iprayiam3
2yr ago
Quite the opposite. I was originally a CS major, planned to do SE, and bailed out in college after internships. I have a different career that I have little interest in but have been steadily moving up to the point of having a PhD related to what I do, all while trying half-heartedly for 10 years to get back into a technical space, even at one point having a start-up on the side. There was a time where I was involved at job with evaluating a commercial software tool, of which I had literally written my own (not enterprise ready though) only two years before. It was insult to injury knowing more about the inner workings than the Sales Engineer trying to sell it to me. AI + age + family, beat that plan out of me in the past year and I've only dug in deeper.
My career is one of those things that makes me most (insincerely) wonder about determinism and whatnot. It's such a sticky track for me that it almost feels like trying to pivot away is an unallowed path like in a video game.
Jump into #2 quickly*! Seriously. Giving your kid a sibling they can play with is something that will pay off for them their whole life. It will also help you out tremendously when they're tots looking for attention you don't have. It might seem crazy to jump back in quickly, but it's probably easier than starting all over again several years later.
*By this I mean within 1.5-3 years, My first two are 16 months apart and even though it was a total unexpected surprise, it was the greatest thing we ever could have done. They are best friends and they keep each other occupied for hours a day that they would either be lonely or staring at screens
One thing that rolls around in my head when talking about the rise in transgenderism is the complexity of comparing outcomes. Now I don’t personally think this topic should be primarily judged through an outcomes lens, and my position isn’t based on it. However, it inevitably gets tossed around, and it’s also related to the question of how much a rise in transgenderism is revealed preferences vs changed preferences, so to speak.
It shouldn’t be controversial to say that a person who transitioned in the past, say even 2003, would have poorer outcomes on average than a person who transitioned today, due to both medical progress and social acceptability etc. Consequently, the baseline unhappiness for a person to transition should end up being higher in 2003 than 2023.
Thus there’s a lot of argument that the rise in transgenderism is at least partly due to a lot of people who would have transitioned in 2003 in a 2023 environment. And I think that’s straightforwardly true.
But I still think that doesn’t show the whole picture Consider the difference in comparing the level of happiness of a person who transitions today as compared to…
• If they didn’t transition today vs
• If they didn’t transition in 2003.
I think social contagion is certainly partly responsible in cause. [There are certainly some people who would never have felt gender dysphoria if they weren’t socialized into this, and I think it accounts for a lot of ROTD in young women, but I suspect it’s also less so in men with AGP, though I definitely suspect things like porn as @2rafa suggest also cause an increase in amount of AGP.] But I think it is also responsible partly for degree of dissatisfaction. How many people in a social context where transition wasn’t an option, would have been happier not transitioning than people not transitioning in a social context where it is an option? Again, the answer seems obviously a lot.
A person tempted to drink, but trying to remain sober is probably going to have a harder time at a party where they’re being encouraged to drink than in an environment where everyone is sober and encouraging them to stay so. So the real comparison is how much happier is a person who transitions in 2023 than that same person would have been if they hadn’t transitioned in 2003.
Obviously it’s a difficult if not impossible measurement. But I think there’s reason to believe that the answer on average is less happy. And if that were true, there’s an argument for a society that is less accommodating, knowing that the person who transitions is less happy, but on average the individual doesn’t transition and is happier for it.
Consider it a related thought experiment that could be measured:
Take a group of children and divide them into four blind groups. **Groups A and B **are given an enthusiastic conversation about and shown advertisements etc for Disney World and told they might get to go there this weekend. Only Group A is taken. Group B is brought to a local playground for the day.
Group C is also shown the advertisements and get the topic presented, but not told that they have a chance to go, and are told upfront they will be taken to a local playground, which they are. Group D is also taken to the local playground after being told they would be, and not shown any adversement for Disney, even though they are likely aware of it.
Even though we might expect that the kids in Group A might have a better time than the kids in group D, it’s reasonable to assume B will have the worst time of it.
Now suppose one wanted to make an argument that A’s overall satisfaction was not great enough over D’s or even C’s to be worth the expense of taking them there, and that C’s and B's satisfaction could be most effectively increased by including them in group D (avoid showing them DW promotions), rather than A’s (taking them to Disney World).
Now imagine that your opponent’s response was to compare A to B (the group who was told might go and then denied) and used B’s dissastisfaction to argue for making D’s into C’s, dissatisfied C’s into Bs, and then arguing it’s human decency to make A available to all Bs.
