TitaniumButterfly
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User ID: 2854
TitaniumButterfly
1d ago
There are many, many ways to help others that don't require a tenth that much effort to get into. Not to mention the expense in terms of both time and money.
Someone who chooses to become a doctor does so only via willingness to expend blood, sweat, tears, and treasure, and lose a whole decade of their lives more or less before they can even begin. That takes some serious dedication to a very specific form of 'helping others'.
Someone with ten years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars to volunteer could probably make a much larger difference than just being another doctor.
TitaniumButterfly
1d ago
I'm responding to the numbers, above, that 16% of American physicians are not in the top 10%. I didn't do any math. (Well I guess I subtracted 84 from 100 but I'm reasonably sure I got that part right.)
To get into the top 10% you only need to make like $220k/year. Is that level of income worth putting your whole life on hold until your early 30s, not to mention the debt from all the education?
TitaniumButterfly
1d ago
Personally I'm a bit horrified at the thought of putting in all the time and effort to become a doctor and not being in the top 10% of incomes. What went wrong? Would anyone do that on purpose?
TitaniumButterfly
1d ago
The avocados I get at Costco are better now than they were a couple of years ago. At that time they were prone to being rancid inside before they were even soft enough to eat.
TitaniumButterfly
2d ago
Why is your problem capitalism in particular and not technology or market forces?
As usual when people complain about capitalism I get the sense that you're just unsatisfied with the basic structure of reality.
ETA I do appreciate your perspective and can relate to some degree.
TitaniumButterfly
2d ago
I can't even begin to remember all the leftists who walked away from this board (and its predecessors) while straightforwardly saying that they were doing so because they couldn't tolerate the icky opinions. Not the tone, not the poor quality of discourse, but the opinions. Some ended up on sneerclub where they complained again about the opinions and were warmed and comforted by others who assured them that some ideas are just not okay.
As I think that a lot of the ideas in question happen to be correct, I found this endlessly discouraging for several years, especially in cases where I'd genuinely liked the poster in question up until their minds snapped shut. Now I've just accepted that some people don't want to think about certain things, and that where actual uninhibited high-quality debate happens, leftists cannot persist.
TitaniumButterfly
2d ago
Personally I just find it irritating to not be able to use the word literally.
Actually, in the vein of master and slave in hardware, I'm amazed we're still allowed to call things e.g. 'flame-retardant'.
TitaniumButterfly
3d ago
It's climate change and capitalism.
I'm not generally a white knight for capitalism but I really don't think it's appropriate to blame here.
If people insisted upon better products, capitalism would generate and deliver them. And it does! It's never been easier to find amazing produce year-round, if you're willing to go the extra mile and pay a bit more.
The problem is that the average consumer is stupid and tasteless, and economies of scale mean that mass-market products will reflect the situation.
TitaniumButterfly
3d ago
And you didn't mention the avocados?
40s and I drink pretty irregularly.
I have a bad relationship with alcohol. During my divorce ten years ago I essentially disintegrated as a person and was often away on business, so slipped into what would be 'functional' alcoholism for anyone else. Real Anthony Bourdain hours, solemnly staring into glasses of chemical oblivion at hotel bars. I was drinking generally about a 750 ml bottle of liquor per day, and often a bit more. It was better than being sober. And to be honest I'm not sure how I'd have survived that period otherwise. It is, as they say, a solution before it's a problem.
But after 2-3 months of that I started to lose my mind. It would be easiest to describe the experience as very early, very rapid-onset dementia. I'd miss every exit; forget to turn off my engine when pumping gas; as often as not couldn't remember why I'd walked into the room; couldn't read a paragraph of text and hold the ideas together in my head long enough to make sense of them. Trying to research what was happening to me while in that condition was a terrible experience. I can only think about it now without residual terror because it worked out okay.
Long story short I managed to find a doctor online who very quickly put his finger on the problem. I was astonished to learn about 'wet brain'. My whole life I'd been warned about how alcohol can damage the liver; never once had anyone mentioned that it can also damage the brain. "Stop drinking alcohol and eat lots of red meat," he told me.
By the grace of God I did, and it was no problem at all. I can be compulsive about other things but for whatever reason alcohol does not hook me beyond the next sunrise. I simply stopped drinking for several months, and ate lots of red meat, and recovered fully within about a year. Since then I've learned that I'm extremely lucky; that almost no one who drinks that much for that long is capable of maintaining control.
