Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
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User ID: 2188
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
11mo ago
You're right that there are absolutely people who want the old-school religion with Absolute Truth and Faith Not Works and a God who smites unbelievers, and they will find your wishy-washy Episcopalian and Methodist congregations unsatisfying.
This is true but I think... uncharitable-adjacent?
If one believes that Christ actually is who he says he is, and that he instituted a Church for our benefit, it's enough to want what that is without resorting to vengeful deities. "Faith Not Works" also isn't a particularly central member of this category for several reasons.
Generally, we can note that Christianity has had certain historical understandings and that these have been under constant pressure from outside perspectives to 'modernize'.
It's enough to be cognizant of these forces and broadly against them.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
4mo ago
Speaking of trigger warnings, I can think of a few (admittedly not well thought out) reasons why I may not want trigger warnings that are different from the strawman he used at the start of his video.
Spitballing here (and also I don't care) but given that we're talking about digital content, maybe someone could write a bot that uses AI to review the item and add some reasonable (low-hundreds) list of triggers as metadata, and then the consumer can set their pertinent triggers and automatically receive a warning that they want, whereas everyone else is unaffected.
Again I don't have a horse in this race but this seems workable pretty soon.
In fact, though, I side with those who argue that it's on the consumer to decide what they wish to consume. If there's a market for trigger warnings, well, the market will provide solutions.
I also side with those who suggest that avoiding things which make one uncomfortable (or 'open up' 'past trauma') is a major impediment to the healing process. Trauma-as-identity is a failure mode for human existence and getting over it as quickly as is healthy is imperative. And yes, fwiw I say this as someone with some hard things in my past.
Spent a minute trying to find a charitable basis on which to respond to this, but —
Can't remember the last time I saw someone so casually dismiss an entire concept while openly admitting that he doesn't even know what is being discussed and can't be bothered to spend five seconds at least googling the acronym.
It took you so much longer to write that! And you're so comfortable assuming that HBD-proponents only hold their views because of tawdry character flaws. When you do make it to google maybe look into "projection (psychology)" as well.
I'd thought you were a troll but it looks like you've been around a while?
One of life's mysteries, I guess. Like what 'HBD' means.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
11mo ago
Well it's an interesting question -- is there any sort of intrinsic character to Christianity, or is 'Christianity' whatever people do while declaring themselves 'Christian'?
Can a group like Antifa call themselves "The Anti-Bad Guy Squad" and thereby make all their actions good?
Refusal to answer an uncomfortable question does not render it invalid.
Even if I were to grant that something by nature perfect exists, I don't see how that is a god, much less your god in particular.
These are two completely different (and sort of contradictory) complaints.
Let me put it this way:
Atheist: We evolved from lower apes.
Fundie: So you say. But did the apes turn into us, in which case there should be no more apes? Or did we evolve from something other than apes, in which case why are we so similar to apes rather than the other thing?
Atheist: ...Some of the apes evolved into humans while others did not.
Fundie: Aha! You are refusing to answer with one of the horns of my lemma. Why even talk to you if you won't answer?
Now,
You: Is it A or B?
Me: Neither, it is C.
You: Aha! You refuse to answer an uncomfortable question!
So that's the first complaint down.
As to the second (where you note that I did in fact answer), I fail to see what your ability to understand the argument has to do with its validity.
And you are definitely misunderstanding, since I'm not arguing that "if something by nature perfect exists it is a god and mine in particular."
My argument is: According to Christian understanding, God's nature is the standard of goodness itself.
To elaborate: God could not be other than what God is, so it's not arbitrary. And there is no other reference frame from which something like 'good' could be evaluated, so it's not external.
Now, you can say that doesn't make sense to you, or you can say that it's a silly thing to believe. That's fine. The point -- the only point here -- is that neither horn of Euthyphro's dilemma is applicable to Christianity in the first place. So expecting me to tell you which of two inapplicable concepts is applicable (let alone correct) is... not productive.
