TracingWoodgrains
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User ID: 103
TracingWoodgrains
3mo ago
“I don't see how that is shown by the email in question.”
“If you were thinking you were the only one, and if that was crucial to what you felt about our relationship, I’m sorry, that isn’t true.”
That is: he lied by omission by not mentioning multiple simultaneous affairs. I don’t find your “emotional cheating” reading plausible; in context, it seems strained to read it in any way other than “actively pursuing the same sort of relationship he has with her, as the opportunity arises based on distance.”
TracingWoodgrains
3mo ago
Oh, I see a lot of open questions and a lot of room for my judgment to shift in a number of directions—but few beyond complete falsehood that are highly exculpatory for Singer. Your hypothetical is not impossible but even in a scenario like that the mixing of career benefits and an affair is morally fraught.
TracingWoodgrains
4mo ago
There are absolutely competent people within it, inasmuch as there are people within it at all. The issue I'm pointing to is one of raw numbers, not one of competence.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
The lads over at rdrama made a spin-off site for the politicalcompassmeme dudes, but nobody used it so they gave it to... I forget. Some other weird little online community. You can check the wreckage and/or new construction out at https://pcmemes.net/
TracingWoodgrains
3mo ago
Sure. Of the things I listed, I think lying to your affair partner is rather less significant than most other parts of the story—I just wanted to establish that it was one of the points demonstrated by the email.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
there isn't really a culture war around them.
It's actually teetering on the verge of being a serious frontier on the culture war. After one or two furries made some noise about joining a trans counterprotest to Scotland radfems, culture war sites started going after uninvolved but gross furries in the vicinity. Graham Linehan is in on the fun, as are other commentators in a similar milieu. Fox News has taken note of a Boston College professor who teaches a furry-focused course.
Will it erupt into something more? Eh, I'm not counting on it, but we'll see. It definitely shows signs of real potential as a culture war front, though.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Fair enough! I’ve been out of the dating market since pre-COVID, and it’s possible/likely a lot has changed since then.
TracingWoodgrains
3mo ago
I think the two are inherently connected in important ways—that a world where people share more of Singer’s ideals is one where they share more of his behavior as well. For an ethicist, their life is and must be their message. We all know about the sexual misadventures of Mohammed and Joseph Smith. Secular ethicists, too, must be judged by more than simply their abstract ideas.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
But they really just seem to think that getting a journalist (or person who thinks they are a journalist) to clown themselves is its own reward.
This is about the sum of it, yeah. It is!
Not one worth the cost, mind. But it really was a lot of fun—definitely captured the 'heist' feeling in a way I'd never experienced. I got wholly caught up in the moment, for better or (ultimately, mostly) for worse.
TracingWoodgrains
3mo ago
In what sense am I not being skeptical enough? My strongest conclusion by far is based on the email from Singer she entered into evidence and the evidence of their collaboration during the time frame of the alleged affair. Did you read the email? Unless it is inauthentic, it makes it hard for me to see a world where they were not having an affair, he did not initially lie to her in at least one way about it, or he was not having at least one other affair at approximately the same time.
It’s worth being skeptical of her claims, and I am, visibly so and stated every time I post about it. I agree that the “made advances on every female coauthor” claim in particular strains credulity. But there is enough that does not rely solely on her word to make it noteworthy and tough for me to dismiss in full.
TracingWoodgrains
3mo ago
Ah—I have no idea whether he explicitly said such a thing and would be quite startled if he did. From my angle, the fact of an affair and concurrent/subsequent collaborative work are already sufficient to establish a degree of fairly serious misconduct, where the spectres of professional reward and punishment inevitably loom given the power dynamics in play.
TracingWoodgrains
4mo ago
The best advice I can give for Twitter is basically “follow eigenrobot and work outward from there.” tszzl (roon) and growing_daniel are also good “hub accounts” for the tech side of things. If you prefer to start with motte-adjacency, go with ymeskhout, AnechoicMedia_, sonyasupposedly, CremieuxRecueil, and Kulak.
There are a lot more accounts I could mention (I follow around 900 people) but the clear entry point to Twitter for people from here is the ACX-adjacent section (TPOT), which maintains a high standard of amiability/sanity norms while talking about much the same stuff as here.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Well, of course everybody wants that.
I feel like you're reading my comment as saying "I, uniquely, want a values-driven society, and cruel people like you prevent that."
I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the rubber meets the road with values differences at some points, and that's where the culture war becomes most complex and most serious. It goes without saying that I believe my values are correct. They are, after all, my values. Others disagree with them, and the truce of liberalism is the most stable way I've seen to deal with those clashes up to this point, but the culture war stops being an abstract chat when your decisions cross someone else's line in the sand or vice versa. I condemn or criticize some choices. Some condemn or criticize my own. I have strong feelings about who is right and who is wrong in most culture war conflicts, but the stakes are high for everybody. At some point, conflicts or no, people decide what sort of life they want to live and find allies where they can. The value I have chosen to make my own stand on here is that bringing people into the world, becoming a parent, and working to raise children well is a good that should be pursued even as circumstances fall short of the most ideal.
