ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
Use your mind! Create new memories! Interact! Don't just add it to a library of forgotten photographs! - Megatron
User ID: 2120
https://www.themotte.org/post/383/wellness-wednesday-for-february-22-2023/68713?context=8#context
First of all, I hope this poster has read https://www.themotte.org/post/195/what-to-do-when-you-get
Second of all, I'd like to express my disappointment in nearly every response I've seen them receive. The fact that their question, which appears to have been made in total good faith, is still getting dogpiled and drive by downvotes is vicariously embarrassing. This isn't a culture war issue. It's a person in the life advice thread asking for life advice on interpersonal relationships as it pertains to their trans friends concerns over a tendentious CW item. prof xi o isn't even stating a position, only that they have trans friends and like Harry Potter (apparently this justifies an accusation of trolling, to the tune of a 45 [edit: 30, my back of the skull hangover sums aren't great] updoot difference. An uncharitable read might see some of the responses from prof xi o as sealioning. Cool. Take your uncharitable reading and keep it under wraps). If I was feeling extreme, I might posit being told you shouldn't be friends with my outgroup is not a valuable remark.
If I want to dunk on wingcucks I can go to arr drama. If I want to dunk on globohomo I can go to /pol/. If I want to dunk on chuds I'll join Hasan's discord. If I want to dunk on MAGAts I'll head over to /r/news. If I want to dunk on libtards I'll join the Mug Club. This is it, as far as I know, for frank and civil discussion between people, whose only commonality on themotte are their shared, seemingly intractable differences. This is unbelievably important to me, because there exists a reality where I am wrong. There is a chance that you too are wrong. Having a place where I can be presented with the absolute best argument against my pet philosophy (and those of others) is valuable, and it's valuable because it can if nothing else, diminish the evil I do as I navigate a confusing and confused world.
Overt forum-wide bias of any particular flavor or stripe, in my opinion, is the most pressing threat to the long term health of this site. Please don't fuck it up for everyone.
P.S. I will be appropriately embarrassed if the OP turns out to be another d*rwin, until that point try leaving the internet at the door and treating everyone as if they are, in fact, sincere.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
What's funny is, in the loose pantheon of supplemental writing and even a brief mention in one of his interludes, there are actually "paladins" or Christian style priests who hunt down and bind and/or exorcize literal demons in the name of God. It's just never been brought up again or made relevant to his Pactverse stories.
"Faith" in the Pactverse clashes somewhat with the Biblical definition, at least as laid out in Hebrews 11:1. When you can perform a given ritual, utter the right words, and invoke the might of a higher power it can be difficult to frame that as "belief". One doesn't need to believe when you can know, a problem inherent to the setting and as such one I'm willing to forgive.
The POV of that particular chapter is also one belonging to a literal apostate, so I can accept there being no deference paid to the Supreme Creator, whether he thought there was one or not.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I've just signed up after lurking for a good while, please forgive me if I'm a little out of the loop and this has already been addressed or explained. Is there a reason why I'm automatically upvoting my own comments? It seems like kind of an odd feature for the community (if anything I would think you should, by default, upvote the comment or top level post you're responding to) plus I feel a little self conscious looking at the little highlight showing the implied numerical value of how proud I am of myself(1). I'd be very curious to see if anyone else has/had any feelings whatsoever about it.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
While I find the sentiment of maximizing the purity of your social bubble somewhat loathsome, in this instance I would be entirely content providing you as much assistance on this front as I could. I even think that I could do this in good conscience, given that your stated premise is to
steer clear of them in IRL interactions
The rules I have, personally, for total removal of an individual from my life before I even know them have been invoked a few times in my life, but not often enough that I feel the need to nervously genuflect towards the Paradox of Tolerance when I do.
That said your somewhat duplicitous presence would lead to my wondering whether your [statistically likely presence somewhere along the chain of decision-makers in the hiring/firing process, for instance] motives in this are entirely pure, or at least not intended to cause real, actual harm to real, actual people while offline. Could you please tell me if the stakes being there was a consideration to you, when you wrote this comment?
Would you consider asking yourself as well, if coding "right-wing" to danger or at least avoidance isn't just coding class-signals (your presumed outgroup) as political?
