RenOS
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User ID: 2051
RenOS
something is wrong
2d ago
He thinks he has left the faith, but he still sounds like a Witness.
I almost want to say that parents SHOULD tell their children that Santa is real. That way they learn very quickly in life that everyone will lie to them without hesitation for the most trivial of reasons.
yes_chad.jpg
I literally don't know a single kid who had the problems he had with it, and I strongly suspect his JW upbringing has to do with it (and/or autistic inclinations unsurprisingly inherited from his parents). Not saying there are none otherwise, but it's just extremely rare. The average kid play-pretends a lot naturally already, and they instinctively pick up on Santa being somewhere in the same area, but they're not sure. Then as they get older they notice further facts solidifying that impression, and maybe have a short, smug santa-isn't-real phase, but they quickly join in again on the play-acting ... because it's fun. The "santa-lie" is a great way to indirectly teach kids how to distinguish between truth and fantasy, and the fact that ultimately this is something you can only ever do yourself, for yourself.
RenOS
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2d ago
I'll just quote myself here:
It's called ethnic spoils for a reason. It doesn't matter much whether the different ethnicities have immigrated recently or have been there for generations.
Foreign-born is generally one of the worst categories you can possibly look at, because it mixes vastly different groups together as if they are mostly interchangeable. Ethnic spoils systems also don't depend on trust/solidarity, it's quite the opposite; Because trust is so low, nobody believes any other group to actually do merit-based allocations, and without trust, allocating by quota is usually the only kind-of-fair system that everyone can agree on.
RenOS
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3d ago
I've never really found this complaint really compelling. In fact, I'll top it: You can beat most parts of all DS games by summoning another (often ridiculously overlevelled) player and letting them do everything for you. You don't even need to know anything.
DS is imo very clearly, very deliberately designed to accommodate large differences in player skill without resorting to outright different difficulty levels. That's also the reason why I usually say that DS games are better grouped as high casual, but not quite hardcore.
In fact, arguably much of the games' difficulty is rooted in the fact that players don't know how the games work.
That's mostly an inversion of reality in practice; Plenty of bad players who don't know how the game works follow some online guide for an OP build to do exactly the stuff you're complaining about. Better players deliberately avoid the OP things bc they don't need it and just do a run with some weapon/spells they like. Even better players deliberately use gimmick gear (not me, sadly) or other limitations.
RenOS
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3d ago
I have no objections to looking at only the murder rate - but that doesn't actually change anything, just check out the demographics.
It's called ethnic spoils for a reason. It doesn't matter much whether the different ethnicities have immigrated recently or have been there for generations.
Just purview the list of US cities by crime rate, sort by total crime and check out the highest vs the lowest total violent crime rate cities. It's hard to miss the fact that the demographics are, with only a few exceptions, dramatically different. For example, among the lowest five, 4 have (asians + white) > 75%, while among the highest five, all have (asians + whites) < 50%. The difference for the black population is, of course, especially extreme. Hispanics is also quite noticable.
RenOS
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4d ago
In general humans have exterminated, bred & moved very many species throughout history. All to considerable benefit with virtually no ill effect for humans. Most talk about the dangers of loss of diversity are scaremongering nonsense. We could probably even wipe out all mosquitos, and as a result other insects would simply take over its niche. Nature is quite adaptive and there are many overlapping niche species.
RenOS
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4d ago
AFAIK the degree of warming usually expected to stop AMOC is generally on the same degree or even higher than the cooling expected to result from the stop, so it mostly comes out as a wash except for slightly more winter extremes, but which are still limited to ca -10 °C. In general also, higher co2 + higher temperatures also mean plants grow better, (which we can already see with current levels) so I don't think starving will be a particular issue.
As someone living in northern germany, I'd certainly welcome a bit more snow in winter!
RenOS
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9d ago
FWIW, several of my friends who don't plan on having kids explicitly state that part of the reason is that they will have more money for retirement. From a personal view this is sensible, from a societies' view it's pure insanity, and a point in Soterologian's favor, even if it's far from the only reason people have no kids.
RenOS
something is wrong
9d ago
While I agree with Tractatus' reply as well, I've also had a recent post on a very related topic, namely the dissolution of marriage. Social changes are rarely actually instant; They are spreading & compounding. Just because something became legal, doesn't mean that everyone is doing it. Usually it's only a small community really taking advantage of the most recent change, while the majority just mostly carries on with what they grew up with, unless they have a very good reason.
