RenOS
Dadder than dad
No bio...
User ID: 2051
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
That might exceed the scope of your intendend AMA, but is that really workable? A society needs people to defend it, and if those people can't have families/kids, aside from the obvious cultural issues the army has at the moment (it's really, really unpopular among large swathes of the young population), I don't see how we can long-term retain a decently sized army. Also, aren't army families (multiple generations of army membership) in america allegedly really common? What changed? Or would you see army membership as a strictly young man's game, so they can still have families/kids afterwards?
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
I also worry about decoupling for narrow optimisations like IQ. I'm strongly in favor of general health and general success/competence selection, however. Both would imply some degree of IQ optimisation even if IQ itself is not explicitly represented. I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to adding explicit IQ selection in addition to the others, but a lot of the common objections fall apart if we simply leave that out and I think we will have the majority of the gains even without it anyway, so I'm tentatively against it for the moment.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
This is imo mostly nonsense if applied to genetic enhancements, for a number of reasons.
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Both sequencing and IVF are already very accessible for the middle class. It's probably not far off from becoming accessible for the poor. The only way to make it exclusive to the uber-rich is, ironically, by outlawing it. CRISPRing people isn't really prohibitively expensive, either, and becoming cheaper as well.
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Better selection has pretty much zero marginal cost per person. It's 100% developmental cost, and once we know which genes matter, it's widely usable.
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This hasn't happened even when it made sense. For example, the same argument could have been applied to all technological advancements that have significant marginal cost per person. Cars, better healthcare/hygiene, education, electricity, etc. all of those are much more plausible to cause a runaway effect with the rich getting disproportionate ROI and everyone else falling behind since they have nothing to invest, but it didn't. Currently, AI is much more plausible to cause a runaway effect, and human enhancements are if anything one of the more plausible ways of competing with them.
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My main objection: What do we want to select for, and how do we do it plausibly? We want to select for generalised success (which includes IQ, health, social success, educational attainment, etc), and we find the genes associated with those by comparing the successful with the not-so-successful. As such, genetic selection uniquely disproportionally benefits the downtrodden, since the successful will already hold a decent chunk of the genetic enhancements we want to select for.
As a concrete example, we know that specific genetic variants are almost mandatory to become a top-tier runner. Making targeted genetic enhancements accessible does not benefit the top-tier runners, since they already have these. It does benefit everyone else, though. The same principle applies to all attributes, even complex ones that are associated with thousands of variants. There is also both significant evidence in favor of diminishing returns for many attributes, as well as strong theoretic arguments (for example, there is a physical limit to how fast a carbon-based, two-legged lifeform can run. As you approach that limit, "better" genes do less and less, meaning that improvements are largest for the relatively genetically cursed).
The only plausible objection here is that in the lab, we can find even better variants - which nobody holds - so that the top-tier can benefit again. However, to my knowledge we have no consistent approach to do this, and since trial runs on animals only get you so far, the first generation humans trying them will still have excessive risks. I personally wouldn't try such a variant even if I could. Much better to use variants that already plenty of successful people have, so at worst it's something marginally negative that isn't holding them back much and on average it should benefit them.
It bears repeating that disproportionate returns for the rich is something I'm always worried about with most new technologies, but gene editing/selection is uniquely implausible to cause that. On the other hand I'm very worried about AI, since factories and companies purely or overwhelmingly staffed by AI can make the elite independent of the plebes in a way they have never been before.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
It's not saying a somewhat neutral "could be true, could not be, there is no scientific consensus". It's doing the weasely negative formulation "not supported by science/biology", which is technically not a strict a denial but also clearly implies a direction. Likewise, the "more differences within than between" is a distraction - it's almost always used to imply there being no differences, even if it technically only makes a point about the relative importance of the difference (which I even agree with).
I'm pretty sure that if the AI made any statement whatsoever that is actually neutral towards HBD, it would be pilloried by the mainstream while this forum would probably not mind.
