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
I doubt it. I think the main reason is "we need to find something that avoids the conclusion that the Left does political violence, because the Left are the good guys". And fortunately, the Message Machine produced exactly the message they needed - it was actually a right-wing extremist (who are all extremely violent and dangerous, as everybody knows) who done it. So they grab it and hold on it for their dear life, and everything is correct in the world again.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Well, I didn't read the GR tops but I am pretty sure it's not porn - at least not the thing I'd call porn - at least in the SciFi and YA SciFi categories.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Provides a fantasy wherein merely being actually intelligent (as opposed to being iron man or sherlock holmes intelligent) is enough to gain social status, wealth, and power.
Yes, but not exactly. HPMOR's premise is that being intelligent makes you super-powerful. And it's not like Tolkien characters are not intelligent (please, no "why didn't they just order Eagle Uber to Mordor", it had been done to death) - it's just, as in the real world, intelligence is not enough. Otherwise we'd all be ruled by God Emperor Yud The First, The Only And The Eternal by now. But in HPMOR, intelligence makes you a god among mortals, pretty much literally. Unfortunately, this means all other characters (except maybe one or two) must be dumbasses for that to work out. That's disappointing.
Actually manages to teach general principles by which its audience (high schoolers) can become more intelligent.
Might be, not being a high-schooler I can't make much use of that, so here might be a part of it that I am unable to appreciate.
Captures the essential fantasy of harry potter in general.
I must disagree here. The essence of how Potter wins has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with feelings, especially love. The whole premise of the original HP universe is that Voldie is smarter, more powerful, more capable, more ruthless, more everything, than any other character in the universe (including Dumbledore, which is close to his level but ultimately is also done in by him). And he still loses, because he doesn't know what it means to be human, and that's, evidently, how the magic works in that universe. HPMOR universe runs on pure intelligence, the concepts above aren't even featured there. Many people - especially rationalist, autist, introverted, hyper-intelligent geeks - may feel much more at home at the latter universe than at the former, but those are very, very different universes, and claiming HPMOR captures the "essence" of the original work is very far from the truth. If anything, it captures the external trappings while hollowing out the essence and substituting another - maybe more palatable to the geeks, but completely different.
Doesn't make any of the invisible-to-normies but backbreaking-to-autists mistakes found in most ordinary literature.
I've noticed a number of literary mistakes (like, dangling plots, unmotivated actions, etc.) when reading it but of course I already forgot the specifics. But I am willing to believe HPMOR does not have a kind of mistakes that trigger the autists so much, like claiming in one part that certain staircase in Hogwarts had 12 steps, and in another chapter saying it's 11 steps. Of course, no normie reader had ever cared or will ever care about this. Avoiding such mistakes indeed may make it an easier read to certain category of readers - but that doesn't make it a work of literary genius. At least my threshold for it is much higher - and in a different place too.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
it's far from certain that the current incarnation of the Democratic Party will ever get another President
Why not? They got Biden in. Average Democrat always beats average Republican, because Democrat ground game (including control over voting in virtually all population centers, with all possible shenanigans, which we all know is a long debunked conspiracy theory and never happens) is much stronger. Extraordinary Republican (like Trump) will beat average (like Clinton) or weak Democrat (like Harris) - but how many extraordinary candidates Republicans have on the bench? What if Democrats get a good candidate (good at being elected, I mean)?
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Russian prison culture has its own hierarchy, with the honor and authority of the senior ranking members dependent among other things on their resolution of disputes
The actual prison culture does, but street thug culture influenced by echoes of the prison culture doesn't respect any of that. If such thug gets into prison, he'd be either forced to adapt and learn respect, or will be killed. But while they are out there - and many of them are low-level enough to never get to prison - they don't have any such hierarchy.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
I am very surprised by a continued stream of praise (including such words as "genius") piled on HPMOR. I read it, and it was fun, and I admit the premise is pretty clever. But both as a fantasy book and as a literature it seemed to be very mid. Tons of plot lines lead to nowhere. Main reveal is obvious very early. The main protagonist is very Mary Sue. Other characters are severely under-developed. And coming back to the premise, what actually comes out of it? I mean yes, the protagonist wins (I don't think it's much of a spoiler that the titular character in a fantasy book wins at the end, and especially if he's named Harry Potter, right?) but isn't that where the interesting part starts? I mean, by that point HP is basically a god. And he intends to make everybody else into gods (without even asking them, of course - I mean why would he, they are all NPCs anyway). Or only wizards (what happens to muggles btw?) Isn't it something we may want to address somehow? Nah, we're done here, buh-bye.
I mean it's fun, I do not deny it. But genius? Life-changing? "one-shotted a substantial percent of the world’s smartest STEM undergrads"? I mean I knew undergrads now are not what they used to be, but really?
JarJarJedi
11d ago
A lot of cultures have this pattern of behavior. Especially low-trust cultures. Not every one has a scary foreign word to attribute it to, but I saw it many times. In Russian culture, especially with its lower rungs which are thoroughly imbued with prison culture, this is a pretty common pattern. In Israeli culture, again especially among lower rungs (keyword: ars), this approach to every interaction being zero sum win/lose exists and getting one over somebody is highly valued. I am sure there are a lot of other cultures where the same pattern exists, because it's a common human pattern. Not sure why the Urdu term would be any better to use than any other meaning "honor culture" and describing common failure mode of honor cultures. But pattern existing in a culture and the whole culture (or set of cultures) being subjugate to one and single dominating pattern are very different things.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
I didn't mean any people in this discussion, sorry if it isn't clear. I meant people in the US that pretended this was just a theoretical lecture on existence of illegal orders and not a threat (which of course they knew it isn't theoretical and it is very much a threat).
JarJarJedi
11d ago
That's a good point, looking at my reading list, probably the newest books I read in 2025 are Murderbot series, which, ironically, are written by Martha Wells, and Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. I've read about 25 books this year, but the rest of them aren't new.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
I mainly use goodreads for cataloguing my reads (since it has a list of books and UI to manage reading lists, and I am lazy enough to use whatever is there instead of building my own) and seeing what my friends (people I actually know, not facebook kind of "friends") are reading. I sometimes also review, but definitely not all books I read.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
Since publishing and readership overwhelmingly lean female
Why? Males stopped reading? I certainly didn't, and I know many people who are male nerds like me and who read. Is it the millennial/gen Z thing? Are males only doing tiktok or games now?
so I'm not super bothered by it.
I'm not bothered at all - my concern is not having time to read what I already want to read, not to find more reading based on somebody's opinion - I am just curious as to what is going on.
The claim I am addressing is:
If you are only arguing point 1, then gender dysphoria being a genuine medical condition does not support the "trans cult" and has little bearing to the discussion about the cult and the "average trans person", because as you yourself said, the cult's claims go way beyond medical conditions, and they also do not identify "average trans person" with one having the condition. So it's like saying "vitiligo is a real medical condition" and arguing that is a very important insight into racial relationships in the US. Yes, it also about skin color, but it's completely different issue.
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