domain:freddiedeboer.substack.com
I think it's sort of different in that the accusations that Darwin threw around were much more inflammatory than in the 2A hypothetical: 'JK Rowling wants to eradicate trans people' is much more strong than 'Biden wants to take your guns'. He used to use words like 'eradicate', 'racist', etc. a lot. Saying transphobic or racist things, or performing transphobic or racist acts, is literally illegal in Rowling's and my country. Those are strong accusations to throw around!
In that context, it's really pretty bad to throw that heat when you have no evidence, the existing evidence is exactly contra-indicative (Rowling had been reasonably supportive of trans people at the start) and you openly admit you have no interest in actually looking through what she said.
Then moving to 'people like Rowling' as in the quote "people like Rowling aren't fully committed to that broader conservative project, they just want to slander and eradicate trans people" strikes me as broadening that brush rather than narrowing it.
JarJarJedi
2hr ago
How often does everyone here wash their cars?
That depends a lot on where you live and how you use it. In the summer in place where it never rains you can get away with pretty much never washing it. In winter, especially if you drive in the snow, it gets filthy really quick. I usually go to a wash when I notice visible dirt on it, and usually just a run in automatic wash is enough. Occasionally when I take a longer trip (those darn bugs) I have to manually clean it with a rag pre and post the automatic part. Never found any special ritual meaning in it, it's just a chore for me.
JarJarJedi
2hr ago
Dude, there are literally thousands of people being removed from the country weekly who, in the world we lived in last year, were in no danger of deportation.
Yes, those are illegal aliens. If you are one, it's very much the time to prepare a plan B. And nobody made a secret of it since the beginning for Trump campaign, which is years from now - one of the major promises Trump made was to deport illegal aliens. He run the whole campaign on it. He never made a promise to revoke citizenship from existing citizens.
So yeah, research into alternatives is a reasonable thing to start doing on the off chance we see similar changes by next year.
If that's what you want to do, don't let anybody to stop you. Some people prepare for alien invasion (the Mars kind, not the Guatemala kind), some for the rapture, who can forbid one to prepare for Trump revoking citizenships? I am just providing some data on how realistic this scenario actually is, where to take it from there is one's own business.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3hr ago
The metaphor itself has been a part of ancient Western culture for millennia. Gnostic thought goes all the way back to Plato. The gnostic gospels are nearly 2000 years old. It’s hardly surprising that a movie playing on those themes is going to resonate with modern western people raised with the idea of a separation between the mind and the body and who quite often react with surprise when they find out that biology influences your mind both from birth and because of the environment. We think of ourselves as minds driving bodies and not as a whole being that contains a brain that is biologically wired to produce your thoughts. It’s hardly surprising that Marxists and other gnostics can appeal to this pre Christian myth to push their beliefs.
We actually have a lot of those pre Christian myths in our culture. The myth of the perfectibility of human kind — which should have died the day we discovered Auschwitz’s gas chambers — has been going strong for centuries. This is another piece of the liberal system of thought. If only we could teach people to be good, they’d actually be good. If only people had more money they’d stop being criminals. If only we could give people what they say they want we could have utopia. It’s never worked that way.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3hr ago
Giving up on telling the dumb kids they can be doctors is probably a moral good but I'm not sure it opens up efficiency gains?
If we're spending a fortune, futilely, to bring up the low end and we stop doing that with no change in results, that's an efficiency gain.
FtttG
3hr ago
What was the home video market like in the US?
Dunno, didn't grow up there and don't live there. Funnily enough I have a feeling that The Matrix Revolutions was the last film I bought on VHS before the transition to DVD was completed.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3hr ago
I think it'll be hard to explain to the next generation, but the effects in The Matrix were absurdly groundbreaking. But they also were groundbreaking enough that pretty much any movie with a VFX sequence will copy some of its visual language. If you've seen a bunch of modern action movies, though, and then watch The Matrix, you're going to feel that a lot of it is just playing to standard visual tropes that have been done well, maybe even better, in lots of movies. But the thing is, most of those were new in 1999, and you won't appreciate it unless you can compare it to the zeitgeist of 1998 cinema -- without a lot of effort, you really have to have been there.
I'd compare it to The Beatles: I wasn't around when the originals were published, and I find it hard to appreciate the novelty that my older friends and relatives attribute to them because very few features in their catalog haven't been done better (and with better recording and mastering) by other artists since.
In today's era of disposable pop culture, where Marvel Studios are delighted if people are still sharing GIFs of their latest capeshit instalment so much as one year after release, that kind of durable cross-demographic cultural staying power is hard to even wrap your head around.
