fishtwanger
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User ID: 2896
fishtwanger
15hr ago
I'll file this away as an unconfirmable theory, then. :-)
fishtwanger
1d ago
I... was making a joke about the problem of getting new members to this forum, if we're deliberately not making it easy to join.
But OK, if we can get the makers of virtual boyfriend (or girlfriend) app to insert hypnotic suggestions to follow the "Courtesy" rules in the sidebar, that'd be a major win for humanity. Heck, even "don't be egregiously obnoxious" would go a long way toward making the Internet usable again.
fishtwanger
1d ago
What aspects of linguistics interest you? I'm afraid I don't have much advice for how to get into it as a hobby, but maybe some of this will help. Overall, my main recommendation would be to start learning the International Phonetic Alphabet, in parallel with whatever else you try. No matter what you wind up doing, being familiar with IPA will probably help you later. And it can be fun (or frustrating) to try to make all the funny mouth noises at will.
You don't mention books, but if you did, I'd recommend starting with John McWhorter, who also does the podcast "Lexicon Valley". He's probably best known here for his political commentary, but he's also a linguist (studying creoles, which are super cool), and is a shining counterexample to the depressing trend of linguistics professors being bad writers.
You might check out the Language Log blog, which is by a couple of linguistics professors who mostly post random linguistics-related things they find interesting. The most prolific of them specializes in Chinese, so that's a focus, but you can search through the archives and probably find a few entries on just about anything. If you poke around and find yourself fascinated by something, that's a good sign!
From an academic perspective, I'd tend to divide linguistics into a few categories. First, there's the core disciplines, things like phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. These are usually a combination of describing how languages work at that level (as best we can), and the Chomskyan project of uncovering the underlying structure in the brain. This latter aspect should currently be going through some serious upsets, with the new ability of LLMs to generate language, and I wonder whether it'll even be a going concern in 20 years. (Also, sign languages are an important variant to consider, being fully formed languages themselves.)
There's also historical linguistics, which was the focus of the field before Noam Chomsky came along. This is stuff like reconstructing proto-Indo-European, and untangling changes in non-Indo-European languages. It's almost like a puzzle, except you're often missing half the pieces.
There's specializations and extensions of linguistics into other fields, like linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics (I love this, despite having to deal with sociology), child language acquisition, language formation, computational linguistics, neurolinguistics, and so forth.
And there's field research. All the other fields require data, but this is where data comes from. The most prominent type is going off into the middle of nowhere (often Papua New Guinea) and spending 3 or so years documenting the language (and culture, etc.) of an isolated tribe of people before their language and culture dies out completely. But it can also involve stuff like finding examples for the Oxford English Dictionary, or working on an OED equivalent for another language. Linguistics has been dominated by English speakers for the last half century or so, and by Europeans before that, so there's almost certainly good work that can be done by anyone in a different part of the world.
Anyway, that's what comes to mind as a description of the field, from my experience a few decades ago.
fishtwanger
1d ago
Last I heard, that was the generally accepted theory, but like pretty much everything in linguistics, it's always being poked at.
fishtwanger
1d ago
and there's always some loony Korean nationalist scholar, never taken very seriously, insisting on how this or that aspect of Sinosphere civilisation (from festivals to Chinese characters, so on and so forth) actually originates from Korea.
Oh, that's where this comes from! I've seen Chinese people complaining about this, but I never understood why it was a thing that the Koreans did, and it always struck me as bizarre.
fishtwanger
1d ago
Yes, moral foundations theory. It's not the most grounded theory, because the foundations were largely eyeballed from initial data and then expanded based on feedback and discussion, instead of being chosen by some sort of factor analysis. And if someone does enough research on this to put it on solid ground, "three" and "six" are probably not what the result will be. But they're good enough for a shorthand.
