Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
Hello back frens
User ID: 2022
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
tomboys are not trans men, though they function like the platonic ideal of one, including attitude and general outlook on life
Ive thought this too. If self-identified trans men really are men, theyre the type of man who worrys that his canthal tilt isnt enough - ie a loser, who we would consider at least as deficient in masculinity mentally as physically. Obviously the really masculine thing to do is to just be one of the boys.
And while youre right that theres some obvious reasons why men would be interested in those women, I also think there is something particular to it for nerds. We are a culture thats mostly male and at least used to believe in gender equality, and so have accumulated a lot of masculinely inspired but genderneutrally applied ideals. Jocks might like the convenice of a more masculine mentality, but they also like acting steretypically all girly. How do you act girly in accordance with nerd culture? Dimorphism exists for a reason, and I feel sometimes that this remains a mote in our eye, who now complain about other unnatural degeneracy.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
Those are two different things. Whats useful for dealing with whale hunting is not whats useful for understanding. As for the latter, Scott disagrees with that:
If I’m willing to accept an unexpected chunk of Turkey deep inside Syrian territory to honor some random dead guy – and I better, or else a platoon of Turkish special forces will want to have a word with me – then I ought to accept an unexpected man or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered female if it’ll save someone’s life.
Yes, this is another example of asserting that there are two kinds of words, and that the "pragmatic" ones should be optimised according to reasons provided using the "primary" ones (the axis of thingspace), without explaining how to distinguish the two. Yuds version is better in that it at least gives you a concept of a plan he might propose - like "primary properties are continuous" - but it doesnt give us a system that could be evaluated for corresponding to our epistemic situation, or even being coherent. I also dont think his version of "optimise" has considerations like "Norton really wants to be an emperor so lets include him in the category":
Suppose we mapped all the birds in the world into thingspace, using a distance metric that corresponds as well as possible to perceived similarity in humans
This helps, because you have to describe your "optimisation target" in terms of primary words to avoid circularity - I doubt the Yud primary words could actually be used for the Scott objective. For the Scott version, you need to make it so "aggregate human preferences" is a real word, but "woman" is not. For an illustrative example of this problem, see here:
Similarly, if I’m thinking about whether shrimp are conscious, I’m thinking about how shrimp are similar to and different from creatures we normally think of as ‘conscious’, and what these differences indicate about whether there’s something it’s like to be a shrimp.
where you might notice that "whether there’s something it’s like to be an X" is well established in philosophical discourse as being pretty much exactly as difficult as "consciousness", and has in many ways even started the trend of considering consciousness difficult in analytic philosophy. Thats what happens when your redefinition attempts accidentally hit on one of the terms in the optimisation objective, which happened because youre not systematic about it, because youve convinced yourself its unnecessary by intellectual descent from the exact thing in Scotts post Im objecting to.
(This isnt really relevant to the gender conversation, but one consequence of these cluster words is that all logical arguments, which require language compositionality, come with an asterisk to them. This is highly relevant when you try to use such arguments to convince people of a rather unusual conclusion, where you will not have an opportunity to see if these particular words "empirically describe the cluster well enough for these purposes" until its too late.)
it is highly practical to be able to open up a minimal number of them, for example to debate what should be included as a mammal without pre-emptively also debating what "hair", "water", "leg", "swim", and "definition" mean, exactly
You, on the other hand, seem content with there not being a real distinction, and as far as I can tell youre saying here that my complaint that "this principle requires selective application" is true of Scotts theory and also in reality, without any way to be systematic about it.
'all models are wrong, but some models are useful'
Yes, what do you think "useful" means? Of course, your evaluation of whats high-utility will have to include all sorts of knock-on effects - but it cant include things like "this is useful to say because its true". This is of course incoherent, you cant actually decide whats high-utility without knowing whats true, and Scott the human knows what truth is when its about normal topics - but thats what the argument of the post implies when taken seriously (you will notice that the section thats actually talking about how language works is very short relative to the post). Theres no conceptual role left for truth, as distinct from "the outcome of usefully structuring language".
