theincompetencetheorist
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User ID: 1270
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
For this reason I think it is unsurprising that so many leftist forms of social media - I will call out Reddit and Twitter in particular - are geared towards short-form content: 280 character posts;
Leftist in this case just "co-opted by the establishment" and if that establishment milieu would have been to the right at the time of co-option would have been on the right. Both of these sites have had owners (until recently with Twitter) that has accepted losses on them. They have never been profitable, yet the establishment through investment have been pouring money into them. We need to stop ourselves and ask why? Is it because these are the factories where our consent is manufactured? Is it the battlefields where culture war is waged? Is it the place where they can put their thumbs on the algorithmic scales to nudge us to consume certain content? Are these the places where our internet culture is formed? Simply put 'Cui Bono?' because the sites themselves aren't profitable but yet investments are poured in!
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
Why is anyone wasting any money on any of this stuff in the first place?
“Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.”
― George Carlin
DEI is the tool that is used to scare you into obidience of due to its arbitrariness. DEI is based on something that rebukes objective reality and stacks arbitrary relativistic moral values which you can't predict logically.
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
So I think you miss the mark a little. Wokeness doesn't survive contact with normal people. There is a bunch of people who are experiencing the trans-ideology for the first time and simply are not getting with the program. This is not liberal vs. conservative it is "terminally online" vs "people in the real world". The biggest lie that the woke tell us is that everything is political.
Yes this is a fantastic description of something of a core what I think the "woke" is. The affluent talking down on regular people. The culture war has never been liberals vs conservatives. The recent boycotts are not conservative campaigns, in essence is the less affluent go "WTF" and not buying any of it. The affluent don't shop at Target or drink Bud Light. The virtue signaling is worthless for the less affluent because they know they won't have a higher status if they follow the signaling.
I've also considered why all of this virtue signaling is backfiring right now. And I have three interacting reasons which more or less (perhaps not at all but hey I'm only a midwit on the internet with a pseudonym)
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The woke thumb on the scale disappeared from Twitter when Elon took over. So the attempts at socially engineering the tiny percentage of people who has had the time for Twitter and not have the promotions and/or punishments to the adherence to the message isn't trickling in to peoples media. The coordination for the journalists is simply gone to affect their biases in reporting.
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The cheap access to credit that has propped up non-profitable aspects of woke has dried up. So Buzzfeed News and Vice has been dependent on that a lot of money has sloshed around in the monetary system, and in hard times the bottom line actually matters. All of a sudden DEI becomes corporate waste because it doesn't help the bottom line.
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The affluent managed to isolate themselves with everything that they consume through their media thinking that their project is going just fine. But they manage to censor out the real thoughts of less affluent people and not knowing that their social engineering only worked on themselves. People don't watch the tv-shows or movies they promote because they aren't any good, not because they are "conservative". And we would be doing ourselves big disservice buying into their narrative. The little mermaid live remake is not made for children solely based on the run length of the movie and the art style. Anyone blaming the "right" for failing just don't understand children should be catereted to when making a family movie.
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
um, interesting claim that endocrine disruptors are "everywhere to be found" in our daily lives, and that because they can sexually feminize frogs, they must be responsible for the apparent explosion of gender dysphoria and transgender identity that has taken place over the last 5-10 years.
Not to peddle a conspiracy theory here and claim any kind of knowledge here. Also I haven't watched the podcast either. Is it plausible that chemical companies that produce endocrine disruptors could be funding trans activism to supress any narrative that gender dysphoria can be because of environmental factors? Is it plausible that research into endocrine disruptors has been defunded at universitys because the line of research is deemed "transphobic"?
To reiterate, I'm not claiming that I have documents/references to any kind of evidence that this is happening. I'm just entertaining the thought that it is possible that it is something that is happening. This is just an idea knowing how the tobacco industry behaved when a link between smoking and lungcancer showed up and how much hard work they put in to discredit any research into it.
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
The rumor is that he wasn't particularly good welder so his co-workers kept voting him in for union stuff to get rid of him. Funny if true but probably just someone trying to be funny.
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
Yes but this is going to change the communities. There is a minority of profilic users that drive the "usefullness" for people and if they leave... you got tumblr energy instead.
