aiislove
1yr ago
Google has been failing to innovate for years. The last time they put out a useful innovation was Google Images, and every change they've made to it since its debut has made it worse. (Most recently hiding the link to images under a "more" button, dumbing down the "size" option years ago, and a handful of other things I can't recall at the moment.) Even the Russian search engine Yandex's image search is better than google images. The search pages are loaded with ads and irritating "helpful" information that just makes me spend more time trying to find what I want. Don't get me started on trying to find the names of songs by song lyric, the one thing a search engine should actually be good at 100% of the time...
I don't know if it's specifically "AI chatbots" that are going to threaten google but it seems like they've been stagnating for years so I'm sure some emerging technology is going to make them obsolete if they continue the same trajectory. I don't know why they're not incorporating AI into google images for example, the possibilities there are endless, it's like they're stuck in the 2010s while the rest of the internet has moved on
aiislove
1yr ago
It's because luxury beliefs are also aspirational beliefs for people who want to see themselves as being in the luxury belief class.
For example, I have a friend who works in NYC. He doesn't make much money but his partner and many of his friends and family are rich. Many of them espouse anti cop beliefs so he tends to espouse these beliefs as well, even though they live in much more expensive parts of NYC than he does. He doesn't want to have to lose face by admitting that the cops protect him in his high crime neighborhood so he acts like he dislikes them, like his richer peers who are more shielded from the consequences do. That's just one mechanism for where these "magical beliefs" come from. He doesn't want to engage with the reality that he should be afraid of criminals rather than the police because it would mean engaging with the reality that he's of a lower economic status than his peers.
And why is the more practical worldview (that people respond to incentives) so looked down upon?
It's irritating and low class to admit that you have material practical concerns. We like to imagine the rich just walk around life unbothered by consequences, and that all we have to do is imitate that lifestyle and we too can live that way. To give away the fact that we have to wash laundry and be protected by cops and face consequences for our actions feels degrading to many people.
aiislove
1yr ago
Alternately, just don't build culture around proprietary intellectual property. Having your cultural identity as an American tied to the whims of corporate interests is a recipe for disaster. See: Disney's Black mermaid. Millions of white Americans grew up identifying with Ariel and Disney World as part of their core identity, and now when the globalist interests of Disney shareholders decide that white America is a liability and not an asset, white America's cultural heritage is in the crosshairs.
At least when white American identity was more closely tied to Christianity you didn't have this problem. It actually really bothers me as a white middle American to think about how much of my own childhood and shared culture is owned by corporations or even just by people who wrote and published books or created something of their own. I envy European and Asian cultures who in many cases have many thousands of years of folk tales and traditions to draw from when American culture is locked behind IP protection laws from decades ago.
Your proposed solution is to end copyright protection sooner, but to me the ideal solution is to avoid building identity on anything proprietary to begin with. Admittedly I find Marvel and mass market films kind of gauche to begin with and the idea of people rallying around these properties as cultural entities worth tying identity to makes me uneasy.
aiislove
1yr ago
I have seen this take many times but I have never taken the take from the other side: someone who admits openly that they just want a video game checklist for their own morality. It is so far away from anything I would ever want that it's impossible for me to imagine that real people would reach that conclusion. Do the people who want to live that way know that's what they want? Would they be turned off if they heard their views described the way you've described it?
aiislove
1yr ago
Test question shows a French peasant and a priest riding on a rich guy. Implication is that he is supporting them. Correct answer is “this image depicts France after the revolution.” I show up and point out that the nobility was destroyed (not esoteric knowledge) and largely the clergy too, and therefore this image cannot depict France after the revolution.
Was it this image I just found on the wikipedia entry for the French Revolution? If so, that would be (according to the caption on the entry) "the Third Estate carrying the First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility) on its back."
Actually, I suspect there probably is another version that depicts the Second Estate carrying the other two on its back ("a French peasant and a priest riding on a rich guy" as you describe) that is supposed to show the apparent situation after the revolution which you were shown, parodying the image I've linked to above
But either way, even after the French Revolution, France still had many rich people, right? Certainly the monarchy was abolished, and maybe the nobles were stripped of their titles or shunned from society or something, but somebody was still owning all those chateaux and vineyards and 18th century jewels, right?
