domain:questioner.substack.com
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
3hr ago
I like people who engage with the messiness and admit to the limits of knowledge over those who claim to have it all reduced to smooth lines and platonic ideals with certainty.
You should certainly make an effort to study philosophy then! It's right up your alley. (The tradition of philosophers tearing down Platonic ideals goes back to at least Plato.)
TeknOShEeP
3hr ago
Engage maximum cynacism mode! No nukes are needed. In fact, nukes are overrated. Two squadrons of B-52s can drop the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb via conventional ordnance, except those can all be individually targeted down to an arbitrarily precise degree as smart bombs, and so are actually far more devastating. 80% of Iraq's oil is clustered in the southeast, you just blow any civilization near them off of the map, occupy the oil fields, and declare a 200km buffer zone between your occupation area on top of the oil fields and the rest of Iraq. Anything or anyone that enters the buffer zone will be destroyed without warning.
Literal robbery? Absolutely. But perhaps more humane in the long run that the almost quarter-century clusterfuck we have now.
07mk
3hr ago
You discuss school and jobs, but I don't think any of that applies to entertainment media. Yes, it's usually good that we force children to go to school. It might even be good if we were to force adults to go to work, even ones that are independently wealthy or happy enough to subsist on welfare. But entertainment media? We currently have no way of forcing adults to watch certain pieces of media that we think would be good for them. Adults have pretty free choice - today more than ever - to seek out entertainment media as they wish, and though "high art" stuff are very very niche, they're still a significant niche.
This indicates that people actually seek this stuff out voluntarily. Where I see gen-AI being a boon for this is that we can have far higher throughput of art that is considered "good" by whatever "high art" standards are held by people with taste and discernment and [whatever characteristic that true connoisseurs have], and also for far more custom artworks that provide exactly the right amount of challenge to enrich someone's life without being so challenging as to make them shut down and reject it.
And building on that, there's also the fact that it's quite possible to train AI on media that makes people go, "I expected that to be really bad, but it barely piqued my interest enough to check it out, and I'm glad I did," versus ones that make people go, "I expected that to be really bad, and there was nothing about it that piqued my interest, so I decided not to check it out," versus ones that make people go, "I expected that to be really bad, but it barely piqued my interest enough to check it out, and I regret doing so," as well as many other combinations of similar concepts. And I don't see why some near-future gen-AI couldn't generate media that creates reactions similar to the first one while avoiding the latter ones fairly consistently.
faceh
3hr ago
My generalized advice for finding a friend group: learn to fight.
That's your best chance at finding physically fit, socially active, yet potentially nerdy male friends out there. 28 is a fine age to start. That's where I found the core of my current social group.
Online friend groups can be great but you really need to be having gatherings in physical space, where a woman can actually see you in person and you can actually monopolize her attention for a while if you want.
I'm speaking as someone who has had to completely rebuild/reform friend groups like half-a-dozen times over the years, and may have to do so again soon, since most of the dudes in my current group have gotten into stable relationships and... predictably, are putting less time in being social. And the guys who are still around are, unfortunately, the ones who've had bad luck with women.
All that is to say that it will work, but you might have to be the guy who does most of the hard work up front.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3hr ago
If your doctor's office uses an app, it's probably Healow. I'm not even aware of another one.
Mine uses Medical Brain.
Corvos
3hr ago
Broadly, the anti-free-speech perspective is that ‘having an advantage in the realm of ideas’ != ‘having an advantage in the realm of propagating ideas’.
Indeed, your ideas bring true can (from this perspective) be a significant disadvantage because you cannot dress them up as prettily or make them as appealing as someone whose ideas are all lies.
HermeneuticsOfVibes
3hr ago
Relabelling an unpopular idea rarely, if ever, works. The fundamental problem is that free speech, called by any other name, is no longer popular. If you doubt this fact, find whatever the most incinidary post of the day made by a [left/right] aligned person is, then ask a [right/left] aligned group if said speech should be "platformed".
The reality you have to operate in now is one where free speech, is deeply unpopular, insofar as said speech is something inflammatory that the reader is outraged by. The slogan you so despise is just people broadcasting their honest, genuine intent: "there should be consequences to speech I disagree with".