What was the home video market like in the US? Because, for us, The Matrix was one of the first DVDs we got which gave it even more staying power but we were generally a bit behind the West (especially on TV)
If you can only own a few you pick movies that are either classics, have good special features or really "popped" on screen.
Nowadays you can cycle through terabytes of movies at will (hell, even if you had no internet 6-in-1 DVDs are common in any random street market in Africa) and I don't know that anyone cares about the BTS stuff. You can't sit with a movie for months to years.
FtttG
3hr ago
A lot of people have pointed to 1999 as being a high watermark for mainstream American cinema. It's remarkable to think of what a widespread influence on Western Anglo culture two concepts from movies released that year had (taking the red pill from The Matrix, "special snowflake" from Fight Club) and how durable their staying power was. A quarter-century after the film's release, you can use the phrase "taking the red pill" in conversation with a group of Anglophones of varying socioeconomic backgrounds and income levels, and reasonably assume that they'll understand the metaphor and that it won't seem dated or clichéd, even if they haven't seen the movie from which it originated. ("Snowflake" will be understood by most audiences, but won't have the desired effect: after years of conservative commentators beating it like a dead horse.) In this regard (that even most people who haven't seen the movie have a passing familiarise with one of its key images/concepts), The Matrix is right up there with 1984. The Matrix was a true four-quadrant movie, equally appealing to fans of action movies, sci-fi nerds, philosophy eggheads and weeaboos. In today's era of disposable pop culture, where Marvel Studios are delighted if people are still sharing GIFs of their latest capeshit instalment so much as one year after release, that kind of durable cross-demographic cultural staying power is hard to even wrap your head around. Nothing from the current decade of cinema seems likely to equal it: offhand, the only movie from the last decade which might is Joker* (and I think that film's star has well and truly fallen after its disastrous sequel); from the decade before, The Dark Knight.
*I was tempted to say Drive, but I have to remind myself that that film only made a tiny fraction of what The Matrix did: it's universally beloved in the circles in which I move, but not necessarily beyond that.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
3hr ago
Kinda missing the part about backing away to a claim about Biden specifically that they think is more defensible, it turning out to also be also be false, and then saying "it doesn't matter" even though they started the conversation.
The 2A advocate would back up to claiming that Biden probably did want to take everyone's guns away, and that his more mild political positions were just a way of being palatable to the broader populace. And even if they don't then Biden's at least carrying water for the more extreme factions that want to do so. This is symmetrical to what Darwin is claiming with JK Rowling.
It's not false at all that at least some factions of the Republican party want to eliminate trans people, although this need not necessarily mean "death camps". For some it probably does mean death camps though.
I don't really see your issue with Darwin here overall:
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Is it that he didn't explicitly admit he was wrong about the point on JK Rowling? Nobody every does this in debates, especially once things get heated. At best you'll get implicit acceptance as they move to different points.
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Is it that his original post had an offhanded bailey in it that he abandoned to focus on defending the motte instead? See my prior post: yeah, it's a bit annoying, but it's very common.
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Is it that he didn't bother to defend the bailey even though that's a prime area where Amadan wanted to press him on? You mentioned him saying "it doesn't matter" was a problem, but obviously people shouldn't be forced to defend dumb positions if they'd rather give up and just implicitly accept an L on a given topic.
Jiro
3hr ago
I don't see how that's relevant. Is someone who wants to stop the suffering of non-cute animals counting it too much?
Sure, when someone says that insect suffering counts at 15% of human suffering, he's counting it too much, but that doesn't generalize. In the more general case "tries to stop animal suffering efficiently", how exactly is he counting it too much?
Turniper
4hr ago
My car is 18 years old. I think it's gotten one wash in the last 6 years. I tend to wash it whenever I needed to vacuum it anyway. It's perfectly serviceable.
gattsuru
4hr ago
while something like this gets AAQC'd.
I would be very, very, very interested to see you explain exactly what in that post you believe is objectionable, "hostile", or "delusional".
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
4hr ago
I'm often startled at how culturally significant the Matrix has been. The sequels weren't all that good, the plot of the original was strange and confusing, and the concept of "the world is revealed to be an illusion" has been done better -- but the concept of the colored pills, bullet time, and Laurence Fishburne's performance as Morpheus just made the movie hard to forget. The strange aesthetic made it both confusing and memorable. (Sometimes I think the flaws of Star Wars did the same -- both the OT and the prequels have diehard fans precisely because they were tacky and disjointed. The sequels are so polished, but they're polished like a turd.)
The Matrix definitely sticks out in my memory, but personally I'd rather everyone take the Christpill from Catholic Morpheus.
