guajalote
1yr ago
I mean that's kind of my point. In text form this exchange can be read many different ways by different people.
If you imagine it as a verbal conversation where both parties statements are dripping with playful sarcasm, then it's clear they're flirting. If you imagine it as a verbal conversation where both parties are being dead serious, then they're both being pieces of shit to each other. It's impossible to create a neutral set of rules to decide which is which, especially when it's happening via text.
guajalote
1yr ago
I think it's a feature, not a bug, in more ways than you're giving it credit for. Saying stuff that makes the other person slightly uncomfortable is an important component of flirting for both sexes. It's a way of testing the other person a little to see how they perform.
It's similar to how a job interviewer might ask "what are your three greatest weaknesses?" That's a completely batshit insane thing to ask in the context of a normal conversation, but it's typical in an interview. The point is to see how the other person responds to an uncomfortable question - can they stay focused and give a socially appropriate response instead of getting flustered?
A woman saying "I hate your first date idea" is basically the same thing. It's (often) not a literal statement. It's about seeing the quality of the response from the other person and communicating that she isn't desperate for a date. "You're scared you'll lose" is basically the same thing. It's a little jab back designed to get a reaction and communicate a certain sense of aloofness. It's a delicate dance because you have to push a little but not push too much, and everyone will screw it up at some point given a long enough timeframe.
guajalote
1yr ago
No, it makes it even less legible. Is this "pressure" or is it playful banter that both parties are enjoying:
Him: "Let's have our first date at XYZ Mini Golf."
Her: "No way, I hate Mini Golf. And if that's your idea of a good first date then you aren't getting a date at all."
Him: "You're just saying that cause you're scared you'll lose."
Her: "Ugh. Fine. But I'm only agreeing because you're being such an asshole about it."
guajalote
1yr ago
guajalote
1yr ago
But even this "unjust" world is ultimately just in their belief system. Otherwise the concept of being "on the right side of history" would be incoherent. The good guys are destined to prevail in their eschatology.
guajalote
1yr ago
It seems like one of those situations where people go through a superficially logical chain of thought but commit a bunch of fallacies along the way without noticing.
- For a woman to be attracted to a man he must be a good person.
- Women are not attracted to incels.
- Therefore if a man is an incel he must be a bad person (fallacy of denying the antecedent).
- Therefore if a man is a bad person he must be an incel (fallacy of affirming the consequent)
guajalote
1yr ago
If we do the same for opioids, usage will go through the roof - as will overdoses.
Usage would go up, but overdoses would plummet because people could dose accurately.
guajalote
1yr ago
Housing is hard because no one knows what to do.
Just be like Houston and don't have zoning or red tape. Housing is affordable and it has an absurdly low homelessness rate, lower than Denmark.
guajalote
1yr ago
But, in my mind, the biggest thing that turns a type 1 down-on-their luck person into a type 2 pants pooper is the wide availability of fentanyl and heroin on the streets today.
I think it's meth much more than opiates. Opiates can kill you and make you unproductive, but they don't fry your brain and give you psychosis like hardcore simulants do.
And before anyone says "War on Drugs didn't work", we should take a look at the overdose stats. Overdoses deaths in the U.S. are up 1000% since the 1980s. The correct take, IMO, is that the war on drugs did work. We just didn't do it hard enough and gave up too soon.
The main reason overdoses are up is that fentanyl is really potent and easy to overdose on, but it's also the most popular illegal opiate because it's cheap to make and can be smuggled across the border in large quantities because it's so concentrated. If lower potency opiates (and narcan) could be purchased legally over the counter, fentanyl use and fentanyl deaths would plummet.
guajalote
1yr ago
It seems plausible that the absence of affordable housing for the first type of person creates a pipeline whereby they are more likely to become the second type of person.
guajalote
1yr ago
I think this is the best way to keep politics out of gaming - just don't reference anything remotely political and let people do whatever they want.
Also, the game is based on 5th edition DnD, which is a fantasy setting where basically anything is possible. A high level wizard can easily change their gender or species if they so choose simply by casting a spell. A 20th level wizard can cast True Polymorph on himself and become a dragon (permanently if he so chooses). Or he can cast Magic Jar and inhabit someone else's body (permanently if he so chooses). Real-world concepts of gender identity barely even make sense in this sort of setting.
guajalote
1yr ago
It's hard to make legal interpretation truly outcome blind because even if we're talking about strict textualism, often the text of the law cares about outcomes in some way.
To take a random example that comes up in my line of work, here's 28 USC § 1404(a): "For the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice, a district court may transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought or to any district or division to which all parties have consented."
To interpret and apply this statute, the court has to care about what outcome is best for the "convenience of parties and witnesses" and "in the interest of justice." There's no way to apply this statute in an outcome-blind way because the text of the statute explicitly cares about outcomes.
Even when we're talking about laws that are less explicit in their reference to outcomes, it's hard to actually interpret those laws in a vacuum without understanding the context of outcomes. Let's say I argue that the 2nd amendment guarantees me the right to keep and bear a copy of my neighbor's house key, because a house key can be used as a weapon for the purpose of self defense. If we are naïve about outcomes this seems like a valid enough argument. But in practice, it's an absurd interpretation of the 2nd amendment to say it gives people the right to posses copies of their neighbors' house keys, and clearly the outcome of such an interpretation is contrary to the text and original intent of the 2nd amendment.
