vorpa-glavo
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User ID: 674
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
There seems to be a desire to remove Rowling, but still somehow retain possession of the franchise itself, something that is frankly impossible.
This general situation is actually why I'm very consciously a fan of knock-offs. I'm a huge believer in libre/open culture, and I think modern copyright laws are a travesty across the board.
Give me the Evil Galactic Authority, where the noble but persecuted Star Paladins use laser-swords to fight off the evil Inquisitors. Give me a villain in a YA novel with an arc suspiciously similar to Zuko from AtLA. Give me Invincible's Omni-man and knock-off Justice League. Give me copy cats and follow the leaders, and fan fiction.
I hate that Disney and a few other companies own so much of our culture, and take a century to give us the scraps off their table. Human creativity is usually more like that of Shakespeare, who mostly retold well-known stories, or Sir Thomas Mallory, who codified an existing story tradition. Our cultures emphasis on pointless originality and innovation in storytelling is a disease, just as surely as the fact that only a small number of franchises dominate the box office is.
I don't really care much about the object-level question of Rowling's Wizarding World. But if people can find the non-copyrightable part of her work, and can retain the soul of Harry Potter in the derivative works, I wish them luck. More cultural elements should be like Romero zombies or Slender Man - not really belonging to anyone, and being used and reused to tell interesting stories, or just retelling old common places with a new twist.
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
I'm firmly in the camp of people who doesn't quite understand what a lot of "non-binary" people are doing with gender, despite being somewhat progressive and happy to exercise pronoun hospitality with such people. (I once heard an acquaintance describe their gender by saying, "if man is black, and woman is white, I'm purple - if you see me in monochrome, I'm more masculine, but really I'm not either of them" - and I was more confused than before I heard the analogy.)
I've seen various mottizens bring up the idea of "gender" being the latest subculture like goth or punk, and recently I stumbled across an interesting Tumblr post that accidentally circles around a similar insight. The whole thing is interesting, but I think you can get the gist from the following:
[...] I think there’s an interesting similarity in the way nonbinary (or genderqueer people in general) talk about the nuances of their gender and how people really big into specific music scenes talk about the nuances of the genres they listen to. Like there’s the description you give other people in your community, and the “normie” description you give to people who aren’t as familiar. And “genre” and “gender” are both constructs in similar ways too. Just my little binary observation tho.
and
so if someone identifies as a demigirl in some circles but to you they just say they’re nonbinary or even just “female”, they clocked you as a gender normie lol.
Now, I grant that the gender-as-fashion analogy isn't the only possible takeaway from this person's observations. I'm reminded of the "soul-editor" from the SCP Foundation Wiki that had symbols from every major world religion, as well as a few unknown ones. Who's to say that some phenomenological aspects of being human aren't so complex that no one set of vocabulary is capable of describing it all? Perhaps some qualities of human minds/souls/whatever are ineffable, or so unique and subjective that one cannot help but create a new label for oneself in describing one's personality?
But I have my doubts. Mostly, I often feel like people must be mislabeling something that I have in my "mental box" as well. (I've read accounts of genderfluid people who talk about "waking up feeling masc" some days and dressing the part, while suddenly and abruptly "feeling femme" partway through the day and wanting to change outfits - and I couldn't help but speculate if they hadn't attached special significance to what I label "moods" in myself.) I don't discount that there are many real human experiences that aren't in my "mental box." In a very real way, I can't do much more than guess what depression, schizophrenia, OCD or dozens of other seemingly real human experiences are like. If I'm being maximally humble about what a tiny part of the vast terrain of possible human experiences I occupy, I have to concede that I can't know that many people aren't out there experiencing "gender" in ways I never will.
My partner is a binary trans man, and many of my friends and acquaintances are part of the LGBT+ community. I still don't quite understand why someone in that extended friend group suddenly finds it very important to change their name, and let everybody know that their pronouns are "she/they" now - while changing nothing else about their appearance or presentation. I'm happy to use a new name for someone, if they don't make such changes too frequently for me to keep up with, but I often feel baffled by why they find it so important? It's not really a big deal to me, but I would like an explanation. Gender-as-fashion seems so tempting as an explanation, but I worry that it might be a false explanation flattening human experiences into something that's more comfortable to me - the same way, "that person who supposedly has ADHD is just lazy" might flatten a person with ADHD into a form more comfortable for neurotypical people, and not in a way that is very sympathetic to the person with ADHD.
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
The Writer's Guild of America (WGA) is on strike as of May 2nd, after negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) broke down. While most of their demands deal with the way pay and compensation in the streaming era is structured, on the second page towards the bottom is:
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
- WGA PROPOSAL: Regulate use of artificial intelligence on MBA-covered projects: AI can’t write or rewrite literary material; can’t be used as source material; and MBA-covered material can’t be used to train AI.
- AMPTP OFFER: Rejected our proposal. Countered by offering annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology.
I think this is an interesting first salvo in the fight over AI in creative professions. While this is just where both parties are starting for strike negotiations, and either could shift towards a compromise, I still can't help but see a hint that AMPTP isn't super interested in foregoing the use of AI in the future.