These days I don't drink often. Partly this is because alcohol is the only drug I've ever regretted doing, and mainly in terms of my behavior and the things I say when drunk. I've learned to associate it with regret. Also because I've learned that while I can have one drink without any problem, it does make me want a second. Turning down the second isn't hard for me, but if I have two I'll have ten.
Wine with dinner sometimes, if I know I'll be metering it out across a multi-hour conversation with lots of food in-between. A cold beer while grilling, of course, though I'm careful to not buy more than that at a time, so as to avoid compulsive additional beers. (By the way, a glass of ice-cold whole milk is much, much closer to capturing the satisfaction of a cold beer than you might believe, and is also better in its own ways.)
I will have a drink or two with friends sometimes, but always with an eye to whether the situation looks liable to spiral into more.
But overall I'm just happier without any. I don't like the way it makes my body feel, and while it granted immense euphoria in my youth I don't get any of that any more. It just makes me dumb and vulgar and pushes me deep into 'drunken racist uncle' territory at family gatherings. Better to say no thanks. Finally, in recent years it's become apparent to me that if I have a drink one day my general anxiety level tends to be higher for several days after.
At this point I'd be happy to cut myself off entirely, except that can be awkward socially and also it would just seem... sad, to me, to have to go that far, and miss out on what can be a lovely dimension of life. I love good wine, and good scotch, and sometimes a ridiculous neon blue cocktail on the beach.
And I can have those and get along. Most of the time.
TitaniumButterfly
5d ago
Similarly, even though they're no longer needed as draft animals, horses are doing just fine.
In 1900 there were about 21 million of them in the US, whereas now that mechanization has made them much cheaper to feed there are, let me see... oh, no. Oh, no no no.
TitaniumButterfly
6d ago
After thinking about this a while I have two conclusions:
- You're arguing with someone else
- I might look into getting trepanned
TitaniumButterfly
6d ago
Wanted to finally comment, mostly to say that I enjoy your posts and general project and even remember to pray for you sometimes. <3
In terms of intellectual certitude, reality is simply not structured to allow for it. You will never know until it's too late as it were.
But the argument for classical theism is entirely persuasive to me, and the guy who makes it best, David Bentley Hart, is an Orthodox Christian. He's one of the smartest, best-read, and most integrous people I can practically imagine and in his (half-remembered) words he can't at this point seriously conceive of the Logos except as Christ.
My point is that the historical avenue is effectively a dead end. Christ reveals Himself in the process of Being. Whoever told you that you need to be able to prove your beliefs was a liar.
If you want to dig deeper in this vein I'll recommend The Experience of God by DBH. It's not about Christianity per se but once you understand the reality of classical theism it's a natural additional step to take.
Also I assume you're already listening to Lord of Spirits but will dutifully badger you into doing so if not.
Christ is risen!
TitaniumButterfly
6d ago
Thanks and nice job! You just saved me from erroneously reifying my priors here. Appreciate it.
I'm inclined to think that anyone so susceptible to the media environment as to be taken in by demoralization tactics would not improve the gene pool by breeding.
Some predators which have evolved to eat humans, e.g. bacterial infections, must be fought off using genetic technology like the body's immune system. Other predators evolved to eat humans, e.g. Satan, must be fought off using memetic technology like Christianity.
Society decided that having a memetic immune system was low-status and threw the whole thing away. Now, pregnant men, sterile women, hopeless children.
Anyway, holding genes faulty for failing to respond to novel memetic predators seems unwarranted to me, especially when those genes evolved in an environment where such memetic immunity was a given.
TitaniumButterfly
6d ago
I'm referring to institutions continuing to try to indoctrinate the population with failed leftist ideology even as the waters close over their heads.
TitaniumButterfly
6d ago
Why think in terms of single alleles instead of traits? Complex traits get lost immediately upon mixing with populations that don't have them fixed. The odds of recombination get lower and lower the more complex they are.
TitaniumButterfly
7d ago
The genetic legacy which will be squandered by these women not reproducing is a tragedy of historical proportions, but I think we're less than a generation away from the corrective counterswing.
