somethingsomething
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User ID: 1123
somethingsomething
9mo ago
In a sense I knew what I was getting into, in another sense I really am a godless liberal with almost total naivete regarding what each church is "really like". I thought I'd start with the one who at least is most aligned with my belief that Jesus was not resurrected. And I was legitimately surprised with just how miserably it all went.
somethingsomething
9mo ago
I feel im missing something with your links, could you help me understand the lie, and what his own idea was in your view?
somethingsomething
9mo ago
A godless liberal goes to church
I knew in advance that my frustration with the godless progressive milieu that did everything but (ok, not but) cheer a horrifying political assassination, would be unlikely to be assuaged by attending my local Unitarian church's sunday service, but since I had read it described as the most intellectual church, and because of its sensibility towards Christ's (obvious lack of) resurrection, I felt like it would be the most likely out of the various sects to be a spiritual home for me.
I had no idea how bad it is in there.
The introductory speaker began the service reading very slowly and deliberately through various housekeeping items in a kind of "this is why boys in school have ADD" teacher voice. It was revealed that this was a special "all ages" day that they do every month. Could this be why she was reading to us in a voice like we were all babies, or is she always like this, I wondered. The last thing she did before passing the mic was asking us all to stand up and get the wiggles out.
The choir then got up and sang "Liberty and Justice for all" by Brandon Williams. Could this be an old Whiggish protestant church song, I wondered. But as it started "We are frightened... we are angry... we are rising..." which came across as a bit modern to me.
Then they sit down and they are followed by some ceremony to induct new people to serve as some kind of counselor role, which involves some vow reading that takes a while. Then they sit down and the choir gets up again, to sing "One Foot/Lead With Love" by Melanie DeMore which again contains words about being "scared," but it's a bit catchier than the first song.
Then they go sit down and now the two apparent church leaders say they are going to tell us a "story." Very slowly and deliberately they read out a baby story about two brothers trying to find God. They go up to the mountains, but they don't see God there...
I have to leave. The whole experience has felt like being Dracula confronted with a crucifix. Every cell in my brain screaming to get out of this holy place. Exiting the door I'm confronted with pouring down rain on a street with cars going by and I'm struck by the beauty and calm. THIS is where God is, is the thought that occurs to me.
So now my thought is, culturally, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!? How is THAT what church is? Jesus Christ! How fucking horrible was all that? I could not believe only 30 minutes had passed.
I looked up the two choir songs and they are both basically anti-Trump protest songs written in 2016/17. Why are we singing about how scared we are? Why don't we fucking man up?
Why in every aspect is this a church for babies? Where even the children are bored by their pandering to them?
I was raised as a godless liberal but I had an idea that if things felt really dire and miserable, or if I felt like I needed God for whatever reason, any one of these places would at least do a serviceable job of keeping me connected. Holy hell was I wrong, there are some fucking bad, miserable churches.
somethingsomething
10mo ago
It's not 1:1 with your example, because he's not swinging while he is hefting it. He would heft it first, then swing. So it would be more similar to "going for a run, he showered off the sweat and went to sleep".
somethingsomething
11mo ago
I feel like your last point is basically the social safety net and pro-union wing of the left (and now right?). In that respect we already do have a lot of pushback against pure capitalism in a practical sense, and a lot of it came from socialist strains.
somethingsomething
11mo ago
I have depression as well, which I blame mostly on a stressful, lonely childhood that gave me attachment issues, using marijuana as a go-to coping mechanism through young adulthood to the present day, and failing to land in some kind of realm of family/community in adulthood to smooth over the various psychological rough edges I have. A little over a year ago I did a ketamine sequence over 7 weeks which I found to be beneficial, but it didn’t quite result in a lasting fix for me, and I ended up going on an SNRI about half a year ago which has felt more reliable in the long-term so far.
The ketamine experience was truly beautiful and fascinating though, and I will probably do it again, but I want to have a significant amount of time between using it to avoid it feeling like a crutch or a recreational drug experience.
