oats_son
1mo ago
I'm not asking anyone to become atheist. But the idea that prayer does anything is chafing enough to me to cause me to comment. As I said elsewhere, I think religion is healthy, though I struggle to accept the good with the bad.
oats_son
1mo ago
I know Trace messes around with AIs a lot just to see what the machine can say, especially after some training on progressive wrongthink. I'd guess for most people, it's just a tool to idly wonder about the world. I wondered idly if there were tsunamis before life existed on Earth, and that question hadn't been directly answered, but Google Gemini took some evidence about possible tsunami deposits from a certain time period to deduce that they did exist. There are lots of weird questions I have that I can freely ask an AI about, if it isn't too edgy.
As for talking to it in sincerity, I think that's the realm of children and actual weirdos who form cults or kill themselves based on a machine. Wasn't there an article about a man who developed a God complex from talking to one? Otherwise, maybe if you're super bored? I would never myself, of course...
oats_son
1mo ago
To be clear, I am the one that made that point that ackshually AI is good. The original artist made no such claim, just a complaint that graphic design requirements for musicians make no sense and nowadays has the added benefit of occasionally getting you into AI shitstorms.
oats_son
1mo ago
One of my favorite bands just took a bunch of AI accusations, I guess, and he wrote a somewhat-pissed Substack post. That lead singer doesn't often step into culture war stuff, but this was close enough, I think:
Unfortunately, as soon as we released the other day, people started accusing us of using an AI image. Now, I want to be clear, this is not an AI generated image, and I have the layered design files to prove it, but I get that it has certain features which can easily make someone think it is, particularly the similar-ish smiling faces. And everyone is talking about AI nowadays, and so they’re all primed to think it is AI. Seriously: Fair enough, I’m not blaming anyone. But I’ve seen the design templates, it really isn’t.
and goes on to say that fighting AI art in this way is fruitless:
And so, there is no “solution” to the problem of AI imagery other than the one the Luddites came up with over two centuries ago: smash the machines. Until we can actually smash the machines (literally or semi-literally), the AI will just get better and better until no-one can tell. This day is fast coming. So, I think we should either start figuring out how to smash the machines or accept our fate. There is no middle way. And so, with all due respect for those honorable people who just hate AI and want real art to prevail, calling out artists because you think you can “tell” is just another one of those doomed middle ways.
I regret that the culture war is poking random people in a new way in the last couple of years, and I can't help but cynically laugh at it. Not to mention how short-sighted it is. In that post, the lead singer details how much of a pain it is to do graphic design for music, and videos, and other art, and he hates it. Imagine if you could get a machine to do it? Also, it actually lifts up people who do not have money and allows them to make art like the people who have money do. Look at this VEO 3 shitpost. Genuinely funny, and the production value would be insane if it was real, for a joke that probably wouldn't be worth it. But now, someone with some Gemini credits can make it. This increases the amount of people making things.
I'm not sure I have any real thesis for this post, but I haven't been very good at directing discussion for my own posts, so, reply to this anecdote in any way you see fit. I thought it was interesting, and a little sad.
oats_son
1mo ago
I am not really the person to make the point, anyway. I saw @Hoffmeister25 make the point much better than I can, and if @FCfromSSC had any satisfying response to it, he sure didn't seem to post it there.
But it's an old question: the problem of evil, the problem of random things inherent in nature hurting you for no reason. Why are there so many things that are absolutely awful, caused by immutable nature, and are only explainable to us modern humans? To ancient humans, it seemed functionally equivalent to being smitten by God to get tuberculosis and die slowly. They likely thought that prayer had something to do with getting bubonic plague and dying, similar to Tenaz's idea that prayer causes better outcomes. The Aztecs thought that sacrificing people was statistically likely to keep the world from ending. Perhaps they sacrificed something and felt some sign from God twitch within themselves. But they couldn't have been further from the truth. Do you think we modern humans are more pious than ancient humans? Not a chance.
I have seen from some young earth creationists the idea that it's because humans are fallen ever since the Tree of Knowledge was eaten from by Adam and Eve. But that only works in a young earth model of the world. If there is no young earth, there was no Adam and Eve, and we are just animals, and the world was always fucked up, right from the start, before any human was involved at all.
In this case, I'd say a lot of that probability mass should be taken from the theory that being alive was actually good for her--that what you were praying for is actually what you would have wanted with full knowledge of all the details.
Ha. Haha.
I have sometimes thought that someone being dead means that you will never worry about them again, because their story has ended; they are right where you left them, and you will always know where they are, what their status is.
