iprayiam3
1yr ago
The most charitable read here is that Musk thinks Wikipedia deserves less money, not no money
That's not the most charitable read, that's the obvious straight-forward read. Do you really think it's possible that Elon Musk doesn't know that servers cost some amount of money?
As others have noted below, Wikipedia doesn't need the money it raises to run itself, and hasn't needed it for years. Wikipedia could put it's assets / raised capital in a safe financial vehicle and run its servers forever on the profit. Elon Musk is 100% correct Wikipedia simply doesn't need a large yearly donation campaign to run itself as a website.
Musk is in an even better position to make this argument as he just massively cut the operational waste of a major website to prove the ridiculousness of the actual costs to bloat ratio. He is the only person who has ever done this at this scale, and thus is the best person in the world to listen to about wasted operating expenses.
I am not an Elon stan, but this is a willfully anti-Elon take that requires squinting his comment into absurdity just to prove how stupid he must be.
If you have been tricked into thinking Wikipedia needs your individual donation to keep the lights on, that's on you and on Wikipedia for lying to you, not on Elon.
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
1yr ago
I think this is a tired drumbeat from your side, wishing over and over for pro-lifers to not actually be prolife. I get that it's inconvenient that the religious right is not up to your snuff. It's counterpart is Kulak's old saw that if prolifers really believed it, they'd be more terrorists.
I want to point out, something else though:
forced into having more babies
This is a tremendously biased frame. It's a sister of the constant misinterpretation from pro-choicers that prolifers think people having unprotected sex should 'suffer the consequences', when it's nothing like that at all.
Forced into having babies has implications that are simply not true. Except on a negligable and understandably hotly debated margin (i.e., rape) nobody is 'forcing' babies on them, and even then it's not the same person as the pro-lifer.
At most, they're being 'forced' not to kill babies they already made. Your frame begs the question too much.
I get you can make arguments all day long about the non-existent impulse control of the population, but that still doesn't causally or morally get you all the way to arguing that Republicans are forcing them to have more babies any more than me not giving you money for drugs, 'forces' the drug user to steal.
iprayiam3
1yr ago
I'm suprised you haven't heard this before. I agree with your last sentence, especially with MTF. I think the phenomenon is multi-faceted, but AGP is a tremendous part of it, and I don't think anorexia is particularly fetishistic.
Just spend a minute looking up the concept of 'euphoria boner', and it lays waste to most of the narrative. Especially on trans forums where it gets brought up as the most crushingly painful example of pretending something isn't there by closing your eyes. The essential concepts is that it's really common for dudes with TD to get really turned on by crossdressing etc. Instead of accepting this as straightforward evidence that this is psycho-sexual in all the obvious ways, they've invented a tortured concept that no, no, just the opposite. This 'euphoria boner' transcends fetish and is a result of a much deeper sense of self-understanding.
Noone reflects on why this concept only exists conveniently in this use case of convincing yourself a clear turn on is more meaningful than that. Thinking with the wrong head and the related post-nut clarity is pretty well trodden and understood male pyscho-sexuality, and this is the most painfully transparent attempt at gaslighting this into the opposite.
A very common and sad gaslight is some recently cracked egg on these forums makes a comments like, "yo, I'm worried this is a fetish / sexual fantasy, because I get super aroused when I induldge" (usually much less concisely and straightforward, but that's their real point). To which, they are showered with " no no, it's the exact oppposite. Your sexual excitement in this context actually proves it's not a sexual indulgence.... because...um... euphoria boner".
Critics are out in force, arguing that...the state sabotaged the program by not efficiently distributing treatment resources to addicts... I do sympathize that better public services and addiction resources that people actually trusted would help
Object level conversation already lengthy below, but want to take this in a tangent... about this reverse moral proscriptive perspective of government. It's not quite horseshoe theory because it inverts around pure liberalism.
