domain:lesswrong.com
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
8hr ago
Looking at that thread you linked, I am more leaning towards the theory that @hydroacetylene is KulakRevolt, based on politics, the particular style of deflection when they want to deflect, and most of all the curious dedication to the idea of frustrating stylometry/basilisks with artificial tics (Kulak's forwards-from-grandma punctuation, hydroacetylene's "French autocorrect").
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
8hr ago
This matches my experience as well. I find that consciousness almost constantly throws off quanta that emerge as concepts to which language then attaches, which defines and refines the concept into something more definite. My attention inevitably engages something from this firehose-like blast of experience and from this my inner monologue emerges, describing my experience to me. Emotions are unusually intense quanta with fractal-like definition that require much more attention and language to tease out, almost as if I have to weave my thought and language around them to accurately capture what I'm experiencing.
HereAndGone
8hr ago
"Put a chick in it, make it gay, and make it lame" was pretty good, though, and I say this as someone who has no sympathy at all for Parker and Stone's politics (whatever they may be).
ulyssessword
8hr ago
Anything can be a UFO is you're bad enough at identifying flying objects.
Gaashk
8hr ago
I haven’t encountered all that much of that, in the course of getting an education degree, among other things. There’s a lot of “we have the kids we have, not the kids we wish we had,” which is literally true but often used as an excuse. Lately, the higher ups have been going on a lot about “data” — academic data, behavioral data, data to get kids in trouble, data to get higher staff ratios, and so on and so forth. I don’t like it, much of the data is just a more onerous way of documenting opinions, but it’s certainly getting pushed hard.
HereAndGone
8hr ago
But there is wealth and talent to squander. There's a higher baseline and that is the most important factor in just about any equation.
That's true, but raising the waterline for the less able and less talented is going to be good for the nation as a whole. Better to have literate, functional (as in "learned how to pay attention and behave, not wreck the classroom"), blue collar or working class kids than criminals-in-training. Sure, they'll never get jobs at Bear Stearns, but they won't be clogging up the jails either.
I believe it was season 21, episode 10, Splatty Tomato.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=STT1ZHPPpGQ?si=0SBcTWEn7GyX2KdJ&t=100
HereAndGone
8hr ago
It's the teaching colleges and the universities. I saw the same when it came to newly-minted social workers: they had been stuffed to the gills with (slightly outdated by that time) theories of value-neutral, non-judgemental, the rest of it. So completely unprepared to deal with the types who were cunning, gaming the system, and knew exactly what buzzwords to use when spinning a tale to wrap the social worker round their finger and get them to advocate for "more gibs!" (that handy phrase which the job could have used back then) when interacting with authorities on their behalf.
The Pedagogy of the Oppressed is decades old by this time, and it's still being referenced, for one.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
8hr ago
At one point this may have been true. After vaccine mandates and pronoun mandates, the activist have more or less gotten the last of the conscientious objectors out of the profession, and the normies have been indoctrinated.
ABigGuy4U
8hr ago
Why have they gone easy on leftists so much since the rise of wokeness
Old age and actually having status to lose has made them cowardly. The new school principal character South Park introduced in 2015 was basically a meta-textual admission that they just can’t do the same kind of jokes that they did in the 90s for fear of getting cancelled. Even with their criticism of Trump, they spent 10 years walking on eggshells and are only being really vicious in their parody now that much of controversy over Trump has died down and he has safely solidified into a semi-establishment figure.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
8hr ago
Both @Belisarius and I speculated four months ago that @TequilaMockingbird may be the return of Hlynka, but my confidence was fairly low then and remains a bit shaky even now. The “Steve Sailer is actually a liberal” thing is so inexplicable a delusion that it’s tough to believe two people could arrive at it independently, but I guess it’s plausible, given a certain set of intellectual priors (and generalized mistrust of urban Californians) which Hlynka and TequilaMockingbird might just happen to share.
I support the ban because anyone who peppers their post full of “dude I’m totally gonna get banned for this one, the mods are gonna be soooo pissed” ban-baiting deserves to get what they’re asking for. This can be true even if he’s not truly a ban evader.
Gaashk
8hr ago
I’ve had to unfollow a couple of people I used to be friends with and like well enough in person for this, though I think it may be decreasing. In person they’ll read the body language of people around them, but only positive reactions are allowed on most social media, which was a mistake. There’s probably no solution, women have been spurning each other on moral grounds forever.
HereAndGone
8hr ago
So no, Miss Smith, second grade teacher number three at literally who elementary that used to be named after a well-known but now problematic individual, does not bear responsibility for this proxy battle.