I got into meditation in the past, and doing so I feel like really benefited the trip because I was able to go into that zone and really relax, while following different paths my brain was going on. I had explored Jhanas on my own in an amateurish way, and I was definitely able to experience some piti eruptions in ketamine land. I felt a connection to the Eleusinian Mystery rituals, and in moments of awareness I felt a lot of appreciation that I got to live in a time where this mystical state was accessible. It reinforced a feeling that life has meaning, because I was experiencing “meaning” in such a profound-feeling way, that it seems truly odd to imagine a universe devoid of meaning that could produce such states.
All that wasn’t enough to really deeply change me, as I was still spending days alone feeling like my life is still “shit,” so to speak. Possibly that’s because I already kind of knew these things that ketamine was revealing to me through past meditation experiences. Once I was on the SNRI, it felt like the non-marijuana coping mechanisms I had developed were easier to implement, like understanding feelings are temporary and not getting too attached to negative spirals. I don’t have a feeling of why they are easier, they just kind of are, which I’m thankful for, although I’m not sure what the future holds in terms of actually trying to make a better life happen for myself.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
You can throw things in the back without opening the door is the basic answer I think. Very casual, like you're getting stuff done on you're own time, your gear exposed to the elements etc. Work vans are more ubiquitous for actual company cars.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I gave it a read, and yeah it's a pretty accurate summary. But I don't agree that the gemini version is meaningless, and I don't think the limitations you suggest in your post would have made the Claude test better. We have a pretty good idea now of the varying level of crutches needed to be useless (none), to get through some of the game, and beat the game. Now we can ask the question of what would it take for a LLM to not be useless without human assist.
In my mind, it basically needs to write code, because the flaws to me appear fundamental due to how predictable they are across LLMs, and seeing versions of these issues going back years. The LLM has to write a program to help it process the images better, do pathfinding, and store memory. In that sense it would be building something to understand game state not that differently than the current RAM checking from reading the screen.
It then needs to have some structure that vastly improves it's ability to make decisions based on various state, I'd imagine multiple LLM contexts in charge of different things, with some method of hallucination testing and reduction.
And it has to do all this without being slow as hell, and that's the main thing I think that improved models can help with hopefully. I'd like it if any of the current Twitch tests started taking baby steps towards some of these goals now that we've gotten the crutch runs out of the way. It's odd to me that the Claude one got abandoned. It feels like this is something the researchers could be taking more seriously, and it makes me wonder if the important people in the room are actually taking steps towards ai agency or if they kust assume a better model will give it to them for free.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
This aligns with my vibes although I've looked into it a lot less than you have it appears. The "nerd metaphysics" you describe seems to always be what I encounter whenever looking into rational spaces, and it always puts me off. I think that you should actually have a model of how the process scales.
For example you have the AI plays pokemon streams which are the most visible agentic applications of AI that is readily available. You can look at the tools they use as crutches, and imagine how they could be filled with more AI. So that basically looks like AI writing and updating code to execute to accomplish it's goals. I'd like to see more of that to see how well it works. But from what I've seen there it just takes a lot of time to process things, and so it feels like anything complicated it will just take a lot of time. And then as far as knowing whether the code is working etc. hallucination seems like a real challenge. So it seems like it needs some serious breakthroughs to really be able to do agentic coding reliably and fast without human intervention.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
My thinking is that the right-wing elite collapsed, due to and resulting in more rising right-wing populism, and populism basically selects for bad characters. It's the responsibility of the elites to not screw up so much that no one has faith in them anymore, and they failed to do that
somethingsomething
1yr ago
Well the "uncalled for" quip does kind of point at a question of who started it, the easiest way to avoid that is to describe the smear campaign sans judgement. I feel like on this site you constantly get reminded of all the reasons why the innocent conservatives just had to rebel against the mean democrat which conveniently ignores how dems felt under his predecessor (and "we hated him too" doesn't quite make up for it)
Definitely not unique, this is a component of ascetism, Buddism, Schopenhauer(ism?). You can try Nietzsche as a embodiment-affirming response to these feelings.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I think it's literally just the shape of their heads and relative size.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I agree that the mainstream media environment is not trustworthy and I don't go for them for unvarnished truth. But again I think there's a good comparison on the other side, so many on the left believe that Trump can never be right about anything, so they believe the opposite of whatever he says, which creates a huge blind spot that ultimately degrades societal trust. It can be a similar problem regarding what the right believes about mainstream media.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
The question is how much noise and populist rage does this justify, and does it justify the language that has enabled people broadly to believe in much more conspiratorial takes under the umbrella of "the election was stolen". For instance I think it is a very good thing that that effect was much more muted after Al Gore lost, and the adults in the room encouraged moving on, at least much more than in this case where believing the election was stolen is a requirement to be a part of the Trump admin.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I think that's a fair point, I could probably have targeted my critique more precisely. You could make a parallel to the "russia hoax" where Trump made it very much appear that he was a Russian asset, moreso than he really was. How much do we blame Democrats for going rabid because of that? I think ideally the democrat media would have been more measured and patient, and the temperature on everything could have stayed more reasonable while the professionals did there work, and I think an honest Democrat who engaged in any over-the-top accusations would reflect on that behavior as ultimately net-negative.
