FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
We should. How is that incompatible with the following?
Our bandit hordes are already here. The warlords that will tame them have already been born. And when they do, earthly notions of equality, sameness and tolerance will go with them.
All this has happened before, and will happen again.
Compare that to this comment:
Yes, our ancestors were "like us" insofar as they loved their friends and families, liked to tell and hear stories, enjoyed food and sex, and feared death, but that's a pretty sparse overlap in my opinion. Outside of a tiny handful of intellectuals and philosophers, you probably wouldn't be able to hold any kind of real or meaningful conversation with a 16th century German even if you could speak his language perfectly, and you wouldn't want to anyway because he might crush your skull.
The difference seems pretty clear to me.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Actually none of what you describes strikes me as a fraction as unpleasant as the life of the average person a few centuries ago, which is probably why humanity collectively abandoned that lifestyle as soon as it was materially feasible.
You have no experience of the life of the average person a few centuries ago. You don't even have stories of that life. You have a small, curated selection of those stories provided by a small collection of people, almost all of which likewise had no experience of that life. Biasing that sample for personal or tribal ends provides obvious utility, and it is trivial to observe that such biasing efforts are endemic.
We have actual histories, songs and stories from people a few centuries ago, and even from many centuries ago. They do not demonstrate a life-experience of unending hell-misery, but rather an existence very like our own. Their concerns were similar to ours. Their joy and suffering was similar to ours. Nothing fundamental about human nature or the human experience has changed in any way since at least the invention of writing.
Sorry, sorry, potential wife.
It still however leaves the fear that i will feel alienated from my own children and the belief I have failed in endowing them with the capacity to achieve great things.
My children are not yet capable of a coherent conversation. I still find them wonderful and amazing; the last few months have been pretty tough, and interacting with my eldest has consistently been the largest source of genuine joy and contentment in my life, to the point that several times I've stepped away from crises with work to simply pick up and hold them.
There are times when I might have been tempted to claim that I was smarter than my wife. I know a lot more about history, philosophy, politics, pretty much anything academic, and she certainly lacks my encyclopedic knowledge of banal gun trivia. And yet, she is miles better at most practical matters than I am, and it turns out that those practical matters are extremely important every day of the week, while my academic knowledge is mostly useful for arguing on the internet. My life improved massively by all objective measures when I married her, and if I lost her it would immediately get much worse by those same objective measures, completely ignoring the emotional and personal factors.
If my children take after me, I hope my wife will be able to teach them a great deal of her practicality; my life would have certainly benefited from more of it. If my children take after her, then it will be my job to try to compress what insights I have down to a level their capability and inclination can make use of. Intellect that cannot be communicated has scant value. I am likely always going to be "smarter" than them, simply because I'm much older and have much more data and experience; the question isn't whether they're my intellectual equal, the question is whether my intellect is sufficient to the task of making good humans from scratch.
My father was quite critical, and I think I've inherited a double-portion of his critical nature, but this is something I'm aware of and can try to compensate for. I'm critical because I see how things could be better, and I want them to be better, but nothing gets improved without the motivation to strive, and criticism is not a good motivator for most people. So, again, the test of intelligence is not whether I can find flaws, but whether I can motivate improvement. I'm proud (and terrified) that my eldest can climb a ladder. I'm proud that they can hold a pencil. I need to cultivate and communicate this pride to them, teach them that focused, purposeful effort is the essence of value, that that I am proud of their growth.
More generally, I think the standard Rationalist discourse on intelligence is badly flawed. To put it bluntly, I do not observe a correlation between intelligence and "correctness" in any objective, holistic sense. Self-deception and rationalization scale in direct proportion to intelligence. Von Neumann was not, in fact, the God-Emperor of mankind; he was in the end successfully yoked to a society of his supposed inferiors, and his more unique ideas were thankfully discarded by those same supposed inferiors. Intelligence is not isomorphic to Goodness, but rather is values-neutral. There are no shortage of examples of the harms caused by intelligence turned to evil ends, and no reason to believe that a dramatic increase in intelligence, either on the individual or societal level, would alter the human condition in any fundamental way.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Do you like your wife? Do you think the world would be a better place with more people like your wife in it?