Unhappily, the most vocal and most online ones are the Mx. Smiths in a polycule who were highly indignant over not being able to tell their eight year old pupils all about their sex life as a queer non-binary folx because some repressive, probably MAGA, parent snitched on them to the administration about what was really being taught instead of readin'/ritin'/'rithmetic.
I occasionally dip into the Reddit teachers sub-reddit and sometimes there are sensible posts (e.g. violent students being able to beat up teachers and other pupils with no consequences, and the administration doing nothing) but equally there are "now today I was highly disturbed because I failed to inculcate into one of my 15 year old male students that Patriarchy Bad, Toxic Masculinity To Blame For Everything, and Men Bad, White Men Especially Bad, what can I do to steer him onto the right path?" posts.
(In case you think I'm inventing the polycule teacher, nope, that's a real example from a few years back).
Tree
8hr ago
I am hugely disappointed that rather than taking your ban like a man
Never understood this concept. In Paths of Glory, when they decide to execute three soldiers at random, one of the condemned starts whining and dragging his feet, saying it’s so unfair and he doesn’t want to die, and his executioners and their priest tell him to show courage and die with dignity …. But why should he help them to commit an unjust act?
That quivering mess is the only honest man there, and moreover he’s morally correct. You want your “comrades” to have nightmares for years where they see you begging for your mother – their conscience torturing them is good. You don’t want them to commit a grave crime, then eat breakfast like it’s tuesday.
When you make it easy on them, you are cooperating with defectors. In modern parlance, by acquiescing to your own destruction, you become a cuck.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
8hr ago
95% sure. The report made me look back over his comment history and previous warnings.
We do frequently get reports claiming someone is an alt, but we usually don't find them particularly credible.
HereAndGone
8hr ago
Luckily I went to school before the "whole reading" thing kicked off (indeed, I was able to read before I started school) but I was there for when the New Maths kicked in, and oh brother.
I think they did to English what they did to Maths: don't teach it the old boring rote way, be the guide helping children discover for themselves, draw out of them what is naturally there.
That's fine for people who have talent for maths and can figure out on their own from first principles. For the likes of me, it meant I understood nothing of what was being taught and scraped along with barely passing. The old "rote learning" would have worked a whole lot better for me, rather than "now we'll just write this on the blackboard and you can all figure it out for yourselves". Even the teachers were stuck at times! They couldn't follow the methods in the new textbooks and were reduced to "just look up the right answer in the back".
For kids who got thrown in at the deep end with "just look at the shape of the entire word and take clues from the context and then you'll figure it out", that must have been a nightmare if your parents weren't teaching you how to read at home.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
8hr ago
I thought South Park went fully mask off at the end of the 2017 or 2018 season when they looked directly at the screen, broke the 4th wall, and told me "Well Whites, what are you going to do about Trump?" Haven't watched it since.
HereAndGone
8hr ago
To be fair to Freddie, I don't think he's claiming "education doesn't work". He's claiming "some kids are academically stronger, some kids are academically weaker, and all the interventions in the world are not going to magically give Susie a six point IQ leap up to the same level as Theophilus if she doesn't have that originally".
It's the push about "all kids must go to college" where experience at the coalface has shown him that some kids are not college material and would be better served being educated for a different path. But if the 'cure' for poverty or getting out of your original social class is being pushed as "more college! college for all!" then you are faced with (a) be honest and some kids won't get into college, any college at all (b) go along with what the government and everyone else is telling you, fudge the figures, lower standards, and graduate kids to go to college who will then drop out in their first year because they are not able for it.
I think Freddie sees (b) happening and thinks that is worse for everyone: schools, parents, the kids, society itself.
HereAndGone
8hr ago
Are you sure it's Hlynka? It's easy for someone to tell you "Dude, I think this is him" but if you didn't catch it before, then maybe it's not?
I dunno, I can't identify posters as easily as others on here claim to be able, so if it is him, okay.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
8hr ago
· Edited 8hr ago
It seems to me the ways we can be internally wired are surprisingly numerous. For me its neither. Emotions aren't a physical sensation, they aren't thoughts either. Instead they are a different sensation i'm at a loss to describe.
I would basically agree with this, yes. That was the "something ineffable" part I mentioned in my own description. I think that's what a lot of the people who answered "thoughts" were getting at, although obviously there's no way to be entirely sure.
One person mentioned that they literally have to examine the linguistic contents of their internal monologue in order to know what they're feeling, which is quite bizarre to me, and not how I experience things.