The entire concept of "shaming" seems like a relatively new concept to me, in much the same way that "gendering" is a relatively new concept. It used to be understood that some things (like being fat) were just inherently shameful by nature, irrespective of whether anyone was engaged in the act of "shaming." Now the idea is that things only become shameful as a result of the act of shaming, i.e. of being assigned shame by someone. I feel like a similar transformation took place around the concept of gender, from being a description of a state of affairs to being the result of "gendering," i.e. external assignment or perception of gender.
None of this is denying that shame and gender are socially constructed. But there's a big, unacknowledged leap from "X is a social construct" to "X is only real if individual people choose to acknowledge it." If I say my friend John is wealthy because he has $10 million in the bank, I'm describing a social construct. Money is a social construct, and the concept of what qualifies as "wealthy" is a social construct. But it doesn't follow that John ceases to be wealthy if I stop treating him as though he is wealthy. Even I refuse to acknowledge John's wealth, he still has $10 million of purchasing power. Even if everyone who John knows pretends like he's broke, he's still not broke.
guajalote
1yr ago
The system can tolerate a lot of corruption, but Hunter has just been so incredibly sloppy and his corruption is so undeniably blatant that it represents a bridge too far for a lot of people.
I think this is basically the same reason why Trump was and is subject to such extraordinary scrutiny. His level of corruption is in the same ballpark as other recent presidents, but he is too sloppy and is unable or unwilling to correctly play the plausible deniability game.
guajalote
1yr ago
At least in some recorded cases the Romans seemed to feel quite sorry for the Christians they killed. There are a bunch of accounts of Roman judges basically pleading with Christians not to make them sentence them to death, saying things to the effect of "listen, nobody cares if you want to worship your god, just go through the motions of paying obeisance to the emperor's genius and be done with it." The Christians would often be given long periods of time to reconsider their obstinacy and save themselves from the lions. The Romans generally didn't see true belief as a necessary component of religion, it was all about the ritual, so couldn't understand why Christians wouldn't just go through the motions like everyone else.
I think you're getting hung up on the word "judging" and reading in connotations that aren't there. Maybe a better neutral word would be "evaluating." In situations where we need to evaluate someone (to determine whether they should get a job, get admitted to a club, qualify for a particular government benefit, etc.), the classical liberal approach says we should only evaluate them based on personal characteristics, not based on group membership.
So how is this Conservative/Classical Liberal valorization of judgement really much better than, or different from, what Poilievre is criticizing the "woke" for?
It's better because we're evaluating the person based on characteristics they actually possess, rather than imputing group characteristics to them that they may not actually possess.
guajalote
2yr ago
Depends on what you mean by "quality of life." If quality of life corresponds to revealed preferences, then people in the heartland are getting more of the things they want than ever and are therefore enjoying a better quality of life than ever. But it so happens that what they want is meth and McDonalds.
If by "quality of life" you mean "the things that people should want," then that's a harder question. We'd have to come up with an objective way of figuring out what people "should" want, and then measure whether they're getting more or less of that.
guajalote
2yr ago
The question for the floor is: why the high degree of correlation? Is there an underlying principle at work here that explains both positions (opposition to AA plus opposition to debt relief) that doesn't just reduce to bare economic or racial interest?
In practice, I think things like party affiliation are the driving factors behind the correlation. But I also think there's a rather simple "underlying principle" that ties both decisions together.
Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine you find an intelligent person who's fluent in English but totally ignorant of American history and law. You hand this person a copy of the US Constitution and have him read it carefully. Then you ask him to answer two questions based on his understanding of the plain text of the document:
-
Does the Constitution allow the government to treat people differently based on their race?
-
Does the Constitution allow the president to spend money without congress's approval?
The answer to both questions is clearly "no" if you're just reading the text of the document without bringing any external knowledge or biases to bear. In order to answer anything other than "no" to both questions, you either need to come up with complicated interpretive arguments or you need to just not care about the text of the Constitution.
So I think a rather simple underlying principle unifying both decisions is: "the plain text of the Constitution is binding."
guajalote
2yr ago
That's fair, I don't actually think "cis" is a slur, but I do think it bothers some people for reasons that don't apply to terms like "straight."
guajalote
2yr ago
The main difference compared with those other examples is that not everyone agrees the relevant axis (gender identity) exists or is coherently defined. By using the term "cis" you're implicitly buying into the premise that gender identity is a real, coherent thing.
guajalote
2yr ago
Yes, I love that show as well, perhaps should be part of the list above.
Same way I make peace with any other set of mutually exclusive choices I have to make. Say you choose to become a doctor instead of a professional musician. Certain doors are opened by that decision, and certain doors are closed. You gain certain experiences, you lose out on others. If those tradeoffs aren't ones you can live with then you need to make a different choice. Otherwise, you have to accept the tradeoffs. Nobody can have everything. You have to choose what you care about most and decide accordingly.
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