The resentment you describe is understandable but a bit peculiar. There was no slippery slope from gay marriage to surrogacy. Gestational surrogacy has been legal in (most of) the United States since long before gay marriage was allowed. There was no carve-out in the push for legal marriage saying "we want to have all the legal rights straight married couples do, except for the option to pursue already legal surrogacy options". Marriage and surrogacy aren't even directly connected, except for questions like who the parents listed on birth certificates are: single men can pursue surrogacy, just like single women can find sperm donors.
Not to lean too much into the villain role in your story, but... what did you think was going to happen? Did you think all gay men who wanted to get married simply saw marriage in the shallower modern "if two people love each other very much..." light and not as the best option for stable, happy family formation and child-rearing? Did you see the collection of legal rights attached to marriage, routes to adoption and surrogacy that straight couples were already using, and assume gay people were simply uninterested; were you treating the idea as primarily symbolic rather than a specific legal change that would open up specific doors for people?
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Okay, Hlynka, please tell us explicitly in what sense Steve Sailer believes in Hegelian oppressor/oppressed dynamics.
He cannot and he will not; this is less charitable than I typically am, but from his treatises on this topic I get the sense that he hopes by force of repetition alone to cement a tendentious and sweeping thesis of why everyone who disagrees with him is aligned, no matter the level and incontrovertibility of evidence provided to the contrary. You are not wrong to correct him, but you will get nowhere in doing so.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Disagree on magic words. The magic words are “Anyway, you seem chill. Want to grab a coffee?” or something very similar, within the first three or four texts. No point beating around the bush until a text conversation dies, and I think a lot of people are looking for the few magical connections via text rather than treating it as the minimal filter it should be. Just provide a safe, low-commitment date option and most people who responded to your first couple of messages will shrug and go with it.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
For what it’s worth, I expect you and I can or could still have plenty of good conversations—but when people tell me they don’t want to share a society with me, I take seriously the need to build alternate spaces alongside those who do.
TracingWoodgrains
9mo ago
My impression is that there's little reason to contain culture war in specific. Other similar spaces I participate in (eg /r/blockedandreported) do just fine with a discussion thread for most topics and independent posts for particularly effortful or relevant commentary. I think it would make sense to preserve the culture war thread as it stands while allowing effortful posts touching on culture war topics to stand independently if the author wants to post them at the top level.
TracingWoodgrains
9mo ago
It's the same set of 4 charts I embed towards the top of my article, showing the relative rankings of students of different races on academic, extracurricular, personal, and overall axes.
TracingWoodgrains
10mo ago
while it is true that speakers of tonal languages are substantially more likely to exhibit AP, even among musically trained children it's not really an "almost everyone" thing
I do think it’s worth emphasizing the difference between “musically trained children” and “children trained in absolute pitch.” It’s a specific skill related to musicality but neither fully contained within it nor necessary for it; knowing that children receive musical training says relatively little about their specific pitch training.
It’s possible that I’m stating it too strongly! It’s an understudied, underutilized training process, since people have broadly treated it as a mysterious divine gift rather than a specific, trained skill. I think the most precise statement would be “far more people than generally acknowledged can develop absolute pitch during early childhood with relatively low effort.” But mostly I just think people should move from completely ignoring it to studying it enough that we know how prevalent it can be.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Thanks for the thoughtful response and for your willingness to engage! I know it can be tricky to speak across the divide of belief, and I appreciate your openness. I'm not aiming to be rhetorically deceptive in any sense, though I'll certainly cop to choosing my words with an eye towards persuasive effect.
Firstly, because I just argued that it took place over the course of decades, and here you imply that I claimed it was a sudden discovery.
To clarify, with the "suddenly" I was referring primarily to the 1954 committee. I broadly reject the notion that they re-examined the scriptures and concluded there was no scriptural basis after having defended it on a scriptural and doctrinal basis for years before that point. From my angle, it's more accurate to conceive of their conclusion not as "we learned there was no scriptural basis" but as "we would like to move away from our prior emphasis on the scriptural basis for this ban". I do think their opinions gradually changed; we agree on that point. I do not agree (and, to be clear, do not assert you believe) that any new doctrinal information emerged between 1947 and 1979 that would have given them doctrinal cause to reassess; rather, I think their social conditions changed such as to provide strong cultural motive to reassess, and they altered the doctrine as a result.
I also wouldn't present any of this as simple rhetorical strategy. I don't take a particularly cynical view of their beliefs; I think most or all who reach the core leadership of Mormonism are true believers. I think leadership most likely genuinely changed their minds over time, but the proximate cause for that change was not divine guidance that happened to coincide with major social upheavals, but the upheavals themselves, bringing with them increased salience of those issues and sociocultural pressure.
I do take your point in terms of addressing differences between Smith's and Young's practices of ordination. I won't quibble about that difference: while there is a degree of ambiguity in Smith's views and he made enough claims about racial inequality for Young and others to build on, his actions absolutely made the mid-20th-century doctrinal shift simpler. That's a clear difference between the doctrinal shift on interracial marriage and ordinances for black members and a theoretical shift for gay members. My claim is both that they adapted doctrine to stick with the times in response to social and cultural pressure, and that Smith's actions made that change easier to enact.