It feels more like my mind operates in an abstract, global regime, where meaning exists in a raw, platonic form before any linguistic scaffolding is applied. The “translation” into language is almost a compression process, reducing something vast, multi-layered, and instantaneous into a linear stream of words that inevitably loses detail.
The MBTI jargon for this way of thinking is called "introverted intuition". I was always under the impression that this is just how "thought" worked in general, although recently I've discovered reasons to doubt that this experience of thought is as universal as I had originally anticipated. Although I wouldn't describe my experience quite as intensely as yours (maybe you just have a stronger "CPU" than me haha), I do feel that my thoughts exist in non-linguistic form prior to being given linguistic expression (the "thought" comes first, abstractly, and then I have to start "writing out" as a sentence what the thought actually means and what implications can be drawn from it, assuming I want to communicate it).
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
8hr ago
Raksha Bandhan
We had Raksha Bandhan or rakhi today, sisters tie or at least strings tied around your wrist which are called rakhis, these exist to signify that the brother will protect the sister, its a very popular festival here which is also super commercialised. My mom was the youngest of 6, all 5 being brothers who are sort of people Jim Donald would approve of to state things mildly. Not criminals or anything, but they are not city cats.
Many festivals here now seem emptier by the day. We went from having large families that were interconnected to frequent visits and now sending rakhis via delivery apps. Technology moves towards more abstract, interconnected, nuclear structures, which seem off to me. All my years alive, I am yet to see the kind of sibling bond my mother's brothers have with her. I got some rakhis, including one which was packed with a copy of the Bhagavat Gita in Sanskrit, unabridged, that fits in your wallet, the size of a zyn tin or smaller.
nvim
Since Saturday is also my non-work workday, I will finally complete my tutorial of nvim. My mentor helped me set up kistastartnvim based on TJ Devreis' recommendation. I will watch his video and Luke Smith's Vim Diesel tutorial so that I can have more productive Python sessions. Conjure, an extension that works much better with Clojure, was one that my mentor insisted I add. The learning curve is not easy; once you start, everything else feels clunky. Opening a Facebook webpage or a Google Docs one vs nvim is a night and day difference. Does anyone else have any favourite IDEs, text editors, or debuggers? I know very little about nvim, it still feels like a 1000 cc barely legal road bike compared to everything that is also not old. Once you get even a little comfortable, it feels simpler too since your screen is not cluttered with random buttons that you do not even know how to use. I write some basic code, run conjure, and it instantly shows me what the output in that block would have looked like, extremely limited, but it makes writing code enjoyable.
marinuso
8hr ago
In 2013 the Mississippi State Legislature enacted the Literacy Based Promotion Act (LBPA) which required kids to pass a reading test to be promoted from elementary to middle school or else be held back or forced to repeat a year.
It's crazy that this is considered cheating. You can't seriously let someone into middle school who can't read. What are they going to do there? Certainly not learn anything if they can't read the textbooks.
In the Netherlands it's normal to be held back if you haven't learned whatever you had to learn in a year.
Totalitarianit
9hr ago
I think this is probably largely true. My kid's teachers have all been pleasant types who are passionate about helping kids and who do not seem overly political, but I can't help but be pulled away from your claim every time I pop open Facebook or any social media site and see, on my feed, some of the few random "friends" that I acquired through acquaintances in college (some who are now teachers) start talking about the patriarchy while simultaneously demanding that they and their districts receive more funds. The one thing they have in common is that they are all college educated, middle to upper middle class liberal-progressive white women.
The online world probably skews my perception of reality when it comes to the actual percentage of teachers these types represent, but they are so loud, passionate, and irritating online that it starts to feel like they are the majority simply because they take up the majority of the conversation online. Not sure what can be done about these squeaky wheels other than just waiting for the continued vibe shift brought about by regular people finally having had enough and insisting that these women shut the fuck up and that no one cares about their personal vendetta against the toxic masculine white man.
For me personally though, this group has become the most annoying group on the planet. To clarify, I'm not saying they're the worst people. It's just the combination of them dominating the online conversation and acting offended (either over something that happened to them or on behalf of someone from a marginalized group) while also having the cultural momentum to impose and enforce all of their bullshit rules and policies that makes them exhausting to endure.
It's worth remembering how extreme Reddit is when you see stuff like that. For example, the board gaming subreddit is extremely woke (as the forum discussed a few weeks ago), but in real life very few people I have encountered are that way. Similarly, the observation that Reddit teachers are crazy does not necessarily show that the wider group of teachers is that way. They may be, I don't have experience or evidence to say otherwise... I just think one needs more data points than Reddit because of how overall crazy that site's users have become.
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