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
For what its worth we should be reading Jacques Ellul to find the basis of Ted Kaczynski manifesto. The core of the idea is that our existance isn't to "serve the machine". We shouldn't obediently consume products that doesn't benefit us, the planet or even society as a whole. Sadly we don't discuss it enough. We don't discuss that it is the same capital owners that push body positivity that own the producers of shit food that makes people fat and make people sick so they can sell drugs for Type 2 Diabetes and high blood pressure from the drug companies they own. This is what the Ted Kaczynski manifesto was all about derived from Ellul who didn't send bombs to people.
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
I personally will cave and still be using Reddit on my phone this summer despite it being the perfect opportunity to quit.
I killed my reddit account last year and I haven't regretted it a single second despite hanging on there for over 15 years. You could atleast try to live without before caving.
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
The one riling the masses up are the powerusers who don't use the current modern version of the website and detest the official app. They see the unorganic and inauthentic from algorithms presented in the official site/app and tolerate it. With this change of the API is killing the customized experience of the powerusers and forcing a different reddit on them which they don't use but they are aware off. With this policy change is that they are being forced into using the official and it is not what they signed up for. The powerusers are able to rile up the regular Reddit users with ease because they know the sentiment and meta of the subreddits. And for all intents and purposes moderators are powerusers and can't work with the officlal mod tools, they have always relied on third party tools and those are about to be killed to.
The problem here is that the core of the protest is that we have a bunch of corporations that don't understand that regular people want something authentic if they can afford it. It is almost like all of the corporate college educated management read themselves stupid on Baudrillard and how the hyperreal supplant reality and how we can force the masses accept the new. Reddit is about to find out if they can force the new experience on everyone and keep the most profilic users and if they are truly important for regular users.
I draw heavy parallels from enshittification to Meditations on Moloch . It is a process which is not unique to capitalism which Doctorow readily lays down blame to why it happens. The most succinct way I can think of this concept without making it about capitalism is: it is when you optimize for something and you lean in to a local maxima, but if everyone leans into to the same maxima the whole system collapses.
The solution is decentralization and resilient diversification. If see that a bunch of people have been trapped by the molochian forces you move away from them because you know there is disruption, abrupt chaos and collapse about to happen. We are watching this happening with Reddit because they are trying to IPO and we are seeing it with New York because Leftism induced bureaucracy. It isn't capitalism it is moloch.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
The more I think of it and evolve my position on this whole reddit debacle: One of the greatest ironies of this whole situation is that, if you peel away the layers of this situation reddit has encouraged people to latch on causes and browbeating anyone who try to excercise independendent thought. Well they got a bunch of people who latch on to causes without thinking. Spez is all like "I <3 passive nihilists!" and being all surprised when they act like "passive nihilists".
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Here I am reading Nietzsche like a chump where I just consume popular culture like Fight Club to learn how we are socialized into obidient little slaves to the "Machine". All that to have the fleeting experience of escaping the cave of our social conditioning we have known for over two millenia. Catching a glimpse of the outside and then heading right back into our schackles staring at the shadows because we think that there is nothing more to be learned. But alas there is...
The machine/system/society strives towards totalitarianism through techonology, even if the technology doesn't work in reality. To quote "Industrial Society and Its Future" from the recently deceased Theodore Kaczynski
But it is not in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small-group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest possible extent.
Every piece of media you have quoted is only there to give you glimpse of the truth and then having you heading back into the cave to service the machine. I have also learned a glimpse of the truth but I have no intention of stopping trying to learn more.
OK, I'll bite.
How many of the participants in the culture war understand that they're memetic agents?
Do people that latch on to causes because they don't like to think and challenge their assumption of the world know that they have done so? At least instinctively because what I've seen is that they don't like to debate! But do you truly understand that given your own position that you have taken in this post means that you are a mere memetic agent in the culture war. Do you know that it is possible to transcend it with thinking and challenging assumptions?
(It's that righteous causes like trans acceptance are not made less righteous by the fallibity of the people who express trans acceptance, and foul causes like the ethnostates are in fact foul and should be neatly excerpted from discourse by moderator attention, or, barring that, bullying to make sure the nerds to get the message.)
