coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
We’re using hypothetical extensions of real world events to test our moral intuitions and formulate principles, yes. This is common in Western philosophy and traces at least to the Socratic dialogues. Gdanning posted a good link on the legal implementation details if that’s of interest to you, but it’s of pretty much no interest to my argument which rests on moral intuitions regarding concepts like care and negligence.
Do you really want bad things to not happen or just really really want to torture those you deem to be evil?
These are actually the same thing. The first is just the logical explanation, and the second is the internalized, evolved taste for justice that certain human populations naturally develop. The first is the deterrent theory and the second is the retributive theory of justice, but they are not mutually exclusive. I believe they are the same thing! “Did you really kill Hitler to prevent evil, or to feel good about killing Hitler?” Yes!
Proposing severe punishment as a disincentive is hardly the newest idea out there
Yes, it’s the basis of every civilization’s deterrence to extreme defection of standards. Let’s apply it to a novel use case!
This point of view is aesthetically repulsive for me […] sounds like a clown to anyone who knows anything about History and how bad things used to be.
To me this sounds just a little naive. We are already implementing terror and torturous death on nations that affect our geopolitical dominance. We are fine with starving Yemenis and dead Syrian children. We are okay with pregnant women in Afghanistan being foreseeably-accidentally killed so that we destabilize these areas. It is the very basis of American foreign policy in the Middle East, and before that Cambodia and Vietnam. We commit more torture today (all of its moral residue, st least) than a medieval kingdom. We shouldn’t ignore the widespread use of it just because a video on liveleak made us feel icky. The barbarity of torture and torturous death is a fact of life in geopolitics and must be accepted.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
Why do you see tobacco as anything halfways comparable? Tobacco use is known to be harmful and the harm is something that people willingly exchange in return for a pleasant experience. In the case of a tobacco executive in the 60’s lying about the dangers of smoking, this is mitigated by the expectation that corporations lie in America. If a regulatory body were tasked with doing research on tobacco, and it knowingly declared tobacco free from danger in the face of overwhelming evidence, and this ruling was in effect for thousands of years, then yes I would see it as similar. But a reasonable person can find the studies and dispute the government consideration, whereas no one can opt out of getting COVID. So this is an essentially dissimilar metaphor in regards to risk and culpability.
If you’re saying that we should let mad scientists do mad research because otherwise they will do it in Russia, I disagree because of the risks of mad research, and would hope an international body is developed to oversee mad research.
Alec Baldwin, the Lab Leak, and punishing maximal negligence
Alec Baldwin has been charged with manslaughter. We don’t know the nitty gritty details yet, but let’s consider the following possibility. Baldwin, as someone who funded and produced the movie, was ultimately responsible for choices in hiring. He hired someone insufficiently skilled at risk management on set. In addition to hiring and retaining someone whom a reasonable producer would consider insufficiently skilled, he acted negligently on set through pressure, which led to the death of an employee.
Whatever the actual details, there’s a plausible avenue by which Baldwin has serious moral blame in regards to manslaughter. The details that come out later will obviously dictate whether this occurred, but we can imagine a case in which a producer possesses moral blame for the system of failsafes failing. Importantly, in cases where the risks are high (a gun misfiring), greater care is morally warranted. Our expected duty to exercise care is proportional to the potential of harm.
Following from this example, I assert that we should develop a legal principle to maximally punish anyone involved in catastrophic lab leaks (those resulting in millions to tens of millions of death). [paragraph edited for clarity] We should do this regardless of the material facts of individual responsibility of a lab leak. This is because the risk of leak is of such significance that it belongs to a new category of risk:care ratio concerns. It is the principle of reasonable care and deterrence but amplified to the amount of harm involved. The amount of harm that a Covid leak created (implying that the lab leak theory is true) is more than what inspired the Nuremberg Trials. Playing with genetically modified coronaviruses, specifically enhanced for virulence, constitutes such a threat against the human race that every single person involved should have been made to underwrite their life as a guarantee in case of leak. Not for a lifetime in jail, or capital punishment — the guarantee should have been that the State would use medieval punishment on you for the rest of your life. The scientists who worked and funded and stamped the research should have been so certain that a leak would never happen that they literally stake endless, limitless torture for the rest of their life if it leaked. Only this level of deterrent punishment would befit the level of care required to deal with the potential harm of COVID. I am suggesting a moral principle that would prevent future leaks, applied to future cases, to stave off the risk of leak catastrophe.