RenOS
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10d ago
Oh, I know, that's the joke/point : This is specifically eastern orthodox, not christianity in general. Neither the catholics nor mainline protestant churches I'm aware of would sign off that statement. If anything, they'd consider it a dramatic misunderstanding, not just a minor point of contention.
RenOS
something is wrong
10d ago
The point of Christianity is to become like God. "God became man so that man could become God."
That sounds like a heresy, mate. Better let a specialist check it out. There are catholic priests in your vicinity.
RenOS
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16d ago
Sorry for what you had to go through.
First, I want to point out that you never got to see actual conservatism. I know, I know, no true scotsman and all that, but imo one of the most fundamental hallmarks of conservatism is stability and long-term connection to a local community. Your family - in particular your father - seems outright incapable of that. I've had discussions with friends who've had a similarly bad time with their allegedly conservative families, and I had to point out repeatedly to them that their families basically broke all rules you can possibly imagine for conservatives (the very basics, stuff like "don't have three kids from three fathers while being an unemployed single mom"). Conservatism is when both your parents are regularly employed, stay together and don't sleep around, have a decent number of friends (who all life a broadly conservative life), have positions in various local communities, they have a fixed lifestyle that is not substantially changed from their own parents (and their grandparents, and wider family, and so on), they also just simply know lots of people in their environment and are on amicable terms with them, etc. Not necessarily all of those, but most.
I know especially those from difficult backgrounds think this is just make-belief idealised conservatism that doesn't exist in the real world, but it's how I grew up. It exists, you just have to find it, there are whole towns like this. Ironically, this is also why I consider a large part of the mainstream left fundamentally conservative, as much as they hate that term, so YMMV. But contrariwise that also means that as long as you avoid outright woke groups, even many superficially left-wing groups will include lots of women with nice, conservative relationship views (even if they may not admit that to themselves).
So I'd say simple local connections is where you should start. Find local activities and groups that are at least roughly sex-balanced (ideally more woman then men!), intrinsically require human interaction and just do stuff. Dancing is the simplest. But there is so much more; Grow something and sell it on a farmers market (even the growing part can be done in a group). Help out in a local charity. Organize local festivals, and also, simply party there. Language/ethnic affinity groups. Maybe your work has some afternoon activities. The list is endless. You can even just start now shopping around for roommates - you have lots of time after all - and jump-start a social life from there once you've found some good people.
The important part is that you just join various stuff that exists already and try what suits you and has a nice culture. You will have to leave your comfort zone. You will find groups with an odd, toxic culture. Don't get stuck in the wrong place, and also don't let yourself be ruled by your inhibitions. Also, unless you're already very social, don't try to start things yourself.
Once you have a bit more of a social life, finding the right partner will be easier. I'd also advice you to not be particularly choosy, and DEFINITELY don't do that cheesy "oh I'm so damaged and I don't want to hurt you you're just too good for me" routine if you find a nice girl.
RenOS
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17d ago
I've noticed a while ago that a disproportionate number of my posts have exactly a single -1 , and then whatever number of upvotes, except a small number of posts with zero downvotes and another small number of posts with higher numbers of downvotes (which are usually noticeably more controversial). At the time, I checked out some other posts and noticed a similar pattern. It seems likely to me that there was some kind of downvoting bot/person, but just one. However, looking at posts now the distribution actually seems more natural; Lots of 0 downvotes, a few -1 downvotes, even fewer -X. So maybe it was a fluke, maybe the bot got banned, hard to tell.
RenOS
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22d ago
Look, science has flaws, but it works, damn it!
As another scientist, the problem is that it has been working less and less well, with ballooning costs to boot (especially including the entirety of university funding).
On the teaching side, I've been now long enough part of academia, and have seen it from both the student and the teaching side, over more than a decade now, and it's obvious that the standards just keep going down and down. Professors openly admitting that they let everyone pass in the oral exam anyway, so why even bother making the written exam hard? Students just whining until they get their way, and the administration takes their side. Entire new courses with even lower standards are created, lest the "Nursing Sciences" may feel disadvantaged by the mean old boys club of math and statistics.
