domain:cafeamericainmag.com
pigeonburger
1d ago
I find it useful to practice languages. I used to speak spanish but lack of usage means I'm not confident enough to speak it now, but LLMs are infinitely patient conversation partners that will not overly correct me (and shoot my confidence) during the conversation, but can afterwards give me pointers.
MachineElfPaladin
1d ago
I was just using it because you'd brought up "why not pick 4" - and, as demonstrated it's perfectly valid to pick 4! It would work fine. It's just that multiplying and dividing by 2 is usually easier for people, so that's what erwgv used.
thrownaway24e89172
Death is the inevitable and only true freedom
1d ago
I've seen people of both sexes put up with shit I really wouldn't have; being down bad is quite the drug.
Unfortunately so are low self-esteem ("this is the best I could ever hope for") and self-harm ("I deserve this abuse"), particularly in people who don't show it publicly.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1d ago
Thanks! I'll have to look into those other books once I finish the current one.
ace
1d ago
17 years. Summer and fall of 2008, I was searching for explanations of quantum mechanics because the textbook and everyone else's explanations were so goddamn confused, incomplete, and self-contradictory. Found Big-Yud's Quantum Physics sequence, which felt like the first time finding someone who had sane, coherent opinions on the matter. From there an easy step to the rest of the sequences, LW, and SSC.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1d ago
Whoops. Comment updated.
Magusoflight
1d ago
I've never felt unable to identify what emotion I was feeling; I do it easily and often!
Then you must be wrong that you don’t get a physical sensation. You aren’t a machine that can reduce emotions to thoughts. Thoughts aren’t emotions, and according to a lot of neurophysiological literature, emotions are primary and thoughts are secondary processes. You are picking up on a cue somewhere in yourself, but maybe you don’t understand what physical sensations it is you’re picking up on. Now, are thoughts connected to emotions? Yes in the same way behaviours are. But you wouldn’t mistake crying for sadness, because someone could be pretending to cry, or crying from happiness or laughter. A negative thought can induce a sad feeling, and a sad feeling can induce a negative thought, but you must lack a certain psychological mindedness to therefore mistake thoughts for feelings
Magusoflight
1d ago
I agree we over accommodate people with learning issues or whatnot, but it probably is to some extent bad for you to not be able to identify what emotion your “feeling”. Alexithymia is a useful word for a kind of state, but maybe I’m misinterpreting what they mean by “feeling with thoughts”
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
Ruinous! Posting functions should trend towards forgiving so as to encourage contribution from would-be or marginal posters. Locking people into mistakes that demand more clarifications might be tedious.
Or locking people into bad temper posting which runs afoul the rules, but which they might think better of after seeing it posted.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Being smitten is a hell of a drug.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
To be honest, I don't actually recall any instances in which someone we knew to be a previously permabanned member came back, was identified, but was behaving well enough that the mods decided not to ban the new account for ban evasion. Possibly it happened before I became a mod, but as far as I know, it's kind of like the case of "We'd consider it if a permabanned member petitioned us to unban him": to date an entirely theoretical policy.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
His grievance was that we talk about things instead of planning to murder our enemies and burn it all to the ground.
He got a timeout for his screed, but he's not banned currently.
Quoting this because this was what was present and being responded to before your edit.
No. In order for the mission to be fucking accomplished, you have to accomplish the fucking mission, which is to reform sufficiently to go unnoticed.
Heavens no. The Mission fucking Accomplished paradigm was established precisely to defend not banning recognized ban evaders who were noticed, but weren't breaking the rules on decorum to the degree to warrant another ban on those grounds. It was the returnees compliance with the decorum, not their ability to not be detected, which was the accomplishment. Were it the later, the defense of non-moderation wouldn't have had to be made in the first place.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
He hates Christianity because Christianity places importance on concepts like "mercy" and "forgiveness" and not hating, which he despises. I don't think it's much more complicated than that, and certainly not theologically deeper.
09milk
1d ago
I second this approach of thinking, at the end, the goal of school is to pump out students actually capable of reading and understanding. Pumping out illiterate students contradict the function of school, school is NOT day care facility and we should not treat them as such
A school pumping out illiterate students should do worst on stats, State A's school (0.7/year) in @odd_primes's example is a worst school than State B's school (0.6/year), even though State B's school has less effective teachers
Just like a company, the administration stucture matters, it might increase or decrease the overall profitability of the company, and State B's school's administration makes their school more functional at their goal, depite less effective teachers
Lorian_Aristedes
1d ago
Good luck with Less Than Zero, I felt dead inside for a week afterwards.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
1d ago
The Reverse of the Medal. I will do a badly written synopsis later once I get into it.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
You know, your record is pretty awful too, and for exactly this kind of low-quality growling and contempt. The discussion was "Who was Hlynka and why was he banned?" not "Take free shots at Hlynka because he's banned."