In 2007, when the WGA went on strike for 3 months, it had a huge effect on television at the time. There was a shift to unscripted programming, like reality television, and some shows with completed scripts that had been on the back burner got fast tracked to production. Part of me doubts that generative AI is really at the point where this could happen, but it would be fascinating if the AMPTP companies didn't just use traditional scabs during this strike, but supplemented them with generative AI in some way. Maybe instead of a shift to reality television, we'll look back on this as the first time AI became a significant factor in the production of scripted television and movies. Imagine seeing a "prompt engineer" credit at the end of every show you watch in the future.
It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
I think one issue I see is that the critics will never be satisfied. There have been tribes of neutral orcs since 2nd Edition, and Planescape allowed them to explore concepts like non-evil succubi (even demons can sometimes not be evil!), while 3rd edition gave us Eberron, which was designed from the ground up with the idea that traditional alignments not being relevant - with evil metallic dragons, broadly good orc cultures, evil halfling tribes, etc.
By the time we get to the 5th edition core books, race was already almost a non-issue. Alignment was a vestigial structure that barely mattered mechanically anymore.
Is anyone really offended by the idea that orcs might be stronger on average than humans? Is anyone really offended by the idea that a dwarf might be able to drink you under the table because they're built a little tougher? I kind of doubt it.
But once ability bonuses are mental, then people have a big issue.
One D&D is moving away from making ability bonuses for player races baked in. Fair enough. But this isn't going to fix the issue. Are mind flayers going to exist in the next edition of D&D? Is the default mind flayer stat block going to have 19 Int? Is the mind flayer elder brain going to have 21 Int?
If that's even sort of true, we're back at bioessentialism. Mind flayers and their elder brains are just naturally smarter than the average human peasant. Unless WotC wants to do something stupid like say "actually mind flayers have the same Intelligence range as playable humanoid races, and it's just the really, really smart ones who become psionic and start attacking people to eat their brains, but all mind flayers have free will and can choose to be vegans if they want" then mind flayers as a concept are going to remain problematic going forward, no matter how many steps they make to "clean up" the game.
Sometimes fantasy might call for nuance, or deeper understanding. And sometimes you just want to mow through a horde of orcs and not think too hard about whether they're inherently evil, or whether you could have talked them out of it under the right circumstances.
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
I'm intrigued by this comment by @reddit_lies:
I staunchly believe AI art is a 'checkmate' to the Postmodernist prioritization of the viewer's subjective experience over artistic intent.
When artistic intent doesn't matter, neither does the artist.
I think this really is a major crux of the argument. I saw people complaining that knowing art was AI-generated took the fun out of speculating about artist intent, and I was mystified. I didn't realize people still cared about what human artist's intentions were when making things. I had basically accepted the lessons from The Elephant and the Brain, that even the actual artist of a piece isn't an authority of the intent that went into making a work - that it is just the "press secretary" in their brain fabulizing a plausible story of the intent behind something.
With this as a background, most of the fun of art to me has always seemed to be using your own brain's "press secretary" to make up your own plausible story about how a particular painting came to be, or what hidden meanings it might have.
It probably helps that I'm a huge fan of Borges, and his story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote", which is about a man trying to write Don Quixote word-for-word the same, but different because of the different time period and life circumstances that he is writing it under.
AI art is definitely a postmodernists dream - it is the ultimate death of the author, since no author even exists anymore.
Contra Innuendo Studios On "Didoing"
Today, another video from Innuendo Studios in their "Alt-Right Playbook" series just dropped, and it describes a move in an argument where Person A will propose a small gesture that they assert will make things better for some group, and Person B counters by essentially agreeing that society is unfair around the issue being discussed, but that it is such a minor problem that it is not worth addressing. Innuendo Studios' preferred word for this move by Person B is "Didoing" (after the Dido song Thank You which features the lyrics "[...] it's not so bad"), but he also points out that some people have called this issue "The Tolerable Level of Permanent Unhappiness", which I prefer as a name for this, since it doesn't rely on knowledge of a song from 1998 to explain.
According to Innuendo Studios, Person B's hidden premise is that "it is okay for things to be unfair, within a certain tolerance." That "some people do and should take extra precautions just to exist in the world alongside the rest of us."
My own politics lean towards social democracy, and aside from some anti-woke skepticism, I am far from "alt-right." But to the above I have to say, isn't Person B obviously correct?
Innuendo Studios initially frames the discussion around content warnings, so let's start there. I want to set aside, for a moment, the question of whether content warnings are actually successful at addressing some alleged unfairness in society. Let's grant for the sake of argument that they are 100% successful at addressing the issue of people with PTSD or anxiety attacks having their conditions activated as a result of media they are consuming.
That still doesn't answer at what level society should be trying to deal with this issue. As I see it, there are four basic levels a coordination problem can be solved in society:
- The government (AKA the use of organized force)
- Social norms (AKA the use of organized social ostracism)
- Private organizations
- Individual actions
Now I believe the question becomes, assuming that content warnings work, at what level should we try to solve the problem that they solve?
None of these options are without downsides. If we create a new government bureaucracy to do this, how do we stop it from trying to seize new power or misusing the power it was given? If we enshrine a new social norm, are we prepared to accept the ostracism of people from polite society for its violation? If a private organization tries to solve the problem, how can its limited reach be solved so the maximum number of people possible enjoy the benefits of the solution? And doubly so for individual actions.
We already live in a world where there are a ton of voluntary systems for content ratings, from the MPA film rating system to the United States pay television content advisory system to the ESRB. All of these systems are being done by private industry, and don't have the force of law.
