domain:experimental-history.com
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
10hr ago
You can buy a flying car, at least if you're in the US. Moon bases? Give it 5-10 years.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
10hr ago
Well, I suppose you and I are more psychologically different than I thought.
I have to confess, though, that I’m not necessarily surprised — the only guy who ever mirrored my orientation in this way was that one guy from high school. Intriguingly I’ve had more “oh that’s how you see it too?” conversations with trans women than men, and actually more than cis women too — nobody crack an egg over my head. I have often found that people on the margins are those who most understand the precious nature of intimate connection.
Romance for a lot of both men and women seems immensely tied up in external status in a way it never was for me; while I absolutely recognize the norms of male performance in my own romantic success, when it’s come, I am also lucky that the performances that were appealing were abundantly personal to me, showing me at my best, being myself. And that the feeling I can, at times, inspire includes both attraction and companionship.
I believe all the things I do about love as transformation not because of things I read in novels, but because of what I have experienced in love. Every time someone has loved me it has changed me for the better. Not in the sense that “I was trained” or whatever people believe about women in relationships. But in the sense that I became more tender, more empathetic, more open to other people, and in fact more spiritual. I actually believe in God in part because of my experiences with romantic love. C.S. Lewis once called Eros “the thing in the world that most begs for idolatry,” (paraphrase) and I believe it.
But our discussion here and the serendipitous chat with my girlfriend prompted a really good chat with her last night — thanks for that. She made the point that what women dream about “in traditional romances, not the werewolf thing,” she added, is a man who cares about them, talks to them when they’re down, is emotionally available, good dad material. I made the point to her that a lot of men dream about the same thing — a woman who cares about them, accepts their vulnerability, believes in their potential, sweet and loving — good mom material. The great male fear is that a woman will love him only for what he can do, and will resent him and hate him if he ever stops giving interest on their principal. This shows up in complaints about nagging, the alpha/beta dichotomy, sexless marriages, if you find a male complaint about women this is what it resolves to. I don’t want a woman who loves me because I slayed the dragon, I want a woman who gives me the strength to slay him. “Behind every great man…”
If “cishet girl lore” can dream about a man who sees a woman for who she is, for her actual personality and soul and love her for this and not for the size of her tits, well, Cishet male lore also dreams about a woman who sees a man’s capabilities even when he’s down and yet believes in him. Loves him. For who he is, for who he can become. What both sexes truly want beneath the recriminations is very similar: love, affection, and commitment based on who we are in our innermost selves, not what we present to the world. This is the meaning of “intimacy.”
It is only because this is preciously rare that anyone settles for less. And men and women both feel its lack with great yearning. And sometimes, contempt.
faceh
10hr ago
I bet there are some subcultures out there that have this feel, but you'd have go out to look for them.
faceh
10hr ago
There has never been a prolonged global financial crisis in bitcoin’s existence.
Clearly Bitcoin is warding off large financial crises!
More seriously, this has been my main logic for never going all-in on BTC.
faceh
10hr ago
How does your position differ from creating an artificial general intelligence (supposing we developed the capability) to do the same?
Welllll we haven't assumed the ability to arbitrarily modulate the AI'S compulsions and interests.
Which is a big question these days.
More to the point, though, are we allowing the modulated person to request that their modulation be changed if it no longer suits them, if they feel they're suffering with the current setup?
Unless you're ALSO suggesting that these behavioral changes are SO ingrained that they won't gradually shift over time as they accumulate experiences and/or head trauma.
I think that's where the ethics of it start to kick in. If your modulated human one day says "I would rather not do taxes today. In fact, can we adjust my brain a little so I can get a feeling of optimistic joy from viewing a sunset? I read some books that made that sound really nice."
(Aren't we just talking about Replicants from Blade Runner, here?)
Why is there a psychological/clinical concept or coping mechanism known as Dissociation, but as far as I can tell no 'opposite' concept? I guess hyperfocus is a thing but its not really what I'm talking about.
I ask because while I can't say that I've never dissociated in my life, the vast majority of my experience of life is basically the opposite of that. I've been present for and fully sensitive to most everything going on, perhaps overly so. If I'm feeling depressed, I'm still feeling it as 'myself.' Ditto fear, anxiety. Sometimes I have 'brain fog' but I still don't tend to feel like I'm "apart from myself" or just nonpresent, that's just viewing things through a blurry lens.
Seriously, what is the psychologically 'opposite' concept for when a person feels more 'present' and 'integrated' and 'aware' of themselves and their surroundings than usual?
