georgioz
3mo ago
So give me your sources. The AI gave me Gitnux and 2date4 love or Worldmetrics as sources. I don't want to research that stupid shit too deeply, if you have other numbers just send it. The point still stands, sex is relatively easy to purchase for almost any single male.
Hard disagree. Sex has to be really bad before I would prefer to just crank my hog.
Even in that case, you can easily satisfy yourself using hookers. According to quick AI search the prices ranges from $20 per hour for street hookers to around $150 for average escort to $300 plus for high end hooker in USA. For a price of your average car lease, any single male can have a different hooker every week, getting his body count to triple digits easily thus matching any redpilled macho. And we are not even talking about sex tourism, where you are a cheap flight away to some 3rd world country where you can enjoy orgies for really cheap.
The OP's point of course still stands - even if you satisfy your sexual desire, there is still the social aspect that many people fill parasocial relationships. Although even those are not the only options. There are hookers who act more like your lovers where you are something like a sugar daddy. They have stable clientele of multiple men with their own schedule, so you can visit regularly and get not only a sex but also massage or even homecooked meal.
To be frank I find this as highly distasteful and unsatisfying relationship but I used it only as an example. In the end there is not much more difference between people obsessed with sexual conquests or people who obsesses about masturbation or people who just chase hookers. The difference is only in degree.
"Do you feel emotions as physical sensations or intense thoughts?"
I'd say that most people feel emotions physically - e.g. you are so anxious before an important event so that you want to throw up. You are so angry that your hands tremble and maybe even contort into fists. You are so ashamed that you feel your face and ears turning red in wave of hotness.
In fact I think there was some post possibly back in reddit TheMotte days, where there was somebody promoting a theory of polytheism being born of these particular physical foci of emotion. I do not remember it that well, but the gist of it was something about the fact why you had god of war or lust and so forth with specific rituals and physicality - down to actual representation of that emotion in vocabulary: like the words heart, bile, spleen, gut, stomach etc being associated with courage, hatred, anger, anxiety, fear etc. The theory was that your actions were driven by that particular emotion associated with that part of you body related to a specific god who had domain over it. In order to be integrated you had to appeal to this multitudes integrated into you being. Monotheistic religions like Christianity integrated all these emotions into one person, putting reason/logos on top of all of it, as the ultimate ruling principle.
But I still think that rational thinking is a reflective stance, there is still a need to control the emotion on a physical level in order to analyze it. But the underlying physicality is still there - how could it not be. Stress or fear reaction are famously related to various levels of hormones with large impacts on physical state. Just because you have more experience controlling them does not mean they do not exist physically.
I even think that a good way of controlling/regulating your immediate emotions is to disassociate yourself from these physical effects - you posit your ego as an observer of physical impact of your emotion as if you are some curious anthropologist of yourself, not fighting or appeasing them directly from within the paradigm.
georgioz
4mo ago
I'd say that I am mostly with you here. I however have an additional position which can give animals moral worth - if they impact humans. This is I think Kantian position, where animal moral worth is derivative from humans. E.g. we give pets more moral worth compared to nonpets, because killing pets impacts their owners orders of magnitude more. Additionally animal cruelty by perpetrator may make them more cruel to people, so we may regulate that behavior somewhat. Of course this argument can be hijacked by somebody claiming any animal suffering causes them a lot of harm. So it is not a sure thing, but it is directionally correct for me so we can have some basic prescriptions when it comes to animal cruelty while not morally equating [some number of] animals to humans as some rationalists do.
georgioz
4mo ago
My two cents from old cooking books - poultry was treated as inferior type of "meat". Many recipes had additional ingredients - such as bacon or ham or other "higher" level meats added to poultry in order for it to be considered a proper meat meal.
georgioz
4mo ago
In elementary school grammar classes, students are admonished for saying things like “Me and Tim played baseball yesterday”.
I always thought about it in a way that if the sentence makes sense with just one person, then I should use I. For instance: I went to school yesterday means that I should use My brother and I went to school yesterday. But when the original sentence makes sense with "me" I should also copy it. E.g: My mother gave me a cookie changes into My mother gave a cookie to me and my brother. I am not sure if this is correct, but that is what I use as a heuristic.