We also have successful examples of crowd-sourcing trigger warnings with sites like Does The Dog Die.
I don't think it would be unreasonable for a person to think that this level of dealing with the problem is more or less acceptable. We haven't delivered a perfect solution to all people, but we've achieved reasonably good coverage at a tolerably low cost to society in terms of money and resources invested. Sure, some people might find this incomplete resolution unsatisfying, or on the other side believe that even the level we're currently investing in it is too high.
All discussions are going to end up like this in the end, whether we're talking about whether the government should have programs to pay for eye glasses for people, or whether we're talking about whether we should force private companies to build handicapped spaces in parking lots.
If we have a list of societal interventions we're considering implementing, I think it is obvious that you should do the ones that have the highest impact with the lowest cost of societal resources to implement. It doesn't mean that the problems that you don't focus on aren't problems, but they might be small enough problems that you don't actually need any larger coordination to solve the problem.
I think it would be worth prioritizing relatively cheap interventions like eyeglasses, which can have huge positive impacts on people depending on the level of impairment they started with, over more untractable problems that tend to be the focus of woke bellyaching.
No matter how you try to solve a problem in society, there will always be trade offs. You're always compromising between bigger interventions in Area A and Area B since every resource that matters is finite, and I think most people find it acceptable to leave many small problems unsolved. We're okay with saying, "suck it up, everyone has to deal with some level of unfairness, and the current status quo already solves most of the most important issues you have to deal with." Or alternatively, "The status quo is indeed unacceptable, but we should focus on solving big, important issues X, Y and Z, and we won't be getting to your tiny issues any time soon, if ever."
There has to be a Tolerable Level of Permanent Unhappiness, whether you're "alt-right" or not. Most of the argument is about where the line should be drawn.
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
This is the first mass school shooting by a woman that I know. Probably the first mass shooting I hear at all committed by a woman.
Wasn't one of the first notable American school shootings a woman? The Cleveland Elementary school shooting by a 16 year old female perpetrator, which lead to the Boomtown Rats song "I Don't Like Mondays."
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
For me, it was fascinating to discover how males and females consider history, especially when the topic of "in which historical epoch would you like to live?" and every woman answer "now".
I'd have to answer the same way as a man. If the question was, "In which historical epoch would you like to take a month long vacation?", I have a lot of options I would pick, but that question is a bit like "In which third world country would you like to live?" except worse, because I wouldn't even be able to leverage the favorable currency exchange rate I enjoy as an American, and I wouldn't have any access to modern conveniences.
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
The problem with FairTax, is that the United States chose to implement several of its largest federal welfare programs through the tax code. That's one of the big reasons there's very little political will on the left or right to truly rip up the tax code by the roots and replace it with something better.
vorpa-glavo
4mo ago
In my own case, I'm mostly a lurker here who likes to see a light-over-heat discussion between smart generalists across the political spectrum and extending to well outside the Overton window. I learn so much here, and get a ton of ideas for new books to read or topics to look into.
But I mostly don't comment, because I usually feel out of my depth. I'm a huge believer in the project of the Motte, but it is only in cases where I feel like there is a vacuum of a particular thought that I feel the need to throw my hat into the ring.
I think part of it is that the more heterodox people of the Motte have views forged in fire, and have been forced by necessity to become the best read, most expert exponents of their own ideas due to their having a position that is rare in the rest of society.
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
Yeah, I suspect that a certain extremely online segment of trans-rights activists has collective bitch eating crackers syndrome for anything Harry Potter-related.
I've been unimpressed with most criticisms I've seen of the actual content of anything associated with J.K. in the last few years, and the "Sirona has 'sir' in it" is just another example of an extremely weak claim that only works to signal solidarity with a group that has already made up their mind, rather than engaging with the content of the game in good faith.
It would be so easy for the trans community to portray the Harry Potter situation as a near-complete victory. Basically every major actor came out as pro-trans, J.K. Rowling has been passed over for the various anniversary celebrations recently, and the latest AAA Harry Potter game has trans character creation and a canonical trans character! And yet people insist on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
I've heard of too many people, even some within my social circle, who are beating themselves up over people going "mask off" and showing that they're not true trans allies by playing "the Wizard game" and it baffles me. There's pending anti-trans legislation around the United States, but a lot of trans people are seemingly so secure in their lives that they can worry about a nothing burger like a 90% pro-trans franchise having a tiny portion of all proceeds going to an already incredibly rich, uncancellable woman.
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
Thank you for articulating this. I long suspected that something like this was the case, but my friend group is fairly thin on people with any negative reaction to trans issues. (Not surprising, considering my partner is trans.)
So, two points. One, I think it might behoove activist types (assuming we're not in pure conflict theory) to try to notice when one of their pushes is hitting this sort of reaction and figure out a path to undermine or alleviate it.
Sadly, I think that in spite of me recognizing the edges of this phenomenon before your post, I'm light on ideas on how to route around this.
Part of it is that I believe there are other forces much more likely to "psychically castrate" your offspring than trans ideology. Almost my entire friend group is queer people, and none of them have plans to have biological children. Even my old college friends who are in long term relationships or getting married have no plans for children. My sister is dead set against children (and that was before she learned about the heritable medical condition she has.)