On the other thing I agree with the other poster, HBD is probably a majority view at this point. Though more the "there are differences in mental attributes between groups just like we already know in physical attributes, get over it, no it doesn't mean we should discriminate based on skin color, yes individual differences will frequently be large enough to overpower the group differences" than the "blacks are subhuman, I always knew it!" variety.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
Disagree pretty hard. Men have a much lower bar for a partner before they say "I'd rather stay single" than women and men would rather sleep with many different partners than having a single super-high status partner. Or the other way around, some women, particularly while they're still young, apparently even prefer being a high-status man's affair over a low-status man's wife.
Just as an example, I personally know multiple women who "have trouble finding a good man" only to find out that they got hit on by a man who was, quite frankly, better than them. My wife confronted a friend of hers who had this problem and concluded herself that she will probably never find someone unless it's literally Brad Pitt, but he is also an accomplished researcher (her words, not mine). Meanwhile looking at my male friends who struggled, most jumped at the very first chance of getting any girlfriend whatsoever.
You should in particular compare what high-status man vs woman say and what they do, since this is the group that has most agency and can optimize for what they actually care about. High-status man will quite frequently have multiple affairs and rarely complain about finding a partner. High-status woman have much less affairs, and if they have one it's usually with a single man that is often even higher status than them, they will frequently complain about finding a good man and generally invest their resources into finding a single high-status man.
These are very simple, real differences between the sexes, and while you may use any word for it you like, hypergamy is a good one.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
As a purely egoistic question? Absolutely the former, no questions asked, and I'm even talking about me personally here. Though I do think it applies to the average man as well, especially given I know how they talk when in all-male company & drunk. If anything in my experience I'm already somewhat unusual in that I actually want kids since I'm a teen instead of purely casual sex. But again, if I'm being honest to myself, I would prefer to have lots have kids with several 6/10 than to have only a few with a single 9/10, assuming I can provide for them.
Of course, in a how-to-structure-society meta way, I prefer for everyone to prefer the latter. So I do not think my egoistic preferences to be good, in fact they're very bad, but I think it is important to be aware of your failures & weaknesses.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
Where did I condemn women, or implied that their way of choosing partners is worse? If it satisfies you, I will say that men's mate-seeking behaviour ranges from pathetic groveling on one end to callous hedonism on the other end, depending on their status. It is in no way better than women's mate-seeking behaviour.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
No, I do not think that the average women high-five each other every time they get pumped & dumped by a high status man and I find the insinuation rather insulting.
What I do claim however is that the average woman who struggles to find a long-term partner (note that this is already not the average woman) often has already been asked out by perfectly respectable similar-status men but rejected them for flimsy reasons. If you confront them and ask, well, among the people you know, who would you be willing to date, they'll frequently mention a single, maybe two or three, high-status married men (or, to take an extreme example, the aforementioned non-existent Prof. Brad Pitt). Depending on their taste, they might instead be into a flaky artist they've been having an on-off relationship/affair with for years, their boss, or their most popular co-worker, but the principle stays the same. Their obvious main issue is that among their peers, they simply deem no men worthy of being in a relationship with them, except the ones that clearly have other options. The moment they actually want to settle down and have a family, they'll often find someone in an instant. It's just they're still hoping for a better deal.
On the other hand the average man who struggles to find a long-term partner has already asked out similar or slightly below status women than themselves and been rejected. If you confront them and ask, well, among the people you know, who would you be willing to date, they'll give you a long list of all their female friends, as well as most their female co-workers except the batshit crazy or disfigured, and the same for female acquaintances that may even be significantly below their own status. Their obvious main issue is that among their peers, they simply are not deemed worthy of being in a relationship by almost all women (no, a women telling other women to date him bc he's so "nice" doesn't count). If they wanted to reliably find a girl, they would have to go to great and unusual lengths that may even cause their peers to lose respect for them, like going to Thailand and hitting on every non-prostitute they can find. Otherwise their main options are a) waiting until the women among their peers become sufficiently desperate with age or b) work harder to become higher-status. But unfortunately the latter is a zero-sum approach that will mostly kick down other men even further.
