ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
Blogger, Christian convert, general strange one. https://shapesinthefog.substack.com/
User ID: 3709
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Fair points! Yes and these are the arguments I plan to investigate and take down in depth. I have looked into this topic at length and concluded all of these arguments are fallacious, or at least not worth the costs.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Those people also view your own ideology as an evil cult, and will oppose you on principle for wanting to enforce hetero norms.
Oh I'm well aware. To be quite frank I am mostly writing this to settle my own niggling doubts, and to have an article to refer someone to for the hundredth time someone asks me to explain why I'm anti-trans. I hope it convinces people, but that is not the main goal.
Frankly most of the people I've talked to in the twitter post-rat scene (or tpot) don't seem to have a coherent ideology explaining why they are pro-trans at all, besides "some people are born intersex" and "it's mean to not let them do whatever they want." Along with the classic sob stories followed by the implication that my views are going to make people commit suicide.
Sadly I do believe they're straw men, but hey what can you do. Most people don't think about things very deeply, news at 11.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Sure. I think my general approach is that if trans is some weird mental disorder that like .2% of the population get, whatever. I can see that happening, and it's probably not too harmful to let them cross dress.
Modern trans ideology is far, far, far away from that and is evil. Even if we let transgender people cross dress, it still needs to be weird. Normativity being enforced around the heterosexual family is crucial imo.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
This very strongly goes against the cultural relativism arguments, which a lot of left ideology is built on, imo.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Wonderful! Huh, didn't realize you were on Substack too, I'll have to follow. Ty for the links.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
I am only a few chapters in, to be fair! The beginning is very fun and engaging. Can't speak to the book as a whole.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Excellent! These are wonderful sources ty. Phew this is going to be... interesting.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's actually quite a fun fan fic. I wish Yudkowsky had stuck to writing fiction, he's quite talented in that realm!
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
I'm finally going to write an overview of the whole trans cult/ideology because I'm tired of otherwise seemingly intelligent and well meaning people arguing with me about it.
Could you all send me your best deep dives into the topic of transgenderism, both pro and con?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
You don't think UBI will be an uphill battle? These sorts of things are always battles my friend.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
For managers and chefs, sure. That's nowhere near the majority of workers. That's also a norm that could be changed with enough pressure from organized labor.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
We could be the labor movement, or I suppose employees. The way it worked in the past is basically the labor movement lobbied the government to reduce working hours.
You are in an extreme bubble if most people are looking for overtime. Or perhaps we could agitate for higher wages, organize into unions, etc. I'm just saying if AGI is actually going to massively increase productivity, labor should get a share of the pie instead of being turned into a permanently dependent underclass via UBI.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Yeah frankly I think a lot of this sort of behavior is downstream of the breakdown in a shared cultural narrative, or perhaps religion if you want to put it that way. You need some sort of overarching structure to help coordinate elites to a similar goal, even if just ostensibly. Doesn't matter if the elites really believe it, it creates strong incentives for them to act certain ways. (There's still abuse etc, but it's mitigated a lot in my view.)
Once that shared moral framework breaks down, you just get the most base and vulgar stuff like you're describing, where people are nakedly fighting for their own power.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Yes so you hire more people! This would help a lot with the whole AI taking our jobs thing. Sure people might pay a little less, but if everyone makes the shift at the same time this simply would not work.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
I strongly disagree here. You can still get plenty done in 4 days a week. In fact, much of white collar work is busywork and extending the time needed on a task to look productive.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
All hail Great Scott, the appointed mouthpiece of Sophia.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Plenty of people work weekends, but far, far less than a century or two ago.
You are in a humongous bubble if you think working on Saturday or Sunday is anywhere near normal. It's a very small amount of jobs that do this sort of thing. (Unless you mean working weekends but still 5 days a week.)
It's absolutely possible for us to shift the societally acceptable norm to 4 days a week instead of 5.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Thank you! I am surprised by how few people even on the Motte are able to understand this. I would think societal lock-in effects & coordination points would be well understood.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
Depends on what you mean by 'human level AI'. I believe they preclude machine consciousness, but I don't know it well enough to explain it. I'd recommend the book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss if you want an intro to classical theistic metaphysics.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
What is this actually supposed to do? If you want to work 4 days a week, 6 hours a day, you already can.
You actually cannot in most of the white collar world, it's extremely inflexible. Also, it's supposed to increase human flourishing and give us more time to spend on things we want to do! Ideally help people grow.
Imagine this attitude back when work was 7 days a week, 12 hour days. Work is a necessity, ideally we live as well or perhaps work on projects more aligned to our souls when we have more free time.
I do agree that there's always more work to do. I think our modern economy doesn't value the type of work left to be done very well, namely spiritual / emotional / community work.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
The pattern seems to play out time and time again - Scott's last post about China made me want to scream something. Where is the reason to think that AI is so militarily and economically significant at all? What if this is all nonsense? Isn't this all based on a vision of AI technology that has no justification in reality?
AI and techno-futurism in general are the dominant religion of our times. They aren't seen as a religion because the worshipers ignore metaphysics and fundamental axioms. So yes, it's based on a religious vision a lot of the time.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
Interesting given that the trades are the least impacted by AI. I suppose I'm thinking white collar work should be implementing some of this.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
Don't think this is true at all. We can always find uses for humans, even if it's just serving others. Big disagree.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
Would've been a great idea, but yes far too smart and forward thinking for the U.S. Government to actually implement... sigh.
This sounds lovely. Make sure there's an Orthodox church there and sign me up.
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