Gaashk
8hr ago
Yes, I think it's something like that.
A couple of years ago, when I was off birth control, I was driving alone and kept puking which is very rare for me, but didn't have anywhere to pull off. Not pleasant at all. Then later that day got an unusually heavy and abrupt period. Probably an early miscarriage.
Gaashk
9hr ago
Meritocracy is probably useful at very high, best in the world levels. Like I said, I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with an actually wise judge, who would look at a surgeon, or researcher, or entrepreneur -- how competent they are, who they're planning to bring with them, how excited they are to become American, etc, and let some number of competent, excited potential Americans over. On balance, I'd rather have Musk as an American than not. Or even Ramaswamy, despite having mixed feelings about some of the things he stands for. If there are 100 Von Neumanns out there somewhere, sure, let them in. If some of them are Chinese, let them in but watch them. If they start complaining about whiteness, or prom queens, or high school football, let them go back. Not that I even care for those specific things, but those are pretty bad red flags.
At the same time, no, I do not want Ramaswamy or Musk to be able to each import ten thousand compliant, desperate engineers from India. Even if they are marginally better than the locals (though I mostly doubt they are). They should have to work with Americans. If they're trying to do things Americans don't want to work on, for wages Americans are not willing to accept, while they should change their plans. I'm not so desperate for a Grok powered humanoid robot army in ten rather than thirty years.
While it's useful to have meritocracy at the top, I'm less convinced of its usefulness at the middle and bottom levels, especially with automation proceeding apace. I would prefer to live in a world where I work fewer hours, then bake, sew, and pick fruit with my kids. I already do that to some extent, and there's a lot of angst about how all the straightforward housewife tasks have been outsourced, and that it's not entirely a good thing. Like the communist Xitter about wanting to lead discussion groups and make clothes out of scraps. Things like sewing undergarments and picking strawberries are fine in moderation, and terrible as a full time job. Keeping a flock of chickens is fun, people will do it at cost. There are a decent number of tasks like that. American boys won't pull weeds for nine hours in the sun for $10/hr, while others might -- but the people who have accumulated nine hours of weeds are doing it wrong.
Gaashk
1d ago
I suppose I have less of an issue with citizens who have done bad things having to get shit jobs, since they're their home country's problem to deal with either way.
Still, I'm confident that our economic system is robust, and we'd figure something out if we had to. Would our houses be slightly worse? I don't know, since you didn't say what the jobs are, specifically. If it's roofers working in Phoenix when it's 120 out or something, maybe it would be more expensive and certain styles of roof would become less feasible, hard to say, it would be worth trying. Almost everyone used to work in agriculture and repair their own houses, I'm sure the current arrangement of turning everything into an assembly line isn't the only possible one.
Gaashk
2d ago
picking strawberries is still a job that really sucks
I've heard that mentioned a lot, as a reason it's so, so important to have slaves. It just seems incredibly weak. Coal, sure. It was super important. But... think of the strawberries??
Oh, I see. Looking at Netstack's post I guess it's only been 4 hours; maybe he'll come back.
I was getting pretty tired of the AlexanderTurok inspired you people posts, with minimal drive by engagement.
Gaashk
2d ago
I wanted to argue about the core disagreement I think I have with the prevailing political views and values on this forum.
It's not a great sign that it's been 8 hours and you haven't been arguing with any of the responses.
Of course there are vanishingly few self made men, everyone gets almost everything from their family, nation, ancestors, etc. That's proper, right, and necessary.
I don't believe very strongly in meritocracy. Reports of the striver rat race to get into the best colleges, of South Korean grind culture, and of elite overproduction suggest failure points. I would be alright with a world where people mostly followed their parents' professions (assuming they're competent enough for the position -- the child of a brain surgeon might be a more generalist doctor, or if they don't want to do the work, some other PMC for, for instance), aside from the obvious issues with underclass kids with no profession to look to (sure, intermittent work in a warehouse or fast food restaurant is not a good life plan), and technological obsolescence. Trying to get everyone to go to college because blue collar is just so terrible was a bad idea. America should focus more on making things like working in all aspects of chicken farming/processing less terrible, not on importing desperate Guatemalans who will work until their fingernails rot off.
