coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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3d ago
But it’s at least the case that Jesus larped, and then the Disciples larped when writing about specific miracles.
People have no idea how real world change is actually effected. Freemasonry sprung out of a LARP novel about a fictitious Rosicrucian Brotherhood; freemasonry rituals involved LARPing; this organization had a huge effect on the modern West. If you are an atheist, it’s impossible to see Christianity as anything other than a Hellenic / Hellenized-Jewish LARP over the Old Testament — yet it’s the most important movement of religious history. The entirety of the Roman elite were engaged in various “mystery cult” LARP rituals, like the Mithraists who were LARPing their own version of a Persian cult. Hitler, of course, was motivated by Wagner’s Live Opera Role Playing work Rienzi, a LORP, and then joined a LARPing movement filled with LARPing occultists who inflated their numbers, and before all his speeches he neurotically LARPed the gestures to seem organic and impassioned. It was LARPing all the way down, and the last thing you can say about Hitler is that his influence on reality was small.
The thing about the LARP is that the more you do it, the more it becomes true. If I were to throw you into the Chinese military, to do their ritual allegiances, you would be faking it 100%. But when you fake it, there’s invisible peer pressure and then music and ambience which changes your memory of the event… The second time you do it, it’s only 95% fake. After enough times, you wouldn’t be LARPing anymore. Provided that the ritual is actually reinforcing the right things. Not too dissimilar to the techniques used by the Chinese in the Korean War to gradually change a person’s identity. Of course, it’s far easier when you yourself are interested in modifying your own identity.
It’s like if I just repeat an affirmation, that’s not going to do much. But if I repeat it while elaborating upon all the connections in my life, and all the benefits, and I imagine various rewards of the affirming identity, over time I will believe it. Our own identity is constructed by memories, and we can modify our memories and make new ones — ergo, we can construct our own identity. This is akin to sports hypnotism. It works.
LARPing isn’t fake, it’s pre-reality. What’s fake is people pretending that they are in reality, when they are doing nothing. This comprises a lot of posting online. Posting online does little; LARPing identity rituals can change the entire history of the world. I imagine that this is part of the reason why IRL organizations are routinely slandered as LARPs — it is a useful tool to prevent anything that has actual potency from disrupting current structures.
Also, “authentic belief” itself is kind of mysterious as a concept. If I’m some guy online, and I write all these logical reasons for why Jesus is definitely God, but my behavior in the world does not evidence this belief, then do I really believe it? I mean, Jesus says right there that giving away my wealth gives me 100fold in this life and the next. So, why am I not doing it? There would be no better investment or use of my time. The reason no one does it is because they don’t actually believe. Whatever they say they believe, it doesn’t matter, because their revealed preference belief is that they don’t believe. So their criticism of others’ lack of belief is Pharaiscal. They would be more faithful to a Mr Beast challenge prize. And well, of course, Jesus also assumes this, hence why he spends so much time talking about how we need just the faith/trust the size of a mustard seed. I think that, we don’t really believe as we think we believe; we believe we believe, because this feels good; in actual fact, in our soul, we do not believe. And we don’t believe because there is insufficient social reinforcement / identity-rituals regarding the belief. The “faith statements” are something of a stretch or exercise: you practice believing that this bread is real flesh, and that the man was born a virgin and revived from death, in a socially-reinforcing way; and though you will never fully believe, you will at least be convinced part of the way, that it’s a good idea to be kind and a little giving. The faith statement is not a belief statement (we don’t accurately know what we believe) it’s instead an exercise with a mechanical consequence in our behavior.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
Another poster in that thread asked you for your research notes. Do you know of any accessible articles or books on this subject that I could share with normie friends and family?
I haven’t found a singular source for this kind of “dark arts” of manipulation. Everything I’ve learned has been via trawling through studies on google scholar, I’m afraid. If I write a longer post on all the ways we can be inadvertently / invisibly manipulated, I’ll ping.
I have no problem with billionaires investing, provided that every single time they take that money out for personal use, it is taxed so that most of the returns go to other people, and not wasted on their own consumption. This is an easy way to get the best of both worlds. Charity is part of the problem. Look at how Bezos’ wife spent her fortune on racial justice advocacy. I fundamentally dispute that “charity” can be better than raising the middle class worker’s quality of life, unless that charity is for something that actually does this. I have no problem with a law that demands billionaires give money to useful charities.