On the one side, you have this idea that the government can prohibit or regulate certain behaviors. Rules against drugs, prostitution, gambling, buying alcohol on Sundays, etc. have traditionally existed within a concept of appropriate government power. These things may be associated with social conservatism, but more broadly the whole range of government's regulatory power is not broadly understoods as allowed only narrowly through a liberal perspective but as a (varyingly constrained) right of the democratic government to govern.
In the middle you've got a liberal ethos, where we should be maximizing personal freedom, only intervening where it threaten's another's freedom. Here most government regulation would be understood as only justified through protecting freedoms.
But then you get to the other side where you allow behaviors but demand socialized payments for the costs of those behaviors. Here the idea is flipped from the right to regulate to the obligation to provide additional services. Instead of saying, 'hey you can't gamble" to the gambler, we say, "hey, you have to subsidize the externalities of his gambling" to his neighbor. The druggy has the right to drugulate, but I don't have a right to not pay for the addict's access to hotlines, resources, etc (let alone the costs I have to pay for the infrastructural externalities).
I'm struggling to find the right words to describe this framework, but it's definitely a phenomenon.
And I want to add that very rarely would any individual be maximally inside one of these three frameworks across their political beliefs, but rather it's about the proportion and scope. All forms of general welfare do exist inside of this third frame, but it's traditionally seen as something to be limited and something that ideally comes from true disadvantage and need, not as a ballooning response to greasing self-destructive 'freedoms'.
To go full circle:
I do sympathize that better public services and addiction resources that people actually trusted would help
I completely disagree, and this is a runaway bad idea. If you want to make something legal / unregulated, then it stops being the government's job to prop it up against it's bad effects. Leave that to charity and NGOs.
If drugs are illegal, then I'm all for also pouring tons of money into helping people who use them. I'm all for a flexible justice system that can substitute help and supervised second chances for punishment and imprisonment. But if drugs are legal, then suck it up and use your freedoms responsibly. Don't demand the rest of the public to pay for the government to be the 'cool parent' who bails you out for the rest of your life.
iprayiam3
1yr ago
This is the first time I've heard of it and I hang out in rat spaces like theMotte, which are the only places ive ever ever ever heard anything about Hananai. My theory is as simple as this, I think your information bubble has led you to vastly over-estimate Hananai name recognition / brand awareness especially among the age demographics likely to buy books.
I think you're searching too hard for a reason, when your null hypothesis should be that he doesn't make the list and try to test the theory of why he would
iprayiam3
5mo ago
And this is why daesch and self made human are wrong to want AI slop here. The purpose of a human forum is subverted when top posts are AI generated text walls.
I say, we bring back the bare links repository as a palette cleanser to this new trend. It’s the opposite of ‘I asked ChatGPT and here’s what it said copied and pasted’.
It is brief where AIslop is verbose. It doesn’t dress itself up as original thought or even a point of view. It doesn’t claim to be effortful. Most of all, it points outward instead of inward toward an actual external idea, rather than reposting an ephemeral private chat.
Leaving behind the BLR was the greatest mistake of theMotte, nay of the rat sphere (standing among other mistakes like trans murder cults and founding an entire movement on fanfiction of kid books) and it is time we correct this blunder.
If this post gets 20 upvotes the mods will have no choice but to retvrn to the glory of the blr.
You know, it's really a shame because with a little more effort, the guy could have taken this in so many interesting directions and still kept up posting. e.g. an earnest training log, or better discussion starters about what makes a 'Hock' or a literature review to look for any precedence, etc.
But it's clear at this point, these posts are just a lazy masterbatory exercise. I do feel for the dude. I suspect these posts had become a parasocial avenue for emotional engagement, to be cared about to some degree and evoke some sense of desire for his well-being.
Might I request that you only ban him until the end of the year? He (supposedly) takes off in mid-February, and as roped into his exhibitionist sympathy bait as we are, it's worth knowing whether he went out and his state of preparation and mental fitness. I think many of us would rather suffer a few January posts from him and provide him some last human empathy and discouragement, rather than go on wondering whether that one guy from that forum ended up killing himself.
iprayiam3
8mo ago
This is the key thing. There’s no way to reconcile the presentation on here with any mainstream narratives about him unless he’s also the world’s greatest and most restrained actor as well.
