Ah, I see! And "You have to put something of yourself in" is a great way to put it! I do think that there's an objective reality, but that it cannot be described or modeled. If I make a mental model of you, that model would reveal more about myself than it would reveal about you. As for oughts, there seems to be actions which bring better results than others. Any process which is not sustainable will eventually cease, so that which wishes to stay in existence must play by certain rules, or make sure not to step too much out of line for too long. I don't really believe in something like morality, but my personal preferences looks a lot like what people call morality, and finally, it would be bad taste of me if I attacked your moral beliefs since it wouldn't benefit you.
I would call this the standard post-modernist worldview.
Is that so? I don't like post-modernists though. Do you think they understand any of these things? Average people who are post-modernists likely don't know about axiomatic systems or the incompleteness theorems. Human perception is very malleable, they got that much right, but they want reality to be malleable as well, and they think we can achieve this if we simply agree that we can. We could agree that people were equal, and that would largely succeed, but IQ test results would remain entirely unchanged.
Like spiritualists say, everything we need to be happy is already inside of us. We have incredible power over our own reality. We only really need to deal with objective reality enough that we can meet physical needs like nutrition and shelter, which is quite easy. But treating reality like it's malleable is just immaturity, for social methods like "If I just complain enough, I will get my way" only work on other people, they do not work on reality. And treating reality like fantasy is dangerous, it very quickly leads to ruin.
I don't think the issue is necessarily diversity of though, for that actually works well to the extent that everyone is self-sufficient. When people are "enough in themselves", it doesn't matter much if there's other people who also have their own worldview. It's only when people are incomplete that they need other people to be coherent enough that the sum of whoever is present exceeds one person who can live independently. Of course, shared language and such is highly useful, but the more mature and developed you are, the bigger distances you tend to be able to cope with (which is why the old internet used to have many wildly different people co-existing somewhat well, while the modern internet is intolerant of differences as disagreement immediately results in drama and hurt feelings)
But what OP meant was probably "People are now valuing feelings over correct information, and their mental defense mechanisms kick in when they encounter evidence that their precious beliefs aren't workable, and they get hostile towards you if you cause them to reflect on themselves or if you ask them questions which makes them comfortable" and I can only agree with this. What he said wasn't exactly true, but what he meant still carries a good point.
It's not necessarily possible for A to justify their beliefs to B in a manner that B finds convincing
While this is true, you can increase the tolerance for differences in beliefs by about 10 times by focusing on terminal values. For instance, two groups might be in a conflict, both claiming "We're civilized, while you're uncivilized!" very well, but they're in agreement in this: Both groups prefer civilized behaviour to uncivilized behaviour. They merely need to learn how to communicate better to resolve this issue. The reason communicating (talking about things) can resolve conflicts in the first place is probably because most peoples terminal values are highly similar, or because it allows people to understand eachothers perspective in a way which they can respect (in other words, it doesn't conflict with their core values, as that would likely be irreconcilable). Mentally immature people get triggered and misunderstand others quite easily, over minor perceived differences which tend to not be differences at all (at least not as you get closer to terminal/core values)
etc. all criticising different aspects of our society for not being an improvement over nature
I don't think they're honest, even if they don't realize it. They will likely criticize the aspects in which they are at the bottom rather than at the top (meaning that they just want more power). And to be honest, I might enjoy society better if I was in the top 1% myself, or if I felt more compatible with the modern society than I do now. But besides a bit of technology (Computers, virtual reality, dishwashers, washing machines, driers, ovens, fridges and freezers, medicine and the ability to communicate over long distances with voice, video and files) I don't really need any aspects of the modern society. The modern society fulfills my physical needs better, but not my psychological needs. I like civilized people more than uncivilized people, but civility now seems to be decreasing as society gets more modern. In any case, what's important to me is peoples actual character. I've recently read some of the guodian bamboo strips from about 500 BC, and they resonate better with my own values than modern ideologies do. So civility does not necessarily require modernity nor scientific thinking.
I wrote quite a lot here, but I think we agree on most of it?
No pressure! Reply if you want and whenever you want
What I meant to say was "It's not just that we don't know how, it's that it's impossible". I don't subscribe to the idea that no humans have figured this all out yet, for I pretty much have. But the conclusion is that humans (myself included) are stupid. I believe that things work out because of human instincts and the laws of nature, and not because we actually know what we're doing.
