aiislove
6mo ago
What can I do with my money after I'm dead? (No, I'm not planning on dying soon, I'm just curious.) Is it possible to, say, have all of my money invested and untouched for a hundred years, with someone as a steward of the fund who is paid from it yearly just to manage it, and then create a foundation to, say, support a certain art or something I'm interested in after the money has amassed to a great amount? Is this legal? Are there foundations that people have planned after their death that are operating today in this fashion?
Responding to @Forgotpassword as well here.
Speaking as a white gay man so your milage may vary. But as a gay top I am attracted to Asian and Latino men who are a bit smaller than me. It's difficult to top men who I perceive as bigger or stronger or more violent/aggressive than me so it's more difficult to top black or Middle Eastern men even though I often find them attractive in an abstract way. Even when I do "top" a man taller and hotter than me it leaves me feeling weird because I don't feel superior to him in any way so it feels like it shouldn't have happened. I suspect that straight men who are not black might find black women harder to "top" (excuse the weird gay metaphor applied to heterosexual intercourse) compared to white or Asian women. You have to be able to believe that you have a right to screw the person you're screwing and it's easier to believe it when you have a physical advantage over that person physically.
Does the black female face structure more commonly have more masculine components to it?
I don't know if it's necessarily "masculinity" that black women have more of but it's possibly some combination of aggression and strength and dominance that is off putting psychologically in a sexual context. Black men look stronger and more dominant so trying to top them as a white man is difficult and weird, compared with other more docile looking guys. I imagine it's the same with women, broadly speaking.
aiislove
8mo ago
The point of Barbie being "sexually harassed" five minutes after arriving in the real world is to illustrate that her luxury beliefs and wokeism is delusional. The Barbie dream world represents everyone who lives in a woke simulacra of the real world where the horrors of reality are shielded from their view. The point of the harassment isn't to portray the dangers of sexual assault, it is to illustrate the dangers of living in a fantasy world when other people are exposed to real horrors every day. Barbie brought the sexual harassment onto herself by dressing in a sexualized way and not anticipating the realities of interacting with people who aren't in on the luxury beliefs that Barbie got to hold previously.
aiislove
8mo ago
The first topic reminds me of a ridiculous story from sixth grade. Someone told me this kid in my class had a gay cousin, and since I was gay I asked this kid if his cousin was gay. He got mad at me for implying that his cousin was gay, and then complained to my science teacher, who I was sure was a lesbian because she was a soccer coach and I saw her buying wine with women at the grocery store multiple times. My lesbian science teacher scolded me for asking this kid if his cousin was gay, even though I was just asking because I was gay and wanted a gay friend. (Granted I probably didn't ask with a very polite tone.) Either way, the kid I asked was more homophobic than I was, since he was offended that I'd imply his cousin was gay, whereas was just asking for a gay friend, and it ended with me getting scolded by a lesbian teacher for homophobia instead of the kid who was actually homophobic.... anyway I'm just relating this to try to illustrate how the "homophobic public offense" law is terrible and will lead only to ridiculous outcomes. Am I allowed to be homophobic as a homosexual? If not then I can only see this law being worse for me as a homosexual who interacts with homosexuals all the time and happens to do things that can probably be framed as homophobic if they need to be, compared with someone who knows no homosexuals and runs little risk of doing homophobic things unless a lesbian cop shows up at their door...
I like the song you are asking about. As a rich man north of Richmond I empathize with him and people like him more than most of the people in my class FWIW. Rich people lording their power over the poor is really bad and every time I see it I cringe. I thought about writing out a response to this piece in the NY Times but don't have much to add. The rich are increasingly divorced from the realities of the poor. All everyone with a college degree has been doing since 2008 is throwing poor white people under the bus, pointing at Trump voters as racist hicks while trying to differentiate themselves in increasingly extravagant ways. I think (hope) this has basically run its course, even the Barbie movie seems to be illustrating the horrors of "going high" while everyone else is struggling in the gutters.
aiislove
11mo ago
Also as an aside both men and women are misogynistic, projecting their existential disgust/despair onto woman as the closest to 'life/creation/existence'.
I don't think that both men and women are misogynistic. Rather I think that both men and women are predisposed to hating men due to the essential power structure you outline in paragraph 3 above. If you hate a more powerful person who has power over you, it's righteous and empowering and normal to do so. If you hate someone weaker than you, you are a loser. I am not predisposed to hating women. When I think of my father, I think of him eternally as an adult who subjugated me as a youth, but when I think of my mother I just feel regret for ever having hurt her in any way. Indeed the things I fault my father for are for his weaknesses, not being strong enough, out of this grew my resentment toward him. Toward my mother I would never feel any hatred toward her weakness, to do so would be gruesome, especially as an adult.