The original book is interesting. It's dated, because it came out shortly before SJ hit, and it didn't anticipate SJ at all. But it's prophetic, because its thesis explains exactly why SJ is the way it is. And then there's the last section, which isn't talked about much, but which strikes directly at the heart of the rationalist project. It suggests that our capacity for rational thought is actually a capacity for rationalization and rhetoric, evolved to help us form strong coalitions with other humans, to help in intergroup competition. And that it's entirely incidental that this also happens to allow us to think rationally about the world, although it might be inevitable (as long as the simplest model is also correct). Which has some implications about LLMs, too.
fishtwanger
1d ago
It reminds me of the theory that young children form a creole language based on an adult pidgin.
fishtwanger
2d ago
In essence: SJers were never liberals (they're clearly six-foundation rather than three-foundation),
To poke slightly at this one aspect: perhaps the movement started in the 90s and early 00s with adult 3-foundationers, but because of institutional capture, a generation of 6-foundationer children grew up influenced by this ideology (instead of the more natural-to-them 6-foundation traditional conservatism), and they fleshed it out into a full 6-foundation system of its own.
fishtwanger
2d ago
Do they not in Korea? If not, why not?
I can't say about Korea, but in China there's a whole Thing about buying houses, and who pays, and who owns it in the marriage, and who gets it in the divorce. It's like someone took America, realized that we're all sappy romantic meme-infected morons, and solved for the equilibrium. Which turns out to be a ruthless financial battle of the sexes.
If Korea has gone further down the Neo-Confucian gender-role rabbit-hole than China, combined with the same Western personal freedom as long as you don't marry, no wonder it's such a nightmare.
fishtwanger
2d ago
Where do I even go in 10 years?
We're on a site five steps removed from a LiveJournal called squid314, and I certainly wouldn't have predicted this back in April 2014. Scott had been doing SSC for about 14 months, the events that would result in GamerGate were still playing out, and I don't think /r/slatestarcodex was even around then (June 2015?).
I'd posit something like "the openness of the system can only be in proportion to the quality of the general population". As the population gets worse, more gatekeeping is required. Unified logins, generic codebases, and modern web design are on average bad signs; single-site authentication, custom codebases, and archaic design are on average good signs. A lot of commercial web design is to make it easy and attractive for anyone to participate, and in a way, I think we want the opposite. We want people who value the content enough to step outside the path of least resistance.
But there's also the problem of keeping population growth above replacement.
fishtwanger
2d ago
You seem to be reacting very strongly to something, and I'm not entirely sure what, but we might be closer than you think.
By "nature documentary", I mean that although we happen to be following one little fellow around with our camera, and building audience identification with him, the choice of subject is either largely arbitrary, or selected after-the-fact when we know who gets a result we're interested in. But there's many of these potential subjects operating at any given time, with various degrees of success. If we only follow the stories of young stags who win the mating contest, or successful leaders of movements, or successful startup founders, we don't get a complete picture of the lifecycle, and can fool ourselves into mis-attributing the amounts of ability, tenacity, opportunism, and luck that are required for success. And to the degree that the OP's goal is building a theory of what happens, I think it's important to look at all the angles.
But for people who grew up under 90's liberalism, that sounds like the choices to follow particular "entrepreneurs" are freely made, and if this is what you assert, I'm prepared to push back with examples from both the market, nature, politics, and social movements.
On the one hand, at the level of the individual, of course there's free choice going on. But on the other hand, from the perspective of the potential organizer, it's all statistics, at least after the first few dozen people, and setting aside "whales" or important benefactors. It's treating the people as just another natural resource lying around, under-exploited, like an oilfield or an ocean or a bunch of horny dudes. Individual horny dudes obviously make choices about whether and where to spend money on naked Internet girls, but to the naked Internet girls they're a non-uniform resource which gets exploited as appropriate. (Attention being roughly proportional to revenue, as I understand the market dynamics?)
I think this would capture an important truth, that a mass of people looking for change can be a powerful force, if they can somehow be harnessed to all work together.
That's no really new, it's a message that all democratic countries bombard their citizens with.