A shared delusion
I think this perspective comes from the modern belief that everything must be justified or proved in order to be correct. I simply don't impose such rules on myself (and reality itself doesn't either). What I want to convery here is that preferences and beliefs aren't "illusions" in the sense that they're false or fake, and that there's no unique, more "real" underlying reality to discover. I'm "calibrated" for the world through my DNA (darwinism), through a process which made us to adapt to reality itself in a sense, so I will simply trust this process.
Anyway, it seems that beliefs influence reality. That your confidence influences your success (and that this applies even if you're entirely alone). Even if a belief is false, it may influence reality and become true. In other words, a belief seems to be an act of creation, making it "real".
I mean a set of beliefs and values
I do have those, but everyone must have them, or else they simply don't live very long (since they don't prioritize future states in which they are alive). Even the belief that beliefs are bad is a belief, so there's no easy way out.
Genuine intelligence and knowledge
A lot of highly educated people don't seem all that intelligent to me, they just seem good at memorizing things. That said, I'd prefer it if people simply stopped believing that they were smarter than nature (including their own nature). There's so many things about life which are unintuitiv, one of them is eustress, and not knowing about it has caused a lot of damage (helicopter parenting etc). But there's a lot more. Thing seem to go better when one is not so antagonistic towards existence, nature and oneself
And we have never discovered how to dispassionately turn an 'is' into an 'ought'
You can if and only if you agree on some values. If you want X to happen, then you 'ought' to take action Y. You need assumptions to have any truth at all (for the same reason you need axioms to have mathematics), and you need subjective values in order to rank possible future states and deem one of them better than the other.
The only problem here is that people are naive and rely on theory which only gets the first-degree consequences correct "I don't want birds to suffer, so I'm going to feed them", yeah but now there's more birds to feed, and more suffering if you stop giving them food (simple example)
Post-modernism survives because its skepticism is backed up by history
In a naive way, that's true. But when has a successful post-modernistic society existed? As far as I know, the answer is "never". A culture which has a coherent set of values and beliefs, and strict social norms to avoid various bad spirals from occuring, will be successful. A culture which knows that no culture is more correct than any other ... Well, such a culture will probably destroy itself. And by its own logic, this is fine, for it's no better than what it replaces, right?
you are going to have to exercise official, ideology-driven judgement at some point
I disagree, but you need something similar. I don't subscribe to any ideology, but I do have my own preferences. Whoever thinks you can succeed in life by being completely neutral is simply wrong. Biases exist in the first place because they aid survival.
Anyway, I trust reality, by which I mean that if a culture does X and it's nice to live in said culture, then said culture should continue to do X. Japan has strict borders, and Japan is perhaps the most civilized population in the world, so no other country has the right to tell them to open their borders.
You have be really clever to think something that stupid' crises
This happened because we assume that "expert" means "nice credentials", that "intelligent" means "educated", and because appearance is starting to have more value than substance (Real nerds tend to have worse social skills, but now even Tech has become a normie space in which connections and good verbal skills are king. In fact, "wokism" seems to correlate with verbal skills and social skills, but most great scientists have been sort of autistic and controversial)
I largely agree with some of what you've written, but not all of it. But it's interesting! In a way, it feels good to read, as it's rare to see somebody sharing what they actually think and feel without excessive self-censorship. But I don't think you've found the truth. Some of what you say get the symptoms right, but the causes are really elusive.
Let me start out by warning you that you care too much. Of course, we need people who care, as nihilism is a danger, but those on the left who are the most insane and the least logical tend to care too much. Once you start a moral war against something, you're almost always on a bad path. All the social movements causing these problems are ran by people with strong moral convictions, and it has come to the point where I instinctively avoid moralizers (I still have high standards for taste, though). I don't think it's a coincidence that you're angry about sexual abuse of children, as it's one of the worse things that people can think of. But all political discussions degrade into accusing eachother of the few things which carry the highest social stigma (which at the moment is pedophilia, nazism and racism). Is this not the same fear of immorality and social judgement which makes people act absolutely crazy in the first place?