Tree
11hr ago
Like you said, it‘s important to us that he sustain himself, so we would give him dopamine rewards for eating and resting when he‘s tired. We need him replaced when he‘s too old, so we would reward him chemically for shooting his gametes in a female of his species. We would even make it so he likes her, to make the process of growing the next generation easier. Et caetera.
If he is our slave, are we not the slaves of Nature? It is a joyful existence, despite it all. Certainly preferable to oblivion.
Crowstep
11hr ago
Back when I did judo guys would often talk about 'old man strength', which was really just better technique from the guys who had been doing it for twenty years. They weren't strong, but they knew how to leverage what strength they had.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
11hr ago
Go.Yes. I hate doing taxes, and such a creature would love doing them for me.
Is it horrifying? Yea sure. But I'm doomer enough to consider the evebtual coming of such technology and its utilization a foregone conclusion. It's a question of when, not if, unless our chatbot overlords kill us all forst.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
11hr ago
Ouch, I guess it is just me in the corner then.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11hr ago
It's nice living in the future*,
I don't know about you, but when I was a kid I used to dream about flying cars and moon bases, not digital panopticons and simulacra.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
11hr ago
I think it's the nervous system flexibility / relaxation.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
What do you think of "gym muscles"? Referring here to the idea that musculature bought in the gym is less effective than muscles bought by manual labor.
In day to day life, much like discourse around "forms of intelligence:" if someone tells me that they are strong but not with "gym muscles" then I know they aren't actually all that strong at all. Most discourse around "Gym Muscles" is pure cope, the person accused of having "gym muscles" is normally stronger than the accuser. A fat powerlifting champ mostly recognizes the bodybuilder curl-monkey as a fellow lifter and rarely needs to insult him, it's the newbie redditor #StrongLifts5x5 who wants to tear the other guy down to build himself up because he recognizes there isn't much to back up his own pride. ((Though, to be kind, the ego is so difficult to navigate in that early-intermediate level when one is dedicating all kinds of time to something that one is still factually bad at))
In the same way that when someone starts talking about "types of intelligence" I'm pretty sure they don't have any type of intelligence I'm interested in. If someone tells me they aren't "book smart" but they are "street smart" they typically aren't street smart either, at best they have some degree of low level native-guide knowledge that they value higher than it is. If someone tells me they don't test well, but they have great artistic intelligence, their creative output normally sucks. Etc.
Now, factually, at some level if you do all kinds of manual labor tasks you will be better relative to your muscle mass at all kinds of manual labor tasks than you will be at bench press, and if you bench press all the time you will better at bench press relative to your muscle mass than you will be at manual labor tasks. We perceive this as confusing because we think of labor as a "stupid" task, and sports and fitness as more intelligent tasks: anyone can use a shovel, but only some people can lift weights. When really using a shovel properly, hard, throughout a day, is a much more complicated physical task than the bench press is. Experience completing labor tasks will add to your ability in those tasks, no different from any athletic specialization.
So IDK, I'm a gym bro for life.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
12hr ago
That theory could work re: pleading, but there are some problems. The passage seems to indicate that the object of the plea (or entreaty) was salvation from death (or the realm of the dead), not from the psychological torment associated with the event. This is reaffirmed in the content of the prayer: let this cup pass from me. And the only case of such a prayer occurring is during the Agony in the Garden; he is only around the disciples, who pay such little attention to him that they fall asleep. There is a sense of authenticity to this in Luke: “being in agony, he prayed more earnestly, his sweat as large drops of blood”.
The whole passage in Hebrews surrounding this is interesting too. It continues:
Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. […] About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain
which is insightful and funny. He needed to learn obedience, and evidently the relationship between his humanity and divine purpose was difficult even for an apostle to articulate. Really, I think the mystery and variety is actually the point. The more mysterious Christ is, in a human way, the more you are drawn into the story, and drawn into imbuing your own situation onto the story. The greatest stories don’t often provide one concrete answer. But the story shouldn’t be mysterious in a logical or philosophical way. There’s nothing to gain from drawing people into thousands of hours of philosophical speculation that have no bearing on behavior, but there’s a lot to be gained when a community is drawn into the same story, identifying with and loving the same figure.
Is your contention that Jesus, in mortal life, understood he was special but not that he was, in a way, God?