Individualism is fine to the extent that it's possible to interact with people as individuals. If there were some wise judge who was actually wise reviewing all potential immigrants as individuals, and they really had the best interests of the nation in mind, over multiple generations, then sure, fine. But that's not going to happen, just like the communism of a monastery isn't going to scale to a whole country, or even city. States often can't operate at that level (cue Nikolai Rostov "they're actually trying to kill me! Me, whom everybody loves!")
Anyway, yes of course most Americans are citizens because their parents were. Just like everywhere else. There's no frontier that could absorb large numbers of stateless people who failed to earn their citizenship. I guess if the Starship Troopers plan were on the table, where people had to earn the right to vote through national service (but still retained the right to live and work through birth), that would be fine. I dislike the custom of anchor babies, but doubt that anything much will change in that respect.
Gaashk
4d ago
Without looking each one up:
- 30 miles?
- I'm not sure. The only person I know who asked about this ordered one from Vietnam.
- 20 miles? Green Chile, probably.
- 30 miles?
- 15 miles?
- 30 miles?
I feel like most of these are just different ways of asking "how far are you from the core of the nearest city?"
Gaashk
5d ago
Gaashk
5d ago
It's interesting that every myers-briggs temperament corresponds to aristotelian temperament combinations, but there's not much of a pattern as to which to which. That tells me there's a there. It may not mean much but it surely exists
Myers and Briggs were reading Jung, who was almost certainly reading Aristotle (along with all the myths he could find), so it makes sense.
Gaashk
6d ago
If I'm really disregulated, I can just keep refreshing this and DSL over and over (operator error, I know).
Gaashk
6d ago
Sure, it's good advice. It's just good advice in almost all contexts, hardly anyone gets enough exercise nowadays. It's worse for the purposes of differentiating various personalities.
Gaashk
6d ago
I may have underrepresented how much I tried getting into it, though it's been most of a decade. I bought and read a book (not sure which), had coffee with a neighbor who was a certified counselor and used it in her work, who also lent me a book, and put probably about 20 hours into it, with no results, just confusion. Meanwhile, MBTI people say things like "use your second function more," which is much more actionable.
Gaashk
6d ago
I definitely doomscroll The Motte, and find it more addictive than social media.
Gaashk
6d ago
I've heard of the Big 5 being used in management, but mostly as a hiring screen, to try not to hire people who are too low in conscientiousness. Which is of course a zero sum game, so not useful for society at large.
Gaashk
6d ago
I tried looking into Enneagram for a while (recommended by a Five, I think), but just couldn't. It seemed like everything that might have been interesting was not just paywalled, but sold as "retreats" and "experiences." I came out type nine, and I think it had super generic advice one would get from a generic check-up, like getting more exercise, which seemed actually worse than a horoscope.
Gaashk
6d ago
It sounds like the supposed communist wants to be a homeschool mom, once the kids are a bit older, and with a denser community than is usual nowadays.
Gaashk
6d ago
ISTP
I was really into it for a while, due to having a less common personality for a woman, and hearing a lot of "women ___" statements that don't really apply to me, and trying to express why.
My main objection, in comparison to OCEAN, is the Sensing/iNtuition dichotomy. I'm both high openness and a concrete (rather than more abstract/symbolic) thinker. For instance, when I paint, I prefer plein air or studio painting rather than stories -- I want to capture the thing in front of me. But I also spend a lot of time reading people theorizing and predicting, so shrug, I think high Openness/concrete captures this better than S/N
Gaashk
12d ago
Even in cases where it doesn't really matter what race the characters are, like The Little Mermaid or Ghostbusters, it's usually a red flag for a lazy retelling where the film makers are going to respond to criticisms about how lazy it is by whining about racism.
Something like Bridgerton is in the middle, where they acknowledge what's going on, that it's historical revisionism, and people think that's fun. I haven't watched it to see if it's any good or not.
Gaashk
12d ago
Same with reddit's daily complaint threads about how 'the fashion industry' refuses to sell women dresses with pockets. Inevitably someone links an outlet which does offer that but is doing poorly because no one actually wants them.
This was the only example I know anything about, and it's not that simple. I tried looking up some Reddit threads, and after about half an hour, brand mentions included:
- Duluth Trading always has good pockets, so if you want pockets for hiking, gardening, and generally being outdoorsy, that's great. Can confirm, I have a coat from them, and I while I look like a giant tomato in it, I can wear it in any conditions between -40F and 40F, due to how many layers it allows me to wear under it. Do I want to fit a hat, scarf, and gloves in the main pockets, and then still have an inner pocket for money and keys? This is the coat for that! Could I wear it to an office job, or a date night? Not unless the date involves hiking in the snow (it frequently has).