As for “subsidizing new technology”, I also dispute this and think that wealth inequality reduces technological development. This is because of economies of scale and competition. You can’t buy a new compact cassette player which is as compact as older models in their heyday, because the factories only built models with such precision because of the millions of people looking to buy them. When it’s only one wealthy person buying something, as opposed to millions of people with more money, the results are always worse. This is due to economies of scale and also due to the tastelessness of most billionaires. A billionaire alone could never get an iPhone made, only tens of millions of consumers (at least). Or if you consider the video game industry — there are billionaires who love video games, yet not a single product made specifically for billionaires. Instead, the best titles are made for millions of consumers, or else by a small group who has the “resources” to attempt to make a groundbreaking title!
coffee_enjoyer
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9d ago
I think the question of which economic system is “right” should relate to function and results, which necessarily involves understanding evolutionary instincts (perhaps more than anything else) and metrics of national wellbeing. Our evolutionary nature enjoys both ownership and sharing. It requires incentive and status signaling to do things. It works best with peer competition for status.
So the question of ownership should be a question of degree, not “what is it” or “is it good”; ownership is our evolved desire and understanding that a thing is ours, which we crave knowing, and this concept is simply implemented differently in different economic systems. The healthiest and most dominant people have even more of this instinct, it would seem. A big problem with “capitalism” in my mind is: if we are giving people resources in excess of what is required to incentivize them, then it’s wasted resources. If Bezos would do all the same Amazon stuff at only 20% of earnings, then it’s wasteful to allow Bezos to keep the leftover 80%. Because all the wealth of billionaires in America combined is the lifetime earnings of something like 1.25 million median Americans; more when factoring in billionaire lifetime earnings and not just current wealth; there are better uses for it than expensive properties and cosmetics and ex wives and so on. Like, fuck, imagine being able to allocate one million people toward a project? And the project is necessarily better than the prodigal billionaire? It’s crazy all the resources we waste based on the modern fiction that people “deserve” what “they” made. I want utopia, not capitalist purity spiraling.
coffee_enjoyer
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9d ago
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Tell me up front any surprising or interesting takeaways, so I know whether I ought to read it. If there are none, delete.
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Get to the point, as efficiently and clearly as possible. Smaller sentences are always better, as we digest information in units. Long sentences are for pretentiousness or concealing stupidity, or both.
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If you have successfully organized the information well, you can make it enjoyable to consume. Never in such a way that it negates the significance or order of the information. A little wordplay, a fun reference, or a surprising melding of ideas are best. Scott does this well. TLP did this well.
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if you are writing fiction, make it moral, otherwise you are selling the equivalent of a gas station transfat high fructose corn syrup snack, and you should feel eternal shame. “Oh wow, so fun to read” — are you a child? Moral means, “retrospectively this experience was greater for longterm holistic wellbeing than the alternative experiences presented to me”
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Polemics are enjoyable to read. Reading something angry and opionated is fun. Because we like fights and drama. Angry opinions are more fun to read than the castrated disinfected writings of academics.
My personal opinion
coffee_enjoyer
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11d ago
IMO
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small writers, researchers, and information-aggregators need to be credited with specificity. This promotes good sources to the top and incentivizes independent efforts. It’s also intuitively good manners. It is what we owe to someone who spent his free time aiding the Common Good.
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if you’re copying an original independent researcher’s small blog, just dropping it in “links” 20 subtweets down is insufficient. The reader will think that the author merely consulted the information but synthesized it themselves in digestible language. But Crem took someone’s synthesized and digestible language and simply reposted it. This would be like if I took an old themotte post and reposted it, just linking it at the bottom, or if I reposted someone’s humorous post for more views and only linked him as a reference. The small guy is owed recognition for his unique effort, or a direct mention; not a footnote.
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Twitter and blogosphere generally = zero-sum status game; there cannot be infinite “interesting people you consult”. Crem siphoned most of the status gains from the “little guy” who may have spent a dozen hours writing an effortpost after reading about aspartame.