There have been a million things
You hear one side of the news, and they repeatedly confirm the same thing. But "your enemies" are repeatedly told another another side of the story, even if it's one fabricated by the media. Even if the media turns out to be wrong in the end, only we are getting the updated information, other people have already moved on to other things, and the memory of who was wrong in the past (because the media told them) remains unchanged. All sides feel like they're on a streak in which they were right right every time. "Once again the criminal was migrant!" "Once again there was racist intent!" "Once again the early life section confirms they are jewish!" "Last-state capitalism claims another victim!"
All of these issues are much bigger than just migration. Some will tell you that the western world was subverted. Some will tell you that people are becoming "cucks" because Testosterone levels are decreasing. Some will tell you that the marxists are to blame for this, others will tell you it's the media, others will tell you that it's a rich elite, others will tell you that it's the result of an ideology which first too over western education. Others will tell you that good times create weak men, others will inform you that technology must result in weaking freedoms. Others will tell you that capitalism is to blame, others will tell you that materialism and the death of god is to blame. Others will tell you that it's due to increased social competition and that we're forced into the rat race. Others will blame Moloch, game theory and social dilemmas as they warn you not to hate the player but rather hate the game. Some speculate that ideologies have replaced religion, others that propaganda and marketing research has reached incredible levels and that we're creating superstimuli that humans cannot possibly resist. Finally, some say that weighting hurt feelings higher than problem-solving will be our doom.
Between 1 in 6 and 1 in 3 girls age 11-17 in the affected cities
Is this not a stat which goes something like "1 in 3 girls experience sexual harassment"? The threshold for that is very low now compared to the past. The rapes are the worst instances of this problem, it's not that 1 in 3 girls are literally raped.. Unless you count even grouping or a slap on the ass as rape. EDIT: Rotherham seems like a particularly bad case, and you might not have exaggerated here, my bad.
That if the best lack all conviction
Somehow, the population has largely been spiritually defeated. We all think something like "We all ought to do something", but nobody wants to go first. But it won't make a difference even if a single person does something extreme, I think. As for those with convictions - do they fare much better? I see more conviction pushing for immigration than against it. I think it's because naivety, idealism and conviction correlate with one another.
Rationality, politeness, tolerance, charity
I never bought into any of these things. I don't even see why you would, as the rational world is at odds with the natural world. Academia leans left, "rationality" is deeply materialistic, "tolerance" never made sense as a concept and these so-called intellectuals cannot even interpret Karl Popper correctly, much less think further than him (which is not even hard). Charity movements disgusts me, and not only because charities waste 90% of their money and exist as a guilt tax, not because they're not motivated by actual goodwill (thought they rarely are), and not even because they simply result in a kind of reverse eugenics which makes the problem that it's meant to solve even worse, but because doing math with qualia in a superficial manner is in terrible taste. In the first place, "suffering is bad" is a terribly stupid assumption which misses the problem. And people from all these spaces tend to think like Elon Musk does, and arrive at the conclusion that we need to mass-import indians. Western intellectualism disappoints me, I can barely respect the one-in-a-million. Not only do they not strike me as intelligent, they all seem to have a "number go up" mentality which conflicts with healthy living and subjective experience.
And it is like you said "The entire project of this space is wrong". It's not a question of intelligence, but of character.
They are evil
They wouldn't succeed without massive support, though. What makes people watch the destruction of their culture in real time and go "Maybe I'm just over-reacting"? What makes somebody more afraid of being racist than of being murdered? Even if those who caused these effects were evil, the average person can't be said to be evil, and for every evil person behind the scenes, there's at least 99 normies cheering for them.
By the way, "sexual depravity" seem to correlate with intelligence. A lot of good things and bad things correlate, which is why "good" and "evil" aren't easy to cut in two. Intelligence also correlates with openness, which is why intellectual conversations easily enter areas that regular people find repulsive. But the feelings of disgust and the ability to think about things which repulse you are valuable.
Finally, the evil you can define still does not manifest clearly. You can fight against immigration, but that's a vague idea. You likely don't have concrete individuals to point your anger at. I think most people face this problem, they're angry but they only have vague targets to point the anger at. Speaking of anger, are you perhaps projecting your own frustration with yourself? You're angry at yourself for being unable to stop the problem, so you point this anger at us? Not that I blame you for this. (By the way, please don't do anything stupid)
Because we don't value reason or the truth
Nobody really does. And you seem concerned not about falsehood but about the destruction of something you deem good. Society as a whole pretends to be partial while fighting for their own values. These two can co-exist, but only when people believe that their values will win on an even playing-field.
