Tacherus
9mo ago
Interestingly I’ve heard the same thing from the other direction, that honest portrayals, the best portrayals, are inherently anti-war.
Tacherus
9mo ago
When in doubt, listen to the view of the Japanese person, who will be getting all the subtleties. That said, I am of the belief that one person can't give the one right answer any more than any random American can tell you how to interpret a given social situation at the shopping mall in Columbus, Indiana.
Agreed.
Tacherus
9mo ago
Oh, sure. Sorry wasn't trying to be opaque.
The Ministry of Love is of course the organization that tortures and re-educates wayward citizens. It seemed to me the first time I read it like a deliberately absurd exaggeration to name something the literal opposite of what it is, but "reasoning from names" seems like a common strategy.
See, e.g., "antifa just means anti fascism -- why would you oppose that?" or "why would you oppose 'inclusion' initiatives, you worthless bigot?" or "a disinformation governance board makes you nervous? what, you want incorrect information to spread unchecked?"
It's a common trope that to name something is to wield power over it, for instance Adam names creatures in Genesis, demons keep their true names secret in much of fantasy, and there are plenty of folklore beliefs about the power of a true name.
The inverse also seems true to me. If you can't properly name a thing then you can't control it. Giving something reprehensible a benign-sounding name seems to really short-circuit something in our brains. It becomes difficult to even reason about it properly I think.
Orwell had a deep understanding of how language can manipulate people and I shouldn't have doubted him.
Tacherus
9mo ago
This is the death spiral though isn’t it? Responding to norm violation by violating more norms just leaves us with weaker norms overall. It’s one-step-ahead thinking.
Tacherus
9mo ago
I thought “Ministry of Love” was over the top long ago as well. I too owe him an apology.
Tacherus
9mo ago
For what it’s worth, I have heard of Ft Bragg before and this thread is the first I’ve ever heard of a Ft Liberty, let alone that it’s a renaming of a prior base.
I can’t speak to the writer’s intentions but it’s worth considering that using an older, more widely known term could be just about avoiding confusion.
Tacherus
9mo ago
This was interesting to read. I’m learning Japanese right now and recently have been practicing kenjougo and sonkeigo (forms for extra politeness).
One of the exercises was an extended dialogue of an employee and his boss talking and I had to convert the normal forms to the honorific ones.
It really surprised me when I was done how much of an asshole the boss seemed to me. My tutor had to repeatedly reassure me that he’s not being an asshole; its ok because he’s the boss.
I accepted it more or less but now what you’ve said has made me reconsider a bit if maybe there’s something to it.
Tacherus
9mo ago
Thanks for the contribution. I think you hit on something important, which is the rationalization aspect of it.
It does seem like it comes back to using concepts of evil vs evil influence to justify what I already want to think.
What’s striking to me is even in your Harry Potter example it seems like we could make it go any direction we want. Maybe we want to redeem Voldemort because of absolutely-not-sex-related reasons.
Wouldn’t I be on equally firm ground (which is to say, not that firm) saying “yeah the little scamp got carried away but it was the bad influences! And now he’s terrified of these Death Eaters who know where his horcruxes are and are Evil!”
As I type this I think it’s basically scapegoating. That’s all it is. There’s something bad I need to account for so I pin it on someone I don’t like in order to absolve someone I do.
Tacherus
9mo ago
I can confirm both being asked by women (at work!) and being shocked because I thought it was low status.
My theory is that it’s not so much a “god-shaped hole” as an “identity-shaped hole.”
The other day, I forget where, I saw an ad to find out my “work personality type.” Astrology, Myers-Briggs, various personality quizzes do a couple things I think
- they let you out yourself and others in a box
- they seemingly outsource introspection—why “know thyself” when you can read it in a book?
- they give you a narrative for yourself
It’s not completely unrelated to god I think, but more about missing meaning, purpose, and something to tell you who you are.
Tacherus
9mo ago
To me what was striking was not the counter examples or the rightful heir trope, it was the explicit invoking of varying degrees of mind control to account for the baseline behavior.
Maybe I’m just reading overly into it but it felt conspicuous not that there was a random mindflayer, but that the reason he was good seemed to be he’d broken free of mind control, implying others might be too.
While I agree that there’s some justification in each case, if you couple that with the recent push to for instance remove alignment associations in DnD, it seems to me a pattern starts to emerge.
Tacherus
9mo ago
For sure. I get paid mostly in shares of stock and it blows my mind that my colleagues will keep theirs instead of selling and diversifying.
Tacherus
9mo ago
That’s a bit of a bummer to hear. My wife and I were thinking about buying guns like 2 months before Covid hit. My main concern now is the time commitment to stay fresh on maintenance, training and skill.
When you say your friends “cannot” do the tactical courses, what do you mean?
Tacherus
9mo ago
Sure but where does the difference in politics come from? Why would Trump appeal less to a union boss than a union worker and vice versa with Harris?
Tacherus
10mo ago
That’s what I thought at first but it seems like they’ve got the same background as the members. How do you account for the split between leadership and members?
Tacherus
10mo ago
Lying about “prospects” seems pretty hard to prove because they’re predictions. And founders definitely tend to be a little crazy.
Tacherus
10mo ago
Wouldn’t the same be true of a worker’s coop? This seems more like an example of markets providing the right incentives than capitalism. Many group the two together; not trying to nitpick, it’s fine if you want to group them together, just want to make sure I’m clear.
Tacherus
10mo ago
I don't follow the question really as I don’t see bureaucracy or democracy as the same type of thing as capitalism.
All I’m saying is whatever its virtues I don’t see how capitalism somehow leads to more decision makers having skin in the game. Would you be willing to flesh out an argument?
Tacherus
10mo ago
What is your evidence of the general rule?
To make sure I understand, you’re saying “in general, capitalism leads to decisions made by people with skin in the game,” right? Would you be willing to flesh out an argument a little more? I just don’t see why that’s true.
Tacherus
10mo ago
The beauty of capitalism is that it usually (though not always) aligns incentives in a positive way because the people making decisions have skin in the game.
Doesn’t the whole concept of externalized costs undermine this claim?
I’m don’t think it’s a specific failing of capitalism but the insulation of decision-makers in business from consequences seems alive and well to me.
Tacherus
10mo ago
Appreciate the suggestions. I’m not sure what it was but today I feel fine. I’ve gotten pains before at the top of my tibia near my knee but that’s been ok. This was weird in that it was soreness lower down by my ankle. I ran 4 miles last night though and today it’s perfectly fine.
Tacherus
10mo ago
My 10k training is getting pretty tough, and I might need to skip a run or two from some lower shin pain. I think I’m improving but still have a ways to go to get my pace to 9-minute miles for the race.
Japanese is a blast but very challenging as well. I’m wrapping some of the major grammar points for my proficiency test in December. The main focus now is “elevating others” and “lowering yourself” correctly.
What’s fascinating to me about this is to do it correctly you have to know who the subject is. And since subjects are often implied by context in Japanese, you have to be correctly tracking quite a bit more than simpler “change I ate an apple to I didn’t eat an apple.”
I’m still playing piano but have decided between the race and the test I have to dial music theory back a bit until December. Still enjoying playing songs though.
I listened to an interview with I think a psychologist a few years back who argued what we diagnose as PTSD in soldiers is often really the loss of the close relationships and the intense bonds that develop. The feeling of having someone’s life in your hands and willingly putting yours in theirs.
Returning to the world involves a grieving process, he argued.
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