TLDR, my, not particularly unique point, is that I bet there's a lot of people with a given level of dysphoria, who would have lived a hardly affected life untransitioned 20 years ago, but would suffer much more for it in today's context, and that should be accounted for in extending social permissiveness.
Since many here will already agree with me, I'll go ahead and make the more controversial: The same argument above but for divorce, extramarital sex, and religious participation.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
Threads probably won't succeed, but I think the idea of a TikTok For Text will at some point.
Interesting take. For the sake of playing devil's advocate, I wonder whether TikTok with Pictures and Video will always be better enough dopamine rush that TT4Text can't compete on that front.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
Claiming that this doesn't count because Susan's only being penalized for non-Christian sexuality, instead of for sexuality, is a nitpick that makes no real difference to the criticism.
It depends what the criticism is though. As I stress, if you are using the "Problem of Susan" as a way to criticize Christianity at large, its a stupid starting point because you are reading into an intentionally vague line whatever you happen to want to criticize instead of criticizing it directly.
Due to the Penseveerseres's discretion, there's not much to work with, but that not much to work with is intentionally and incorrectly spun into excluded from heaven without much reason. My entire point is that it's insincere and distracting to translate, Lucy et al's explanation is thin into the reason is thin.
The problem of Susan is completely contrived, because Christianity is already the coda for interpreting Peter, Edmund, and Lucy's, euphemistic vagueness for the in-world sake of discretion.
Had Lewis, said something explicitly at odds with Christianity, there'd be something there to criticize. Alternatively, if one is simply looking to criticize Christianity, we need not strangle a passing line about a fictional character, written out of a story for the sake of showing "stakes" to do so.
Because Lewis left it vague and intended it to be Christian allegory, we need only to read Christian beliefs into an understanding of it.
Q: Was Susan left out of heaven because she was sexually mature, or generally a grown up?
Decoder: Does Christianity exclude adults or the sexually mature from heaven?
A: No.
Q: Was Susan left out of heaven because she lost her faith?
Decoder: Does Christianity exclude people without faith from heaven?
A: Quite possibly so.
Q: Is it really that binary, she goes to hell because she misremembered fantastical journey?
Decoder: What does Christianity have to say about morally upright people who get the details wrong?
A: Here Lewis does have something to say in the contrast with the pious Caloremene, Emeth. Here one can actually earnest debate Lewis' message about nonChristian salvation or inclusion into heaven. For those who don't remember, he was a pious and morally upright believer in Tash (a false diety), but found himself in heaven, and is told essentially that his proper moral conscious was unknowingly done in honor of Aslan himself.
Now, one might fall on either side of Christian inclusivity, but let's put that a theological debate aside and return to Susan, because even in a world of inclusivity, Susan doesn't make it, which means that within TLB, Susan is clearly both not a believer in Aslan, and relatedly living impiously / immorally.
So whether or not a lack of faith in Jesus is enough to keep one out of heaven, we know that Susan had both a lack of faith and a lack of moral uprightness within the context of Lewis's narrative. This isn't an interpretation, it's deductively so.
Q: Was Susan's immorality a simple appreciation for lipstick, nylon, and/or invitation?
Decoder: Does Christianity condemn lipstick, nylon, or invitations?
A: Here Lewis used the characters' discretion to leave it vague, in order to be inclusive of a wide range of Christianity. And the reader is best served reading into as a placeholder for un-Christian lifestyle. If you are a Puritan, maybe it does render correctly to read it straightforwardly as immodesty.
But it's weird and dishonest to interpret a vague euphemistic line in a particular way for the sake of disagreeing with that reading. But how can we interpret it?
Q: Can we draw anything from Susan's behaviors?
Decoder: What does Christianity have to say about sexual immorality or worldliness?
A: Quite a bit. If you want to render Susan's behavior as a sexual awakening at odds with Christian sexual ethics, what's the problem with Susan that isn't just a problem with Christian belief? You don't have a "problem of Susan", but a "problem with orthodoxy".
If you want to render Susan's behavior as a sexual awakening not at odds with Christian sexual ethics, then clearly that isn't what kept her out of heaven. It makes no sense.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
Old post of mine at the old place, but I want to reiterate my objection to referring to education as a public good:
Particular College education, but primary education is a public good, and I think the people is support of affirmative action take the same framing and extend a position of what college ought to be. Even if not economically a true public good, college as part of education collectively as a public good, not in the "benefits the public way", but in a way that is somewhat more abstract.