Finally, The Motte likely isn't allowed to value truth the highest, since they would get shut down if they got too much negative media attention. And without moderation of things like politeness, many users would simply leave, and we're not many people to begin with.
For day 6 part 2, you can solve it
I'm not sure what you mean that the outputs are too long
My bad, I meant that the inputs seem too long. But I suppose you can just describe the input structure, size and possible characters and make the LLM make a program which works for all possible valid inputs
How good are these solutions? I find that they seem quite easy to solve (I have only looked at a few of the problems so far though!), but that memory and time-efficient solutions take a bit more thinking and coding. Something which surprised me here is that the outputs weren't too long for chatGPT. I have never tried giving it the full input as I simply expected it to be too many tokens
I like the sensitivity part, I feel like senses is how you feel alive, so sensing more means feeling more alive than most people, or at least I like to think so. And having strong principles is usually admirable, though bending is better than breaking at times. Putting oneself at a disadvantage like this is great for individual development, but some people enter into unfortunate brittle configurations where it brings them many disadvantages. If I were to describe your trait as something positive, I'd say it's "having standards". Having standards is a mostly good form of inflexibility (plus, it pushes for things to be better).
I sort of both like and dislike human superficiality. I suppose I can forgive deep people for acting superficially, but that I can't forgive shallow people for having no depth. One of my favorite animals are cats, they just chill and do what they want, but they're easy to understand, they lack the layered deception that human have. If a cat wants to talk to you, or if it doesn't, you will know. As an autistic person, this is much easier to deal with than most people, and I quite like socializing with young people for this reason. So I admire even people who act like cats, despite how easily self-determination is confused for egoism, and how easily being in tune with oneself is confused with superficiality (which might be why it's mostly young people doing this - they're less socialized).
One thing I dislike though, is people who live in "shoulds" rather than reality. This is probably you (and it used to be me) so I will try to explain myself. They might follow rules, not for the reasons that the rules were made, but simply because they're rules. Life is too context-dependent for this to be viable, for there's a lot of cases in which "shouldn't"s are actually harmless or even beneficial. It took me a while, but I have learned to love ambiguity and all the advantages that it brings. Undecided parts of life, those kept vague or unknown, are basically pure potential. Once you make them into something specific, you lose the flexibility of choice. And most importantly, unchanging things are an illusion, everything is in a constant state of flux. Instead of deciding that a person is an introvert or an extrovert, you can just decide to experience the person as they are - and not hold them to the restriction of either (and feel bad when they act against the model you made of them). Plus, if you live in reality rather than in formal definitions, you tend to be mostly immune to thought experiments and existential issues.
where man only focussed on the superficial and the vibes
He didn't advocate for hedonism and materialism at least. But I think he did like "vibes" when they were caused by strong instincts. Nietzsche likes the human body and its potential. But human beings cannot improve without some struggles and hardship, and most people probably won't seek those out if they can avoid doing so, at least those who do seem rare.
Actually, you might be right. I know it's associated with ADHD, and that ADHD overlaps quite a bit with Aspergers, but it might not be an uncommon trait in general, even in people without ADHD or autism. A related quirk is probably liking having the television running in the background, or concentrating best when listening to music (most people I know with these traits have had ADHD though)
My guesses of somebody being ADHD are usually quite accurate, but maybe I've gotten overconfident after all
I enjoy theories like this, but personally I separate:
1: The anxiety of intelligent (and often autistic) people, who feel like they need to control the world and make everything legible and predictable, because they hate risk.
2: The mentally fragile, who is afraid of being a "bad person", afraid of being judged, and afraid of anything which might push them out of the category "mediocre" because such things poses a social risk.