It is possible that bad behavior is so obvious that the rabble rousing is correct, but I should have clarified my point which is that when it is a failure, like it is here, those who were in the thick of it should acknowledge it, and move towards acting with more prudence if they realize the evidence wasn't quite so open and shut as they thought. If what I believe is true, then a very large amount of social trust was lost with little provocation from the party that supposedly highly values social trust. That party should reflect on that if it's being honest with itself.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I agree that this question should definitely be asked here. The dissident right doomerism (which mirrors the 2016 Sanders whining) reminds me of my black/white thinking depressive episodes. It's a kind of justification, not a logical argument. What the right wants to do, just like what Sanders wanted to do, is difficult. Being an outsider is difficult. It is a political miracle for Trump-aligned right-wingers that Trump is electable, when every historical precedent would suggest otherwise. There will probably never be anyone like him in our lifetimes. The fact that he closely lost an election to a former Democrat Vice President under a fairly popular administration should not cause people to spiral so hard. It's an emotional reaction to a very normal possibility that your preferred outsider candidate can lose.
I happen to strongly believe that the election was not stolen, but I imagine that the people here who do also want to live in a high-trust society. My question for those people is, what does it mean if you're wrong about the election? If you learned for a fact the election wasn't stolen, and you had been shouting otherwise, you'd be forced to consider how you contributed towards lowering societal trust by lowering its faith in our democratic process unnecessarily. It's been totally reckless for the right-wing to jump on this boat with so little meaningful evidence. For all I hear about high-trust societies here, that aspect of things, the fact that the right-wing very loudly questioned an election that was very likely totally fine, seems to me to have massively increased distrust. And again, if they're wrong, then what was it all for?
somethingsomething
1yr ago
Well I think the most advanced societies that we know about that existed the earliest were in the fertile crescent, presumably they have some kind of lineage going back. I agree animals iterate but the question is whether they have some kind of upper bound which our lineage surpassed, which I'd argue we did, probably around when we learned to make fire and passed that knowledge on to our descendants
somethingsomething
1yr ago
Society? Going backwards modern western morality is basically reformation, germanic conversion to christianity, roman conversion, greek + judaic philophy, fertile crescent society, etc. Thousands of years of iteration that animals don't have?
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I had similar reactions reading the republic recently with how much felt like it could apply to our times but I didn't quite pin it as "progressive left" entirely, although there are definitely some echoes there. I think there are clear echoes in modern populism generally, as well as with liberalism which both have strains in both American parties, and the left/right divide in general. Given that Plato's alternative suggestions were completely unworkable, the temptation for me is to throw my arms up and say "that's life", but the other commentator's description of Aristotle makes me want to follow up with his writings which I've barely explored.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
Thoughts on Fellini's Casanova?
somethingsomething
1yr ago
Yeah rereading that you're right about the followers, so my characterization would not have been totally accurate, but I have to imagine there was some turnover and generally that the apostles were reacting to unexpected events at the death of Jesus, and didn't have the intense spiritual hallucinogenic experiences Paul had to give them as clear of a direction forward beyond just waiting for the apocalypse and continuing Jesus' teachings and proselytizing.
