RenOS
Dadder than dad
No bio...
User ID: 2051
RenOS
Dadder than dad
27d ago
That's my point though. Universities should strive for academic excellence and political independence. However, it got increasingly taken over by leftist politics, got (mostly correctly, then) labeled an enemy by the right, and is correspondingly now a target. I've been a critic of this process from the start, precisely because this was the only logical outcome. Nevertheless, as far as I can see the right has always been more interested in using the same tactics of silencing and outlawing disagreements, just now for their position, than in restoring some semblance of academic excellence.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
3mo ago
The dysgenics is trivial to solve with embryo selection, which unlike AI-powered robots has the perk of existing and already being cheap enough to be accessible for middle class people if they so choose. Even in the current form it'd be trivial for western government to subsidize usage for poor people (though I think there is enough slack to make it much, much cheaper to begin with through scaling).
Agree on the Ukraine war & on the problem of extremely fertile ultra-conservative populations, though.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
26d ago
What you call milquetoast false-centrism, I'd call regular centrism. I know Corona is your hobbyhorse, but the FDP was if anything overly critical compared to the center (which suits me, since I also was on the critical side).
On the AFD, the FDP is explicitly on the record as being against the Verbotsverfahren. Privately, I've argued multiple times that the AFD has a point, and that as long as the german political establishment is unwilling to tackle the dysfunctional, barely existent border and immigration politics, they will only get stronger. This is reasonably close to the stated position of the FDP, though I suspect that being libertarians they're more in favor of open borders than I'd like, but unfortunately we don't have a topic-based voting law.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
27d ago
I mean, I push hard enough against left-wing orthodoxy both in person and online that I'm regularly reflexively labeled right-wing, and I have the same frustration as you with plenty of other allegedly centrist politicians who fall hard for the "no enemies to the left, all enemies to the right" fallacy. You're really throwing this at the wrong person, sorry.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
26d ago
If you want to know, my last vote went to the FDP, which is the german libertarian party. Unlike the US, the FDP is not consistently on either side, but has coalitioned with both sides (currently it's in fact part of a broad left-leaning government). Myself I'm not even a straight-ticket FDP voter, I've considered the CDU (originally center right, though nowadays probably just pure centrist), due to their family-first focus which I find appealing, and the SPD (center left), since I'm in favour of broad redistributive policies if done right. My vote ultimately went to the FDP however since it's the closest thing to free-speech absolutism on the menu and because they currently appear to be the party most concerned with imo common-sense concepts such as "having a functioning economy".
Privately, at work, and online, I primarily push back against left-wing orthodoxy since it's quite common among my acquintances.
Nevertheless, and yes this is precisely what I mean, if you try to force me into a binary left-wing orthodoxy vs right-wing orthodoxy, both enforced equally, I'll choose the left everytime. The right needs to be significantly less orthodox for me to consider it.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
4d ago
The media is also still regularly uncritically reporting numbers from de-facto Hamas controlled bodies such as the Health Ministry. The UN is likewise blindly trusted, despite the fact that they have been caught red-handed over and over at this point. There is a very strong zionist lobby with a lot of influence, but the media landscape as a whole is a mix of very different biases.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
3mo ago
I don't think it's necessary to use for every birth, just consistent usage for people who struggle with pregnancy in the first place & people with certain known problems (I'm deliberately vague here because I think there is a wide range of reasonable policies that should be subject to debate by both the public and experts to collectively find out what we find or find not adequate to select against) is likely to be sufficient to make effective dysgenics per generation almost zero or even turn it around. Many dysfunctions and abnormalities impact fertility, so even just better embryo selection for those that already use IVF is imo likely to impact dysgenics more than you'd naively expect. From the initial data I've seen, simple general-health PGS is likely to even substantially improve the chances for a successful pregnancy beyond what the existing standard tests do, so it's win-win for absolutely everyone.
My first rough idea is something like this:
- Make sequencing (again, deliberately vague because while I think deep WGS should be the goal, WES, larger SNP arrays, etc. would be a big step up compared to current practice) for would-be (in the sense of planning, not already pregnant obviously) parents completely free. Even if we assume every second parent takes you up on this, and even assuming one of the most costly option, 100x WGS at ca. 1k (see Nebula for example), this is more in the ballpark of low single digit billions. Probably we will go for a cheaper option, and probably less parents will use it initially, so in practice I'd expect less than a billion.