aiislove
1yr ago
All right, reading this feels like you're kind of pointing to some interesting observations but have come to different conclusions than I have. As a gay man I have complicated feelings about the matter but let me try to unpack some of your points from my perspective. This is going to be really long and informed by a ton of personal anecdotes combined with pop psychology that I literally just made up from my own experiences, so if anyone objects they can feel free to share their experiences instead, but otherwise here goes:
First of all I want premise this with a certain framing that I don't think many people are privy to, even among gay men and certainly not more broadly understood outside of gay circles*. That is to illuminate the dynamic of being a "top" or "bottom." Now, I was misled by this premise for years, believing it only referred to the sexual position of each partner during anal sex: The top puts his penis in the bottom's rectum. This is the broadly accepted and understood meaning in American mainstream society today. And according to your shiny mainstream LGBTQIA image, the top/bottom dynamic basically ends there.** But outside of that narrow American perspective on homosexuality, these terms are more loosely interpreted: In many languages, the terms for top and bottom are more translatable to "active" vs "passive," (aktiv vs passiv in German) for example. And indeed, at the end of the day, what determines who is the top and who is the bottom in a homosexual relationship has literally nothing to do with self identification as a top or a bottom: this sorts itself out naturally. There will always be one partner who is more dominant and one who is less dominant. Any third party can see this. It is strange and disorienting to see a bigger, stronger, taller guy be bottom to a smaller, weaker, shorter guy. It happens but it is weird. It is basically against the way of nature. Homosexual relationships that last are nearly always ones where the top has legitimate, physical, material claims to being the top over his partner. Gay relationships always fail when the bottom is sick of being the bottom, or he believes the top isn't worthy of being the top anymore, or the top starts doubting his ability to be the top.
From my experience, what I've outlined above is exactly how things play out, constantly, even though no one parses it into plain english the way I have. Basically, all gay men exist on some hierarchy or spectrum, that is sort of opaque to each of us at first, but that always sorts itself out in the realm of sexual play. The more dominant man will always become the top to the more submissive man, regardless of who's trying to put what body part where. Bad gay sex is when a submissive man tries to top a more dominant man. You can put up with being a bottom for a man who deserves it, but to be made a bottom of a man who doesn't deserve it, is horrible and degrading beyond the regular degredation of bottoming for a man who you do respect.
I'm rambling a bit so let me get on to some direct responses to what you've written now that I've gotten my own framing out of the way.
I feel like homosexuality is correlated with a lack of thirst of competition. Homosexuals like to win but they want to win without a struggle. It seems to me that non-gay men LOVE to be engaged in competition.
Here I get to talk about my observations of straight men, which have really enlightened me greatly about myself and about other gay men. Straight men are motivated to reproduce. But evolution has complicated things: It wants the most fit males to reproduce. So straight men must compete for the right to reproduce with women. It is not that straight men "LOVE" to engage in competition, it is that straight men WANT to engage in the competition, and believe themselves worthy of doing so. Now, an anecdote. When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I saw a pornographic film of a man having sex with a woman for the first time, and this video really shocked me. I saw how huge his penis was, compared to my 8 or 9 year old penis, and how his body was so much more mature and fit than mine, and at that moment I was sort of "cucked" out of ever wanting to compete in the sexual arena with women. I thought, there's no way, this dude is obviously way more fit than I am to reproduce so I better just not even try. Having sexual energy in abundance, and mortified that I'd never be able to compete in sexual competition, I began rather to see myself as an object of sexual desire and tried to repress my masculine urges as I was so unconfident with my own ability to compete with them that my ego couldn't bear being rejected as a male. So I was drawn to conceiving of myself as a bottom, to be used as the sexual gratification of other men- because at least then my ego wouldn't be damaged when I tried to compete with other men.
Near the end of my 20s this role began to really grate on me. I was frustrated in love and sex; I would date many older men, who I was drawn to because it was easier for me to respect someone with more experience than my peers. But I didn't respect them particularly at the end of the day because I didn't see them as good enough to satisfyingly top me. So none of those relationships ever went anywhere. But I also dated a handful of men who were my age or a bit younger, and I always dragged them out, never going anywhere with them, and I never understood why until I realized that at the end of the day I wanted to be a top but was worried about rejection from these guys. In these relationships I was basically their top but too scared to actually make a pass at them because I was afraid of being rejected by them. I spent a few years at the end of my 20s not dating anyone, because I was tired of playing the bottom role and hadn't yet realized my desire to play the top role. Finally I did some self reflection and came to the realization that what I wanted was to be respected and play a top role in a relationship and once I got over my fear of being rejected, and accepted that I'm actually valuable and worthy of being someone's top, I've had much much more fulfilling relationships with men and dating is much more gratifying.
In summary, I'm trying to say that straight men perceive themselves as being a good fit for reproduction. They are driven to compete with other men to reproduce. In a way, my ego was too fragile to risk the rejection of women so I decided not to compete with other men for sex with women. It's as though part of my brain thought I should instead, seek the role of the female, and become the object of men's desires.
