Westerly
2yr ago
Why does Hlynka get a lifetime pass for bad faith, low effort, uncharitable takes, namecalling, “hbdtards”, you name it? I guess he is just treated as a fixture at this point, but if he were a new user he’d have caught a ban already
Suppose we made a policy all children will be provided the necessities of life (food, medicine, shelter, whatever). This would be selecting for those who have the most children regardless of their ability to provide for them. So I mean in a sense this would be “evolution doing its job”, insofar that it was maximizing reproductive success given the situation.
But I think most would consider it dysgenic, because “has children beyond their personal means to provide” would seem to be an undesirable trait to most. To some extent we can control the environment within which “evolution does its job”, so what kind of evolution will the environment we’ve created lead to? A kind we want? Or a kind we don’t want? So the label of dysgenic or eugenic is just passing a value judgment on the results of evolution given the environment parameters we control.
I would think most evolutionary changes would not be value-neutral, so every change to the environment that affects evolution could be considered either eugenic or dysgenic. I guess you might disagree here if you consider all or most things to be value-neutral, but I think most would disagree
Westerly
2yr ago
All of these premises are just plainly ridiculous. They don’t follow from one another at all. Am I obligated to be friends with retards, schizos and sociopaths? Am I obligated to have sex with 100-year olds, men, and retards? Are blacks not allowed to say “I just feel more comfortable with black friends”? Are women not allowed to reject incels?
If the answer to any of these is “no” then we know what this is really about. This is just cover for browbeating white people for having white friends or partners, or anyone for rejecting trannies. If the answer to all of these is “yes” then this is such a silly fantasy it needn’t be taken seriously
Westerly
2yr ago
If I understand you correctly, this is what you are calling the Phenotypic Null Hypothesis: that a trait being heritable does not mean it necessarily has a direct genetic cause. Particularly relevant to HBD, my understanding is that you might say that blacks scoring lower on tests might be shown to be heritable, but perhaps that could be because of racism. Since blackness is also genetically heritable, if blackness were to cause them to experience racism which causes their test scores to be lower, then this would be a plausible explanation for why low test scores appear to be genetically heritable in blacks, but it would actually be due to blackness being genetically inherited and that causing low test scores through a more indirect means than low intelligence.
That seems plainly reasonable and true so far as I can tell. I think people are perhaps responding to you defensively because this feels like an isolated demand for rigor or weakmanning directed specifically at HBD, without considering the epistemic failings of hardline blank-slatists which are surely even greater. Also I think that showing a trait to be heritable has to count as weak Bayesian evidence at least in favor of a genetic explanation.
Westerly
2yr ago
I really do not see what is wrong with their wording. Are you saying Politico made some specific diminishing statement that the NYT is trying to weasel their way around with their wording?
Trad macho posturing bullshit like this is always so laughable being posted on a community that is an even less productive use of time than some Minecraft open source project. Say, MeinNameistBernd, shouldn’t you be teaching Sunday School, bodybuilding or reciting Greek poetry right now?
Westerly
2yr ago
The only specific example you provide is very obviously not a bot. Is that all you’ve got?
I believe you are right, and it is interesting how completely taboo it would be to suggest to a gay person, “Maybe a heterosexual relationship and a family would make you happier?” What percentage of people in heterosexual relationships experience little or no sexual desire for their partner? Between the elderly and the ugly I would guess >50%, but plenty of hetero people are fine making that compromise in exchange for a friend, a companion and a family.
Westerly
2yr ago
”Groomer” as I understand it, is a person who’s making a covert attempt to directly modify a kid’s sexuality in unhealthy ways
This is the equivalent of wokes using “white supremacy” to include timeliness, dress codes and objectivity. Maybe you feel turnabout is fair play, but it’s dishonest and is a transparent attempt to leverage conditioned emotional reactions to a different, narrower concept against a newly broadened category
I also really doubt any supporters of this would say its purpose is to punish reds as opposed to “protect trans kids.” I think it’s fair to ask whether “protect trans kids” or “hurt red tribers” is a model more predictive of actual behavior, but you have to actually ask that, because this law is consistent with both so far as I can tell.
Westerly
2yr ago
Winnie-the-Panda
What’s with this? We wouldn’t call Trump “The Orange Cheeto-in-Chief” here, just bizarre
Westerly
2yr ago
These are just reasons why drinking is good, not why it is a costly signal of trustworthiness.
Is a social drinker more trustworthy than a completely sober guy? Maybe, but you can make plausible-sounding arguments either way. Maybe the drinker is less likely to have elaborately hidden secrets, but the teetotaler has also demonstrated capacity for self denial and high impulse control, which has to be worth something.
