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
1mo ago
Eh I'm way too invested now. But yeah that's actually kind of sad that it works that way. :(
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Ok Baldur's Gate three is pretty great. A little too much sex / dark humor for my taste, but enjoyable nonetheless! I'm playing as Gale and loving it. Wish I could have had a druid or bard as a character though, would've been very fun as I love those classes.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Don't you have a one income household? What if your wife handled the benefits? I feel like that is the standard practice.
Anyway, sorry to hear man. I know Germany and the EU generally have it tough economically.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
False. You are making a clear logical error. Most of the posts aren’t saying “lower standards.” Indeed most don’t address what the standard ought to be. Instead, they are saying the current standard is being applied unevenly.
Strongly agree. I think most here would be heavily in favor of nuking 90% of the university system and enforcing extremely high standards in what remains.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Again I think what you aren't understanding is that giving students who turn in a paper a 0 is simply not done in modern academia. Grade inflation is absolutely out of control.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Very much cosign all of what you're saying here. The breakdown of societal trust and good will towards one another is another way to say that we are spiritually sick, to my mind.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Spirit? Meaning? These have been dead longer than I've been alive. They're not what's causing bad vibes.
X to doubt. They have been dead for the intellectual class for a long time, the last few decades is when the same nihilistic worldview has spread to the masses.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Your grandfather had to be the best of his city, your father the best of the state and you, you have to be the best in the world.
Yeah I think this is a huge part of it, having to compete with people from all over the world. He does talk about the instability of things at some point, but quickly brushes over it. That your grandfather could have a good life working 30 years at one company, now people have to hop from job to job to get a similar level of wealth.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
The economy is basically the stand-in for God for many people in modern consumerist America. I'm saying that they don't know what they're talking about, and that they would be happy with even less material wealth if they were spiritually sound.
If you read the article, Scott tears all the economic arguments to pieces. Even housing is not really THAT expensive, and you can own a house on less than $100k combined income in a decent area if you don't blow your money and spend wisely. I don't buy the economic arguments at all.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Scott Alexander just released another "Much More than You Wanted to Know" article, this time on the Vibecession.
He goes through all of the traditional arguments in his standard exhaustive way: is it housing? no. is it wealth inequality? no. is it wages down? no. is it overall GDP down? maybe, but no.
Ultimately he makes the case that the economy is doing well, and the younger cohort is doing great. Many economic indicators do seem to show that in real terms, they are doing better than ever! Reading this article I was excited to see that he might get to what I consider the real problem, but alas, he concludes in a very lukewarm way with:
Because of decreasing application friction, any given opportunity requires more effort to achieve than in earlier generations. Although this can’t lower the average society-wide success level (because there are still the same set of people competing for the same opportunities, so by definition average success will be the same), it can inflict deadweight loss on contenders and a subjective sense of underachievement.
Because of concentration of jobs in high-priced metro areas, effective cost-of-living for people pursuing these jobs has increased even though real cost-of-living (ie for a given good in a given location) hasn’t. This effect is multiplied since it’s concentrated among exactly the sorts of elites most likely to set the tone of the national conversation (eg journalists).
Homeownership has become substantially more expensive since the pandemic (although the increase in rents is much less). This on its own can’t justify the entire vibecession, because most vibecessioneers are renters, and the house price change is relatively recent. But it may discourage people for whom homeownership was a big part of the American dream.
But even if these three factors are really making things worse, so what? Have previous generations never had three factors making things worse? Is our focus on the few things getting worse, instead of all the other things getting better or staying the same, itself downstream of negative media vibes?
I find this hard to believe, but am unable to find the smoking gun that definitively rules it out. I hope this post will serve as a starting point for further investigation: now that we’re all on the same page about which purported explanations don’t work, we can more fruitfully investigate alternatives.
I hope that eventually Scott comes around to the idea that economic indicators are a proxy for community, emotional and spiritual health! Ultimately the average person doesn't really care much about the economy or their wealth, instead they care about how easy their life is. How pleasant their interactions are. What the emotional tone is of the people they interact with the most.
Scott does briefly get into this talking about the 'negative media vibes,' but for some reason he doesn't dig in there more?
My take is that our culture and religious framework have been breaking down at an increasing speed for the last couple centuries, and the last few decades we have accelerated into freefall. It's complete chaos out there, the Meaning Crisis meaning that young people have zero clue what to do with their lives, no consistent role models to follow, and as we discussed in a post below, they basically are told that they're doing great even if by objective standards they are fucking things up terribly.
The younger cohort has lost connection to any greater framework of values that teaches them how to actually live in a positive and healthy way. Instead, they are awash in technological substitutes for intimacy, cheap hedonistic advertising, and an increasing propensity to fall back to vicious, tribal infighting based on characteristics like race, gender (or lack thereof), or economic status.
Overall the vibes are bleak not because of any material wealth issues, but because the spirit of the West is deeply, deeply sick.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Yes! I just got two super bright lights and wow they are effective. The energy level and focus is immediately obvious.
This is a good article on it: https://meaningness.com/sad-light-led-lux
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Congrats bud, that's awesome. And you should definitely buy new jeans.
Also if you're open to help on the sales/marketing front, I might be interested if I like your startup idea. Shoot me a DM if you want.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Wear socks and put the temperature quite low! You could also experiment with weighted blankets, I've heard good things.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
This sounds lovely. Make sure there's an Orthodox church there and sign me up.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo ago
Excellent! These are wonderful sources ty. Phew this is going to be... interesting.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo ago
You don't think UBI will be an uphill battle? These sorts of things are always battles my friend.
Yeah had no idea what I was getting into sadly, but really don't want to spend another 20 hours just getting back to where I am now. Sigh.
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