(tbc this isn't actually my opinion)
Suppose one claims that water should be a public good, in the technical sense. In economics, "both non-excludable and non-rivalrous." However, particular water fountains and taps can't themselves be accessed non-rivalrous or excludable due to their limited availability adn disproportionate desirability or pressure. One solution could be truly truly treat water fountains themselves as public goods with completely even lotteries for access.
Another solution could be to maintain that 1. water is a public good, that 2. access to particular water fountains isn't, and yet that 3. laissez-faire access to water fountains collectively leaves access to the public good unfulfilled. They could make an argument that targeted affirmative access to water fountains is a tool for keeping the water publicly accessible, while allowing the specific taps to be excludably regulated in their availability.
I'm not saying this is correct or has no holes in it, but it is a way of squaring the abstract concept of education as a public good with universities not being so, without resorting to a 'good for the public' definition.
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?
The quickest and imo most accurate answer is that it's teams, not principles holding the two groups of support together.
But for a more effortful reconciliation, I don't think you need to go all in on race or bare economics. Support or opposition to both rulings can cleave rather nicely into a broader philosophical disagreement of social responsibility and the purpose of education for democratic equality & social efficiency. The argument for both is a collectivist view that goes:
Education is a public good, which should provide broad social benefits. Universities and the government should maintain the right to press on the scale to ensure democratically available and efficient outcomes.
In other words, both are united by a philosophy of social responsibility to both sides of the college as a public good bargain: "access" and "outcomes".
The anti-side of both is one about individual / meritocratic fairness. In both cases someone is getting to skip the benefits line, not based on personal merit, but on a collectivist effort to balance some measure. Education is a private good, and proper democratic access is one of equal, unbiased cost/availability, not collective equal access.
EDIT: Other replies below are even more parsimonious about a dichotomy between clear interpretation of existing rules and activist creep. But the most parsimonious in terms of popular opinion, remains teams.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
I'm not saying it won't augment the current toolset in new ways I can't well predict. But, the nice thing about mice and keyboards is that, when I want the computer to respond, I touch them. When I'm not touching them, the computer isn't responding. I can do whatever I want with my hands and eyes, and they computer isn't trying to figure out whether I'm asking something of it. There's an inherent limitation with asking the entire attention of your eyes and hands or trying to constantly double task the input devices.
There an analogy with voice-to-text on phones. It may be easier or more convenient at times, but when you are also using your mouth to have an in-person conversation, it's worse.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
I'm confused because I thought this was already the case
It was and then it wasn't again with varying steps along the way. There was a point before Musk took over where you could see a particular tweet or scroll a timeline one or two down before the sign in wall would come up. Then it seemed to have all been removed. Then recently, you couldn't actually run a search unless signed in, but could click a username that popped up in the search bar and navigate to their timeline. Then last week, you couldn't even see the search bar, but still open timelines through hyperlinks.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
You are hitting on the three competing and unreconcilable goals of education: Democratic equality, social efficiency, and social mobility.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
TL;DR: Autogynephilia isn’t caused by cringe story books in which Jimmy has a trans mom and a cis mom lol.
No, not directly but it's crowd cover and encouragement to take your paraphilia public / evolve it into an identity. No, I highly doubt that anything put on by the school is ever a spark for a kid to trans (except actual groomery grooming), but it's definitely gasoline, and a firepit.
For a lot of paraphilias including agp, the exhibitionism and humiliation is part of the excitement and can eventually sublimate into association.
A teen in the 90s who got turned on by putting on his sister's dress, would still not be caught dead coming to school like that. So it's ability and context to grow is stunted, and in many cased desisted, subsumed into hetero-erotic exploration with women, or maybe remains a mild kink. But when the teacher and school is encouraging it, and more importantly you are given examples of other people doing it and seemingly getting away with it, you now have a context to dive all in and let it consume you, and receive the positive social feedback.
TL;DR: Autogynephilia isn’t caused by cringe story books in which Jimmy has a trans mom and a cis mom lol.
Finally, returning to your initial TL;DR, again no I doubt it's causing anything outright, but certainly someone with some mild curiousity can get tickled by the idea and it's a great way to grow into an earworm.