Trumps not hitler. Trumps not a wannabe dictator (sorry @Amadan). Trumps not senile. Trumps not a dimwitted lazy slob whose world view comes from watching cable news all day. Trumps not a paper thin egotist who doesn’t really like America or hold policy positions. Trumps not a phony fake executive who can’t actually think business.
But also Trumps not a genius. Trumps not a conservative. Trumps not a particularly visionary thinker or populist leader.
This is dumb bait. But I think the Bill Maher discussion of his dinner with Trump soundly puts to bed any arguments here. Bill Maher, is about a raving of a TDS as almost anyone, coming away and praising his sharpness and conversability is not something that can be shrugged off with gestures toward nothing like this.
Trump's quoted point at the end is completely coherent, just ideosyncratic and favoring his point over debating the minutia. I'm not defending either the content or point of view, but it's entirely coherent, and the demential complaint is dumb as hell. Here's a summary of the not even subtext of that clip:
Interviewer starts to try a tu quoue about some Biden tactic analogy to Trump. Trump doesn't want to take the bait, so pre-empts with an reverse objection about a double-standard of critique. He uses that to launch that into an attack on Biden's competence. This single sentence has tons of intent:
- The media's critiques of Trump are invalid double standards
- As evidence by the media's protection of Biden
- Biden was not just bad, but incompetent, and the media / deep state covered for him/ controlled him.
All this could be disagreed with, but rather than being incoherent, its a very tight conveying of meaning.
The interviewer then tries to dodge the question of Biden's competence by arguing whether Biden actually did an interview with them or not in some given timeframe.
Trump first starts to engage, but then decides he's not going to lead the interviewer to any Socratic point, so just throws out the idea that he didn't do an interview into being a well informed that he 'barely' did an interview and it was terrible.
Is Trump lying that he's familiar with that particular interview? Yeah probably. (or else he was lying that Biden didn't do an interview and lying or mixed up about the length). But that's not really evidence of mental acuity. The lie makes complete sense in context of the picture he's trying to paint.
The interviewer then gives a sarcastic praise. Trump takes it straight-faced, and uses it to restate his thesis: Biden was incompetent, and any appearance of power-grabbing from him is just hostile coverage from the media
Again, without any bias here (tbh I deeply dislike Trump), Trump's entire bit in that last exchange is tightly governed by a specific frame and defense against a percieved hostile frame. He just favors rhetorical point over detail consistency.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
I've all of the sudden seen AI blackpilling break out into the normie space around me. Not so much about FOOM, and paperclipping, or terminator scenarios, but around the sudden disruptive nature, and especially around economic upheaval. Not exactly sure why. Veo3 has been part of it.
For example, coworkers suddenly aware that AI is going to completely disrupt the job market and economy, and very soon. People are organically discovering the @2rafa wonderment at how precariously and even past-due a great deal of industry and surrounding B2B services industries stand to be domino'd over. If my observation generalizes, that middle class normies are waking up a doompill on AI economic disruption, what is going to happen?
Let's consider it from 2 points of view. 1 They're right. and 2. They're wrong. 1. is pretty predictable fodder here - massive, gamechanging social and economic disruption, with difficult to predict state on the other side.
But is 2 that much less worrisome? Even if everyone is 'wrong', and AI is somehow not going to take away 'careers', people in mass worrrying that it's so will still manifest serious disruption. People are already starting to hold thier breath. Stopping hiring, stopping spending, running hail mary's, checking out.
Somehow, it's only senior management who doesn't realize the impact. (They keep framing 'If we can cut costs, we'll come out on top, instead of following the logical conclusion, if everyone stops spending the B2B economy collapses.) - I have a nontechnical coworker, who has recently recreated some complex business intelligence tool we purchased not long ago using readily available AI and a little bit of coaching. He had an oh shit moment, when he realized how cannibalized the software industry is about to get. The film industry seems about to completely topple, not because Veo3 will replace it immediately, but because, who's going to make a giant investment in that space right now?
