domain:mattlakeman.org
MayorofOysterville
10m ago
I'm very confused about this speech and Peter Thiel's religious beliefs. Because as far as I can tell he doesn't practice Christianity in his daily life the only Christian denominations that would accept him being a homosexual are very liberal and don't care about Armageddon. And I can't see him being an Episcopalian. It just doesn't fit my mental model of him at all and I don't understand how a gay German techlord is giving talks like an Evangelical preacher?
Unless it's some kind of Jordan Peterson metaphor thing? But it doesn't appear to be. Can anyone explain where this came from?
wemptronics
13m ago
Forms of talk therapy are commonly and can be reasonably considered medical treatment as self_made points out with CBT. I have sympathy for the gay teens whose parents shove them into therapy to talk the gay away. I can see why that experience could be stressful, offensive, or even counter-productive in cases.
Colorado solved the difficulty of this speech restriction by only regulating licensed professionals who who could potentially be doing a medicine by talking with people about sexual orientation. No one seems to have posted the text of the law in question or the transcript for oral arguments:
"CONVERSION THERAPY" MEANS ANY PRACTICE OR TREATMENT BY A LICENSEE, REGISTRANT, OR CERTIFICATE HOLDER THAT ATTEMPTS OR PURPORTS TO CHANGE AN INDIVIDUAL'S SEXUAL ORIENTATION OR GENDER IDENTITY, INCLUDING EFFORTS TO CHANGE BEHAVIORS OR GENDER EXPRESSIONS OR TO ELIMINATE OR REDUCE SEXUAL OR ROMANTIC ATTRACTION OR FEELINGS TOWARD INDIVIDUALS OF THE SAME SEX.
(b) "CONVERSION THERAPY" DOES NOT INCLUDE PRACTICES OR TREATMENTS THAT PROVIDE: (I) ACCEPTANCE, SUPPORT, AND UNDERSTANDING FOR THE FACILITATION OF AN INDIVIDUAL'S COPING, SOCIAL SUPPORT, AND IDENTITY EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT , INCLUDING SEXUAL ORIENTATION-NEUTRAL INTERVENTIONS TO PREVENT OR ADDRESS UNLAWFUL CONDUCT OR UNSAFE SEXUAL PRACTICES, AS LONG AS THE COUNSELING DOES NOT SEEK TO CHANGE SEXUAL ORIENTATION OR GENDER IDENTITY; OR (II) ASSISTANCE TO A PERSON UNDERGOING GENDER TRANSITION
Helpfully, the law doesn't define many or any of these terms including sexual orientation, gender identity, and affirmation. Perhaps Colorado courts figure that out in the courts. For SCOTUS, the Solicitor General argues that of course the law doesn't ban all treatment to change an individual's sexual orientation. That would be silly, because then the statute would also prevent, say, the affirmation practices it seeks to protect. Only the bad version of A-B is illegal.
Alito didn't have a big enough brain to wrap his mind around this obvious fact. From oral argument:
JUSTICE ALITO: -- a difference between the argument that you're making now and the argument that I thought we rejected in NIFLA that professional speech is a special category that's outside normal First Amendment scrutiny, but I'll -- let me put that aside and ask about your interpretation of the statute at this stage in the litigation. And let me give you this example. Suppose an adolescent male comes to a licensed therapist and says he attracted -- he's attracted to other males but feels uneasy and guilty about those feelings, and he wants to end or lessen them and asks for the therapist's help in doing so. Under your interpretation of the statute, is that banned?
MS. STEVENSON: So, Your Honor, our interpretation of the statute turns entirely on whether the purpose of the therapy is to change the person's sexual orientation or gender identity. If that minor --
JUSTICE ALITO: Yeah, what's the answer to -- what is the answer to my question? Is that banned or is it not banned?
MS. STEVENSON: If the therapist told him or he asked can you help me become straight, the answer would be it would be banned. If it was can you help me cope with my feelings as to how I am and how I want to live my life, that's permitted... This is the way we've interpreted the statute from the beginning of this case. It's the way both of the lower courts interpreted the statute. It's the way every state that has this statute interprets it. And the reason why is because the harms from conversion therapy come from when you tell a young person you can change this innate thing about yourself, and they try and they try and they fail, and then they have shame and they're miserable, and then it ruins their relationships with their family or --
JUSTICE ALITO: I understand -- I understand all of those arguments. What I don't understand is how you can square your interpretation with the plain meaning of this statute
[...]
