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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


[Johnson]: "homosexual behavior is something you do, not who you are".




I'd like to soapbox a bit about this.


Johnson is absolutely right on this, maybe more than he knows.  One of the more insidious things about the prevailing culture is the way that it encourages people, almost to the extent that it is unthinkable to do otherwise, to identify with their desires -- especially if those desires are sexual.  People make fun of the Evangelical thing where they insist on saying "same-sex-attracted" instead of "gay", as if it's some shibboleth, but the reason for this is that "gay" carries with it an assumption that it is, and ought to be, part of one's identity, and the Evangelicals are right that it's a big part of the problem.


Having sexual attraction to other men may be (generally is) involuntary, but engaging in homosexual activity is absolutely a choice, and so is making your desires such a core part of your identity that you automatically interpret any discouragement from gratifying them as an attack on your self.  Yet that last choice is, in the prevailing culture, the water that the fish don't know they are swimming in.  They are told, "Those people hate you, they want to deny you the right to even exist" because of their opposition to behavior.


People with disordered desires need a narrative other than "you are a disgusting pervert" or "your desires are innate and good and self-actualization means fulfilling them".  The bit about "same-sex-attracted" is a (somewhat awkward) way of trying to supply that other narrative.


I think the same is true about "trans".  A boy or man who desperately wants to be female, and/or who experiences discomfort at being male, may not be choosing to have those feelings (though they can certainly be fed and encouraged by dwelling on them), but "I am trans" is a decision to adopt those feelings and desires as as an identity.  I can't think of any non-awkward way of encapsulating those underlying feelings and desires (yeah, "gender dysphoria", but that carries its own set of assumptions and also doesn't capture the full range here), but the discourse really needs one.


I'm very sympathetic to people saddled with these disordered feelings -- this is not really to my credit, but out of personal experience, as my other posts on the "trans" subject attest -- but I get really angry at the activists who encourage people to see them as a core part of their identity, and accuse opponents of wanting to "deny [their] right to exist".  It's like telling an alcoholic that  being a "drunkard" is a core part of their identity and that anyone who wants them to stop drinking hates them.




"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea."




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for September 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Maybe not the right place, maybe better for Sunday, but I'm not in a great mood.  What is up with senior software engineering hiring?  All the job postings seem to be premised on the idea that you don't learn any transferable skills in your career, only domain-specific ones.  If you want a senior position doing X, you'd better have been doing X for multiple years already.  I get that makes sense for principal-level jobs where the whole point is to hire a world expert on X, but a senior still has to ramp up as part of a team anyway.  Surely this state of affairs is really suboptimal, given (I hear) how hard it is to find good people. Where are the companies hiring smart senior SWEs who have been doing X to do Y and just figuring on an extra bit of ramp-up?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My surprise at seeing a The Last Battle reference here (what fraction of the commenters are familiar enough with it to recognize the reference, I wonder?) was quickly accompanied by confusion at how the analogy is supposed to work.  Puzzle is a mostly-unwitting tool of Shift all along, not an independent conman who is superseded by a better one...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 29, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, as someone who is a natural skeptic and also an Orthodox Christian.  Consider this comment an IOU to get back to you with something of an essay in the near future.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Eros vs Venus, AGP, and MtF Trans


Apropos of the preamble to the latest ACX post.  In part an evolution of / different angle on my previous post on the subject.  (Tagging @zackmdavis as relevant to your interests.)


In the book The Four Loves, in the section on sexual love, C.S. Lewis draws a distinction between Eros and Venus.  Eros is romantic love, or the state of "being in love"; Venus is sexual desire (one might say "lust", but without the connotation of immorality); as he writes, "I mean by Venus not what is sexual in some cryptic or rarefied sense [...] but in a perfectly obvious sense."  Lewis is at pains to point out that the two are distinct (albeit closely connected) and that one can easily experience one without the other.


He allows that "to the evolutionist, Eros will be something that grows out of Venus" but points out that this is not, generally, "what happens within the consciousness of the individual."  With Eros, the lover "is full of desire, but the desire may not be sexually toned."


Conversely, that Venus can exist without any trace of Eros is almost too obvious (at least to most men) as to need mentioning.