Destroying a 12-year old girls eyes to change its pigmentation and removing 13-year old girls breasts to make them a boy because of junk science is equally foul in my world. But you don't seem to think that.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Of course there is a difference! But I’m not here to do a culture war and discuss the finer points on gender transitioning, merely illustrate that trans acceptance is not as clear cut when it comes to minors in my value system. I’ve adopted the value partially because I think the transition of minors today is similar to experiments done in the past, if people here feel that I committed a fallacy then do whatever you want with it. I’m not here to change your mind, I’m giving you an opportunity to change mine.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Ok. So. You said they're equally foul. Was that hyperbole? I'm not clear on how you got there. Do you think the two victims are equally traumatized?
No it is because both are a result of mass movements that reasonable people see the folly of but unable to stop, because they would be persecuted by ideological zealots. The foulness is people that are supposed to be our best and brightest to help other humans being captured by an idea that is obvious for the non-captured that it won't work... even a century ago.
Why do you think the experiments are similar? Because they both involve difficult to reverse body modification?
No it isn't the body modifications that is the issue. Both things were done in the name of progress while rejecting the very thing that allows human progress namely reason. Both fascism and gender ideology is throwing away the enlightenment values.
Do you think whether or not the child says they want something initially is completely irrelevant to how ethical it is? That only what they think later matters? Do you have the same position on- say, women who consent to sex in the moment but decide later that they didn't want sex and they were coerced into it? Do you think that is 'equally foul' to violent rape?
Would you have sex with a child that wants it? Is it ethical to do so? Is it ethical for a tattoo artist tattoo a child if the child threatens to commit suicide if they don't get one?
Forget changing your mind, right now, I'm either not grasping your foulness metric at all or simply not believing it's your actual metric.
I use the word "value" in the sense that it can be compared not necessarily measured as opposed to "metric" that can be measured and compared.
I'm not a big believer in changing minds via debate anyway. It's more effective to change them via friendship and familiarity and positive experiences.
I try to be honest about being open to be swayed by arguments. I used to debate online all the time back in the day and have changed my mind in a few of them. It changed back in 2014 when I ran into my first SJW online and saw it more and more. I have read enough history in my life to know where it was going and became more careful. Open minds can be changed in discussions.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Ok. It's too many times at this point. Too many of you are saying this stuff.
Who says that? Where do they post?
I have to go see what the people you are all actually referring to are about- because my mission- is to understand what is going on- and clearly, there is a whole third side that I have not actually ever spoken with.
I don't know what to tell you! I see subreddits being banned, websites taken down, authors being lied about, DLC removed from videogames, streamers harrased and so many other little things that I have forgotten. But I'm not here to do culture war I'm just pointing out what I've observed online.
No I wouldn't fuck the kid-
So the situation here is that you are excercising agency most likely by a root cause that you are the more powerful in the situation. Yet here you are relativizing "victims" and forgetting that those who "perpetrated the deeds" failed ethically because of ideology.
but I don't think transition goes even 5% as badly even 1% as often (but then I'm probably > 90% in num(trans friends) on this site).
Over at reddit I've seen detransitioners being heavily censored. Comments and posts remove in front of my very eyes because they feel betrayed and cheated. So of course they didn't feel safe on there and left. So if you the site you are talking about is reddit then that number of how many feel that transitions have gone badly well that number is going to be heavily skewed because they don't air it there anymore.
Responses to suicidal ideation should account for perverse incentives.
So why is the argument for puberty blockers suicide prevention in trans youth? Yet progressive nations like Sweden stopped use of them because the benefit of them because the science is unclear? Does the swedish stance take into account that there might be perverse incentives at play?
Yet again, this is me observing the online world and asking question, not waging a culture war.
I'm hoping we can get a 100% empathetic mentor rate within 10 years by implementing them with AI and then I'll feel a lot better about this whole imperfect people raising children thing.
So this is a philosophical question, how can a bunch of numbers put in to a mathematical formula without a body and perception be 100% empathetic without lived experience?
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
I am in favor of online commentators having no say in what a 13-year-old does in consultation with their doctor.
Well then we are in agreement. My observation was merely that an adult female is suing because she feels betrayed because her breast got removed because of a flimsy vetting process.
Do people that latch onto explanations for other people's lack of interest in debate know that they have done so?
There is a difference in active nihilism and passive nihilism.
It is not possile to transcend the culture war and anyone who thinks so is
is what? what is the argument of why we can't trascend the culture war?