The hypercorrection makes sense, except given how English language forms it means it will actually be acceptable very soon. Similarly to how literally/metaphorically are now basically synonyms, except when they are not.
georgioz
4mo ago
I will admit that Elon and I's moral systems are deeply at odds.
I know that this is off-topic - but can somebody explain what is this sentence structure? Is it something similar to the word literally now also having the meaning of metaphorically? So similarly as now it is okay to use X and I in all the formulations - even in those where it does not make sense - we now even upgraded to it into X and I's Y?
Would you rather be 95th percentile in Lesotho, or 40th percentile in America?
I think it would actually be quite competitive. 95th percentile in Lesotho would put you into literal top 100,000 people in that small nation. We are talking about a country with Gini coefficient of 0.44, being part of top elite would mean being very rich even in nominal terms - probably scion of some well connected family a respected local businessman or government official who studied in South African university (5,6% people have university degree in Lesotho) and goes there for shopping trips. Not to even talk about things like social status or what you can afford - things like your own maids and servants, housing etc.
georgioz
4mo ago
There are additional suspicios angles with Epstein murder - specifically that Epsteins associate Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced for 20 years for sexually abusing minors, and so far she is the only one sentenced. In fact even in the official government website there was at least one other person involved in the scheme:
In the later phase, from approximately 2001 until at least approximately 2004, MAXWELL and Epstein enticed and recruited, and caused to be enticed and recruited, minor girls to visit Epstein’s Palm Beach Residence to engage in sex acts with Epstein, after which Epstein, MAXWELL, or another employee of Epstein’s would give the victims hundreds of dollars in cash. This is all highly suspicious - we are talking about trafficking many girls over the span of at least a decade and there is nobody else involved.
georgioz
4mo ago
There definitely woke things which are centrally defined and driven, especially if it is implemented withing government. These are things like hate speech laws, various DEI labor requirements etc. Additionally even oldschool Marxist were constantly infighting, especially in power vacuum before some faction solidified their power: think about bolshevisks vs mensheviks or Stalinists vs Trockyists etc.
georgioz
4mo ago
Candance Owens was a hot star in conservative commentariat - a black well spoken conservative woman. She built her own following then was also part of Shapiro's Daily Wire until they went their separate way after conflict about Jews/Israel after October 7.
As for what is happening - did you ever crack some edgy jokes in your friend group, maybe something like "Hitler did nothing wrong" etc. only to find out that this one guy actually took it literally and did not get it as a joke? That is Canace Owens for you when it comes to some of her stuff including Obama/Macron being transgender. It is a meme going on way back like when Joan Rivers offhandedly had a remark that Michelle is a tranny.
georgioz
4mo ago
So in other words Israel's only strategy would be creating a giant refugee crisis 300 km from Europe.
Other countries do that. Syrians do that, Sudanese do that, Pakistanis do that. In a sense Palestinians from Gaza are peanuts when it comes to potential issues and resulting refugee crisis right know in the whole Sahel region.
Nobody wants that. Israel is a small state that is going to be in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them.
Not really. Many of Israel's neighbors - like Egypt or Saudi Arabia - don't give a single shit about Palestinians except for some platitudes. In fact it is Western countries who are more active in this sense. Plus I think that this is already old news, Israel will be considered a bad guy no matter what - there are people who still throw 1948 expulsion at them
I'd say that the definition of woke is much better grounded than what leftist define as fascism or neoliberalism or even capitalism. It was beaten again and again including parallels with Marxism. Woke uses the same oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, marxist dialectic and interplay of Theory(Critical Theory) and Praxis (Activism) as old Marxist. They also use similar concept of consciousness as Marxists do with their class consciousness. The easiest way to make the parallel is that wokeness expanded on the concept of property/capital, which now includes other types of property that oppressing class possess. In the same way bourgeoisie possess the property of capital, white people possess the property of white privilege, men possess the property of male privilege and cishetero people possess the property of [cishetero]normativity.
But again, all these are high-level academic definitions and one can argue them. But this is far from the extent to which we are talking about. Wokeness is an ideology, even secular religion in similar way to let's say scientology. Woke people have their own ontology of what is man and a woman, what is justice, with their own prescriptions of how society should work with their own sins such as racism, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia or homophobia. On ground level woke people do not need to know the nitty-gritty details of how the ideology is developed. But it is the same with other religions - not all christians know bible passages by heart or know the main church doctrines. This does not prevent people to call them Christians as a useful descriptor.