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Crem, being the most popular twitter account in his niche, has a duty to promote good manners, ie cooperative prosocial norms. If he doesn’t give sufficient cred, then he is setting a standard where insufficient cred is the rule; suddenly, no one is ever going to do anything new or effortful, because someone like Crem will take most of the status.
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It’s trivially easy to sufficiently share the status. Just say, “x wrote a good summary at y”, or “over at z’s blog”, or “summary is from h”. Best manners would be to find his account and link it. But just “links” isn’t enough.
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Crem’s reply tells us that he is an antisocial status-obsessant like so many others, and people instinctively find this character type repulsive because it’s incredibly dangerous to the Common Good. World of Warcraft saw a similar moral quandary regarding PirateSoftware which essentially led to his plummeting in status. It’s not a “small error” if it indicates a deeper ethical violation, even though this specific error is super super tiny.
coffee_enjoyer
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12d ago
Incredible.
coffee_enjoyer
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12d ago
Alcohol can enhance social bonding; nicotine can enhance learning. But what is the best possible use case of cannabis? Can it serve a prosocial function in a specific context?
The only thing I can think of is that it can transiently “heighten” non-cognitive sensations, and so it may be useful for highly sensory experiences — anything from large meals to the highly sensory experience of a beach. This would be a general pleasure-amplifier, which may be worth the cannabis costs if the experience is highly sensory, and would also give us a better memory of the experience (possibly).
Is there any other “benefit” to it? I don’t think if enhances social bonds like alcohol, and its relaxation effects are too transient and come at a higher cost with more anxiety later on.
coffee_enjoyer
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13d ago
I’ve only seen stuff online, but I’m not a fan of the color changes. The super white marble of the ruins and the general dreamlike quality were important to the aesthetic, because the game is magical, it’s not realistic. The game is dreamlike, the intended playstyle is that you are doing while awake the things you would do in a dream, essentially: walking around, exploring absurd things. Theres a quest within Oblivion that is a microcosm of the game itself: you see an oversaturated painting in a house and enter into the painting. If you add too much detail in nature, too much accuracy, it actually takes you out of the dreamy reverie which is Oblivion (imho)
I feel that over-emphasizing the forgiveness of the passion clouds a full understanding of the event. Yes, the whole world knows that Christ took past sin bodily on the Cross, those before you knew him, that it was blotted out. But what about all the other elements? The wrath of the Father coming down on ungodliness because we killed His Son; the depravity of human sinfulness that would kill their own savior and utopian redeemer (and the likelihood that we would be active or passive participants if we were there); the purchasing of our souls by the priceless blood which makes us slaves to righteousness, obliged to obey Godliness, not of our own will or interest, but almost as if in bondage, not our own; the notion that deliberate sinning now becomes so bad that if we do so, it would be better to never have known Christ at all; the power dynamic of the worldly Leaders crucifying the true Leader (a punishment reserved for crimes against social hierarchy)…
Indeed in Peter’s first preachings, in Acts 2 and 3, forgiveness is not the primary mode of understanding the Passion. It’s the opposite! It’s the weight of the sin that makes the hearer’s heart pierced, who now wishes to be saved from their “wicked generation”, and is then compelled to repent [change the heart] and is forgiven. The forgiveness, in a way, can only come after we have first understood the primary modes of the Cross. If you acknowledge only a simple statement like “Jesus took away all our sins by dying on our behalf”, this is akin to “Jesus died so we don’t feel any guilt at all”, and if you don’t feel guilt you can’t care about sins, and if you don’t care about sins then the Cross loses the very meaning that drew you in — it’s totally self-nullifying. In a way, it shows you the profound dangers of misinterpreting religious language & meaning.
coffee_enjoyer
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20d ago
A list of Trumpisms according to colloquial usage (am I missing anything?)
Very common
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Many such cases
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I have concepts of a [plan]
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Open the schools
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Many are saying this
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Big if true
Common
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We do a little trolling
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You’re telling me this for the first time
Used Uncommonly
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Sad!
