cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1d ago
I think I mostly love the light buzz I get from being tipsy. The laughter comes easier, I am more socially open, and I tend to just enjoy things more.
I also generally enjoy imbibing cold liquids of all kinds. Including just plain ice water. But adding flavor or carbonation usually makes it better. Regular beer fulfills that but so does N/A beers.
I dislike being very drunk, and I dislike the health side effects of lots of drinking. But otherwise almost everything about beer is awesome to me.
cjet79
2d ago
I mentioned elsewhere but I think once a week is a good balancing point where I'm getting something enjoyable out of alcohol and not overdoing it. That is where I'd like to be where I can have a fun social outing with drinking once a week, and otherwise I'm not drinking. And if the social outing doesn't happen I don't want to feel the desire to drink anyways.
I've been at that point before. It just morphed slowly over the last two years to where I'm now at. Now that my wife isn't drinking I very quickly noticed "oh, I'm drinking just about every day".
I've seen my dad get to a worse point with his drinking so I know that's in my genes, but my dad has also lately been where I want to be where it's just a few drinks for social things once a week or every other week.
cjet79
2d ago
Good idea, I do just generally like liquids and drinking interesting flavors. Sugary soda was my vice before alcohol.
cjet79
2d ago
Generally the beers im drinking are super light, I go for low carbs, which often ends up being low alcohol as well. Miller Lite my go to, and it is 4.2% alcohol.
And yeah the N/A stuff like Athletic actually tastes better than my normal beers ... its just that it is heavier on the carbs. And keeping my diabetes under control matters more to me than the alcohol.
cjet79
2d ago
I have quit for months at a time to make sure that I can. Last time I did that was a few years ago though. I've got my A1c down to 5 for the past two years, so the diabetes feels under control, but I'm just treating it like its permanent. So no more desserts, no more sugar drinks, and avoiding carb heavy meals.
Quitting sugar was way harder than quitting alcohol. Like incomparably harder. Had days where I screamed and nearly cried from the frustration of not being able to have sweet sugary snacks again. Quitting alcohol was kinda like just having a slightly less active social life, and I'm an introvert already so that was easy to fall into.
My wife will also be holding me to account on the no drinking thing, so this is just me doubling up on the accountability. She will not be drinking at all since we just discovered she is pregnant. Hopefully this one survives.
cjet79
2d ago
I'll probably switch to non alcoholic beers to have with my dinner. Sometimes I just want a bit of the flavor.
But I tend to mostly drink late night, after 9pm and my kids are down. And I mostly drink alone which seems silly and pointless to me.
cjet79
2d ago
It's been slipping more from choice to habit, and that's exactly what I don't like and want to break.
I only mildly look forward to it. I've certainly noticed that if I do it too often it loses the fun. It's a mood boost and makes my enjoyment of comedy and social settings greater, and my likelihood to pursue sex with my wife much greater. I think an optimal amount of drinking for me would be like once a week. That would be my goal with this change.
cjet79
2d ago
I don't do THC. Mostly a lack of interest in the effects.
I actually manage to make it through dinner most of the time. It's late night an hour or two before bed when I really need to avoid it.
My wife is pregnant, hopefully this one will survive, but that should be some good built in accountability. I was anticipating that id already start to get the accountability even if I didn't want it.
Thanks for the well wishes!
cjet79
2d ago
Sugary drinks gave me the worst hangovers. And I don't have sugar anymore cuz of a diabetes diagnosis. So hangovers are pretty mild.
My sleep schedule has also been real shitty lately, and bad sleep can feel about as bad as a hangover for me.
I am certain the drinking is not helping my sleeping, so it's another reason I'd like to cut back.
cjet79
2d ago
I feel like my drinking has gotten steadily worse this year. I'm drinking nearly every night. A light nights its just a light beer or two. On heavy nights its probably 2-5 light beers, and 2-4 drinks of liquor. (usually never the max of both).
I would like to do this far less. So I'll report back here every month or so on decreased drinking to try and hold myself accountable.
cjet79
2d ago
It always feels like there are so many offramps to tragedies like this that by the time the actual incident occurs there is nothing useful left to learn. Whatever happened in those last ten to twenty seconds is basically inconsequential.
