domain:web.law.duke.edu
cae_jones
5hr ago
Yeah. I'd describe it as slightly LDS-Flavored mystical hippy stuff that is totally not new age, for real you guys.
The main thing it reminds me of is discount Scientology, but way less scientology about it. The guy mentions his books, services, and other workshops ... occasionally. It has the structure of a lot of 30-50min Youtube ads, where they tell you something cool's coming, then spend half an hour on vague anecdotes, but there are also exercises (which are actually more scary than the part where the guy heard his toddler say he was Jesus, once, and did everything short of saying outright that he believes it, still, decades later).
What makes it work for the participants, I think, is a mix of insistent but meaningless afirmations (formally showering people with complements, talking about enough universal love and transcendant joy that he had to have met the cactus man in the 60s or 70s, telling people how awesome their spirit-realm self is). And there's the thing where people are encouraged to work through their issues with conversations crafted to get them crying and/or screaming by the end, incidentally revealing some very sensitive personal trauma at the top of their lungs to the whole room in the process, and ... OK, it's clearly not actually therapudic. Rather, it's getting people high on intense emotional expression, and using that to get them hooked.
Mainly, though, the people who stick around are clearly emotionally or relationally vulnerable, or the boyfriends that said vulnerable girlfriends convinced to join them. My friend says she's grown a lot and improved since she started going, but her resentment toward her family feels like it's grown (I also heard her complaining about how they're encouraging her to get out of it and move back in with siblings, the latter part of which would bother me more if her entire social circle weren't made of people involved in the thing), she's gone from the anxious but determined and genuinely positive person from a few years ago to a generally grumpy and discontent person using "inner child" / "energy work" things to cope. Other people were in much darker places, and it seems like the workshops are the only outlet they practically have, but it does nothing to improve the underlying issues, and, IMO, trains them to get high off expressing their suffering and just kinda hoping that enough love-bombing and emotionality-induced ecstacy will get them to project a more positive countenance for all the people they're encouraged to invite.
Also, a dad brought his 12-year-old daughter, who is already getting pressured by women in the group to come to "the awakening" in a couple months. Cue the first time I've heard a 12-year-old use the "I'm only 12" excuse totry and end an awkward conversation (which backfired and got her showered in more encouragement).
I tried going along with the exercises to see what would happen, but since I don't have daddy/mommy issues and get the impression that Spider-man's mantra was not going to fit in with all the "I AM PERFECT! EXPRESS LOVE!" speeches, and I already suck at communication period, that ... did not go well. I can't theatrically get in front of everyone and loudly weep about regretting ... Hold on, I think I just realized why I'm immune to the bullshit. Namely because it's the distilled and unrestrained essence of the hippy style stuff that was pervasive in 90s edutainment and motivational PSAs, turned up to 9001, and I took that stuff seriously in elementary school, only to unwittingly become a jerk by 11, and spend the next decade progressively recovering from the problematic stuff that was mixed in with my arrogant teenaged worldview. They might have gotten me before, let's say 2010 or so.
Mostly, at this point, it seems like 90% of my friend's life now revolves around this thing, every day she talks about how brilliant the leader is (he emphatically is not and 90+% of what he's said has been garbage at best, but, uh, a less toxic way of communicating that would be helpful ... ), she's taking on a leadership role and started a coaching business, and lost other friends who she brought in and crashed out hard by this point in the process. Also, I haven't asked her how she found it, yet, but she somehow revealed on the second night that her boyfriend's ex (who he was dating whhe first got with her but told neither woman about this) was there. And the only interactions I've any evidence of between her and him is one conversation (facilitated by another member, over the phone) and a few texts. She's actually in my hotel right now, because she let another member have her bed and couldn't get her boyfriend to host her for the night. (Bro, if he'll cheat with you, he'll cheat on you. And she desperately wants to get married.) Everything she wants mostou of this, as she expressed it to me, is directly harmed by her being involved, and I have no idea whatsoever how to deal with this.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
5hr ago
The fact that a bullshit e-commerce company that profits off of male insecurity took the time to say "bald is sexy" makes me seriously question your unsubstantiated assertion.
hooser
5hr ago
But increasingly, the only roles which are prestigious in modernity are those of white collar undefined-what-the-value-add-here-is jobs and those of pushing the bounds of theoretical knowledge(much of it actually more the philosophy of fartsniffing).