So I'd mark out the difference by saying that they didn't "know" what was going to happen next in the way Paul did, beyond reference to Jewish apocalypticism. When James says the Lord it is ambiguous if he means Jesus or God, and Paul says Jesus is Lord but does that mean he is God? Jesus probably comes back as a messiah figure but is it Jesus as God or is it just because all the prophets are coming back too and everyone lives forever with heaven on Earth? I just think there's a lot more ambiguity compared to the crystal clear metaphysics with Paul. Obviously it helps that we have his letters but I also feel like it fits the events that occurred, and the personality of Paul that comes through his letters where it seems like the mechanics of how everything works interests him far more than it did Jesus and James.
Regarding the holy spirit I don't think it's totally clear what the holy spirit was which is why I think it took a while to eventually flesh it out as part of the trinity down the line, but to me it just seems like a Paul thing, where he's differentiating between those with faith in Jesus as having this spiritual thing that connects them with God, ensures their heavenly body, and also affects their actions to be more "Godly", and I imagine it's something all his followers said all the time, "holy spirit" this and "holy spirit" that, and so it crops up in the stories the ended up writing about Jesus and the other apostles, but it's basically just when they act Godly, it just looks like word substitution to me.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I don't know, I think they are actually disagreeing and I think that's the common view of it. Paul is prioritizing faith over works, and James is more emphasizing works. James seems to be saying, just like you shouldn't discriminate between parts of the law (I.E. you should follow all of it), you shouldn't discriminate between rich and poor (treat everyone equally).
I think the Jewish followers still believed in some form of coming heaven on Earth, I think they probably believed Jesus would come back, but I think it's unlikely that they invented/incorporated the Platonic ideas Paul preached. I imagine them being pretty shaken and confused after Jesus' death, and having lost a lot of followers presumably, but still believing in the mission and believing they would be rewarded in some way on Earth by God. I think that would've contrasted with the manic energy of Paul's movement which was probably pretty a pretty exciting thing to be a part of, and Paul seemed to have a very clear idea of what was going to happen next. But I just imagine after their meetings, a bewildered James saying "just remember the poor, whatever you're doing out there..."
If Peter 1 was written by Peter then that would be good evidence for the jewish sect being on the same page with the afterlife, but I think it's a pretty common view that it's a forgery.
I don't know what the significance of Acts 5 is, I think both gentile and jewish groups were preparing for a looming apocalypse, maybe Paul more fervently, but I could see the story fitting both Paul's thoughts and the original Jesus-style apocalyptic ideas.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
No I consider Q Jesus' teachings, but it was placed into the bible from the Pauline school, and I don't think the way the holy spirit is referenced in Q has the kind of theological qualities that it does in the more explicitly Paul writings, it's more just used as a kind of addendum or exclamation mark, there's not much meaning in how it's used there and could be removed without changing the meaning of things.
Corinthians 15:35 (and a bit preceding it) goes over what I think are his unique ideas that I don't think the Jewish followers of Jesus really had in mind, and have that platonic quality. When he's talking about "glories" of things that is basically Platonic "ideal" versions of things.
I think that contrasts with James' "whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." I'm not totally familiar with all the evidence on what Jewish Jesus followers believed, I think there would be knowledge of Greek ideas and the traditional Jewish views of it not being much, but I don't see anything like passage of Paul in the above passage along with his certainty. I only find one passage in Q that seems anything like an afterlife heaven and that may have been phrased differently in Jesus' original words, referring to what I think most scholars understand that he believed in an earthly heaven that he would rule.
And sorry I meant James 2:10 which I think Paul very much disagrees with.
Yeah more or less, it is a bummer to me how insistent Paul was on that but I suppose it was probably necessary to keep the project together and convert the Pagans.
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