If Baldwin, in acting unreasonably in hiring or setting workplace culture, can be responsible for one death, how much more care should scientists who work with virulent viruses exercise? Viruses that will kill 200 million by the end of the century are inconceivably more risky than anything that can happen in normal everyday business life. The risk to care ratio must be maximal because only this level of deterrence is sufficient to encourage a reasonable level of care. The whole point of Law is that foreseeing punishment deters behavior. It’s not just that Baldwin ought to have practiced sufficient care; it’s that everyone in Baldwin’s place should foresee a punishment from failing to exercise sufficient care. Baldwin deserves a punishment in accordance to his level of negligence, and everyone in Baldwin’s position must foresee a similar punishment for similar negligence.
Do you think scientists would still work on virulent chimera viruses if they had to stake endless torture on the possibility that it is leaked? If they wouldn’t, doesn’t this simply prove that research this risky should never be done?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
Are those female teenagers really being edgy against hegemonic currents, or are they simply assenting to what they consume in popular media and music to the dismay of their less powerful parents?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
I think this misunderstands edginess. Edginess is a mix of the young desire to show your courage, and the desire to plot out the unknown frontier of ideology. It’s commonly an adolescent and young adult phenomenon when the sex hormones are highest and social identity is being developed. It is typically male. Then there’s the (more urban) desire to prove that one is “in the know”, has new insight and intellectual uniqueness. It’s a typically cosmopolitan feature of following the latest trend. Progressives have commodified this urge to being in the know in the form of being woke (literally awakened). That term has died, but the desire to know the truth about the grimdark fantasy of America’s evil racism is still alive.
Many progressives certainly want to appear cool — they follow the latest trends in fashion and music — but does this desire foment any edginess? I don’t really think so. So I would say we’re talking about different phenomena.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
Ratzinger is not attempting to persuade atheists here. This is a passage about how a theologian might feel conveying truth in “religious language” to atheists unfamiliar with how religious language works. It’s saying a lot, and should not be seen as an attempt to persuade atheists.
Cox cites this story as an analogy of the theologian’s position today and sees the theologian as the clown who cannot make people really listen to his message. In his medieval, or at any rate old-fashioned, clown’s costume he is simply not taken seriously. Whatever he says, he is ticketed and classified, so to speak, by his role. Whatever he does in his attempts to demonstrate the seriousness of the position, people always know in advance that he is in fact just — a clown. They are already familiar with what he is talking about and know that he is just giving a performance which has little or nothing to do with reality. So they can listen to him quite happily without having to worry too seriously about what he is saying. This picture indubitably contains an element of truth in it; it reflects the oppressive reality in which theology and theological discussion are imprisoned today and their frustrating inability to break through accepted patterns of thought and speech and make people recognize the subject-matter of theology as a serious aspect of human life.
Importantly, he notes the “classifying away” of religion as a category distinct from everyday life, and how this leads to the public seeing religious rituals as something performative and distinct from everyday moral and psychological concerns.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
Where do I find an illegal incandescent bulb dealer?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
Consider:
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Induction requires magnetic cookware which may be more costly and may be bad for the environment
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Electric requires more electrical components which are sourced from somewhere, how does the trade of these materials compare to gas
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If the poor can only afford electric foil ovens, the longer time to boil might add up over time
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Estimated days per year of power outage. When the power is out, the stove is the only way many people can still cook a meal. I imagine power outages in some parts of the country will be more frequent over the next decade.
I think I have read every top level post of the past four weeks, and I don’t recall someone’s key argument being that prostitutes should be called whores.
There is room to explore how language evolves, though, and who decides when an emotionally potent word becomes a slur. Not every potent word is a slur: the words “felon”, “rapist”, and “racist” have high emotional potency today, in that calling someone these things creates a serious negative emotional reaction in the listener. In the case of “rapist” this emotional residue is clearly acceptable, but what about felon? What about those who are blankly labeled “racist” without qualifier for making the most innocuous of mistakes, and who are then categorized with history’s worst people? Functionally speaking, is that any different than a slur? Who is deciding when a word is so strong or unjustly used that it’s a slur?