Michael Church's 3-ladder system of US social class offers a much better model of prestige. In broad strokes, there are three ladders of social status:
- Labor, with aspirations towards high-skill labor and leadership;
- Gentry, with aspirations towards white-collar professions and cultural influence;
- Elites, with aspirations towards power.
You have described aspirations for Gentry, decrying the lack of the aspirations for Labor, and completely disregarding the existence of Elites.
2rafa
5hr ago
Climate of London (5-25 C for most of the year), weather of somewhere sunnier, like NYC.
I once read a comment here that said "being a doctor is one of the most prestigious things you can be". And I just thought... really? Really? I mean it's an important job, don't get me wrong. Thank you for your services. I'm happy for them that they're making a lot of money. But at the end of the day it's, from my perspective, still just another job. Doctors are, modulo individual technical skill, fungible, and fungibility is antithetical to prestige as far as I'm concerned.
There's a game I like to play whenever I go to a new country or region, and that game is 'what job does this culture value most?', as measured by 'what careers do parents, but especially mothers, try to push their children towards?' Or, more flippantly, 'where do the best and brightest get pushed towards?'
There are absolutely countries where being a doctor is uber-prestigious. Korean mothers had (still have, presumably) a reputation for pushing their children hard in that direction. By contrast, an adult who, say, stayed in the professional military beyond the conscription requirement had the stigma of 'maybe they couldn't cut it.' If they were better, they'd get a better job.
But as you note, that sort of prestige isn't a given. Doctoring doesn't get any easier, but there are places in the west where they aren't as respected / striven towards as, say, lawyers. Or financial services. And let's not get into truly different cultures. There are cultures where a military service is considered prestigious (often when access to the military is selective/limited, as opposed to 'scraping the bottom of the barrel). In parts of the middle east, a religious education / islamic religious certification is something broader families take great pride in. Etc. etc. etc.
The game I referenced before comes from how inevitably, any sort of socio-cultural 'list your top X most prestigious jobs you'd be proud of your kids having' tends to leave more than a few highly relevant jobs off for those who are not as good or gifted. It can be fun to (gently! in good faith!) tease out those gaps in social values versus social impact. Surprisingly, not as many people as you might think put 'going into politics' as 'prestigious' for their best and brightest kids... and so who can be surprised when politicians are viewed as midwits? Or 'just' government service? And so on?
If you ever need a cross-culture icebreaker conversation on a low-key social drinking, that's a good one. It's a good way to get your counterpart to open up about their background, why they are in the job they are in, and even what they feel about it- all of which are good for your personal/professional relationship. It's also an opportunity for some comradery, since no matter where they are in their own country's relative preference stack, there's usually another culture where their job would be in as high or even higher esteem (and thus you can signal recognition/respect that their culture may not ascribe to them). Alternatively, if they are highly placed and they know it, you can get them out of their normal headspace by inviting them to wonder what other jobs they might have had in a different context- something which gets them outside of their familiar context of knowing all the things they need to know.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
6hr ago
Whats the "ussri" name about btw?
He stuck to a regime and has a beard, which, if not quite Dwarkesh Patel standards, is eminently respectable.
As far as I know, beard minoxidil doesnt need to be kept up. Androgenic hair is easy to get and usually sticks around.
But this only holds if all the numbers are accurate and independent
I dont think Bayes theorem requires its numbers to be independent (whatever it would mean for a conditional to be independent of its condition).
It's no surprise I didn't think of this, since my anecdotal evidence is that there's no shortage of ungracefully balding Indian uncles both at home and abroad. But the numbers don't lie here.