I think "Young made a mistake" is the most comfortable answer for modern LDS members, but would argue that it mostly falls apart once the record is clear that it was seen as unambiguous and lasting doctrine, not as temporary policy: claims like Woodruff's "the prophet will never lead the church astray" are compatible with many errors, but I do not believe they can comfortably be made compatible with virtually every leader in the church for more than a century being in apostasy on questions of racial equality, marriage, and salvation. When someone's framework contains the belief that virtually every leader in the church was in apostasy on those questions for more than a century, I don't find "...and they continue to be in apostasy on <pet issue here>" to be a serious stretch. The doctrine of continuing revelation and "he will yet reveal many great and important truths" provides serious leeway for ambitious/creative theologians. The language against interracial marriage during that time was every bit as clear as language against gay relationships is today.
Will the church ever come out and say that homosexual behavior is not a sin? I think not, and I'd be willing to bet on it, but I don't imagine you'd be willing to bet on a statement like that resolving within our lifetimes.
If reasonable terms could be arranged, I would take a bet at around 25% odds that the institutional LDS church will come out and say that homosexual behavior within the bounds of committed monogamous partnerships is not a sin within our lifetimes, whether via an overt institutional shift or via a schism. I think it's more likely than not that the shift does not occur, but that 1% is much too low.
I respect your preference for scripture/doctrine over beliefs over time, but I believe both are important to understanding religious evolution and the bounds of what is possible. As far as scriptural/doctrinal support goes, I think the wide range of beliefs among Christian denominations serves as a good sanity check for just what people can be convinced has serious scriptural support. Joseph Smith, so far as I am aware, never said a word about homosexuality in the works of scripture he dictated, his sermons, or otherwise. That is: setting aside the words of recent prophets (which can be done! As the Lowry Nelson letter indicates, unanimous written consent of the first presidency at any given time is not sufficient to determine doctrine), the LDS church relies strictly on the Bible for its doctrine on homosexuality.
While Paul's statements on the matter are unambiguous, the church has been shifting temple ordinances and other words/actions away from similarly unambiguous statements of his (eg women covering their heads) in accordance with modern social instincts. To go further back... well, let me quote a Catholic writer (from what is probably the most honest, perceptive Catholic argument for a shift on doctrine around homosexuality I know of):
During the 1850s, arguments raged over the morality of slave-holding, and the exegesis of Scripture played a key role in those debates. The exegetical battles were one-sided: all abolitionists could point to was Galatians 3:28 and the Letter of Philemon, while slave owners had the rest of the Old and New Testaments, which gave every indication that slaveholding was a legitimate, indeed God-ordained social arrangement, one to which neither Moses nor Jesus nor Paul raised a fundamental objection. So how is it that now, in the early twenty-first century, the authority of the scriptural texts on slavery and the arguments made on their basis appear to all of us, without exception, as completely beside the point and deeply wrong?
The answer is that over time the human experience of slavery and its horror came home to the popular conscience. [...] once that experience of their full humanity and the evil of their bondage reached a stage of critical consciousness, this nation could neither turn back to the practice of slavery nor ever read the Bible in the same way again.
None of this is to say that such a shift around homosexuality is likely. But I hope that helps explain why I don't wholly discount it as a possibility, despite its obvious tension with the LDS framework. Stranger things have happened.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Inasmuch as I have a rebuttal, it's that I would strongly prefer not being pinged into old feuds you choose to dredge up out of context, particularly given that you've also indicated my continued presence here is undesirable. Leave me out of your fights, please.
TracingWoodgrains
25d ago
What are you talking about here? Last time I recall mentioning systems on Twitter it was to marvel at the way some people take the whole thing seriously.
I freely admit association with the Motte as appropriate. This place was a big part of my own intellectual journey and I have nothing to hide about it. In this case, Twitter throttles Substack links as if they're ads, so I couldn't link the Vitalist's blog without my posts getting throttled into oblivion. I even mention my connection in the replies to that post.
TracingWoodgrains
4mo ago
Did you? I barely noticed that happened on my timeline. It didn't really pop up except from, like, a BARPod listener tagging me.
Why would I? That tension between his present and his past, and my conflicted thoughts about it, is core to the reason we thought it would be interesting to do a podcast in the first place. We chatted in advance as well and covered some of the same ground; he came in fully aware that it could get combative and was not just amenable to that approach but actively interested in it. Masking my own sentiment towards the alt-right would be a disservice both to him and to listeners. When we moved past that part, I went back to engaging in a milder, more deliberate way, but both have their place.
Walt doesn't praise Hitler, but analogies are just that: analogies. I absolutely would push soft democratic socialists who had histories full of guillotine memes and so forth on those topics in very much the same tone I was pushing Walt. In his own writing, he makes the explicit comparison between himself and liberals who had communist phases, so it's worth exploring that comparison on its own terms.
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