domain:freddiedeboer.substack.com
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
15m ago
Frankly women can enter as well, were it not for the nannying and tutting.
In other words, only transgender women who are sufficiently divorced from [as perceived by the other gender] their gender's primary flaw can enter this space.
That flaw, being (in my opinion/experience) unrestrained anger/disgust, is the GP's point about why non-transgender women are motivated to destroy male spaces in the first place: they're angry that they have to follow the rules to get anywhere, and something inside them renders them wholly incapable of doing that, so their attempts to simply destroy the space for "reeeeeee"-asons are a natural evolution of that.
somedude
16m ago
I'm of essentially the exact opposite opinion. The linear game has almost no reason to exist. If my input has no effect on the outcome, why is it even required? All I'm really getting is a movie, but made objectively worse by the fact that it insists upon repeating a given scene until I complete an arbitrary task.
What's the point? Is there a movie that would be improved by making me win a round of Tetris every ten minutes to stop it from rewinding? Hell, why even have death animations or other displayed failure states in a video game? After all, it's not like the protagonist being eaten by monsters or falling down a hole to their death is what "really" happens.
Those failure states exist to create the illusion of agency. No game advertises itself by telling you the princess can already be considered rescued, because that's the artistic intent, but hey you can come push buttons if you want to see it. No, they want to create at least the pretense of the player's input having consequences.
So stop with the pretense and give me the real thing. Give me actual agency and consequence. Or commit to your singular vision for the story and write a book instead.
faceh
18m ago
Interesting point.
I've argued elsewhere that martial arts gyms/dojos are pretty much the last bastion of healthy male masculinity that hasn't been invaded by woke culture. Because end of the day, there is simply no amount of social maneuvering that will make up for the strength differential between men and women, and you can't 'fake' martial arts skills without willing participants, which makes entryism nigh-impossible.
But yeah, despite pressure from both sides of the political spectrum, strip clubs and various other sex-adjacent spaces where men can pay to skip the formalities and just get to the T&A do a pretty good job filtering as well.
Implicitly, the females in these spaces are there to look pretty and be quiet (unless it is part of the tease) and this is 'enforced' when they rely on earning tips.
Lefties have given some cover to these places too, by being 'sex-positive,' 'pro-slut,' and 'anti-christian' to the extent they like that dens of vice piss off a certain segment of the right, and (probably) provide a wedge to bring in LGBT matters.
But yeah, the fact that guys can use these places to form reliable partnerships and create networks that aren't so legible while filtering out guys who have hangups that might turn into liabilities later.
I would definitely say I prefer the Dojo as the healthy alternative, but if it works and persists across decades, hard to say its doing something 'wrong.'
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
28m ago
The best recent example I can think of Isaiah Hartenstein.
There's Meghan Markle and Zendaya, who was mentioned by Stefferi in this thread. I do not pattern match either as black. There's also Rashida Jones and Wentworth Miller.
like no one would would ever mistake his father as anything other than black
He actually looks more like a MENA to me.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
44m ago
I don't think that LLMs will really change the way large virtual words work. At least not at first. I think the biggest breakthrough will be in small-scale games that are currently restricted by the amount of writing someone has to do and by the limitations of the dialogue trees as their only interface, all of this for what is ultimately a game with no replayability. Think "locked room murder mystery" or "scoring at prom" types of games. A well-trained LLM could come up with an appropriate cast, keep track of the minds of everyone involved and generate appropriate responses to your freely-phrased questions.
Putting a live LLM into something already as buggy as an open world game? No way. Using it in a limited fashion, to pregenerate a whole bunch of dialogue trees for the human editors to vet or maybe even to generate sidequests that are better written than "Here's another settlement that needs your help"? Very much possible. But replacing dialogue trees with LLMs everywhere will just break the game in hilarious ways.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
48m ago
Yes, there was recently a bit of hubbub after it turned out that the government had sent four guys representing different parties (instead of, say, the female ministers theoretically in charge of such affairs) to a sauna trip to hammer out various details to the latest austerity package. Here's the Green Party's unofficial online magazine complaining about it (google-translated). However, such sauna sessions would presumably be expected to be chaste (if drunken), there's a bit of a taboo with associating saunas to eroticism in the Finnish culture.