Do teetotalers have higher or lower than average rates of criminality? I would bet lower, but I could be wrong.
Westerly
2yr ago
it is socially useful as a costly signal proving trustworthiness
How? How is it a costly signal and how does it establish trustworthiness?
Westerly
2yr ago
The level of invective acceptable against atheists here is totally wild to me. Religious posters here get away with shit others never would, simply because the average atheist California software developer that posts here is vaguely self-hating and sees it as an exotic and cool worldview. Like if there were an Amish poster here he could probably say literally anything and he’d be showered in upvotes and praise.
Like at this point, yes, most posters have come around to the Peterson-style view that religion is a useful social technology that has tangible benefits. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to either start hitting my head with a hammer until I believe it, or raise my kids with an elaborately larped lie. Unfortunately the box can’t be closed and I just have to figure out how to get those same benefits another way
Westerly
2yr ago
They’re both bad. Critics fall for wokeshit but audiences fall for shitshit. Superhero trash and Black Panther are at the top either way
Westerly
2yr ago
These kinds of choices are just degrading, painful and exploitative. What’s the harm if I offer a poor man one million dollars to have sex with his wife? If he values his wife’s purity he can just refuse, no harm right? Obviously not, if he’s in a situation where he needs the money, even just having this option can be deeply distressing.
Westerly
2yr ago
This strikes me as rationalists rationalizing their own class self-interest. The same way EA just so happens to only support democrat politicians, rationalism coincidentally just so happens to work out extremely well for the types of people that are rationalists. Easy to be YIMBY when you are 25 and living in a rented apartment in San Francisco.
Westerly
2yr ago
There were honestly so many retcons over the course of COVID that I lost track. I can only hope someone more spiteful than me collected them all lest they be memoryholed. I at least remember when the WHO edited the definition of 'herd immunity' to exclude natural immunity after the vaccine came out, or when magazines retroactively attached prefaces to articles about how leaky vaccines might make diseases more virulent explaining this did not apply to COVID for unspecified reasons
Westerly
2yr ago
Right, but his original comment implied that Alex Jones would have died for questioning 9/11 cops when in the Dorner situation he didn't die for questioning cops but for going on a killing spree. So yea, I guess if Alex Jones decided to question 9/11 and then go on a killing spree he would have something to worry about, but I feel like the "killing spree" is the integral part of that much more than the "questioning 9/11"
Westerly
2yr ago
Am I once again missing something here? What do you mean by getting "Dorner'd"? Perhaps he was wrongfully fired, but my recollection was he then went on a killing spree and committed suicide. How is that analogous to getting assassinated for conspiracy theories?
Westerly
2yr ago
Did some notable 9/11 truthers get murdered? Is this alluding to something specific?
Westerly
2yr ago
What is the “community nurse” doing other than “finger wagging about dont drink soda”? Why won’t her words go in one ear and out the other? The fact that people continue smoking despite all the well-known harms and warnings suggests that a mild-mannered suggestion from some obese nurse will have no greater effect. What revelatory information about cigarettes or soda is the nurse going to provide? If you are so stupid as to give your baby soda rather than breast milk nothing can help your baby short of losing custody
Westerly
2yr ago
I feel a low effort/bare-links CW thread would be best. Now that we own the codebase I imagine we can have multiple pinned posts and the bare-links post could be separate from the CW thread. So if users dislike it they can just ignore it.
Westerly
2yr ago
troll accusations
Typically meaningless tactic for dismissing points you don’t like. A lot of whining
why are the children of our elites so consistently idiots and drug addicts
I would be very, very surprised by this. Is this actually true? Are children of the top 10% actually lower IQ and more frequently addicted to drugs than the bottom decile?
If the HBD-Tards' and Woke-Cels' theories about race were accurate, this ought to have translated into quick and easy victory
I don’t think any HBD advocate claims that by accepting HBD you automatically win all wars regardless of other factors
Westerly
2yr ago
Suicide takes less than 1 second of action, and zero persistence through pain or discomfort. It is closer to watching tv than bodybuilding. If you told me you badly wanted to watch tv, but a tv was in the other room and you simply lacked the will to walk in there and turn it on I absolutely would question the depth of your desire to watch tv.
I’m nobody special, but neither is the guy that decides we need to have a policy ensuring no children starve, but his policy shapes evolution just the same. Nearly every policy that touches on life and death is influencing evolution whether you like it or not. At least we can acknowledge that and bring it into the discussion of tradeoffs. Instead you seem to just want to stick your head in the sand and pretend our actions have no effect on evolution.
I don’t seek to impose any values. I’m not arguing for sterilizing Africans or whatever you think I’m angling towards. I’m just trying to explain eugenic/dysgenic to someone that seems to be willfully misinterpreting it
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