Offense taken, all the same. What an absolutely awful way to view life. I suppose everyone who is dead is better off dead, otherwise they wouldn't be dead, right? Not to mention the conclusion that perhaps the suicidal ought to take their own lives since their earthly ones suck so bad.
Regardless, I wish you the best in your theories, though I will continue to doubt them.
oats_son
1mo ago
Let's say that the study really did prove that prayer works.
Okay. What kind of wording was used during the prayer? How many people prayed for the subject? Did they pray a long, individual prayer, a short, individual prayer, or multiple prayers throughout the days? Does length of time spent praying increase the statistical likeliness that the prayer works? Do acts of faith (fasting, attending worship, displaying faith artwork) improve the outcome? Does Biblical conduct (charity, honoring the Sabbath, honoring one's parents) improve the outcome? Does the intensity of the prayer (praying for one's child recovering from cancer as opposed to praying for one's stubbed toe to stop hurting) affect the outcome? Are people in the faith more likely to have a support group that helps them relieve stress?
Do you see that there are an impossible amount of factors involved in such a study? I guarantee the study was not so rigorous as to specifically probe every single aspect that I've listed here. Even if you asked them, you wouldn't get straight answers. People forget, people don't understand their own minds or why they think certain things or do certain acts.
It's really not hard to do, as I did, a "controlled" study of the efficacy of prayer.
This is the same problem we ran into last week with the gender dysphoria thing. It's impossible to look inside someone's mind. Do you tally your successes to failures? For how long? Are they correlated at all with the other upswings of your life?
In my youth, I thought that when I was worried sick about my dog, calling for it to come back over and over, praying desperately for it to come back, that it was certainly a miracle when it did, in fact, come back. The problem is that there is no evidence for this whatsoever. There is no way to run two exactly matching sets of reality, one where I prayed that my dog came back, and one where I did not pray that my dog came back. For such a trivial matter, it is easy to say that my calling had more effect than prayer. What about for not-so-trivial matters? The feeling that a miracle happened would be even greater, but it would have no more basis than my dog anecdote. I felt spiritually uplifted by that event, just as I guarantee a girl who mistakenly thought she was a boy would feel great relief at wearing boys' clothing and being called by a masculine name. But feelings are not proof of anything. We are not scientific beings. We are animals, a big ball of emotions, tightly wound at times.
I can tell you I prayed for a troubled girl once every night, and despite my devotion, despite pledging I would never ask for anything more besides if this wish was granted, she ended up shooting herself due to chronic abuse that I had no idea about. It was after some years of sustained nightly praying that her soul did not go to Hell that I realized the utter stupidity of such a venture.
oats_son
1mo ago
If you really think that this is something that works empirically, it should be easy to design some studies that properly prove it. Has anyone done it? Or maybe there are too many confounding factors like true belief? If you fail to pray for something and it happens anyway, did God do it?
I'm perfectly happy to let Christians have their faith. I think it's healthy. But I really can't stand these kinds of outrageous claims about how prayer really works when it's been pretty clear that it does not work at all for years. If God only grants you specific, insignificant, entirely-taking-place-in-the-mental-realm prayers, can you say it's that useful, especially if something like stoicism grants you similar results? Is God pleased by secular stoicism? If we compared prayers made to God to prayers made to stoicism, what would the results look like?
oats_son
1mo ago
It's the idea that absolutely awful things can happen to you for reasons outside of your control at any time for many multitudes of reasons that were decided by seemingly nobody.
oats_son
1mo ago
The fact that prayer is what brought you back is really strange to me. Do you think there is any statistical evidence that prayer works? What about other statistical evidence, like people who live on coasts that have earthquakes tend to die more to tsunamis? Completely area-based, unless you make the argument that people who live on coasts are more sinful and thus encounter the wrath of God more often. How many people are mired in addiction that try everything, including prayer, and never make it out? Knowing that statistics has incredible predictive power is enough to dissuade me that prayer does anything at all.
oats_son
1mo ago
Myth TFL had some physics that made the multiplayer fun and broken, yes. The fetch lightning propelling the dwarf bombs sounds like a lot of people did it. Unfortunately, it is not present in Myth II. Generally, you have to keep the AoE guys away from the melee guys, yes. You frequently see melee dudes mopping up other melee dudes though.
oats_son
1mo ago
I think you should try Myth II: Soulblighter. It's a real-time tactics game where the multiplayer really shows how it can shine with regards to troop placement and management. I think the multiplayer community eventually settled on the best formation for melee being all of them packed in shoulder-to-shoulder, though.