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
Keep seeing same link. Keep making same response
If "is a fish" really were just semantic, then by the same mechanism "has tiny hairs" would be just semantic. So there would be no facts based on which you can classify things... The only thing that makes this theory remotely workable is that you already know which things you want to apply it too. Its pure Humpty-Dumpty-ism in practice.
You could look it up, it's not my argument. It's good enough for me that most people hate it, so let's avoid it. It's fun when nickels are worth picking up off the ground and can get you a coke.
I mean, thats some reasons, but when weighed against "prosperity beyond what anyone can imagine" they dont weigh especially strongly. Could you at least link it? MMT has lots of cranks that will be dismissed as not representative.
I said the government levies 'some' taxes every year
I also have 'some' income outside taking on debt. I can commit to spending part of it on buying back my own IOUs/debt service in the future. Indeed, my nominal income increases with inflation and economic growth, so this is in many ways like a relative tax. Also assume I live forever. Now can I blow up my debt to infinity? Propably not; propably there is some mechanism tieing the debt amount to the size of the tax base/income, but what?
So, I actually agree that, with fixed expenditures and relative taxes, you can just print money to make up the deficit and it will stabilise eventually. Youll have inflated down the expenditures so that they are covered by the taxes. But this will have reduced the real amount of the expenditures. What is the benefit of doing this over just cutting the expenditures to meet the income?
That doesn't imply anything about somehow taxing it all back and paying it all off or whatever, at some unspecified jubilee judgement day where we have to unwind everything.
Indeed, you never have to actually go down to zero debt. But the debt is nonetheless tied to the ability to do that. It can not grow without limits in real terms. Consider: in your view printed cash and government debt are interchangable. So lets say we only print money. Then unlimited real growth of debt would mean unlimited real growth of GDP, or an unlimited willingness of people to sit on cash and never spend it. Neither is realistic.
This question of an "end date" where you unwind everything or absence thereof is in fact very interesting and fruitful to think about more broadly, because it leads to a lot of changes in economics, and Im not sure you understand this in a "settled science" way (else you would have likely lead with that, because thats the only point where your assumptions may differ from classical). For example, imagine you have no time prefencence and an investment that will keep yielding 10%/year indefinitely. What is the optimal amount to withdraw each year? For any given percentage, half of that is better in the long term... but 0 provides no utility at all.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
There isn't a consensus sorting of everyone into male and female either
I agree thats the status quo; but success for the trans movement would be creating one. Thats what I said.
they call a definitional core of "unambiguous women", but this would look like "phenotypical women not asserting they are not + progressives in good standing asserting to be women".
I think this goes back to whether the definition by self-identification is circular or not. I think we all, including OP, know that progressives can answer "a woman is whoever says theyre a woman" in response to the question. He must not consider that a real answer.
neither side is okay with transracialism (central-example whites asserting that they are central-example blacks).
Actually, I dont think theyre necessarily fine with non-central people asserting to be either, either.
where both agree on central examples, the boundaries are fuzzy so few would be comfortable defining an exhaustive predicate and committing to it
The difference is that with gender, progressives are accused, IMO accurately, of their criteria ultimately depending on sex stereotypes, and they deny it. The right on race, once its out that they care about it at all, doesnt really mind their categorisation judgements being understood. I dont think progressives even have a theory there, true or not, that they would want to deny.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
I assume you're not asking for the various downsides of inflation in general and why people find it annoying when it's above some small amount like 1-2%?
Im asking for some kind of real economic cost; "Its annoying when the prices are different than I remember" doesnt count, no.
As for paying interest, it's purely a policy choice to pay anything other than 0% on any of these IOUs
If you dont pay enough interest, people will stop lending you money.
When and why would they ever need to 'tax back' this amount? The IOUs just roll over indefinitely.