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Sorry for adding to the wall of text, but I just realized you were one of the respondents there (I realized I was getting pretty bummed by the way some posters I really respect had written their replies and I try to avoid hanging feelings on a person online). I want to be clear, I have no specific issue with most of what's being said in that thread. Again, my big problem is primarily with the pile on. His question was fairly innocuous and considering some of the other material posted here made very, very few assumptions. The one mistake was being blue-coded.
Also to your credit and undermining my point, you did in fact seriously engage and provided a thoughtful and reasoned response when asked.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Would you please explain to me the thought process behind including this in your reply? If you genuinely believe this to be a bad faith actor then the appropriate response would either be to ignore and move on or to publicly register them as such first. Actual engagement, while an enticing option, is their intended goal - granting it to them just doesn't make any sense.
Alternatively you don't actually think that but you want to call out their belonging to a group/antisemitic signalling, in which case you may want to address that (e.g. Are people of differing ideological beliefs allowed to post here? Are they capable of posting here within the rules? Are usernames even useful for anything other than marking a continuous personality across conversations/threads?).
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
The fluttering hands and stressed murmurs that pass around rationalist circles every time the subject of "unaligned AGI" comes up has always confused me somewhat, and I think what you're describing is essentially the root of my fears as they relate to AI. Alignment isn't the issue we should be worried about, the whole human species is unaligned; different nation-states, corporations, religions, regional cultures and local flavor are all in contention with each other to some degree. An unaligned AGI may be an existential threat, but who cares? The third impact is mercurial, and the when/why of its arrival will be in a manner of its own choosing.
AI is dangerous because, as with all things technological, it acts as a force multiplier, amplifying the intentions and actions of its users (to a lesser degree, its creators; the author of new tech effectively dies the moment it slips into the world) to superhuman levels - users who are motivated along overtly tribal and ideological lines. I'm not afraid of Skynet, and honestly I think it's rather silly to obsess over the imagined cataclysm du jour. I am afraid, mortally so, of my fellow man's darker impulses and the paths they will walk to manifest them. Insert that one C.S. Lewis quote here
There's a wide spread, perhaps universal (in America at least), sentiment that everyone is lying to you, on some level or another, whether these are government agencies or news orgs or scientific journals. True or not, doesn't matter. What matters is these latest innovations and the timing of their release seem primed for the environment they find themselves in, where uncertainty and a dash of extraordinarily naive credulity (just look at the quantity of people who will share a screenshot of !person/thing I don't like saying something unflattering) have attainted the dream of a free flow of information.
The thing-in-itself has never been less valued, its representation more revered. Maybe I'm weird for maintaining what I view as a moral objection to AI rather than an ethical one, it just feels like so much of the discussion around this stuff avoids the obvious cultural and societal impact this will have (e.g. Replika).
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I sincerely don’t know what “coding class signals as political” means, otherwise I would answer that question.
I think it's likely you are confusing the urban/suburban/rural cultural divides with political allegiance: while these things map to each other to a degree, these are far more likely to signal class allegiance as opposed to political (e.g. "conservative", "progressive"). Since we're discussing anecdata, I happen to know a great many pro-lgbt, pro-public healthcare, pro-prison reform, all around fairly leftwing types who also exhibit every sign you likely find repulsive (religiosity, "traditional" families, regularly hunting every autumn, drives a pickup truck daily for no reason). These are overwhelmingly lower class markers, not political. In fact there's almost no commonality whatsoever between the "cultural" practices of members belonging to any given political group, these commonalities are far more accurately mapped onto stuff like Red Tribe/Blue Tribe, lower/middle/upper class. If you've (perhaps) had trouble figuring out just why the chuds voted against their interest in 2016, perhaps view it through the lens of "the proletariat sending a message to the petit bourgeois". Hopefully this helps you understand my meaning, I wasn't attempting to be cryptic and apologize for not making myself more clear.
“Would I not hire someone if I knew they were conservative?” To answer that, I would, yes.
Thank you for answering, it's pleasing to see my assumptions born out by reality, at least so far as this place is a reflection of it. How do you reconcile your overt and clearly stated reactionary behavior and bigotry, that appears of the same order (if perhaps a differing flavor) with what you proclaim to despise? It's hardly an original observation, but could you please tell me where and how your desired institutional discrimination differs from historical redlining, women being unable to vote or legally own property, or exclusion of lgbt from marriage/adoption/surrogacy? Or that this discrimination will catch only bad actors and not simply the poor, working and lower classes?