oats_son
1mo ago
It makes sense to me that different things framed differently can get more or less popular at different rates. With the amount of media coverage being dedicated to transgenders, it is likely more normie-coded than wearing assless leather out in public, giving cover to anyone undertaking the transgender path. I'd argue a huge part of the discourse is in trying to present an obviously sexual thing as not sexual at all. The way it's presented is "transgenders are just normal people like you and me trying to navigate their mental illness (even though dysphoria isn't actually a requirement in the public eye anymore), so most restrictions are hateful." I think that kind of framing would have a big impact on uptake of any paraphilia, or any trend at all, like T-shirt wearing or membership in a gun club or motorcycling.
oats_son
1mo ago
I don't think naraburns meant to say that transgender is the hot new thing for crossdressing enthusiasts, just that crossdressing is one of many sexuality related reasons for doing it. If you're a woman who got abused and doesn't want to be seen as a woman anymore, transitioning into a man is one way to do it, and that's still related to sexuality.
oats_son
1mo ago
Well, then! I guess those are more achievable than they sounded. Now I guess it's up to whether you actually have enough free time and willpower to do them all. If you have 8 hours and don't spend much time cooking/eating dinner or on hygiene or on other pursuits, then probably possible. If you have 4 hours after work and after your PhD efforts, and you have those other pursuits to contend with, maybe not. I can't tell you what you should value more, though to be honest, reading this site and others are a huge sink on my time, personally, so cutting those out would give me a huge boost to doing more stuff without having to cut much important. Anyway, you can do it!
oats_son
1mo ago
Which of the goals actually matter to you? I would try to focus on one category of thing and then do that.
Swimming 4 days a week is a realistic goal, 50 miles a week, maybe not unless you're that one guy who runs in this forum, I think it was Walterodim? It would have to be your main hobby. If you don't already run, 9 miles a week will already be a lofty goal. But my real advice would probably be to try swimming one week and then running one week.
These days I find Anki exceedingly burdensome and increasing my already huge screen time, so I would cut that new card count down quite a bit, or at least to just one language. Learning two similar languages is a bad idea, it's generally suggested to stick to one that you focus on. Wait, you're trying to learn 100 Spanish words a day? That's probably not going to go well no matter how devoted you are. Why not try 20? Or 40 if you're really bold. And pick Italian or Spanish. I like learning languages too, but I've really fallen out of it lately. Sad!
Substack posts seem like a waste of time unless you're really trying to make a career out of it, in which case you might cut the rest of this list and do just that. If you have subscribers, I guess keep the goal.
Reading in both Spanish and then also having an English reading goal at that size is kind of a lot, too. Cut both of the numbers down until they reach numbers that aren't dizzying.
Masturbation abstinence doesn't seem that worthwhile to me, but maybe it is... crucially, it is not something you have to spend time on, so go for it. The Day 21 orgasm will feel amazing.
I don't know what your savings rate means. If it's about cutting down spending, that's a great goal and one you should keep for every month, forever.
oats_son
1mo ago
I might agree with you on the whole, but I have to wonder if this whole gun debacle is just how lawyers work.
Brown v. Board of Education and Obergefell may both have been written precisely enough to avoid people trying to find holes to poke, whereas all these hyper specific laws around banning inanimate objects with a million different variations come pre-loaded with holes in them. Ban one, another one that's basically the same but with some small change comes into effect because millions of different variations in a field where no one drafting the laws actually knows anything. I don't see anyone wiggling out of Dobbs.
Granted, courts purposely seeing right past obvious constitutionality is pretty obvious at times, especially when they write about the "Aloha Spirit" in their rulings. We're likely doomed either way, but I wonder why it happens more to guns than it does to other red tribe endeavors.
oats_son
1mo ago
The idea that you can swap genders is a farce that is only enabled by anarchists who spent too much time thinking about sex, and invented a convenient concept that gender is opposite from sex. For pretty much anyone, undertaking the sex change journey is an incredibly bad idea. It marks you as a freak and you will spend your whole life trying and failing to fit in. Fighting one's nature is not fun. It also mostly puts you out of normal life paths like marriage and raising kids.
oats_son
1mo ago
Top quality comment, you put a lot of work into this. Yes, during my argument, it was seriously proposed that there wasn't any real difference in health outcomes between the usage of blockers for precocious puberty and the usage of blockers for gender affirming care purposes, since you're blocking puberty either way. I actually didn't know that that's the actual medical reasoning, that's insane. Blocking puberty to get it to happen at the right time is a much different case than blocking puberty from happening at the right time. The advocates should be the ones doing the work, and things would not have progressed this far if they were. There also would not be nearly so many advocates in that case.
oats_son
1mo ago
Are you suggesting that society should ditch any notion of gender and accept every way of gender presentation so that passing is no longer necessary? How likely do you think that would be?
oats_son
1mo ago
Sorry for the harsh words, but this is just a lie.
