InfoTeddy
11mo ago
Screwing up the dating market, for one. China has the opposite problem with vastly more men than women as a result of their former one-child policy, and that leads to a ton of men being unable to find a partner. Analogously, an excess of women would leave a ton of them unable to find a partner. Of course China has more demographic problems beyond that (namely having more old people than young) but you get the point.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
My immediate objection is to the lopsided gender ratios that this would produce. As seen in China, lopsided gender ratios are not good demographics to have for a country.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
I am confused at how the above comment is promoting hate upon vulnerable groups and would like to see this claim elaborated on.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
Indeed. Caroline Farrow is a great example. She is (was) being harassed by a trans woman, but for the crime of tweeting unfavorably about a trans person, police showed up at her house and arrested her in front of her children, rather than the person who was harassing her. This is on top of her being socially canceled.
In general, nothing about government prosecution of cancel culture precludes private, social prosecution of cancel culture. Unlike the laws on monopoly of physical, men-with-guns violence, there's no law saying that only the government can deal consequences to one accused of wrongthink. It would be great if there was, but for now, we're in the uncanny valley of half-measures where we have the downsides of both implementations and neither of the upsides.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
Philosophy Tube's, for one.
I think there's a chance of coordination because an independent attack would be quickly refuted with accusations of homophobia and bigotry, but if everyone in the community agrees, then the attack becomes okay.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
I always roll my eyes when people's idea of debate is to use a Bingo card and immediately discard one's argument if they vaguely fuzzy pattern-match to an item on the card. It's why I'm not a big fan of simply citing fallacies, like "that's an ad hominem", at least not without elaboration on how exactly what their interlocutor said is fallacious in that manner.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
You can go and look at the LTT subreddit and their forums, people were openly expressing the notion that the botched benchmarks didn't really matter and the only thing that did was the prototype GPU or whatever that the other company had provided and LTT had given away.
Just to be clear, "given away" is a huge understatement. First, Linus Media Group told Billet Labs that they were going to give the prototype cooler back to them. Then they slept on it for a long period of time without giving it back. And then they sold the prototype at auction.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
It's funny seeing this when viewed in the context of "Vision Zero" and similar urbanist movements.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
Furthermore, the biggest target of the video was actually someone ostensibly on Hbomberguy's team (Somerton).
I doubt that this is Hbomberguy just acting without bias, since he more-or-less gives Hasan Piker (and other react streamers) a pass despite react streamers committing arguably worse plagiarism, and Hasan is another BreadTuber friend. Around the same time his video came out, a couple other videos attacking James Somerton also came out. It's really hard to not see these videos as coordinated.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
Your post puts my pause about supporting EA into better words than I possibly can write. I've always found it... cheating, kinda?... that the entire premise of EA seems to just be brute-forcing morality and ethics by shoving as many zeroes into a number as possible. And that's how we get what you have described here, where it's easy to say that you've saved 200,000 or however many lives, but then people don't interrogate that result beyond that. People just see the number and go "wow that's a lot of zeroes so it must be good".
I guess what I'm wondering is if there's much focus put in to long-term solutions (and I don't mean "longtermism" like figuring out how to get humans to colonize the stars or whatever to maximize the number of future lives) rather than just whatever saves the most lives in the short term. For example, I was always under the impression that you can't just brute-force solving world hunger by confiscating all the world's billionaires' wealth (ignoring the fact that much of it isn't liquid and actually kinda doesn't exist and if you confiscated it then most of the wealth would just go away) and funneling it into programs to distribute food to starving populaces (ignoring the fact that this would outcompete and devastate local markets, etc.). Sooner or later, their governments would stop you, because it turns out that the reason they're starving in the first place is because their government wants them to, and there's plenty of things the government can do to get their country in a place to feed them, but they don't for various reasons. So there's a good short-term solution by just distributing as much as you can, but an actual long-term solution requires some change to the government, and a lot of focus seems to be put on the short-term brute-force way of doing things.