This is not a gotcha to be clear, I find quite literally everything you've said to be objectionable but I'm genuinely curious what your worldview is that consolidates and synthesizes what appear to me to be contradictions and am hoping for an explanation. Or do you simply not feel that these are contradictions, and that conservatives are so uniquely repugnant and valueless as a group their ultimate extinction (not via murder or violence of any kind of course, just the inexorable push over a generation or two down and out of our shared world) is a net benefit to society?
If you are asking me if I would hurt a conservative in real life when you say “real harm”, no.
I think that you and I have differing thresholds for what we consider "harm". I think someone being denied the opportunity to fulfill their natural talents or chosen course in life, not by insurmountable failure or poor fortune, but rather by a conscious and conscientious human being deliberately putting their finger on the scales to be harmful. Consider that others may share my definition of harm, and that some quantity of the hostility you see might be a normative reaction from fairly standard-issue human beings towards perceived contempt and deliberate depredations. Consider that the Morlocks also know how to read, and have recognized, rightly or wrongly, the parallel between your course of action and the UN definition of genocide, specifically Article II.c. Consider that someone otherwise entirely sympathetic to your motivations and lived experience would still look at your proposed course of action and consider you "a baddie".
I know you've stated already that you aren't interested in discussion or debate (here, at least) so if you don't want to respond then feel free to ignore me, I won't take it personally and am happy to indulge your wishes.
Bonus points:
but one attended their college’s Turning Point club
You and I may be in agreement with your direction on this specific example, if not your destination. Mere attendance isn't quite the mortal sin to me as it would seem to be for you, however.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
It escapes the rage-bait/circlejerk flair that the r/*advice subreddits almost universally share.
Really? Because what I saw was 8/9 top level replies using varying degrees of effort and wordcount to say essentially the same thing; "your friends are unreasonable, possibly deranged, your continued existence as a mentally stable sophont is in jeopardy if you leave these people in your life". Social circles are vitally important and are precarious things at best, and telling a stranger to rip up a part of theirs (who knows how sizeable that part is, immaterial to my point), especially over a CW topic, is not good advice, by any measure. The problem for me however isn't that this advice was dispensed (I think it's a real position that a reasonable person can have, I'm not accusing anyone of misrepresenting their own beliefs), the problem is it's the only goddamn advice he got, sans the one person who read his post and provided an answer to the actual question within.
Additionally, I believe that you can in fact discuss CW adjacent topics like "how do I navigate a situation where my friends feel strongly about !issue and I really don't, here are my uninformed and nascent opinions, wat do" without the obviously negative reaction he received. He very technically invited this when he said
Any response is much appreciated.
Still not an excuse for the smug dogpile, not in a place allegedly dedicated to good faith discussion.
I suspect if the political valence had been flipped he would've received at least a more neutral/positive response e.g. "My friends are strongly pro-life and think that Roe being overturned is a landmark victory for innocent life, I kind of feel like it's not murder but this isn't an issue I care much about and I'd rather not alienate my friends if that isn't necessary, wat do." "Wow wow sounds like ur friends might have something to teach u, try asking them for profound opinions" (I view the pro-position on both abortion and trans issues to be largely unreasonable along very similar dimensions and to somewhat similar degrees, but I think a differently coded question of the same genre would have prompted a VERY different response, not like my exaggerated example but along those lines).
The level of detail - trans friends (who I love dearly) - coupled with the admittedly amusing false dichotomies is a dead giveaway. There was no need to go into that level of detail to get meaningful advice - "my friends are getting offended because content-creators have different views than them, what should I do" would have sufficed and would have nonetheless garnered, I reckon, substantially the same response.
Maybe this is uncharitable of me, maybe I didn't make my point clearly the first two times. Regardless,
Maybe he's a troll. Maybe he intends to stir shit up, JAQ off, dissemble then flame out. Cool. Wait for that to happen. I'd like to see this place manage discourse a little bit better than mentally installing a script that turns [Blue Tribe shibboleth] into [!downvote] regardless of how ridiculous I or you or anybody else might find the woke catechism.