I believe tech companies are meritocratic in the hiring process
Hopefully without doxxing myself, I work as a contractor for several of the top-5 tech companies (however that is construed it is true). So I'm privy to a lot of their internal communications, culture, etc. And I can tell you that these people are simply falling all over themselves to worship the dark and the lame. The gay, the fake, the trans. It's pathological and it's clearly a very high priority.
at least for the tech positions
Yes, but this is doing a lot of work. A serious skilled employee (i.e. white or asian male) generates enough productivity to support maybe 10-20 others. But this is being utilized. I go to a lot of sales meetings, etc. with the 'big guys' and it turns out that almost everyone in a position to function in other-than-coding-or-facilities is a woman of color, and they (mostly) have no idea what's going on.
I like to ask people questions. E.g. I was once at the Udvar-Hazy museum, where resides the actual Enola Gay, and was fortunate enough to chance upon a veteran who had flown the same model of plane. I asked him one of my favorite questions, which is, "If you could change anything about it, what would you change?" This is, more broadly, a great question to ask of anyone about his industry. But the guy's response was, "The head." Apparently people at one end of the plane had to crawl through a long, cramped, dark, very cold tube to get to the bathroom. Fair enough and good answer; precisely the sort of insight for which I am fishing.
So anyway, given what I do, people very high-up on the corporate ladder like to meet me and have a conversation. Executives, etc. And I like to ask them, "How did you get into this?" Up until about 2017 it was mostly white men with blue eyes and they had interesting answers. Long life histories, fascinating twists and turns, happened to be in the right place at the right time so as to illustrate broader trends and forces. These guys were enthusiastic about describing their journeys and, frankly, grateful to tell someone who clearly wanted to glean what wisdom he could from their examples.
Now it's all girls with names like Roselia and they have no idea how they got where they are. Not only that, but they perceive that they don't belong, and suffer terribly from impostor syndrome, and hate me for asking. So, after a couple years of bad sales, I stopped asking, started emotionally supporting them, and am doing just fine. Except inside.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
7mo ago
What exactly do you mean by Tolkienesque?
I’m curious as to which systems you think get closest.
Well there are several overtly based in Middle-Earth. MERP is the OG here, with more modern versions such as The One Ring and even a series of supplements for playing in Middle Earth using the 5E rules. I want to run a One Ring game but haven't found the time or people for it. Hopefully in a decade I'll be able to do it with my kids.
Point is, neither of these groups seem like they’d end up at Tolkien, and I can’t think of any systems that really try to implement such a style. Maybe a low-magic variant of 2e?
Yeah, I really like 2E for this, with 1E attitudes toward magic, i.e. it's very rare. A +1 sword is a big deal for even mid-level characters, and giving a magic weapon of any kind to a minion is a huge deal.
There's a style of play called 'E6' (idk why) where the basic premise is that characters can ascend to level 6 as normal but advancement stops there. This keeps them feeling roughly mortal which I think counts for a lot. Beyond that point in normal campaigns it becomes more and more difficult to give them real challenges beyond simply enemies with comparably-scaling stats, which feels clicky to me. In E6, as the campaign goes on, they continue to accumulate wealth and prestige, which opens the door to interesting options. And of course magic items, while hard-won, gradually serve to give them a sense of legendary prowess. But at the end of the day, one bad encounter with a gang of low-level enemies can still wreck them entirely. And they never really get the sense of being able to walk into combat without concern.
In one game I tried something out where beyond level 6 they could only attain further advancement in levels by eating dragon hearts, and dragons were as difficult to find and kill as you'd expect. I liked this approach because it really slowed down advancement and provided some kind of justification for why normal people could get so superhumanly powerful. Also it ends up feeling a little bit like Birthright, which I've always loved.
Haven't tried it, but I bet that Westeros campaign setting from... 20 or so years ago? probably would be a good fit as well. IIRC it was partly based on the idea that the players are, and only ever will be, eminently vulnerable. And it seems to be very low-magic, in keeping with the setting.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
7mo ago
Idk about good but it certainly was eye-opening. Did you catch the username? I was confused about how cocaine comes from scorpions and wanted to follow up via PM.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
7mo ago
I remember being astonished to learn that Vietnamese tourists will generally bring their own dried food to eat during their travels. Asia really is a foreign country.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
11mo ago
The only way out is to stop producing so many dysfunctional people. We have so far failed to figure out how.
Seems to me that a good first step would be to stop subsidizing their production.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
11mo ago
My state banned fishing and then later on one of its counties promoted having sex through a hole in a shower curtain.