Group 1 tend to be individualistic and unafraid of questioning the narrative, whereas group 2 is the polar opposite of this. Group 1 is neurotic and tends to have low EQ, whereas group 2 has high EQ but avoids risk because they have very little faith in themselves as individuals, and they need to be part of something bigger in order to act, so they're always looking for some cause or group to be a part of. Group 1 are often childish and sort of naive in that they trust people too easily, and they're higher in the trait "openness" which allows them to believe in more far-out ideas, part of this naivety is likely that they dislike lies, and project this onto others, and another cause is probably spending a lot of time alone, so that they more easily retain childhood naivety. Group 2 are are childish and naive in that they are afraid of negative emotions and anything else which might aid their personal growth. They tend to consume whatever helps distract them from reality (modern entertainment), and they have plenty of friends who will aid them in keeping their delusions intact (You're so valid! Being a little chubby is okay! Being triggered over mean words is totally normal!)
It's hard to cut these two groups perfectly in two, but if I had to try, group 1 are rigid and logical people in an illogical world which requires flexibility, and group 2 are flexible but weak-willed normies who live in shared social delusions (blank slate, etc) and care more about emotions and social reality than they care about objective reality.
I'm autistic, and I can tell that it runs in my family. My family tree has a lot of intelligent but eccentric people who likes model trains and such and have a silly form of humor. I've also heard "Coffee just makes me fall asleep haha" at quite a lot of family gatherings. Every time I watched trivia channels like "Who wants to be a millionare?" with my grandfather he'd know basically all the answers. My family also had a lot of criminals, mentally ill people (manic depression for instance), and millionares, so it's definitely not just autism and ADHD.
But yeah, I can see the traits, even though most of my family aren't diagnosed. Diagnosing mental illness is more of a recent thing, at least where I'm from (which I'm not telling).
I don't know if autism is genetic, or if it's mostly caused by stress like you claim, and my family just happens to be high in neuroticism (which results in high rates of autism). I do think mental illness is on a raise though, as the modern society is less in tune with human nature. Couple this with the modern and much lower thresholds for diagnosis of mental disorders, and the effect is basically explained.
That we're less violent now is a more complicated topic. We might simply have removed most violent people from the gene pool over time, and oversocialization likely has a large effect as well (and the general drop in T levels is probably also relevant).
Finally, I don't mind being autistic, but I do think autism is an illness. The overly systematic way of thinking, the need to be "correct" and find the "truth", the need to be in control, the hatred of ambiguity.. I don't think any of these are good or necessary. But I'm also completely disillusioned about technology by now, and by math, logic, rationality, the computability of reality, the value of intelligence, etc. If you ask me, intelligence itself clusters with mental illness and conflicts with human instinct (and therefore, more importantly, it conflicts with aesthetics).
If you're interested in how Christianity won and made us less violent and in how modern society conflicts with human nature, Nietzsches books covers all of these aspects. His criticism of systematizing philosophers like Kant might very well be a criticism of traits of autism.
I'm going by feeling myself. I feel like the way people think is changing to be more materialistic, so that people say "good" and "bad" without considering these as value judgements or opinions, but instead experience them as answers which are found and that one can learn if they have enough information. People also increasingly assume that if something doesn't make sense to them, then it's wrong, and like one should have to prove something in order for it to be valid. And yet reality is simply how it is, and if doesn't make sense then the sense-making is wrong, not reality. I often interact with Asians, since I like doing so. I always notice the change when I go back to interacting in English, it's like we value models of reality more than reality, and believe in them too much. There's a similar tendency towards optimization and efficiency as "best", even though there's a clear tradeoff in both aesthetics and morals. I hear things like "Of course X group will lie to you, they want to make money" said in a way which seem to support lying, rather than calling out liars or explaining why they exist. As if throwing away a personal advantage because of personal values is something strange. I hope I'm just over-sensitive to things that I dislike, and that they're actually rare, though.
Magick Tomes
Got any recommendations? It just seems like normal psychology to me (where the magic is speaking to your subconsciousness directly), but if it works, I will give it a try, even if it's strange.
I think some wisdom is of the type which can't be verified. I can rewrite sections of the Tao Te Ching such that it says a lot of things that we consider impressive today. For instance "acting without interest" is wise in that it avoids Goodhart's law and "One who loves the self as the world can be entrusted with the world" makes sense from the point of alignment, at least in humans (recreating human love in AIs might prove difficult, after all).
I agree that agenda driven universities can't be trusted with ancient wisdom. The only reason they can be trusted with math is that the rules are verifiable and because they're symbols which cannot be connected to anything that people have strong feelings about.