I suspect the macro economic shock is going to hit faster than most are expecting, and faster than actual GDP gains will be made, but maybe I'm just an idiot.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
I find surrogacy morally absurd, in pretty much the same reaction you do. I have gone back and forth on it with @TracingWoodgrains (respectfully) before, and it is (sadly) one of the best examples of why I can't adopt a 'live and let live' perspective, although I am dispositionally inclined toward that. I think it is a a sister moral issue to abortion, involving the commoditization of children and subordinating the natural family to liquid modernistic relativism.
Where I will push back, is that I don't think it's so much a transhuman issue as another slip of the sexual liberation + LGBT slope and repudiation that gay rights had much more social effect than, people doing their thing in the bedroom. Much like Grindr-> Tinder, this is another social-sexual transformation of norms that really matured in the gay community before being adopted by elite, then PMC straights.
Of course, straight surrogacy has been in the public consciousness for a long time (Phoebe from friends had a plotline around this in the 90s). But it really became trendy in the last decade through wealthy DINKy gay couples using this as an equal access avenue to 'biological children.
You will probably be mocked here and elsewhere for the Lovecraftian horror descriptor, but it fully resonates with me. But let me back it up, and roll back my anti-LGBT perspective here. This is ALL DOWNSTREAM from contraception, socially acceptable divorce and casual sex. I have become less and less patient with people who try to propose some limiting factor to sexual liberation that stops exactly where they want it.
The Catholic view is really the only one that provides a complete and coherent counter framework against this that isn't a bunch of special pleading.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
personal perspective: I've listened to the first two Eliezer interviews and part of this one. Yes the guys, presentation is horrible etc, but I'm actually suprised at how receptive I've been to hear him out. I have always had very negative view of most ratsphere things, and Eliezer was prime example.
He does not present well outside of his fanbase in writing. Twitter to lessWrong, to HPMOR, he's always come off to me as insufferably arrogant, weird, and over concerned with how clever he is. (Anything SA has ever written on AI has been much much worse, his regular simple penetration of issues falls apart on the subject of AI, and has done more to make me (wrongly) dismissive of the whole thing than anything else.)
Back to Yud, having never actually seen or heard him before, I am shocked by how much more I like the guy in video format. He seems a lot nicer and sympathetic and likable than I ever imagined him. To the point that for the first time ever, I'm honestly open to hearing out his concerns and combined with Musk's views on the issue, I am in medium to high medium support of any 'pause' efforts, but tentative to being done in a way that doesn't require nuclear war or a totalitarian world government.
It is very bizarre to me that every normie in the world may have to, in their lifetimes, decide where they stand on a 'Butlerian Jihad'. This is a possibility I would have mocked relentlessly 18m ago, and am depressed that I even have given thought to.
Personally I like the pardon power and am glad it exists.
The biggest issue is Biden's blatent lying about it to collect on the facade of justice when expedient and avoid the consequences when not. This is what tears at the credibility the most, not the pardon in itself.
This is probably a much better outcome than the alternative. The example of other nations shows thay prosecuting presidents and their families is much likelier to lead to coups and crises than genuine justice and law.
Moderation in all things. You need a stalemate here, which has been perilously broken on both sides by the left now inside of a year. Yes, escalation in prosecuting the opposition's family leads to bad outcomes. But so does flagrantly demonstrating that overt familial corruption and enrichment are given a blank cheque, as long as one obtains / stays in power. The family in power gets to break laws sell influence and avoid prosecution as a perk, is a bad overt admission.
By both prosecuting Trump on nonsensical charges & by pardoning Hunter who was overtly criminal and corrupt after repeatedly stating letting it play out was the justice-based approach, the left has broken both sides of what should be a schelling point of stability.
iprayiam3
1yr ago
Overall, this is a great post, and I think you have a good point. However, I beleive you overargue it a bit, and even the insinuation that these examples might involve lying or dishonesty, is under-evidenced here(thought not necessarily untrue, just over interpreted given you're examples).