Being brutal against the locals is not an effective way to win.
You just cherrypicked several unsuccessful attempts even in relatively late times. Croats literally performed ethnic cleansing of Serbs under NATO umbrella and were successful. Czechoslovakia and Poland were absolutely brutal toward native Germans living in the area for 500+ years and were successful in solving the "German problem" creating ethnically homogenous states. Plus don't forget about ongoing war in Ukraine with "war crimes" aplenty.
What you described is all poxy/colonial wars with little to no investment of local population. The comparison of Israel as a colonial power similar to France in Algeria is absolutely misguided, millions of Israelis cannot just pack and leave such as French from Algeria or Americans from Vietnam or Soviets from Afghanistan. Again, just look at Ukraine war where Russians are willing to shoulder losses two orders of magnitude higher compared to their previous colonial military engagements. It is a completely different game.
georgioz
4mo ago
Technically I’m supposed to call her a former porn actress, but the actual level of ‘acting’ that is involved in all of this makes me decide against doing so; supposedly she also appeared in a grand total of one casting video only (by Pierre Woodman) so calling her an actress would be a big stretch either way.
Yeah, she acted as a porn actress employed by a well know porn director in his porn film. What else would you call her other than a porn actress? If somebody murdered "grand total of one person" or somebody only burglarized "grand total of one house" - then such a criminal would only be "technically" murderer/burglar? What is this. How would you call her? I am genuinely curious.
PS: As a wise person once said - you may have built thousand bridges and only sucked one dick. But forever more, you are not going to be known as a bridgebuilder, but rather as a dicksucker.
georgioz
4mo ago
"Ominous" how?
Probably ominius in the same way Arabs in Palestine saw it as ominious, when their neighborhood changed its "vibe" over the decades in first half of 20th century. Or maybe how American natives carefully watched their new neigbors with strange culture. And ultimately they were correct.
So we are back to square one. It seems to me that you are truthitarian and not a utilitarian, which is fair game. Let's investigate it on my previous example of Kant's axe murderer asking for you wife. Since she can be destroyed by [you telling] the truth about her whereabouts, then she should be destroyed, right? Because telling a lie can hamper yours and murderer's ability to correctly calculate the utility in the future with immense impacts. Or you should tell a lie, because death of you wife would be more negative utility compared to whatever impact on correct calculation of utility is there from telling a lie. What is your answer to the axe murderer? Is the truth the ultimate value that should destroy all and everything in its path? Or is it subordinate to other values such as your best estimation of utility in a given moment?
This is distinct from "lies can be utile", which is broader and covers things like people having different utility metrics and/or people not actually being utilitarians and/or direct, non-choice-based belief effects (e.g. stress). That condition of "if you need there to be lots of utilitarians" is actually relevant to my point, y'know.
That is why amended Sagan's mantra:
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be - except if it clashes with some other higher value (e.g. causing negative utility), in that case you should not destroy that thing by the truth.
georgioz
4mo ago
I mean, this is basically just saying "sometimes lying results in people believing the truth".
No. It says that lies can increase utils. Truth and utility are independent concepts, why do you have it confused?
More generally, you say "I am not sure why rationalists cannot understand this argument". Notice that if you're not sure why somebody doesn't accept something, one of the possible answers is in fact "they understand it just fine, but there's a counterargument that they understand and you don't".
Then demonstrate it. The very first sentence of your reply shows that I was right.
Act utilitarianism is not the only kind of utilitarianism there is. There is also rule utilitarianism and Two-level utilitarianism. Utilitarians can be against believing false things in the same way that they can be against child rape: while it is certainly possible to conjure hypothetical scenarios where the thing they are against has the better outcome, in practice these situations do not seem to appear.
Of course, but in the end they still want to increase utils - be it by acts, rules etc. This does not weaken my arguments - whatever way you calculate utils, the sentence is stupid if destroying a lie decreases utils by that metric.
Hey, I am not the one who claims that there is such a thing as a false belief which improves utility. You seem to claim that such things exist, so you should come up with examples.