- Only if the parents fulfill the aforementioned "certain known problems" they will also have access to free IVF + embryo selection. Likewise, people that get regular IVF due to struggling to get pregnant also get free genetics-based embryo selection by default on top. Here there is a wide range of costs; I'd probably be initially in favor of a policy that subsidizes only the worst 1% or so. So this would again be in the low single digit billions or less than a billion depending on the take-up.
- We can also save a lot by only subsidizing it for people who can't afford it otherwise, but I'm personally against such policies since they have bad incentives imo. But it's an option on the table that would slash the cost down substantially.
I think such a program would be very cost-effective initially as mainly people who already have family histories take it up + those struggling to get pregnant. Over time, success and normalisation would increase the take-up and hence costs, but - and here you can call me out I guess - I think the scaling will more than make up for it. Remember, dysgenics is a pretty slow long-term problem, it's fine if it takes some time, as long as we get the process started and don't just completely ignore it.
In my ideal future, it's completely normal and free for everyone to have access to their own genome through ultra-deep WGS, access to several different risk scores for various diseases, abnormalities and dysfunctions for themselves, there is simple, accessible software that can estimate the joint risk for the same things for the offspring of any two people, and there are clear, commonly agreed guidelines when embryo-selection is subsidized or free for you (ideally with a linear or a multi step function instead of a simple free vs full price). All in addition to full-price IVF/embryo selection for those who don't agree with guidelines and want to select for the things they personally care about. And in think this ideal future is actually possible even just with the current technology level.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
6mo ago
Clearly, it was a burrito. It's the sacrifice you have to make to eat something so delicious.
Yes, I saw that one, too. Not very nice either.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
26d ago
The coalition is not actually doing anything yet, though. Even the SPD lead is rather mealy-mouthed: "we can't entirely rule out a Verbotsverfahren as a last stop, maybe". People are certainly complaining a lot about the AFD, which is legal. Funny enough I've heard the same criticism from the left in person - the SPD hasn't actually done anything against the AFD yet, and Scholz has mentioned deportation favorably in the past, therefore they secretly agree! I find that silly, to be clear.
More questionable is that AFD-members are being kicked out of some smaller organisations, which I'm mostly against, but this has little to do with the FDP, and is difficult to legally control without throwing out freedom of association in general.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1mo ago
Ah, schizophrenia it is. That's certainly harsh. In this case I admit that changing countries is questionable independent of legalities and finances - even the most functional schizophrenics I know have had issues that required assistance by family, friends and/or the state. You don't want to become a crazy homeless guy in latin america. I guess you've already been to different places inside the US itself? I've heard about a similar dynamic in southern US, where it can be a lot easier to find a hispanic wife, and they often are surprisingly right-leaning and becoming more so with time. Sure you might have some ... disputes on immigration law, but agreeing on everything is boring anyway.
SSI forbids this — it is, in fact, a big part of the issues I've been having with Social Security for the past year thanks to the Covid lockdown times. I'm forbidden from having more than $2000 total assets at any one time — if I go over that, my SSI drops to zero each month until it's back under.
Oh man do I hate SSI laws that are structured like this. But you can subvert this, depending on the way the law is written - in the most benign way if you're owing debt to your parents anyway, you can just pay them whatever you earn extra, and then ask for money again once you need it. Depends on the relationship with your parents and their attitude, but if I was them I'd be more than happy with such an arrangement. Next on the list would be to spend your money on easy-to-claim-worthless assets, such as trading cards (also a good source of companionship for losers, though you probably should avoid talking politics with them). This is technically breaking the law, but extremely unlikely to be caught (how many policemen care to look at your trading card collection?) and very plausibly deniable - you can just claim you thought of it as consumption. Further is just good ol' working black labor and keeping everything in hard cash - at least in my country, as long as you're just doing some odd jobs here and there for like 200$ a month, not a full-blown employment, nobody really gives a shit in practice. Private tutoring is ideal and very common for this in particular. But I guess you've probably considered this last one already.
Not great at video games, and my internet is too lousy for that.