I've lurked this place for years in its various forms, and yes, there are fewer and fewer high quality leftwing/liberal contributors every year (are libbies too thin-skinned for rational discussion? I think so! Does public pontification on the topic of Blue tribe irrationality and pussification drive away left-wing posters? Yes! That's why I will always keep my mouth shut for topics I can't write an evenhanded take on). That's why I feel it's incumbent upon all users of this site to point out the burgeoning Red tribe bias that is contributing to the evaporative cooling here. Is it a problem at the moment? I don't think so, could be wrong. Is this going to be a problem in a year? Probably, and it'll compound over time. This place is neat, I've made my case upthread already for why I think that is. If I come here same time next year and this place is where the 125 IQ groypers and Anime PFPs™ hang out, well, miss me with that shit. I know plenty of smart rightwingers in my personal life, I don't want to go online and read the shitpost version of something I already agree with.
I also basically agree with all object-level responses given in the thread
Same. I don't disagree that these trans friends hold an irrational, low information and censorious cluster of beliefs, but this is something I believe to be comorbid with the Human Condition™. I too hold a number of irrational or otherwise low information beliefs on a great many topics, and I suspect everyone else here does as well. The idea that one should take the advice to cut ties as a result of ignorant opinions with those in their immediate circle, as delivered by a stranger on the internet (regardless of context or object level content) seems preeminently dim to me, let alone reasonable. I'll confess to some difficulty now squaring your circle: how can someone of your background and obvious familiarity with the history of a culture that rewards filial impiety1 be comfortable endorsing a practice that is at least superficially similar in type? Or is this something you've already considered, and feel that these two are sufficiently (or completely) disparate subjects?2 Please keep in mind I do not mean that there's never a reason to cut someone completely out of your life, or that you even need a good reason for it, only that the idea of someone (who is unfamiliar with your life beyond whatever broad strokes you provide) telling you to do it for political reasons is just wild.
Perhaps we need to learn to not engage so... earnestly.
In essence, that is my point. Being met with a circling of the wagons doesn't assist in the exploration of ideas, even if the point of exploring said ideas is to eviscerate them more effectively.
Maybe we need to codify this heuristic into a rule (haven't we already?).
I also thought that there was something along those lines already enshrined, but the closest thing to such a stricture would be the rules pertaining to consensus and inclusion. Nothing said in any of the immediate replies rises, in my opinion, to the level of requiring moderator action. That said I believe that the letter of the law may rhyme with the spirit, but that they do in fact mean different things. You don't need to say "as everyone knows" when everyone coincidentally seems to know and profess the same thing. No use getting worked up over consensus building when the consensus is obviously already built.
the measure of the community is whether there is still the will to engage on proposed terms, helpfully and within the bounds of polite discourse.
I agree, and I may have gotten carried away with doomsaying; themotte is not even close to declining to the point I would stop visiting, let alone lose its value on the broader 'net. I don't believe this is a problem as it stands, but I do believe this specific ailment I have described will raise its ugly head in the fullness of time. I lack the experience, knowledge and understanding needed for maintaining an online community, and have little to offer as far as adjustments go. I only believe it's necessary to avert this particular future if this place is going to hold any value down the line, and I can at least point out what I see as the first sprout poking up from the soil.
You can notice my absence there
An amusing downside to posting prolifically is that one's absence does in fact become notable, if only for a given genre of topic.
1Apologies for the source, but the internet is inexhaustible and SEO has crippled my ability to confidently scrape for a more reputable source of my illustration in a reasonable timeframe.
2I am genuinely curious, I am not accusing you of any sort of hypocrisy or double standard. I don't even recall if it's a topic you've explored publicly here, if you have done so I'm always ready to read or reread your write ups.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Thank you, and greyenlightenment too! I have never and would never make an account on reddit and probably not hn either, so I guess this is one of those little shibboleths that you wouldn't even think about if you were familiar with those kinds of message boards. It still seems odd to me like laughing at your own joke before anyone else does, but if that's the industry standard I'm not complaining. Learn something new every day.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I'll report in as a datapoint.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
It might have been received too many plaudits but I wouldn't say it was boring. Visually interesting and had a lot of heart (its message of unconditional love and the rebuke towards the post-ironic cynicism in our society landed nicely to me), though it leaned into the zany a little too much for my liking. I'd give it an 8/10 if you held a gun to my head. For reference I would say something like Annihilation or Oldboy (2003) are functionally perfect films for me, I love great visuals and think good acting and compelling stories are less important (not that I can't appreciate an excellent performance, There Will Be Blood is in my top 10 all time and I will sit down and re-watch it any time, if asked).