I think this is the core of the misunderstanding? I can see how that looks a lot more naive and idealistic than I meant, and it looks like the mention of Lenin failed to set the tone. A herd of wild cattle is a powerful force, but if you can manage to round them up and brand them, they're all going to be eaten (or otherwise exploited).
To rephrase a bit, I think that when there are a mass of people desiring a particular type of change, that presents an opportunity for entrepreneurs to recognize and exploit this unfulfilled desire. It's not always the first who succeed; sometimes later ones will do it better. And the nature of the desire is important, in that the presented "solution" needs to cater to it. I suspect that people who come up with an ideology and then look for converts, are going to be less successful than people who find a group of potential converts and then come up with an ideology that makes them want to join (Hitler's path, IMO, although he was a part of the group himself), or people who just start improvising and don't care what they say as long as it gets crowds to cheer their name (Trump's path, IMO). Marxism is something of an exceptional case, but I think this model can cover it.
I haven't read Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals", but from what I've seen, it describes that middle approach (the Hitler one). Sure, it talks about doing everything to help "the poor", but ultimately it's about constructing an organization with yourself as a leader, and acquiring power, and the choice of ideology is completely irrelevant. The organizer may even think that they're doing it for the benefit of the people (and it's probably more effective if they do believe this, on some level), but it still boils down to "find an untapped source of power, and build an engine that exploits it", in the sense of a deck-builder card game. On the one hand, I do care about having good cards, but on the other hand, they're just pieces of cardboard that help me win the game. Maybe the solution I propose is "equal pay for equal work", or maybe it's "gas the Jews", whatever gets my power-base motivated. If the leader is just out for power, from a certain perspective there isn't a difference.
Is that sufficiently cynical? :-)
fishtwanger
3d ago
Stage 1 and 2 seem to imply that all movements start with elites, who are not themselves a natural client. I'd prefer a more market-style reading, where the niche exists first, and may be filled with a variety of solutions. But as in a nature documentary, we choose to follow a particular entrepreneur who comes up with an idea that allow them to make money/gain power in the niche. They may not be the only one exploiting the niche, so there may be competition. And they may have found the niche by being part of it themselves, as in Paul Graham's advice to build something you want to use. And there were entrepreneurs before them, and there will be some after them too.
I think this would capture an important truth, that a mass of people looking for change can be a powerful force, if they can somehow be harnessed to all work together. And as Lenin discovered, an ideological vanguard is a great way to do it. And if you want the movement to persist, the mass of people should never actually be satisfied, which was one of those criticisms of consumer capitalism that can easily be repurposed to describe the slippery slope of activism.
fishtwanger
5d ago
This is like a guy who has an old car that barely works, and every time it breaks down he patches it up just enough to keep running again. He doesn't have some hidden Freudian motive about "preferring to not have a reliable car", he'd actually like to have a reliable car, but he can't think beyond the immediate moment. If the car is capable of moving, he gets distracted by Twitter or rebuilding his computer or trying to get a complete set of Michael Whelan covers of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom stories, or whatever. Only when smoke actually starts coming out of the hood, or the clicking noise gets too annoying, will he spend a bit of time to tinker with it.
fishtwanger
5d ago
(At the very least, once my Mom passes…)
Yeah, same here, and I'm not quite sure how my decision process will go after that. But I do have some nephews and nieces, and some little first cousins once removed, and maybe they'll keep me going.
There's an old children's book of Greek mythology I had when I was a kid, "The Greek Gods", by Evslin, Evslin, and Hoopes. It's got the story of the twins, Apollo and Artemis, and part of the story is that Artemis gets to choose her own gifts. Among her requests is "I wish to be your maiden always, never a woman." And Zeus' response is "You shall have the gift of eternal chastity, and also the gift of changing your mind about it at any time, which will help you not want to." I feel the same way about suicide.
There's another part of my situation which makes the choice a bit easier. I shouldn't go into detail, but I'll just say that sufficiently strong anger appears to be able to overwhelm any other emotion I can feel, including despair. I don't know whether this is actually a good thing, but in the spirit of honesty, I thought I'd share.