More directly:
Gay men are afraid of losing more than straight men. Our egos can't bear to be rejected by women so we create a new game within our own minds where we can become the object of affection of other men, who we know are horny so it seems impossible to lose.
I feel like non-gay men like the back and forth between opponents ALMOST as much as winning.
Actually, the most gratifying gay sex you can have, in my experience, is when the bottom is trying to do his best to be the top but the top is always secure in his position and brings up the bottom to his level but they both know who's in charge. Which echoes the back and forth you are describing here. But is this type of gay sex super common? Not really, in my experience. Usually it's the sort of safe sex where the top and bottom agree beforehand which position they're taking, and then they just do that, without any play or experimentation. It's better when the bottom can try to push the limits of the top, and the top is secure enough to be like, yeah dude you like that and play into it, while maintaining his status as a top. If a bottom tries to top the top and wins, it's gross and bad because the top has been degraded and the bottom feels bad about it too.
The point I'm trying to make here is that gay men probably aren't really predisposed to this sort of back and forth competition, but it is very gratifying when it happens in a good way where both partners are secure and enjoying themselves. Does straight sex have a similar dynamic? I'm curious to know.
It would explain why gay men are found in careers that don't necessarily have the strictest of win conditions. (Fashion).
I have a degree in fashion design and I don’t know what you mean by this. The fashion industry is extremely competitive.
"Competition is for losers"
At the end of the day, the barrier for gay sex is so insanely low that any “competition” that happens is purely elective. Like, as long as you aren’t aiming to top a guy way above you on the totem pole, i.e. your expectations aren’t totally unrealistic, you can get laid with little to no pushback from your partner. So if you’re competing as a gay man, it’s either because you’ve realized that it can be fun, or it’s because you’re a loser trying to top someone way out of your league. So I can see where Peter Thiel is coming from with that book title, but the underlying logic isn’t the same for straight men.
*Though sometimes I wonder if some Ayn Randian type cynical old women could sus out the top-bottom dynamic as I've laid it out in this post. I'd love to hear more straight people's takes on homosexuality as the echo chamber of gays talking about gays can really leave me feeling insane.
**I believe this is meant to empower people who play the bottom role in homosexual relationships. I personally find this role degrading for long term situations but pointing that out is extremely unpopular politically and risks the entire scheme of homosexuality imploding on itself, if every bottom decided to see their role as degrading, so I guess it's really best if all the tops just shut up and act like it's not degrading to be playing second fiddle to a fellow full grown man, but I digress.
aiislove
11mo ago
I hate it, it's hideous. It's kind of degrading to look at because he has so much fuck you money that he doesn't even bother to give the rest of us something pretty to look at. I'm guessing the location was exactly what he wanted or something and he has so many things already that he doesn't care about aesthetics. It also pattern matches to the irritating impulse many rich leftist Americans have where they feel so guilty about their money that they think to flaunt it would enrage the proles when in reality, not flaunting it is even worse (a la Marie Antoinette's peasant dresses, many of the people of France in the late 18th century weren't mad that she was a queen flaunting her wealth, they were angry that she dressed like a peasant in her spare time)
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
I never knew exactly how we were supposed to read that part. I always felt like we were supposed to be rolling our eyes at Hermione and that her attempts at elf liberation were a satire of overly zealous leftism but then other times it felt like we were supposed to be on her side, granted I haven't engaged with the material since I was like 17. What do other people think?
When I was in highschool in the US midwest around 2007, I would flip through the cable channels when I was bored and note the race and sex of each person that was being shown as I changed to each channel. It was almost always white men. I pointed this out to other people and they thought it wasn't good. I haven't done this in years but I'm sure the demographics are not nearly as skewed in this way anymore.
Another conclusion that I could add to your list above is that the people in charge of casting in advertising are very worried about being seen as propagating white supremacy or making microaggressions toward minorities. They are not worried about white people being mad at them for not being represented because in the US it's culturally taboo to point out a lack of representation of white people. Basically advertisers are being socially conditioned to cast fewer white men.