The word “whore” has had a stable definition for a thousand years, almost identical to the Old English “hore” and similar to the proto-Germanic “horon”. It’s used in the King James Bible. It is used by Shakespeare 59 times. It has long-standing use in English. When did it become a social violation to call a prostitute a whore, and is this justified by virtue of the connotation of her act? If someone has a strongly-held personal belief in the immorality of prostitution, and his own holy book calls those in the profession “whores”, is he justified in using the term? Are we justified in preventing him, any more than preventing him from using the words “sinner” and “damned”?
So it is an interesting question, and it cuts to the root of the potency of language and its control by vague and unspecified powers. I doubt any of us would use the word “whore” outside of private company, and I wouldn’t despite making the rational argument for its use. But… why? It’s not actually an easy thing to puzzle out. “Because of the social connotation” is just begging the question! How are we all accessing the same terms blacklist in our linguistic OS?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
Well the idea is that the “high” effect of THC (and maybe CBD) is “directed” by the addition of terpenes. So a relaxing terpene would make the experience more relaxing, or an energetic one more energetic. The circumstantial evidence is that the user-graded relaxing strains only differ in specifically higher terpenes which are shown to promote relaxation in human and mice studies. How this would work is understudied. You know how you can get high one day and feel like a child again, but then on another day you might feel like you’re in a Truman Show scene? This may be due to terpenes + environmental context (and perhaps terpenes are just another element of environmental context).
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
Does anyone have a view on THC->CBN conversion from aging or high decarboxylation temperatures, or the role of terpenes in the subjective experience of marijuana high? I had previously read about how terpenes affect mood when reading about phytochemicals and essential oils. The idea that THC acts as a vehicle for terpenes, which then influences experience, is pretty interesting and would have wide (and fun) implications.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
IMHO
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Real life: university-adjacent organizations; engaged so thoroughly in their career that they don’t want to spend any spare time online; such an enjoyable social life that they hardly have non-private communications.
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Tweeting out to the abyss. I was surprised that plugging in a medical related keyword and sorting by new took me to world class experts tweeting to no one in particular. Had I an account, and posed a good question, I could have had a discussion with some of the most relevant academics researching a niche subject matter. This is likely only limited to academia
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Very small niche forums. Had a chat with an Australian academic studying the mnemonic potential of aboriginal songlines the other way.
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Engaging in random vices. Very smart people still waste time on Reddit and Tik Tok and play video games.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
I have to disagree. Renaissance architecture and statuary, and consequent developments, are influenced by Pagan architecture and rediscovered architectural/theoretical treatises more than anything Christian. Ethiopia, despite being Christian longer than Germany, does not have the same standard of beauty that you find in the West. Western architecture is its own category distinct from Christian non-Western communities in Ethiopia and Lebanon. Even Gothic (medieval) architecture was heavily influenced by Romanesque which was influenced by the developments of the Roman Empire.
“Western” only became befuddling as a category when postmodern academics willed this thought into existence. It pretty much just refers to Europe influenced by Rome and various hegemonic European groups (themselves influenced by Rome) (Goths, Franks, etc). The West, of course, does include Western Christianity. But it’s a perfectly useful term to use. Everyone seems to know exactly what region I’m referring to when I use it, absent edge cases in like the Balkans or Finland.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
But would we say the Chinese cultural revolution was Chinese in culture? I would say it was Marxist-globalist, and I would say the same about Soviet art. These nations have since tossed aside their Marxist-globalist chains and have put on their authentic culture once again. We should do the same. Perhaps the seed of Global Man art (globo-homo) did originate in the West, in the form of capitalism or Bolshevism, but its adherents consciously place their works outside the tradition of their ancestors. They themselves see it as global, and not Western.
Why Boston’s “Embrace Statue” has led me to embrace Western chauvinism
Boston Common is a beautiful park in America’s true historic city. It’s a must see when visiting, and features a number of old monuments. There’s the Soldiers and Sailors monument, the Robert Gould Shaw memorial, and a memorial to the Boston Massacre. All of these are in a beautiful timeless design that the common man appreciates, which is appropriate for the common park of Boston. I wouldn’t say these monuments compare to achievements in European cities, but they are nevertheless noble attempts to celebrate the glories of the nation. As in all great art, the form befits the content, and the statues artfully imitate the gravity of their depicted scene.
