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thomasThePaineEngine

Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill

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thomasThePaineEngine


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 11 16:24:53 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So for an article to gain top-shelf status it seems it has to use so many inside terms--and preferably inside terms that in turn require inside terms to understand--that only people on the inside could get, not the "normies".






So a "normie" article would just not cut it, regardless of useful the insight, especially if the insight is accesible by anyone (the plebs). I guess elitist is the word.




Can this be simply the case that what you're encountering is the intersection between novelty and community preferences?


For example:


    

  • 

    blog post that satisfies the community's preferences and offers novel insights = much liked.
    

    • 

  • 

    blog post that satisfies the community's preferences but offers no novel insights = mostly ignored.
    

    • 

  • 

    blog post that does not satsify the community's preferences but offers novel insights = sometimes ignored, some times disliked.
    

    • 

  • 

    blog post that does not satisfy the community's preferences and does not offer novel insights = disliked.
    

    • 



Let's take your idea about Karl Popper's falsifiability principle:


    

  • 

    if you post a description about it on LW, I would imagine it would mostly be ignored. It does not seem to satisfy LW preferences nor is it novel.
    

    • 

  • 

    if you post a description about it on themotte, I would imagine it would be read, but would garner few replies/upvotes. It falls into themotte preferences, but is not novel.
    

    • 

  • 

    if you post an interesting, novel take about it on LW, I would imagine it would mostly be ignored, although you have a chance to hook someone interested in this type of stuff.
    

    • 

  • 

    if you post an interesting, novel take about it on themotte, I would imagine you might get many replies and many upvotes.
    

    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 4, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How do you find the writing and style? From the bit about your husband it sounds engaging.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 9, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Solstice?


Not the San Diego one, but I'm going to a local rationalist solstice.


Last time, when I attended the ACX meetup, I met a ton of cool people and had some refreshing non-CW discussions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Stop that! It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But you do mimic those around you subconsciously all the time, both short term and long term.




I think this reduces the phenomenon that was described in the article. Perhaps I'm reading too deep into but, here's my take: you statement misses the "illness" part, which I take to mean something undesired, and the "remote" part.


Mimicking others wearing jeans around me doesn't harm me in any physical or sociological way. Plus, the impulse to wear jeans is immediate--real people around me wearing them seem happy and comfortable.


Fidget spinners were a fad. People were using them around me and I probably saw people using them on TV or youtube (the "remote" part). But they had no negative influence on my state. They also died out after a few weeks.


Youtube-Tourettes has propagated fully remotely via youtube. It also has negative consequences for the individuals, such as putting them in conflict with others around them, and the mechanism for the consequences seems to be that these individuals make it a part of their identity. None of jeans, pokemon, harry potter, or fidget spinners ever became a core part of someone's identity. Even hardcore fans of these fads have been mostly able to contain their fascination so that it doesn't interfere with their lives (work, school, community, family, etc.)




The whole point of the article was that they had plenty of agency. They did the tics more when it was convenient for them and less when it wasn't.




I don't think this is evidence for agency, because correlation doesn't imply causation. Humans are not rational creatures, especially adolescents, so I can quite easily entertain the idea that they tricked themselves into believing they had Tourettes to the point of losing agency over this. People who speak in tongues sincerely believe they have become vessels of God. I suspect they had previous beliefs that made it possible to wake up one day, have a funny feeling in their brain that caused them to babble a little bit, and completely miss the moment to make a decision because their faith allowed them to see only a single path forward: to claim they've become a vessel of God. Similarly, Youtube-Tourette's sufferers probably already had a bunch of agency-robbing views that made them certain they were afflicted with Tourette's.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks. It seems my main focus should be on building relationships very broadly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
At least a few local flavors of Catholicism that I've come to contact with (thinking Eastern Europe, specifically).


I've just become aware that in the Polish branch of the Catholic church, the part of the confession when you ask God for forgiveness differs from a few English versions I've sampled just now. It includes a piece that goes a little something like "(...) my fault, my fault, my great, great fault (...)". I think this describes the general spirit of describing man as forever tainted.


Edit: I just realized that something I thought as core to my knowledge about Christianity may very well not be true (https://www.themotte.org/post/193/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/35768?context=8#context) and may, instead, be a distortion of memory.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think there's a difference: I'm not very cautious about film reviews. If I don't like a film, I'll happily get on the bandwagon of those bashing it.


But when I'm evaluating ideas about how the world works, then I'm going to use a much higher standard. It's more uncomfortable, both because the issues are more complicated and more important, but it seems the struggle is worth it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for sharing. I'll dig a bit into what happened in the early XX century.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm confused by your premises.