As a gay man the only misogyny I can find in myself is a sort of irritation that straight men are attracted to women, but this doesn't really spark a deep seated hatred within me but if anything rather an irritation toward myself that I'm not what a straight man would be attracted to. I'm more predisposed toward hating men and it's downstream of hating myself which I believe all men are predisposed toward. As a young child I was resentful toward women because I imagined they would reject my love but this just made me seek male affection instead, not hate women.
What makes you draw the conclusion that men and women are misogynistic? It's funny that you mention projection in this sentence as I think it's male self-hatred and women's hatred of men that you are projecting onto men and women as misogyny.
aiislove
1yr ago
While I do know men who are married and accomplished, they’re all so damn neurotic I can’t seem to respect them or truly look up to them.
I think that all men are neurotic and insecure. I have traveled and dated all over the world and every man you can imagine thinks they're a piece of crap at the end of the day. Every man in my family that I've known my entire life is like this. I think it's intrinsic to being a man. I have met men who are insanely hot with huge muscles and are, to me, the perfect example of masculinity and even they are extremely insecure. I am a thousand percent less neurotic and insecure than I was ten years ago but even today I'm just a snide comment away from spiraling again into self doubt. I think it's downstream of sexual selection, men are so driven to procreate and have sex that we lead ourselves into madness when we aren't actively fornicating. It sounds bad at first but taking this perspective has made me more empathetic to fellow men I meet. We're all self doubting. Dating as a gay man can be so dire because we often tear at each others' insecurities. It makes me have more respect for women who seem to be able to lend sanity to the male psyche in a way other men can't.
Also expanding this as a quick reply to @fivehourmarathon's post above, which I agree with strongly: He proposes that we need a new kind of masculinity we can perform or grow into. (I think that's a fair assessment of the point, correct me if I'm wrong.) I think it's a good proposal, however I think an easier fix would be to encourage people on an individual level to actually support and urge on masculine qualities in men. I can remember times people in my life have told me I have certain manly or masculine traits and it is a huge confidence boost for me to remember those times. I think we dislike making these comments as a culture because we don't prize masculinity as a trait.
aiislove
1yr ago
That's true, but the "convince congress to change copyright" solution doesn't do much for me as it allows people to continue to tie their personal identity to Spiderman, in a novel and more atomized personalized way and I don't really see much value in that.
My solution isn't entirely "unactionable" either, really, it's not like people can't have their opinions changed en masse in certain ways (that are outside of my scope of abilities but not everyone's)
aiislove
1yr ago
The media and cultural elites really revealed their hatred of poor rural white people during the Trump administration imo. I don't think most people realized what was happening during his presidency but now that it's over, it really feels like TDS was directed toward white people and especially poor white people with little to no cultural power or relevance. Before 2018 I was relatively happy or at least complacent to conform to the fashions and opinions of democratic elites, in the hopes that I could reap the benefits of being part of the ascendant class, but after experiencing the hatred this class of people spewed toward poor white people I really can't stand to associate with democrats anymore.
Circling back to your post, the point I'm trying to make is that I have much more sympathy for middle American white people after the past 6 years than I had before and I feel like white people have actually earned a huge right to feel like the underdogs at this point. I think a ton of people in the creative industry are feeling this as well FWIW, so many of us are sick of working for democrat tastemakers who constantly censor our work and ignore artists creating anything that could threaten their credibility or power. As artists/creatives we're used to rooting for the underdogs and when the legacy art media is constantly screaming at us that only BIPOC voices matter, and that poor white trash people will ruin their careers if they're associated with them, then the poor white trash people are, obviously, the underdogs.
At the end of the day, when you pick on losers, it makes you look like a bigger loser, and it grows support for the people you're picking on. The more the mass media and pop culture and everyone you meet piles on poor white people, the more it reveals how pathetic they are for doing so.
aiislove
1yr ago
I actually prefer having the net votes at the bottom of a post because I can start reading the comment from a neutral point of view. On reddit when the votes are at the top I feel like it influences me to read the comment from the point of view of it being good or not based on the number of up or down votes and I'd rather choose for myself whether the post is good or not.
aiislove
4mo ago
Yeah, I can relate. I am mainly interested in gaming from an aesthetic perspective. I think the switch from prerendered backgrounds to fully 3d environments in JRPGs between the PS1 and PS2 eras killed the genre. The prerendered backgrounds of FF7, 8 and 9 are probably the best art that have ever come out of gaming and 3d environments are extremely ugly in comparison. Prerendered cutscenes are beautifully lit shot and angled by an artist to create an attractive visual, whereas 3d environments have a crappy camera angle pointed at random stuff that doesn't look good.