JUSTICE ALITO: Are you suggesting that everything beginning with the word "including" is irrelevant? That just -- you just want all of that deleted from the statute
MS. STEVENSON: No, it's -- it's illustrative [...] But, if the -- if the minor wants to start dressing like a boy to match his gender identity not because --
JUSTICE ALITO: -- that's just not the way language works...
If you see someone receive talk therapy to turn themselves gay, well, you know that's legal. When you see someone receive talk therapy to turn themselves ungay you know it's illegal. Simple as.
I find it difficult to approach these concepts in a legal setting with any credulity. Sure, I usually have an understanding what an individual refers to when they mention something about their gender expression or sexual orientation. I have ideas on how certain identities are shaped and formed and an opinion on what extent a "gender identity" is "innate" or learned. Someone tap me when there's overwhelming empirical evidence to draw massive conclusions that could justify no gender conversion speech laws.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
19m ago
Klaus Schwab's nightmarish visage emerges on the projector screen, staring down on you like a god from on high
You vill enjoy fresh food from local stores rather than chemical slop from Walmart.
You vill have a healthy waistline.
You vill have a walkable neighbourhood with trees and park amenities.
You vill commute via bus, train or ferry in safety from lowlives - ve have dispersed them
And... you vill be happy.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
23m ago
They do in my state, which has a high minimum wage. And is where I hear them campaigning about unionizing.
hanikrummihundursvin
24m ago
It certainly feels that way. The 'build more housing' crowd is in full swing where I live in Scandinavia. Usually coupled close with the 'walkable cities' phenomenon.
It's an odd feeling to be stuck in traffic for hours on end in a city of about 300k, on road going through what used to be an industrial area but is now filled with multiple 5+ story high apartment complexes in various states of construction. Where are all these extra cars going to go? It was bad enough already, one wonders.
Well, the city council, on the bleeding edge of progress, decides to deal with traffic by making one lane of an already very busy road a 'bus' lane. So now they feel emboldened to lot these new apartments with 0.4 parking spaces each. Meaning there are cars parked everywhere around the area, as they obviously can not all fit around the apartments. This increases foot traffic around and across the busy road. So every time someone presses the button on a crosswalk, the lights go red, congestion increases even more.
Dense housing - one lane + extra foot traffic = ???
Well, lets hear it, what were they thinking? A member of the city council, speaking in defense of new public transport centric city plan, said that a part of the problem was to do with values. There was a need for a radical confrontation with how people look at and organize their lives. It can not all be centered around cars. Well, are they completely wrong? Maybe not.
Similar to how one can argue that how we view addiction and drugs is wrong. That it's a disease, not a crime and so forth, one can say our relationship with cars and transport is wrong. It's a broader more novel philosophical argument that might not be incorrect, and certainly sounds fair minded and appealing. But to assume therefor that all the relevant factors have been accounted for has shown itself to be lunacy that costs lives.
Quantumfreakonomics
25m ago
That whole section of Leviathan can be boiled down to honor as deference to and respect for power. There are some old Moldbug essays that try to flesh this out concretely.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
39m ago
They do police outflows but that's part of their managed float of the currency, it's not freely floating. You have to maintain control on money if you want a tethered currency. It's all part of the plan, they want a cheap currency to have more competitive industries in world markets and to aid their industrial goals.
They want Chinese investors investing in Chinese industry to develop the country more. But Chinese industry is struggling with a very competitive market with razor thin margins (see the Chinese share market's poor returns), investors would much rather buy Sydney real estate which constantly goes up in value. There's this tension between government/national interest and private interests.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
45m ago
Which side understands the other better, do you think? I'm guessing the right understands the left better heh.
But yeah, it is a very common thing. I'm not trying to laugh at OP though, just pointing out that his tone of confused smug questioning is coming from an uninformed place.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1hr ago
J.J. Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness is a wild ride and a special effects extravaganza, but its good points are overshadowed by the dumbest move ever: recasting Ricardo Montalbán's Khan Noonien Singh as English actor Benedict Cumberbatch. Whatever one might think of the practice of racewashing in film, this is a move that made nobody happy (except Cumberbatch's agent and banker). The casting was intended as a surprise reveal, and when people guessed correctly, Abrams lied to the fans. So dumb.
So I fixed it.
This scene takes place after "John Harrison" the augmented human defeated a cadre of Klingon soldiers and then surrendered to Chris Pine's Kirk and crew. It's largely Claude's prose, since I was more interested in reading it than writing it, but I've edited it with a weed-whacker.