There's a very real difference in cross-examining on material facts of a situation from epistemic positions, and I think you're extending the implications of contradictions in the former too much into the latter. If I ask you 'where were you?, when?, what did you do?, with who?, and so on, and you provide me answers that self-contradict or are contradicted with other evidence, then I can fairly accuse you of being dishonest or mistaken.
Partly, this is because we're working on a very clear frame of ontology and epistemology that nobody is pushing back against. We're working within a materialist, physical reality that is universal and constant, and so forth. Contradictions that cannot exist in that shared framework must be reconciled, they are not usually allowed as evidence against the framework.
Imagine to the contrary, someone, when faced with a contradicting timeline, tried to argue that this is because of an update to the simulation or because of Christmas magic. You could dismiss as lying or crazy, but assume you didn't. To engage them, and get back to your orignal accusation of impossible contradiction between Event A and B, you must first travel down one level and redefend the consistent materialist frame. If your witness's entire argument rests on the existence of Christmas magic, and you refuse their allowance of arguing or even answering within a framework where that might exist, then you will walk away with the appearance of simple inconsistency, and interpretations of dishonesty, insanity, or stupidity.
So that's a somewhat silly scenario, because we all know that Christmas magic can't change the rules of physics and that we don't live in a simulation (right? don't we know that?).But the crux in epistemic, ideological, and political debates, is that the "we all know" is far less founded than in empirical examinations. When the examiner sets the frame, he controls the debate.
Chris Ruffo's example gets at this swimmingly, and he even tries to get to this meta-argument and it isn't accepted by the presenter (at least in your exerpt).
In his book, The Allure of Order about how educational debates are framed, Jal Mehta lays out three ways in which a particular paradigm in a debate shapes it. The main point is that having first mover advantage on setting the paradigm is powerful because replacing a paradigm is much more difficult, and the existing paradigm has tremendous authority over the conversation.
1. Consitutive (interpretations) effects. The paradigm sets the way an issue is conceived and discussed. 2. Strategic (incentives) actions. The paradigm creates opportunities for those who's views are consistent with it. 3. Regulative (intersubjective) function. It constrains the positions those who oppose the paradigm can take.
You can see all three of these on display quite clearly in the Ruffo example. And if you simply accept the paradigm, it might look like Rufo's in an epistemic jam. But if you reversed the cross examination, you would have seen an equal and opposite jam. These say nothing about who's epistemic position is inconsistent, because it only says that the conclusions of the one actor is inconsistent with the frame of the others... Which is not as interesting or 'gotcha' as it seems.
We see this also in your interpretation of the Murphey example, where you force a reframe of what's more likely a deontological view as an aesthetic one:
Murphy's responses make a lot more sense if you assume that her true objections to the sex industry are really borne out of an aesthetic or disgust aversion, and specifically only when men are the patrons.
This seems inaccurate, and you use that to ground your entire critique.Without the full clip, what I see Murphy doing here is having a deontological opinion, but defending it inside a paradigm about effects and outcomes. No fault to Destiny here. In fact, effects and outcomes, is kind of the default way to discuss morality across unsettled moral frameworks. But this has a constitutive effect, initially setting the converstaion into a causal discussion. There's nothign dishonest about taking this up, especially because the conversational cost to resetting the paradigm is great and rarely effective. (See Rufo's attempt).
Because we're talking effects and outcomes, Murphey takes the strategic position of showing the bad outcomes. But when it comes to exceptional examples, the regulative function of the paradigm set contrains her from being able extend the worldview. What we see here is an existing paradigm chase someone who's framework doesn't actually fit into a corner, not necessarily a breakdown of her actual position.
Now I think you get at this with your interpretation, but I think you mis-characterize it as her dishonestly hiding her real objection, when I think it's really getting chased down from trying to play along with a different framework's boundaries in realtime.
