somethingsomething
No bio...
User ID: 1123
somethingsomething
1yr ago
Regulators should have good laws that work and not have bad laws that don't work, and if that's not happening there should be pushback. But gun regulation isn't the impossible task you make it out to be. The whole "murder is illegal anyway" doesn't track because gun laws can make things more risky by increasing the points of illegality before the murder actually happens. Then you start cracking down on minor crimes, search for guns while you do it, and bam you have a much nicer city Mr. Giuliani. Similarly I easily can imagine effectiveness in inconveniencing and tagging people at high suicide risk (ie people who have attempted before) just because I think many of those happen at intense points, under the influence, etc.
Another thing but the with the whole onerous gun laws thing: Those should just be relaxed if you're a woman, and that'll solve most of those issues. If you're a man, then you should keep a clean slate or get one illegally if you really need to protect yourself and you don't pass the background check, you should probably have connections at that point anyway.
somethingsomething
2mo ago
I mean it's a sham, and it's leading to a less liberal society, and if you embrace it you're part of why it's worse. If you don't believe in personal responsibility or you get brainwashed, or don't think to much then you can live with that comfortably. If you're striving to be the best version of yourself, it's a hindrance. And I think the material benefits in return are ultimately not that consequential.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
Regarding that Mark quote, there absolutely was a separation, the separation between Jews and Romans. To read the separation of church and state into that is anachronistic. Jesus didn't want the Jewish temple separate from the Jewish state. If you look at that quote practically, it is obvious in the context of the bible that taxation was a big deal at the time, and Jesus is weighing in on paying the Romans, which he almost certainly wasn't the only one to do so. If you look at it in the context of apocalypse, of which both Jesus and Paul believed was coming very soon, it adds another dimension that it doesn't really matter because God is coming to bring revelation soon anyway. And finally, if you look at the division between the Earthly world and the heavenly world in this statement, that is entirely an innovation by Paul (not Jesus who thought he would be king on Earth), and Paul was clearly influenced by Plato. So your classic example completely falls apart to support your argument that Christianity stands as an entirely new way of thinking apart from those before it.
I would love to hear from a Christian a compelling argument for why western civilization owes it such a great debt, but this is just not convincing.
somethingsomething
2mo ago
Well to be frank, I've met plenty of high functioning autistic people who I think could do a way better job at masking, and I doubt many people are really doing all the things I suggest, I think most people just find a rut they're comfortable in and see how far it takes them. If autistic people want to show the receipts, and really lay down a whole list of things they do every day on the normie grind to impress me, I'm all ears, but it better be significantly more onerous than what say, a NP person with some social anxiety has to do.
But that said the question of how much sympathy people get for how much trouble they go through is basically a worthless train of thought. Most of the sympathy going around is false, virtue signalling, or confused. Each human being is lucky if they find a few who really understand them, are there for them, and able to listen reciprocally. If you haven't found that person, you're no different than an able white guy with no friends. You're two sad sacks looking for people who understand them. There is literally no difference in that respect, because for each person there are other people who understand, or who are willing to listen, and you only need a few. If that isn't filling then something deeper is wrong.
somethingsomething
10mo ago
The moment he stops being investigated he also loses his political power. He's powerful because his actions feed the collective persecution complex of him and his supporters. It's not just political. He also always creates the appearance he is doing something shady behind the scenes, to bait investigations because they are good for him and his political prospects.
somethingsomething
10mo ago
The point is Trump doesn't want to stop, and if he knows what's good for him he won't stop trying to get investigated, because they improve his political prospects.
somethingsomething
10mo ago
You can pick that out as an issue but I don't think it derails my argument. It just means Trump may have bit off more than he could chew. Ultimately I do think Trump baits these investigations and the broader elite ire as a way to foster the kind of indignation you see in this thread. Sure Trump gets treated unfairly, but he purposefully acts unsympathetically in order to bait out the unfairness. In other words, he's not acting in good faith and everyone outraged on his behalf are being played.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
The point I'm making is the idea of a Jewish person paying taxes to gentiles ruling over them was not at all new and is well trodden in the old testament. To turn that into separation of church and state is anachronistic, and I feel like I'm repeating myself to explain why.
Yes people stand on the shoulders of giants, but they add something too. My point is that nothing in that quote was new or interesting at the time.
somethingsomething
2mo ago
Let's say there are three ways people can generally react to you: Disgust, pity, and respect. I believe that there is a world where as a group autistic people are generally treated with respect. Going on the stack means trading that for pity. Either is better than disgust. But I think the respect is worth aiming for, and I think it's where we are trending anyway. I certainly don't think of autistic people the way you describe, and don't know anyone that openly does. I work with autistic and non-autistic people and everyone is respectful to everyone, no one is making fun of anyone behind their back etc. I think things like this would be way worse like 20 years ago.
But looking at that study, which was a survey, it basically confirms my beliefs. You have this broadly shared set of behaviors in regards to masking across autistic and non-autistic, with some extras only exhibited by autistic. But then you have the shame response coming from the autistic group that hates it, that feels suicidal etc. What I believe, and I accept you may disagree, is that there is a shame element here, that is making the masking feel worse than it really is.