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Thank you [Kanye], very cool
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Fortunately or unfortunately
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Lightweight (more aptly a repopularization)
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Everything’s computer
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Don’t we, folks
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Fake news (as interjection; regional variations in popularity)
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Bigly
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Drain the swamp
Deprecated Use
- Bad Hombres
coffee_enjoyer
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21d ago
How do the Gypsies maintain their extreme exogamy? Is there something psychological going on with cultures that have intense ritual purity laws being more resiliently exogamous?
coffee_enjoyer
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22d ago
Here’s what we know conclusively:
- CICO doesn’t work. Has been tried, doesn’t work. Literally been tried for decades, tens of thousands of studies on it, just doesn’t work.
Here’s what we know partially, only exploring the smallest sliver:
- Clear genetic / epigenetic correlates to obesity; breastfeeding correlates to obesity; hormesis-related fasting cures for diabetes; neighborhood walkability correlates to obesity.
Here’s what we don’t know:
- all that we don’t know (!), in those fields we haven’t even half-explored.
Here’s a time-honored rule of wisdom:
- if some territory of knowledge is proving fruitful, and isn’t even half-explored, or 1% explored, we should allocate most funding and attention to these fields, and ignore the fully-explored field which doesn’t work.
Truly, it would be better for all the obese to acknowledge they have simply been poisoned by environmental and cultural practices, and then to lobby and allocate funding to good research, instead of woefully attempting to fix a societal problem each individually — not just hating themselves in the process, but wasting time and political opportunity.
coffee_enjoyer
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22d ago
CICO has already been tried, so we can cross it off. Now we direct our energy to real solutions, which means finding real solutions. If I were a fat billionaire, I’d direct all my funds to epigenetic and “evolutionary” factors
coffee_enjoyer
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23d ago
The evidence is in our obesity rate and the studies showing that dieting usually fails longterm. You’re welcome to find any of those studies on google scholar. There’s, like, thousands.
You promised me "real solutions
You have to read more carefully: “direct precious mental energy to real solutions.” Real solutions are not found in CICO related things which have been tried to death for decades with little gain. Real solutions are going to be found in aligning humans to evolved conditions, indicated in the OP.
coffee_enjoyer
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23d ago
CICO is useful for boxers, bodybuilders, yeah. But it’s not practical in a population-level discussion, where it’s wielded to cut down practical inquiry.
an example of a "real solution" would be?
Studying early life and parents’ cold exposure and temperature variability; environmental pollutants; early life hyper-palatable food exposure; microbial exposure; artificial lighting; duration of lighting in day; hormesis fasting (not normal fasting); early life walkable neighborhoods; duration of breastfeeding / weening; invisible conditioning effects (what you do before, during, after meals; what you think about when eating)
There’s a lot that should be studied. IMO we will find that it’s a confluence of things, most of which are outside the individual’s control
coffee_enjoyer
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23d ago
Willpower is just a modifier to your calories input, and calories output
coffee_enjoyer
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23d ago
IMO, it would be ideal for CICO to be banned from any discussion on the obesity crisis so we can instead direct precious mental energy to real solutions.
coffee_enjoyer
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23d ago
Knowledge of cooking is useful, sure.
coffee_enjoyer
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23d ago
It is easy for me, and presumably you, to not eat the donut. You believe that this is a power by our will, though you don’t believe that this should be deemed “willpower”. However, we can’t peer inside the hunger of an obese person. What is considered a power of our will may in fact be a less strong sensation of hunger. How easy would it be for us to not eat the donut if we stopped eating for two days? Because our hunger would increase, the power of our will to control it decreases, and we would likely succumb to the donut. In the same way that we are liable to nap after not sleeping. The thought is simply: what is the evidence that the skinny and the obese experience the same level of hunger? It’s possible that they experience more hunger. The circumstantial evidence indicates this. The above study suggests environmental factors influence hunger. Etc.