As a guy I can tell you there are a lot of random little slightly 'strange' fleeting experiences that I can still trace certain shapes of my adult sexual-psyche back to today. Even if you want to make an argument that in every scenario, the spark was already there, I'm saying that something as ridiculous as a teacher reading a book that makes you feel weird can really feed that spark.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
This post and the thread in response is unreadable, as it and most responses are a long collection of unrelated ideas and only the ability to respond to some before branching off into dead ends and redundancy.
I suggest we don't do this. It's extraordinarily annoying.
Perhaps you meant the thread discussion to be confined to the meta-discussion about discussing such topics, but it clearly didn't turn out that way and you shouldn't have itemized several dozen.
A top level post that throws out 73 disparate discussion topics is an abuse of the concept of topics. This is essentially 73 low effort posts that amount to "controversial statement... discuss."
iprayiam3
2yr ago
I think this question is very hung up in the complexity of the concept of 'happiness' (and possibly also confounded by correlations between who does and doesn't have money. The richest people I know are also the most stressed out because they are rich because they're broken in a never ending quest of career and financial improvement. But if you took a well adjusted middle class family man and paid of his house, I bet he'd become happier.)
In terms of the complexity of happiness, I am a pretty happy guy dispositionally. I have a positive attitude, I'm relatively low stress and I love the simple things in my life. It's true that on a daily hedonic level, it would be hard to make money adjust by day-to-day mood all that much. I suspect it's also true of people dispositionally unhappy, restless, etc.
On a more fundamental level, my sense of value and meaning in the world is tied to my philosophical and religious beliefs as well as some deep ingrained pre-dispositions (like hating change, and being naturally nostalgic). Again, I doubt money could change that much, or possibly negatively.
But between my deep sense of happiness and my daily mood/disposition, I think there's a middle concept of happiness that would be helped greatly with more money. If the stress of working, saving could be reduce, the opportunity cost of my time, etc. It would affect my ' middle happiness' quite a bit.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
Not everyone has the luxury of tradition, religion... Try to get a traditional relationship as the average Western 20 something now, see what happens. Fucking try. There literally aren't places for you to even look for those things anymore.
It's not a luxury, it's a choice and a difficult to substitute ingredient. If you want a traditional relationship & family, get religion. If you don't want religion, accept that you might not get the relationship.
Jeffrey Atomic asks Danny Familyman what he's eating, because damn it smells delicious. "It's called pizza. It is delicious, and pretty simple. Highly recommend!"
Jeffrey: "Maybe for you, but I don't have the luxury of a pizza dough. Try eating hot cheese and liquid sauce out of your hands. Fucking Try."
Danny Familyman: Yeah that sounds terrible. Why don't you get a pizza dough? People are offering them literally all around you. Here have one of mine!
Mr. Atomic: "I don't want dough!"
Danny Familyman: Ok, then you don't want pizza. Delicious sauce, cheese, and toppings are all founded on the crust.
JA: I want the deliciousness of pizza! But I don't have the luxury of wanting the dough.
Danny Familyman: OK. But you will have to find that deliciousness some other, much harder way. And the dough is right here available for you. If you don't want the dough, you don't really want pizza, and your desire for pizza without it being pizza isn't a real or coherent wish. This isn't a luxury, or a cheat code it's the foundation.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
If republicans only cared about vigor, why are they aligned around a spetegenarian? Why is this plan centered around having Trump refuse? Is there anyone in the world who doesn't already believe Ron would beat an old man in a boxing match?
Is there some large demographic that would only be convinced (and also switch support) by having this demonstrated either physically or constitutionally? What a bizarrely stupid take.
Also, where is the evidence that 'Ron hasn't captured the republicans id?' he won Florida handily, and is pretty popular and would be the far front runner if Trump died tomorrow.
Ron can't beat trumps popularity is the motte to the bailey were being sold that he's not popular with conservatives.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
It's certainly a rare view, but I was quite disappointed with and bored by 3. A good deal of what makes it work is the subversion of Connery from his usual expectations, and that is very cultural moment in time referential that degrades the further away you are. I also generally don't like the 'old-timer' tagging along or the adult man reconnects with distanced dad plots so, the whole team up weighed it down for me, and the Holy Grail bit with associated deadly magic was just derivative at this point.
2 was quite surprising at the quality and tone downgrade from 1, but once you accepted and adjusted I thought it was a fine and unique movie that really only suffered from following up on 1. It being more of a bottle made it comparatively worse than 1's globe-trotting but better than being a shallow derivative, which 3 and 4 and likely 5 all are.