Selling people something that they want to be true
This seems to be modern self-help and not something that I brought up. But you're not exactly wrong, for there's a line in the alchemist which says something like "When you want something enough, the whole universe conspires in helping you attain it". But I don't think these statements are supposed to be true. Like "Believe in yourself", it's telling people to have a bias which, on average, works out better than not having said bias. Our belief influences our reality, even though they do not influence objective reality. So quotes like "Whether you think you can or not, you're right" are some degree of true. But most people have a hard time believing in themselves, so they just say "the universe" or ask "god" in their prayers, for they can still believe in something greater than themselves. These things are not intuitive at all unless you're told them.
But newer self-help books are made to make money, and therefore to make you feel good and to feel like you like the book that you paid money for. The claims of these books aren't impossible to achieve, but one does not get there without actual effort, be it conscious or unconscious (tricking your brain into heading towards your goal through visualization techniques and such)
the number of self-help books a person owns seems inversely proportional to the person’s mental health
I don't think that's a fair argument, though it's true. I even like the snakiness. But you could also argue that the more medicine somebody has in their home, the less healthy they tend to be. This does not dismiss the value of medicine, right?
By "Red pill" I was most referring to the dating aspects. Men get burned when they follow advice that they're given, especially by girls. Red pill takes are more honest about human nature and about what girls want. But the best dating books focus on "inner game" which is another way of saying "self-improvement", so for a largely unregultated response to men being mislead by society (and women) there's surprisingly little negativity. Of course, there's still some spiteful incels and superficial pick-up artists, but I find that they're a minority.
Yarvin is said to be part of the "Intellectual dark web", and while this is a very loosely defined cluster, I find that anything from there is like a breath of fresh air, no matter the subject in question or the speaker. By the way, since most of what I dislike is modern, I simply just consume older material. I regard the Erhard Seminars Training (1971-1984) books and Og Mandinos "The university of success" (1980) as high quality. Newer self-help is too kind for me, I want to be called out like when I'm reading thelastpsychiatrist
I agree, I dislike the statement "anything not objective is not real science" only because it's used to dismiss anything outside of science as "pseudo-science" or "woo", which is to overestimate the utility of science and to create a false dichotomy. Perhaps it's laziness on my part, one just puts themselves in a difficult position if they attempt defending or even explaining the value of unscientific knowledge
We reflect on that question right here on the Motte
On the Motte, and many similar sites, materialistic view of life are starting to dominate. I've been told many times now on similar websites that well-being is improving "because the GDP is increasing". They believe that an increase in wealth is a direct increase in well-being, and that the two are basically the same thing. They then use this as an argument for "progress" and to dismiss any values, customs and ideals of the past.
I think this is a direct consequence of being an intellectual and liking nerdy things like mathematics. You start thinking "logically" and "scientifically", and eventually you become materialistic as you confuse the map and territory (theory and reality). For instance by thinking that the truth values of logic ('true' and 'false') has anything to do with truth (meaning as 'existing in reality').
The sooner we free ourselves from this corrupt priestly class, the better.
I agree with this, but it's difficult to be an intelligent person interested in things like well-being, without encountering material which has been poisoned by the priestly class or somebody who is influenced by them, and if one practices actual psychology, they will find not only the truth but they will also understand why some people avoid the truth. If you have recommendations of works written by highly intelligent people who dare to think for themselves (they can be arrogant, a little bit of mania usually only makes for better writing), I'm all ears!
I'm not sure if I'm qualified to answer as I'm not familiar, but I'd say that being "Respected" is about social ranking, and that leaning "woke" is basically about valuing social reality higher than actual reality. The very way that "woke" operates is by attacking the reputation of the un-woke and making them out to be immoral. Notice this is about how "good" something is, and barely about how "true" it is. In other words, people who care more about truth than signaling and social hierarchies tend to be closer to the truth, but less respected by society. Here, I belive that the assumption "Respected = Good" is dangerous and misleading, since you'd be buying into political manipulation of reality (that sounds a bit dramatic, but I'm not sure how else to phrase it)
By definition, "non-woke" and "respected" seem separate
Psychology is absolutely "real science", at least potentially. That these fields are filled with 110-IQ women with left-wing biases, who wish not to arrive at any conclusions which contradicts modern morality or politics, is an unfortunate fact unrelated to the potential of psychology as a field.