Speaking of performances, have you seen The Whale yet?
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I don't disagree with anything you've written here, sans the reiteration of this guy's troll status. Maybe my trolldar is out of whack but IME even concern trolls don't seriously respond the way he seemed to. Perfectly willing to accept that I'm wrong in this instance, but I still think it's uncharitable to levy that accusation based only off of that thread. That said I still can't help but feel like my takeaway here hasn't been taken away. I can only assume this is due to a lack of precision or unintentional obfuscation on my part, or maybe the point was made, received, and summarily discarded (that's fine, if I've been spazzing out here please let me know, seriously. If that's the case then I sincerely apologize for wasting the reader's attention and server runtime). It was wrong of me to even mention score (I personally loathe that there's even a scoring system here in the first place, but people seem to like it so I'll accept that I'm in the minority and won't be a pest about it), it distracts from what I'm trying to describe.
What bothered me was that after the second or third reply, his post kept attracting rejoinders for days (I know, I know, it's an internet forum and responding to a day or two day old post isn't necroing, but I didn't think it was worth remarking upon until I saw another dunk close to three days after the OP) with an almost identical theme to the rest. What I don't mean is, that if someone already said what you think then you should shut up and not say anything at all. What I do mean is, that after receiving a few replies making it clear in detail that this framing is inappropriate for this place, the dead horse kept attracting blows. It would be more healthy for the site, in my opinion, simply to not try (deliberately or not) to drum others out for such a faux pas. Yes, I think the average person (and especially a Blue1) receiving this degree of reaction one or two times will most likely never come here again. The point I have struggled to convey is: that someone saying something objectionable should be objected to, but just because you disagree with a post doesn't mean you need to say it, especially when you can just scroll down and see your opinion already well represented. It just makes you feel good, and them bad.
To use some verbiage I hate but still find useful, I think the way this community treats the Blues is toxic. Is it justified? I'm willing to concede that point, but I didn't come here to turn the tables on my outgroup, I came here for discussion featuring light as opposed to heat. I hope it isn't necessary to say that it's bad when the Blues do it, and it's bad when the Reds do it. I think themotte has already started down the path of becoming a social media-tier echochamber, just in photo negative. I hold this place and its users to a significantly higher standard than I do twitter or reddit, and it's not because everyone here is smarter than them but rather everyone is trying to be better than them.
Thank you for taking the time to write a serious reply.
1I am perhaps being uncharitable when I say that lefty potential-posters are more easily offended than the righties. For clarity's sake, I do not advocate a two-tier moderation system for the opposing ends of the political spectrum as a solution for this.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Endlessly fascinating to me how hard the internet has accelerated the life cycle for nostalgia, I've noticed myself pining for the good ol' days of the internet with newgrounds, YTMND, SA, 4chan or even what YouTube used to be. These things disappeared or underwent fundamental changes to them not so long ago (a similar timeframe to paying off a car loan or meeting, courting and marrying a stranger) and yet everybody who remembers the internet before Facebook (at least those I've spoken with) all seem to share a similar sentiment. My favorite quote that encapsulates this was from a post from 2014 on one of 4chan's now-defunct text boards saying "2012 was so long ago, was i even alive back then. who knows."
I read for the first time in 2022 the Three Body problem trilogy as well as the fanfiction Redemption of Time, the Inhibitors trilogy, the Hyperion Cantos, and the first two Ian Banks' Culture novels. I've also been very slowly working through my omnibus of the Princes of Amber series (serial?), which is enjoyable but a bit too pulpy for my taste.
Me and my close circle of friends also started a book club to help motivate us to cover works of literature and quality fiction that our schooling or upbringing had never shown us, so we read King Lear, and Child of God by the inimitable Cormac McCarthy amongst others. I was the one to tap out ultimately however, Frankenstein broke me. I cannot possibly envision a realistic future where I can power past the first 50 pages or so, it's some of the most eye-strainingly tedious writing I've ever slogged through, and I read most of Galt's screed in Atlas Shrugged. Maybe I just got filtered.