For reference, I'm talking about upper-middle class behaviour here (i.e. the group of people we hear the most complaining from & about). So, well-mannered people with decent hygiene, good work ethic and enough income that any reasonable family can be provided for. I'm a research postdoc at a decent western university, and the number of women with frankly delusional expectations and a surprising amount of sneering disgust towards even slightly below their status men that try to hit on them is downright frightening. Single female professors with bitter attitudes towards the male professors who dared to marry a non-professor are basically a running joke. Plenty of my wife's female acquaintances and friends, who are mostly also researchers, therapists, or I/O psychologists at companies show exactly the behaviour described above, and my wife, who has also become a bit sick of their attitudes, occasionally digs a little deeper into who would actually be good enough for them, and it's reliably exactly who you'd expect.
And to repeat myself, I'm specifically talking about the women who claim to struggle to find a partner, not those that are in stable long-term relationships (I do think women in general are hypergamous, but for most women that preference is weak enough to not lead to this obvious failure mode). And also to be clear, I have plenty of gripes with male mate-finding behaviour as well and do not consider women's behaviour worse overall. But the topic here is the existence of female hypergamy, and the specific issue of a seeming pandemic of unhappy single people is in my opinion mainly caused by female hypergamy, and not by men playing too much video games or similar claims in mainstream journalism.
As an aside, I'm also quite frustrated how reliably every time one complains about how much men suck as a group in some way (they're more violent & criminal, they constantly try sleeping around if given the chance, they flake on family duties, they're less reliable in general, etc. are all things I genuinely think are true on average), it's just everyone nodding along, but if one mentions a single way in which women might not be so great, they get these ridiculous assertions thrown at them.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
More in the abstract than in the specifics. I'll occasionally talk with her about something that was discussed here and she has her own opinions, but she doesn't particularly care where I have these topics from. It helps though that she is pretty anti-woke, generally anti-mainstream and frankly at times sounds like a misogynist (you don't want to hear her opinion of women drivers, lol).
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
That's the thing, I think you're obscuring more than you're revealing by trying to put everything into generic boxes that can apply to both genders. For example, you can kind of explain "roid rage" through general human concepts like regular rage/anger. But no, the very specific hyper-violent presentation of roid rage is caused explicitly by excessive male hormones. You can also see in general that men express anger and rage much more violently, and that some unlucky men can even get something resembling roid rage more or less naturally. An angry women is just frankly not comparable, and will consistently express that anger very differently. Violence in general is more or less a male-specific problem, with women who are engaging in substantial violence being basically a rounding error (yes, I know the female domestic violence stats; no, I don't think it's very comparable).
The same applies here as well. Being perpetually, unhappily single due to inappropriately high standards is pretty much a female-specific problem. You can kind of find similar-ish behaviour in men if you squint hard enough (some super-high status men seem to have trouble holding a long-term relationship, but they also seem pretty happy dumping their young model gf for an even younger model gf), but again, it really isn't very well comparable. Every single guy I've met that claimed to be single due to his high standards immediately jumped at the opportunity once any woman showed him any attention whatsoever. It was just pure cope.
I agree though that viewing this as as insurmountable is wrong as well. As an individual, there's plenty of things you can do to improve your chances.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
It depends on what you see as "autonomy". I think a world where everyone is plugged into a simulated world is, if not exactly zero, at least pretty close to zero autonomy. You do not provide for yourself in any meaningful way, you are not capable of substantively changing the material world around you, you are not capable of protecting yourself and instead depend on protection. Of course your examples aren't positive, either. I would like a future where humans are improving their capabilities, try their best to colonize the universe, are meaningful members of society (not just "a" society like an online guild, but "the" society, the one that creates the infrastructure we use, the food we use, etc.) and in a fully general sense are in control of their destiny.