Boston liberals decided to plop down a new monument, called “Embrace”, in dedication of MLK Jr — a figure mired in controversy over his support and instructions on raping women and the evidence that he plagiarized both his PhD thesis and his famous dream speech. (If that sentence was strange to read, it’s because I’m trying a new writing style where I introduce progressive heroes like they introduce mine). But the reason I disagree with the statue isn’t because MLK is a cheat or a misogynistic rape-enabler. Were the statue beautiful and heroic, and adequately conveyed the perseverance and dedication and cultural significance of MLK, this post wouldn’t be written. But that didn’t happen. Instead the statue looks like shit.
I mean this literally: it looks like a gigantic turd. The real world angles (not the architectural projections) make it look like a man firmly gripping monumental dung [1]. Some go further, and say it looks like a man gripping a monumental dong — that Boston has erected nothing short of an erection [2] [3] [4]. Surely the view of the common people should take primacy for the statues of the Boston Common, and Twitter is filled with normal people laughing hysterically at this statue.
So why erect something so ugly? The root cause here is the conscious betrayal of the Western legacy. What we see in the Boston Common is what we saw in Obama’s official portrait, with many questioning the artist’s choice of a casual background and hiding semen in his work [5]. The Western legacy and its hundreds of years of artistic development, which made a science out of beautiful monuments, is seen as intrinsically white — which is intrinsically bad. And so the novelty of experimental artists is privileged over the traditional and beautiful forms of art. Many of these artists make bad and gaudy work. The public knows this, but they are chosen anyway by the powers that be, who notoriously have an undeveloped sense of beauty.
And so I embrace western chauvinism. The West is the best, not in all the ways, but in important ones. Their statuary history is surely the best. Because the West is the best, we should privilege the traditional modes of art. Accepting this fact would make the public beautiful again.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
[Reposting from the Wellness thread because it’s also a fun thing to think about]
What would you add to your emotional-motivational memory palace?
A memory palace is an imaginative, spatial arrangement of visual objects, usually taking the form of a predetermined walking route or the memorized layout of a building. It is a 2000+ year-old memory technique used throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. With practice you can memorize thousands of “items” placed within a spatial arrangement, and keep them stored for longterm use.
I’ve been thinking about how this technique can be used for an emotional benefit. Let’s say you wanted to craft the perfect space for understanding your own life goals. You want to enter this space in order to remember all of the important whys and what fors of your life. You might also want a space where you can remember all of the why I must nots. What would you place within your space? You can put anything in there: a person, a book, an album cover or image which reminds you of a song, objects which remind you of experiences and scents, anything.
As an example, if your raison d’etre were running, the palace might include:
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Signs and symbols of your favorite past running experiences and paths.
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Some people who remind you of the joys of running, or people who are fit from frequent running.
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Salient images of the glory of continued running. Maybe you imagine a collection of gold objects which signal your progress, and empty spots in a trophy room which signal your future accomplishments.
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Symbols of your favorite fantasies to use while you run (fleeing from zombies, racing against the clock to deliver an important message, chasing a wild animal or an attractive woman).
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Some metaphorical reminder that pain is fleeting and laziness is never worth it.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
Not sure if I’m following that comment’s train of thought. History has proven time and again that organized armies are superior to disorganized but strong foes. The Romans were able to beat the stronger, taller Germans mostly because they had better organization. The Google employees have passed through numerous filters for conscientiousness, intelligence, health (a necessary precondition for good work), industriousness, and cooperative ability. In a “state of nature” they would be creating spears and bows and Henry would be their slave on week 2. They would be spending 8 hours a day on specialized labor, trusting the labor of their neighbor, according to a hierarchical common plan. Henry would be singing old Henry Rollins songs to himself and failing to ferment fruit into alcohol.
I think this European “spirit of the underdog” is really a unique domesticated instinct to protect the innocent member of the expanded tribe, and has nothing to do with weakness per se. White people love the ugly person actually being beautiful and everyone knowing it (innocent of the crime of being ugly); they don’t like a shitty team that plays shitty, they like a shitty team that is actually great (innocent of the crime of being bad at sports). White people love stories of innocent people getting justice, not weak people who aren’t innocent evading a crime. Weakness per se would bring all white people together to support, I don’t know, incel manlets and Nick Fuentes. But these people aren’t innocent, but in their eyes deserve their just deserts.