Similarly I strongly prefer the art and music of SNES era to N64 era. The creativity after N64 era really took a dive, the industry was no longer about innovation but rather the genres became very rote and the industry has become much more bland. I blame this also on Japan's economic stagnation after the 90s, and though American tech companies had plenty of money to pump into gaming they lacked the taste and creativity of Japanese designers in the 90s and early 2000s. I believe creativity in gaming has basically died after We Love Katamari was released.
I took the Gamer Motivation Model you linked to and scored highest on creativity as well. I like games like Animal Crossing and the early Harvest Moon games where you can decorate/arrange things. I also used to spend an embarrassing amount of time on crappy Korean farm sim games on my phone so I could design beautiful towns with their assets. Actually, I would prefer to play a game like Super Mario RPG or Persona 1/2:EP/2:IS which all have really really good art direction, even over games where I can be creative, because it's enjoyable to see the art that other people have made.
You mention games that you don't like in your post but none that you do. Which ones do you like?
aiislove
6mo ago
This sentence confused me as well, I knew he was referring to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as voxelvexillologist notes below but the 200k figure surprised me. The wikipedia entry states that 230k ethnic Armenians have been displaced by the conflict. I assume moldbug was using "ethnically cleansed" to mean "displaced" while I imagined he meant that there were 200 thousand casualties.
aiislove
8mo ago
I don't own a big truck, but I'm pretty sure big trucks make you feel smaller by comparison.
You buy the big truck to augment your feelings of smallness. When you control the truck you feel much larger than any person who is not controlling a truck. You feel smaller than the man controlling the tank or the semi truck but you feel bigger than anyone in anything smaller than you.
What is the source of the FUN of guns? Is it POWER?
aiislove
8mo ago
Yep, I can confirm your assessment in the first two paragraphs. I'm very bored of worldly pleasures and want to seek greater fulfillment. What do you mean by diligent meditation? Do you sit in a room with no distractions and just think? That's what I imagine meditation is. Do you reflect on deeper questions? I'm curious to know more about it and why it helped you out to be more satisfied with life because it doesn't sound super exciting but I'm open to exploring it as well.
aiislove
8mo ago
The mainstream right [...] don't believe in group differences
I have read this take so many times on this forum and every time I read it I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone. Where did you grow up?? I grew up in the midwest in a non major city and group differences were so obvious and apparent and openly talked about my entire life that I don't understand how you think half the country doesn't believe in them. The mainstream right absolutely believes that group differences exist, I would estimate that the most mainstream portion of them believe that the differences shouldn't matter and we should try to broadly accept the differences if not correct for them, and the bulk of the rest believe that the differences shouldn't matter, but do, and that trying to do anything to correct it is a fool's errand at best and a recipe for harrison bergeron style dystopia at worst. I don't think this is an extreme online position at all, I can imagine anyone in my grandfather's generation saying it implicitly to friends and family and anyone in my father's generation understanding it but perhaps not saying it.
aiislove
11mo ago
I am really cheap. I hate to waste money. However I'm happy to spend small amounts of money that tangibly improve my life. What are some small things that you spend money on (say, under $10 USD per month- or $20 if you really have to splurge) that you think are the most worth it?
aiislove
1yr ago
I've studied German, Spanish, Japanese and French in school and in immersion (as in, visiting the countries where they're spoken and living for a few months in each.) I agree with you that German is the easiest for English speakers to learn (though Spanish is not very hard either.) Also agree with Japanese being a rather practical language and pronunciation is very easy. I got lost on the kanji too though.
aiislove
1yr ago
You need self esteem. You are worried about making mistakes socially because you beat yourself up when you make a mistake, so you are going into the situations feeling negatively about the results. People can sense your negativity, and react with uncertainty because they don't know why you're feeling hesitant or awkward, so react with hesitance and awkwardness in turn.
Think less about yourself. Think more about making the people you're around happy and comfortable, and less about how you feel.
People who are better at social skills than you are aren't smarter or better than you, they just don't beat themselves up if they make a mistake so they're more willing to put themselves out there and make mistakes. They also tend to think more about other people's emotions than their own.
aiislove
1yr ago
This will be sort of speaking on the meta level on @Lepidus's comments, as I don't really have a response to this specific post. I've been in East Asia for a few months now (and not my first time visiting,) and I really love the people here. So kind, smart, organized, polite, I adore the aesthetics and so many aspects of the culture here. Being on public transit where people don't talk and just follow basic rules of etiquette is about three million times nicer than any ride on the bus or train in Europe let alone America. But I'm somewhat sympathetic to Lepidus's underlying point as well, though I don't think he's particularly good at rhetoric. What I'm specifically referring to is that I find the political and social structures of East Asia to be quite restrictive. I don't want to live under a regime that is treating me like I'm East Asian. I love visiting the area for the novelty and to experience something different from the West, but the lack of individual freedom here is hard to cope with as a relatively libertarian American person. There certainly are values that Chinese hold differently from the West and it isn't a waste of time to worry about that, given the geopolitical situation.