BahRamYou
3hr ago
So, as someone who once wanted to be a professor but gave up on it because I'm a white male with some non-woke beliefs and the whole thing seemed hopelessly rigged against me... is there any chance for me to go back into academia now and get a position? or is it still just clogged with way too many grad students chasing way too few tenured positions, and the whole system rigged in favor of woke types?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3hr ago
what you would predict based on dysgenic fertility
How does that work? Under what population parameters?
07mk
3hr ago
Correct. So those who are against free speech on the basis of conflict theory are openly admitting that they don't believe that they have an advantage in the realm of ideas. And people are absolutely allowed to believe, "My ideas are bad, but it should win over the good ideas anyway, and I will make it so through smashing the skulls of the proponents of the good ideas." But I don't think that's something they actually believe. I think they actually believe that their ideas are good, i.e. have an advantage in the realm of ideas. And I think their behavior indicates that they're deathly insecure about this belief and are deathly fearful of what might happen if someone checks.
faceh
3hr ago
Funny, one large reason I post is to poke holes in 'mindblowing' arguments or to just point out some glaring counterexample that demolishes up a convenient narrative if acknowledged.
I've come to learn that the way the world 'really' works is messy and on the fringes is quite unknowable, and I've come to gain an instinctive skepticism towards anyone who claims to have a insight that explains large, abstract phenomena.
I like people who engage with the messiness and admit to the limits of knowledge over those who claim to have it all reduced to smooth lines and platonic ideals with certainty.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4hr ago
How many folks on the motte are into "emotional work," or self improvement, therapy, etc?
I have found a lot of value in practices designed to get you in touch with your emotions like somatic emotional meditations, loving kindness meditation, and even some IFS style stuff where you say loving things to yourself in the mirror, etc.
Unfortunately, being a relatively conservative Orthodox Christian, I find it quite difficult to explain the benefit of these practices to others in my social circles. I'm admittedly a relatively recent convert (in the last few years) but I do take the faith very seriously.
Anyway, just curious if other people here are open to this sort of thing?
felipec
unbelief
4hr ago
We should tabboo both "freedom of speech" and your proposed "Open Ideas." The contention in these debates is that we have an obligation to forebear from certain courses of action in response to certain speech acts by others.
But humans need words to communicate -- and apparently so do other rational agents. It's nearly imposible to talk about empathy, mass formation psychosis, rent-seeking, woke ideology, frequency illusion, etc. without using these words.
Did I breach an obligation to A by these actions?
That doesn't depend on either freedom of speech or Open Ideas.
07mk
4hr ago
So if the fallacy of the left is to expect that any inequality of the racial distribution of tenured faculty is proof of unfairness, the fallacy of the right is to believe that any inequality of the political distribution of tenured faculty is proof of unfairness.
There's a distinct asymmetry here, though. In that there are loads of documented recent evidence of people in power explicitly and openly encouraging unfairness of the latter kind, while you have to go back quite a few decades before you encounter anywhere near the same density of such official documentation (well, at least in the direction that is being discussed, anyway; certainly there's no shortage of recent official documentation that explicitly calls for discriminating against members of white/Asian races in academia). Perhaps, more importantly, diversity of political orientation is material to an organization's ability to perform academic research (and more generally to discover truth) in a way that one's race isn't. As such, there's an argument in favor of AA in cases of political orientation that doesn't exist for race or other immutable-characteristic-based ones.
I still think this would cast MAGA as hypocrites and unprincipled, but mainly because (a) they're unprincipled hypocrites anyway for independent reasons and (b) the people who would judge MAGA as unprincipled based on this are motivated to be sloppy in their thinking in order to judge as such no matter what, anyway.
oats_son
4hr ago
I have been doing some more thinking, and I think the "no sex before marriage" thing was predicated on a lot of things: that people got married really early on, that parents could much more closely watch their kids to ensure nothing bad happened, and that they could not easily get divorced. I think evangelical Christianity misses some of the nuances, and unfortunately, male evolutionary psychology also doesn't appreciate that people tend to have more sexual relationships now, on average.