I personally can't stand advertising and use ad blockers religiously. I would recommend it.
aiislove
8mo ago
What do you guys do when you feel stuck in a rut? It feels like all I think about is food, sex and money and it's really irritating. I'm constantly preoccupied with what I'm going to eat for my next meal, how I'm next going to get laid and how I'm going to make more money. I don't like spending time on activities that are nonproductive so I try to avoid video games. I spend a few hours every day on my computer but it's kind of a half work half mindless visual processing thing. I make money passively so I don't have to really work more than an hour or two a week but I usually end up spending a few hours more developing ideas and doing work that's not really necessary. I have a lot of free time but I spend a lot of it organizing stuff in my house and cooking. I am dating a bit but I don't really like any of the guys I'm talking to for anything long term so it feels like a dead end there. I also don't really generally like people and would rather spend time alone, I feel like these convos always go to "go to church" or "join a community" but it just sounds irritating to me.
When I used to feel this way I would just take walks outside or drive around or do chores around the house but I have done all of those to death. I have walked every path within an hour of my house, driven everywhere in my state and done many chores. I traveled for over a year and it was great but now that I'm stuck at home again the inanity of daily life is driving me crazy.
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.
Thanks for the analysis, I think you're correct.
The piece of media that really illustrated everything you're describing, for me, was the Ghibli film The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. I could write an entire essay on it as well but it really strikes at the same situation you're pointing at. Kaguya-hime's father becomes obsessed with material and societal wealth, pulls his daughter and wife away from nature and raises a girl who is so empty that by the time she ascends to heaven she has nothing to live for. This is basically the same as Susan's pursuit of material/societal wealth that drags her away from the world of Narnia (which, while a fantasy world, actually represents the world of truth/nature/God in the same way that Kaguya-hime's birth village represented truth/nature/God.)
Kaguya-hime is completely heartbreaking, by the way, and the older I get the more upsetting it is. It kind of shook me out of the path of material status chasing, it was so profound.
aiislove
11mo ago
I empathize with your sentiment but I think it's a little bit uncharitable, I mean people had a valid right to be afraid of the virus as well. My father was high risk and ended up dying from it, so to paint everyone who freaked out about the virus as a sheeple is slightly insulting, though I realize that for the majority of people they didn't have nearly as much reason to worry. I also wonder if you're living in a blue tribe setting or somewhere outside the US as the response from where I was in a more rural area wasn't nearly as sheeple-y as your post seems to indicate, plenty of people were rolling their eyes the entire time in the small town I was living in
aiislove
1yr ago
It seems like China or some other country with less stringent safety standards and a strong desire to outcompete richer countries will be chomping at the bit to adopt autonomous vehicles and other emergent technologies. The US and our allies are too cautious to dip our foot in the water, making us vulnerable. Then again the cost of labor is so much lower in poorer countries that they have less incentive to adopt them, so I don't know.
aiislove
1yr ago
I actually think it's cool, I like the surrealism of the setting and the repetitive rhythm of the audio and the physicality of the woman on the floor who is really beating herself up for the audience. I can't decipher the words or figure out where the banging is coming from but I don't think it's a terrible art piece. Obviously it's been decontextualized in this clip and I'm too lazy to find out more but I appreciate it for the absurdity alone.
And ironically I think you're wrong to say that the leaders of the western world even enjoy this, they're mostly far too cynically gone from the world of enjoyment at this point and sort of just accept it as the state of performance art today and view it through the lens of the Nth generation of like disruptive subversive irony that this class of person is supposed to view everything through at this point. I don't know it that makes it better or worse for you.
What kind of art do you prefer?
aiislove
1yr ago
What are some niche things you like to watch on youtube? The more obscure/random the better. Here are some of mine:
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People grocery shopping in Seoul/Tokyo (they don't speak, they just show them picking up items and putting them in their carts)
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People who use metal detectors and "fish" with magnets to find old relics (usually in the Eastern US and Western Europe, lots of civil war bullets and things like that are found)
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This guy who builds huts and other primitive technologies in the woods by himself
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Nail art videos
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People building small models of things (like dioramas etc)
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People doing traditional crafts (especially Japanese art craft like urushi and kintsugi, wagashi making etc)
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Old documentaries (especially from the 70s or about foreign cultures or groups of people who are unfamiliar to me)
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Videos from people who've bought castles in France showing their homes
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How It's Made type videos (particularly bakery food production)
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"Walk with me" type videos where people post high res videos of their walk through neighborhoods or nature
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70s cable tv variety hour skits
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Women doing their makeup while talking about true crime stories
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Videos of people eating at fancy cafes and restaurants in Paris
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Videos about people who live in far flung places like rural Alaska or Siberia and how they survive or make their home
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"Nostalgic footage" videos ranging from early 1900s street scene footage to compilations of everyday 70s and 80s scenes in east Asia
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Animated fairy tale videos (usually anime or Eastern European ones for me)
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Soviet movies (I particularly like fantasy ones for girls)
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Animal Crossing island tours (people showing you how they've decorated their islands)
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Walmart Story Time videos (mostly girls telling you about when they worked at walmart and weird stuff they saw or experienced)
I could go on but that's probably enough haha, let me know if anyone is interested enough in any of these and I can give recommendations for videos or channels to check out. But yeah I'm always looking for new interesting ways people use youtube so I'd love to hear what you all are into
aiislove
1yr ago
I've had similar thoughts regarding the UFO discourse as well. In my opinion it's not about aliens, it's all a military public opinion psyop. Copypasta'd from the old world:
Regarding the UFO discourse from the government/military lately. It seems like an intentional program to explore how information disseminates on the internet. Even coining the phrase "UAP" is exactly what you would do to track a new meme (good SEO) and getting Obama to talk about it on Jimmy Kimmel or whatever is exactly what you'd do to get people talking about it like you're marketing a new movie premiere. The government/military is testing out their propaganda powers to see how information spreads and disseminates online with a red herring like UFO's so that later they can harness this intelligence to sell their next war in the realm of public opinion the next time they need to do so (since the public seems to be taking narrative building into their own hand and crowdfunding narratives with the diminishing power of the mainstream media)
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
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.
