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
You should bother for people like me! I went from a standard progressive to far more conservative from reading rationalist forums/the Motte.
Then after a while, reading some of the more moderated takes on here, I came back from the far end of the conservative positions and am back closer in the middle. I no longer even support Trump, hah. There are people out there who have their minds changed, even if we aren't always the loudest.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Frankly I don't believe the unemployment rate actually reflects the labor pool in the U.S. A ton of people in the U.S. are not working, or are on disability or some other program that hides their labor.
Also, I disagree that working a farm is a worse job than being a cashier for instance at a gas station. It's demeaning work (I have done many low wage service jobs including gas stations), you are directly aiding people in deep sin (selling lotto ticket to degenerate gamblers and booze to alcoholics) and generally is just bad for your psyche, even from a purely psychological view.
On top of that, as others have pointed out I do believe in the self-correcting nature of markets, I find it ironic that you as an economist don't! If we cut the labor pool, the wages and benefits will rise for these jobs.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Yeah I have actually done one of these jobs at a plant nursery. It absolutely blows when nobody on your team speaks even the littlest bit of English.
I did pick up a lot of spanish as a result, but still it was not a very fun job.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Yeah no s***, if we really set our minds to it, we can move down the tech tree and make our country's economy more similar to Bangladesh. Why anyone would want to is beyond me.
How is promoting higher wages for manual labor and trying to keep those jobs going to actual American citizens "moving down the tech tree?" This seems like a huge jump to me.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Alas, I've fallen into the trap here.
You know the word scandal in the Greek refers to a part of a trap for animals. That's why the skandalon or stumbling block is referred to so much in the Bible.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Yeah the typical rationalist mind is allergic to this sort of thing. It's a shame.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Where is this from?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Ahh. As I said, I stopped reading ahaha. Yeah perhaps it is antagonistic.
I do have a lot of sympathy for child abuse, but as the person says you can't have infinite compassion. Infinite compassion for anything will ruin you.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Most of the claims of the mechanisms are likely not spot on I'll admit, but the 'psychological' effect is absolutely real. Make of that what you will.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Aesthetically, I can't summon much disgust for her. "Women are being seduced into prostitution by a female rationalist self-identified nerd and sex researcher" is not going to be a major social problem anytime soon. The "trad" stuff, that's the disease of the heart.
What do you mean by the "trad" stuff exactly?
Also sidenote, are you Christian? Just curious.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
We have good evidence to believe that free will is mostly BS at this point
I stopped reading at this point. Thinking that free will is a solved debate makes me not take any of your other arguments seriously.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
To try and summarize the matter, actual redemption always comes with a cost
Not true in the slightest. Redemption is about turning your heart towards God, and He lets the sun shine on the just and the unjust alike. He does not require payment, he's not a debtor that we owe. He is a healer.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Ahaha ok maybe it's too mysterious. It translates to "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy love."
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
What is the main argument?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
As someone on twitter said: (can't be bothered to go find it) "Aella is what first-principles thinking actually looks like". That's what is so great about her. If that lead her to heroic quantities of LSD, a high body count, and an unorthodox bathing schedule.. well, so be it. She has honest to god genuine curiosity
Eh, she is curious I agree. She has that particular blindness of rationalists though, where they ignore almost all of human history and throw out all religion, myths, and pre-modern society as full of complete idiots. I can't really respect a thinker who makes such a huge blunder personally. Though I used to be there myself.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Therapy didn't help you, you helped you. I know, that's an outlandish claim to make. I don't know your whole story. How could I be so presumptuous blah blah blah. But this is yet another part of therapy culture I find so contemptuous. For the success stories out there - like yours - I believe 99% of them are just that person improving their life.
Ahaha I appreciate it. I honestly can't give therapy too much credit - Jesus Christ saved my life more than anything. That being said, going to therapy and learning especially about somatic modalities (paying attention to what you feel in your body, your emotions etc) is a big part of what led me to Christ. So perhaps I can say He can work through these tools.