On the research side, it becomes harder and harder to even try to conduct neutral investigations. Everything that can possibly be judged politically has to either directly include assurances that you're a good person with good politics, or you have to live in fear that activist-scholars will go after you. Jesse Singal has examples that are close to the platonic ideal of course, but you're extremely mistaken if you think this just limited to specific topics.
I'm working in genetics, and it often feels like almost everything about it is politisized. IVF and embryo selection have always been opposed by the conservatives of course, but nowadays the left will be much more dangerous to your work. A colleague of mine works on a certain kind of serious, inheritable and debilitating diseases. She is being pressured by left-wing activist-scholars from the humanities to drop the topic since exploring the genetic background assumes these diseases are bad - which is ablism - , the money ought to instead go straight to left-wing support structures. Nevermind that most of the patients themselves hate the disease and are thankful for any attempt of fixing, even if only available for their kids. Do you think they get in trouble for this egregious breach of scientific conduct? Of course not, they get support from the administrative and cheers from the media. One of my PhD students is an Egyptian curious about his heritage, and we are investigating what the genetic differences we found functionally do. But even here we have to walk on eggshells since implying that different groups from different places with different conditions might be genetically different in meaningful, functional ways is a big no-no. Well, only for humans, for any other animal it's perfectly obvious and only a creationist would disagree.
And apart from the science itself, the AA hiring is also madness. I personally know not just one, but two cases of a female professor getting their position with just a single publication. I haven't had to work with them myself, but everyone who did has told me that they have been wildly out of their depth and very difficult to work with. Committees that make lists by publications and other measures of competence, and end up taking number ... eight because that's the first one that fulfils whatever quota currently in need of filling.
This is not mild productivity decreasing, these are the big dangers that have been bogging down science for decades. For a different field, just look at the nuclear renaissance going on in certain countries right now; we could have had that in the 90s for the entire world, but fearmongering and green extremism has thrown us back so, so far. Instead, we ideologically wasted so much on trying to turn solar and wind into essential generators through complicated battery schemes, while they are much better suited to simply being supporting energy generators for specific times & places. Michael Magoon has a whole slew of good articles for lay audiences on the topic, but the basic economic case is currently being proven by demonstration in my own home country, germany, which has managed to utterly ruin its own energy production through ideological mismanagement. Even just keeping the old nuclear reactors would have been better than the insanity we've went through. We didn't just move more slowly; We actively moved backwards, and are now depended on the countries around us who invested correctly.
The only part I agree on is that I do not like Trump and don't think he is likely to really fix things. But I also do not trust academia to fix itself. If anything, I expect it to get worse.
The movie obviously seems bad, but I'll be devil's advocate and take the opposite position on the book.
While the politics of the plot setting may be purposefully superficially vague, it imo portrays a failure mode that only really make sense from a far-right PoV.
Basically, a theoretically ideal state, on an abstract level, does a simple thing: It sacrifices the less important things, to give everyone as much of the important things as possible. The details depend on the environment; If gangs are murdering and oppressing common people, you sacrifice significant freedom to get the situation under control so that most may be free from the gangs at least; If the murder rate and crime rate is already very low, contrariwise that's a reasonable price for greater freedom. And so on. The by far most common fail state is then simple: "Promise everyone everything without sacrifice, then blame subversion when it inevitably comes crashing down". Who is blamed again depends on the situation and the ideology of the government. The auth-left is pretty much the purest form of this failure mode, always blaming insufficient dedication to the cause and/or wreckers for absolutely everything. But there is also a rarer fail state, which is this: "The situation is so dire, we have to sacrifice everything just to survive." Historically this was even true for significant amounts of times. But it can be taken advantage of, since if even progress is sacrificed, the ruling class can stay in power indefinitely. The auth-right is the purest form of this failure mode, outright fetishizing "blood, sweat and tears". The game as described in the book fits only with the latter. The former may gleefully do something similar to alleged conspirators against the cause, but it would still frame it very differently.
This also makes sense given King's politics; He has to my knowledge never strayed far from left-wing orthodoxy in his stated politics, and I have read many of his books, and his left-leaning worldview shines through these works, even if he often attempts them to be superficially non-political.