I oppose the idea that all "real science" is objective, since this fuels fields which are inhuman and which promote the inhuman as better than what's human. I'll even claim that most of the modern worlds problems is caused by designing society in a "rational" way which is actually incompatible with human nature. We also tend to compare what's "rational, logical or scientific" to ourselves, and arrive at the conclusion that human beings are flawed and wrong, and that they should change to become more rational, logical and scientific. This is a fallacy in that it tells the territory to approximate the map, rather than building maps which seek to approximate the territory.
The Tao Te Ching is still ahead of the consensus of today in multiple areas. "The prince" likely still holds up today (admittedly I haven't read this one). Buddhist meditation and enlightenment still hold research value today. And this is just older Psychology. There's also value in religion, values, wisdom, culture, rituals, etc.
No science, mathematics, nor logic can deal well with these areas at all. They're mere tools. You need to put humanity in the center in order to benefit humanity.
I almost agree with "The social science is so corrupt that it's almost worthless", but that's the fault of academia, politics and well, corruption. Self-help books are still popular today despite them not being hard science, and the lies society create about gender and sexuality has spawned "red pill" groups online which are closer to the truth than the consensus (thought they aren't perfect). In fact, I love psychology because it can explain why this problem happened in the first place (denial/repression of unpleasant parts of reality)
By the way, you don't need the scientific method to approximate truth in the first place. We're starting to forget this as the scientific method is so popular.
The gentle nurse who sets up your IV doesn’t tell you whether each dose of drugs through the IV could set you back hundreds of dollars, but they know.
Why does a single dose of drugs cost hundreds of dollars? Every drug is mass-produced, and pretty much every human in the world needs them, so why the insane markup? I feel like this is the actual upstream issue. I don't think it matters too much if the patient is informed, for if you're in a hospital, you probably need at least half the treatment you're getting, so much so that you don't have a choice.
This post confused me when I realized you had written "Liberalism" instead of "libertarianism". I don't see what liberalism has to do with liberty. It seems like a purely a collectivist ideology to me. Only if we replace "liberalism" with "libertarianism" does the post make sense to me, and afterwards it's great reading rather than merely confusing. I will engage as if you wrote libertarianism for this reason (not that you're making a mistake. It's likely me who is confused here)
In reality, people will choose things that bring them temporary pleasure or help them avoid temporary discomfort over things that will bring them greater happiness and peace
This seems like what we'd call "brainrot" or "degeneracy". I started using this latter word almost 10 years ago after reading Nietzsche, and nobody else seemed to use it at the time, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the reason the word came back. Anyway, freedom is actually the freedom to command yourself, not the freedom not to be commanded. One should only seek freedom if they don't need being told what to do in order to succeed in life, if they don't use their freedom to destroy themselves.
We're deeply social by nature (and the most oversocialized lean left! They just want to socialize without taking responsibility for anything, which is why they want the government to do everything for them). It seems that being around a lot of other people is bad for you, for the same reason that social media is bad for you. People start competing and aiming for superficial appearances of what people value while neglecting what actually matters.
The advantage of libertarianism is that you can choose which group you want to depend on and have depend on you (living as a hermit for very long is almost impossible). People are only equal in value, that they're actually equal is a stupid idea. I also agree that family values are essential, and throwing them out is basically taunting darwinism to remove you from reality. I also don't see how anyone would disagree with "The best kind of parenting is both loving and strict".
I consider myself pro-freedom, and around my friends I give myself all the freedom that I want, and I give them all the freedom that they want, too. But this only works because we're all reasonable and because we can take responsibility for ourselves. Those who believe "freedom" to be the freedom to indulge in vices (because it seems unpleasant for them to resist unhealthy urges) cannot live like this.
I agree with your conclusion, but you can word it differently. We don't need "authority" but "coherence". The advantage of Christianity is that it gives value to things which are healthier than our random urges/impulses. The disadvantage is that you can lose faith in Christianity (but if you have a preference like vanilla ice cream, you don't care if there's no objective proof that it's good - you still believe in your own preference). We also need Reponsibility (this is one of Jordan Petersons core values too) and you don't have to call this "authoritarianism". Being overly lenient with others only works when they're being too strict on themselves. I feel like this might have something in common with "we praise those who degrade themselves and degrade those who praise themselves". We recognize the need for a balance. As long as internal control + external control > X where X is some threshold, the individual will turn out alright. To the extent that a person is able to control themselves, they've earned the right to be free from external control
You were making a categorical error
I do not believe so, but I'm also not sure where you find the error to be, could you elaborate?