The birth rate is low in the Western world, and the trends depressing it are bigger than any one object-level fight in the culture war. Sterility and the end of legacy is the water we swim in and the air we breathe. Lack of issue is the curse of modernity. The trends in Bowling Alone and since the advent of the internet are only making things worse. We are slowly becoming Japan.
I understand that imagining your own child becoming a modern trans eunuch touches a nerve. I don't necessarily think it's healthy to focus on one relatively unlikely source of "castration" when society is full of these kinds of pitfalls and in much more likely forms like feminism and certain kinds of environmental activism. Parts of Western society have become a nihilistic death cult, waiting for the End and unwilling to propagate itself into the future with offspring.
But what are the odds? 0.3%? That's not that much worse than the odds of childhood cancer, or other kind of unexpected death that a healthy mind doesn't overmuch worry about, and deals with gracefully if it comes. But now it's apparently something more like nearly 2%? That hits me in the Papa-Bear-Who-Wants-Grandkids-In-Space-Forever. And it seems very likely that a lot of that is social contagion or could otherwise be wildly reduced with a minimal degree of skepticism towards youth fads.
I was hoping to dig into your 2% figure here, but the linked page didn't really break things down the way I hoped.
I'd speculate that the 2% figure is a bit misleading though. There's a big difference between 2% of youth using alternate pronouns, and 2% of youth becoming de-sexed eunuchs. What percent are on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and undergo surgeries? I would suspect it's much lower than 2%. That might be a small comfort for a parent worried about the worst case scenario for their own child, but even if your child comes out as "trans" it might not be the end of your bloodline.
I'm reminded of my dad constantly checking if the front door was locked growing up. It was like a ritual to alleviate worries for him. Never mind that if an intruder was truly determined to get into our house, the front door would hardly work as a deterrent. I think it is a mistake to focus your worries too much on one angle of attack, especially one where the "average" case isn't as bad as you're imagining (insofar as a lot of "transition" for younger people is purely social.)
You should also think about whether you'd be okay with your children being "psychically castrated" in other ways as well. It would be disappointing obviously, but would you still love your children if they came to you at 18 and made it clear that they have no intention of ever having kids? Could you be happy living in the doomed world where your kids decide they would rather travel the world and party their 20's and 30's away, instead of having children or starting a family?
vorpa-glavo
1yr ago
Because I believe in federalism as a way to achieve "laboratories of democracy", I support the ability of states like Tennessee to experiment with bans of various kind, regardless of whether I think the bans line up with good policy or not.
That said, I think it's a bit Quixotic to try to prevent all bad outcomes from a system. Law is always about trade offs.
There are a lot of traffic deaths in the United States every year, but it would be insane to limit the speed limit to 10 MPH on all roads, or to spend 100% of the national budget on reducing traffic deaths as much as is theoretically possible via human engineering. Instead, we make cars as safe as we can (within reason), make traffic laws as safe as we can (within reason), and build roads as safe as we can (within reason.) And then we accept that all of those decisions mean that a certain number of people still die in traffic every year.
I'm sure there's some level of regulation on trans medicine, cosmetic surgery, and abusable pharmaceuticals that makes a set of trade offs acceptable to most voters in a given area, but I doubt it would include many provisions for dealing with doctor shopping. I think you can get most of the "benefits" of such a law, by just making it illegal in the state, and not worrying about what rich people do to subvert the law.
I want to talk about some of the failures of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
First, let me say that I thought they handled the death of their main actor about as respectfully and deftly as any blockbuster movie made by Disney could be expected to. The emotional through line of grief and dealing with the death of a loved one rang true, and I found myself tearing up a bit towards the end.
However, I feel like this movie is very messy and a lot of it comes from their unwillingness to be as daring politically or aesthetically as the original Black Panther.
My biggest complaints circle around Talokan and Namor.
Whatever else one might say about the concept of Wakanda, the idea of asking what Africa would look like without colonization, and the imagination behind its Afro-futurism is interesting and compelling. On top of that, the political questions at the core of the first movie, while not Citizen Cane, are fundamentally interesting: What responsibility do the powerful have to those weaker than them? Is a gradualist or revolutionary approach to change better? Isolation or conquest? Isolation or outreach?
It is also helped along by the fact that Killmonger managed to be a villain with a point - as a descendant of royalty and African slaves, a Wakandan who has seen the plight of African Americans and come away with a more revolutionary Black nationalist mindset as a result. He manages to be grounded up until the point they decide to make him just enough of an asshole to justify stopping him for trying to change things the wrong way.
But all of this falls apart with Namor. He is old enough to have personally been oppressed by Spanish colonists 400 years ago, and he even attacked a Spanish hacienda while burying his mother. He says he will "never forget what he saw." And yet... he just sort of let the rest of Spanish colonization and Mesoamerican history play or more or less the way it did in our world after that? He saw the rise and fall of Fascism and Communism in the 20th century, and he didn't lift a finger, but as soon as the surface world is on the brink of discovering Talokan, it suddenly becomes imperative to preemptively conquer the surface, since the system of White European dominance that American hegemony is the latest instance of would be all too happy to use neo-colonial policies against these two new superpowers.