2rafa
49m ago
I think there are so many overlapping drivers of pro-Israel sentiment in the “ratsphere” (many Jews, the scene was largely founded by Jews, respect for Jewish inventions, Israelis as disproportionately active in tech/AI research, general dislike for religious Muslims, contempt for wokeness, dislike of student protestors) that it would seem unlikely for there to be any significant number.
The three core predictors of support for Palestine vs Israel are being Muslim, being leftist/‘woke’ and having a broadly low opinion of Jews. I’ve never met a strongly anti-Israel person who fell into none of those three categories.
vorpa-glavo
54m ago
Personally when something is that frequently out of whack it goes beyond “natural” to something else.
I feel like you're exhibiting the same "representation fallacy" that a lot of left-wing idpol people do. Imagine we're in a spherical cow world where the main cast of every piece of media (be it a commercial or a movie) is 10 people and Hollywood produces 100 high profile movies/commercials in a year, and you're evaluating all of the media produced in the past year for its representativeness of the general population, across a variety of identity categories.
It is going to be trivially true that the media is not going to reflect the general population, either on a case by case basis or taken as a whole. It's just a huge coordination problem. If LGB people are around 5-10% of the population, then to get "accurate" representation, every other movie would need to have a gay person in it. But if their gayness is going to be a relevant trait, then two of our 10 cast members probably need to be gay (so they can be in a gay relationship together), and that is already going to create a wonky balancing problem when it comes to movies that aim to portray gay people.
And the problem only deepens if you consider movies like Moana, which would have 10 polynesian characters in it (thus accounting for 1% of the total characters in spherical cow world's yearly evaluation), when polynesians are around 0.5% of the total population.
I think the "rounding error" problem is always going to be present when it comes to representation in films. I also see it being an issue for panel discussions. I have a female friend who was indignant that professional conferences don't try to have a 50/50 split of males and females on panel discussions, but even ignoring the demographics of certain professions like STEM fields being majority male to begin with, you're always going to have the problem that when putting together a panel discussion, you're presumably prioritizing goals other than equality (such as, "Wouldn't it be nice to have someone who wrote a book about this topic recently?" or "We want to balance the panel with opposing viewpoints, so lets try to find the most prominent person who believes ~X, and see if they're willing to fly out and participate on our dime"), and large professional conferences are also operating under constraints of who will actual attend and who actual wants to be on a panel in the first place. Add in the fact that an odd-numbered panel number will always result in an imbalance of some kind, and I think it's completely unreasonable to want more women (or more anyone) on a panel discussion.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
56m ago
Both Rousseau and Hobbes are wrong. There has never really been a thing such as the state of nature in the anthropological history of man, we were never perfect individuals, we were always individuals living in communities.
Man isn't inherently good or bad. He's both, has always been both and will always be both.
The point that Hobbes makes that this common Shire existence exists because there is a sovereign to monopolize violence and enact justice is still a potent one though.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
59m ago
Sorry didn't see the other comment. Still, I don't see how wokeness isn't just about tolerating overrepresentation. The Chinese deal at least gives me pause, if you offered me the Russian one, I wouldn't even bat an eye.
I discuss it below, but it’s hard to quantify the extent to which Putin tolerates the extreme overrepresentation of various minority groups in organized crime in Russia proper. By contrast the modern FBI went after organized black gangs to the extent that the whole culture fractured and the drugs business is no longer even the main cause of internecine conflict in eg. the South Side.
2rafa
1hr ago
How about the extreme amounts of organized crime by various non-ethnic-Russians that the Kremlin largely tolerates and which de facto amounts to huge wealth transfers to these minorities? Sure, there aren’t many state handouts (although there are some), but that isn’t the only thing that serves that effect.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
If the policy was time-limited like in China, sure.
It is simply indisputable that China is more leftist about this kind of thing than the US
We were talking about wokism, not leftism.
Also note how you completely dropped Russia from your argument.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
I'm legitimately not sure whether you're being sarcastic or not. The argument would make sense either way.