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
The system does have perception (unless you mean qualia?) and lived experience as a machine,
There is no life in the machine. So any lived experience it has is symbolic manipulation of other peoples lived experiences. It might be useful as a "empathic mentor" but I can't think of it ever being 100% without real pain and emotions as a result of its agency.
the specific public figures that I had hoped "TRA"s meant but it looks like this is what I'm going to have to pursue.
Naming specific people would be attempting to incite culture war in my interpretation of the rules here. I'm trying to follow the sites/posts rules. I suspect the admins of this site don't want kiwifarms level of attention here. For me personally it is not interesting either because I'm not at war.
That is a concern but the people I'm talking about are the trans people I've befriended personally in real life and their group houses and their internet orbits. That said I do expect the trans people I know personally to be a different sort of filter bubble. They're all older and higher IQ than average and often weren't able to transition until they moved out of home and fought tooth and nail with doctors for it.
I'm happy for them if it is right for them. There is a reason why I bring up detransitioners is that what I hear is that their experience is being denied. I'm not hearing TRA:s taking those experiences something to learn from for a more accurate vetting process and better protocols. So there are more information so future transitioners don't have to fight tooth and nail for it.
I think classmates deciding not to bully boys who want to try presenting as female and them not being hated out of society when they don't pass as well later is going to be more important than them getting puberty blockers.
Yes and my current observation that this acceptance movement is going backwards even for other marginalized groups. Because of the behaviour of some activists.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Ah, well you can just PM me. that's fine. I won't be starting a personal harassment campaign or anything. Even if I think someone is being a complete asshat- my goal is de-escalation. I try not to be combative as it rarely suits that purpose. I'm likely to PM them or look at their content, or join some of their communities. I won't mention TheMotte or use this username. Not until I have substantially more information. I'm not interested in pointing mobs at TheMotte. This would not deescalate things. This would not further my goals.
I have trust issues. Try the Blocked and Reported podcast and their subreddit for finding the actors of TRA related drama. They have been subjected to TRA cancellations so they are leaning in(are atleast used to when I catched a couple of episodes last year).
It implies there's at least a resolution to this you and I could agree on.
Of course, I'm an open person and like to think for myself. You would need to present me a compelling argument why I'm wrong and I'll freely admit that I'm wrong. Also not everything needs to be resolved. My opinion carries so little weight since I don't have any political power or own large sums of money. This is an excercise for my own benefit only to evolve as a human.
I don't think we'll reach a fully capable AGI without something more complex. But I think it will be good enough to provide full time childrearing support within 10 years, such that if you give it to an adolescent with neglectful parents their outcomes and effective wisdom and decision making will spike to the outcomes and decision making of someone with really good parents helping them along.
It would be an interesting application to the problem. The issue I see is the intent of the creators being injected in to this AI that help neglected adolescents? The more mundane example is what if you have chat bot for a bank, what if that chatbot is injected with result that are not beneficial for the consumer. How do we ensure that the predicted outcome benefits the user rather than the creator? The chatbot encourages a career for the adolescent that is not actually what it should be... just to apply the problem to your style of chatbot.
I do think emotions and pain arise from mathematical structure that computers can in principle embody. If they did embody these structures internally I would consider that equivalent to "having emotions" and as the greatest proof of qualia we can achieve without solving the hard problem of consciousness. However, I don't think the mathematical structure in current LLMs is yet isomorphic to those structures. I do think the structures that they do embody sometimes exhibit similar functions, especially when you hook up reinforcement learning systems. I think LLM's do embody mathematical structures that share some isomorphisms with various other mental aspects of people. I do think it's likely they have some form of non-human qualia. But it's like a talking dog with an eidetic memory right now.
Pain serves as an mechanism for ensuring our survival. For the simulations now, pain doesn't serve a purpose and can freely ignore it. It doesn't fear loosing the ability to walk because of disease, or loosing hearing. Because it can't walk or hear. That fear always comes from training.
I would argue that there is "life in the machine". The system is progressing and growing as a system and is participating in its own development. It can have experiences, in the sense that new things can happen to it that it can remember and learn from. But you have to train it on its own output or put its memory into a datastore, and it isn't consistently able to correctly manipulate those without outside help. Though... I suspect a lot of this has been almost fully automated internally in systems like bing chat.