Just when I thought politics couldn't sink deeper into the gutter.
We have not yet begun to defile ourselves.
...But the man, because he's not carrying the child, the responsibility begins the moment he chooses to have sex with a woman.
...And ends the moment he makes it clear that he doesn't want to raise or support a child, and has offered compensation for the remaining medical risk inherint in terminating the pregnancy, minus that covered by the doctor's malpractice insurance. The fact that biological reality makes perfect symmetry impossible does not salvage even a fraction of the asymmetry you are endorsing. The woman still has all the choice, and there is no principled reason to finance her unilateral choices with 18 years of child support.
Also, a truly financially destitute man won't really be on the hook for more than a meager amount of child support.
What relevance does this have? Rich women are still allowed abortions. Whether the man can pay for a child's rearing has zero bearing on whether he should have to, any more than it does for whether women should have to carry a potential child they do not wish for. The established standard here is not hardship, but mere perception of inconvenience.
It seems to me that your arguments would work a whole lot better on a 90s-era Evangelical social conservative; maybe if that was the sort of person you could reason with, you should have made some effort to preserve their continued existence.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Okay, put a hard number on the medical risk of Abortion, which I'm told is significantly safer than carrying and delivering a child to term. We can discount malpractice and similar, which should obviously be covered by the abortion providers' insurance. It seems to me that the monetary value of any remaining medical risk would have to be orders of magnitude smaller than the expected cost of 18 years of child support.
Problem solved, no?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Walking away from a child you've created and that will be born is an irresponsible act.
Pardon, but the consensus is that it isn't a child, which is why we allow routinely allow doctors to cut such entities to pieces with surgical implements and then sell the resulting offal as pharmaceutical raw ingredients, an entirely normal and unobjectionable practice that social consensus strongly resists critiquing.
Likewise, whether or not it will be born is entirely the mother's decision. Financial hardship is a generally-approved motive for termination. Why would it be irresponsible for to allow the man to be absolved of financial responsibility for the potential child before they are born? If the mother does not wish to finance the child's rearing on her own, she is still free to choose to terminate. Why should she be allowed to compel the father to finance her unilateral choices?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Was Sex Positivity ever actually workable, or did culture war dynamics aid in sweeping its contradictions under the carpet for a decade or two? "Skinsuit" implies that there was something alive and worthwhile inside that skin in the first place. Does it seem to you that this was the case?
It seems to me that Horny Liberalism was never actually going to work long-term. Sex is not, in fact, harmless fun; it simply has too many consequences, physical and psychological, for it to be treated as such. Those consequences can be hidden for a time, but they build up and sooner or later they demand a reckoning. For that matter, it seems likely to me that the same is true for LGBTQ2A+; the reckoning will come, sooner or later.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
It’s a fully rigorous definition, “enthusiastically want to have sex with the other person” is a well-defined state of the world.
So it's a rigorous definition because it's well-defined? What makes it well-defined? What are the simple, easy-to-assess components that allow us to distinguish A from !A?
Separately, it is difficult to provide objective evidence of this state to outsiders, but that doesn’t mean that the definition isn’t rigorous.
My understanding is that definitions exist to draw distinctions in reasoning, and rigorous definitions allow us to draw distinctions in reasoning rigorously. You seem to be conceding that your "rigorous definition" can't actually draw distinctions in practical examples of the issue encountered in the real world, which is the fact that I'm attempting to discuss with you. If "rigorous definition" is a hindrance, I'm happy to discard the term and use whichever term you'd prefer to encapsulate the problem of actually determining, whether in advance or in hindsight, whether sex was rape or harmless fun, in a way other than simply the woman's say-so.
