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CDR in the US Navy Reserve. Former Googler. Computer programmer. I'm here mostly to read.
User ID: 2527
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9mo ago
People aren't very good about making the distinction, but note the difference between the Ferber method and "cry it out". The Ferber method is good and effective, and cry-it-out is kinda mean and not very effective. tl;dr (but you should actually read up on the Ferber method before having a baby so you can do it): the Ferber method is to put your baby down drowsy but awake and let them cry for a set amount of time before going in to comfort them. The Ferber method offers guidelines for how often to check in on crying children and how to provide reassurance. You'll progressively increase the time between each check-in, ultimately teaching your kid to be able to put themselves to sleep.
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9mo ago
If you haven't already read it, you should check out Worm, Set in Stone, HPMOR (of course) but also the unfinished (as far as I can tell) Project Lawful, and Unsong.
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9mo ago
I disagree with a lot of what you've said, but I appreciate you saying it here and explaining your stance clearly. I see you're kind of getting dogpiled by people who disagree, but I've learned a bit about green activist viewpoints from all your interactions here. Thank you.
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9mo ago
Could you point out where in that article (or elsewhere) there is any important insight provided by the mainstream of constructvism? I do not have a positive view of constructivism as a useful way to analyze the world or predict future events, and that article further cemented my view since it mostly seems like a posthoc justification for obviously-true statements whenever it's testable: "Constructivists argue that states can have multiple identities that are socially constructed through interaction with other actors." is untestable, "500 British nuclear weapons are less threatening to the United States than five North Korean nuclear weapons" is obvious without constrictivism.
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9mo ago
Colleges have 4 competing goals. Figure out which one you want and decide from there. Want a career that will make you lots of money? Figure out how you want to do that and get those skills and certifications and whatever else you need, no college necessary unless it's part of the certification process. Want to be a Renaissance Man, with a life enriched by an understanding of history, literature, art, etc.? State college might be appropriate. Want to contribute to human knowledge by doing Science and writing important papers in important journals? Find a school with at least some prestige in your field of choice and be prepared to play a lot of politics and be poor all your life. Want to be part of a grand social experiment of dismantling the patriarchy and white supremacy helping ensure equity across America? Well, don't, but if you must, then pick one of the many schools that makes that their priority above any actual education of its students.
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9mo ago
I'm not educated on these terms and this whole school of thought, and right now the gap between my understanding of how the world works and what you've linked/described about Constructivism is too great for me to understand your points. I do not see a reason why I'm not allowed to conclude that nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea should elicit a different international response than nuclear weapons in the hands of Great Britain without the constructivist need to claim that the nature of the nuclear weapons is different between the two. Like, I can change my opinions, reactions, and decisions between a good adult friend and the 14-year-old across the street when each asks to borrow my car. I'm allowed to do that without needing to believe that my car has changed. And there are inherent truths about nuclear weapons and cars that would be true regardless of social context: nuclear weapons make a big explosion when successfully activated, and cars have 4 wheels. A society that believes the will of a supernatural entity is the only cause of fire is unable to modify a nuclear detonation through prayer no matter how important the supernatural entity is in their society. A society that believes the number 4 to be bad luck and that refuses to allow anything to have that number of wheels is allowed to collectively say a car has 3 wheels, but that doesn't make it true.
Where are you getting your definition of "realists"? In the colloquial meaning of "realist", I don't see why they would conclude that a country whose government has committed genocide would be less likely to intervene to stop another genocide. The obvious conclusion seems like it could be reached by observing the real world, with real, testable things that really exist, regardless of social constructs. Measure: has each country committed genocide, and have they intervened to stop another genocide. Calculate: historically, what's the chance a country that has committed genocide will intervene to stop another genocide versus one that hasn't. Predict: given two countries, one that has committed genocide and one that hasn't, which is more likely to intervene to stop this particular genocide. The answer is independent of social context.
Again, I'm ignorant here. I want to understand why there is any benefit for believing that social context changes the reality of objects, or that we're not allowed to consider any actor as different than any other actor without constructivism. Because the downstream effects of constructivism I see are awful: college professors claiming that aboriginal interpretations of the world are just as valid as the scientific method, and the superweapon of unfalsifiable "lived experiences" that trump rational debate. I want to stop those things, and from my perspective shunning constructivism - making it costly and embarrassing to believe and support - seems to be a good solution. I don't see any loss, because what you're saying constructivism adds all seem like common sense that we could figure out without that structure.
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9mo ago
For anyone following along, some handy Wikipedia links:
- Realism (international relations)
- Constructivism (international relations), which is apparently the type of Constructivism we're talking about here.
I do not believe that Googling Constructivism, IR, or realist would have got me there within 2 minutes, but mea culpa. I should have tried harder to figure it out from context.
I don't care about the philosophy of international relations, so I can't claim an educated opinion on whether "previous IR schools like realism were unable to predict that the responses would be different." That sounds stupid to me as a layman. Other times I have heard that an entire field has failed to notice something obvious, the error has been with the person making the claim and not with the field itself. Gdanning, I appreciate your attempts to explain it to me, but I remain unconvinced that "The mainstream of constructvism has important insights in many fields". If I need to understand the history of the philosophy of international relations in order to see the important insights of Constructivism, then I'm comfortable dismissing its insights as "not actually important in the grand scheme of things", which I will file in the Constructivism folder in my mind next to "that stupid philosophy that people are referring to when they say 'reality is a social construct'".