- Someone said that Torrid had one pair of black pants once that offered great pockets, but she has never found them again.
- A few people mentioned cargo pants, where even the women's versions have pockets.
- There are a number of brands that sometimes have pockets, but not that often, and will sometimes say on their listing that they have pockets, but they're tiny and poorly placed, such that it's not safe to put anything inside them. If you spend a lot of time and effort, you might find something suitable in a department store. Maybe. Or maybe you just wasted two hours and will leave with no clothing (this is why I stopped shopping for clothing at department stores). Maybe they'll have something, but it will cost $200 and be dry clean only. Hard to guess.
- Target often does have pockets! The responses being: good for them! (they are not doing poorly)
- Temu and Uniqlo often have pockets! Good for them! (they are expanding quite quickly)
- A recommendation for Maya Kern skirts -- comments that other had also bought those, and liked them.
You realize that black people didn't hop on their ships, cross the Atlantic and invade America, right? Forcibly enslaving people, displacing them from their homes and bringing them to America is vastly different from an invasive species...invading and ruining an ecosystem?
That's literally how invasive species work. If rabbits had been able to swim to Australia unaided, they wouldn't be invasive, they would be part of the natural ecosystem. Like the French and Spanish in the Americas. Do people even bother calling rats invasive? I suppose the British are the rats in this analogy.
Gaashk
13d ago
This is trivially true, but unimportant.
American blacks with racial consciousness have started calling themselves Black, and so that's what people call them, unless it's completely laughable like Meghan Markle. If someone with very dark skin comes over from some monastery in Ethiopia and doesn't do any American Black things, and doesn't teach children to whine about someone else getting opressed several generations ago, then even the racists don't complain about them.
Gaashk
13d ago
You are mostly talking about Big 5 trait agreeableness. There's a good Jordan Peterson lecture about it from before he became politicized. It's convenient for a person's managers, husband (if they're into that), and infants. It's more of a mixed bag for the people possessing it, as you mentioned.
These are almost universally positive traits unless you happen to enjoy arguments and rambunctious trouble-making and think such a person would be boring.
Two highly agreeable people together can be quite annoying. They don't get high quality feedback about each other's preferences, and end up playing guessing games about what the other person wants. They have a bad time raising older children. I can't remember it well enough to find it, but there was a Less Wrong post about how it is actually an onerous imposition to one's host to flaccidly say that whatever they want to do is great, they're totally happy with anything, because this makes more work for the host -- maybe they don't like making a bunch of decisions.
- There are positives and negatives. The people who enjoyed the benefits were allowed to bring them over, and even if the negatives eventually become more obvious, there's no going back on a country wide scale.
- It's reasonable to warn people about planting them in their own garden, on purpose. They are not well behaved plants that will do what you want!
- Even is Siberian elm and American elm were technically the same species, and had hybridized by now, that's not really the point. If the native Americans had been able to resist the religious zealots from England and Spain they would, of course, have been right to do so. Even today, they're allowed to keep people they dislike, who don't respect them, off their reservations. Would you be happier if it had been a bulldog vs golden retriever analogy? It looks like it was based on the OP's "planting trees"
- But, yeah, it was rude and, yes, NotAllGhettoBoys
Gaashk
13d ago
I'm going to go ahead and support the metaphor.
Consider ailanthus. Imported to New York when air pollution was so bad and green spaces so rare that almost nothing else would grow (c.f. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). Now it's endemic throughout the country, integrated into a ton of rather harsh towns, cities, and as roadside hedges, and it's not going to be eradicated. Even if it could be, people would be upset about it, because it's providing privacy and shade.
Consider the Siberian elm. Planted during the Great Depression to provide shade when, outside the river valleys with high water tables, it was pretty much the only tree that would grow. And it's edible! Now there are canopies in the high desert with nicely kept, mature elm trees, but also weedy wild elms. They aren't going anywhere. People would be upset if all those old, shady elm trees disappeared, though the roadside volunteers aren't always welcome.
Now consider malaria and heatstroke in the old South...
Condolences, that's really hard.
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