Main problem being institutional capture and the unbelievable amount of human damage which will be committed in the name of pride, i.e. futile resistance.
TitaniumButterfly
9d ago
This is fairly common in the US in parishes with a background of immigrants who just wanted to fit in to mainstream culture several decades ago.
Agreed that it's dumb though. How can you even do prostrations?
Sometimes you'll see organs, even, in churches that were bought from other denominations.
And every service, and every event, and every informal gathering...
My parish has a custom of celebrating the Ascension every year by going up to the top of our local ersatz Mount Tabor. The first time I participated, I paid attention when the priest went to great lengths to make sure we all knew exactly where to park and what to do, and how long various routes would take, such that we could all be there on time and not miss the service. I was a single father at the time and did my best, but was sweating because I could tell I was gonna be about 20 minutes late.
When I got there, no one else was around. Had I missed it entirely?
The first other parishioner arrived about an hour after that. They trickled in over time, and we did the service about two hours after we'd all agreed we would. No one seemed the slightest bit surprised by this.
Punctuality is about the only thing I miss about Protestantism.
...
My priest told me not long ago that he has such different experiences counseling (ethnic) Americans and Greeks. The Americans, he says, are perpetually-terrified about their own salvation, but generally seem to rock it in life. The Greeks have no concerns about salvation, but he has to work extra hard to get them to do things like hold down gainful employment or make smart decisions about the future. Since I don't know what to say about that I guess I'm presenting it without comment.
TitaniumButterfly
10d ago
I have seen too many of my own family members, and friends, die surrounded essentially by foreign medical workers who only notionally speak their language, can't imagine their values, and don't seem to care about them as human beings at all.
And I suppose this is only going to get worse by the time it's my turn. Not clear whether robo-nurses might be an improvement.
I'd like my end of life care-givers to be young, earnest, hopeful members of my own ethnicity.
...But then I see the kind of things white nurses post on TikTok and...
Hmm. Seems like I have some kind of block when it comes to thinking past that point.
For this explanation to work would require the following:
- Said headgear would have to be constrictive enough to cause major permanent deformation
- All these cultures independently happened to put such headgear on their newborns
- For no apparent reason they'd all have to independently decide that it also increases intelligence
Basically I'm not buying that.
A practice being widespread doesn't by itself mean anything. Bloodletting was practiced on every inhabited continent thanks to its alleged curative properties. However, I think we can all agree that unless you have one of a fairly small set of diseases it's unlikely to make you feel better and the ancients just didn't know what the fuck they were doing. Circumcision is another bizarrely universal practice, though the reasons for it appear to be lost to history.
That's true, but
- Bloodletting is indeed helpful at times, which is why we still practice it
- I actually don't think bloodletting or circumcision were anywhere near as prevalent across as many isolated cultures, though I'm less sure about this
- My point was that no other comparable practice was consistently supposed to specifically increase the recipient's intelligence. No one's claiming that about circumcision, tattoos, or tooth-filing; or if that did happen it was an isolated fluke instead of consistent.
- It's natural for moderns to suppose that the ancients would obviously have associated bigger brains with higher intelligence, but in fact many (most?) of them hadn't made that connection at all outside of ACD specifically. C.f. some cultures supposing that consciousness and wisdom are located in the liver, which can be eaten to absorb it.
If ACD is correlated with bigger skulls solely because elites naturally have big skulls, that's not great for the "ACD increases skull size" theory unless you're going to smuggle in Lamarckian inheritance. It should decrease, not increase, your belief that ACD increases skull size.
Yes, I'm aware. It's almost my point! Which is that it's weird for the mainstream consensus to be that there is no correlation. If anything I'd expect them to lean harder into it as evidence against ACD's effectiveness. I really do think the motivation here is just to keep distance from icky associations with things like phrenology, etc. Certain ideas are simply radioactive to academics and this has all the hallmarks of being one.
Part of the reason I think so, as I said before, is that they're apt to lead with "ACD doesn't even increase cranial capacity" which is a very strong statement. When it's pointed out that it clearly does at least some of the time their backpedaling becomes less convincing the more one presses into it.
TitaniumButterfly
16d ago
Depends upon how high they're falling from, and in what concentration.
Yeah the summary is kinda nice but I came here for a review. Which, upon double-checking the title of the post, is my fault.
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