It might be quite heterogenous within India, too.
curious_straight_ca
6hr ago
Sure but you can see how we should have higher standards for supreme court justices than "a bit above average for judges"?
curious_straight_ca
6hr ago
just that it comes across as below the standards of this board to imply that someone who has risen to the rank of Supreme Court Justice acts the way they do because of low intellectual capacity
... why? I don't read Supreme Court opinions much so I don't have an opinion on it myself, but this is the kind of thing that could be true, and would have significant political implications if so. Sotomayor being dumb isn't just a personal insult, it's a fact about a person that would make their rulings worse. And that the impact of her being maybe dumb is blunted by the rest of the court being less doesn't make it not worth discussing - if true, a trend of appointing more people like that could be really bad for the country! And it doesn't have to be an outgroup thing, you could easily imagine Trump getting mad about fedsoc judges 'cucking' and appointing some low IQ people himself.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
6hr ago
I think the first one is that transaction costs in Africa are 1.5x transaction costs in not-Africa, although it's misleadingly worded.
I will also note that "X costs 1.5x what it should" = "1/3 the cost of X is unnecessary".
Thinking that an argument by assigned terminology ("magic") is remotely persuasive is a delusion. You're also deluded as to what you think "religious people" "admit". Your bare, unquestioning faith in bad metaphysics probably also rises to the level of being a delusion.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
7hr ago
I don’t really think that “food insecurity” which is how im understanding his bizarre ideas about controlling colored people with food, is a neutral or red idea. I’ve really only heard it in blue leaning areas. As is his concern about said colored people as a group separate from poverty issues. Reds don’t tend to do that, they tend to talk about poverty as a problem and solve for poverty, with a pretty strong allergy to bringing up race in most contexts. It’s almost a useful heuristic at this point. A person who brings up minorities unbidden when talking about an unrelated subject is likely a blue.
TIRM
7hr ago
Ideal weather? Southern to central coastal California. Warmish and dry. Humidity is the great enemy and it is not present here. I'm fine with snowy winters, it is muggy wet summers that are intolerable.
white collar undefined-what-the-value-add-here-is jobs
The thing is, a lot of ‘traditional’ jobs are bullshit now.
Farmers: half the EU’s budget is agricultural subsidies (edit: 37% in 2017, down from 70% in 1980). The other main source of income for them is when the village council declares their land constructible, another form of subsidy. The production of food is just some hypothetical scenario (they get paid to leave the land uncultivated) these real estate guys known as farmers dangle to soak up more subsidies.
Japan completely protects their rice farmers from competition (with subsidies on top), so to keep their WTO commitments, they are forced to buy rice on the international market, which they let rot until they can feed it to animals. The asian rice penury from 2008 was solved when Japan got permission from american farmers to sell their useless rice back to the international market(wiki, asianometry video). The latest round of farmer absurdity was EU farmers forcing a tariff on ukrainian exports: the country the EU is currently shoveling money to, whose economy they’re trying to keep running. Robbing peter to pay paul so that piotr and pierre can steal it back from paul to pretend their job has any economic value.
Teachers: we are massively over-educated, and they make it worse. Doubly useless, they encourage others to be non-productive. A university professor who rants alone in a room would only be half as damaging. To be fair the early teachers do provide daycare for the normal kids and prison guard duties for those who can't read.
Doctors: Attending to hypochondriacs and prolonging old people’s suffering.
Soteriologian
8hr ago
The story is a bit cheesy, and takes itself more seriously than is merited given its quality.
But the battle system is really unusual and really fun. I did two challenge runs with it in the past year: gambits only (no issuing any manual commands during combat) and Vaan solo, both of which were challenging enough to be fun but not so difficult as to be frustrating or infuriating.
The Blind Men and an Elephant
The parable of the blind men and an elephant is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the animal's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the animal based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true. [from wikipedia.]