One of the worst possible futures is them becoming glorified pets of safetyist AIs that make sure no harm comes to them and allows them to play in a little golden cage of their own making, one so nice that they don't even consider leaving anyway.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
Does this happen because Christianity is largely not viewed as a threat and because since wokeism is this community's main out-group and Christianity is vaguely right-aligned in the modern West, people here tend to follow the principle of "the enemy of an enemy is my friend"?
Ding-ding-ding, we have a winner! I grew up in a conservative christian environment (even went to a private christian school), was just about the only kid who actually read the bible, and relentlessly mocked the absolute silliness of it back then. Despite being overall conservative, my religious teachers were surprisingly accepting (mostly along the line of "we're sad to see you not wanting to be part of us but will always welcome you back") and I got into no meaningful trouble for being an edgy atheist.
Ironically, once I went to university I realised that they do not take kindly to disagreements about certain dogmas, and that here, I can get into real trouble if I point out the wrong kind of basic biology lessons. Ultimately I think that Mainstream Christianity is far past its prime, knows it, and largely behaves accordingly. I don't consider myself on the right, but I also don't consider Mainstream Christianity a threat, so I'm fine with treating them nicely.
Tbh after reading your other comments, this just reads to me like "Why is [thing I like] so much better than [thing I don't like]?". I hate the new LotR series just as much as anyone else, but I've never heard about the Dune video nor board games and even the current movie, while certainly not bad, is not even near the LotR film trilogy. Looking at review aggregators, wikipedia, etc., both the public and critics seem to agree with that as well. The board game has a small fandom with no larger impact. The Dune 2 RTS seems to be the only objectively culturally impactful piece of media following the Dune books themselves.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
I agree on Elon having the tendency to make people deranged in any direction, not just against him, but saying he is "just a guy" seems similarly wrong. He's certainly quite unusual, probably very smart in at least some way, also clearly socially awkward & extremely petty (which codes as "bad" for large parts of current society, whatever your opinion might be), and with the achievements he has already accomplished he will probably be considered at least a notable celebrity for decades.
Among all people currently alive he also seems to be among the ~top 10 most likely or so to actually have a considerable influence on the course of history I guess? Hard to make a judgement call on that, but with all the weird things he has done and plans to do it seems likely that something is going to stick that would not have happened if it wasn't for him.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
It's very fuzzy and inconsistently used, but the basic idea is: Suppose you have a huge amount of data. How do you curate the data set, how do you answer question with it, how do you make predictions with it?
Machine Learning can be used for any of those things. For example, you can curate it by first sorting the data set with some clustering algorithm into groups to make it easier to handle (and possibly throwing outliers away). You can answer questions by just running some CNN on the data set. Etc.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
For some, that is the point; Many AA initiatives cite white over-representation as a reason why whites can't be allowed to benefit from them, which is reasonable until you realize that whites are hardly monolithic themselves and there absolutely are very different groups with very different performance in them. I'm not opposed to helping people from difficult backgrounds achieve their potential, nor do I have a problem if that disproportionally ends up benefitting certain groups over others. But I dislike the current reality were privileged rich kids often get benefits on top because they happen to have the correct skin color or gender.
Just to give an example that happened to me personally, as a PhD I've been lectured on my male privileges and how we need to support women by a female scientist who is literally a decendant of some british noble family, while none of my ancestors have to my knowledge even finished high school. And it's not just about the lecturing, someone like her has access to a vast array of Women In Science Initiatives that makes sure that she succeeds.
The Group That Must Not Be Named is just the most extreme example of this, since separating them out will show you that not just specific smaller groups, but gentile whites as a whole are actually underrepresented in many important ways.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
Christianity certainly used to be more dogmatic. My own parents told me that when a brothel was established in our village, the local church started a campaign were a rotation of people would stake out the brothel and report on everyone who visited it. Wild stuff. They themselves were protesting at the brothel as well, so this is not a hostile report by a non-religious, quite the opposite; They were proud that they successfully got rid of them.