Did you ever watch "The Wire"? Nope.
Well, personally, I consider it the best TV show ever made. Opinions differ, but I'd say it's definitely worth trying out a few episodes.
Yeah, I don't really have those — not nearly enough to "fill the days."
Hm. I suppose one thing I have going for me is that I got into Buddhism enough to be able to "live in the moment", most of the time. Even just eating plain rice, if I pay attention and go slow, I can actively enjoy it, the flavor and texture and the entire process of the thing. I don't actually know whether this is good for my long-term mental health - I think there might be ways in which this partial half-assed approach has crippled my internal mechanisms that could lead to recovery - but it does work on a moment-to-moment basis. You could try taking a look at "The Way of Zen" by Alan Watts, if you want an overview. It's short and a good read, anyway.
fishtwanger
5d ago
Given that it's listed as being from Australian English, I might have spelt it the same way. It wouldn't seem much different than what they do with their vowels in other places. ;-)
It's a nifty word, thanks for sharing!
fishtwanger
5d ago
One trick that occasionally works for me is to think of today-me and tomorrow-me as separate people, close as twin siblings, and to try to have today-me do favors for tomorrow-me.
For weight gain specifically, you might try fasting. In my experience, the first two days are the hardest, after that it gets much easier (when ketosis kicks in). It helps if you learn to appreciate unflavored tea. (A major contraindication is if you're on medication that needs to be taken with food.) And in my opinion, exercise is fun when I'm in shape, and miserable when I'm not, and I think a lot of people get the correlation/causation thing wrong there.
As for whether to go on living... I don't particularly, either. It's more of a habit; I can get some enjoyment out of daily life, and occasionally there are specific things I look forward to. True, it would be very convenient to die in my sleep, and I've gone to bed plenty of times hoping that would happen. But ultimately, there are some people out there whom I love, who love me, and as long as they're alive and in touch with me, I don't want to hurt them. (Did you ever watch "The Wire"? The end of season 2? I don't want to do that to them.) In the meantime, I try to find little pleasures in life, like smelling flowers, petting kitties, taking hot showers, and so on. It doesn't help with motivation toward long-term goals, but it fills the days. I wish I could help more.
fishtwanger
5d ago
Write him off. He's toxic-to-dangerous to associate with. You may have had a long friendship with him, but that was only because he hid his full personality from you. It's the classic story of any abusive relationship, whether it be controlling spouses, pimps, or vampires. Find people in the group that you can trust, and talk about everything (it sounds like you're doing this). Share all the warning signs, and listen when other people share theirs. Look up diagnostic criteria and discuss them like a book club.
As for the bad actor, you want to separate from him in a way that does not draw attention to you personally. If he focuses on you, that could be dangerous: you don't know what he might try. Just fade out and wind down any connections. Be a "gray rock", stay bland, don't give any emotion back one way or another, and be noncommittal. From a purely selfish perspective, let other people take the heat. But if you're feeling altruistic, you can look up strategies like this and share them with other people in the group.
Sadly, I don't think modern society has any good legal/ethical remedy for this situation. (If only we still had weregild!). He'll be out there, preying on other people, and you'll know that. Fortunately, this guy doesn't seem particularly intelligent, charismatic, or sadistic, so you're probably not letting another Jeffrey Dahmer go free. Unless he escalates, he'll just be spreading a low-grade cloud of misery and evil into the world.
fishtwanger
5d ago
Reading while stretching is fun, especially gravity-assisted stretches where no muscle activation is needed.
fishtwanger
6d ago
Thowaway lines are one thing, but for anything with a plot, I think it does more harm than good.
fishtwanger
6d ago
In some ways, it seems like a game, or most other types of job. It's an artificial toy system, but as long as it's kept contained, there's nothing horribly unusual about molding a bit of your brain into a shape that reacts to the output of the system. (Whether doing so is "good" is a different question, but it often seems to be necessary for modern life.) But yeah, there's a huge problem when you start altering your basic personality and political views based on artificial outputs, especially if you're not aware that that's what you're doing.
fishtwanger
6d ago
spruke
Is that a version of this word? I never encountered either before, but the context seems right...
fishtwanger
6d ago
Depends on the type of game, but largely agreed.