Why is this relevant to the autogynephilia/trans/Blanchardianism controversy?  Because AGP, framed as a fetish, is seen (by both sides) as being about (a misfiring of) Venus.  This makes it disreputable, both in itself and especially as a motive for transition, but perhaps even more importantly this limited concept doesn't seem to fit with the introspective reports of many trans individuals, even those who admittedly have some element of AGP.  Blanchardians tend to dismiss these reports as self-serving narratives (admittedly not without some justification, given the occasionally documented confabulations about historical femininity in MtF transitioners, and of course the obvious psychological pressure); anti-Blanchardians tend to take them as proof positive that the AGP->trans hypothesis is false.  (Anne Lawrence, a Blanchardian, allows for some nuance with the "AGP as sexual orientation" framing, but this seems to be not quite right and is still a "Venus"-first explanation.)


My strong suspicion is that, while Venus-AGP is the most obvious (and, um, salacious) manifestation, the thing that mostly drives trans-feelings, and thus actual transition, is something of an Eros-AGP.  This may or may not co-occur with Venus-AGP, and when it does, may either pre- or post- date it, and either may be the stronger -- just as in normal Eros and Venus.


Why do I think this?  Because it is an explanation which seems to account better for reported experiences than the others on offer.  "But I don't feel like I'm in love with being a woman, I feel like I am or should be a woman (in some deep sense)!"  Yes... but this actually rhymes with an aspect of Eros!  Lewis again:




Milton has expressed more when he fancies angelic creatures with bodies made of light who can achieve total interpenetration instead of our mere embraces.  Charles Williams has said something of it in the words: "Love you? I am you."




And also, there is my own experience (as a sometime sufferer of AGP of both sorts): my first crush included the confusing and intense desire to be the girl I was crushing on.  The purely sexual aspects of AGP -- the fetish part, what I'm calling Venus-AGP -- may be the most externally visible, but it seems likely to me that Eros-AGP, whether manifesting as an intense but nonsexual desire to be female or a sweetness and feeling of rightness in contemplation of oneself as such, as a much more powerful emotional experience, is more likely to lead to transition.


Again, this says little about which set of feelings precedes the other or of their causal relationship.  I am pretty confident that they frequently feed each other, and that indulgence and encouragement strengthen them, which is why in many people they seem to intensify over time.  (This is true of nearly every other mental and emotional disposition; it would be surprising if it were not the case.)  Whether Eros-AGP is preceded by Venus-AGP or not; whether Venus-AGP is seen as important by the sufferer -- these things are maybe not so relevant.  As strong as the urges of Venus are, it is Eros which is more powerful, which feels transcendent from the inside, which motivates truly extreme decisions.  Perhaps in this case, too, it is the dominant proximate factor.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think that people who are grossed out by gay sex think of that as part of their identity, though.  They think that their emotions are tapping into something real on that topic, but they don't make an identity out of grossed-out-by-gayness.  For the most part, at least, they trust those emotions, not identify with them.


But on the meta level, the object level matters (heh).  Yes, I think that adopting some identities is good, and adopting others is bad; that sexual desires are bad things to have as identities; that people would be better off if society discouraged people from adopting these bad identities -- or at least didn't put its thumb on the scale the other way as currently.


Or for those who prefer quotations on the subject, from Heretics by G.K. Chesterton:




Somebody complained, I think, to Matthew Arnold that he was getting as dogmatic as Carlyle. He replied, "That may be true; but you overlook an obvious difference. I am dogmatic and right, and Carlyle is dogmatic and wrong." The strong humour of the remark ought not to disguise from us its everlasting seriousness and common sense; no man ought to write at all, or even to speak at all, unless he thinks that he is in truth and the other man in error. In similar style, I hold that I am dogmatic and right, while Mr. Shaw is dogmatic and wrong.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Rationality and Religion
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have, of course, a lot of disagreements with this comment, but in the spirit of explaining things rather than re-waging the Great Internet Atheism-vs-Religion Wars (I was a teenager 20 years ago; I ought to know better now) I wanted to focus on two things that are a bit more meta-level and more relevant specifically to rationality.




All else being equal, a simple hypothesis or prior should be privileged over a more complex one when they are equally as good at explaining the evidence, or predicting the future. That is a basic consequence of probability theory, complexity needs to be justified.