I actually agree with the emotional prostitution part. Ironically I wasn't able to get a ton out of therapy until I did a bunch of research on my own, learned to sort of discern who is actually wise and who is full of shit, and then pick from there. If you aren't able to do that discernment yeah, you're kind of screwed sadly.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Nah I mean she didn't provide much evidence afaik, she just said she searched her name and was looking through the reams of vitriol with nobody defending her and that's what hurt her the most.
Why are you surprised how negative the reaction is? She is a prostitute, and this is a (sadly) mostly conservative forum now.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
She says later on that:
I'm a meme, hating on me is cool and fueled by disgust response and sexism. You can gain points in your local tribe by saying I'm stinky....
etc.
Then she goes basically says later (can't find it now) that though she knows she's breaking taboos, she thought being kind and honest and data driven would be enough to break the stigma and have people treat her with respect, basically. And to be fair to her she does seem to be doing that stuff. (Idk about nice but I don't follow her that closely.)
So sounds like she sort of assumed she could be a prostitute and people would still like her if her other virtues were good enough. Sadly she has found out the hard way that this is not the case.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
This is all part of the rot and incipient counterproductive nature of "therapy culture." It invites negative feedback loop rumination on bad feelings, the opposite of personal agency, all while promising constant absolution from responsibility that one can presume and demand of others. It's a kind of inverted religion; a kind of satanism, if you will. A self-referential cult of the victim ego.
I agree with most of your arguments, but I have to jump in with #notalltherapy here. I have been helped quite a bit by therapeutic modalities, even though it took me years to find ones that worked with good practitioners.
Unfortunately, like with most fields, good therapists are few and far between. In general I'd estimate 90%+ of therapists out there provide negligible effects, or actively make their clients worse off. And indeed, much of the issues are the "cult of ego" stuff as you point out.
That being said, the truly good therapy that's out there can be life changing. Especially if it's focused on somatic practice and "emotional armoring" in the Reichan sense.
Very much agree on trauma not being an excuse to hurt others, though.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Yeah this is where a lot of my tension comes from. (As you can see from my flair I'm Christian.)
That being said, I also like Chesterton's quote about virtues gone mad:
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
Basically we can't be compassionate at the expense of truth and other virtues like chastity. There's a limit to how compassionate we can be while still being "good".
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
She promotes a lifestyle that is highly anti-natal, and she pushes it against a high-iq people population (rationalists) who should be having more children. These high-iq people almost always have a cognitive vulnerability of poor intuition regarding social consequences.
Yeah well said. I'm not a consequentialist, but you can make an extremely strong argument on those grounds that she is massively impacting the wealth of society via her lifestyle and what she promotes.
I do not like the idea that someone can push a horrific way of life and we have to accept this because they are “nice”. It doesn’t matter how nice you are if you’re telling people to eat lead paint chips. She is evil because the consequences of what she promotes is evil.
Yeah, reminds me of Chesterton's whole thing about the virtues gone wild:
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Awesome! Yeah you did a great job, I was impressed with the work even if I came off a bit condescending here hah.
Sounds interesting, but would like to point out that SSI and DI are different programs with different funding. SSI is administered by the Social Security Administration, but the funding comes from the treasury's General Fund rather than the OASDI trusts. SSI is intended as a supplemental (hence Supplemental Security Income) payment to disabled people who don't have enough credits to collect on DI.
Gotcha, yeah I could have been more explicit about this. I'm still surprised less people of working age got on disability, but seems the stats bear your argument out.
Dang I'm tired of everything coming down to population cohort sizes but seems like that's a major driver of... tons of stuff in the U.S. Wild.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Yes absolutely! It's not pure cynical nihilism, he pairs a lot of intelligence with someone who clearly cares about society and wants the best for us. I love the way you put this, he definitely has a strong belief in what he's writing about.
Have you read Sadly, Porn? Haven't been able to start given what I've heard myself ahaha.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Like what did she think her value was?
I mean yeah, I think perhaps the cruel part here is that she was showered with money, attention, fame, and general encouragement because her shctick lined up with progressives stated values. But when it comes to actually living out those values, most people seem to pull back.
Supply and demand, baby.
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