Sure, I can use a hypothetical. If utilitarian of any sort - act, rule or two-level - made a calculation and found out that let's say believing in Christianity increases utils, then he would be obliged not to destroy it even if he thought Christian belief was based on a lie. Is it not true statement?
My criticism of your "homeopathy" example was that you actually think that homeopathy decreases utility. Which is not an argument for anything, you just affirm that saying what you think is true increases utility. Which does not tackle my argument at all.
EDIT: you lost me with Pratchett, aliens and peasants. Was is supposed to be some longwinded explanation for why you hold truth as an ultimate good instead of utils?
Right, and the point of a pithy, simplistic mantra like "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" is to explicitly condemn such behavior of selectively applying and not applying principles based on whims and preferred outcome
But the point is that it is exactly what is expected - utilitarians ought to apply the mantra selectively.
But if it is indeed true that this statement is useful, then it certainly doesn't seem like truth would destroy the statement. Why would it?
Because the sentence is false and thus should be destroyed by its own prescription. Unless you selectively apply it based on your whims and preferences. Exactly what you condemned in paragraph before.
georgioz
4mo ago
If your point was that rationalists are deontological in practice, why did your first post in this thread express confusion as to why rationalists like the pithy phrase expressing this rule, not a useless utilitarian tautology?
Because they pretend to be utilitarian, but are in practice quite dogmatic. This Sagan's quip is actually a good example of that, because it is self-defeating paradox. If taken literally, it should destroy itself. It is a very poor choice for some deontological rule for a wannabe utilitarian. There are much better rules - e.g. give 10% of your income to charity.
07mk gave the rationalist answer to why prefer the shorter version.
I think 07mk did a pretty good job for why rationalist should ditch the whole sentence. He pretends, that the shortened version is somehow better, because it gives less space for individual whims and preferences. But he also basically admits, that it should not be applied all the time - of course subject to individual whims and preferences. How is that better? I focused more on the paradox side, but it does not mean that 07mk's explanation is satisfying in any way.
georgioz
4mo ago
But the indirect epistemic consequences are devastating
The consequences are devastating for what? Some cosmic sense of justice and rightness? As long as consequences are beneficial for utility, then lies are absolutely okay for utilitarians. Are they not? Of course you may argue that a specific lie is detrimental to utility, but then it is not my argument. Go and find some utility improving lie as an example, and defend destroying that one from utilitarian standpoint.
georgioz
4mo ago
If you need there to be lots of utilitarians, then assuming some commonality of interests lies are terrible because they cause people to calculate utility incorrectly
Or lies can cause people to calculate utility correctly, especially if they have some sort of bias. Is it not the whole point of rationalist thinking - Overcomening Bias? If a white lie can do that, then it will increase utility and general good.
Truth and utility are different concepts that are independent of each other - rationalist could say that they if they are not exactly orthogonal, they are at least at some steep angle to each other. I am not sure why rationalists cannot understand this argument - are they not supposed to be impersonal calculators? If Yudkowsky calculated that spewing lie after lie for the rest of his life will enable humanity to align the AI, he would 100% do it to usher his utopia. Would he not?
I recently delved into LitRPG/Cultivation sphere, which I think is somwhat newish offhoot of scifi/fantasy genre and is at least adjacent to YA scene/audience. And to be frank, I start to think that female protagonists like in surprisingly interesting Azarinth Healer series may work better in that context. The male protagonists in many of these stories are some combination of weak whiners, being overshadowed and constantly scolded/humiliated by female side characters, having weird fetish/harem sidestories and more.
The pet theory of mine is that feminism is basically projection of male virtues/characteristics on females. Terrible girl-bossing is just projection of what feminists view as toxic masculinity on women: aggressive know-it-alls, emotionless or even cruel leaders etc. If the author can do modicum of work to reign that tic at least a little bit, they can actually end up with decent formerly male character only in skirt. With female protagonist you will not see her being literally hit on head if she says something "dumb", scolded for being a creep, being told that she is an idiot, humiliated or womensplained for not knowing something or any other type of terrible writing now so prevalent with male heroes. Or to me more precise even if they are addressed like that, they have a mature response to it.
It reminds me of the story how the character of Ellen Ripley from Alien was originally written for male actor and how it surprisingly worked well for female - especially in a world where only women are allowed to have oldschool male traits/virtues.
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