There are two points to be made here.  The first is that Occam's razor, the simplicity prior, and the particular formal version based on Kolmogorov complexity, are all assumptions, not inevitable consequences of logic.  Probability theory tells you how to update your prior based on evidence (....if, somehow, you can know the probabilities of all your observations conditional on each of the potential hypotheses, which in this context is an unrealistically big ask); it can't tell you what your prior should be.  A simplicity prior is not an unreasonable choice in many contexts, but it's (a) not actually practical for many things (do you know all possible hypotheses and their exact complexity?) and (b) it's not the only possible choice.


The second is that it seems likely to be impossible to even evaluate simplicity or conditional probabilities when you are dealing with radically different ontologies, and it's not at all clear that e.g. the claim that physics and the existing physical universe is the brute fact of reality is in any way simpler than the claim that a Person is.  Certainly I'll grant that "the physical universe, but also God/supernatural/nonphysical stuff tacked on" is more complicated than pure materialism, but that's explicitly not what the alternative is.


An analogy for those who know about the demoscene:  a long, intricate demo certainly looks more complicated than a random short clip on Youtube, but it is much simpler in an information-theory sense, being generated from a small executable.  Given that we don't know any real equivalent of "the shortest possible code" for either a materialist or Theistic account of the reality, I don't think it's even in principal possible to judge the complexity of either.




The Hard Problem of Consciousness is a sign that our existing knowledge and theories are insufficient for the task of explaining everything




This misses the point.  There are certainly many problems that, when substituted for "the Hard Problem of Consciousness" here, would make this statement a valid criticism.  For instance, if someone tried to argue that the fact that science can't account for Abiogenesis is a knock-down argument against materialism, this would be a good point.  The fact that we have no good idea how abiogenesis could occur is some evidence against its occurring by natural means, but in the future new evidence or a better understanding of chemistry might turn things around, just as biochemistry did for the properties of organic life as it is now.


The Hard Problem of Consciousness is another matter.  The problem is not that current science can't explain it; the problem is that ontological materialism excludes consciousness (in the sense those of us talking about the Hard Problem mean) entirely.  There's no way to get an "I", a first-person perspective, in a materialist ontology, any more than it's possible to get moral realism.  And I don't know about you, but I'm quite a bit more certain that I exist than I am that the external world exists, let alone of any laws of physics or theories about what other things might or might not exist, simply for the reason I have direct, unmediated observation of the fact of my existence, which I don't have of physical things.  Not to go full #DescartesWasRight here, but he's a lot more right about this than many people give him credit for.


To get at something of my frustration here, let me present a fictional dialogue between a normal person "Matt" and a person with a rather odd ontology, "Noah":


Noah: "The whole universe is just a number.  Everything is just some digits or properties of this number.  All is number!"


Matt: "But this rock isn't a number!  It's not even the same sort of thing as a number!  It's stuff, matter, not something abstract like a number."


Noah: "What do you mean?  How do you know that stuff isn't just properties of a number.  After all, you know that atoms can be counted, mass can be measured, positions can be located, as numbers.  Numbers are everywhere.  We can express everything about your rock as some numbers, and thus, of course, as digits in one Great Number which is the whole universe."


Matt: "Sure, numbers are useful for measuring things.  But a rock isn't just its measurements -- it's made of stuff; it has actual existence."


Noah: "I don't know what you mean by 'actual existence', or 'stuff' or 'matter', and I don't think you do either.  Sure, I'll grant that there are things about a rock that we don't know how to measure yet, so we don't fully know how it is part of the Great Number.  But it's just a matter of time."


Matt:  "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"


Whenever I talk to materialists about consciousness, I feel just like Matt talking to Noah.  If you actually don't get it, I don't know what to say to you.




And this leads into some final thoughts which are connected to both of these.  The elephant in the room here, the simplest ontology that nobody wants no believe -- maybe that nobody can believe: Solipsism.  Why believe in the existence of anything external to yourself at all?  A universe with just one thing is simpler than any hypothesis other than one with nothing (not tenable for the obvious reason).  It can easily account for all your putative observations (i.e. they are not actually observations of anything at all).  And yet, despite the talk of Boltzmann brains, which is functionally the same thing (if you are just a brain in the void, why do you think your observations of the laws of physics have any meaning -- and thus why is the fact that QM may permit Boltzmann brains any evidence whatsoever about whether you might be one?), I don't think I've heard people insist that solipsism is the only rational position.  Frankly, the reason I'm not a solipsist is not that I have a good argument that it's false; rather, I just can't believe it -- I have an arational certainty -- generously, direct apprehension of a truth -- that solipsism is false and I'm not the only thing that exists.