You describe puritans and the founding of the US as if to imply these are strongly related, one flowing from the other perhaps. But if we look at when the Mayflower landed--1620--and when the Constitution was published--1787--there's over a century between those two dates! I'd expect the people and the norms and ideas to have changed much in the time in between.


Admittedly, I know little about early/Puritan America, but looking at the Consitution, it seems to strongly lean toward individualism. The Bill of Rights establishes a framework where the individual is the basic unit of society and seeks to protect the individual from the Government. I know that in reality this didn't always work out this way because people were constrained by customs and norms, especially as seen from our vantage point, but compared to what was and had been going on in Europe back then, it was an incredible leap forward away from collectivism.




These towns were not morally relativistic and policed behaviour of their members.




But this policing was done according to norms that, back then, were revolutionary! Like, in contrast to much of Europe, women were allowed and supported in attaining an education. I don't have sources at hand, but I also believe men were punished for beating women. And again, this sounds conservative now, but back in the day, this was some holy shit progressive thinking and if I were to go out on a limb, many European conservatives of that era would have labeled allowing ordinary women to attend school as something disgusting and upsetting to the perfect, God-ordained order of things.


What I'm trying to say, I think, is that modern conservatives would find issues with how liberal both the Puritans of the 17th century and the Enlightened "Spirit of '76" crowd of the 18th century.


(Though my understanding of modern US conservatism is rather fuzzy, so I should spend more time reading through this thread.)




What many conservatives actually want is to enforce their values, norms, and culture on society.




When I naturalized some years back, I signed up for the Republican party. In my mind, this was the party espousing the values of 1776 (and 1787). Markets, individualism, responsibility. Friedman, McCain, Schwarzenegger. But since then, I noticed the same pattern you point out here, cut my ties, and having no other options, marked myself as independent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for sharing this. This is the first time I've encountered Paolo Freire. I've only skimmed the wiki article on him and on his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, but I think I need to dig a little more.


Both you and the wikipedia article on him say that he's been hugely influential on the US education system. How is this impact measured? I'm reading the City Journal article on this and it mentions that Pedagogy of the Oppressed is assigned to teachers-in-training very often--but does it actually change how teachers teach?


I can imagine that some more fiery educators will have done the heavy lifting and baked in some of Freire's ideas into curricula. But going off my assumption that most Marxist teachings are very abstract (almost postmodern), then most teachers would highlight a few juicy quotes and later forget about these ideas. My other assumption comes from going through a few grades in the US system and I'm struggling to find anything that would have a noticeable taint of Marxist thought--but then, I only did a few grades, and that was over 20 years ago.


(It's too easy to find low hanging fruit of a few teachers refusing to teach math because it's oppressive. I'm looking for more subtle but broader effects of Freire's thought).




One of Freire’s key concepts is what he calls “the banking model of education.”




I find this interesting because it seems like nothing new. I've met before with the constructivist theory of education, which seems to have begun assembling into a coherent theory somewhere in the early 20th century, though its roots go back to the mid 19th century. It's amazing to me that someone could take this idea, which, in the right hands, could produce so much good, and then cover it in Marxist nonsense.




“Why don’t their concrete policies and actions lead actually seem to further their stated goals”, your first instinct should be to assume that they know what they’re doing, and it’s not what you thought they were trying to do.




I think my emotion wasn't around the disconnect between their goals and actions, because it's pretty clear that whatever "good" they say they aim toward is subordinate to their real goals. Rather, it was about how openly they disdain science, reality, and human discourse as a tool for pursuing truth. While writing my post, I had a look at the Calkin's institute page and most of the messaging their is, indeed, about DEI stuff. So yeah, 100% WYSIWYG.


Anyway, I have more reading to do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sometimes I think there are parts of a culture that are not communicable unless a person spends considerable time inside that culture.


This is a subjective and completely anecdotal take: the amount of lying that happens in Eastern European cultures (and others too, probably) is difficult to imagine for someone from a high-trust society. It's just hard to imagine that people could lie for almost no reason at all, I guess. It's somewhat similar in that way to corruption: many of my American friends think they live in a corrupt society. I grew up in a society where my mother, just before ejecting me from her womb, had to present a 'gift' of cognac to the doctor, the head nurse, and the receptionist. A society where lying is as common as asking "How ya doing?" or talking about the weather is in the US.


Lying about big things. Small things. And that gets you accustomed to not relying on anything anyone has said. Did an online merchant say they sent you the item you paid for? Or did the clerk at the store promise your construction materials will be delivered by eod tomorrow? Or perhaps your employee called out sick? There is no way you could know for sure. The only way to increase reliability is to increase the effects of retaliation--hit people where it hurts--meaning, their long-term social standing. So you get to know the other party's friends and family so when an occasion for renege on a promise, the cost of doing so involves shame, perhaps even some ostracism if the stakes are high enough.