Sure, Murphey could have threaded this needle better by saying something like, "Male prostitutes for women are tremendously rare. Nominally allowing them, creates a standard of inequality for imperceptible benefit. Whether or not I find it wrong objectively is beside my point about the real-world affect of female prostitution on women."
But the fact that she didn't isn't really a point against here. When you drop someone else in your own maze, it's a hollow gloat that they get lost. What is interesting is whether they get lost in mazes they got to choose.
With that, we get to Tim Pool's example which is different, and notably happens because Tim interjects, he's not the cross-examiner.
Remember before I said:
These say nothing about who's epistemic position is inconsistent, because it only says that the conclusions of the one actor is inconsistent with the frame of the others... Which is not as interesting or 'gotcha' as it seems.
Here, Pool allows Lance to draw out his own framework. The "mother's body, mother's choice" has no starting point in the pro-lifer's frame. And Lance walks into an open contradiction within his own set of justification. It's somewhat similar to Murphey, but you already admitted that Murphey here probably isn't arguing her actual epistemic foundation around prostitution. There's no appearnce that Lance isn't. Lance is just proving that his heuristic is undercooked. It's nothing like the Rufo situation, which is just open paradigm warfare.
iprayiam3
5mo ago
In that (perhaps quite likely) eventuality then forums and social media as a concept are dead. AIs talking to AIs while people nod and curate them basically destroys the platonic purpose of social media.
This is like if you brought photographs to a painting club and claimed that it expressed what you which you could paint better than you can paint it yourself. Can you see how that might satisfy an itch you personally have but is thoroughly uninteresting to the painters there to paint?
Yes the existence of photographs and digital tools have fundamentally transformed art and even tradition methods can’t really exist outside of conversation with them to some extent. Yes AI has changed the nature of written discourse.
But no it’s not a good reason to dump AI slop and say ‘discuss…’
I am sure that, now having been convinced you will join me and the rest of the rising chorus to return the Bare Links Repository to the Motte
iprayiam3
6mo ago
What happened is kind of a sad story. Kulak, you see, unsuccessfully attempted the hock… and the rest is as it is.
iprayiam3
1yr ago
Part of my clients' clammed-up demeanors rests on a deluded notion that I won't fight as hard for their cases unless I am infatuated by their innocence. Perhaps they don't realize that representing the guilty is the overwhelmingly banal reality of my job.
Help me understand more clearly why this is 'deluded'? it might be wrong but deluded? You talk about your clients' poor theory of mind later, but don't offer any reason why, in their shoes they should know and beleive that you work just as hard for clients you believe are guilty.
I know it is a light hearted article, but the whole spirit of sneering and literal anecdotes of mockery and sarcasm with these people is good evidence that you might treat them psychologically differently. Maybe you really really would never work a little harder, polish a little more, fight a little better for a client you were sympathetic too, but that hardly seems deluded to assume.
When I recieved a serious speeding ticket, which I beleived was somewhat in err, the exact thought was in my mind as I debated how to discuss it with lawyers. Yes, yes, they're all going to fight for me to get out of it, and yes it's routine boring shit. But with even a chance of outcome unpredictability in the air, and knowing that I won't be there when the lawyer negotiates with the DA, is it really, not just incorrect but 'deluded' to wonder whether the lawyer, who's not getting any bonuses for better outcomes here, might advocate a little better for me if he likes me? (also I, a PhD, wasn't 100% confident exactly what the rules were about incriminating yourself to your lawyer. I can only imagine some level of lingering uncertainty with an uneducated criminal, especially if their lawyer talks to them with sarcasm and playful mockery that goes over their head.)
Even if that's not a conscious thought, we all want to ingratiate ourselves to people who hold some sort of power over us. You might see yourself as 'working for' this guy, but every time I interact with a doctor, a mechanic, or much less often a lawyer, I have a strong pang of recognition that my outcomes are somewhat at the mercy of this busy stranger's scruples. I become over eager to prove myself worthy of their esteem and extra consideration. Is it stupid and often counterproductive, sure. But your sneering about it to strangers on the internet only reenforces my perception that professionals are contemptuous of a lot of the pleebs they have to boringly 'serve'.