And if we aren't rationally required to be solipsists, well, isn't that giving the whole game away in terms of trying to evaluate ontologies with the same tools one uses for day-to-day reasoning about more bounded questions?


(A more complete version of this comment would relate this to questions about model uncertainty and why, practically, 10^-9 is no more a "real" credence level than 0 is, but this comment is far too long already.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for March 6, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd like to talk about Adderall.


A bit of background:  I've had ADHD symptoms my whole life (though the hyperactive part greatly diminished in adulthood), but was never treated because I (a) won the lottery of fascinations (math and computers) and (b) have enough raw intelligence that I was able to excel academically through undergrad.  Ever since I started grad school, however, my difficulty with focus has plagued my work, and though I managed to muddle through, I'm much less successful than you might otherwise expect, and my subpar (per my own standards, I guess) productivity at work has negatively impacted my mental health.  I've been lucky if I can get a couple hours of productive work in a day -- and I don't mean "I had to go to meetings and that interrupted my flow state" (though there's that too) but "I got distracted by some math problem / thinking about a video game / reading a forum / etc and lost a couple hours with nothing to show for it".  I've self-medicated a bit with coffee in the past, but I haven't used it as much recently as after a hiatus, I noticed that drinking enough to make any dent in my problem was also enough to cause me sleep trouble the following night (even if I only had it in the morning) and was very much not generally worth it.  Somehow I'm still productive enough to keep a senior software engineer job without (many) complaints from management or coworkers, but I'm always feeling like I'm on the verge of failing to adequately do my job.


So my wife persuaded me that just maybe my persistent difficulty focusing on tasks is due to ADHD rather than being incorrigibly lazy.  I saw a psychiatrist and she prescribed Adderall, 10mg up to 3 times daily.  The pharmacy finally filled the prescription and I started taking it yesterday (Wednesday).


I took two doses yesterday: one at about 10:30 AM when I started work, and one at about 2:30 PM, about 20 minutes after I noticed the effects starting to wear off.  The first dose was weird: it helped very noticeably with my ability to focus on a task, my ability to get started on a larger new task (previously I'd have to wait for the perfect moment psychologically for this), and my ability to maintain focus when switching tasks while waiting for a coworker to do code review.  On the other hand, I got the jitters - as if I'd had too much coffee, or was very nervous about something, except that I wasn't nervous, I just had the somatic symptoms (this was really confusing).  (Other than these jitters my fidgeting/pacing decreased.) The second dose had the same cognitive effects as the first, but without the jitters.  I had as many productive hours in one day yesterday as I typically have in three (though it's worth noting that my usual distribution is highly uneven) and got a commensurate amount accomplished.


Miracle drug, right?  Well, remember how drinking too much coffee would give me sleep troubles?  Yeah, that. I had a hard time winding down last night (even though the mental effects had otherwise worn off), took longer than usual to fall asleep, and woke up in the wee hours of the morning and couldn't get back to sleep.  This is not totally out of distribution for me (in fact it's similar to something I've had happen two or three times in the last month without any drugs) but it's suggestive.  I'm pretty tired now, but not "I'm a zombie and can't function" tired, at least at the moment -- again, a bit unusual for how little sleep I got but not out of distribution. I really hope this goes away (or I can find a dosing regime that doesn't do this to me) because I really want to be consistently productive for once in my life.


My psychiatrist suggested when prescribing that I could cut the dose in half if I felt "high" or had significant side effects after the first few doses, or that I could try taking only one dose if it was effective enough to get me started on the right foot and I didn't crash after it wore off (which I didn't).  I'm planning to take one or two 5mg doses today and see if it's still as effective; I don't want to screw up my currently fragile sleep even more.


Does anyone else here have experience with Adderall for ADHD?  With insomnia as a side effect?  With dosing (looking online, 10 mg per dose is a bit higher than normal for an initial dose)?  Obviously I'll bring all the details to my psychiatrist next week for my followup, but there's bound to be some people here with the right experiences and insight to get some initial feedback or suggestions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 29, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
@TheDag @KingOfTheBailey @coffee_enjoyer I, um, wrote a long thing.  It's up as a top level post (...and a reply because I ran out of characters) now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for September 8, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For some reason, every time I see the Friday Fun Thread, my brain insists on first abbreviating it to "FFT", then re-expanding "FFT" to "Fast Fourier Transform."  Not that I get confused, it's just kind of there in the background.


