Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
Hello back frens
User ID: 2022
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Not necessarily from the same premises. Its a more general sense that, if the Singerian argument werent valid, hers would not be either. That can be because ethical theories share machinery, because they hinge on similar questions of fact, because they draw on the same intuitions, or some other reason.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
I'm socially liberal enough that no matter what the actual underlying case may be, I can justify pronoun hospitality, nickname hospitality, and access to hormone treatments and cosmetic surgeries. But I'm not sure if something like Blanchard's typology, or social contagion theory, or something-something autism turned out to be the underlying cause of transgenderism that the general public would agree.
So you would support hormones and surgeries for transgenderism caused by social contagion? That sounds interesting, could you flesh that out?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
My idea of life and freedom, were I to succeed in rigorously defining it, would probably be similar to «empowerment gain» in this theoretical ML paper
This doesnt do what you want it to do.
First, its defined in terms of what the agent could do in the future, not what it will actually do. So if the pothead could do something productive but had his values shifted to where he doesnt want to any more, that wouldnt limit his empowerment in the sense defined there.
Also its defined for discrete finite outcome states, and adapting it to the continuous case requires an additional parameter, most simply a measure on the outcome space which tells you how valuable granularity of control is in different parts of that space relative to each other.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Thank you, this looks very interesting.
Ive always thought that historical incomparability cant apply to civilised peoples, precisely because they think about history. That enables them to disagree with you and your theory of history that you put them into. You cant "input sanitise" them when you put them in there, without denying that they were talking about the history that they themselves are in. And yet, here is someone who wrote a whole book about what people thought of history, asserting that incomparability. I wonder how he tries to square that.
I agree with your application of this version of progress to the Cthulhu swim, if "problem" is understood correctly: In the version I believe, what counts as a "problem" for the sake of progress in a field is determined by the field itself. Not us, or an "objective observer", looking at the state if the field and thinking something is bad, but the internal criteria that are already present in the field. I would guess that is what Collingwood means as well, but your comment doesnt make it clear to an unfamiliar reader, and it could lead to very different takeaways.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
7mo ago
Having just returned after a while, I notice that theres no easy way to find recent quality contributions posts from the front page. I know to look on reddit, but maybe we would want them more prominent for new users?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
The higher IQ applies to the ashkenazim and is thought to be from selection in the late middle ages and after, but the pattern of concentrating in certain elite professions and the majority getting mad about it applies to jews much more generally, and so is presumably not explained by it.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
So there is no dissonance in people's minds.
I meant within german progressives, or the overall coalition. As in, turkish opinions on the treatment of the armenians is something progressives would have a problem with, but is not immediately relevant here and now, so absent the loyalty conflict they could have ignored it.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Sorry if this wasnt clear, Im austrian. But I think its somewhat surprising you dont hear about them in america as well. You certainly heard about the "syrian" refugees, and I would guess youre at least aware that the turks are a topic here?
Yes, but its a thing far-lefties write about and thats kind of it. Can you remember a polititian being accused of Antiziganismus by a relevant opponent or a major newspaper? Now compare antisemitism, racism vs MENA.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
This is going to sound mean but one of the reasons I've largely stopped participating in conversations about sex, gender, relationships, etc... is that so many of the surrounding it is so, for lack of a better term, "autistic".
Some of this propably is a lack of social understanding from the people involved, but I think a good bit also comes from arguing in a formalistic way. Where, instead of "being reasonable", and using your common sense to grease the understanding, they try to be very literal about everything. Theyre doing this on purpose, not because they dont have common sense, but because, to stick with the metaphor, greasing well might let you get work done even with a mistake in the gears that you dont notice.
Potentially finding that mistake is prioritised because you dont particularly care about getting to the "practical" outcome. Theres propably many cases of red- and blue-pillers arguing with each other who handle their real-life relationship very similarly. The goal is to understand "what things really are", in some sense. To nerdy liberals, whether men or women are "really" treated unfairly in relationships is such an abstract question, not necessarily related to practical recommendations for anyone, but very important morally. And I think its clear why such a "reality" could be interesting on the trans topic.
This isnt intended to convince you such arguments are a good use of time, they propably mostly arent, but you might appreciate knowing it.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
The western world isn't homogeneously wealthy though.
Most of it is within a factor of 2, which corresponds to about 30 years of economic development - and the bigger ones grow slower.
And Japan is at a minimum proof that you can have a functional and affordable housing market even with extreme land constraints and a high population density if you just allow more construction.