Yes, I guess I already knew it was a lie. Healthcare professionals can't look inside your brain for you, so they have to rely on what you say. It's extremely easy to get antidepressants if you say you've lost interest in doing your schoolwork, you have heightened anxiety, and you have bleak thoughts involving self harm. The script is different for different mental issues, but it's a script all the same. I don't know how you convince someone of that, but generally, anyone who argues this with you already has their mind made up.
It hasn't been properly studied yet to my knowledge as, until recently, the hypothesis was treated as an insane conspiracy theory.
It is deeply frustrating that such an intense issue is so stagnant on the research front (not to mention actually discourages wrongthink). If medicine didn't overextend into territory it didn't fully understand yet, none of this would have happened and I wouldn't get into these soul-destroying arguments. I think science didn't have much to do with the decision to do all this in the first place, so it's very frustrating when pro-trans advocates say to me that clinicians know a lot about medicine and can properly judge in individual cases whether it's worth it or not, so we should just trust them. It sounds so noble.
Not to my knowledge, but I'm biased.
I am just wondering if trans advocates have any leg to stand on with regards to dismissing the review entirely. Do they have any official published critiques at all they're drawing from? Or is it a blue-tribe-wide vibe that they all feel? It's disturbing to see so many people actually in the field express such things if it's all vibes.
The deadly cocktail is blockers + opposite sex hormones, that basically clinches infertility and/or anorgasmia
Are there any studies on this that you know of? How did you find this out? Too bad it's both that are required or it would be easier to argue this.
oats_son
1mo ago
Yes, because it is a harm being deliberately inflicted on minors by the medical establishment that has permanent horrible consequences like infertility, plus generally being considered freaks for the rest of their lives. There's a reason that despite the low occurrence of incidents, people care about the Catholic Church having members of the clergy molest children and then shuffle them around without being prosecuted. Teens getting into car accidents, or kids dying in pool accidents are problems that are hard to solve, but deliberate actions from officials in respected establishments based on strategies are much easier. That goes for the Catholic Church, that goes for doctors, that goes for police department policies on restraint with chokeholds. Thanks for posting some statistics.
oats_son
1mo ago
Thankfully, I am not a doctor. I appreciate the rhetorical suggestion. I don't know how much I can take it, though, because these are my friends and I try not to overly offend my friends (or anyone, I guess). Like Sonya from Crime and Punishment, I have recently realized that no matter how I conduct myself, I will never be able to totally avoid offending people.
I do appreciate your sincerity, and your honorable attempts to explain the gospel remind me of the valiant and zealous missionaries of the past, as shown in movies like Black Robe (1991). Growing up, I thought Mormons were really weird, and you are another in a long string of non-weird Mormons who challenge that stereotype. I thought the same about Catholics, as well, until @SubstantialFrivolity made a post giving quite the steelman of the branch. Like him, you are perfectly willing to wade into the difficult stuff.
No problem. To be honest, you did articulate something that it is not polite to think, yet I think many people think it privately to themselves - that some unpleasant lives would be better off if they were not alive. It is humanitarian to strive for the best for everyone, and that they continue living for as long as possible, but in many cases, the thought springs up anyway. If we actually take that thought seriously, we get some scary hypotheticals, like "at what point is it acceptable for lifelong chronic depressives to just give up and step into traffic", or "maybe you should kill your kids so they don't get a chance to lose the faith as adults". And if it was okay for her, as an abuse victim who was awfully messed up herself, to take her own life, then that has bad implications for other people who struggle with chronic depression or bad childhoods. I shouldn't have gotten mad at you, though, especially since you realized your mistake later anyway.
I hope she will be okay too, but an entire childhood of fundamentalism telling me that people who commit suicide go to hell and unbelievers go to hell cannot be washed away by the same fundamentalists backstepping with "God is perfectly just, so you can trust Him to make the right decision". You didn't say that, but there are so very many interpretations of the Bible that many people who genuinely were looking to God to give them the interpretation came to it. All of them genuinely feel their way is the right one and can cite scripture and cite their own internal spiritual uplifting upon praying. For Mormonism, the problem is even more acute, as @TracingWoodgrains found out through testing Moroni's Promise on an open minded Christian.
For these reasons, and more, I am afraid my faith is permanently disrupted. I don't think it's a good thing, so I appreciate your defense anyway.
More options
Context Copy link