However, the passage of 400 years really makes Namor feel way less justified in his crusade. Killmonger personally experienced life as a poor black kid in contemporary America, and learned the broader context of his suffering and the oppression of his people. Meanwhile, Talokan has been isolationist for the last 400 years and clearly hasn't bothered to stop oppression anywhere else. (He says his enemies call him "Namor", but who are his enemies? Aside from burning one Spanish plantation to the ground 400 years ago, what did he do for the Mayan people since then?) The passage of time has also made things more complicated. Namor would be most justified if his crusade was against the Spanish - but of course they haven't been a world power for a long time, so instead the movie uses America and, strangely, France as its two examples of White European colonizers in the modern world. (I suspect they wanted to do more with the Haiti-France connection in the original script, but it got cut for being too spicy.)
But in Namor's conversations with Shuri, he talks about how "you know how they treat people like us", and I have to ask whether the movie actually manages to say anything about race relations or the history of colonialism at all, rather than lazily referencing it. Like, sure small pox and Spanish conquista was horrible for many of the natives, and it sucks that Namor's tribe had to go through that, but none of that would really justify attacking the countries today, the people alive today. The time to act would have been 400 years ago, and it seems like the Talokanian people had the power and ability to fight back against the Spanish, and they did nothing really substantive to do so. They gave up after one plantation.
As an aside, I think it is simple realpolitik that America and every other halfway competent nation would be trying to get their hands on vibranium in the MCU. I don't actually think the hints of neocolonial critique really get off the ground here. MCU America doesn't want vibranium because Wakanda is a black nation, and wouldn't want it because Talokan is a Mayan nation. They want it because there are aliens and demons and gods in the MCU, and vibranium is one of the better tools for fighting back against them. As well as being responsible for miraculous advancements in medical and other technologies.
Overall, this just seems like another instance of Marvel not doing a great job with Hispanic countries and cultures, even as I tend to be fairly impressed with how they handle the African American experience. For a good example of the former, look at the Eternals. What exactly makes Druig stop his mind control scheme to bring peace between the Indians and the Spanish at a single city? Why didn't he do that to all the Spanish? For an example of the latter, see The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
vorpa-glavo
4mo ago
Worth noting that today (Feb 15) is Lupercalia. If the tweet isn't testing the waters for Trump as king, it is god-tier trolling.
vorpa-glavo
7mo ago
I think this is why cultural products from the more feminists countries, such as the US, feature mannish-looking women, acting in a masculine manner.
I don't want to get too bogged down in the object level discussion of Aloy, but I think her having peach fuzz is a defensible choice. In our world, there are products to remove such hair. But Aloy is living in a post-apocalyptic world in 3040, isn't she? It's not hard to believe at all that grooming habits have changed, and women with peach fuzz just leave it as is.
Honestly, this kind of thing is something that takes me out of a lot of media. While we know that the Romans were big about hair removal, we also know plenty of ancient societies that weren't, and it's always strange to see "cave man" media where the women look like they stepped out of a modern Instagram photo, with shaved legs and armpits. I think a lot of creators across time have been cowards, unwilling to contend with the fact that humans are all, men and women, hairy apes.
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
Piracy might be morally wrong, but I've always felt like the attempt to compare it to "stealing" is incorrect. It's in a separate category. If I steal an apple, the merchant doesn't have the apple any more. If I pirate a movie, no merchant has been deprived of a DVD or anything like that - there's just one more copy of that movie in the world.
Imagine I had a matter duplicator. I walk up to your car, duplicate it, hotwire the copy and drive away. Did I steal your car? The only moral violation I think I might have done there is violating your privacy, depending on what was in the car when I copied it.
Now, I acknowledge that in a world with widespread matter duplication, the government might impose limitations on the use of matter duplication, so that creators are incentivized to create and innovate and produce new products. But I almost think this is getting the obvious funding model backwards. In a world where it's easy to create a copy, but hard and resource intensive to create an original, it's foolish to stop the creation of copies. Money needs to enter the system somewhere, but the distribution step isn't the most obvious place for that to happen. Instead, it makes sense to me to use a patronage/crowd-funding model.
Car companies would put together a proposal that says, "We'll create a car with features X, Y, and Z and we need to collect $A in order to make it worth our while." Then people who like their cars can pay into the crowd-funding scheme, and after car is created, people can use their matter replicators to make perfect copies of the car.
I feel like media companies have resisted moving to funding models that are a better fit for the world we live in, and trying to stop the creation of new copies when literally every person has the means of creating a copy in their pocket is Quixotic at best, whatever it might mean for morality.
I agree with that. I'm not saying people are having badwrongfun if they decide to have vegan mind flayers. My issue is more that it will be a bad thing if every single fantasy race or species becomes interchangeable.
I think it will be a shame if 6th edition comes out, and instead of having a few paragraphs that flesh out the idea that mind flayers are a brain-eating, psionic, planes-spanning race, who once enslaved humanoids in a grand empire until they were overthrown and now live in pockets underground or in the stars, it says that mind flayers are not naturally different from other sapient species (except in their superficial appearance), but some of them (not all!) have a culture that encourages eating brains and developing psionic powers, and you're just as likely to find a mind flayer running a flower shop or having a nice cup of tea. Let the brain-eating alien abominations be evil!