As someone who travels between cultures frequently, I find myself thinking a lot about this parable. Everywhere I go, different people in different places have developed different views and interpretations of the world, but the underlying fundamentals of reality remain unaffected by mere human perception and interpretation. In other words, the elephant remains the same regardless of the spot we’re poking at, rubbing against or cutting into.
I find myself reorienting what I experience and perceive from the viewpoint of my background and upbringing, shaped to some degree by my current context. When I meet new people, I compare them to people I was raised around, my friends and family back home. When I try new foods I orient them in relation to foods I was raised with and are most used to. When I experience new weather patterns I compare them to the climate of my birth. Inextricably I am linked to the time and place of my upbringing.
I was raised in a chaotic home environment between divorced parents. My mother was very strict and had many rules, while my father was very lax and enforced very few rules. My mother raised me in the Protestant church while I attended Catholic school for two years, then I was switched to public school in third grade. The inconsistency between Protestant, Catholic and secular worldviews left me very disenchanted by competing narratives and viewpoints that each assert their own contradicting universal realities which I remain suspicious of today.
General artificial intelligence could be capable of synthesizing the perspectives and contexts of every place and time into one universal viewpoint. Mapping out the elephant of the world with more objectivity seems more plausible than ever before. The self assuredness of modernity and the arrogance of postmodernity (Fukuyama’s end of history, for example) are likely to be dwarfed by the self assurance of any newly synthesized panopticon of awareness that an AGI could run on.
But would an AGI be capable of synthesizing every view of the elephant into one accurate rendering of reality at all, or would it merely be able to switch from one perspective to another? The Japanese conception of reality works well enough in the Japanese context, and my basic understanding or exposure to it is amusing enough to me as an outsider, but start poking at it a bit and the construction begins to fall apart. We westerners are just as bound by the false or skewed construction of the Western viewpoint, which is difficult for us to perceive the limits and contradictions of.
I wonder if the AGI will be a Tower of Babel of sorts that could give the illusion of unity and progress but that ends up dividing us further than ever before.
Actually, the thought of a universal synthesized view of the world is what is most frightening to me because it is so utterly foreign to anything we’ve ever come up with ourselves. Either we will discover things we never wanted to know about ourselves and the universe, or we will fail to discover those things and create an even more dystopian world that further reinforces the skewed, convenient beliefs that I believe we already build our societies on.
——
Many people on the right believe that right wing thinking is fundamentally the position of believing in the power to change things: The power to make different decisions, free will, and so on. But in my years of reading right wing thought, the concept that feels the most fundamentally grounding in right wing theory is the idea that nature remains constant. That is, that the elephant remains the elephant regardless of our interpretation. This is the most reassuring concept to me in right wing thinking: that I don’t need to make the Sisyphean effort to rewire my reaction to things outside my control, that I can just accept them as immutable forces of nature and move on with my life. I also think this is a more loving, understanding view of the fundamentals of reality compared with the left’s struggle to undermine them.
lagrangian
8hr ago
DM me if you'd like a (free) practice interview + feedback or just general advice. (I'm a FAANG SWE.)
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
9hr ago
Minoxidil alone will not do much. You'll keep losing hair, fin is the most important intervention, pretty safe. Some people do experience heart issues when they ingest minoxidil orally. Topical use is safe.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
9hr ago
Because you look worse because of it in most cases. Hair changes your face a lot. Beyond just the look, the hair is a sign of youth as young people have more of it. Some rare cases may look better, most can't.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
9hr ago
No one I know wears puffy jackets in 30 degrees, including desert dwellers.
I would have to wear an overcoat to roam around in sub 10 degree weather. Women surprisingly don't feel the affects of temperature when they have to wear revealing clothes. Something funny I noticed.
