Morgenland
6d ago
Do you have a major problem with your weight or is it a minor one? If your BMI is in a range 25-28 then I think that's fine, maybe even healthier in the long run than aggressive diet.
In some sense all of modern fantasy is just a knockoff of LOTR. In fact, I share the conviction that Tolkien invented the whole genre of fantasy, among other things by creating a unified imagery of elves and dwarves that was assimilated in more or less unchanged form into almost all later fantasy works.
I must disagree. Kulak is a controversial - yes, but very well established poster in the Motte community. Kulak's posting history reaches 2019, maybe earlier. I think you are long enough here to know this. The fact that he is tolerated despite his edginess means something, probably many users (including me) find his writings valuable in some sense. And look how many comments this posted has generated so far. Isn't this discussion something what we are here for?
Furthermore, I share the opinion, that the Motte is in desperate need of top posters, even mediocre, because otherwise one can easily see where this evolution is going. Users will be hesitant about writing top posts and we will be left with nothing but CW thread with comments which take hours to read and even more time to reply and only some small subgroup of the smartest/most involved Mottizens being able to contribute without getting scoffed.
I made the count and Kulak's essay is around 4000 words, while the natural selection post is about 1600 words, so I don't find the argument about length convincing.
I think of myself as pretty radicalized, but even I find the content of the movie and of the essay off-putting. And it's not about the scatology and gore, the idea of labeling any group of people 'subhuman' is too much to bear. But the argument that the post makes us 'appear like a bunch of racists' is the weakest argument I can think of. This is some sort of an Argument from authority but in its most mediocre form: "What will the people think about us?" I am not going to self-censor myself because some group of people I don't care about will think badly about me. I am interested only in people who will find integrity in my views and actions. And I don't really think a lot of people care what the Motte thinks and writes anyway.
Morgenland
25d ago
Thank you.
Morgenland
25d ago
Now I understand, thank you. But barely anyone posts something on the Motte, so I don't find this feature as useful as I previously thought. But it can be useful in the future, thanks once again.
Morgenland
25d ago
You are right, by writing 'posts' I meant post and comments, but it's not clear. So I get the notifications only for posts and not for comments?
Morgenland
25d ago
I have a bit embarrassing question to ask: what is the functionality of following users for? I thought that if I followed some users, I would get the notifications of their posts, but apparently it doesn't work that way (or at least not for me). Would someone be so kind and explain it to me?
Morgenland
25d ago
I store my music locally, but it's not a big collection. I do not consider myself a huge music enthusiast, usually I listen to some jazz albums or to obscure post-punk or post-cold-wave music. I do not enjoy radio and listen to my music only when the mood strikes, not very often. Some of the albums I like are semi-amateur, I doubt if many people even know them. I don't like the experience of streaming, too much of a fuss, a lot of distractions, I don't want any recommendations, I don't like working while music is playing, heck I even rarely drive with music.
And I like the experience of playing music locally, no distractions, just my music and me. I put myself into the state of day-dreaming, and I can play it anywhere, just need to take my mp3 player (yes, I use mp3 players, they are ridiculously cheap now). Mp3 players are very convenient at night, when I don't have to reach for my phone, just a little, discrete device only for music. It helps me a lot with my sleeplessness. And I'm sentimental about some archival recordings that are nowadays barely accessible anywhere, certainly not on youtube. So, the sum of my idiosyncrasies I guess.
Morgenland
27d ago
There are allegedly rumours that there was a terrorist suspect the IDF thought had entered the convoy at the WCK warehouse, but actually stayed behind
It wouldn't probably be very controversial if I say that this explanation of killing seven civilian aid workers is just ridiculous. Even if the convoy actually somehow transported one terrorist, does it justify the death of seven innocent people? And we know that there was no terrorist, so it looks to me more like a damage control on the Israeli side, attempts to water down the responsibility. But maybe it was the trigger and I'm overly cynical.
In the end, as @BahRamYou wrote, probably little will change, since western politicians see supporting Israel as the least bad option, so they have to express their anger in front of public opinion, but it won't influence their long-term attitude.
The whole western world is outraged after an Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen charity: three of them British, one Palestinian and single citizens of Australia, Poland, USA and Canada (one victim held a dual American and Canadian citizenship). IDF attacked a convoy of three vehicles spaced 1.6 km and 800 m apart (or 1 mile and 0.5 mile apart). The attack consisted of three methodical missile strikes aimed at each vehicle and took a couple of minutes. This in conjunction with the fact that the convoy was previously announced to IDF leaves little space for a mistake.
More then 600 senior jurists from UK conducted a letter in which they accuse Israel of war crimes and call for a ban on sale of weapon systems to Israel. Prime minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese 'expressed outrage over the death of an Australian aid worker'. Yacov Livne, Israeli ambassador to Poland rubbed the Polish public opinion very wrong way when he refused to apologize for the death of a Polish citizen and accused some Polish politicians of antisemitism. Some demand an expulsion of the ambassador, which is unlikely to happen. After the incident Joe Biden urged Benjamin Netanyahu to significantly shift his code of conduct towards civilians in Gaza under the threat of reducing support.