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
16d ago
I don’t disagree with this and that the just so undermines credibility of the point. On the other hand, I do think Bezos deserves to be criticized whoever he marries. He started an affair and broke up two marriages with children.
I think part of the issue is that modernity has removed the vocabulary to cricicize the object level misbehavior so they displace their ‘something is wrong’ to a secondary element
Before getting to the stealing, I'm more stuck on my aesthetic distaste to the vignette of a man on an early date telling the woman he's cold, and her giving him an article of clothing to comfort him (among the more feminine articles to boot). It's too perfectly set up as a subverted cliche, that I am 50-50 (edit on reflection, 70:30) that it's made up. I suspect many if not most of the people defending it are doing so on those very aesthetic grounds, and it's not remotely about agency, morals, or consequentialism. This is basically a manic pixie dream girl scene that crossed with light 'gender swapped' tittilation.
There's a very real trope about a certain kind of proclivity toward strong female to femdom fantasies, that is disproportionately represented in ratty kind of spaces, and people who like this stuff are likely to make up, hyperbolize, or latch onto real anecdotes online as a substitute for the actual paucity of it in the real world. The high agency stuff is just a laundering of a titilating fantasy about a strong female, playing provider to a meek guy with 'low agency', aka the sub.
OK
Regarding the lying and stealing, yeah morals aside, there's a russell's congugation here: My: high agency, your: unscrupulousness , their: low impulse control
To the extent that this is a real story, yeah run buddy. A girl who casually lies and steals for immediate time preference satisfaction (even (maybe espectally) if charitably done by proxy to near empathetic aquaintances) is bad news.
iprayiam3
1yr ago
very substantially restrict their actual freedom
Here in America, speech is actual freedom, my man.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
I'd like to riff off this comment and muse on just how far apart our worldviews are. I assume you're positing it here for general interesting discussion; but if any of this feels too personal or prying let me know and I'll retract.
- You are on ADD medication
- You are on an antidepressants
- You are on semiglutine to counteract (partly) the weight gain from the anti-depressants
- You are looking at plastic surgery
I am sure from your perspective, this is exactly what the transhumanist plan looks like - medtech improvements and fine tune control over your inner chemistry and outer appearance. To me this looks like a medical doom spiral, and one that won't end in a post-humanist nervana.
I am not critiquing your decisions, as they flow out of your own circumstances I can't know intimately, and are in line wiht your axioms. I have always been a critic of your axioms however, and this seems (dispassionately amusingly) to be two movies on one screen -> a confirmation of each of our philosophies.
Anyway, best of luck on the weight loss and fitness goals, and again, apologies if this is too spicy.
You are describing what I used to criticize here as liberalism of the gaps: the theory that the solution to culture and institutions falling to progressivism via post-detraditionalization liberalism is MOAR liberalism!
No, the solution to protecting tradition and institutions is protecting tradition and institutions, both through fortification and legal protection. Libertarian solutions to protecting / building institutions cannot work in a legal landscape that makes a key component: free association, illegal.
OP is pointing this out with the fact that 'no politics' is subverted when you declare X value neutral. But the other side of the coin is also on display. When X is value neutral, anti-X is illegal discrimination / harassment. Start your own... cannot work without first winning back the neutral ground, which cannot be done when you spend all your time abandoning your institutions and fortifying elsewhere.
Show me an example where conservatives/traditionalists abandoned X to go build their own X-prime, where X-prime remains both not a ghetto and not actively infiltrated.
Your question about why traditionalists don't build their own X is easily answered in that they can't build their own X, and part of the reason is ironically because half their rank are actually liberals who keep telling them to build their own X.
Example:
Jonny Vanheusterwhilton is a made up character who used to get picked on as a child for his ridiculous last name, but that is completely irrelevant to this story so let's call him JV and we don't need to spell out his last name again.