Anyone else do something similar?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I wouldn't expect you to be able to empathize with it, any more than... well... with people who want to have sex with men.


I can't be certain, but I strongly suspect that the vast majority of men saying this have at least a touch of autogynephilia.  The sense of "it could have been me" is less "I, as a perfectly ordinary man, could have become socially hypnotized into wanting to be a women" and more "What if that part of me that already -- at least somewhat -- wanted to be a woman had been socially encouraged, been amplified, been given a (positive-valence) identity category; what if I'd been encouraged to indulge in this, been offered "specialness" and affirmation and a ready-made memeplex, all when I was young and socially and emotionally vulnerable?  Then I could see myself having gone down that path."


It's so common because some degree of autogynephilia is probably about as common as homosexuality among men.  (I remember -- I think it was in Men Trapped in Men's Bodies? -- seeing a reported study estimate of 1-3% of men for erotic cross-dressing alone, and that's almost certainly a substantial underestimate of the fraction of men with any amount of AGP.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Isn't it the case that a lot of the legacy youth orgs have, whatever their past reputation, themselves been drifting left over time?  The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts in particular are no longer considered safe by a lot of more conservative religious people (and it's not just about allowing gay scouts) and several more explicitly conservative Christian (Protestant, of course...) versions are, at least judging from some families I know, gaining in popularity because of this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I too am a member of this club. (Actually, although I quoted Lewis in my top level comment downthread, I'm not sure if I've actually quoted the others in my few Motte posts yet.  It's only a matter of time, though.)


What struck me so strongly is that the reference was just dropped in with no explanation, as one might a Biblical or mythological allusion, or a reference to some other ubiquitous cultural touchstone.  The implication that the readers would be expected to actually follow the reference absent a citation was... well, about the only place I'd be confident of that landing for most of the audience is in a Lewis society.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The explanation you are looking for is "great circles".  Your flight probably took close to the shortest route.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Surely most of that (in the paper, I mean) is selection effects?  I expect that there's a substantial barrier to entry for completing SRS at a university hospital (the selection criterion for that paper) and that the barriers are higher for AGPs since they don't match the stereotypical / ideologically acceptable profile.  (I also suspect a similar effect causes these studies to underestimate AGP in that population.  People who want a thing tend to say what gatekeepers want to hear, and those that don't... don't make it past the gatekeepers as much.)


Of course I'm also saying this as someone who suffers from AGP (though much, much less than I did in my teens / early 20s -- mental habits do make a difference) and also ticks many of the usual boxes: high intelligence, nerdy, family history both of mental illness and of joint hypermobility / connective tissue problems.  So make of that what you will.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Rationality and Religion
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
6 Rituals and Sacraments


Finally we come to what might be the main point of @TheDag's original question, which is that, frankly, rituals seem irrational.  Why should one make the sign of the cross here, or bow there?  Why does the priest pray the epiclesis ("Make this bread the Precious Body of Thy Christ")?  Doesn't that all seem...well...superstitious?  Definitely not reasonable?  Like, what is it doing?


There are two easy answers, both of them wrong.  The first is that it is, or is attempting to be, magic.  That the sign of the cross wards off evil for no particular reason, like a vampire.  That the priest pronouncing the magic words is what makes the Eucharist transform.  That would, indeed, be superstition, and the Church is at pains to make clear that, while miracles may occur in such rituals (reliably do, in the case of the Sacraments), it is not the ritual that effects a miracle, nor that a failure to pronounce the proper words exactly or make the proper motions nullifies it.  These rituals are not enacted to do magic or to attempt to manipulate God.  (This may not be true of all religions and rituals, but it is true of Christianity.)


The other wrong answer is that rituals are there as a sort of human bonding experience, that the content is irrelevant and the impact purely social.  This is, it seems, a common anthropological story, and it's true that there are a lot of purely social rituals in the world.  But this is not the point of religious ritual, and if you are just seeking social bonding, you will miss something important.


The theology of sacraments in particular is a giant can of worms, so I'll leave that aside and focus on something smaller.  In the course of the liturgy, the people will make the sign of the cross, bow, and (on weekdays and in Lent) make prostrations.  Why?  None of these is magic, and they seem... contingent, perhaps?  Arbitrary?  Why this ritual and not another, why now and not then?