BigLoom
9hr ago
I think your last point sums it up pretty well. The press is going to work over time to find SOME form of justification to deflect away from whatever his real motives are. I'm not saying he was a Dem agent, but that is something that he himself stated and it is something which should be investigated with transparency and honesty which is something I do not see forthcoming from the establishment or the media. The truth is probably more muddled but seeing that Tim Walz is implicated in some manner, I have very little faith that we'll ever know the real truth about what happened.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
9hr ago
Sam was willing to stand for something, it did burn him for a little but ensured that long term, he has better odds. I saw the preview for extreme peace and wish to watch all of it soon.
YouTube is worse now than it was in 2010, Sam is a throwback to back when the internet was not the normie saturated place it is now.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
9hr ago
Do you believe that Tim Waltz actually directed this man to kill state politicians to clear up seats for him to run for the Senate?
I am going to say that this is almost certainly a lie. I've been watching the story develop as well, and have been updating against my previous prediction that this guy was a Red ideologue, and in favor of him being a straightforward wacko. I'm not sure how this shifts the calculus; if he were a Red ideologue, claiming Tim Waltz put him up to it makes this an after-the-fact false flag, but it's also compatible with serious delusion.
I would estimate a roughly 0% chance that he is a democrat operative, or that any amount of "training" he received from "elements of the US military" is anything at all resembling the median image evoked by that phrase. If I visit a shooting range with a buddy in the guard, I'm "receiving training from elements of the US military". That doesn't make me John Rambo.
Reporting on his previous activities shows a clear pattern of delusional/manic energy animating his various schemes.
However, in the preceding years, Boelter seemed like a hard worker striving to make his ideas real, and sometimes, struggling to make ends meet. His fervent personality frothed with big, civic-minded ideas on how to "make the world a better place," Kalech said. In the professional relationship they had, Boelter was clearly "idealistic."
"I think he sincerely believed in the projects that we worked on, that he was acting for the greater good," Kalech told ABC News. "I certainly never got the impression he saw himself as a savior. He just thought of himself as a smart guy who figured out the solution to problems, and it's not so difficult – so let's just do it. Like a call to action kind of person." Most of those grand-scale projects never came to fruition, and the last time Kalech said he had contact with Boelter was May 2022. But in planning documents and PowerPoint presentations shared with ABC News, which Kalech said Boelter wrote for the web design, Boelter detailed lengthy proposals that expressed frustration with what he saw as unjust suffering that needed to be stopped. Some of those projects were also sweeping, to the point of quixotic -- even for the deepest-pocketed entrepreneur.
Boelter first reached out to Kalech's firm for a book he had written, "Revoformation," which Kalech took to be a mashup between "revolution" and "reformation." It's also the name of the ministry Boelter had once tried to get off the ground, according to the organization's tax forms. "It seemed to me like maybe he volunteered more than what was good for him. In other words, he gave too much away instead of worrying about earning money, because he didn't always have money," Kalech said. "It was never clear to me if the ministry really existed. Are there congregants? Is there a constituency? I don't know. Or was it like something in his head that he was trying to make? That was never clear to me."
I'd imagine I'm not the only one here for whom this description feels uncomfortably familiar. I've known a few people like this.
Kalech recalled that Boelter chose his firm for the work because they are Jerusalem-based, and he wanted to support Israel. Boelter's interest in religion's impact on society is reflected in a "Revoformation" PowerPoint that Kalech said Boelter gave him, dated September 2017. "I am very concerned that the leadership in the U.S. is slowly turning against Israel because we are losing our Judaic / Christian foundations that was [sic] once very strong," the presentation said. "I believe that if the Christians are united and the people who are leading this Revoformation are a blessing to Israel that it will be good for both Israel and the U.S."