My parents were also living together before marrying which got them into trouble since that was considered a "wild marriage" and the more conservative christians clearly tried to shame them into marrying(which my parents wanted to do anyway). And so on, I can give you a million examples of the church having been not much better than the woke not too long ago, from people who personally were around when it happened. Despite my more positive short description, I also had my fair share of bad experiences with dogmatic christians.
I'm also not claiming that it can never make a resurgence, but it is obvious that in many parts of the world Christianity had a certain position of dominance that they do not have anymore. And I'm cynical enough to attribute their recent mellowing out less to intrinsic do-good-ness than the good old "when I'm power" vs "when you're in power".
Finally, don't misunderstand me, I don't really have much beef with Christianity in particular anymore, and even got some newfound appreciation for it (my daughter even goes to an explicitly christian daycare!). But with age I'm more and more convinced that all ideologies get mean once they're to solidly in power, and I don't believe Christianity to be an exception. There are some genuinely nice devout that I know which are similar to what you're talking about, but most people unfortunately suck more than that.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
Anything I have ever seen from Gary Marcus suggests to me that on the issue of AI he is simply on the side of "against". He doesn't like it, it's stupid and also probably dangerous.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
Funny, I just recently got myself a carbonating machine as a reward for myself for my new postdoc position. Where I'm from, it's normal to drink essentially nothing but carbonated water; Before I had the machine, buying & transporting the bottles was a huge pain. I wouldn't drink uncarbonated water, it tastes terrible to me (on top of the fact that local water here is very hard & carbonation cancels that out to some degree).
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
Huh, one of the reasons to drink carbonated as opposed to uncarbonated water is that it makes hard water taste less chalk-y.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
Do you never do things like bath with your children when they're young? Or do you always wear bathing suits even at home? I have to admit I find the attitude genuinely puzzling, I don't want to make fun of you, I just don't even get how you manage to avoid them seeing nudity until a certain age. Many children's books here include nude people. If anything, there is the problem that older kids are more likely to associate nudity with sex so you show less nudity around them, while with small children your main problem will be that they think pulling or pinching your penis is funny when they see your reaction.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
Similarly it now occurs to me that the root cause analysis vs practical problem solving and the resulting failure modes awfully resemble those of traditional psychoanalysis vs CBT. Yes your parents were mean and that is bad, no you will not solve your social anxiety by talking at length with your therapist about how bad it was. Now go out and talk 10x with strangers for at least a minute until next week and report back on how it went, and depending on what you struggled with in particular we will try to develop strategies to make it easier for you.
I also get the impression that both psychoanalysis and root cause thinking for social problems are popular with the same crowd for the same reasons.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
With our oldest I remember the day that my wife scolded me for letting our toddler see me on the toilet. She was about 2 years old, I think.
Ha, I guess the only constant is that we all get scolded by our wifes. I just want to sit on the toilet in peace, but both her and our daughter constantly come in for various reasons and if I complain I'm scolded for being silly, it's not like there's anything they haven't seen a million times before!
You can be nude around a baby, but once they're smart enough to start talking you treat them like other people. Do you walk around nude in public? Maybe you do, but that isn't done here.
Come on, "we treat our children like adult strangers" is hardly a generalising conservative principle, if anything it's usually progressives that are often criticised for that. I'm also neither changing the diapers of other people nor am I scolding them for improper manners and in general I will keep my distance, both emotionally and physically. Intra-family behaviour is just something else entirely from public behaviour. Also, we have public nude beaches here, although they are fringe they also aren't looked down upon, so I guess our culture in general is more comfortable with nudity and less sexualised.