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9mo ago
I have lost all faith that the soft sciences, including the philosophy of international relations, actually lead to a better understanding of the world. "Not actually important in the grand scheme of things" because I do not believe that learning the philosophy of international relations would enable anyone (including people actively involved in international relations) to make better decisions or better predict the future. For what it's worth, I do have some ground-level experience with international relations: I was assigned to a US military base in a foreign country. I was fairly senior, and the OIC of my particular area. I dealt plenty with the US State Department, the host national government, and the large government-owned corporation that provided us some services. What mattered was people skills and common sense. Having read the above wikipedia pages, I can say that nobody ever talked about any aspects of those theories, or behaved in any way differently than could be predicted by people skills and common sense.
When there's a claim from academics (which you have relayed to me in this conversation; please don't misinterpret this as an attack on you!) that we would be unable to distinguish our response between British and North Korean nuclear weapons without Constructivism, I think the appropriate response is "Fuck you".
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9mo ago
people are much more likely to pursue the easy path that is sold well than the hard path that actually provides what they want
This is exactly what's described in "The only Theodore Dalrymple article anyone reads", as Scott Alexander said. Without cultural pressure to guide people into a meaningful life, many (most?) people just coast along and find themselves sad when they reach middle age and they realize they're missing something.
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9mo ago
Not to detract from any of your points, but as a 20-year US military veteran, I believe you have a gross overestimation of "military levels of fitness" and "ready for deployment". Add caveats of "specops" or "infantry" or "Marine" and I'd agree, but holy shit you would not believe the fatbodies I've had to work with in a warzone.
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9mo ago
I'll believe it when I see a cop lose their job for a similar donation to someone left-coded.
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9mo ago
+1 to Mother of Learning. I finished the last book just a week ago and thoroughly enjoyed them.
The Divine Dungeon series is another one to check out.
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9mo ago
The book A Christmas Story, which is a collection of 5 short stories that inspired the movie. It's hilarious, given you find the movie hilarious.
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8mo ago
Saw this song shared a few times on Twitter/X yesterday. I don't normally go for country music but this was good. Talented fellow, and I hope his career takes off.
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8mo ago
I would be very interested in your examples of "public advocates of hbd holding spicier takes in private", with the added conditions that
- they be public advocates with some legitimacy and following (specifically: published on hbd/genetics in a peer-reviewed journal, or >1000 followers on a social media platform, or similar credentials)
- their "spicy take" specifically includes "how they actually advocate for treating individual Blacks", and that advocated treatment involves some actual harm beyond hurt feelings or missed socioeconomic opportunities.
I predict you won't be able to find anything about denying individuals human rights based on race, only about assuming individual blacks are more likely to commit crimes and be poor at high-g loaded tasks than individuals of other races. I commit to making a personal bayesian update of my worldview if you can fine 2 or more examples that meet this criteria, since you used "advocates" plural.
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8mo ago
Kids will work, or go be delinquents, or do whatever it is they want to do. Why force them into school at all? I just don't see the problem.
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8mo ago
My understanding is that truancy problems usually start after all those things are taught in elementary school. I disagree that basic algebra is valuable when, in a few years, someone with an 85 IQ will be able to ask the Large Language Model on their phone to solve the problem for them, and it will get it right. You say teaching numeracy is important, I think by any reasonable measure we have tried and failed to do that. It would be easier to change societies expectations to be "people aren't expected to understand things with numbers", than it would be to rely on an assumption that call center employees can understand what it means when they push buttons on a calculator.
You're right that we shouldn't abolish school entirely, and I apologize for being unclear in my comment. I propose we keep schools but make them optional, at the parent's discretion. We are forcing too much education on people who are too stupid to benefit from it, and in the process we're torturing children who would actually benefit from more schooling.
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7mo ago
Thanks for sharing, and good luck! I'd love to hear about your favorite recipes with what's left for you to eat, maybe in the Wednesday or Friday thread.
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7mo ago
The conflict in the Mahabarata, which could be loosely described as a Hindu holy book, is instigated when the evil uncle and cousin lure the emperor into a dice game with weighted dice. The way it's described (at least in the translation I've read) paints the emperor as fairly blame-free as he bets successively more and more on the dice game trying to chase his losses to the point where he loses his kingdom. The responsibility lies chiefly with the uncle and cousin who made the gambling available.
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6mo ago
I really enjoyed Bo Burhnam's Inside (wait, not like that...) and he had a monologue that touched on this very issue. Transcript (though I recommend listening/watching the video):
Here’s a question for you guys. Um… Is it… is it necessary? Is it necessary that every single person on this planet um, expresses every single opinion that they have on every single thing that occurs all at the same time? Is that… is that necessary?
Um… Or to ask in a slightly different way, um, can… can anyone shut the fuck up? Can… can anyone, any… any… any one, any single one, can any one… shut the fuck up about anything– About any… any single thing? Can any single person shut the fuck up about any singlе thing for an hour? You know, is that… is that possible?
It seems to have peaked during the Floyd riots, but we're still recovering from a time when everyone was expected to have an opinion on everything. It's hard to turn that off.
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6mo ago
I find myself frustrated at how so many of the links in the unz article are now dead or censored. The video you linked seems to be the only one that is still widely available. With the recent history of narrative-shaping through selective release of evidence, I don't think the one uncensored video should weigh that heavily in judging whether Fields was the victim of a politicized and unfair trial, but that's just me.
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6mo ago
(Points if you can guess roughly how far into the linked NPR article you can get until the author writes the sentence "That really started to change in 2020, when police officers killed George Floyd in Minneapolis.")
Goddamnit I thought you were kidding. That really is in the article. So zero points for me, I guess.
I have 3 kids under 6 right now and strongly endorse every one of these recommendations. Doula's are absolutely worth the money, and you should be shopping around for one ASAP if you don't already have one.
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