The issue is that culture from Uncle Tom’s Cabin down through To Kill a Mocking Bird and beyond to George Floyd emphasizes the innocence of black people in the face of white people being bad. You learn from these stories who the innocent (and pure) element of the expanded tribe is (not white people).
It’s interesting that most cases of blue eyes in mammals are the result of domestication, found in certain sheep, dogs, and Russian foxes, and that the dog breeds with blonde hair are particularly prone to innocent friendliness. It’s not impossible that Europeans are excessively sensitive to claims of innocence, or internalizing social hierarchies from media exposure, because it sparks something in a gene or two that code for domestic traits. There are supposedly already genes showing differences in European vs East Asian expressions of shame, sensitivity to parental judgment, and empathy
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
Just curious, you’re so passionate about the war that you set up a Google ping for themotte when anything critical of Ukraine pops up. (Nothing wrong with that, why not give your POV.) You mentioned last time you are living in Ukraine. Have you considered fighting in the war? I know Ukraine is drafting every young man they can find; I think their recent bill allows recruiters to enter homes to find young men. Or do you have a desk job with the Ukrainian military that permits you to engage in forums from time to time?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
You can use it for these things. Whether it is most optimal for school is another matter.
For formulas, you can “signify” various applications of a formula and edge cases in a spatial representation, and then mentally walk through them when confronted with a problem. You can also visually signify things you usually forget regarding the formula. Memorizing a formula is actually an extremely simple application of the art of memory. Numbers are easily converted into images, as are math symbols. You would just need to know a number system, which is what most beginners focus on. The people who can memorize a deck of cards in 30 seconds are just converting the numbers into visuals through an encoding system.
It is ordered, yes, but you don’t need to traverse front to back. You can traverse it just like you’d traverse walking through your house.
As for languages, I think you can find some use by memorizing groups of nouns according to their phonetic similarity.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
What would you add to your emotional-motivational memory palace?
A memory palace is an imaginative, spatial arrangement of visual objects, usually taking the form of a predetermined walking route or the memorized layout of a building. It is a 2000+ year-old memory technique used throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. With practice you can memorize thousands of “items” placed within a spatial arrangement, and keep them stored for longterm use.
I’ve been thinking about how this technique can be used for an emotional benefit. Let’s say you wanted to craft the perfect space for understanding your own life goals. You want to enter this space in order to remember all of the important whys and what fors of your life. You might also want a space where you can remember all of the why I must nots. What would you place within your space? You can put anything in there: a person, a book, an album cover or image which reminds you of a song, objects which remind you of experiences and scents, anything.
As an example, if your raison d’etre were running, the palace might include:
-
Signs and symbols of your favorite past running experiences and paths.
-
Some people who remind you of the joys of running, or people who are fit from frequent running.
-
Salient images of the glory of continued running. Maybe you imagine a collection of gold objects which signal your progress, and empty spots in a trophy room which signal your future accomplishments.
-
Symbols of your favorite fantasies to use while you run (fleeing from zombies, racing against the clock to deliver an important message, chasing a wild animal or an attractive woman).
-
Some metaphorical reminder that pain is fleeting and laziness is never worth it.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2yr ago
The main issue with any argument about the perceived legitimacy of violence is that it will cause whatever site you’re on to eventually shut down.
Re: (1), Jewish groups and historical societies have built a library of Q&A websites. These are usually the only thing you will ever come across from googling a denialist argument. It is unlikely that a denialist is spending thousands of hours arguing about it online, because there is literally no place to do that now on the mainstream internet. A holocaust historian will also probably not agree to argue against a denialist. This puts the denialist at a disadvantage.
I would definitely prefer to live in a country with the reasonable amount of Risk-Care assessment that (per the view in my post) encourages saving millions of lives from a torturous death. If someone disagrees I am completely unbothered — what can I do but express my argument? This discussion is not about the most efficient practical form of procuring the legal remedy in the courts, it’s higher order than that. To me, wanting to do maximal evil to a person that wants to effectively minimize maximal harm (and torturous death) does sound like a perverse and antisocial worldview. But maybe you can get a society up and running on such principles. I would listen to someone argue that this leads to the best results, despite my doubt.
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