I guess Alaska in general does probably not have the greatest ping even if the connection might be good otherwise. I'd consider it anyway, looking at my acquaintances who are very much losers it seems to be one of the most reliable ways to find companionship and even some respect for them. And to be frank they often also weren't actually very good, plenty of online games are structured so that the time you put in is more important than the skill you have (though it obviously is beneficial). In general given your age it's not unlikely that you're primarily bad since you never got into the habit. There is plenty of right-leaning spaces in gaming also, especially if you just stay in modding/clan discords and choose games appropriately (who would think that a WW2 tank warfare game where most of the best tanks are german would be absolutely dominated by right wingers? pikachu face). There is a decent number of games that do not require a good internet connection, such as turn-based games.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
5mo ago
One can believe that Senators face a relatively high threat compared to random citizens and so need the protection more and not be hypocritical.
I suppose he is not talking about STDs, but it is possible.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
7mo ago
RenOS
Dadder than dad
27d ago
I consider myself primarily a pragmatist, not ideologist, so I can see myself allying with a broader right coalition in principle, if I had the impression that I can fit in under a live and let live paradigm. In particular I'm probably more center than left, so it's not even inconceivable that I'll someday identify as center-right. But nevertheless, I just do not have the impression that free speech absolutism is really something the right is dedicated on (nor the left, which is key to my frustration with them, but at least I agree with them on more other things). Currently I do push hardest against left-wing orthodoxy because it's the only realistic threat to me at the moment since the right-wing has no power whatsoever in science, but I have no illusions that life would be better under the thumb of the right.
This. It's my favorite genre and I'd really like to try it, but this is such a massive ick-factor that I'm probably not going to.
Edit: Just took a look anyway after all, and it doesn't look nearly as bad as I feared based on Mewis' remark. That seems tolerable.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
5mo ago
No offense, but that's very ... autistic. Sure there's still large differences and resentment is not inappropriate. Especially given the often extreme hypocrisy and prejudice of our woke betters. But nevertheless, it's also important to keep in mind that we did in fact make great advances. My parents come from poor rural super large families (I literally don't know the number of my cousins) and didn't even enter high-school. Nevertheless, they build up a comfortable middle class existence and I'm now a postdoc at a decent university.
My gf, who is also a postdoc, comes from a post-soviet background where they lost EVERYTHING, twice (once her grandparents due to being silesian germans, then her parents due to their entire education not being accepted by west germany, so they were suddenly untrained workers with no private ownership).
We lived together with a thai girl for a while, whos parents most prized possession was ... a donkey I think? Some large animal like that. And they lived in a literal shack. She's now a nurse with, comparatively, amazing living standards in germany.
And so on. Re-introducing monarchy, or even just formalizing classes/castes solves exactly no problems, and in fact just makes everything worse. What we need is an honest perspective on what real privilege looks like, and less (sometimes literally) royal girls lecturing everyone on how they deserve to get special treatment. The current petty woke framework is so popular because it's very easy for even the most privileged to conjure up some kind of oppression. Monarchy, as we have seen in the past, would just make them go "actually, I deserve this", which is even worse.
FWIW, a large part, possibly majority but at least close to 50%, of our college-educated left-leaning friends (and it's not even unpopular among our non-college-educated friends) is some kind of vegetarian. Among those who aren't, the majority is constantly stressing how little meat they're eating. The line between them is pretty fuzzy, since there's a decent number of people who claim to not eat meat at home, but sometimes outside when there's no other option, and these people will sometimes consider themselves vegetarian anyway, sometimes not. Almost nobody is an unabashed meat eater. As justifications go, animal sympathy is at the top for the stricter vegetarians, health benefits for the less strict (this actually includes myself), climate considerations are generally second line ("and btw it's also good for the climate I've heard").
Surprisingly, this did not greatly change when we became parents; Yes there's very few super-militant vegetarian parents, but we know multiple families where only the children eat meat, not the parents, and eating relatively little meat is actually the norm.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1mo ago
Again, it's not a lack of interest, it's that as a 42-year-old virgin loser, my prospects are non-existent — unless you've got some some sort of new advice how to remedy that?
That's certainly problematic, but imo not as bad as you think it is. As a man it's easy to fall into a life where your contact with the fairer sex is minimal, and dating events/apps do not suit everyone. But to turn it around, you're basically dating on hard mode. Alaska does not have as bad of a sex ratio as I remembered, but it's still pretty lopsided, it's not exactly known to be full of extroverts and depending on where exactly you are there might not even be that many people in total in the area. As a (presumably white?) US citizen there's a long list of countries where it's extremely easy to find a partner even if you're arguably a loser. Latin america & eastern europe are good options, and asian countries are amazing bc asian women are really, really into white guys.