Well, you said that the difference between me and the state is that the state can tax. If it doesnt actually need to do that, then whats the difference? Why cant I have ever-increasing amounts of debt that I service by taking on new debt?
What youre proposing here is "The Ponzi scheme that actually works". Because Ponzi schemes do work so long as the investors dont take out their money, ie stop letting you roll over your debt.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
I dont think thats a good analogy. While people do try to police race boundaries sometimes, there is not in fact a consensus sorting everyone into white and black. I would tell our autist about definitely white and definitely black people, and the ones in between will depend on whos making the judgement and whats convenient for them at the time. I dont think progressives are happy with this a model for how transgender should work.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
I could say that I do want to shrink the non-government surplus in hypothetical situations, if we're having obnoxious levels of inflation, maybe caused by too much government spending being indexed against the price level
Ill note that you still havent explained why too much inflation is bad, or how we would know what "too much" is.
Having some amount of taxes is what gives the currency an initial anchor value... That's what allows them to indefinitely print up IOUs that promise to pay nothing but an abstract amount of value in a unit of measurement they make up, and people will still line up to earn those IOUs
Transitioning out of just questions, I agree that the taxes give value to the IOUs, but I dont think the made up unit gives you all that much long-term. You can inflate away your debt, but expectations of inflation are built into the interest rate you are offered. Unless you can somehow inflate above expectations indefinitely, in the long term you need to tax back what you borrowed plus interest in real terms. There is no reason to borrow unless your position as the government gives you investment opportunities above market returns, youd just pay interest for no good reason.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
My guess was definitely about US officials and how their actions may be explained by their private knowledge, rather than an estimation about our forum members' beliefs.
The point of me saying this was that in that situation you should put more effort on justification.
When collectively...
None of this describes an actual problem with inflation. It says that inflation will automatically regulate away any excess borrowings. Why then not set taxes to 0, and just let the inflation run its course?
If you think the government deficit is a bad thing that should be reduced, you have to explain why you think that of the non-government surplus as well. It is quite literally the same thing.
Is there any reason this is unique to the government? Or is my deficit also literally the same thing as rest-of-the-economy surplus? Because if it is, then it seems noone else should have objections to me borrowing indefinitely, either - it just makes you better of!
When collectively the private sector has more monetary savings than we want
Why would they not want more? You demand that I explain why we would ever want non-government surplus to be less, but now you just assert that it will be the case.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
MMT is propably not a popular position here. Your comment mostly assumes its true, and your very long quote is entirely about why the reactionaries wont see the light. The justification is essentially this:
To be economically literate, one would have to know that saying the government deficit should be cut is identical to saying the non-government surplus should be cut.
The rest is the same thing in different words. And as for that.
Government deficit & debt are good things, and the only problem is along the lines of 'too much of a good thing' (inflation, which is the self-correction mechanism)
Why is inflation correcting it? We have over the last few years heard from many left-leaning economists that inflation is actually fine, the lower classes are just irrationally afraid of it, go right ahead Mr Biden. In a mostly cashless economy like the US, even the logistical problems of hyperinflation can be handled pretty well.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
A 1% yearly wealth tax is pretty high though - you have to compare that to interest rates and inflation. Ten year treasuries are 4.5% right now, so this is like another 20% capital gains tax, and thats low due to the circumstances in the US - relative to Euribor its 50%.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
In terms of Joe, the best evidence that he didn't take bribes was that Republicans (a hostile party) subpoenaed his bank accounts and repeatedly found nothing of the sort.
Im not up to speed on how this discourse went, but I dont think kickbacks to Joe personally are especially relevant? He could have just played his part so that Hunter would have money. I mean whatever he was taking in at that point was mostly for the next generation anyway.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
Are you sure youre not exaggerating the risks? I dont know about most of them, but one that sticks out is:
I'm grateful I still have urinary continence, something that's not common for women who've had kids.
