Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
What are your 'load-bearing beliefs?' The ones that, if they were disproven (to your epistemic satisfaction) would actually 'collapse' your worldview and force a reckoning with your understanding of reality.
I'm definitively talking about the "is" side of the is/ought distinction. Not your moral beliefs or 'hopes' for how things will turn out.
And not focused on such dry, mostly undisputed facts like "the earth's gravity pulls things towards it center" or "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell."
Ideally beliefs that you consistently use to make predictions about actual events, despite not having sincere certainty about their accuracy.
One that I've been leaning on a lot lately: "Intelligence tends to be positively (if imperfectly) correlated with wisdom."
This is probably the one thing preserving my general optimism for humanity's future.
There are definitely high-IQ sociopaths running about, but I strongly believe that the world would be in a much worse place if the smartest apes amongst us were not also generally aware of their own limitations and were trying to make good decisions that considered more than just short term interests.
People are terrible, a person can be great.
People will do the right thing after first exhausting every other available option.
The stock market is completely divorced from productivity, profit, market share and consumer satisfaction.
For all the good the internet has done, many load bearing systems in society were not prepared for the effects of globalism and the information superhighway, and we have been suffering from the network effects and scale effects of the internet ever since.
Racism is a form of bias, and bias is impossible to truly eliminate as long as differences exist. It can be mitigated, but never truly removed.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes. People want to think in binary, they want absolute X and absolute Y, hard reality, a right answer and a wrong answer they can die on a hill over. Unfortunately, when the binary solution doesn't work, people lose their minds.
Any system of government works under a certain amount of people. I am uncertain as to the exact number but it's probably lower than Dunbar's.
Societal paradigms and dominant modes of thought take hold because they advantage the people, not because they are correct.
Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity; however, JJ's razor applies. If you can't tell the difference, what does it matter?
Sadly, Porn is the most important TLP idea, even more than narcissism, and it explains modern consumerist hyperculture. We are all buying or consuming facsimiles of things to approximate or satiate the need for the thing we actually want, and numbing that need sufficiently is one of the great triumphs and tragedies of modern civilization.
Oof.
Yeah. Even as I actively try to avoid accepting the facsimile and pursue the authentic article, I find that every nudge and unyielding social pressure is driving towards the commodified artificial version as the core urges go unsated and the avenues that will reliably lead to the desired outcome seem shut down (unless you can buy your way through).
Well, it's also because genuinely trying and pursuing and then failing to get it is cringe.
And better to die cool than live cringe.
That really only matters if your attempts are broadcast to the world/your larger social group. Which for Gen Z, many times they are.
Also I'm now at the point in my life (maybe an age thing) where I simply do not feel significant 'shame' over attempting to do things authentically, without hiding behind a veneer of irony or detachment.
You might have an insight there as to why people are completely unable to break out of their 'self-imposed' equilibrium. Gooning away to an OF model or, heaven forbid, an AI girlfriend is a private act that nobody will judge you for since it isn't broadcast. But hoo boy, approaching a real woman entails risk, and even if you acquire a woman you're still going to have to be on your best game since she can d0 all kinds of things to try and embarrass you if things sour.
The issue is that in the modern era being cringe is directly deleterious to your social and even financial circumstances. Nobody wants to associate with people who are cringe, and when connections are pretty much the best and most reliable way to get a job these days or move upwards socially or financially, you get what you incentivize. Especially when we live on a planet of cops.
Again, it's not even really an age thing; if I was an African warlord I would not give a single fig about being cringe as long as I got to shoot everyone who saw. It's about security and power, both things for which demand greatly exceeds supply.
From as long as I can remember, the true essence of cringe is being un-self aware of how your behavior is perceived, and breaking social norms whilst lacking the social capital to get away with it. The larger the audience, the worse the transgression/the greater the social capital required to overcome it.
So one defense is to have every action and phrase dipped in layers of irony so if something does run afoul of a social norm you can plausibly claim to be in on the joke, and thus almost no act or word can ever have full sincerity behind it since now its actually harder to tell what the hell the norms are if nobody can take them seriously. Just, you know, try to remember which level of irony you're on.
Millenials I think invented this particular approach, but in interacting with Gen Z, I conclude that they seem to have totalized it.
The other approach is to be at least partly aware of your behavior, but demonstrate that you simply do not care, nor take the situation seriously, and effectively 'no sell' any shame in the situation.
These are both exhausting to maintain, if you ask me.
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