Financial reasons and what little family I have prevent this
You don't need to stay there forever, nor do you need to go there as a tourist. Unless you're the only carer for someone close, in which case I truly feel bad for you; I've seen a few cases where someone was stuck in a place they hated with no way out for 10+ years because they were the only one giving a shit about their sick mother/dad/grandparent/whatever.
Given that you're clearly reasonably intelligent, and even assuming that you're unreliable, lazy and/or physically disabled, I admittedly have a hard time believing that you can't find some (no matter how marginal!) employment to save up some money. In the worst case Mechanical Turk or such. Plenty of countries are ridiculously cheap in terms of both getting there and in living expenses if you're a childless western single eating regular supermarket food and staying in private accomodation. I read that you have some debt to your parents, but as a parent myself I can confidently say that if my chronically depressed son suddenly tried to get his act together and save up money to life somewhere else bc this place is killing him, I wouldn't mind just writing that debt off. Not claiming that any of this is easy or guaranteed to work, but remember, if you end up offing yourself you'll hurt your parents by far the most compared to any other option.
On the other hand, if you think you're incapable of living on our own due to mental issues and the government agrees, are there any options at all for shared living arrangements in your area? I know it's not ideal - even if you get a spot most people there will be noticeably mentally handicapped, which can be frustrating for someone who isn't - but it gives you a community, which is imo critical, and there is a good chance that you can help the others there to some degree as well, and they also often offer government-supported employment for people who are normally difficult to employ.
Lastly, have you ever tried online gaming guilds and similar? Again it's not ideal - you don't even attempt to be a productive member of society in that case - but it's another good way of finding community for the struggling. Also, it can be an OK-ish source of untaxed, albeit usually very marginal, income depending on the game.
I've been on meds since my first suicide attempt back in 2004. This is me on meds.
Yeah, that sucks. Depression meds are notoriously unreliable, with a side dish of occasionally making people suddenly kill themselves even if their depression hadn't been that bad beforehand. @self_made_human is of course correct that you sometimes have to cycle through a lot of meds until you find something that works for you, but I can understand wanting to stick with a med that is at least tolerable.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
5mo ago
You're not getting my point (also, I'm european, so no, this isn't about america for me). As humans have a rather high inter-individual variance, you can do this game on any level. If I say mediterranean is a good group, you can point out well-known differences between, say, north and south italy. If I say fine, then surely south italian is a good category? Then you can point out differences between more local groups, then between families and finally, individuals. And you will always get more precise this way, despite ending up with a nonsensical "grouping" of one each.
So the imo correct way is to see this as a precision-practicality tradeoff. In any given population, the largest ~2-5 groups that have consistent differences between them are the most practical while still retaining a comparatively good precision (this is incidentally the way people instinctively group other people everywhere in the world). So if you're looking worldwide, that is black vs white vs asian. If you're in africa, it's something like bantu/bantoid vs hausa/hamitic/semitic vs others. If you're specifically in India, it's Indo-Aryan vs Dravidian vs Tibeto-Burman (btw, looking this up it's very unfortunate how consistently wikipedia is trying to reduce everything to culture/language and steadfastly ignores the biological dimension of ethnicities, but that's the general modern biases at work).
RenOS
Dadder than dad
6mo ago
Yes.
On another note, am I the only one who thinks scat and the two incests seem out of place compared to the others? In particular mother/daughter seems outright tame to me.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
6mo ago
I didn't click on the Aella link bc I'm at work. Nevertheless, I chose "past 4" with confidence. Take that as you may.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
8mo ago
Why do they hate us? Why does anti-Western Islamism exist (and before that anti-Western pan-Arabism)? Why did Egypt and Syria and Iraq all move to favour the Soviet Union? Why does Iran hate us? In a nutshell - Israel.
I think you're being very naive here, and also with Ukraine. I'm hardly a hardliner on both issues - back during Maidan time I was actually in favour of the russian territories getting their independence referendum, and I currently work together with different muslim researchers that work in arabic universities. I can see the value of working with people even if they have very different values. But the arabic world has been opposed to the west for a long time now. The alliance with the soviets was purely out of convenience and correspondingly never very stable. The Israeli issue might be the most legible complaint they can give us, but I'm quite confident that if we had given up on the Israelis we'd have different things we'd be fighting over with them. Likewise, they can take our aid and weapons and then abandon us if it suits them just fine, and in terms of their own worldview they'd be perfectly justified in doing so. The same goes for Russia, there was a time where there was a decent chance they may switch to the western side, but I don't see such a chance with the current leadership anymore.