This whole thing could have not happened if:
- A lady didn't call the police for something she could have checked herself with a powerful enough flashlight.
- The police checked the backyard and then left.
- The police did not enter her home.
- One police officer remained outside with the lady while the other entered to check (if anything really needed to be checked).
And none of these necessarily need to be policy changes for the police department (aside from maybe the second one, no need to stay around after you've resolved a call). But they were all reasonable offramps where the tragedy might not have occurred. These many offramps mean that the likelihood of this happening in the first place must have been really low, but also the likelihood of it happening again is now even smaller.
cjet79
2d ago
Ya I mean it's a word in the English language we are talking about, not a mathematical definition. Of course it's a little fuzzy and subjective.
Did you have some kind of objective criteria for athleticism that I don't know of? I think this is like the 4th time I've asked you to define it and every time you just don't answer. It's a little silly to criticize me for a lack of an objective definition. After all, what could be more subjective than no definition at all!
cjet79
3d ago
My experience in both cancellation waves was only to be booted off a few forums that I didn't like much anyways. I'm not gonna claim I know which one was worse. I find it plausible that one cancellation waves could have been ten times worse than the other one and we wouldn't really be able to notice.
I am only certain that there was a cancellation wave, not how bad it was.
If there has been massive escalation by one side that is only an additional reason for me to worry.
cjet79
3d ago
There was widespread low level harassment of gays, arabs, and anti-war people. If the dixie chiks is all you remember then I don't think you really remember. Even as late as 2007 people were freaking out that Ron Paul could say something like "they don't hate us for our freedom, they hate us for our interventions in the middle east", the failure to cancel him was a turning point as well as the general 2008 financial and housing crisis. Bill Mahr got kicked off a TV show for saying that people who committed suicidal terror attacks probably weren't "cowards". Comedians were mostly immune to being cancelled back then, but they loved to be "edgy" by picking at the fanaticism of the right.
Social media wasn't a thing so cancellations weren't as visible and weren't as easily documented. But anyone who grew up in a small town and paid enough attention probably has stories.
cjet79
3d ago
What short memories people have. This event has made me think I am doomed to live in a world of never-ending reprisals. How silly of me to once think that only the middle east was locked in the hell hole that is endlessly escalating conflict and revenge.
The language used by the right is very much exactly the same damn language the left was using a decade ago.
Scott wrote some impassioned pleas back then for the left to not go down this path. I give him lots of kudos for being consistent. I give everyone here who has called for lots of revenge zero kudos.
The right already had its fun being the purgers. Was no one else alive and remembering what the 2000-2010 decade was like? The slightest lack of extreme patriotism was enough for "cancellation". It was not hard to find stories of small towns and chruches treating gay people terribly. And about a decade of that treatment led the left to feeling quite a bit of bloodlust. So when power dynamics had shifted enough by the early 2010s there were a bunch of bloodthirsty leftists that were happy to live by the sword.
I made my position clear last week:
https://www.themotte.org/post/1077/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/230501?context=8#context
I suppose when it comes down to it I just want a maximum punishment for the spoken word. And cancellations often go way beyond my nebulous line for what a maximum punishment should be. People should suffer social embarrassment for a day, maybe a week for really bad things. And then it should be let go. The written word can maybe receive twice as harsh of punishments. If they are some form of sociopath that isn't really punished by social embarrassment then we can work something else out as a punishment that is about equally as harsh.
Humans aren't perfect, and sometimes they slip up and say dumb things without realizing they have crossed a line. I don't know if you think you've lived a perfect life and never said anything wrong before, but I know I've certainly said things I shouldn't have. I would like to not lose my livelihood over saying those things. I specifically remember one of the earliest instances of me saying a wrong thing, I was bullied by a kid in Elementary school, in middle school that kid committed suicide, in Highschool I made an edgy joke to a friend about being glad he wasn't around to torment me anymore, the friend winced and didn't laugh. I felt mild social embarrassment, and learned not to joke about that. That is an easy one to describe that I feel safe sharing because I can say I was an idiot in highschool, but I've made dumber and worse speech decisions in my adult life that I'd absolutely not feel safe sharing.