07mk
4hr ago
I'm sure many people with greater expertise in pedagogy than me could come up with better ideas, if they're looking at the students based on truth rather than on wishful thinking. One idea that comes to mind is having different tracks based on student competency and making sure that school performance isn't measured by overall performance but rather based on how students on each track meet their goals. And perhaps focus on career training for low IQ jobs for the lower tracks instead of academics, at least beyond the 3 Rs.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4hr ago
If you and I were talking about US presidents, and I called Trump and Biden pieces of shit, that wouldn't be great but it'd be much less bad than if I called you specifically a piece of shit
That's exactly how I understood your argument, but my point is it doesn't work if you accept the logic of Darwin's argument, because in that case it wouldn't be calling you specifically, a piece of shit. You don't even enter the conversation. It's just about people like you, which is not at all connected to you specifically.
-"Biden wants to take all our guns!" -"No he doesn't" -"OK but he's the Democratic president, and there are Democratic factions that want to do that"
Kinda missing the part about backing away to a claim about Biden specifically that they think is more defensible, it turning out to also be also be false, and then saying "it doesn't matter" even though they started the conversation.
Stuff like this happens all the time. People rarely get all that fussed over it.
I don't think it does, and I don't think anyone would say "you only hate him because he's right wing" if you got fed up talking to a guy like that after many conversations over the course of several years.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
4hr ago
But this is madness, and I do not believe that you would ever accept the framework off aggregating assholes by ideology, and deploying moderatory actions adjusted for that
I'm not asking for that. I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it for genuinely woke people as a form of affirmative action for opposing views, and it should be noted that I wouldn't see myself as being a beneficiary of that if it were implemented since I'm not woke myself.
What I'd like as a baseline is consistent enforcement across ideologies where things like personal attacks get a warning or a ban no matter who they're coming from. As it stands right now, we're in a regime where right-leaning people freely make personal attacks and only rarely get modded even if they're reported, while left-leaning people get banned off of vibes and convoluted notions that they're being "manipulative".
gattsuru
4hr ago
My typical rule-of-thumb is 1/4 lb per adult per meal if you have a lot of sides, 3/4 lb per adult if meat's most of the food. Lot of it's going to depend on how long the guests are staying (one meal or two) and how picky you'd expect them to be if you run out of one protein. Probably going to end up with a decent amount of leftovers unless they're staying for both lunch and dinner. That said, almost all of these will store well in a fridge for 4-6 days, and they'll mix in well with pasta (everything but the chicken) or rice (everything) dishes pretty easily, so as long as you've got fridge space I dunno that I'd be that worried about leftovers.
I don't grill often, but there's a lot of great kabob recipes that just can't be done in an oven or air frier. Might take one variation on that.
Can't say anything on the alcohol side; I can barely drink beer or wine, and while I can drink hard liquor I've never developed enough of a taste to distinguish more than rough categories.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
4hr ago
I'd probably go with number 2 and a bit of 3. I would likely think slightly worse of someone who acts that way, but not to the point I'd say or do much about it.
I think that the majority of our intuitions about the distasteful nature of torturing animals arises from the fact that, in the modern day, the majority of people who do such a thing are socio/psychopaths and hence dangerous to their fellow man.
This is not a universal unchanging truth! You don't have to go very far back in time to find societies and cultures where randomly kicking dogs and torturing cats was no big deal, and great fun for the whole gang. Even today, many small kids will tear wings off flies without being sociopaths or psychopaths. They get trained out of expressing such behavior.
If a person got their kicks out of torturing animals, but didn't demonstrate other reasons for me to be concerned about them, I don't really care.
On a slight tangent, I don't care about animal rights or welfare. The fact that a cutesy little cow had to die to make a steak means nothing to me. I'm still only human, so I feel bad if I see someone mistreat a dog, and might occasionally intervene if my emotions get too strong. That's an emotional response, not an intellectual one, because I think the crime they're commuting is equivalent to property damage, and they have the right to treat their own property as they will. This doesn't stop me from loving my own two dogs, and being willing to use severe violence on anyone who'd hurt them. But it's the fact that they're my dogs that makes it so, and I wouldn't donate money to the RSPCA.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
4hr ago
Are sexual offenders going to testify that they confessed their sins and then the priest didn't provide testimony to the state? Will the state be bugging confessionals?
While I understand that privilege has a precise legal situation, where a defendent themselves can claim it, I don't know if the legislators are thinking of it that way. I believe the point is they want priests to testify, if they find out some accused person has a confessor, they want to be able to compel that priest to testify in court. Not a lawyer, but I suspect you're right, and this wouldn't stand up as evidence in a real courtroom. But Washington wants that power, the legislature despises that religions allow people to confess a serious crime to a spiritual leader without that spiritual leader having to report it. Mandatory reporting rules are probably the ultimate target; apparently there was a court case in Louisiana about that topic.