Downthread, @FirmWeird posits a similar scenario where the population is way beyond carrying capacity. What do you do? Feeding them makes the line on a graph go up, if you ignore that this means you'll need even more in the future (induced demand). Not feeding them makes the line go down but it results in a more stable equilibrium. "Just shove as many zeroes in as you can" ignores plenty of side effects that may or may not be desirable, almost like a paperclip maximizer.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
It's their thinly-veiled attempt to be loftier, paint themselves as descending from the ivory tower to do a good deed, and aren't just another lowlife doxing someone on the internet, when in reality, well, that's exactly what they are. They're going to stoop to the level of the people they accuse of doing "online harassment", but they're going to do it in a way that makes it seem like they're not doing it at all.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
Epsilon. Note the sneaky clause about "online harassment" (which these days is a nebulous term that can mean anything from posting one mean comment to actually showing up to someone's house in person), not to mention the "often-gendered" part.
That's to say, if your scenario happened, they would bemoan that it's doxing and they'll say that's because it's online harassment of a woman.
InfoTeddy
11mo ago
I wish they would take this definition to its logical conclusion and charge the phone book and people finder sites with doxing, but they never do. (Of course, they added the "with malicious intent" part which could be used to conveniently absolve said people finder sites of wrongdoing.)
It's absolutely staggering how people will blame anything and everything but data brokers for doxing. The United States is an unreasonably easy place to dox people. If you reside in the US and give me your legal first and last name, I can very likely find your home address in seconds by going to one of these sites and typing them in. That's absurd. I hate to play the "this only happens in the US" card (and to be fair, equivalent sites exist for Canada and possibly other countries), but this genuinely seems like a US-specific problem. Nowhere else will governments just release what should be private information to any party who has enough money to buy them.
If there were any laws against releasing that sort of information to data brokers, and people finder sites were forced to be shut down, 99% of US-based doxing (and subsequent "online harassment") would disappear overnight. But of course, there's a huge financial incentive to keep things the way they are, as having data rakes in huge revenue for companies (it's digital oil after all) and they're not liable for their information being misused. And modern journalism isn't suited to actually rocking the boat, so they will never publish a news article on how easily people can be doxed in the US because of these data brokers, and they will never challenge this state of affairs.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
I mean, yes. But arguably even if you do link your real-life identity, it's still a digital simulacrum, because typing text is different than saying words in real life. Is there a standard by which if you reveal enough details on a pseudonym, it's no longer considered a "digital simulacrum"?
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Sure. Never express yourself, just keep everything held down.
That is not what I meant. What I meant is that, for example, if you don't want to reveal to others where you live, you shouldn't mention the name of your city or town. Basic stuff like that. You can still express yourself.
This seems to be one of the most pertinent problems of our time.
How is it a problem? Arguably, it's the other way around, and wanting your identity affirmed or expressed is the problem. The entire trans movement and its externalities stem from a misguided goal to affirm and express their identities.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
It's preposterous, and a sign of the times, that one needs to be well-versed in opsec in order to freely speak their mind.
Maybe it's a sign of the times, but this isn't anything unique to the internet. The Federalist Papers were published under pseudonyms.
Arguably, it's a sign of the times that a significant many on the internet aren't practicing opsec. When the internet first started, people were just screen names in ephemeral chat rooms. Now, they use their real names, with real photos of themselves, leaving behind permanent posts on social media sites describing everything in detail for the entire world to see.
The highest degree of opsec is to simply never share your thoughts, never post anything online, ever.
Technically true, but that's like saying the highest degree of transport safety is to never drive or get in a car, ever.
(And before the urbanists go "this but unironically", might I point out that bikes, trains, trams, and planes still have accidents too, so the technically-true highest degree would also avoid those.)
Both modes of living are fundamentally dishonest, misrepresentative, and, indeed, miserable.
I don't see how this follows. There's nothing fundamentally dishonest or misrepresentative about adopting a pseudonym. It also doesn't have to be miserable. 90% of opsec is shutting up, and that could get many people by for many years. You would only have to do the remaining 10% if you're really paranoid.
Freedom of expression without fear of cancellation and censure is required for one to affirm their identity. Anything else is robbing one of their ability to authentically express their identity and who they are.