The sound of Captain Kirk's bootsteps echoed against the brig's sterile walls as he approached the cell's transparent barrier. Beyond it, the man who called himself John Harrison sat with an unsettling stillness, watching him with eyes that seemed to calculate even in repose.
"Why is there a man in that torpedo?" Kirk demanded.
Harrison tilted his head slightly. "There are men and women in all those torpedoes, Captain. I put them there."
"Who the hell are you?"
Harrison rose smoothly, each movement economical and precise. "A remnant of a time long past. Genetically engineered to be superior so as to lead others to peace in a world at war. But we were condemned as criminals, forced into exile. For centuries we slept, hoping when we awoke things would be different." His voice carried the weight of disappointment, of expectations betrayed. "But as a result of the destruction of Vulcan, your Starfleet began to aggressively search distant quadrants of space. My ship was found adrift. I alone was revived."
Kirk crossed his arms. "I looked up John Harrison. Until a year ago, he didn't exist."
"John Harrison didn't exist," the augment agreed, "because János Horváth was planning the conquest of Europe when Khan Noonien Singh fell." He said the name with something between reverence and bitterness. "I was second in command of Britain's domestic intelligence apparatus when Khan surrendered. I never got to see if my strategies would have succeeded."
He moved closer to the barrier, and Kirk forced himself not to step back. "Marcus found it easier to give me a name with no history. A blank slate. But I am exactly who I claimed to be: one of Khan's officers. His left hand, if you will, while he was the mind that shaped an empire."
"If you're not Khan," Kirk said slowly, "then why should I believe anything you're saying?"
Harrison's smile was thin and sharp. "Captain, please. It would be so much easier for your pride to accept that you were beaten in hand-to-hand combat by the great Khan himself—tyrant, legend, the boogeyman of your history texts—than by one of his lieutenants." He spread his hands. "But I, like he, like everyone in those torpedoes, was designed to lead, Captain Kirk. Engineered. Every chromosome optimized, every genetic sequence refined to eliminate the accumulated errors of a million years of random mutation."
His voice took on an almost evangelical fervor. "You are the product of blind accidents. Your ancestors crawled out of the sea, stumbled through evolution's lottery, and called it progress. We were built. Purpose-made by men who followed the rules of reality to their ultimate conclusion: design, even by their limited minds, was far better than a roll of the dice. My reflexes are five times faster than yours. My strength, three times greater. My cognitive processing—" He paused, searching for smaller words. "You think with the tools that survival happened to give you. I think with an instrument precision-crafted for the task."
Spock, who had been listening in silence, finally spoke. "Yet you surrendered to that 'blind lottery' when you allowed Captain Kirk to capture you."
"I surrendered to save my crew," Harrison said quietly. "The only comrades I have left. Marcus used them as hostages, frozen in torpedoes like specimens. I built those weapons for him, yes—I helped him realize his vision of a militarised Starfleet. He sent you to fire my torpedoes on an enemy planet." His jaw tightened. "The Klingons would come searching, and you would have no chance of escape. Marcus would finally have his war."
"I watched you open fire on a room full of unarmed Starfleet officers," Kirk shot back. "You killed them in cold blood."
"Marcus took my crew from me!" Harrison's composure finally cracked, fury blazing through. "He used my friends—my family—to control me. I tried to smuggle them to safety by concealing them in the very weapons I designed, but I was discovered. I had no choice but to escape alone, with every reason to suspect that Marcus had killed every single person I hold most dear. So I responded in kind. And now because I made those choices, they live."
He leaned forward, and Kirk saw something raw beneath the calculated facade. "My crew is my family, Kirk. Is there anything you would not do for your family?"
A proximity alert shrieked through the ship before Kirk could answer.
"Proximity alert, sir," Sulu's voice crackled over the comm. "There's a ship at warp heading right for us."
"Klingons?" Kirk asked.
Harrison's expression shifted to something almost like satisfaction. "At warp? No, Kirk. We both know who it is."
"I don't think so, Captain," Sulu responded. "It's not coming from Qo'noS."
Kirk was already moving. "Lieutenant, move Harrison to med bay. Post six security officers on him." He paused at the door, looking back. "And Lieutenant? He's exactly as dangerous as he claims to be."
MayorofOysterville
1hr ago
Well maybe, I won't deny envy as a factor, but the ability to buy property is another huge factor. People who can afford property tend to be a lot more content than those who can't. Regardless of wealth disparity or relative social class.