Most women have kids, and even reading the plural strictly many do. If urinary incontinence were the default outcome, at least a third or so of middle-aged women would have incontinence, and I feel like I would know that. If women have more children in your circles, then the risk will be higher, but Id still expect the genpop prevalence to be at least half of those circles, which again doesnt seem to be there. I havent heard about it being the standard in past times with higher fertility either.
The point about fear as an obstacle is relevant, but fear often isnt related to real danger, in either direction; my mother is quite afraid of heights and has a motorcycle. I mean:
Like even as I start breathing faster with elevated heartbeat every time I think about going off birth control
youre pretty much describing panic attacks here. If you want to "get over it", try this: Instead of fearing that it will suck, imagine it would for sure be like your last time again. It would for sure suck. A few years later, youre sitting at a large table full of children. Will you be ok?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
Im not sure I understand the things remaining after strikethrough, or at least the justification for it. "one also wonders why phantom limb or cismale phantom penis sensation rates aren't either 0% or... half that of cismen." Why is the half expected? "Low rates of transmale post-mastectomy phantom breast sensation (1/3 or more in ciswomen) would be more significant." Was that number supposed to have a cite?
Ramachandran and McGeoch didn't include how long their MTF survey responders experienced phantom penis sensations
We also dont know how long cis males getting penectomy experience them - if it fades over time, then its presumably a different phenomenon from the pre-op trans version, and the similar number just coincidence.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
This is an oversimplification (inevitable, perhaps, when discussing Hegel) but Hegelian philosophy is sometimes explained through the metaphor of an acorn.
I know one such quote, but the point there is different, illustrating his dynamic hylomorphism:
The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely different; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this constitutes the nature of the whole.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
You didnt mention the matching, I agree that is some evidence. Though they also find that 30% of mtf have phantom penises after bottom surgery, what do you think is happening here? If the phantom penis is caused by a body image where it should be there, then shouldnt the mtf be at ~0? They dont report any other results, but in my experience these things get a lot more complicated.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
In the case of rationalists, it's not even a point as major as seed oil disrespect among the "bronze age warriors,"
I think youre off on that. Both groups have people who are really into that thing, but those people are much more central to rationalism. I remember a compatriot who would drink pumpkin seed oil (its a thing in styria) neat as countersignalling and he never had problems.
Also, I think going bald is actually not the end of the world. I would on balance advice not messing with your hormones over it, unless youre 20 or something.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
Returning to this, then: I'm the one asserting that we should treat such claims the same as any other report of internal experience. You believe yourself to be Abraham Lincoln...
I think youre arguing that its not true, against sockpuppets claim that they really feel it is.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
phantom limb syndrome researchers found ~60% of transmen reported experiencing phantom penis sensations, when surveyed.
And why would you think that these self-reports prove anything to someone sceptical of gender self-reports? Do you think trans people dont understand that such phantom sensations would make them sound more "valid"?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
Do you mean asexual as in no sex with people, or no masturbation either?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
What will lead the GOP?
I think trumpist campaigning plays out pretty differently when there are multiple people doing it. Im not totally happy with the following explanation of such campaigning, and expect people to dispute some things, but I feel I have to at least attempt one, and I think the conclusion that theres some void to be filled here is relatively clear from just considering the question.
The way the politics game is played traditionally, candidates talk about their policies, are probed for gaffes and flipflops, lose some points for not aswering questions, etc. This gives voters some basis for making decisions, but it can also lead to an "emperor with no clothes" situation with politicians trying to comply with thing voters actively dislike. Trumps strategy exploited a big, interconnected bunch of such issues by rejecting this sort of accountability entirely. This includes saying the populist things, but also not caring how offensive or contradictory you are doing it, never apologising for that, etc. The goal is to trigger a preference cascade towards not judging by those standards. This obviously worked pretty well for him, but it also gives a drastically lower-resolution picture than the conventional strategy. Thats fine if youre far away from all the other candidates anyway, but what if youre not? Now youll need something to distinguish yourself, and I think the great question of the next few republican primaries will be what that should be. Here are the options as I see them:
Inertia-based
Trump won the '20 and '24 primaries because he is the Trump, noone was gonna out-trump him and so noone seriously tried. The path of least resistance going forward is propably that Trump remains in charge of trumpism, continues to voice himself prominently in the media and xitter/truth social, and expects the candidate and later president to dance by his fiddle. I expect this not to go well: People propably arent excited to vote for a president who is outshone even as a figurehead. A falling out at some point is also likely, especially since Trump will likely be more erratic when the role thats naturally the center of attention is filled by someone else. The best case scenario is propably that this goes well once, and then either Trump is too old to stay relevant, or the new guy falls out with him and manages to "win" the internal conflict before his time is up, and then the next election is something else.