2rafa
1hr ago
I don’t think you really mean that. Would you accept a permanent end to affirmative action, bans on any DEI, guaranteed meritocracy in public and private employment and harsh crackdowns on any racial identitarianism (white or black) in exchange for limits on the number of kids white people could have?
It is simply indisputable that China is more leftist about this kind of thing than the US. The specific flavor of anti-racism in America is largely unique to the Anglosphere, progressivism isn’t.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
Reject white nationalism.
Embrace Davos conspiracies.
sun_the_second
1hr ago
How does "more choice in a videogame" map to "wheels come off"???
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
I could imagine it of there was a billion Americans, and it came with none of the self-flagellation. Sorry but there just is no comparison between the two approaches.
2D3D
1hr ago
Frankly women can enter as well, were it not for the nannying and tutting. The sex adjacent focus in Asia is a combination of degeneracy and ability to exclude schoolmarms. There does exist the interesting female equivalents of private high teas in Hong Kong and johnny bars in Japan where female managers of their husbands wealth end up forming consortiums to buy up Canadian and London property but that is a different tale.
2rafa
1hr ago
Non-Han minorities get certain privileges but if they step out of line they'll be in a world of pain.
Non-Han minorities have received privileges that American leftists could never dream of. Imagine if the left restricted white parents to one child while allowing black and brown people to have unlimited children. The CHAZ and Star Wars are nothing compared to that.
Imagine if the top earning film at the US box office was 'Saving Private Ryan' turned up to 11 with an ending caption saying 'the eternal glory of the US Army shall be remembered forever and ever, the brave martyrs live forever in our hearts'. That's the Battle at Lake Changjin, that's real, intense nationalism. The top grossing film in America is Star Wars VII, a woke remaster of the original Star Wars.
Have you watched ‘Masters of the Air’ (2024)? It’s the successor show to Band of Brothers, it’s very patriotic and features a majority white male cast. I don’t think the occasional line about ‘But Black People Were Still Oppressed’ changes that. A rare negative review in Ars Technica said:
The only thing allowed here is wall-to-wall jingoistic patriotism—the kind where there's no room for anything except God, the United States of America, and bombing the crap out of the enemy.
Now, you can argue that no Chinese outlet would publish that about Battle at Lake Changjin, but it’s not clear that that’s really something negative about the US in comparison.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
I’ve got to ask you to be more specific. Make your case politely and firmly. If you skip to the conclusion, you’re just booing your outgroup.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Country clubs and golf courses in Texas(and probably most of the rest of the south, I’ve just no experience there) have ‘locker rooms’ which have comfy chairs and serve drinks.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1hr ago
Yes, I do too, but I'd rather not have the wheels come off while I'm driving.
haroldbkny
1hr ago
I have, at times, suffered what seemed to me like episodes of minor existential horror contemplating the 'world' of narrative driven games like say, Half-Life 2. The protagonist exists in what is, essentially a linear corridor, and he can only move forward. Whatever he may want to do, there's nothing he can do but move forward.
I think I can relate to this a little bit. I have felt similarly, and also this feels to me to be related to a feeling I always have at the end of great games, and especially RPGs. The whole time, you're getting more leveled up, or maybe even you, the player, are getting more skilled. Until at one point, you have done everything you can do in the game. And then that's it. All the levels you've acquired that felt so dopaminergic, and all the skill you have is essentially worthless.
This also reminds me of One Punch Man. I think I remember hearing that the creator based it on the feeling of being overpowered in a video game. You feel like you could do anything, but there's just nothing to do.
To me, that's a lot of what real depression is all about. When I'm depressed, life to me feels like a hallway where I have no choice, and sometimes also feels like I could do whatever I want, but there's nothing interesting to do.
There's already some experimental games out there, like this one that functions just the way you describe it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2240920/Vaudeville/
According to the creator "All the content in my game is original; the only thing that is entirely AI-driven are the dialogues, which are based on an original script I wrote, and then created in real time."
If you watch gameplay of it, it's basically like chatting to a well-prompted Chat GPT bot.
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