Humans also sometimes hold views that are not socially acceptable or within the Overton window. We are specifically on a forum that has been chased out of a larger social media site, because we want to allow people to say things outside of the Overton window. I am very uncomfortable with social rules that make it impossible to state anything outside of the Overton window. My own Dad often says things that are not acceptable on wider social media. He has been temp-banned on Facebook a few times for things he has said. He isn't really willing to not say some of his thoughts. Banning him from social media doesn't really remove him as a person, he is still out there thinking those forbidden thoughts. "Jokes" are one way to tease out the limits of the Overton window. The attempt to use humor, even if the attempt fails, shows that the person in question cares about social conventions. This is a sign that you don't need to punish them as harshly.
To all those about to say something like "its not fair that they got to be mean! I want to be mean back to them!" Don't worry. In a decade when the right has once again gone too far and the power dynamics switch back I will once again say that we shouldn't be "cancelling" people. But it will be the Left that is not listening. All will become fair over time, and meanwhile I won't be pouring gasoline on the house fire.
cjet79
4d ago
Google favors YouTube explainer videos even when those videos seem to be outright garbage. I hate it.
cjet79
4d ago
I talked with my boss at work about it. We work at a non profit that does libertarian policy, so it's not strange to talk politics. Both out feelings were "holy shit we just narrowly dodged a civil war".
Among neighborhood dads group which is very politically mixed, it was a somewhat similar and very sober tone. We quickly started using humor to cope. None of us with little kids want a civil war to kick off.
cjet79
4d ago
It's a personal feeling about what is "athletic". It's not random.
I'm not sure if any traits are not genetic, so I don't even know what would be non genetic athletic traits. Even willpower seems genetic to me.
I'm still confused about how you define athletic. How does being really tall make you a good athlete?
cjet79
4d ago
Inter-generational responsibility
Sometimes I have these moments when I realize I've got a big hole in my mental models for other people. This came up a few weeks ago, but I didn't get around to posting about it because other stuff happened.
The hole in this case is inter-generational responsibility. To what extent are parents responsible for the actions of their kids, or kids responsible for the actions of their parents. And how much of that responsibility carries across multiple generations.
My answer has always been something like "kids are never responsible for the actions of older generations, and parents are mostly responsible for the actions of their kids while they are guardians of those kids, but most of that responsibility goes away when the child reaches adulthood". I thought this was close to most people's take, but I'm pretty certain its not. I had all the clues and information I needed to put this together sooner, I just didn't. So any comments that basically say "how are you so stupid that you only just now figured this out" my response is yeah yeah yeah, whatever, congrats on being so smart, I was busy noticing and caring about other things.
Evidence I had but didn't really put together:
- The bible talking about killing off entire families as punishments.
- Long lasting family feuds.
- Feudal level countries killing off entire families as punishments.
- Ongoing demands for reparations.
Anyways, now that I am unmoored from my previous set of assumptions, I'm not really sure where to set anchor again. I'm curious what people here believe in terms of inter-generational responsibility, and what you think the general consensus is on inter-generational responsibility.
In partial defense of my original view and thinking it was standard ... the US legal system mostly seems to take the same viewpoint. Deviations by other countries legal systems is often something that is noticed and gets commented on. Like North Korea still doing full family punishments, or Singapore having a built in legal responsibility for kids to take care of their parents in old age, or the grown adult in Italy that sued his parents for not continuing to treat him like a kid.
But the political system doesn't so clearly take the same viewpoint. Welfare and social security are mainly paid for by the currently young and healthy to the current old and infirm. Debt is taken on by the federal government, and that debt will inevitably be paid off by the children of those alive today.
cjet79
4d ago
No one responded, but I will let you know that this got multiple AAQC reports. So it will probably be in the next quality contributions roundup. People definitely liked it, good work!