Of course, the view of the Catholic Church is that priests should be willing to be imprisoned or die, even, rather than reveal something told to them in the confessional. A priest who does it is supposed to be punished severely -- the old Lateran canon said they would be imprisoned, basically, in a monastery for life as penance, and more recent canon law is simply excommunication. The moral theologians argued that a priest should lie and say they know nothing when asked about a person's sins.
Personally, I think this could become an asylum situation. This is probably a strength of the temporal power of the Pope. Before it was abused by economic migrants, the concept of asylum was supposed to apply to situations like this: where the laws of the state penalize or compel activity that it shouldn't against a specific targeted person. I've read that applications for ending the excommunication of a person who commits a sin that incurs automatic excommunication (abortion, apostasy, eucharistic desecration, etc) are often sent in diplomatic pouches. So the principle of the Pope using international law to protect the seal of the confessional is already in use.
A lot of Marxist false consciousness and its derivatives seems very reminiscent of certain ideas about the demiurge.
The Matrix is obviously a big Gnostic metaphor (the machines have pulled the wool over our eyes and trapped us inside a false reality, we must see the truth and escape into the real world; machines = Demiurge). The Wachowskis later claimed that they'd always intended the film as a metaphor for coming out as trans, which inspired a lot of eyerolls and accusations of revisionism. But I don't think that's the case at all, I really do think that's what they intended at the time of writing:
the reason this interpretation doesn't jump out at most people is because they're approaching gender ideology from the perspective of "most people are cis, but some people are trans and that's okay and they deserve respect and compassion" as opposed to the perspective of "everyone is trans, but most have been brainwashed into believing they're cis - freethinkers whose eggs have hatched see the truth". Cypher is a detransitioner and also a cowardly traitorous villain: not a coincidence.
Everything about trans activism, really, has Gnostic undertones: the very concept of a "gender identity" which is wholly distinct from one's sex is obviously sneaking dualism in by the backdoor, but the way so many trans people talk about being trapped inside these nauseating flesh prisons and their transhumanistic desire to mould, slice and sculpt their bodies to better achieve their embodiment goals carries a big whiff of it too. This is part of a broader trend since the emergence of the internet towards Gibson's "relaxed contempt for the flesh": the tendency to see your body not as "you" but as a tool or vehicle you are controlling. Sometimes this can end up in weird science-denial places: fat acceptance activists who deny that the laws of physics apply to human beings just as much as anything else, that the only thing that can cause disease is mean words and fat shaming. It almost seems to come off like a denial of the existence of an objective external world: instead, we are all just souls trapped inside flesh prisons, and the only way one soul can be harmed is if another soul inflicts harm upon it.
At the extremes, you get into whatever the Zizians were doing, with their outré decision theory ideas about doing whatever it would be optimal for every one of your paraselves to do elsewhere in the multiverse - but they're a noncentral idea of the trend I'm describing.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
4hr ago
self_made_human
C'est la vie
4hr ago
That is a far more reasonable take, but once again, I'd say that the most likely alternative is death. I really don't want to be dead!
There also ways to mitigate the risk. You can self-host your uploads, which I'd certainly do if that was an option. You could have multiple copies running, if there's 10^9 happy flourishing self_made_humans out there, it would suck to be the couple dozen being tortured by people who really hate me because of moderation decisions made on an underwater basket weaving community before the Singularity, but that's acceptable for me. I expect that we would have legal and technical safeguards too, such as some form of tamper-protection and fail-deadly in place.
Can I guarantee someone won't make a copy of me that gets vile shit done to it? Not at all, I just think there are no better options even given Deep Time. It beats being information-theoretically dead, at which point I guess you just have to pray for a Boltzmann Brain that looks like you to show up.
And if that was true about us, then your opinion or mine considering the ethics of mind emulation would be utterly irrelevant. Not to mention that it wouldn't be the world of Lena, exactly. The entire point of Lena is that the simulation is very different from reality, in the worse direction.
I think your true belief in what counts as death will be revealed once death starts breathing down your current biophysical instantiation's neck, and conflating deep sleep with death will not look so convincing.
If continuity of consciousness isn't a big deal then we can forget the assumption that consciousness is tied to specific mind patterns at all. Maybe one second you're self_made_human, and another second you're Katy Perry, and the next second yet is spent in a nascent Boltzmann brain halfway across the observed universe.
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