To round out His Broken Body I would recommend the works of James Likoudis, a convert from EO to Catholicism. Eastern Orthodoxy and the See of Peter: A Journey Towards Full Communion is the most like His Broken Body in scope.
His Broken Body is also old. At least, a lot of developments in the dialogue have happened since then. There's this moment where Cleenewerck says something like, "No Catholic apologetics ever addresses eccelestiology before talking about the Petrine Doctrine," and I had to check the publication date, because Joe Heshmeyer's book on Peter did exactly that. I also find it fascinating that he explicitly states that he's not going to engage with scholarship on the Petrine Doctrine, only popular apologetic work.
He also exhibits the common misconceptions surrounding Papal Bulls and what is considered infallible. For example, he considers Exsurge Domine to be infallible (which I won't argue) and then takes that to mean that all the things it condemns are considered infallible heresy. But that is not what Exsurge Domine says. The text is they are "either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds." There is a huge difference between capital-H Heretical and "seductive of simple minds." This point goes over Cleenewerck's head. He makes the same mistake with Unigenitus.
There are many parts where he confidently states that "Catholics believe X" and I'm like, "What?" For example, he takes as authoritative something that was actually a well-known swindle. It was common in the 19th century for publishers to claim that certain prayers carried indulgences or promises from apparitions with no actual authority.
His Broken Body is certainty an ambitious project but Cleenewerck doesn't do a great job of expressing actual Catholic thought. I think he did his best and tried to be charitable, but I would consider it as really good arguments for the Orthodox side and mediocre arguments for the Catholic side.
RustySunset
1d ago
Where did you come upon this idea of the pagan gods? I recently learned of it from the Lord of Spirits podcast, but it's the only place I've ever heard it before.
No. In order for the mission to be fucking accomplished, you have to accomplish the fucking mission, which is to reform sufficiently to go unnoticed.
TequilaMockingbird had already drawn attention repeatedly for being antagonistic and obnoxious. If Hylnka actually managed to create a new account, behave himself for a year, not get repeatedly modded for being his usual jerk-ass self, and then say "By the way, it's me," well... we (mods) would probably discuss it.
Same for any past troublemaker who actually comes back and shows better behavior. It is not (as @The_Nybbler keeps dishonestly claiming) that we want to see someone "hat in hand" and begging, but that we'd want to see evidence of change.
You can't create a new account, be your old antagonistic self, and then make a pikachu face when you're banned as soon as we realize who you are.
And it's also worth noting that you did not ban TequilaMockingbird for past posts, or even any rule breaking aspect of this post.
It's fine if we have abandoned the 'Mission fucking Accomplished' paradigm on this site, as long as we're clear of the change of paradigm.
anti_dan
1d ago
I mean, I strongly oppose public school teachers being required, or even permitted, really, to hang the Ten Commandments in a classroom. Public schools should not endorse an establishment of religion.
This boils down to banning public schools when you look at it at all. Every school teaches a religion, it just depends what flavor.
wemptronics
1d ago
If you didn't freeze edits at that point as well, yes.
I don't think they should remove edits or deletion because of one or two serial delete guys. Freeze edits and deletes after a week. Allow authorship to disappear on account deletion. A balance of considerations.
Noting that when I paid dues to The Motte's Conservative Party treasurer I was told the motto was "Change? No!" All these so-called suggested "improvements" are making me a little uncomfortable.
Since 2019 January, I found Scot via econlib which I found when I was trying to see if there even was a thing as a Marxist economist, Scott was the only smart anti sjw dude I found and got myself in these spaces.
I saw themotte due to reddit, I posted on the slatestarcodex and themotte reddit about my adhd as I was depressed since I was months away from beginning college.
Themotte was the first community where everyone was extremely helpful and not cynical. Intelligence is a major factor, yet you can see plenty of communities that are not healthy despite being very smart. Slatestarcodex and lesswrong have had very smart user bases, I never could quite fit in either since the AI stuff always seemed silly and I never got the extreme dependence on studies, stats, soyience.
My comment history is very pro science, I'm ultimately someone who believes in spiritual teachings, we can never prove them. Though my earliest contentions were the two places I listed being way too nerdy. One user who I befriended and learnt a lot from was unearnedgravitas who told me that there are no atheists in foxholes.
Rationalist adjacent circles have smart people, they're also well adjusted as opposed to anyone who is an out and out rat. My single worst irl interaction was with a guy who wouldn't stop quoting Scott Alexander and Yud, I like some of their articles too but man get a grip.
What really got me about slatestarcodex was not Scott, it was the people in the comments. It seems my introduction was not the most common path according to the stories here.
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