RenOS
something is wrong
26d ago
Born rural low/middle class. Parents are mailman and daycare worker, in a time/place when those were perfectly fine jobs to hold long-term and could afford you a house & kids. From my father's side, my ancestors all seem to be lower class employed menial workers, while my mother's side were farmers (though lost/abandoned the automation/upscaling race) and upper middle class artisanal workers owning their own store. Fittingly, one maternal uncle gifted me a book recording the lives of several generations of my maternal heritage, while my paternal side has maybe a few old fotos where my dad knows the names of most but not all people.
On paper I've moved upwards substantially - my parents didn't finish high school (and older generations barely even did elementary), while I'm a postdoc researcher at a reasonably prestigious but small university, and my wife is as well. Most would consider that upper middle class. But especially compared to my mother's ancestry, it does seem like a move downward in practice. We don't own anything (not our apartment, certainly not our work place) and nor do we even earn that well. Maybe we'll cobble together enough to buy our own house. Though yet otherwise, we personally know world-leaders in certain fields, so I guess you could say we are effectively just paying for the privilege of having a serious shot at the very top.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
You're missing the part were a majority of males are either outright killed off an/or are so disenfranchised as to have no children at all. we have more than enough historical and genetical records for either. In general, I find it striking how consistently women tend to completely ignore men in who are in status below them, and then, unsurprisingly, conclude that men have it obviously better. The average male was a footsoldier or heavy menial worker who had to do as he is told by his betters, may not even have or just very limited contact with women and in any case usually died younger than them. Adventure and heroism was an option, yes, but one that mostly ends in ignoble death.
That's not to say that women didn't have a hard life back then; Childbirth, deadbeat dads, limited opportunities, as well as the general all-time favorites such as starvation, war and sickness certainly weighted heavy on them. I wouldn't even say they had it better, either - being a male, just having the option of heroism certainly appeals to me more than the relative safety of the female life. But looking at my friends and acquaintances, if given the option, I'd be very surprised if the women would choose likewise. As usual, the neuro-atypical are the biggest losers, since they may genuinely want a different life than the one intended for them.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
Interesting. Probably it's my academic background, which is already very female-biased and pretty much requires one to be comfortable with travelling, including outright living in other countries. It seems I don't really register 64% women as an imbalance (even though it obviously logically is), since that's in line with my daily experiences (arguably, it's on the low end; When I started my degree, we were around 10 guys for 30 women, which after the first-year crash of nearly 50% reduced to around 4 guys for a little less than 20 women. Even now, I work almost exclusively in collaborations with women [which is intentional, since it opens up a lot of funding for me indirectly that I otherwise do not have access to]).
I guess it makes sense in that if I think back to my hometown, it wasn't very uncommon for older men to consider travelling a frivolous waste of money, while the older women seemed more accepting of the idea (though they still didn't travel without their husbands). Norms change, and the same kind of men still considers it a waste of money, but the women then just go travel anyway, I suppose?
It doesn't really fit with the school friends I kept in touch with, but those unsurprisingly were also pre-filtered for more open-minded personalities.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
I don't get this impression, at least not strongly. If anything, the people I know who have actually lived and/or spend multiple months in exotic countries are almost exclusively men. Maybe women do go a bit more often, but usually to more generic, touristy spots.
My experience matches Arjin's, in that travelling is just generically high status behaviour at the moment, and women tend to be much more receptive to signalling status behaviour. Also, everyone enjoys not having to work, and women tend to have less pressure on that front, so they can have a bit more leeway in how often and when they can go on trips.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
Somehow you replied to yourself on a completely different topic, as far as I can see?
See, for example, this reddit explanation of the unique vertical level design of DS1. Imo none of the other entries, including ER, have done it quite as masterfully, even if they clearly were inspired by it. Which is fine; They have done other things better.
Edit: Btw, DS3, since you mentioned it, is probably my least favorite of the bunch. DS2 at least tried a bit more to do its own thing. DS3 returned to the roots, yes, but in the process feels the most like a rehash of DS1, but invariably worse since a copy never reaches up to the original. That's imo one of the reasons why ER was deliberately given a different name, marketed as something different and has at least some clear deviations in the design, such as the open world.
There is also the element in which, since the DS entries are explicitly intended to be different iterations of the same loops, makes them work together better than alone. See this post which in my view - despite me agreeing that DS3 is a weaker entry! - entirely misses the point of the DS3 design: By the time of this iteration, the cycle has been going on too long, the fire has been lit too often, so that the sacrifice has to be ever greater for but a sliver of the greatness achieved earlier. The message is clear: This time around, just lighting it yet again will not be sufficient. You have to find another way. It's deliberate.