ETA: I also did a substantial bit of rereading but that was mostly retreading things I've read many times before, primarily Blindsight twice last year, once in January and again in September. I also read Worm for the 10th time.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Since you'd have to actually click through and read the thread to see, I think it's worth asking: @ZorbaTHut are you aware that permabanned users still get to participate in janny duty? Should probably be fixed if you want this system to work the way I assume you intended.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Not germane to the discussion, but can you explain Bert Kreischer for me? I like Tom fine, think he's quick and pretty funny, most of the rest of the deathsquad guys are pretty okay at least to me, but Bert has always been a guy I just don't get. He feels to me like he isn't a real person, I've always felt like he's some kind of cutout for a PR company whose name no one knows (Bent Pixels maybe?). Am I just a hater? I'm okay with having an irrational dislike of a comedian, pretty easy for me to just not consume content that rubs me the wrong way.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
people that didn't have any apparent drinking problem proudly announcing that they've quit drinking and feel so much better
This makes sense on an intuitive level if you assume HBD (in a less CW application) is correct. Alcohol is basically poison and causes widespread if minor damage to every system it touches, and if you're a descendant of a culture or lineage of teetotalers then you might not have the same degree of resilience to/recovery from the holistic harm dealt by booze (HBD isn't necessary for this, variation amongst individuals is an equally plausible explanation).
sleep certainly has downstream effects, but I also think that you have to drink a lot for these to be all that noticeable
Speaking only for myself, I went through a period of heavy (.5-1L of cheap bourbon daily) drinking some time ago. The main reason I stopped was the general malaise that I felt, but the thing that kicked it over the edge for me was how frequent my more intense nightmares became when I would crawl into bed wasted. I still have this problem now, more than 6 drinks in a day (with very little correlation to how close to bedtime I've been drinking) is almost guaranteed to have me visited that night by the very worst my unconscious mind has to offer. As a result I don't really drink that much, when I even bother to in the first place (still enjoy the sensation of being drunk, but I have enough consistently bad dreams already that it's just not worth being haunted by myself, the hangovers have gotten significantly worse as I've gotten older too).
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Thank you for clarifying, I knew Pavlik was a bad example of what I was attempting to gesture towards but my collection of annotations and bookmarks is a mess right now, and I didn't want to dig through my disorganized references for a better one. Thank you for putting in the effort on my behalf. I understand that Pavlik isn't quite what I intended to describe, but it's something along these lines; authoritarian regimes (it need not be the USSR; North Korea also works and is a more contemporary example), extremist/terrorist organizations and cults as a necessary function of their position in society at large must encourage the individual to atomize, to cut away as much of the social safety net as thoroughly as possible.
I feel no discomfort over the idea someone might terminate a relationship of their own accord (up to and including, sometimes especially, family), but I do find it disturbing to see others advocate that path. It sets off just about every alarm I have in my head and makes me question the moral fibre of those recommending it. Your ideology of choice doesn't have a couch to crash on, it doesn't have that one recipe that it makes every time you visit, it won't provide comfort in your grieving, in short it can provide exactly zero aid or succor to you the human being. A person is fundamentally feeble in a universe that is very, very strong, and it's only inside of a circle of close friends and family that one can move forward, let alone make their mark on the world (there are few loners remembered by history, almost never in a positive light. They also tend to be exceptional human beings for whom a case could be made that they had no peers, at least not locally available to them. I think they can safely be considered an exception that proves the rule). The annulment of any relationship should be taken seriously, even if said relationship is trivial, and telling someone that that is their best course of action borders, IMO, on evil. In the interest of civility and because I know that my gut is imputing motives on others, I'm perfectly happy to settle for calling it inappropriate.