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Almost brilliant, only weighed down by the fact that Indy doesn't actually have any agency over the plot. IIRC, Nazis get the arc and die from opening it in a timeline where he didn't exist. (9/10)
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A fun romp. (7/10)
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Boring, derivative action movie with a few timeless visuals, but overall better left in the 80s (5/10)
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Bad reboot with a has-been protagonist, with some watchable bits and some cringe bits in equal parts. (3/10)
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... Flaming Garbage? (1/10)?
iprayiam3
2yr ago
I watched the entire series for the first time a few years back and without the nostalgia or leaning on the cultural context of Sean Connery, I found each movie dramatically worse that the previous one, and about evenly. I thought the difference between 3 and 4 was about equal to the distance between 3 and 2, and then 2 and 1, quality wise.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
Yeah but, by that logic it's a double reversal here. Not over-talking and refraining from gossip actually are admirable traits in anyone: women and men. So Ursela was actually giving good advice in the first movie - and explicitly worked out for Ariel. Her quiet shyness did endear her to Eric. And so removing that advice actually makes Ursula a worse person.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
the man should be turned down a few hundred times before she finally accepts he can’t resist her and it’s true love.
In fairness, this is almost equally bad and unrealistic advice. Simping your way through the friendzone is not a much more effective strategy.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
You're arguing for sexuality as a special zone of inappropriate discussion in public
I'm not arguing for anything here, it's that it's the relevant dimension here, and the comparison to other secular festivals is different on this specific ground. To equate Pride with them, is a game of hide the pickle.
Break out the template by it's components, the "Holiday Festival" starter kit, from the inside out:
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The core concept
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The values, priorities and value-system embodied by the concept
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A particular instance, example, or memorial of the concept forming the holiday
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Pious observance of the holiday
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Secular celebration and festivities connected to or an outgrowth from the holiday
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'Spicy', 'Adult', or 'inappropriate' takes on and circumstances of indulgence in the festivities.
Take Mardi-gras:
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Catholicism
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Catholic morality, esp. pray, fasting, and alms-giving
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The Beginning of Lent
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Shrove Tuesday traditions
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Mardi-Gras
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Drunken carousing, partying, sex, and nudity.
4th of July:
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America
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American Patriotism & Democracy
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The signing of the Declaration of Independence
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Patriotic Displays, memorials, Bank holiday, etc.
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Picnics, parades, fireworks, boating at the lake.
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Adult parties with booze, etc.
In both of these instances, (and many more), one might criticize the inappropriateness of them on account of 6, or be specifically upset by children being around too much 6. And, like you have done here, we can rebut that the adult themes in 6, are not central or even necessarily relevant to 1-5. Neither does partaking in or exposing kids to 5, imply any sort of approval or support for 6.
But this doesn't work with Pride because adult themes are central to #1 and #2. There is no instance of 4 or 5 that is divorced from themes of sex and sexuality or divorced from values of sexual liberalism.
And while some things in bucket 6 like boozing, nudity, or sleeping around are not central to PRIDE, they are not nearly so divorced or in contradiction with the core themes as in other holidays, secular and religious. Acceptance of sexual liberalism, breaking of taboos and social mores, and celebration of eroticism are a core component of PRIDE, not tacked on or in tension with.
While there are plenty of prude, chaste, and modest LGBT members, perhaps even most of them, PRIDE itself is not remotely about integrating same-sex into heteronormative forms of disgression.
Pride is about sex and is adult themed. You can accuse me of wanting to specially zone that out of public modesty, but it's the opposite, you need to defend PRIDE's special and unique inclusion of it, and comparisons to other, non-sexually themed holidays are a motte and baily.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
Sure, but there's a major difference, in that drunkenness and sexual debauchery are not a central, or even licit part of Catholicism, while gay sex is central to gay sexual identities, and things like BDSM are all explicitly celebrated under the umbrella of Pride.
The analogy of "Target selling kids rainbow shirts is different from the gay sex" to "Mardis Gras debauchery is different from Catholicism and Lent" doesn't really hold up.
In fact it's the opposite. One is a family-friendly expression of a concept that is centrally about adult sexuality, while the other is a debaucherously expression of a concept which is explicitly chaste.
I'm pretty sure the last Wolverine movie was this trope.
Maaaybe Dr. Strange. They essentially let a white man appropriate their entire Monk vibe so that he can become a super hero in the West.
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