There are people who don't give a shit about any of this and enjoy sex but experience no real FOMO or distress when they don't have it for long periods of time.
Yeah, that probably describes me. Thanks for writing this, helps me feel more normal. I've been thinking about sex a lot more lately now that getting married seems possible for me, but I do still want it to only happen with someone I'm fairly serious with. I just don't know how long I should wait once the relationship starts, or how long the particular woman will tolerate.
felipec
unbelief
4hr ago
Interesting. I tried the same, but the earliest I could find were comments from 2010, and it's the same thing: people were already using as if it was part of the Zeitgeist, but no source.
This reminds me of cargo cults. People suddenly start repeating some dogma with zero understanding why it's there in the first place.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4hr ago
I feel pretty darn maskless here. I can talk about Jewish influence on Western politics, and I can talk about my deep abiding desire to become a woman. Rare is the space that tolerates both.
I think what he means is that the place is perfectly open to Google CrawlBot, and how many AGP antisemites can there be in the world? Between your posts here, and the rest of your Internet fingerprint, you might get got like Light Yagami.
Some of us have come to terms with it, even as we maintain a fig leaf of plausible deniability, but he might not be ready for it.
TheDemonRazgriz
4hr ago
Completely forgot to respond to this— thanks for the informative reply. Sounds like you have an interesting job! The substantial difference with previous secretaries is definitely concerning, as is the general sense of dysfunction you’re describing. Maybe he was a good politician but a not-so-good administrator, appointed above his level of competence? I’ll certainly keep this in mind about him.
felipec
unbelief
4hr ago
I don't agree with this mistake/conflict categorization, but if you are going to use it, what I'm saying that conflict theorists don't seem particularly interested in understanding what freedom of speech was supposed to be either.
It's not possible to move forward when neither side is interested in reframing freedom of speech to what it was supposed to be.
ControlsFreak
4hr ago
I spelled out how exactly you were missing anything approaching a plan, specifically for universities.
I mean, I guess there's a sentence about somehow getting settlement money from them to Elon, but not a single sense of what that sort of thing might actually look like. How the mechanics of it could work. I'm not even looking for a complete strategy, but some sort of something that a person can squint at and say, "Ah yes, I can mayyyybe imagine how that might work." Call it, say, "concepts of a plan".
Indeed, you did not have that. You literally had:
Let Trump's DA start suing universities left and right, and structure the settlements so that they have to give some Elon headed NGO all the money, so he can sue them some more long after Trump is out of office.
That's it. That's all you had. We can just read your comment and see that that's all that you had. How is that supposed to work? Give me an example, an idea, a process, an anything. You claim my ignorance is "tactical". I claim my ignorance is just ignorance. I honestly have no idea how this is supposed to work. I mean, can I just sue you right now in a way that lets my neighbor sue you some more in case I die next year? Just all out of magic or something?
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
4hr ago
It does not feel outside the panopticon, it doesn't feel like a place where one can take off their 'mask'.
I feel pretty darn maskless here. I can talk about Jewish influence on Western politics, and I can talk about my deep abiding desire to become a woman. Rare is the space that tolerates both.
For this feeling to go away, every layer of the structure will have to be unrelated to something that I consider hostile to myself
But this is just a phantasm that can never be realized, in particular because people are actually much more hostile to themselves than they realize.
Do you forgive yourself for being an imperfect human? Probably not, to be honest. But then, why would you expect anyone else to do it?
All you can really do at the end of the day is pick your poison.
oats_son
4hr ago
Wow, this is good advice! I saw some notifications and thought "damn, the AAQC must have brought more attention to this embarrassing thread", but thanks for the input.
I have had friend groups composed of "losers" with no cross-sex appeal, and I also saw possible friendships locally and watched them go by because they were with "losers". I get along with losers, but if I'm going to be friends with losers, they may as well be the most maximally entertaining to me, and I already have maximally entertaining losers (they're not really losers, they just can't really help me) in my online friend groups.