I don't find much value in having my identity affirmed or expressed.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Not least because it's verboten to consider whether trans people can "spread" being trans to others like a social contagion.
There's a couple reasons to believe this is the case. The proportion of trans people historically has been almost zero. There's two ways they try to explain this:
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Cite various examples of historical trans people. But the problem is that these examples are not trans people in the sense of a person who thinks he's a woman in a man's body. These are always an effeminate man who couldn't perform the male gender role, so he was assigned a third gender role (this is almost always what the "third gender" or "two spirit" stuff means), or someone who pretended to be the opposite gender for strategic reasons (e.g. a woman pretending to be a man to join the army).
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Say they were just not noticed, or, uncharitably, suppressed by cisheteronormativity. But this doesn't explain why there wasn't a lot of suicides from these transgender identities being suppressed or not affirmed.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
The biggest example I have in mind is of someone who didn't make opsec mistakes as a teenager, only as an adult.
It's quite curious how rationalist (or rationalist-adjacent) figures will go through the trouble of creating a pseudonym, but then make basic mistakes in opsec that will link them back, thus rendering the whole effort pointless.
The article claims that he reused email addresses, which is a really serious basic mistake. Not only does doing this assume that every website the email address is used on will never suffer a data breach or some other exploit that leaks users' email addresses, it also risks "crossing the streams" where you absentmindedly start doing things meant for one pseudonym on another. And it's really easy to avoid this mistake, too. Just create a new email account.
There's a couple other rationalist figures I have in mind that have had poor opsec, but it's probably best to not name them or go into detail (unless people here are really curious about opsec and want to learn more). Although, all the information I would post is public anyway.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Just goes to show that even in Europe, it's not enough. Europe solves many of their complaints, but they can always find something new. Even Not Just Bikes said he's ceased talking about North America to focus on advocacy in Europe, because there's apparently (or at least it seems like he thinks this) a real risk that Europe will backslide into car-dependency hell. He attributes this hypothetical backslide to the rise of right-leaning parties.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Indeed. That's why I prefaced the next part with "if I were to be charitable". Sadly, many urbanists in real life do not behave as a charitable one would.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
A lot of the talk about suburbs is confused because "suburb" can refer to many forms of development that are less dense than skyscrapers. Commonly what urbanists are referring to when they hate on suburbs is the sort of low-density, single-family neighborhoods built throughout North America. Some urbanists (like Adam Something) make a distinction between American-style suburbs and European-style suburbs, and their argument is that European-style suburbs are better, because they are denser ("missing middle" housing) and can be served with transit.
If I were to be charitable to urbanists, I would say they just use "suburb" as a shorthand since many people in the States will think of a low-density, single-family neighborhood when they hear that word, and that is indeed what urbanists are talking about (and railing against). They don't need to put any more qualifiers than "suburb", because most of the time they aren't comparing between European-style and American-style suburbs, and they don't really have any qualms about abolishing even European-style suburbs as they prefer living in the urban cores anyway.
But it is strange that people's views on this particular question seem to align perfectly with their views on trans people in general.
Is it really? It's people having consistent principles. Which, I can agree is strange, but on TheMotte I don't think is that strange.
I am not aware of a single case of a trans woman assaulting a woman in a women's bathroom. This is purely hypothetical as far as I know. If it happened, I expect the anti-trans side would publicize it heavily.
It's a standard mistake to say "this never happens", because it's happened quite a lot. For example, this case.
The one case I am aware of where a trans prisoner was placed in a women's prison and impregnated a woman involved consensual sex. The safety of other prisoners was not endangered.
Any sources that it was consensual?
Yes, because any number of websites could fall under the same reasoning or worse, but it's only Kiwi Farms that they apply the standard to. This is besides the fact that in particular for Kiwi Farms, many of the justifications are outright lies.
Not without an uphill battle. They're still being attacked by the same ex-Googler transgender trans activist who spends all day sending emails reporting the site for violations of every single provider's AUP.
The point being is that "start your own website" is a huge fig leaf, because they can't just come out and admit that they are opposed to ideologically-opposed groups merely existing, so they always have to find another socially-acceptable reason for shutting the site down.
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