In contrast, while you still have a bunch of lying going on in a high-trust society, the happens sporadically enough that it's effective to bet that the other party mostly truthful most of the time: most business concludes in a predictable way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Rationalists are too easily duped
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To add to this, there's also the element of betting.


Humans, even rationalists, have to make decisions without the time to obtain perfect knowledge. It's only prudent to place bets if you think the upside might be big and the downside small. In other words, there were probably rationalists in the OP's sample that donated/took money from SBF while thinking this is all likely going to blow up in their face. This isn't the case of conflicting beliefs--it's playing the odds.


Plus, the characterization of "rationalists" seems to me a faulty generalization. There are probably very few people who make their life revolve around rationalism. But rationalism isn't some monastic order that stamps out mentat-like Rationalists, so in the real world, "rationalist" describes everyone from hyperlogical baysian wizards to folks who like a good argument and enjoy eating popcorn while watching the Culture War eat itself.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would add, though I cannot search for sources right now, that there's a meme in Russian culture that's been around for some low number of centuries at least, where Russians consider other slavs as "lesser slavs" and themselves as "higher slavs." It shows itself in a disdain for other slavic cultures as less sophisticated, and in elevating the Russian culture/science/history as the pinnacle of slavic culture.


(Big, unverified historical arc warning) Every time Russia annexed a place like Poland, whether it was during the Partitions or in the aftermath of WW2, it basically treated Poland like place from which to extract resources and human labor and nothing more.


I think the situation surrounding this meme is particularly poignant because Poland as well as many other Eastern European states lean strongly toward European culture. Not slavishly though--there is both a respect and awe of Western Europe, but it's mixed with (growing) respect and awe for slavic culture and a slight, often humorous dig at Western European culture as being "fancy." Kind of a "together, but separate" kind of deal.


Edit:


Also, over the past decade, for reasons I cannot untangle, Poland has been heavily revisiting it's 20th century history. Speeches are made, monuments built, streets renamed for WW2 or anti-communist heroes. Seriously, comparing Poland of the 00's to Poland of '22, there's monument upon monument dedicated to WW2 or people murdered by the communist regime. Big or small, prominently placed in the capitol or secluded on a forest side road, the country is awash with monuments remembering historical suffering. I suspect this country-sized load of historical anger is now finding an outlet.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What if these nerds are not the Eric S. Raymond/Richard Stallman type, the initial bazaar dwellers, but the new crop of folks that entered the culture post-DomCom crash? The pragmatic ones who love the counter cultural aesthetic but just want a safe, cool job?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


they have the old soviet stockpiles that means even as the average equipment regresses decades, they can feed the war machine, whereas the European and even American stockpiles are getting hazardously low.




This seems weakly false to me.


Here's an interesting article about how "soviet stockpile" is a myth because equipment, including dumb ammunition, can expire and needs regular servicing, something that Russia hasn't been doing much of until recently: https://archive.ph/4FYzG Also, a CredibleDefense thread that adds some details, including counterpoints, to these claims: https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/x2uhp1/a_farewell_to_arms_by_year_end_russia_will_be/.


I would also be careful about putting much faith in outdated equipment. The way I think of it is that equipment is configured to fighting certain specific kinds of conflicts. So in aggregate, it gives the tactician certain features like speed, time in field, etc. and it would seem to me that old equipment geared toward a 1970's style all-out war w/ NATO would not do well in what's happening in Ukraine right now. More concretely, I would imagine 70's-era tanks to fair quite poorly against modern man-portable anti-armor weapons and tactics. Even more so when we're talking about modern comms equipment.


There's a small counterpoint to be made here using the example of the Millennium Challenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002


In a gist, it was a US military exercise that basically pitted a high-tech player against a low-tech player and the low-tech player won on such a staggering scale that they had to reset the exercise. That said, I'm not sure if Russia is capable of deploy an effective low-tech strategy: to my armchair general knowledge, I can't think of an instance when Russia didn't fight using massive force.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I like how these questions make you think.


I'll put on my sci-fi hat and do some guessing:


    

  1. 

    The social norms will stay but will lose power. It's like having that one vegan friend that's into freecycling. Fun to invite sometimes, maybe even cook a meat- and dairy-free dish for, but they know that if they act up too much, they'll get axed from the social circle. It's like with all the boomers who thought they could keep the summer of love going forever, but instead grew up, got jobs, kids, mortgages and now just want stable living. Youngsters will roll their eyes when their parents will recount for the 12th time how they were fighting for racial justice--because youngsters will be well aware that, well, nothing really changed, so all this SJW stuff is just the same old crap you see in old movies.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    I would guess that we should see another woke cycle in 20 years. I'm basing this on my own fairly short timeframe of observation that only goes back to the early 90's, and a bunch of history I've learned, second hand, about the 70's and 80's. I don't think it can be stopped, though I hold onto some hope on that a great refragmentation is happening that will make purity-based movements like woke much less likely to spread. As for full inoculation against religious fervor, I suspect we're biologically programmed to engage in tribal behaviors whose symptoms include religious and political fervor, so we'd need a massive change to take place, something like artificial wombs or gay space communism, that would completely change the fabric of society to the point where tribal games would be severely punished. Short of that, I suspect it'll be some thousands of years before these genes are weakened enough to make this type of social behavior stop popping up like cockroaches in a bad NYC neighborhood.
    