Yes, as a DM, I can always add in whatever flavor from other editions or from my own head that I want. But I want the products I buy to provide some flavor and lore that I can chose to ignore, instead of saying, "here's a bunch of superficially physically different creatures, that are all fundamentally exactly the same, and we won't tell you anything in particular about how they 'usually are' because their culture is a contingent fact about them that will change from setting to setting, not something they have from birth."
vorpa-glavo
1yr ago
I've seen a few people wonder why some people support Palestine in this conflict. While videos like this one (which predates the current conflict) are undoubtedly propaganda, they do offer a window into the worldview of a person who supports Palestine.
I'm honestly a little conflicted about who I should support. I condemn the killing of civilians by Hamas last weekend, but then I see United Nations OCHA data like this, where it says that 3,208 Palestinian civilians have died from 2008 to 2020 (compared to 177 Israeli civilians over the same period), mostly from air-launched explosions. I see people talking about supporting "the Jewish state’s justified but often brutal response", which so far includes blowing up a Palestinian house full of civilians with no warning, killing those inside, blowing up marketplaces and mosques, and attacking the Jabalia refugee camp.
Wikipedia claims that 40% of male Palestinians have spent some time in an Israeli prison. I hear about Israel demolishing 55,000 Palestinian structures as of 2022. I remember that Gaza had been blockaded by Egypt and Israel since 2005, despite Israel supposedly backing out of Gaza.
Even if every example of Israelis killing Palestinian civilians was collateral damage or accident, even if we assume that the cameras showing Israeli brutality always start rolling at the perfect moment to make it look like unnecessary brutality on their part, it's obvious to me that Palestine won't be able to grow under its current conditions of occupation. If the United States supports Israel, then Israel will prevail and Palestine will lose little by little every year. It will be a slow motion catastrophe, and there is nothing Palestine can do about it.
Is national, regional and global stability worth anything to the Palestinian people under such conditions? No wonder people are posting music videos in this thread of Palestinians with pipe dreams of Russia becoming a global super power again, and supporting Palestine to spite the United States. They're fucked, and I think there's something noble in fighting until you're wiped from the Earth by your enemy. Even if history remembers you as a monster, they will remember you.
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
I'm curious about how you're using "folklore" here. Do you consider any of the following to be folklore in the sense you've used here:
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Fiat currency
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The concept of debt
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National borders
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Adoptive parenthood
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The line between a species and a subspecies
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The line between a genus and a species
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The concept of species
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Laws
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Rules of etiquette
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Social hierarchies
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Race
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Skin color
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Nationality
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Citizenship
If you don't consider any of the above "folklore", do you consider them "real"? Until I understand exactly how you're using the term "folklore" here, I don't know if I can really say one thing or the other of the exercise you've done here. Do you believe that the "folkloric illusion" is stupid in other domains, or just in redneg? Do you believe that folklore requires evidence, or can cultures simply create castles in the sky that are locally relevant but seem strange to those outside those cultures? Do you think folklore can be important and useful, even if it isn't "real"?
Similarly, you make the assertion that "half the humans on this planet believe themselves to be the folkloric entity called 'namow'", but I'm curious how you would get to that assertion. Do you mean that if we properly map all folkloric entities in all cultures in some n-dimensional space, we would find a cluster somewhere that every culture would recognize they more or less have in common, and that in our field of redneg studies is called 'namow', and that each culture would independently identify the beliefs of 50% of humanity as being non-different from the proposition "I am a namow"?
Could we train a neural network for "namow" and "nam" and input empirical information we collect about individuals and train it to reliably classify people into these categories, in such a way that there would be broad agreement that the classifier accurately tracks namow-ness and nam-ness? Can a human brain be reliably trained to recognize namow-ness and nam-ness in at least some cultures?
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
I think this is part of why I'm not that worried if organizational EA falls as a result of all these scandals. The kind of number crunching that is the most central part of EA is going to be something that some nerd somewhere is always going to be able to do, and so it will probably always remain possible to - without much effort on one's own part - find the most measurably effective and underfunded charities, and donate to them no matter what state organizational EA is in in a few years.
I know a lot of people were worried about organizational EA becoming parasitic, and growing like a cancer until it takes more and more of the money that should be going to good causes, so maybe all of this will be for the best in the end, as it might lead to a much-needed fracturing and decentralization of an increasingly centralized movement.
vorpa-glavo
4mo ago
Large, diverse empires often produce "multiple choice" origin stories. In Rome, depending on your tastes, you could tell the story of the Trojan Aeneas carving out a part of his ancestral homeland on Italy, or the story of Romulus and Remus creating a cultural melting pot first through offering safe haven to foreign criminals then through the kidnapping of women of the Sabine people, or the story of the last king of Rome, the Etruscan Tarquinius Priscus, whose overthrow marked the start of the Roman Republic. Each story emphasized different aspects of Romanitas, and each could be used to argue for Rome being more culturally open or closed, or more willing to embrace foreigners as fellow Roman citizens or to reject them.
While the United States isn't a central example of an old-fashioned empire (China and Russia are far closer to this model), it is big enough and diverse enough that it has started to develop a "multiple choice" origin story of its own. There are several possible "foundation myths" for America. There's the Founding Fathers and the Revolutionary War, the "second founding" after the Civil War (where the 13th-15th Amendments saw a massive increase in Federal power), or the "modern founding" of America as the global hegemon with the victory in WWII and the defeat of the Axis powers. There's the Mayflower and the Pilgrims vs. the idea of America as a nation of immigrants.