Edit2: I also think, since, as you mentioned, a lot of the design choices are easy to miss & somewhat subject to interpretation, DS games are especially susceptible to the tendency to always like the first game of the bunch you played. You'll always be more willing to look into all the details, all the theories, etc. the first time around. The more you play, the more you tire of it, so you'll miss more and more on average.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
People say GRRM was just there to have his name on the tin for marketing, but I don't know how anyone literate can conclude this. The lore of Elden Ring has the most profound aesthetic depth I've ever seen in a video game, and that depth is simply not there in Dark Souls 3 or in Shadow of the Erdtree (the former felt like the Walmart version of Elden Ring, and the latter like the Hobbit compared to the LotR trilogy). To me it's clear the big-brain behind the magic is Martin himself, and, in his own words, "when the sun has set, no candle can replace it."
The reason people say this is pretty simple, it's that Elden Ring's setting, to the DS veteran, mostly is just more of the same as has been done the last three times. It's just hard to really see Martin's stamp. You can of course claim that he has done it better, but this is quite subjective. There are a lot of arguments about that already, and everyone has their own opinion. ER is undoubtly a good game, but most of your post could be written equivalently for any DS game, including even the aesthetic design (well, maybe not DS2, as much as I think it is somewhat underrated) and, funnily enough, even Martin's quote. Partially for this reason I got bored with ER halfway through the game, though I'll certainly pick it up eventually again. As a DS veteran you just can't shake the feeling that you have already played this game 3+ times, with near-identical story beats, setting and mechanics.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
Maybe I misunderstand you, but this is imo calculated the wrong way. Presumably, most of the dudes family is also 130 IQ, and you already explicitly spelled out that her parents and siblings are all 130 IQ. If the expected child IQ of a 130 IQ pairing from a 130 IQ wider family is actually 118 ... What astronomical luck did the families have up to then?
First, heritability is a red herring, since we're not in an adoption study or similar situation. These are rich parents raising their own rich daughter. The relevant factor is regression to the mean, which is generally estimated to be ca 0.5, i.e. if you take your spousal IQ_s, and compare it to the population mean IQ_p you're descended from, then you're kids IQ will be roughly (IQ_s + IQ_p)/2.
The population mean you regress to is generally speaking that of your actual sub-population, which is your wider family; Ideally you also know the IQ of your grandparents and uncles and aunts, that improves the estimate further. It's not always 100, which is a very common misconception. It's generally trivially acknowledged for clear examples, such as ethnic ashkenazi jewish among gentiles, but it even holds among seemingly homogenous groups. The reason you see regression towards 100 is partially that assortative mating in superficially homogenous groups is only moderate, so usually there is some difference between the respective spousal family background, and partially an artifact of averaging. But it certainly holds for ethnically separated groups with rather strict assortative mating as is typical in large parts of India, as I understand it.
So the expected child IQ of a 130 IQ pairing from a 130 IQ wider family is simply 130. With a single spouse at 90, the spousal average becomes 110 instead, and the final number after regression is around 120. Still a 10 point difference though, so I guess not a big difference on that account.
My primary issue is that I have yet to see a left-leaning person espouse a position in favor of immigration restrictions that actually work, in any country. The mention of e-verify by left-leaning posters is a good example here; Going specifically after the working illegals is the stupidest option possible, and would result in not only still having the illegals in the country, but now they can't earn anything except through crime or charity. You can't imagine an approach better optimized to cause a surge in crime and welfare abuse, and I'm 100% sure that the left would have made fun of the right if they actually had done it that way around. This is pretty much the situation in germany right now, btw. I mostly consider myself in the center, and all I want is a working border enforcement and the deportation of immigrants who aren't working after several years of being here. But no matter what the right tries, the left will even make a mockery of it and blatantly work around it (like "help navigating how to get access to the german welfare system" by telling people who are currently in poland how to get past german checkpoints) and if not successful, they will complain until the right stops whatever it is that is actually working. I can see how, to a genuine right-winger, this will translate into "If the left complains, that means we are doing something right; the harder, the better". I'm still sufficiently worried about right-wing dysfunction to really be in favour, but the ICE situation seems like the logical endpoint of this game.
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