Yes, essentially. The Epistles clarify that Jesus is maximally Godly (“the fullness of deity dwells in him”, “the radiance of God’s glory”), but stops short of ever actually declaring that he is God. (Unless we want to abuse the Greek, which they do.) He is described in such a way that “in everything he might be preeminent”, and he has cosmic import and existed before the creation of the world (an existence which I do not think he fully understood while on earth). But the omission of any indisputable assertion or dogma that Jesus is God is really glaring. This would have been the thing that every early follower would be confused about, if it was taught, because of how strictly monotheistic Judaism was, and how there’s no Old Testament evidence of the Messiah being God. It would have been in the oldest Roman creed, but it’s not; in the Didache, but it’s not; and if would preached by Peter in Acts, but instead he calls Jesus a man. So yeah, I think this dogma was added a couple hundred years later, and for the worse.
ABigGuy4U
12hr ago
I think it’s true. The types of training designed to increase aesthetic mass are quite different than those for pure strength, like powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting. That said I think a person who seriously lifts for aesthetics is still going to be a lot stronger than they would have been if they didn’t train at all.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
12hr ago
I want the punk. If I'm going to have to put up with corpo dystopia, then I at least want trench coats and neon mohawks, dammit!
Ponder
12hr ago
I live in an area where most social spaces are dominated by woke ideology. People who don’t agree either pretend to go along, or have abandoned the shared social spaces. I feel that there is an unspoken shared social norm in most spaces around me that you must agree whenever someone implies/states that straight white men are problematic/oppressors. I feel like whatever is going on with this social norm is somehow tied to status games and tribalism. I feel that it is morally and epistemologically wrong to blame such a broad group for so many of the problems in society. It is wrong to over simplify societal problems to such a simple ideology. Ultimately, I believe every person deserves to be treated as a unique individual. It is fine to point out specific instances of a straight/white/male doing a problematic thing, but it wrong to assume that everyone in that group is bad and/or benefits from the problematic thing.
I believe it is ethically wrong for me to pretend to go along with problematizing any group of people just because that is social expectation to fit in with the group. Consequently, I mostly avoid social spaces because I don’t feel comfortable with the social norms that I’m expected to conform to.
There is a part of me that thinks the people in these social groups are otherwise reasonable, but they are also caught up in the social mania of modern times. I would like to be more social and make more friends, but the social norms of the spaces around me make me uncomfortable and closed-off to people. There don’t appear to be spaces near me without the straight white men are problematic norm for the areas I’m interested in (such as book clubs or running clubs).
Has anyone discovered a way to let it be openly known that you don’t agree with the group problematizing social norm, while still being accepted into the group? Like steering the group to a pluralistic acceptance of people with different values because those values don’t impact the stated purpose of the group (i.e. social norms about political ideology shouldn’t matter if you just want to go running with some people).
25 years later, Alpha Centauri keeps being relevant.
Personally I'm conflicted. The concept is icky and aesthetically horrific, and probably could be used as a slippery slope to clearly awful outcomes, but I don't really have any counters to my steelman version of it.
It's one of those problems I'm glad technology hasn't arrived at yet that we don't have to solve.
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
The Tleilaxu are a cautionary tale.
faceh
12hr ago
2rafa
12hr ago
Thus far bitcoin has largely tracked US equities with higher beta. Given that bitcoin shares an investor base with leveraged magnificent 7 etfs, with many day traders, growth funds, FAANG gamblers and venture capitalists, the expectation would be that in the next financial crisis and stock market collapse that it would suffer a great fall in value. There has never been a prolonged global financial crisis in bitcoin’s existence.
2rafa
12hr ago
Thank you, that was interesting. One thing:
Jesus would not have loudly cried and pleaded for salvation from death while on earth if he was certain he would be saved; and the passage indicates that he saved because of this plea.
Even if he knew he was going to be saved / go to heaven, he might still have loudly cried and pleaded for salvation. Firstly, because it drew attention to him, and his mission was ultimately the salvation of mankind through following him, and secondly because we plead for relief from pain even when we know it is good for us (life-saving surgery in the time before anaesthetic, for example).
Is your contention that Jesus, in mortal life, understood he was special but not that he was, in a way, God?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
12hr ago
What is the alternative to an opt in system? In this specific case we're taking about the ability to add friends. Is no one allowed to add friends on discord until they prove they are a legal adult? Is that accomplished by setting a drop down box in their profile or must they upload a government issued ID?
How about parents take responsibility for their kids instead of imposing restrictions on all the rest of us because of their laziness.
PropagandaOfTheDude
12hr ago
With all of the enthusiam of Ben Affleck, I figure that I should put some of my investment portfolio into Bitcoin. I expect that it'll move independently of or in opposition to the dollar. What is the boring approach do that, adjusting a boring set of current allocations across the usual boring large investment companies?
Trench coats are sick. That reminds me that I should engage in some more rampant consumerism by browsing Vinted for a few good pieces. The neon mohawks? You're welcome to keep them!
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