I'm not sure I'd buy the idea of "social justice politics" as a form of ethnogenesis. By and large, I do think the assimilated "white Americans" have largely displaced "anglo Americans" as a distinct cultural group, and that after two or three generations most white American immigrants are indistinguishable from any other white American. I suspect that most light-skinned Hispanics will probably be similarly absorbed into the white blob within a generation or two, thus strengthening the "white" coalition. At the same time, groups that are more visually distinct occupy a weird space. Asians kind of get treated as "honorary whites" or "model minorities", but I recently spoke to an Asian American man who felt threatened enough in the community he was living in (trucks of Trump supporters were driving through Asian ghettos and harassing the residents) that he went out and bought a gun. And of course, the hardest square to circle is the African American community, especially the ADOS subgroup which has never held power (note that Barrack Obama was not of ADOS descent.)
I think that social justice politics is just an attempt to form a non-"white men" coalition. College educated white women were xenophilic enough that they were happy to throw in with a variety of visible minorities in order to argue for shared interests in the spoils system of jobs, prestige and power. But with the election of Donald Trump there's been a vibe shift, and I'm not sure if the non-"white men" coalition can hold into the future. Heck, Kamala lost, but the coalition she tried to throw together was certainly some odd bedfellows, like Liz and Dick Cheney. I think we're about due for a political realignment, and I'm not sure where every group will end up in the new arrangement.
vorpa-glavo
11mo ago
I feel like this is a little too convenient.
Centrists get crap because they are perceived as supporting the status quo. Therefore, any sins that are part of the tapestry of the status quo get imputed to centrists, because whether they say they support them or not, they are perceived as being useful idiots for whoever has the power to make the status quo a certain way, and keep it that way.
If a libertarian ardently believes that taxes are theft, then centrists support government theft. If a dominionist theocrat believes that anything but a Christian government is a subversion of God's will, then centrists subvert God's will. If a woke progressive believes that any policy that is not aiming to end racism is itself racist, then centrists are racist.
I certainly think a kind of institutionalist centrism can have the high ground compared to partisan electoral politics in many cases, but I think telling people who believe in change of some kind that you have the high ground is going to fall on deaf ears.
vorpa-glavo
2yr ago
There are 17 states that have passed anti-trans healthcare laws for minors. You could consider moving to one of those places, if this is really a big concern for you.
That said, I think this kind of worrying and paranoia is a bit overblown. Even with a double-digit percentage of Gen Z fashionably adopting non-binary identities, the number of minors actually receiving HRT, puberty blockers and surgeries is still pretty small. This Reuter's article says that there were 42,000 gender dysphoria diagnoses in 2021, and a quick search shows there were 26.2 million children in the US in the same year. Even if you assume that every child diagnosed with gender dysphoria gets the full suite of trans healthcare including surgery and sterilizing hormones, that's a 0.1% chance you kid will actually end up medically transitioning.
The odds of your kid dying in a car crash in their lifetime is ~1%. The odds of someone in the US dying of an opioid overdose is 1.5%. The odds of dying of cancer are about 14%.
I'm sure as a father, you've thought a lot about the many possible risks your child may face. But my overall advice is worry more about other more likely risks your child may face, and don't spend so much time on something that is exceedingly unlikely. I'm not even sure that trans ideology is the most likely way that your son will end up "sterilized" - environmentalist doomerism, feminism, etc. all seem like much more likely ideologies to capture a young mind, and even if you try to raise your son in a socially conservative environment, you'll never be able to keep the world entirely out.
There has always been an air of mystery around closed or initiatory traditions. In the modern day, we know very little about what went on in ancient Greek mystery cults like the Eleusinian mysteries.
And yet, today, if I want to know everything there is to know about the Freemason's, Scientology, or Gardnerian Wicca, I'm a few short internet searches away from it. The mantras of Transcendental Meditation, which normally set a practitioner back ~$1000, can be found on various websites, and the basic technique has been distilled and shared as Benson's Relaxation Response and free apps like 1GiantMind. There is no mystery about what goes on inside a Mormon temple.
By and large, modernity has melted away any barriers for the curious to find out everything about a tradition.
Traditionally, kaballah wasn't studied until the age of 40 and the vedas are only supposed to be read by people with a guru to directly instruct them. But despite this, I can get a book on kaballah or the vedas on Audible for $12.99.
There used to be gatekeeping around many of these traditions, and many people actually respected it.
The Catholics had the doctrine of apostolic succession, limiting who could legitimately be said to be a priest, and had the ability to excommunicate someone if they didn't like what they were teaching. Within Hinduism there's a tradition of guru parampara or lineage, where the authority of a teaching is based on an unbroken lineage of gurus passing down proper understanding generation after generation.
In traditional Buddhism, the concept of the sangha or community of practitioners is given high importance, and in many Hindu sects there is an emphasis on satsang or spiritual community.
However, liquid modernity has melted all of this gate-keeping away, and though one can find disgruntled traditionalists on /r/Hinduism, or essays like this one complaining about "Protestant Buddhism" in the West, most Western practitioners are either secular or belong to the jury-rigged bricolage that is New Age, without any care about the actual traditions themselves. Sometimes this is justified by writers like the Dalai Lama claiming that he doesn't want readers to become Buddhists, but to become better Christians, Jews, Secular Humanists, etc.