Lastly I'd just say that the fact that you have been able to find people you are happy and liked around is a profoundly good thing, and should be enough once you've found it in a stable place. At that point, you can weather the storms, because you have your people. And you can still fight for social change and respect etc. but you don't need the sham that is the progressive stack to do what it does, which I think is vampiric and ultimately soul-destroying, but that's just my personal opinion. Cheers.
Something I've never seen mentioned but am curious if it works for others is choosing to only walk to the grocery store. It seems to align a lot of things the right way, and seemed to help me lose weight. It's basically the only exercise I do and fitbit says I'm burning like 1500 calories a day (not sure how accurate that is). But you do buy less groceries, and what you do buy you are carrying back all the way, and you also generally are making more trips since you can only carry so much.
Dedication-wise I think it's nice as well because you only have to stick to one choice, instead of a bunch of different will-testing choices.
Edit: Forgive me, I am a noob at calorie counting, so scanning through walking calories burned online, with weights etc. I think it should be around six hundred for my particular route.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I think that's right that that was the original conception, but I think there's something to how Marxists were kind of adapting to the failure of communism, and how Foucault abandoned Marxism, that could have possibly revealed a more core principle to Critical Theory which I think is a critique of power or a lens of dissecting behavior through power.
And through this lens, there's no reason why we couldn't have right-wing critical theory. And I wonder how salient an argument you could have that a lot of right-wing, or anti-activist critique against left-leaning power structures owes any debt to critical theory, including in its arguments against modern critical theorists, by using their arguments against themselves.
Though I could buy that that's not critical theory anymore because it's too dislodged from its leftist activist roots.
somethingsomething
10mo ago
Then wouldn't it be wise for Trump to take steps to avoid being investigated? It seems at every opportunity he acts guilty enough to get investigated but is actually clean enough to get out clean. I don't think it's out of the question to think he benefits from the image of the establish going after him, and he knows it.
In the end you get a bunch of people complaining about how he was treated, and that's what he wants. That's why he acts the way he does, anything to make him look like more of a victim.
somethingsomething
1mo ago
I was going to make a similar comment about how VG writing is just bad, but I don't think it's just because they're nerds. It feels almost like the human race has become worse writers in the past few decades, it's like the torch was never properly passed on and it's become a lost art.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
Instead of picking up the book again, I'd recommend looking up history of ancient Christianity videos, preferably by those not active in the faith, because I don't think reading moral lessons into the New Testament is ever going to be fully coherent without knowing who was writing the letters/gospels and what their motivation/politics was. I think Christians tend to underrate the problem of "should we be taking moral advice from people who were convinced of a looming apocalypse?" and "Should we be taking moral advice from a weirdo who never met Jesus but had visions of him alone in a cave, and didn't really talk much with the original 12 disciples, but due to the path history took had a profound influence on the gospels and most of the rest of the New Testament"?
somethingsomething
1yr ago
What it sounds like you're saying with more words than necessary is to quote Nietzsche, Christianity is Platonism for the people. In other words Christianity merged Jewish monotheism/apocalypticism with platonic idealism and there's good reason to think it's not too much more complicated than that.
So you can try to get a bunch of atheists to take idealism more seriously, but if that's your goal I would put it more straightforwardly because then they can actually do their own research on idealism with the various sources that are out there. I don't think too many will find it convincing but you may get some converts.
somethingsomething
8mo ago
look them in the eyes, ask short open ended questions, have a concerned, serious expression on your face, help them move towards a conclusion that they feel like they can move forward with, and thank them for opening up with you.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
My instinct though is that if critical theory would evolve to refute itself, it would be a positive evolution, and would be a kind of completion of the original theory, as in more critical theory, not less.
I haven't thought through too much the actual way it plays out in the real world. It's possible the modern critical theorists have immunized themselves. But on the other hand, you had a similar situation with the Marxists in France in the time of Foucault, and that evolution is kind of what I am proposing could happen again today. Similarly, it might be a philosopher who is "inside" the system that hits at the right time during some slump in their power, that speaks their language while subverting them.
somethingsomething
4mo ago
Yeah I edited with what I think is a better estimate, I don't know where the app is getting calories from, possibly just adding to some baseline. Never really bothered double checking the number since I was losing weight anyway but now I know!
somethingsomething
7mo ago
Fair enough, I may have to update my model, but I still believe that in some sense there is a conspiratorial mindset towards to modern use of patriarchy, and I believe in some sense there is some feeling of things getting "worse" in a way that is behind it, see the negative reactions to the Stephen Pinker view of the world coming from the far left. And I do think there is an inconsistency between the loudness/anger/direness of the attitudes on the social justice left and any understanding that things are getting better. And I think that reflects the reality that things are more mixed than you portray, where you have the rising depression rates, higher loneliness rates, and how those are pressured by various gender-defined experiences (instagram for girls, school for boys, etc.)