Also, voice acting is a mistake. Too many resources get locked up in creating art that only applies to one or few paths. The result winds up being either a bad movie that stops every so often so you can press buttons or play a minigame, or a game that cripples itself to cater to the needs of the bad movie that's been grafted onto it like a second head.
fishtwanger
6d ago
I've seen the first episode, and am unsure whether to keep watching. (I've read the book and seen the 1980 miniseries, a few times each, and like them both, and am not worried about spoilers at all.)
It felt a lot like a certain failure mode often associated with Internet fan-fiction, where the author fell in love with so many of the side-characters that they wind up killing the pacing and narrative structure by ballooning out character "development" with empty scenes that could have better been collapsed into a throwaway reference or a single glance. (GRRM was very good at managing this in ASoIaF, at first. But after book 4 or so, it got beyond his ability to control.)
Despite the claims that various people involved never watched the 1980 miniseries, it was interesting to see how many casting and costuming choices mirrored it and played with it. I especially liked the new interpretation of Rodrigues; he seemed like someone who hadn't exactly gone native, but had adopted a pick-and-choose attitude toward philosophies of life, making him no longer fish nor fowl. And I pity the actor who has to follow in Toshiro Mifune's shoes, but he seemed to be doing a good job. I did not like Yabushige's characterization, but that's on the writers, not the actor. (And why did they alter the name? I searched for a while but found nothing.) I didn't like the actor for Blackthorne - partly because he looks so... early 21st century North American action movie - but maybe he'll grow on me.
Putting aside the annoyance I have at the various interviews that criticize the originals for culture war reasons, I did think there was a lot of promise in the idea of presenting the story from the Japanese viewpoint. The early part where the ship showed up out of the fog was spooky, and the samurai boarding it reminded me of space marines boarding a derelict hulk. But I think to do that properly, they'd need to view Blackthorne as something like a space alien, and the series overall as a "second contact" story with a new alien species that tells you that the "benevolent federation" that you've joined isn't quite so benevolent after all. But instead, they give us enough of his POV that this doesn't work, but not enough of his POV to really get into his head. They left out some bits that provide motivation for his actions, and sped through bits where he should have been working on communication difficulties.
fishtwanger
6d ago
specifically targeted by social media companies
If you look at this in relationship terms, this is gaslighting and abuse. Entity A is trying to act according to entity B's rules, but B is deliberately altering natural feedback in order to keep entity A isolated and weak. All A sees is that they try things that should work, but there's no sign of those things working, and so their model of the world gradually disconnects from reality.
divorce is a social contagion of sorts
I didn't see a link to the paper, but the article gave no indication that there was a reason to suppose a causal link. It seems entirely plausible that there's a hidden 3rd factor that contributes to divorce rates in both the subject, and in the subject's social circle. It seems like a lot of "post hoc ergo propter hoc". (And you identify a potential mechanism and cause for a 3rd factor later!)
Could Silicon Valley, not unlike how they targeted Crowder's business through the algorithm, having also targeted his marriage?
I doubt very much that it's deliberate. Bullies don't usually set out to cause the exact set of symptoms that their victims develop. Perhaps there were people who were deliberately pushing this guy's buttons to see what kind of damage they could do, but even if someone takes credit for intentionally causing the result, I suspect that it'd just be narcissistic post facto justfication at work. ("Yes, of course I planned that, aren't I smart?")
Around a decade ago I saw a report that some research group had produced vat-grown ground beef, and made a burger. At the time, the theoretical cost was $50 per burger, and it apparently tasted mediocre. But I have hope that America's engine of innovation (given time and effort and lack of government regulation) will improve quality and bring down prices until it's competitive. One of these decades. crosses fingers
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