I think a lot of this is a consequence of modern communication technology. In 1979, B.K.S. Iyengar published "Light on Yoga", full of pictures and instruction on yoga, and you suddenly didn't need a guru to learn the Hindu practice of hatha yoga. Today, you can find a thousand white women in yoga pants guiding you through yoga asanas on Youtube. There are yoga classes for pregnant women in Tel Aviv. Pandora's box has been opened, and there's no way to go back to the way things were before.
Harvard divinity scholars Casper ter Kuile and Angie Thurston coined the term "unbundling", to refer to "a mixture of practices from vastly different religious and devotional traditions, and divorced from institutional and doctrinal contexts." In some respects this has been going on for a long time. There is a long history of syncretism leading to things like Greco-Buddhist art or mixes like Santeria, Caodaiism or the Bahai Faith.
That same Harvard divinity scholar Casper ter Kuile also had the idea of applying the Christian devotional reading practice of Lectio Divina to the Harry Potter books, which lead to things like the Stations of the Horcruxes a fandomized version of the Catholic spiritual practice of the Stations of the Cross.
I recently found myself "protestantizing" or "unbundling" Hinduism, and then reflecting on why exactly I was doing that. I've attended a few ISKCON (better known as the "Hare Krishna movement") kirtans in the past few weeks, and have greatly enjoyed the experience of chanting in a group setting - I've gotten similar experiences being in a mosh pit at a rock concert, or doing a tourist-y full moon ceremony in Bali, but this seemed like something free and accessible on a week-to-week basis that filled a lot of the same niche. But I also started reading the ISKCON books I was picking up in the temple, and was left cold. I was in high school when New Atheism started getting big in the early 2000's, and it definitely shapes a lot of my thinking. I'm not a very "spiritual" person, and have never really been a seeker. (I was in Bali not as an aspiring yogi, but to do a two week Indonesian language immersion course.)
I don't agree with most of ISKCON's beliefs. I don't believe in God, and certainly don't believe that Krishna is anything more than a literary figure. I don't believe in any kind of afterlife, let alone reincarnation. ISKCON's strange mix of monolatry/henotheism, and perennialist "chant 'Yahweh' or 'Allah' if you're uncomfortable with 'Krishna'" approach has always seemed a little silly to me, and their socially conservative rules surrounding sexuality and substance use are a bad fit for my own more liberal/libertarian impulses.
But I believe that is the crux of the problem. After getting my free vegetarian lunch, I just sat by myself or with my partner and ate it, not talking to any of the other people there. I wasn't there for satsang/community, and I wasn't there to make friends or start becoming a true devotee. I was just there for warm fuzzy feelings, because they had a reliable package for eliciting a psychological state I otherwise have trouble achieving. The Hare Krishna's may be against intoxicating substances, but for a brain like mine they have a powerfully ecstatic intoxicant at the core of their practice, and I wanted to be warmed by it without getting burnt.
In some ways, the Hare Krishna's aren't a closed tradition at all. They welcome all comers and they're practically begging people to read "The Bhagavad Gita As It Is" and their many other books and scripture. But they also have a path that they're hoping people will take, involving two levels of formal initiation, and stricter rules that come with it - including chanting the Hare Krishna mantra 1728 times a day, sexual abstinence outside marriage, sattvic vegetarianism and no taking of intoxicants. Reading through "A Beginner's Guide To Krishna Consciousness", I realized that underneath their "exotic" Eastern exterior, ISKCON has all of the features I dislike in religion.
I got the sense that they're really trying to do the evangelical Christian approach of finding broken people whose lives are in enough of a shambles that they'll take any source of meaning and structure offered to get out of the Hell they've made their life into, whether that be abusive relationships, drugs or disconnection, sloth and ennui. And at a very basic level, I don't need their community or practices to add meaning to my life. I have an active social life, many friends, and a loving partner.
But I still found myself researching if there were any secular forms of kirtan that I could reliably tap into. I think this is the double-edged sword when one can't simply unbundle a sacred practice. Imagine if instead of requiring a formal confirmation, anyone could just partake in Catholic communion. There would probably be a lot of "spiritual" tourists who just want to see what this whole "eating Lord Jesus thing" is about.
I'm definitely a spiritual tourist, even if I'm not a particularly spiritual person. I've tried practicing Roman paganism, even though I believe none of it. I've tried praying the rosary, even though I was raised Protestant. I made "pilgrimages" to Catholic spiritual sites within the last year. It's not exactly like there's a god-shaped hole in me, but I see spirituality as an experience that many people have that is completely lacking in my own life, and I'm curious to experience it. I've never felt connected to God, never really felt connected to prayer, never felt like God was trying to tell me something or had a plan for me. It's superficial, but I've sometimes envied devout Christians the way I envy superfans on Tumblr. Like, sure there's a lot of weird restrictions their devotion creates, but I wish I cared as much about God or Star Wars as these people seem to.
I'm an eternal dilettante in the realm of religion and spirituality, and I suspect that much of what is occurring with me is characteristic of other "unbundlers" or what Tara Isabella Burton calls the "spiritually remixed." When you grow up in an atmosphere where all the information about a practice is freely available, when many of the practices have already slowly secularized and been unbundled from religion, it is very easy to become a tourist going here and there, and never matching the achievements of a true pilgrim who sets out for a specific destination and knows where they're going.
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