Turniper
4hr ago
I'm gonna necro this a bit (I mean, it's only been a week) to say, as someone in a 10 year relationship getting married in a few months, sexual compatibility is a huge deal. There are people who, after the initial honeymoon phase of a relationship ends (2-8 years or before first kid), will want to have sex 3-5 times a year. There are people who want to have sex once a day. There are people who prefer a more reasonable 3-5 times a week. There are people who are only interested in sex when they are in a good mood and after substantial foreplay. There are people for whom sticking it in is the foreplay. There are people whose sexual interests are dominated by one or more very specific paraphilias. There are people who just don't like sex and are only doing it because they don't want to be alone. There are people who don't give a shit about any of this and enjoy sex but experience no real FOMO or distress when they don't have it for long periods of time.
There are gender distributions to this traits, but none of the groups I mentioned are smaller than 10% of the population. People vary extremely wildly on this dimension. Unless you're one of the take it or leave its, you need to be on the same page about this to have a marriage-length relationship. That doesn't mean having sex before marriage, but it does mean talking about the subject in more detail than a lot of people are comfortable with. "Figure it out with each other" is a strategy that works maybe 50% of the time, and the other 50% either dooms you to eventual divorce or one or both parties perpetually being unsatisfied with whatever compromise you end up with.
I'll pop in a week late to say he's giving excellent advice up there on the general strategic level. And the only way to get better at the tactical level is to do it, over and over again.
The "Get a friend group and stick with them and build until you start running into attractive single women" is a workable strat, and avoids the main miseries of the current dating market. Pre-screening women before actually investing in them saves much grief.
There's a couple failure modes to avoid:
(1) Selection effects rule everything. Notice if the friends you're hanging out with are 'losers.' If your other friends aren't in relationships, or actively and successfully dating, or at least managing to bring women around to your social gatherings, and its usually just you all hanging out with each other... your hunt is not being served by sticking around. Indeed, its pulling you off course, and you'll get into a bad comfort zone that will be harder to leave the longer you stick around. Worst case these guys sabotage your attempts to find a mate out of jealousy or somesuch.
(2) The opposite problem also arises sometimes. If your male friends actually pair off and get married, the friend group will disintegrate. Its just what happens when a guy gets a serious relationship, can't do as much socialization (doesn't need to either). And I can say that being the sole single dude with a bunch of married or seriously dating guys kinda sucks. And unless those guys are still actively trying to get you hooked up, it will again start to run counter to your goals, since those guys aren't aligned with your goal of socializing with single women.
Basically, you may have to remake the social group a couple times as some members pair off and drop out or it becomes clear that they're dead weight. And unfortunately the longer a group persists, it can tend to be the losers who stick around b/c they can't pair off and they don't have much else going for them. You'll notice they're the ones who ALWAYS show up when you suggest something to do, as they don't have anything better going on, ever.
(3) Once you find someone attractive DO try and get a date relatively quickly and then ask for exclusivity relatively quickly after that because holy cow the friendzone does exist, and you can find yourself there without even knowing it happened. I define it mostly as a relationship position where any attempts to advance it romantically and/or sexually is 'awkward' due to the lack of sexual tension and overfamiliarity with the other person, and yet cutting it off feels inappropriate since neither party has done anything 'objectionable.' And then of course the girl in question might show up with a new BF without much warning and now you're in a pretty tight spot, emotionally speaking.
My only advice on that is definitely try to remain 'mysterious' as well as displaying your value and competence. Don't let a girl ever think she can just call you up and ask for favors, or do 'buddy' things with her (go out shopping, do brunch, binge watch shows without intending to bang), or understand your true motives. You want to remain in a superposition of "I could ask you out at any time/but I don't want to" until YOU make the decision to collapse the waveform.
(4) And a parting thought: If you have a good group of friends, don't ever leave them because of a woman. If both you and she are integrated in the friend group, and you break up (for relatively innocuous reasons), don't just let her have the friends and you move on. SHE will have a much easier time plugging into a new social group, so stand your ground to the extent you are able. And if your bros won't back you in that play, they're probably not your bros (or you did something horrible).
If this sounds like a lot of work, yes. It is. But its generally fun and rewarding and the skills are cross-applicable. It won't rip out parts of your soul like online dating or other rote relationship-seeking strategies.
Kind of. Compare "life" to a game though...
I don't know, someone needs to revamp this "life"
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