To an extent there is something arbitrary about the specifics.  But there is something more than that, and it comes down to symbolism.  The sign of the cross is a symbol of prayer, and of faith in Christ (hence the sign of the cross), so for me it becomes prayer and an affirmation of that faith.  Thus I make the sign of the cross during the litany to participate in the prayer, or even when I am alone, at home, to make a wordless prayer.  Bowing is a sign of reverence; thus when I bow I not only display appropriate reverence, but orient my emotions and intentions toward reverence.  That is, the point of the rituals is not how they affect God, but how they affect our attitude toward God and others.


When seen in this light, the rituals are not irrational behavior, but a deliberate way of orienting ourselves.  And this is one reason they can be healing, because giving oneself the right attitudes influences everything else.


There's a part of the Liturgy, common in east and west, called the sursum corda, in which the following dialogue takes place between the priest and the people:


Priest: Lift up your hearts.


People: We lift them up to the Lord.


Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.


People: It is meet and right (in the Byzantine rite, this sentence continues "...to worship the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in essence and undivided." -- my understanding is that this is a later theological elaboration to the original rite)


Here there is a goal: to "lift up hearts" (i.e. to put oneself in a reverential and contemplative orientation to God), to give thanks to God, to worship God. And the means for that goal is this very call-and-response ritual that lays out the goal, and, as it says, this is appropriate ("meet and right").  The whole Liturgy is full of things like this -- the cherubic hymn with the words "[let us...] now lay aside all earthly cares", the litanies with "Let us pray to the Lord" -- "Lord have mercy".


Why does this work?  That's a question about human psychology, and I don't know the answer, but it does, and in that light it's no less rational than talk therapy or being polite to dinner guests or any number of other things people do.


7 Final Thoughts


This turned out to be longer and more wide-ranging than I'd initially intended, and I'm sure will invite a lot of disagreement. I'm aware that I didn't do a lot of "prove this is rational/true" work above; even if that were possible to do to everyone's satisfaction, this essay is already long enough.  I intend to interact with any comments in the same way -- to explain and lay out a way of thinking, not to argue that everyone else should accept it.  I totally think they should, but, in line with my thoughts above, I don't believe that I've offered sufficient evidence to persuade most of you to become Christians, and I don't think that my words-on-a-screen could, unless you're most of the way there anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 28, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Roti Prata is delicious.  Go to a hawker center get some.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My theory is that the "right side of history" narrative (and its close cousins, casting being progressive as just being a "decent human being" and denigrating opposition as "retrograde" or "reactionary") is so ubiquitous because the progressive left is deeply confused about whether it believes in moral realism, and so adopts an inconsistent (but very effective) posture on moral questions.


On these big social questions, there are, at root, three reasons for acting:


    

  1. You are a moral realist and believe that X is right/wrong as a fundamental fact about reality.  (How do you know?  Maybe you believe God -- who knows such things -- said so; maybe you believe you have a direct apprehension of the truth; maybe it is a logical consequence of other things that are in the first two categories.)  You act because you think it is right, period.
    2. 

  2. You have a preference that you want to fulfill, and think that you and those who share it have the power -- or can obtain the power -- to enforce it.  You act out of pure preference and power.
    3. 

  3. You just want to go along to get along.  You don't have an independent reason to act, so you don't act independently -- maybe you stay out of it, or maybe you join a cause you think will imminently win (or is most of your social circle) so that people will like you.
    4. 



"The right side of history" tries to have it all three ways while not committing enough to any of them to expose weakness there.


Straightforward moral realism is a problem for the progressive left (at least in its modern incarnation; past movements vary) for two reasons.  First, because most of its thought leaders are not moral realists, and many of the rest would reject moral realism if the question were put to them (though they may implicitly act as if they believed in it).  Second, because the natural response to "It is a moral law of the universe that [insert progressive cause here] is good" is to say: "And how do you know?  I'm pretty sure I've always heard that God said the opposite, my intuitions disagree, and anyway you just got done telling me that you don't believe in hearing from God, so why should I believe you?"


Straightforward appeals to power or preference are not persuasive -- at least not unless you already have the power and just want to compel, not "win hearts and minds".