My beef is with the claim that this is keeping the whole economy down.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
I think poor people care much more about separating themselves from even poorer people then about getting to be with the richer people. Horrible-to-be-around-ness also follows the power law.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
You could have made that argument about things that actually happened as well though. It needs to get a foot in the door somehow first, unassited, doesnt need to be very big or mainstream. Then I think liberals would support it. Not to increase minorities, or because they believe being gay is better, but in the same sort of way they do with trans now.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
One example for what this could look like is low mutational load: Its also correlated with all the good things, including IQ, and certainly causally upstream of it. Genetic IQ enhancement in a narrow sense wouldnt fix that, and if it has any effects not mediated by IQ (it almost certainly does), you wouldnt get those, whereas currently they strongly correlate with IQ. Now, in this case, if you know about it and are already doing genetic enhancements, its easy to fix that as well. But there could be more things like this.
Basically, noone has run an RCT on IQ increases, because we havent been able to do them.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Re the first part, I think your reasoning here depends on the directions orthogonal to beauty still corresponding relatively closely to terms in which we normally think about art.
the SF Federal Building, the Toronto subway sketches and the MLK Embrace statue all achieve their hideousness in unique ways, and all seem to strive toward various other indicia of elite art
Do I read correctly that you think its possible to make something thats clearly art of our current elite and also beautiful?
We also hear that beauty is consumerist, looks cheap, is reactionary, means embracing an aesthetic of a white supremacist past, etc
What did you have in mind with "looks cheap"? Are there really people who would say e.g. the Lincoln memorial looks cheap?
"Reactionary" here means basically the same thing I did with "fascist", and the association with bad old times is somewhere between made up and self-fulfilling, so it cant be the cause of the dislike.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
I forget the quote and context completely, but the gist is that you can recognize intelligence below your own, but not above.
It actually says that it does extend above a bit:
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
7mo ago
There is but it's not particularly relevant to this discussion
I wasnt particularly disagreeing with you; I genuinely would like to know what you think is in there.
secular progressivism with at least two-scoops of Marx and Hegel
How much do you know of Hegel? My impression is that while he caused a lot of brainrot, you are closer to his object-level positions than to Hobbses.
Also Holy thread necromancy Batman.
Im here so rarely now, I pick out the pearls.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
7mo ago
The joke is saying theres this opinion that conservatives have thats getting censored, and they dont want to admit that opinion. Getting censored applies to all social conservatism pretty evenly. Progressives accusing conservatives of secretly holding some opinion can apply to all of it, but applies most commonly to race. The last line is saying that we should have enough information now to know which one was meant. So the author thinks only one thing meets the previous conditions sufficiently. And race meets them the most, so it can only be that.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
7mo ago
Acknowledging that some parents are bad and need to be treated differently from other parents is in no way at odds with saying parents should generally be trusted to make good decisions for their children. It's just that every rule has exceptions.
And how do we decide if the parents are bad in any given case? On this issue, the progressive answer seems to be "if the child says so". That is pretty close to just letting the child make the decisions in the first place. You cant really claim to agree that "parents should make the decisions in most cases", if you support overriding this default at the childs asking.
In the vast majority of cases, everyone involved agrees what to do. Saying "well in those cases we let the parents decide" does not count as parents deciding most of the time.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
7mo ago
This is a great question, and most of the disagreement youre getting is just insisting on the Enlightenments self-presentation with little argument. Sad.
That said, I dont think "We know how to solve all our problems." is a plausible candidate. First its a very simple idea, thats easy for lots of people to stumble upon in lots of situations. Secondly, confidence can grow quickly, and shrink quickly, too. So if that was what the enlightenment was about, it would not be a historical trend with a definite starting point, it would be something like "Cannibalism in crisis" or "Wars of succession" that pops up occasionally and peters out again.
I think that, at least as far as politics is concerned, a good summary of the Enlightenment is Cartesian dualism. It leads to things like the original position, our definition of authentic desire, people apparently appearing ex nihilo as fully formed adults, "What if you had been born an X", and most of the other driving arguments of "progress".
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
7mo ago
I think that for the most part, people interpret votecounts as "people want to see stuff like this", even if it doesnt effect visibility anymore. And I think this interpretation is correct, in the sense that most people vote like this, too. If you use your votes differently, youre propably not sending the signals you want.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
When the ADL puts enormous pressure at the highest levels of power to "Stop Hate", is that progressivism masquerading as ethnic power, or is it ethnic power masquerading as progressive morality?
But I think you will agree that the ADL didnt get its power from "fierce advocacy". The advocacy and the being-persuaded-by-it are fake. My point is that "doing identity politics" suggests a pretty specific plan of action: You want to be very loud about how your group is treated badly, maybe have an organisation dedicated to that, make an ethnic voting block, etc. But those parts are kayfabe, they dont actually make you win. Now, maybe you mean something else by it, but if so its pretty prone to misunderstandings, because I still cant tell what it would be after rereading your comments with the assumption that its there.
Do you think blacks got their current status in western society by "winning" it from whites?
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