Jonny V (JV), has lived in his neighborhood his whole life, even buying his parents' house when they retired. It's June 1st, and bigot that he is, JV (Jonny) bemoans that the neighborhood is plastered in Pride Flags and preachy yard signs. He's saddened that his neighborhood July 4th picnic has been discontinued and replaced with a late June Pride Party.
Jonny's actually not even a bigot, not even by modern standards, nor even a conservative. He is very pro-LGBT right, a believer in letting people live their own lives etc. He's just a combination of patriotic, nostalgic, and finds pride to be tacky and over commercialized. Yet this gets Jonny labeled a right wing bigot, which almost frustrates him as much as getting picked on for his name as a child.
Eventually his friend, @Primaprimaprima encourages him to just build his own neighborhood. (+) Out of options and tired of being picked on JV sells his family house and buys some farmland with several others in a less desirable exurban part of the town to turn into a new neighborhood. Saddened by the lack of mature hardwoods, history, culture, or accessibility to the broader city, JB puts that aside and focuses on the upside: no more Pride Month.
Although JV is not a conservative, it took partnership with a lot of them, and some outright bigots to even get this neighborhood started. No worries, though, because they aren't banning anyone. JV has a simple liberal solution: Their HOA will just say, no value-messaging yard decorations.
The HOA includes a lot of other shit JV doesn't like. His old neighborhood didn't have an HOA, but now, just to get back to neutral JV has to accommodate regulating EVERYTHING, even the length of his grass. He hates mowing. Almost as much as he hates his last name. Or being called a bigot.
Trouble begins when some of their conservative neighbors put up a cross on their front door, or Easter decorations. 'Hey,' yell the libertarian sect. NO MESSAGING. The French neighbor, Le Prima, convinces everyone that secularism is the best they can hope for in this new arrangement, the conservatives mostly* sadly acquiesce, telling themselves, at least it's better than Pride Month. (*A few with conviction move away to an even shittier, further exurb, to find out what happened to them scroll up to the + above and start reading. Continue recursively.)
This satisfies JV until July 4th comes around, JV's favorite holiday. There will be no J4 parade, and he is forced to take down the American flag he hung must come down at once.... Oh well... at least in the name of fairness this is a compromise.
JV wonders how previous generations like the one he grew up in were able to use maintain communities with shared traditions, while keeping out the elements they didn't like without over-regulating everything. JV can't ponder long before his neighbor accusingly reminds him about the types of discrimination that happened in yesterday. Remembering quickly that nostalgia for any aspect of the past is for bigots, JV quickly stops his musing, and never follows his train of thought to the answer: The type of community JV is describing is found alive in the neighborhood he left, albeit with different values.
Well all goes well for 2 more years until, as the city grows, his neighborhood does too. His exurb becomes a desirable suburb, and now folks who would have simply ignored the neighborhood move in. Doesn't matter thinks, JV, they'll have to live by our rules just like everyone else.
Imagine Jonny Vanheusterwhilton's shock on June 1st of the current year, when after returning from a trip oversees, he sees PRIDE FLAGS everywhere and a flier for a neighborhood pride parade.
"But.. but...but...," stutters Jonny. "I thought we didn't allow value messaging!"
"We don't," his helpful, new neighbor replies. "But... this was brought up at the HOA meeting you missed. You see us new neighbors quickly explained that this isn't about value messaging. It's common decency. To suppress it wouldn't be neutral, it would be bigoted and hateful. They saw it our way.
There were a few hold-out undesirables, but our lawyers were there to make sure they understood this is not negotiable, it's equality. I mean, anything less would be like not allowing you to hold your wife's hand while walking around the neighborhood."
"I'm actually gay," says Jonny.
"And a happy Pride Month to you!," the neighbor replies cheerily, while handing him a school board voting guide for the candidates who most protect trans youth.
That night, JV's visiting his old friend distraught. "It's simple," says Primaprimaprima as he opens a beer and hands to JV. "Just start your own neighborhood."
More options
Context Copy link