Over the years, Boelter would reach out with what appeared to be exponentially ambitious endeavors, Kalech said: "What he wanted to take on, I think, might have been bigger." Boelter wanted to end American hunger, according to another project's PowerPoint. And while the idea would require massive changes to current laws and food regulation, it appeared Boelter dismissed that as surmountable if only elected officials could get on board. "American Hunger isn't a food availability problem," the presentation said. "American Hunger is a tool that has been used to manipulate and control a vast number of American's [sic], with the highest percentage being people of color. This tool can and should be broken now, and failure to do so will be seen as intentional criminal negligence by future generations. We should be embarrassed as a nation that we let this happen and have not correctly [sic] this injustice 100 years ago," one slide said. One slide described how his own lived experience informed his idea, referring to him in the third person: "several times in his life Vance Boelter was the first person on the scene of very bad head on car accidents," and that he was able to help "without fear of doing something wrong" because he was "protected" by Good Samaritan law – which could and should be applied to food waste, the slide said.
This part right here seems illustrative. This guy is not tethered. It does not sound like he understands mundane power, nor what is relevant to that power. He's feeding back the banalities he observes via cable news as the final output of the political process, and he thinks the eight-second soundbite in between anchor waffling is what the actual top-level inputs look like. He's unbearably, excruciatingly naïve
To keep an eye on which lawmakers supported the necessary legislation, "there needs to be a tracking mechanism," the presentation said, where citizens could "see listed every singe [sic] elected official and where they stand on the Law (Food Providers Good Samaritan Law)." "Those few that come out and try to convince people that it is better to destroy food than to give it away free to people, will be quickly seen for who they are. Food Slavers that have profited off the hunger of people for years," the 18-slide, nearly 2,000-word presentation said.
There's the lists of Bad People, and the focus on politicians. Also, complete disconnect from basic reality. The windmill he's tilting at doesn't exist. To a first approximation, hunger does not exist in America. There are food banks literally everywhere. Most grocery store and many restaurants supply them with large quantities of nutritious food.
"At least in his mind and on paper, he was solving problems," Kalech told ABC News. "He would think about things and then have a euphoric moment and write out a manifesto of, How am I going to solve this? And then bring those thoughts to paper and bring that paper to an action plan and try to implement it." The last project Kalech said Boelter wanted to engage him for was a multifaceted collection of corporations to help start-up and expanding businesses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, all under the umbrella "Red Lion Group." The 14-page, over 6,000-word planning document for the project outlined ideas for what Red Lion Group would offer: ranging widely from "security services" to agricultural and weapons manufacturing sectors, medical supplies, investment services, martial arts, oil and gas and waste management. Red Lion would also serve in media spaces: with "CONGOWOOD" Film Productions "to be what Hollywood is to American movies and what Bollywood is to Indian movies."
...The above doesn't sound like a Red Tribe partisan flaming out into violent extremism, and it doesn't sound like a Democratic machine assassin. It sounds like an earnest moderate normie with deteriorating mental health catching a bad case of the currently-endemic madness. The last two personal interactions I had were with Blues, both mentioned their desire for bad-people-murder unprompted. I do not doubt for a second that I could get equivalent expressions from my Red acquaintances. I'm pretty sure large portions of the population are simply marinating in this soup 24/7; fill an echo chamber with "kill the bad guys" enough, and someone's going to take you seriously.
It bears mentioning that the above is from the Press, and one should never trust them. But from the evidence available, it looks like I was wrong and this guy was just a normie psycho with nothing approaching a coherent tribal agenda.
Well, I've lived in both equatorial Malaysia and subtropical/temperate Australia. Despite growing up around the equator I could never stand the heat and mugginess; my preference is 15-18C, clear skies with some clouds, light breeze. The shoulder seasons in Australia are actually ideal for this.
Personally, I enjoy climates where it doesn't rain often either. Rain is annoying, it stops up infrastructure and makes everything slushy. Petrichor smells like shit too.
I'd say it's more "emotionally abusive MLM" than Jim Jones. It isn't the affection that gets me; it's how much it reminds me of the legendary Bay-area Rationalist cuddle culture.
But mostly, after attending a couple workshops and listening to the other people there, I'm increasingly convinced that it's stoking suffering while claiming to improve situations, kinda like what therapy has become, only worse by using charismatic church tactics and emotional intensity to convince people it feels amazing and must therefore be working.
More options
Context Copy link