There are a whole host of differences here, like said annexations happening within living memory (Golan Heights for example), a large population of forcibly displaced Mexicans wanting to go back to New Mexico and the fact that there's no European union of states. Europe and North America aren't even on the same continent as Israel, it's a different region entirely. Mexico also isn't the world's largest oil producer. New Mexico in this case, I assume, is not a nuclear power.
The key here is how people identify their teams. Most people nowadays consider themselves something like "Team Western World", which spans the globe and so to them being on different continents is not a reason to not send (military) aid. You, from what I can gather, consider yourself primarily "Team America", so I gave an example that applies directly to America, to get you in a similar headspace as the average Israel supporter. It's not about the example being perfectly comparable - it never is - , the purpose is to understand how others think about an issue due to their values differences. If you want, you may imagine many displaced Mexicans - with the average values as other Mexicans - wanting to live in New Mexico for the purpose of the example, and similar.
Precisely. It's foolish to ally with weak countries that have little marginal value, angering strong countries in the process. The economic consequences of our Ukraine initiative is already hitting Europe hard. Strength should be conserved and wielded where it's most needed, which is clearly Asia. Angering Russia by getting involved in Ukraine opens up a second front, gives China a useful, resource-rich ally and worsens our position overall.
Imo, depending on Russia in terms of energy was foolish long before the Ukraine, and having to look for other options was overdue. I'd surely have preferred if we had followed your tag line and build enough nuclear plants to be independent before the conflict, though. Likewise arming Ukraine is actually a reasonably cheap way of bleeding Russia, and the basic logic of geopolitics dictates, independent of Ukraine, that Russia had to align itself with China if it has any aspirations of defending against westernization and being a superpower. If we were to give up on Ukraine, they could just take it ... and ally with China anyway. In the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has actually shown remarkable weakness (and/or Ukraine has shown remarkable strength). It is reasonable to conclude that this is a good point to invest resources to strengthen your position.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
8mo ago
See, that's exactly what I consider a toxic influence from these thought experiments! Sure you can just state, as an assumption, that mechanisms don't matter for the thought experiment. But in the real world, mechanisms always have implied additional risks and as such always matter. And wasting your intellect on thought experiments with deeply implausible assumptions isn't just wasted effort, it actively screws with your intuitions in a way that imo makes your real-world decision making worse in the long term. It's a similar thing to how the often deeply ingrained liberal ideology in most of modern media gives us a long list of bad intuitions, such as a massive overestimate of the prevalence of LGBT individuals, or an overestimate of the prevalence of open, honest-to-god rabid racism, or an underestimate of the dysfunctionality present in poor & unsucessful groups, and so on.
To use this example, if the blue pill actually does nothing and the red pill unleashes a weird virus, then even if I grant that the virus initially may only kill blue pillers, the presence of this new lethal virus is just a completely unnecessary extra long term risk. Likewise, if the red pill actually does nothing and the blue pill infects you with a weird symbiotic fungus, even if I grant that this fungus doesn't kill initially as long as there are enough blue pillers, the fungus is again a completely unnecessary long term risk. This matters!
RenOS
Dadder than dad
13d ago
As advice, one thing that is not explicitly banned but somewhat frowned upon and which makes people suspect a troll is writing a top-level post and then not engaging at all with the comments. You can't answer everything, but most regular people would at least be reactive for a short while after writing the OP.
See, this is why center-left people don't feel like allying with the right, despite our increasing frustration with the regressive far-left. I dislike their attitude of wanting to define reality and outlaw disagreement, but I just know that if the right gets into power they'll do the same, but harder. As an example, I have several friends who are as frustrated with the far-left as me, but who support palestine. I disagree with them about this, but I don't thing they should lose their job over it! And nor are they just getting what they're dishing out, no, now we have to take punches from both sides.
Even for cases like Claudine Gay, at least my personal conclusion is that she got her job through politics and lost her job through politics. Scientific competence was only involved as a cudgel to beat her with when it was convenient. This is a disgrace for one of the most renown universities, and the only winners of the whole affair are the people who want to control science with politics. Yes if it was up to me she shouldn't have gotten the job in the first place, but I see little indication that the right would do anything better. In fact I don't even have to look back very far to get right-wing movements such as the moral majority.
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