And finally, appealing to people's "go along to get along" instincts is tough unless you can offer social proof that either your cause already dominates, or soon will.  (It works wonders when you can, though -- see what happened to gay marriage.)


Enter "the right side of history".  It appeals to moral realist intuitions and persuasive force, while not actually committing anyone to staking out an actual claim about ground truth morality.  It can be a threat based on present or claimed future power without being explicit about it.  It appeals to "go along to get along" without having to actually produce the goods in terms of current social influence.


Time will tell (ha) about whether the rhetorical strategy will continue to be effective, but I expect that, absent major ideological realignment, it will continue to be used in one form or another.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Who the hell wants to ban porn?




Quite a few people, actually.  Even on the ACX survey (not a demographic known for its social conservatism) over a quarter of respondents said that they would wave a magic wand to end pornography permanently if offered the choice.  Now making something magically disappear is not quite the same as banning it for a number of reasons, but the sentiment is much the same.


You might be confused because of all those statistics indicating that 90%+ of men have used porn.  Past, or even current, porn use is not inconsistent with wanting it to not exist.  People don't have perfect self-control, after all, and it is Well Known that people have diminished judgement and self-control under... relevant circumstances. Many people are quite capable of disapproving even of their own vices, and think that it's bad to have widely available temptations for them and others to succumb to them.


I am almost certain that banning internet porn is part of the intention of laws like these, not an accidental consequence.  For the state of Texas (and for other states with similar laws) this is the system Working As Intended.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This was a great recommendation -- I'm enjoying it very much.  It's like the game show version of a puzzle hunt.


Why aren't any American game shows even close to this good?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
FWIW I agree with both @hydroacetylene and you here, and I expect that he'd agree with you too.  What I would mean, and what I expect he means, by "trans isn't real" is that none of the people being classified as "trans" are "born into the wrong body" or "assigned" the wrong gender, nor are they "really" (in some sense) the opposite sex -- that it's not just a matter of overdiagnosis and a classification of some people as "trans" who aren't, while there is still some smaller subset who are "really trans" and where that the most appropriate treatment is the constellation of "gender-affirming" (what a euphemism!) treatments of hormones/surgery/social transition/etc.


I do agree that there is a separate mental illness (probably more than one) which correspond to "trans" -- that it's not just depression or anxiety or whatever that causes boys/men to want to be girls/women (or vice-versa), or to be unhappy because they aren't, or to (at times) convince themselves that they "really are" what they want to be.  And I get that there are some people who don't believe that and think that the entirety of "trans" is just some current-day-cultural nonsense.  But I do think that there is a meaningful and important sense in which "trans isn't real" is true, and I think that's what he's getting at.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for March 6, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I ordered an l-theanine supplement (green tea also has caffeine, I don't want to mix that in and I'm not a huge fan of the flavor anyway) on your advice; the palpitations and insomnia [edit: I think some of the insomnia is secondary to palpitations continuing way past the other effects] sucked (at least the serious jitters were only with the first dose). Would you recommend taking it with the Adderall or in the evening?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes.  I started having wrist pain about 5 years ago in my right wrist, to the point where it was seriously impacting my work. I did some research and bought a cheap vertical mouse, and my pain went went away in about a week and never came back.  Best $25 I ever spent.


If you have larger hands, make sure to get a larger mouse, though.  They vary a lot in size and I find smaller ones not nearly as comfortable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Possible explanation: "Public writing" has a lower barrier to entry than it used to, both in terms of who can do it and how easy it is to write something for public consumption.  This means more of that writing will be sloppy, which in turn lowers the expectations people have of themselves (people emulate what they see), so the standard amount of effort is lower and people who would in other circumstances have written carefully are sloppier too.


Putting question marks at the end of statements to indicate uncertainty is just a stylistic fad, though.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for September 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So is "you know someone who works there" pretty much the only way to signal general competence?  I suppose the question, then, is: how does anyone get hired any other way even if their resume ticks all the boxes? If a resume doing X well doesn't signal general competence enough to be hired to do Y absent having someone on the inside who can vouch for you... then why would it be a sufficient signal to get hired to do X?  (Maybe the answer is, it isn't, which is why the whole search process is terrible on both sides?)


Not going into too much detail to avoid self-doxxing but I was hired directly into a senior role from academia with no industry experience... I did have a personal recommendation then, and I guess I didn't give enough credit to how important that was for getting my foot in the door.