    3. 



But what are your thoughts on these questions?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Is that a typo, or are you extending this commentary to things like lying flat and anti-work?




No! This is actually exactly what I'm talking about--if woke has become The Establishment, then youngsters' attacking the establishment is good, no?


Though, to add nuance, anti-work seems like a spinoff from woke, a tumor of it trying to eat itself, and not some healthy type of rebellion, but I'll take what I can get.




Assuming it's a typo, how do you see them rebelling?




Doing the opposite things they see their parents doing. Wearing dark clothing instead of happy pastel colors like in the 00's and '10s. Smoking or rather vaping, rather than sticking to ubercool health regimes. Watching gory movies. Understanding the the DEI stuff they hear at school is just the system trying to control them.


Of course, this may only describe a minority of gen z. Like the 90's crowd, most will go on to happily comply with any beliefs they're given. But this minority are the future mottizens.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And part of me wonders if I even know what real is any more.




Well damn. I have a Mood Cabinet too and have been struggling with this question for some time. It's gotten more relevant recently because I've discovered that I am somewhat unhappy with my life--I lack certain things such as enough meaningful human interaction (I get plenty of the meaningless stuff at work); and I find it harder and harder to focus on what I'm doing. The question I'm stuck on is "who/what is selecting the moods?"


I don't know. Much of it feels like a program put in place by early-20's me composed of things like "there's always time for exercise", "X, Y, and Z types of entertainment are heresy", "every job change should increase my salary min. 10%" and lots of ambitious and optimal stuff like that. And in the years since then, it feels like my life has been focused on optimizing everything within those constraints.


In many ways, it's proven successful. I have an extremely financially stable life. I've tried a bunch of fun things like traveling and sports. I've learned to go deep on certain things like literature. I've found a loving partner. But as I've mentioned before, I just discovered that there are areas of my life that essentially stopped changing since my early 20's, most of them orbiting around human relationships (my early 20's self was a misanthropic shithead). And this little crisis has forced me face the Director who selects my moods. It's a weird feeling. Like suddenly discovering you were merely a mask sitting on someone's face. You thought you had thought and adventures and relationships, but really, it was the mask having all these things.


On the brighter side, the mask doesn't seem that far from the Director. And the guy turned out to be pretty careful and empathetic. So it seems the path ahead is to recombine the two beings to be able to say, truly, "I am."


Anyhow.


My Cabinet is stocked somewhat similarly to yours. The main differences I see are that I rarely touch caffeine since it makes me hyperventilate. That, and I rely on a bunch of different consumables to calms down--l-theanine, ashwaghanda, valerian root, and cannabis (blunts or tincture).


Also, exercise is a big one for me. It gives me a unique mixture of calm energy that I can then use on productive work. Anything from a 5k run during lunch to doing a dozen pullups works wonders. That and some light stretching every day, especially in the evening, seems to give me a solid foundation to function that only requires minor adjustment w/ the consumables I mention above.


Edit: I forgot one: books. Reading a certain type of book puts me a mood that can last for days. Technical books for puzzle-solving mood. History books for writing. Epic sci-fi books for confidence, etc.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for the thorough explanation.


I've recently become interested in measuring things, so finding related domains that I'm ignorant about is pretty helpful to keep following the thread.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 4, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks! I'll look into getting a paper copy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Technical question: why are you using log(monthly income)?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for November 23, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Seconding this.


You may also want to try to look at it as an experiment: a couple of weeks where you can really test how far you can optimize this particular human being. How far can you drive it? Grow its muscles? Strengthen its tendons? Find the optimal sleep/eat/workout plan?


This sort of curiosity got my 5k time from 30 minutes to 23 in the span of a month. It was also great fun--both mentally and physically.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is there a name for this?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks, that's illuminating. Now I just have to adjust my monkey brain.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I should have added more meat to my post, my bad.


I collected some snippets straight from wikipedia on the subject in this comment: https://www.themotte.org/post/75/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/9901?context=8#context


So it appears that whole-word has no effect whereas phonics has a positive effect. Neither probably affect all kids, but given that phonics has a positive effect on at least some kids whereas whole-word has none, it seems like phonics should be used--at least until we find something more effective.