Politics is the Mind
KillerChangerYudowsky wrote an Politics is the Mind-Killer on less wrong back in 2007 on this topic. For an article with the supposed purpose of convincing people ... it kinda sucks at that goal.
To read it uncharitably:
Perhaps the biggest problem with the article is that there is a baked in assumption: that the purpose of the mind is for rationality. Once the mind has been touched by politics it is changed into an irrational thing, and thus it has been "killed" or deprived of its main purpose. This is exactly backwards. The mind was built for politics, language, and social games. Humans have taken this purpose built machine dedicated to politics and managed to make it do other things like math and rationality. And noticeably, these other things are very hard for most people to do. While politics is a mixture of fun, addicting, and often easy for even "idiots" to grasp.
The Drug of Politics
Switching gears, back to charitable. I've always loved the idea of "politics as the mind-killer". Because it so neatly fits my own experience. I was part of the Ron Paul rEVOLution in 2007. I remember sitting outside in 20 degree weather guarding a Ron Paul Blimp from anyone that might want to come by and cut the line, or hopefully just answering friendly people that had questions. I saw the phone survey polls that he wasn't anywhere close to winning the nomination, and I didn't ever really believe them, even when they were born out by the actual primary elections. I was filled with so much hope and copium. Him losing felt like a physical blow.
I came out of that experience like a drug user coming down from a haze. Why had I been so dumb and stupid? Why had I ignored good data? Why had I spent so much time arguing with people to try and convince them? Why did I think I was winning arguments instead of just exhausting the people around me?
The answer was available online in the same sorts of places I'd found Ron Paul. I'd been "mind-killed". I'd gotten very very high on the drug of politics, and I'd never had a strong hit before so I had no tolerance built up. All rationality had left me. So I swung hard in the opposite direction. I became the kind of abolitionist that was a recovering alcoholic. I berated and argued with people about politics being the mind-killer and did so far harder than I ever stubbed for Ron Paul. The irony was lost on me.
An Illusive middle truth
Over a decade later and I've mellowed a lot. I shake my head at the overly enthusiastic supporters of this or that politician. But I'm not gonna say anything to them. I'm not playing the part of a wide eyed DARE presenter yelling "never do it even once!" instead I'm now in the role of the "exhausted" participant that those young operatives get to "win" arguments with.
I don't know if either side is correct, I don't even feel certain that there is some kind of middle ground where a little bit of controlled politics is the way to go.
I'm only certain that politics changes us. Like going through puberty, seeing evil, having sex, your first child, or your first experience with death. You aren't the same afterwards. Once you've seen arguments as soldiers, or motives attached to every move its hard to go back. A conflict theory view of the world is pernicious and infectious, while mistake theory is fragile and hard to reassemble once broken. It places everyone in a prisoner's dilemma, where mistake theory is cooperating, and conflict theory is defecting.
I don't believe it with absolute certainty, but I am pretty sure that the changes wrought by politics are not for the best. Religion and philosophy have both sought to place some ground rules on politics and specifically how you treat other people. Because it is not hard to find examples throughout history of politics going far enough to get ugly and to turn into violence or war. This is a part of Yudowsky's article that is correct: politics is war by other means. But it is our attempt at a polite war, a war with rules and far less violence than actual war. Politics makes us worse, makes us uglier.
Scott has written of archipelego as utopia. It is noticeably a land that mostly tries to avoid politics altogether. The solution is not to argue over scarce resources, the solution is to infinitely subdivide an infinite pool of resources. This is where the necessity of politics becomes apparent. We don't live in that world of infinite resources. We have to figure out ways of subdividing finite resources. War and violence is the way of nature in figuring out the allocation of resources. Creatures eat each other to take another's resources. Politics is the human alternative. Our way of dividing scarce resources when we would otherwise use violence.
In that way politics is beautiful. It doesn't deserve the label of a mind killer. It was humanity's first triumph over nature, but it was such an early triumph that some of us mistake it as part of nature. However, I do not want to tear down the warning signs that so many have sought to erect. Politics will fundamentally change your mind. Most people who come down from the drug of politics don't have good things to say about it. Be ware of politics, but do not hate it.
More options
Context Copy link