Wholeheartedly agree for this specific reply, it's the only one that I felt managed to answer the actual question as posed by the OP without being sandwiched between a few paragraphs of moralizing. I tried to avoid mention of specific posts and posters because I didn't and don't think that hectoring them would do any good and probably would do a modicum of bad, but that was the post I had in mind when I wrote
nearly every response I've seen them receive.(added emphasis)
Personally I violate Western best practices egregiously and comically, and avoid dropping friends regardless of political differences, psychopathy, psychiatric conditions and material conflicts of interest. It tends to work out in the long run;
Loyalty, in my opinion, is among the greatest virtues a human can hold, and I personally feel it acts as something like the metaphysical cousin to a sacrament the more irrational and unconditional it becomes. I believe that a person's relationship with his friends and family regardless of who they are should be treated as unimpeachable. The person in question may be in fact quite impeachable, as a matter of law or what have you, but the actual relationship itself should be held as sacrosanct. We, as a species, are way too messed up in the head to be able to either afford or justify easy dismissal of one another. Glass houses, and such.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I don't use any type of warez to cover myself (besides a VPN where good hygiene is advisable), due in part to sloth and also a lack of wherewithal. My justification for this is probably cope, but my layman's view is that, these days, unless you have a pretty comprehensive suite of software and are unrelentingly fastidious with your choice of hardware/setup, any government entity or motivated individual/group who wants to find you will.
As a result I try to keep myself clean with burner emails, use a new handle for every new platform (and password, which should go without saying. That said I know an embarrassing number of people who use the same pass for everything, up to and including using their ATM card's PIN for their phone) I find myself on and semi regularly (1-3 years) change up the primary screen names and PFPs I use. My last trick and the one I use the least because it discomfits me some is lying consistently about minor identifying details. The consistency of it is important as the purpose is to generate a false positive that'll show up in the kinds of datasets you were demonstrating in your previous post.
Gwern's incredible analysis on Death Note was the primary inspiration for these practices, not that I'm familiar with opsec/digital fingerprints or anywhere near important enough for someone to look for me. The idea is to just throw enough obstacles in the way that, contingent upon an amateur getting ants in the pants over my presence online, I have time to scrub what I can from the 'net (not much, in practice more than you think, so long as you aren't notorious or prolific, as you said). Then I can move my daily business over to a set of cutouts made a while back that I keep the credentials for in my safe.
I'm not anonymized from serious players but I can't play at that level anyway, so fuck it. If things get that far I'll have bigger fish to fry than that time my teenaged self wrote the n-word on a BBS for a kids show fifteen years ago. Would love it for someone with actual expertise in this field to chime in, maybe let me know how if my prophylactics are stupid or not.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Thanks, I hate it.
More seriously though, what is this meant to convey? That asparagus is high class? This might be wildly pedantic but IME that's very much not the case - I live in a rural area with a lot of ditches not near cropland or irrigation systems. As a result there's a rather vibrant scene every summer for about two weeks where wild asparagus is freely available to anyone who feels like pulling over to the side of the road and walking down into the tall grass to snap off a pound or two (or twenty) of the stuff. It has a very similar vibe to people who go mushroom hunting after a good rain, something that could be considered "outdoorsy" or "being in tune with nature". In practice I've found that it's more people who are already farming/gardening/hunting/fishing, drive their F-150 three blocks to the town gas station for their Marb lights, started working when they were sixteen and held down a job somewhere doing something ever since.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Further viewing for anyone who cares about the phenomenal acceleration of nostalgia as much as I do. ALERT! YouTube link! (also contains what can be considered a very annoying pop song)
Go ahead and read the comments below; from what I can tell these are actual children, or at the very least young adults, waxing poetic on the halcyon days of their youth. This, to me, is just incredible. Literally! Imagine if you had told just about anyone across history that the unblooded youth of society would reminisce over their shared childhood, before they had even stepped into adult society proper. Maybe my priors on this are skewed by my neophyte-tier Cynicism and a knee-jerk tribal desire for RETVRN, but I can't help but wonder if this is something very, very new.
A fascinating topic to me, and one I don't have the requisite familiarity or ability to trawl through academic literature on this subject, or even know if there's been anything published that would cover this.
Are you talking about Wildbow? I remember him saying something along these lines a little while ago, specifically his breakdown of the backlash he received forthe "Avery is dead" arc in Pale.
Also, if there's sufficient interest in it, I have a jumbled mess of thoughts I might be able to kludge together into a top level post describing why I think he peaked with Twig, from the angle of someone who is very much in the visible1 minority (not trans, not a furry, not squeeing over various characters, not socially liberal) of his fans.
1Based purely off of a cursory examination of the online communities that bother discussing his writings in the first place.
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