The chief of staff of IDF, Herzi Halevi released a recorded message, saying that the strike "was not carried out with the intention of harming WCK aid workers", adding the IDF was "sorry for the unintentional harm". Netanyahu called the event 'tragic' and assured that "he will do everything to prevent this from happening again".
Since the 7th October about 200 aid workers and 100 journalists were killed in Gaza, more than in the rest of the world combined in this time frame, which rises a justified question about the intentions of IDF towards civilians. I'm very interested how is Israel going to act in the face of its crumbling global credibility and its loss of trust among allies, especially when younger, less favorable towards Israel demographics gradually gain political prominence.
That's great that you have found something that helps you! I also read somewhere that putting white noise in the background can help (so this is in the direction of hyper-stimulation), so you can give it a try, but I haven't checked that myself yet. Edit: Oh, but you have a fan, so you already got that.
Morgenland
1mo ago
Thank you very much, that's an interesting reply. Yeah, maybe some variations in brain receptors are responsible for variations in caffeine sensitivity, I haven't studied the topic much.
Could please expand a little bit on your meditation for wakefulness? I have good results from meditation, albeit not for wakefulness yet. If I understood you correctly: you observe your inner state in the morning and try to identify the state of drowsiness until it fades away gradually or you apply some other practices?
I usually try to hyperventilate a bit before work, but unless I force it strongly, the effect is only slight, so I'm looking for some other ways.
Morgenland
1mo ago
Have you ever used smelling salts to stimulate wakefulness? I am afraid I am naturally very drowsy person, caffeine does very little to me (apparently I have an efficient liver) and I was wondering if using ammonium salts may be a useful option. Are there any big 'no-nos' of using smelling salts? Do you have any good or bad experience? Or maybe you know any good hacks for some nice adrenaline flush in the morning?
Morgenland
1mo ago
I think they are doing extremely well in terms of luxury, even being able to ensure the best possible education for their children but there is something that you cannot buy in Russia or China. Political stability, trust and justice cannot be bought in these countries for any price. There is always a chance (and rather high, I would say) that Kremlin or CCP will knock at your door asking you for a favor, or even worse, seeing enemy in you. That's why all the progeny of Russian upper class, including Putin himself lives in the West.
Having to choose: being extremely wealthy Russian oligarch or just average citizen of Switzerland, I take the latter without any doubt, but it depends on a character obviously.
Morgenland
1mo ago
If you struggle with anxiety, I strongly recommend lavender oil as a short-lived solution. Scott Alexander wrote about the potential calming effects of lavender. I just take one or two drops of lavender oil and inhale it using the simplest aromatherapy chimney. It is very potent and calms me significantly even for a longer periods of time. I am extremely neurotic, I was probably around 95th percentile and now maybe around 80th and it helped me significantly.
No, it won't be possible in hundreds of years, maybe never. You just throw some generalities, without any reference to the basic biological processes. I have nothing against general philosophical musings, but the sheer ignorance of some of the rationalists (I don't know if you count yourself among them), including Yudkowsky (famous nanobots), with regard to the hard science repels me and gives me a vibe of empty pondering.
Morgenland
2mo ago
I agree with you on most points. I'm only considering theoretical possibility of a nearly ideal sex change. But I have my doubts, when you mention 'extremely high-quality surgeries'. Seriously, FtM cannot have real penis and MtF cannot have real vagina. I know that some may wonder on the latter case, but you cannot place nerve endings where there are none. The elasticity of female vagina is remarkable and cannot be reproduced during the surgery.
However, I think that on the level of sexual response it may be sufficient for many trans-people, so I don't deny that many of them will find the sex reassignment surgery helpful or sufficient.
I disagree with this. The human body is a replicant writ large based on a very tiny amount of informational DNA. Most of that matter is replaced regularly, you replace it a bit faster with the right stuff and...poof, you have a new person.
No, this is not true. This is what many people think, that all the information is in the DNA, but that's not exactly right. There is a whole, extremely complicated process of gene expression above that. Part of information is encoded in the environment, maternal hormones help orchestrate the development of different tissues and organs in the growing fetus. They play a role in the development of the nervous system, reproductive organs, and other essential structures. The brain of the fetus is differentiated with respected to gender as early as in the twelfth week and after that there is no way to undo the changes.
Most of the large-scale gene expression happens in embryo and when we are young. Changing the DNA in reproductive organs doesn't make them vanish or change, there is no biological process that taps into this.
A virus can do it. They can kill you, they can certainly change you instead.
It is extremely easy to kill a human, and unbelievably difficult to apply some very sophisticated changes (we need highly specialized surgeons and something can still go wrong). Wolbachia bacterium can feminize some species of insects and this is the limit of complexity that it can handle.
I hope you know something about this, because I would like to learn more. Loosely related, this funny youtube video is the best introduction to evolutionary developmental biology for a layman I know.