Link please
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
1yr ago
"Female librarian fantasy" is one of those things that always felt like it should appeal to me but doesn't. Like nurses, or feet.
But lately I have had a hankering for the genre of 'dark academia' and don't know where to begin. Any recommendations?
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
1yr ago
My ex wife spent all her time writing erotic lesbian fanfiction with her asexual friends.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
7mo ago
Here is the problem with advocating censorship of "bad" ideas: If it is permissible make rules about what ideas can be expressed, then someone has to make those rules. And who will that be, people with power, or people without power. Obviously the former.
I don't see why that's a problem, though I can certainly see why it would seem problematic to people with certain assumptions.
This could be fine with some commentary. As Incanto said below it would be good to enumerate some examples that occur to you, and ideally offer some additional insight beyond the quote itself.
Personally I think there's some truth to it. Arcane language certainly is handy for bamboozling the peasants. It even works on the managerial class, since they're often a particular combination of embarrassed to call the speaker out, thus admitting that they're ignorant of the subject, and unwilling or unable to go to the effort of educating themselves on the particulars. C.f. how few people have any idea regarding the basics of how the financial system works. It's just something for the professionals to handle, I guess. Hope they're competent, honest, selfless public servants!
One of my favorite words to hear in normie discourse is "the economy". It's fascinating to imagine what internal understandings people are referencing when they say that. Got particularly interesting during the covid crisis, which imo revealed some of the enormous gaps in popular understanding of such matters. Particularly frustrating to me was the notion that we need to prioritize "lives" over "the economy". One wonders what they imagine is responsible for producing things like modern healthcare.
So I guess the insight I want to add here is that higher-ups will throw such words around to keep their inferiors convinced that smart people are in control, sure, but also that those inferiors will do their best to bluff by mimicking what they've heard so as to bolster their arguments, all the while swallowing the fear that someone will call them out and force them to explain precisely what those words mean.
Try asking someone who complains about 'capitalism' exactly what that is, sometime.
Probably a much earlier antecedent would be religions, which were often founded on a model where the people in charge had access to special knowledge which justified their position and which would explicitly not be shared with the followers. Many exceptions, of course.
(EDIT to continue) Occurs to me that this dynamic is particularly troublesome in the sort of democracy-ish model most modern nations seem to be pursuing. How can an electorate be expected to make good decisions when the key to securing votes is a confident smile and the ability to plausibly throw out a bunch of power-words in pleasant-sounding ways?
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
9mo ago
People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.
I don't really buy this. For one, plenty of people aren't enduring it because they've already killed themselves. For another, 'truth' itself is a funny thing in that all maps are wrong, and a more accurate map may actually be a less-useful map. But even this pushes us to consider what 'usefulness' means as it seems to imply some kind of overriding telos, which is, as far as I've ever been able to tell, not a matter easily able to be decided conclusively.
In regard to OP, there's also a matter of intelligibility. Perhaps there is a frequency of sound, for example, which is unbearable to hear. Those exposed to it are in such torment that they almost always end their own lives sooner or later, even if perhaps after years or decades of resistance. Only, most people can't hear this frequency. Does it make sense to tell those who can hear it that everything is fine because others are enduring it? Is this an appropriate thing to tell such a person if one is, oneself, unable to hear it?
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
9mo ago
My goodness but that article is incredibly nakedly biased. Little context, multiple scare quotes from the Left, basically zero indication as to why the majority might think what it does. Is this the news Americans are getting?
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
11mo ago
Or, Christianity is defined by the Orthodox Church, which also limits how the Bible is to be interpreted, and all else is Christian heresy.
We are coming at this from different perspectives and common ground seems unlikely.
Thanks for the conversation.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
1yr ago
If goodness means in alignment with god’s nature, god is not good, he’s just In alignment with his own nature.
To say that He is good is to say that He is in alignment with His nature, sure, since His nature is the benchmark of goodness.
And if god’s nature is not arbitrary, goodness is external.
This would seem to be unsupported.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
3mo ago
if it all gets burned down there's at least a chance something better will arise and my children won't have to raise their children in an enclave in the hinterlands to prevent their corruption and alienation.
So, a bit off-topic, but DAE feel like it's time to get building enclaves in the hinterlands? I wonder if anyone's studied how this has gone in South Africa and what we might learn.
Which would you recommend most highly?
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