(FWIW I know woke is largely defined by the right, it really doesn't matter, what matters is is it a clear/useful way of looking at what I'd call the loud social-issues-focused progressive wing of the left)
I see self-loathing as less central than self-pity right now. I think the basic definition of "feeling sorrow for someone's misfortunes" is what I mean by pity. So to fit my example, some bad memory trigger makes me anxious, I pity myself to cope with the pain (feel sorrow about the past, about what it means about me as a person, etc.), a critical feeling enters judging me of not being worth pity, and I turn that around and say, oh, what a misfortunate situation it is that I should feel shame from pitying myself , and from there you have that recursive cycle. And that is potentially one of many strategies to sustain the pity, self-loathing can enter as another strategy, etc.
It seems like what has worked for me lately is a very strong belief that I will not benefit from striving to pity myself, which would short-circuit this process if I am right that this is what's happening. It may be that others can pity themselves healthily, or I might regain the ability to do so. But I believe it's possible that because I used it so reliably as a coping mechanism, I developed a unhealthy dependency on it that it is best to quit.
somethingsomething
9mo ago
That kind of effect was also very prevalent in my own experience and is something I'm still very on guard for. In brief, I currently see it as a powerful way of accomplishing the goal of being pitiable. If that is my goal, then it's a powerful, recursive move to pity myself, and then use that as an example of how pitiable I am. I think the counter-move is to be vigilant about recognizing when I have that goal, and have a strong will to discard that goal as it comes up. But that's just in brief, I think there is a lot I could write to expand my ideas on this.
somethingsomething
9mo ago
I would imagine that yes, there are a lot of strategies that different people could find more or less effective. I would like to go deeply into the strategy of having a solid belief system that makes doing those 2 things fairly automatic. And this doesn't have to mean fooling yourself, if you buy the premise that depression is a delusional state, where you are spending your precious time on Earth moping unnecessarily out of confusion.
So I'm going to go into what that process looked like for me, which was somewhat accidental. It's funny though, I know red-pilled can mean a lot of things, but just going through the left wing disillusionment after so long just felt such a powerful deprogramming, and was such an important part of the process for me.
That was an interesting article, and I think some of my thoughts could translate well into that way of thinking. That said I am a very non-visual thinker, and that may be giving me trouble with really accepting that lens. I read the article on that site about rejecting-not-accepting and did find a lot of that to be relatable.
somethingsomething
10mo ago
I don't know much about other instruments, but playing guitar is physically painful for a while. Less so with electric but if men go electric more than women by default do to tech bias or harshness bias then that cancels that out.
somethingsomething
10mo ago
There's no contradiction between these being sincere efforts to take Trump down, and also that Trump benefits from these investigations, and acts in a way to generally make them more likely to happen, and in my opinion, intentionally so. That's the point of a bait, to say "come and get me," and then turn that into an advantage. It's what DeSantis is trying to replicate, but he isn't so bold as Trump as to actually bait intelligence agencies, settling for the media and Disney instead.
Trump has only been doing better in the primary polls since people have been getting in the race, and the only noteworthy thing he has really done is get indicted. so it's not clear what evidence there is that these latest cases have caused any issues.
It's hard to say for me whether Russiagate overall harmed him because it was bored into everyone's brains, but it also imploded. The worst thing it did really was edge the Democrats who then went totally nuts, and some undecideds got swept up in it. I think there were other ways the establishment got their jabs in and actually made Trump's life worse. But I think the investigations are where Trump wins because that is actually where you have to put up or shut up, it's an actual game that Trump can play, and he's won every time.
As a long-term phenomenon I think the cases look even better for the anti-establishment right (and left even) because there's a immediate effect where people get swept up in them and want to see Trump lose, and then there's a tail effect where people become bitter and cynical towards the prosecutors who are bringing faulty cases they can't win. Biden's win was at the height of one of those anti-Trump pushes, but I think things look incredibly dire for the Democrat establishment going forward, since they have spent so much political capital on nonsense.
You don't want to be on the progressive stack. Being on the stack means being treated like a child, it means that your wins can always be questioned, and it means the worst representatives of your "group" become the loudest and most influential.
You want to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps and fix whatever is making you miserable as long as you have consciousness and basic analytic abilities. I think this starts by learning what is actually abnormal. To some extent, "stimming" and "masking" are things everyone does. Everyone "learns" social cues, some just are naturally better at it. Everyone acts differently among different people and everyone has certain aspects of themselves that they hide from others. It's just a matter of degree for these things, even if the degree can be quite high and even though a lot of this stuff starts with outside factors that we don't control.
But I think the dislike "NTs" have towards autistic people is very similar to the dislike towards depressives, because I think (I suppose controversially) that people with both conditions can work on themselves to basically be normal, but both people of both groups often resent the idea that they can. For autistic people, I think they should just record themselves on their phone, and just try to analyze how they are talking and how others are talking in conversation. They should find NTs they trust and ask them to itemize everything they do differently than they are supposed to.
What will the result be? Probably shame. Being told how you are wrong or different naturally results in a lot of shame. And this is where I think a lot of the pushback comes from autists, from depressives, from minority groups, etc. But that is the point where you can say, I'm a grownup, I can deal with shame and move forward.
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