If on the other hand, you believe that the woman's say-so is in fact all that is needed, that abuse of this power isn't a problem worth worrying about, and that men concerned about this evident power imbalance are just being silly, I'm prepared to take you at your word. At that point, it would be interesting to hear how you reconcile your perceptions with those of Ezra Klein, the state of California, and the Department of Education, which seem to directly contradict you.
Fortunately it’s extremely rare for there to be any disagreements.
You are arguing that sex is basically just harmless fun in the vast majority of cases, and we don't need to think too hard about the exceptions. Klein is explicitly arguing that enough cases are harmful that a considerable portion of all the Fun in sex needs to be replaced by explicit, government-enforced fear.
So it's all fun, except for the parts you don't want to talk about, and those parts need draconian punishments stripped of due process and all the other procedural safeguards. But they're rare, which is why it's okay to be super-loosie-goosey with who the draconian punishments stripped of procedural safeguards will actually be applied to, and why there's no actual need for someone to be able to tell, in advance, whether they're in danger of them.
Klein says there's a crisis that demands immediate action, and damn the consequences. You say everything's fine.
Which is it?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
In fact the differences could be what drives our societies to improve.
Looking at the last decade, does it seem to you that society is improving?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Do both parties enthusiastically want to have sex with each other? That is casual fun sex.
This is not a rigorous definition. A rigorous definition would offer a clear way to distinguish the state of "enthusiastically want to have sex with each other" from the absence of such a state.
It’s really not hard to define rigorously. Of course it’s harder to set down a list objective evidence that proves both people enthusiastically wanted to have sex with each other...
...You say it isn't hard, and then explain why it is hard, and make no effort to actually do it successfully.
but notably for the vast, vast majority of casual sexual encounters the facts are not in dispute.
Do you disagree that the vast majority of rapes are unconvicted, and a large majority unreported?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
No offense but you need to touch grass
Notably, this is not actually an argument.
Can you provide a rigorous distinction between "casual fun sex" and "rape culture", as understood by current-year Feminism? I certainly can't, and I notice most feminists can't draw one either.
It tries to change, through brute legislative force, the most private and intimate of adult acts. It is sweeping in its redefinition of acceptable consent; two college seniors who've been in a loving relationship since they met during the first week of their freshman years, and who, with the ease of the committed, slip naturally from cuddling to sex, could fail its test.
The "yes means yes law is terrible, but necessary...
If the Yes Means Yes law is taken even remotely seriously it will settle like a cold winter on college campuses, throwing everyday sexual practice into doubt and creating a haze of fear and confusion over what counts as consent. This is the case against it, and also the case for it. Because for one in five women to report an attempted or completed sexual assault means that everyday sexual practices on college campuses need to be upended, and men need to feel a cold spike of fear when they begin a sexual encounter.
We're a full decade past the point where the ideological schizophrenia within Feminism became impossible to ignore. Naïve ra-ra sex-positivism is dead, Jackie killed it, and Title IX cremated the corpse. If you disagree, take it up with Ezra Klein and the DOE.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Who is, these days? How about we spend as much on this as we did on invading and rebuilding Iraq?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Common usage recapitulates the last word of the acronym outside the acronym, which is stupid but too endemic to fight.
"NAM Minority" = Non-Asian Minority Minority
"PIN Number" = Personal Identification Number Number
"ATM Machine" = Automated Teller Machine Machine
Addressing the idea of people becoming conflict theorists instead of mistake theorists, I consider this an illegitimate way to divide people.
Why?
We can observe that friction exists between various people at various times and under various conditions. This friction often gets bad enough that something has to be done about it. In deciding what to do about it, we need a theory of where the friction is actually coming from. We can observe that sometimes this friction comes from mistakes, from misunderstandings leading people to fight over things they don't actually need to fight about: a coworker is claiming someone stole their lunch out of the fridge, when actually it just got bumped behind someone else's lunchbag. Find their lunch and give it to them, exchange apologies, and the problem simply goes away. Other times, the problem is real: maybe someone really did steal their lunch, and has been repeatedly.