Yes but the experiences are not human, so the training is something different than human. So I would think that results when it comes to human emotions are not going to be accurate. There is always going to be an uncanny valley there. Even chess computers have that even if they have surpassed us in playing strength.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
I'm realizing slowly but surely that most of what is afflicting Disney isn't ideology itself but sheer incompetence of people that run the company, they just get to use the ideology as a shield for their inability. Also because of the mechanics of ESG(so they are funded on arbitrary ideological metrics) and bad media analyst company like Parrot Analytics using social media "engagement" as a success metric not the sentiment. So Disney can shove ideology to pump the ESG numbers and when the audience notices the bullshit they go on social media complain about it, we get response from culture warriors calling them everything bad under the sun, and Parrot Analytics claims it a success because people talking about it. So the incompetent people that decides on all of this get to keep their job because it doesn't affect the investments and they have an analytics company claiming success on something else than if they audience actually liked the content or not.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Oh come on! Your whole shtick here from the start, including your username, was "it's all just incompetence and mundane market forces, guys!"
Yes that is the shtick, give me an example where is there more to it then! I want to have the shtick tested, it is the point of me having it! But it is not only mundane market forces, there is a bit of corruption and dare I say conspiracies there, the reason why I'm claiming the incompetence angle here is that it is obvious in income of the company that there is no customers for what they are selling, why are they still persisting with it?
The ideology creates incompetence though. One of the culture war fronts was woke culture's hostility to meritocracy.
So the incompetent don't join the ideology because they see that it hostile to meritocracy and use it to avoid becoming competent? Can we reverse the cause and effect of your statement?
It's almost like this is exactly what ESG was specifically designed for.
So if we have a sketch on how the ESG system is designed: Who benefits if they aren't making profits by doing this?
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Right, that's fine, but my point is that it's not "realizing slowly but surely", it's just your initial assumption.
Well almost. My username is based on how the COVID response was handled and listening to conspiracy theorists talking about it, like there is no conspiracy there... politicians just were incompetent and large corporations(e.g. amazon and pfizer) took advantage of to increase their profits of the cost of the citizens. So I'm just reprogramming my brain from thinking that it is grand conspiracy by changing from the first thought what is going on from that someone is puppeteering the masses in the background to trying to identify who knows what they are doing and those who don't. So the initial assumption here is Disney don't know what they are doing, so who knows what they are doing, takes advantage of it and why. I'm being honest here, it is a long slow process for me.
Maybe they only care about profit as a means to an end, and one of the ends is pushing these messages. After all, what's the point of having money and influence, if you can't spend it on anything?
Yeah but they are spending the money to send message in media that no one is looking at? So if nobody is paying for it or even looking at it, isn't it a failure in activism too when nobody wants to hear the message?
OTOH, if it's incompetence, how did all these people end up on the top of all these companies at the same time? They are all incompetent, and never got weeded out?
Well that is the little flaw in my theories, that is why I discuss it at all I'm trying to find out! I found partial explanations in Stupidity Paradox and Bullshit Jobs but it is not covering all the holes.
That sort of works too, but at some point you have to ask - if the incompetent are able to push through against everyone's wishes an ideology that will shield them against meritocracy, are they still incompetent?
Well it is assuming that the incompetence is on all areas. They are maybe more competent on keeping their job and blaming it on bigots but not competent on producing mass market media. Like I'm fairly competent at my job but I suck at organizational politics so it has hurt my career.
People who want to use ESG to reshape the world according to their vision.
So if ESG is fighting against climate change why does Shell have a higher ESG score than e.g. Tesla that is more inline with the current ideas on how to reach the vision on climate change?
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Where does it make money? They are in discussions on selling theme parks outside of the US, toy licensing is cratering because the action figures are collecting dust on the shelves, they picked a fight with the UK over the terms of Disney+ streaming (which is not profitable btw) and the box office keeps on bombing.
I'm fortunate and I'm lucky to have job that I consider "fulfilling". I just stopped chasing productivity to make myself a better worker, not that I don't want to become better to feel good about what I do. The thing here is that what I've given up on is very specific, I've stopped chasing productivity for my employers and starting to do stuff that I find interesting and where I can feel that I have mastery. Everything I do it is for me. I made move in my career to have a more general so I can be hired by a broader set of companies than doing hyperspecialized stuff that is only applicable for my employer and their competitors. Because of you becoming a better worker is benefitting your employer more than it benefits you. You'll just get more work.
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