Agree that Lepidus's tone is combative and the posts are a bit incoherent but since no one seems to be taking his side I just thought I'd try to throw a bone out to maybe spark discussion in a different direction.
aiislove
1yr ago
Why does there not seem to be much progress with AI in the field of music? I am loving all the AI art and chatGPT stuff coming out but I'm really looking forward to AI implementations in music that are interesting. As a layperson it seems like it shouldn't be too difficult, as music is really rather formulaic at its most basic form.
Most of the AI music stuff I've seen so far has been music generated completely from scratch by AI but that isn't very interesting to me. How far away are we from convincing style transfer for example? I'd love to be able to convert a song into another style of music.
A few years ago I found this soundcloud account but the music is pretty garbled and prone to overfitting. Just seems like miles away from AI in other domains so I'm wondering if anyone has any insight into why AI music seems to be lagging behind AI in visual art and chat.
aiislove
6mo ago
You're welcome, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm not sure if you are interpreting the sentence you quoted as meaning that I am applying the same ideas to the psychology that women have when they have sex with men, which is not what I was implying. I meant that I imagine that for men who are attracted to women, that those men also have to be able to see themselves as more dominant and masculine over the women they are having sex with, and that it is easier for, say, a blond white man to imagine himself dominating an Asian woman compared with dominating a black woman.
On another tangent, I believe men who are interested in being dominated by women are sublimating their domination instinct and directing their sexual anxieties toward the female to cover their insecurity and fear of not being able to perform. Exploring this dynamic in sex might be titillating and sexually gratifying for the man but I can't imagine it boosts or stabilizes his ego in the long term, it is a rather masturbatory practice and doesn't result in self security. Similarly a gay man who only bottoms or performs submissive roles in sex is probably unlikely to experience full gratification from sex.
aiislove
8mo ago
Basically, when I was growing up and into college, I was addicted to really tedious video games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing, and resource management simulation games. I would play them for hours and hours, making the most efficient and aesthetically pleasing farm or town or whatever that I could. When I was finishing college I thought I should just take all the time I waste in video games and apply that to business. So I just started selling things online and micromanaging everything about the businesses as if they were video games. Every dollar that came in would give me the same rush as doing something good in a game. Addiction also runs in my family so I basically just hacked that part of my brain to put it to work in a way that worked for me. It took a long time to get to where I am now and it's a very competitive field but now that I've built things up I can literally die tomorrow and keep making enough to live on for years to come. Anyone can do it but you've got to dedicate a lot of time with very little reward in the beginning for a huge reward down the road. I would never want to work a regular high stress job like everyone I know does at this point but it does lead to irritating situations where I've got a ton of free time and feel guilted by society to use it more wisely than I really need to.
aiislove
9mo ago
You're in the honeymoon phase. Enjoy it now because in a few months or years you'll start to realize the money doesn't buy you happiness, class or status and you'll feel pretty desperate that you spent money on uhhh, the gemological institute rather than on improving the happiness of the people around you. And if you don't reach that point it's not great either
aiislove
11mo ago
Which continent do you live on? I've convinced myself that elevator door close buttons only work about 10% of the time in North America and the rest of the world but about 90% of the time in East Asia. Maybe I'm just more inclined to follow rules and expect things to work in East Asia though.
No, I am not registered to vote either. Like I said in my first post, I would prefer to return to the way I lived before 2016 when I happily ignored politics and didn't have strong opinions about political issues. But now I feel I've read so much about politics that I can no longer see people as having an opinion that they've come to on their own, but rather that every opinion I encounter is downstream of broader political culture war issues. It makes me feel so cynical and hopeless.
Yes. I like the visuals of America between the coasts. I like the huge roads, big vehicles, straight highways that go on for miles and miles, the anonymity, the lack of a cloying, overinterested community that defines the rest of the world. 24 hour grocery stores and gas stations all across the country. I have been to about 20 different countries, and while traveling abroad is my favorite activity, at the end of the day every country makes me feel claustrophobic compared to the US. There is no where in the world with the same degree of freedom of open spaces, space between you and others, space for ideological freedom and freedom to live your life the way you want. France has beautiful food and incredible architecture but you can't eat dinner at any time but between 7pm and 9pm and I was chided for having my car face the wrong direction while pumping gas a few months ago. Why I have to have my license plate visible to a camera while getting gas, I don't know, but that's just the one millionth difference between the US and most countries that irritate me. I could come up with a handful of other specific American things I couldn't find anywhere else, but those are the biggest irritations to me off the top of my head.
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