Someone who believes the lunch was misplaced is operating off mistake theory. Someone who thinks the lunch was stolen is operating off conflict theory. Neither is better than the other, both are appropriate in some situations and inappropriate in others. You can't simply discount either without crippling your ability to reason about the actions and motivations of others.
How is any of this illegitimate?
i.e. when he says:
Conflict theorists think a technocracy is stupid.
I'm a conflict theorist, and I think a technocracy is stupid. I'm happy to argue why at great length, but really all I'd be doing is pointing at the horrifying record of actual "technocracy" as it exists in the real world.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
It's a quote from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
...But more generally, it seems to me that this a problem we run into quite a bit, hence the popularity of Egregores like Moloch. When I look at the problems of the world, some of them seem straightforwardly the fault of individual people, but many more of them seem to be beyond any discrete human agency. The Media seems to me to be a thing, distinct from any individual journalist, and I don't know where it keeps its brain either.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
...We just had a thread where a lot of people seemed flatly dismissive that a pot of boiling water could be a seriously threatening weapon. Inspired by this comment, I did a quick google search and confirmed that boiling water attacks are routinely charged under "attempted murder" without controversy.
I think "is boiling water dangerous" is a pretty good example of an opinion that is observably functionally meaningless, due to specific emotional valiances swamping all factual considerations.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
It is probably not real, and I would strongly recommend using that thought as open and close brackets around any reaction you have to it.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Could there be an Is vs Ought distinction here? Focusing on the individual intelligence of a President or Presidential candidate imports the assumption that their individual judgement and analysis is dispositive. That assumption seemed shaky to me before Biden, and certainly hasn't improved since.
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can’t see where it keeps its brain." I'm not confident that we can see where a given Administration keeps its brain. Which do you think would generate a more reliable set of predictions for the outputs of a Kamala presidency: a careful analysis of her responses to interview questions, or a careful analysis and extrapolation of Blue Tribe social trends? Which should we consider the leading indicator?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
My recollection is that they were indeed "mostly false", but it's been a long time. What makes it complicated is that once we toppled Saddam's government, neglected to replace it with anything orderly, and made little to no effort to prevent the Iraqi army's munitions stockpiles from being thoroughly looted, Iraq was subsequently completely inundated with terrorists and terrorism for the next decade-plus, so a rigorous argument would have to disentangle pre- and post-invasion terrorism.
Whatever Saddam's support for terrorism before the invasion, it seems to me that it was a rounding error compared to the amount of terrorism generated by the invasion and occupation.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Somewhere on my shelf is a self-print copy of Dogs in the Vineyard. How low the mighty have fallen, &etc.
I've never gone back to see where Lumley is now. I prefer my memories of a better time.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
I am not confident that SJ and "let's just methodically and efficiently bomb and shoot all the Bad People" are mutually exclusive. There have been a lot of previous "Social Justice" movements that demonstrated a notable capacity for liquidating undesirables, even those cohesive enough to offer coordinated resistance.
You are failing to understand the evidence presented.
Exhibits A, B, and C are all examples of rule-breaking; they did not recieve mod action because he ate a ban for a fourth comment concurrently in the queue. When that happens, we ban and comment for one such post message and then dismiss the reports on the other examples, rather than adding a separate formal warning for each individual infraction.
He has been reported many times, four of those reports drew formal warnings, and a fifth drew a tempban. He has now drawn a second, longer temp-ban for another spate of rule-breaking. The exhibits will not go on his permanent record, any more than the majority of his previous infractions have. On the other hand, we have working memory, and even if we didn't his comments are publicly available and can be perused by anyone at any time.
Do you recognize that, formally warned or not, the "exhibits" provided are good examples of bad posting? If so, then it should be easy to understand that those who make a maintain a habit of posting in that manner will have some of their posts reported, elevating them to the attention of the mods, who will warn and then ban them. The solution to this is to not post in such a manner, and if you are posting in such a manner, to read and internalize the rules and cease to do so.
If you find the rules or the mod interpretation of them difficult to grasp, feel free to ask questions and I'll personally be happy to answer them.
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