Pongalh
2d ago
I know from experience. Well, that is to say, if you can get tired of an 8, there's no reason you wouldn't get tired of a 9. It's on a spectrum. I don't think experience "gets over a hump" so to speak at which point you're fine with the same person forever.
Pongalh
2d ago
This is a common misperception, that a guy with an attractive wouldn't get tired of sex with her. Not so. Men with a 9 will mess with 5s just to keep things interesting.
"Show me a hot woman, and I'll show you a man who's tired of f***** her"
Pongalh
2d ago
What happened with that notion. I'm pretty sure once the 90s arrived James Cameron DID win awards with CGI. Terminator 2 iirc
Pongalh
2d ago
I've wondered about the reception of AI art compared to hip hop in the 80s. Similar claims were made then, about plagiarism, the dilution of musical art, electronic instruments merely aping the real thing etc. I think what's different this time, or why the democratization idea doesn't go far, is because AI is a development given to us by a small number of wealthy nerds, and deeply corporate. Hip hop was DIY, and welled up from poor neighborhoods populated by people who are considered the antithesis of nerds.
If you’re in a museum looking at, let’s say, Palaeolithic stone axes, you might feel certain emotions or a sense of connection to humanity’s distant past. Then if you learned the collection was made by a boomer in the 90s in the Palaeolithic style, you’d be disappointed, regardless of whether the axes looked “good” or not, since they’re literally just crude chipped stones with hardly any aesthetic values on their own.
You thought you were looking at legitimately ancient stone axes, but discover they're fake. That has nothing to do with the visual impression of the axes in an artistic way. This is orthogonal to the labor theory of value wrt to AI art though. The boomer making the replica may very well work twice as hard at it than the stone age man. It's still worse. Its value is lower, despite the labor.
Pongalh
2d ago
Yea. I think right-leaning rationalists think to themselves, "If I can believe in Christianity or Islam or any of those, why not be a woke progressive? They too believe untrue things. And at least it's considered mostly normal in day to day life in the best places in the country to live, to boot."
Pongalh
2d ago
I would rather the universe not be a boring place.
I never understood this. Why the universe is thought to be more boring without god. I'm endlessly fascinated by perfectly worldly things, and contemplating otherworldly.
Pongalh
10d ago
Some of my former colleagues took this as a sign that these young people were in fact not “choosing” as free individuals. One said, “We will have to consider ways of freeing them.” Perfect liberal consent requires perfectly liberated individuals, and the evidence that Amish youth were responding to the pull of family, community, and tradition marked them as unfree.
This is curious, because Deneen and his ilk dislike liberalism for its threadbare consent-only worldview. But by that same worldview, the young people who return to the Amish lifestyle are perfectly legit. Who are you to second guess their choice? Have at it, Josiah.
Pongalh
11d ago
Malcom Collins actually agrees that the depiction of the child is a bit off, giving the pedo accusers something to latch on to. Strangely adult features on what is supposed to be a child (in which case, robbing it of what is supposed to be attractive to a pedo, come to think of it, defeating the point?).
Pongalh
12d ago
There's a brass tacks, Anglo-libertarian bias to a lot of these responses, which I also share. But to hear Catholic Integralists e.g. speak of vigilance in their statecraft as soul craft agenda, I can see them being as dedicated to policing people's hearts and minds in a way on par with communists.
Pongalh
18d ago
Would you say the black person who says, "I don't want to be assumed to vote Democrat just because I'm black" is more sympathetic to this SCOTUS decision than one who's fine with that assumption?
Pongalh
20d ago
"Agreed. And if critics of Israel would regularly acknowledge this, I would be much less likely to conclude that they have "sinister motives" as you put it."
But when people call out Israel for not sharing our values (in being an ethno-religious state), that's also called Antisemitic. As it stands, I feel like I'm being asked to pick a side in the Shia vs. Sunni dispute. I say the line is being drawn arbitrarily. The whole intra-Middle East dispute spectrum, which includes the Israeli pov, is ALL awful.
Pongalh
20d ago
Yes, just assume that the critics already know these other things and that focusing on Israeli, er, malfeasance has sinister motives. That their not talking about violence and horribleness that afflicts Sub-Saharan Africans etc. must be due to a suspiciously strange obsession with Israel, which is just a random country like Bulgaria or Turkmenistan that is being unfairly singled out.
"Can you explain what this means?"
That they are a longstanding and obvious ally, an outpost of our Western way of life in the Middle East that is fundamentally on a higher moral plane (likewise, that even if you agree, you don't think Israel's problems should be our problems; nope, not good enough, it just MUST be Jew hatred.)
Pongalh
20d ago
When you criticize or condemn Israel for something, do you criticize or condemn other countries that behave similarly or worse?
Do you care about the treatment of the Palestinian Arabs? If so, how do you feel about the treatment of Palestinian Arabs by Arab countries such as Lebanon?
These kinds of whataboutisms chalk up to antisemitism what is really about a lack of cognitive omnipotence. (Or the fact that Americans aren't allegedly joined morally at the hip with the Arab World, but they are with Israel, making criticisms more tempting.)
Pongalh
20d ago
"I'm particularly interested in the answer because I am situated in the category whose existence you appear to deny (no issue with Jews as an ethnicity or religion, large issue with the state of Israel in its current form - not even as a theoretical concept, as I've previously argued they should have just taken some land from the Germans and founded it on the Baltic coast back in 1945 instead)."
That pro-Israel classical liberals can't see this as the same nonsense that conflates the NAACP with all black people is beyond me. My theory: Jewish identity politics for some on the right is the one identity politics to rule them all. Meaning, its correctness is positively correlated with the incorrectness of all the other, admittedly more odious and societally detrimental kinds of identity politics.
"There can be no absence of identity politics, so choose the relatively best one, which also happens to nullify the other, worse ones! Yes, it means being hyperbolic and engaging in disingenuous rhetoric, but that's the price to pay, and it's worth it."
Pongalh
22d ago
Someone on this forum pointed out that the ability to make more people without men and women having sex at all is technologically possible. So don't sweat it!
Pongalh
22d ago
Doesn't research claim women are unhappier than men? That recent UK polling data certainly claimed that, despite women officially doing better than men. AFAIK being unhappier makes you worse off, period. So don't sweat it!
Pongalh
26d ago
Unless you're asking the bottom of society? In other words, the people who become nurses?
Pongalh
27d ago
And they make good money doing this so there's no clear reason they should stop.
Makes you wonder how. Presumably people with "real" jobs and things happening outside of streaming are sending them money?
Pongalh
27d ago
Arnold Kling reviewed that book and noted its representation of a drift away from democratic capitalism's defense of the small man and their petty consumer desires. Not very Milton Friedman-esque. Karp's is a more muscular, great state-driven neoliberalism.
Pongalh
1mo ago
All this to say: I think I'm just going to be unapologetically ruled by my aesthetic sense from now on, and say that we can allow some grace
It's like coming full circle. The pre-politically interested child who makes superficial comments about a politician's appearance had it right all along. "He blinks too much!" or "he's fat like Santa" was all the political philosophy you need, turns out.
Pongalh
1mo ago
I think of young women's reaction to e.g. the character Jesse from Breaking Bad and feel your comment is spot-on.
A straight guy around women and gay guys is the lamest. The only thing that saves you is the gay guy being flirty, which may induce interest toward you by the woman.
More options
Context Copy link