The "better" version of inertia is propably some kind of "the party decides". There are plenty of countries that manage without primaries, and while occasional upsets propably cant be prevented entirely if primaries are mandatory, something more like that seems possible. However, the republicans are specifically not set up for this. The democrats have "the groups", and a kind of permanent party leadership - meanwhile, you never really hear about the RNC, except in the fixed phrase "RNC convention". They long where much more of an extension of the current president(ial cnadidate). So the somewhat-possible version of this is that Trump anoints Vance his successor, and Vance some else, they remain supportive of the new guy but in the background, and afer a few times of this you have a more substantial party leadership - but leadership at any time deciding to separate from the previous ones would likely break this, so it takes a long streak indeed.
Return of the media
Candidates go back to conventional campaigning, with a somewhat shifted overton window. This could happen if it seems like political wins were big enough that shielding yourself from the media is no longer necessary, and its also the default option if trumpism has become too unpopular for another go. If it hasnt, there will be significant hesitation before adopting this option, as rejecting it was one of the central ideas of trumpism. Those dont die easily, and its not even clear if the problems of that system where just inerta or an attractor.
There is also the question of the trumpist media. Its been 10 years of Trump on the right, new media outlets have been founded and older ones reconstructed to supporting him. Theyre not really set up to evaluate politicians in a meaningful way, and follow his lead instead. What direction they will take once there is no longer an obvious leader of trumpism is in many ways a similar question to the one Im asking here. If they just try to pivot to evaluation without any kind of more systematic ideological program, that will be one huge slapfight that propably eventually ends in one, but it sure is going to be rough until then. Writing them all off leaves only people who are in significant part not even republicans in name anymore, and propably means a collapse of the right.
Full bore
Candidates engage in an epic rap battle, whoever has the greatest stage presence, the most charismatic voice, and the best alliterative insults wins. This is theoretically the closest thing to multiple people running the original campaign unmodified. I think its unlikely to happen in a pure form, but the the problem of trumpist campaigning that I outlined is with too many candidates running like this. If noone is trying that anymore, it could be viable again. So there could be a mixed equilibrium here, where theres one candidate trying full bore in addition to whatever else ends up happening, with either winning the candidacy sometimes. And since theres no reliable way to have exactly one guy like that, sometimes candidates like that will have to face each other, and it would have to go like that.
Anything you think Ive missed?
I understand that it sounds that way, but I dont think you believe that. Its just that I have not see how there is a benefit, and theres clearly supposed to be one, and getting to fund things with debt would be a candidate. So far, youve shown that just printing the deficit gets you the same effect as cutting expenditures to balance the budget, with some inflation along the way. I dont see the advantage in doing this. Now youve suggested a candidate for an advantage - you get to achieve full employment, either where the conventional method wouldnt, or in a better way. What are the details of that?
For one, you suggest seeing unemployment as evidence of too small a deficit. But in the previous model, there is no ongoing deficit in the equilibrium youre inflating towards. Secondly, the necessary expenditures to achieve full employment would likely be relative ones. And in what way is the equilibrium of your strategy better than just spending enough for full employment, and raising taxes to balance the budget?
Not entirely related to the rest, but conventional theory is that borrowing is less inflationary than money printing. Do you disagree?
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