Morgenland
2mo ago
If humans go on long enough a perfect sex change will indeed be possible at a genetic level. Would anyone living hard in the trans debate still have a problem with it then? How could they?
I don't think this will be possible in the near future, maybe it will never be possible, or at the cost so high that in practice the whole procedure will be undoable. I mean a perfect 100% (or 99%) sex change. Today's sex reassignment surgeries work at least on hormonal level and are sufficient for some very small number of people.
It's not only the problem of changing DNA in all 37 trillion cells of human body, that would maybe even be possible in some very distant future, but humans would need the ability to generate and kill cells arbitrarily in every place of the body and with remarkable precision. And it's not only a matter of adding some cells here or there, we would need to generate the whole extremely complex patterns. Maybe you can fit the uterus in a male body, but how can you change the shape of the pelvis?
Human body is not a machine or a Lego set, where you can add and remove parts arbitrarily, but it is generated by a set of remarkably difficult rules, many yet unknown. It is generated from the embryo like a flower is generated from the seed. And the process of generation takes many years, even decades. Looking from the perspective of developmental biology it is almost impossible to build human from the scratch and this is what would need to be done from the perspective of a perfect sex change: the bone structure between men and women differs, the skin structure differs, muscle structure is different.
Probably it would be more reasonable to swap consciousness between two bodies (how?!) then to rebuild a male into a female or otherwise. I cannot think of any physical or biological process that could be reasonably used in such a transformation.
I don't think it's good that such a transformation seems extremely difficult, it would be even interesting to under go a perfect sex change. I just make some observations based on my knowledge of biophysics and developmental biology.
Morgenland
2mo ago
I associate 'Puritans' with one of the most productive groups that ever existed, but I'm not from US.
Morgenland
2mo ago
I sometimes too dwell upon this aspect of EA. Your argument is similar to the Utility monster argument. If the goal is to minimize suffering then maybe some neurotics in rich western countries suffer more than Africans, for whom malaria is a tamed aspect of life. But never tried to make it precise.
Morgenland
2mo ago
there must be an individual difference in response.
From my subjective experience, an individual difference is everything when it comes down to psychoactive substances. People tend to differ much more neurologically then physically, which is unpleasant truth for many. But we cannot see this on the first sight, so this thought rarely comes through our minds. For my part, I get almost no pleasure or kick from drinking alcohol. And I come from heavily-drinking culture, so this is a huge social burden. I have drunk hundreds times and most of the time I get instantly sleepy and then heavily depressed. And I know people who are extremely aggressive and psychotic when drunk, so the response is indeed deeply varied.
Morgenland
3mo ago
Now I see your point better! I would suspect that many people nurture the grandiose thoughts of self-importance and would even dream of the government taking interest in their usual life. Though sometimes cloud services can suck and while iCloud is smooth, my institution uses Outlook and I'm struck with OneDrive, which is sometimes so slow, that I usually carry around external HD to not get frustrated every couple hours or so.
Though I must admit, that I don't know many people of the type you're writing about, since in general I don't know that many people.
In short, my personal experiences with men. Many times different men in my life have helped me despite having no personal interest and me being an underdog and having nothing to offer them in exchange. They pulled me out of dire straits many times. I recall one story with a father of my friend borrowing me a car for a couple days, fully fueled and asking me to take care of myself. This story brings me to tears almost immediately, even now. My father died quite young, and my mother took all the money I should have inherited and spent it all lavishly on herself. So this is deeply personal and heavily based on my experience, but as I emphasized, this is what I have observed in my life and probably least important part of my post. I have met also selfish, cruel men, and there is a lot of them, but in general men are great, really great. Thus, I will defend patriarchy to my last breath.
And I don't think that papers are being suppressed, not at all. This is just women-are-wonderful effect. People want to know how women are great and so these papers are well known. I don't think that papers are suppressed, they are just difficult to find. And I don't have energy and patience to find them today. I also don't base all my beliefs on reading scientific papers, I'm far from rationalist philosophy.
I will try to give you at least three reasons to motivate you:
If you have a major problem with your weight, then there is a positive side of it, since you can make a notable change without a big effort. Any intervention that you will undertake is very likely to result in a significant drop of BMI, for example walking a couple of miles twice a week.
Body fat isn't only some passive, excessive weight, but physiologically active organ, that messes up with your hormonal regulation. If you decrease the amount of body fat, it is very likely that you will feel better in general, have more energy, better sleep etc.
If you have a major weight problem, there is a lot of things and movements that are difficult to do. I think that it's worth to fight for this freedom of movement, movement is one of the primary human joys. You can try to stick with small goals, like walking certain distance. Your aim is not some utilitarian objective but being able to enjoy life a little more in general.
If young hang up around rationalist community, you may have heard about potato diet, which is said to not involve much willpower and gives overall positive results. Why not to try, even just for a couple days and just for fun? If you want to read more, like half of Slime Mold Time Mold blog is about it. They explicitly write about weight gain in response to medication here.
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