MayorofOysterville
1hr ago
I think another point is the workers in Starbucks aren't paid very much. Engineers are less likely to care about CEO pay than baristas because they baristas are essential to the operations of Starbucks but don't make that much thus the CEO getting 95 million off their labor is especially unfair.
MayorofOysterville
1hr ago
The media ancestral human was a hunter gatherer.
MayorofOysterville
1hr ago
Elon Musk and Warren Buffet are bad examples though as they are Great Men, with a mythos and not easily replaced. Most CEOs are interchangeable faceless suits not visionary founders.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Is it not clear that everything he’s saying is a metaphor and it’s being quoted/framed in the most uncharitable possible way by a hostile source?
Thiel may not be a believer, but he clearly regards organized Christianity positively. It’s not a surprise that when he’s trying to make a point thats where he’s reaching, although he doesn’t hit the trad Catholic end times prophecies well, so he’s at least not just cribbing those.
Bingbong
1hr ago
I can't really see how it'd directly cause issues, but also trying to 'build more closely-integrated housing' whilst doing nothing to actually create community integration or solve for ghettoification could easily just snowball into a bunch more ghettos.
I know Yardcels hate it, but big fan of the Singapore HDB system (which the Chinese are broadly aping with their apartment builds) but that's built on deliberate integration of different ethnicities and very strongly punishing antisocial behavior.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
I’ve been given a free bus pass with juror summons every time.
Skeletor
1hr ago
It’s not [Mark] Andreessen, by the way. I think Andreessen is not the antichrist. Because you know, the antichrist is popular.
God damn.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1hr ago
Yep that's the West today, two different cultures that hate each other and don't understand each other's mythology (not implying symmetrical ignorance, because one side understands the other a lot better than the other way around, but broadly speaking) laughing at how stupid each other is.
Skeletor
1hr ago
Better death at the hands of an American God than life at the feet of a Chinese one. Onward to ruin.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1hr ago
Communication absolutely works that way. What you're missing is it's quite possible that ChickenOverlord and sarker realized the implicit comparison was being made, felt it was wrong, but couldn't challenge it without it being made explicit -- and the best way to make it explicit was to treat it as if it hadn't been made.
In this case, it's even less reasonable because erwgv3g34 in fact DID make explicit the comparison -- he said one person could produce 1000x the value of a "regular man". Then SubstantialFrivolity denied that it was possible for one person to produce 1000x the value of another, leaving out the "regular man", which is denying the specific (that someone could make 1000x the value of a "regular man") by claiming a general rule (that no one can make 1000x the value of anyone else). Basically your interpretation privileges the "this phenomenon does not exist" side.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1hr ago
Stanislav Petrov and Stanislav Petrov alone prevented nuclear war.
No, that's not understanding it correctly. Petrov reporting what he saw faithfully wouldn't necessarily have resulted in nuclear war; it was the Soviet leadership's job to decide whether to launch on that information and it's entirely plausible that they wouldn't have.
Vasily Arhkipov is an obvious but-for case, but not Stanislav Petrov.
Skeletor
1hr ago
If Thiel is worried about a one-world state,
Naw dog, all states are one-world states, at least so far. He's worried about a one-state world.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
1hr ago
I wonder if "build more housing!" is the "decriminalize drugs!" of the latest generation and once we finally kick that into high gear we'll reap a bunch of unintended side effects that are horrible but nobody wanted to think about at the time.
ulyssessword
1hr ago
I want Walmart. Unfortunately due to physical limitations it's impossible to have everyone live 2 minutes from a decent sized store.
A two-minute walk will very literally not get you across the parking lot of the local Wal-Mart Supercenter, but that's not quite a physical limitation. Let's take a closer look.
A two-minute walk is about 160 meters (at 3 mph), which means there is 80240 m^2 within a two-minute walk of any specific point. Given a population density of 100k/square mile (0.039/m^2) (fourth highest in the world), that would mean 3100 people in range of the store.
Locally, each Wal-Mart serves 100k people. You can play around with the numbers a bit by counting Wal-Mart or Costco or etc, and also reduce their required population, and also increase the density above 100k/mi^2 and also this, and also that, but it gets really hard to make up a >30-fold difference by playing around the edges like that.
A 10-minute walk would be approximately possible, but not two.
Writers on this show suck ass now dude, can't even keep character motives straight. No respect for the source material.
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