It’s something of a theory of mind issue to think that everyone experiences the same level of hunger or that our own ability to manage weight would remain if our hunger doubled.
coffee_enjoyer
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23d ago
It might be helpful if you wrote clearly what you’re trying to articulate. I will clarify that I am not interested in quibbling on the literalist definition of CICO that forgets how it is used in discussions. I am simply interested in how can we practically solve the obesity crisis, which is important. I’m asserting that CICO — telling people to focus on their calories and exercise — is not a practical framework, and there’s a study suggesting that a viable framework may be looking at holistic environmental determinants.
coffee_enjoyer
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23d ago
Different months of conception have different genetic effects on a future child. It does not have different effects on willpower. One large group in month A has the same willpower as one large group in month B. There is no reason to think otherwise. So we assume the same willpower. But the genetic effects are correlated with different adult obesity rates. Did you read the study? If you think that the month of conception can alter even willpower, then we are essentially redefining willpower and are all the way back to where we started — in needing cultural / societal changes which genetically change people’s willpower.
one might say that it would require a significant modification to the hypothetical religious/social identity
A cooking change is a one time change. You’re asking for half the humans on earth to fundamentally rewire their identity so that their primary value in life is their body; and this is implying that bodybuilders aren’t preselected for the epigenetic expressions not associated with obesity. This is an insane proposal.
Does that mean that knowledge about cooking is "useless"?
Bodybuilders — the sliver of successful ones who actually succeed in modifying their body longterm without drugs, so 0.01% of the population or less — maintain their social identity through, essentially, thousands of hours of identity maintenance a year, changing what they think about, who they look up to, what they value. A world of bodybuilders would destruct, as no one would care about civic or institutional participation. So this proposal is not serious. We could make everyone become Buddhist ascetics whose new overriding value in life is not eating. This is is similarly possible, but not a serious proposal.
Anyway, please see my weight-cycling studying x3.
coffee_enjoyer
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23d ago
You control for willpower by looking at a cohort conceived in colder months and comparing to a cohort conceived in warmer months. This is simple. As we know that the month of conception has no bearing on willpower, and the study did not find a correlation in regards to temperature of month at birth, which I suppose may somehow change one’s willpower (if you squint), the populations are controlled for willpower.
athletes and bodybuilders modulate their body weight through diet and lifestyle. Is this suddenly useless to them if some larger population behaves one way instead of another way?
A minority successfully do this, only in the short-term, and only by significantly modifying their social identity. It comes at an impractical expenditure of willpower for the population-level. You can probably get someone to not eat for three days with the offer of $100,000; you can get a competitive wrestler to stop eating when it’s required for his social reputation; and a particularly vain bodybuilder can probably bulk and cut when he has made his appearance his entire social value. But this has no effect on the longterm rate of obesity or the general population, because not everyone can turn their entire social identity into weightlifting (neither is this desirable). In fact, even those selected for willpower and who practice willpower in regards to weight during their athletic career are not protected against obesity. Studies show that weight cycling athletes are either at the same level of obesity risk as other athletes, or even a worse level of obesity risk than the general population. We also know that the yearly Ramadan practice of willpower does not affect longterm obesity. If willpower were a longterm determinant, we would see (1) Ramadan practitioners become less obese, (2) weight-cycling athletes are particularly protected against obesity compared to other athletes. Yet we don’t find this.
You can find people who have terrible willpower in regards to substances, energy drinks, candy, and yet don’t gain weight. Then you can find people who exhibit amazing willpower in all facets of life, and yet are fat.
She isn’t receiving the money for insulting a child (with a word he is likely to use 1000 times in his life against other Africans, often with prejudice attached). She is receiving the money as reparations for an unjust system of oppression that permeates the fabric of America, where a small racial infraction while White leaves you reputationally and financially destitute. There is a huge difference here. It’s not for congratulations, it’s a sympathetic safety net for a mother who has to deal with institutional racism against her people in America, in a state which her forefathers braved the cold to build from nothing.
Two other things to note:
Somalians are statistically horrifying, with low intelligence and high cousin marriage, with a TFR greater than 5 and a grizzly Islamic culture resistant to Western civilization, plus a history of scams in Minnesota eg autism clinics. There are 100,000 in the state and growing. If calling every Somalian the N-word got them out of the state, it is arguably a moral obligation incumbent on every fairer resident to do this, in terms of securing utility. Shiloh is on the Right Side of History, if there exist future Whites in the state to write it in Deseret.
The funds have the secondary effect of deterring the antisocials from filming grievances that they instigate. If white people get money for their low willpower replies irl (colloquially called n-word fatigue), then we will have fewer White / Karen shaming in America. This is for the utilitarian good.
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