aiislove
1yr ago
The distinction you make in the two modes of homosexuality in your second paragraph is interesting. It seems to match to a pattern I've noticed among homosexuals myself, where more effeminate gay men tend to have monogamous partners serially, whereas more masculine passing gay men tend to operate in the first relationship style you describe with older/younger males (and also this tends to overlap with triad/poly relationships among gay men much more than the effeminate mode does.)
In my personal experience, growing up, the media I consumed tended to depict gay relationships in the former fem/monogamous mode, so I sort of believed I was meant to operate in that mode as well, but as I grew older I realized I was drawn to the second type of gay relationships much more, which also coincided with my personal behaviors shifting from effeminacy to more masculinity. Or rather my self perception that shifted from a more feminine self image to a more masculine one as I aged.
I think the two modes maybe derive from the psychological concept of self that a gay man can hold: He asks himself, Do I identify more with my effeminacy and need to sort of castrate a man to be in control sexually? Or am I secure enough in my masculinity that I can adopt this other mode of relationships where I am the bull/dad/dominant partner/alpha? This also stems from the fundamental nature of homosexuality making odd compromises necessary. Most gay couples I know with small age gaps tend to grate at each other over time because the fundamental power structure is unbalanced when they are too evenly matched physically, age gap relationships tend to be more stable and longer lasting. The monogamous/effeminate relationships can be interpreted to reflect feminine values (safety seeking, "soft power") and the prison/military sexuality reflects masculine values (pleasure seeking, "hard power"), both deriving from the uncertainty of the homosexual ego as to his particular optimal role in relationships.
There is also a class and culture component to this today, where I see more well to do gay men and men from cities in monogamous/feminine relationship mode and more working class/rural men in more of the older/younger masculine mode.
This also reflects an interesting distinction in Middle Eastern/Islamic culture where homosexuality has traditionally been an age gap relationship, which seems to be relatively tolerated, compared with the basically western/modern invention of the feminine mode of homosexuality coupled with LGBT identity which is seen as forbidden and not tolerated in Middle Eastern cultures.
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
Great post, you've made lots of interesting points, thanks for sharing your perspective.
The weak exist at the mercy of the strong, so they are subservient to the strong.
Context, I'm a white American currently in East Asia (not China) and this exact point I think is the hugest difference between the mindset of rich countries and poor countries (or more specifically, today, rich old countries like USA and Japan and currently poor/recently poor countries like China, Thailand and South Korea.) There is more of a palpable understanding of the risks and dangers of reality in the cultures of poor countries that the US and our aging allies seem to be increasingly oblivious to. Your statement above reads as extremely low class and would probably be shocking to most people in the US but it's so blatantly true that I can't help but feel like any culture that understands it is bound to outcompete any that ignores it for political or social reasons.
it causes me regular frustration that the vast majority of westerners fail to grasp that they're working off of fundamentally different values, let alone understand that they will naturally optimize for those values. Chalk it up to the American belief in universalism[...]
Yes, that's exactly it. The west is too myopically focused on the belief that everyone is equal that they fail to even imagine that a civilization halfway around the world and thousands years older could possibly have a different set of values, for fear that they come across looking racist, when a bit of cultural pragmatism could really help steer things in a more sane direction.
Yes, exactly, that's why I find the concept of police abolition/defunding the police so frightening. It doesn't mean that suddenly there are no cops, it means that suddenly everyone is a cop.
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