Oh I also love hearing stories from psychoanalysts. I also like talking and speculating about the motives and reasons of both me and other people in a similar manner to psychoanalysts/dynamics. My wife studied psychology and originally planned to become a therapist, and her sister is currently almost finished with her education for becoming a systemic family therapist. We all love talking about this stuff. But that's the thing: Psychoanalytics/-dynamics is maximized for interesting-ness and/or pleasantry and very easily degenerates into a stagnant pattern were the patient just likes talking to the therapist (usually complaining about their parents or partners, we all love complaining about our parents or partners) and doesn't really want to change anything. The housewife who has been going to the same therapist for 30 years is not a meme without a reason.
Using more practical approaches (systemic family therapy is another more practical approach for example) doesn't forbid thinking about the bigger scope (calling career choices into question is an all-time favorite in all therapy styles), but actually asking the patient to "do stuff" makes the therapy less pleasant, tends to rock the patient(s) out of complacency and in general doesn't devolve into this particular failure mode. As you mention Psychoanalytics isn't opposed to action, but it also doesn't require it, which is important. Some high-motivation low-introspection people really do only need someone to force them to introspect and re-consider their live choices and then will go on to make the needed radical choices themselves, but many people not only need some practical directions on "what to do now" on top, they also need a push to actually do it.
And there is also the other direction. A push can not only help you achieve something, it can also trigger the opposite reaction. You may even go as far as saying that good therapy needs a certain baseline of hostility, basically amounting something like this: "You claim you want X? Well then, here are simple steps on how to get X. Now go out and DO IT. If you don't, we can devise a new strategy next week or we will talk whether this is really what you want". This forces the patient to put some skin in the game, which in turn makes it easier to realize what you really want. It's easy to claim that you always wanted to become an author, but if someone manages to get you 1 extra free hour per day through re-organization and prioritizing, asks you to actually start and even gives you some practical hints, you may realize that you have been fooling yourself. Or you may become an author. Either way you're better off.
Furthermore, the incremental changes favoured by practical approaches tend to give patients more breathing room. For the example of soxial anxiety, having appropriate coping strategies will expand your capabilities and make you more functional. In general, CBT favors making the patient more functional first. You can still decide afterwards that you're introverted and want to minimize social contact, but you can't entirely avoid it and need to handle the situations you can't avoid. This then makes bigger changes more easy and less likely to fail completely. An appropriate CBT can be the difference between a programmer working in home office most days and a totally dysfunctional unemployed shut-in. I have much less confidence in Psychoanalytics here, since shut-ins usually are poster boys for "need clear directions and lots of pushing" to get them out of their comfort zone.
For your chronically late example, it is the same: If you're already struggling at your current work, preparing for a career switch is a lot harder. I can tell you that from experience. But if you first are helped so that you struggle less at your current work, you then have more time you can dedicate to prepare for the switch. If you are more functional, you will have more spare time, you will have an easier time prioritizing, and so on. You can then use that extra slack as you please. Note how your example basically assumes a functional & decently motivated person; Someone who can just switch jobs and do fine, someone who needs no practical step-by-step guides, no pushes nor nudges.
Again, to be clear, I'm not opposed to thinking about the bigger scope or calling fundamentals into question. A good therapist will always do that. But since most people come to therapy mildly to severely dysfunctional, it is best to first start making them more functional, and then they can make bigger changes. And even once you're not (as) dysfunctional anymore, you will still profit from viewing everything in practical incremental steps, no matter how radical your goal is. And traditional psychoanalytics/dynamics often massively fails on these two accounts in practice, either talking endlessly about things in the past you can't change anymore or proposing radical changes that are almost guaranteed to fail if you can't get your shit together first.
I'm a longtime mostly lurker and I'd also add that holocaust discussions are usually triggered by a small number of very insistent and highly active poster(s) for a while, and then often stop once those posters either get banned or have a meltdown and leave. There is a number of similar topics, like age of consent laws, where there is like a single super-prolific and abrasive guy that can't shut up about it and who will regularly try to start discussions on it until he is banned again, and then you have some silence for a few months again. The forum as a whole is certainly weirder then the population at large and hence fringe opinions are more common, but I don't think holocaust denial is anything close to a widely held belief here.
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