Why do you think a banal practice in history is weird
Because, if the same thing occurs many times in isolation, it's because there's a good reason for it. People can do stupid things and influence eachother, but if the same event happens multiple times in different places which are too distant in time or place to give the other the idea, it points at something in reality. If I go to a club and 20 people are rude to me, perhaps I just pissed off an important person, it means nothing. But if I go to another town far away where nobody knows me, and people at that club are rude, then the cause is either something particular to me, or particular to clubs.
Discrimination against homosexuals seems to be of the same category. (Yes, I'm implying that homosexuals are statistically significantly different in a way that human pattern recognition will pick up on)
Of course you do, otherwise you wouldn't know if they are Jewish as a religion, Jewish as a culture, Jewish as an ethnic identity
I can go by name or the "early life" Wikipedia section. I've seen too many jewish people be in a superposition of "white" and "non-white" and choosing exactly the one which brings them the biggest advantage at said time. I'm not nearly stupid enough to fall for that.
You believe 61% of a demographic voted for Joe Biden because they support making your life miserable
That being jewish makes one much more likely to support left-wing positions like mass-immigration would show a positive correlation with the desire to destroy western society (the outcome of mass-immigration). You can judge people on what they deem "good things" to me. But 90% of the population are so stupid that we can only attribute their values to stupidity rather than malice. The same cannot be said for those sufficiently intelligent.
but I am glad you are making it publicly.
You're outing yourself here, not me.
1984 is not only considerably less than 100 years old, but it was also not a warning about Jews.
It's one example out of many books which predict the future. And my main point is that it says "Don't do X, X would be a terrible idea", and then you see powerful people push for X. Now, these powerful people have no excuse, we can attribute their actions to malice rather than stupidity, as the consequences of X are well known. And if you personally hate intelligent people pushing for X, you're justified in your hate.
Why does something so small impress you
Because many spaces have been considered "far left" for supporting freedom of speech until about 10 years ago, where freedom of speech somehow turned into a right-wing value. Classical liberalism and modern liberalism are almost opposites at this point, and most people I've seen mention it will say that it changed 10 or 20 years ago. Even back doing "occupy wall street" I still felt like there was support for the "little people" against the elite by the internet and the media, but now the media is the corrupt elite. And the same Reddit which joined the protest in defense of freedom will now ban you for wrong-think. To notice 30 years prior to this that the media is just pretending to care about freedom as it supports the interests of a wealthy elite is impressive to me. Then again, I'm young and didn't get involed in politics before my video games and internet privacy got attacked.
Conflating all American media as owned by a singular dynamic
Last time I checked, basically all American media (90%) was owned by 6 companies, but even this is outdated knowledge and it implies that these 6 have no influence between eachother (which is false). I stick to facts, I do not care if somebody labels facts as conspiracies, or that some conspiracies exaggerate the facts. You can say "conspiracy!" some more, but I'm immune to pretty social status attacks.
On timeless issues
The 1984 take (which has nothing to do with Nietzsches work, I know) goes "Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right". Perhaps every tyrannical power has a tendency to rewrite history ("history is written by the victors" after all). It could also just be a psychological thing - that every era and culture considers itself to be correct in a timeless manner. In any case, I remain undeceived by said illusion.
It was certainly not advocating for racial stereotyping and grievances of political opponents.
I'm aware. And I don't think it matters what exactly it's criticizing? Do you know those "Fascism checklists" that you can find online? One of the points is "Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy". I'm not one of those people who go "Fascism is right-wing by design, so anything not right-wing must have nothing in common with fascism". No matter where it manifests, I'm critical of that "You're either with us or against us" kind of thinking. I recognize the abstract pattern anywhere it occurs, in any form in which it can appear. It's the same with the warnings found in 1984. It doesn't matter to me which political party says something deceptive, I recognize it as deceptive. I'm against everything which acts like totalitarianism, and my mathematical intuition makes it easy to tell if two things act the same. Generalizing above words and labels helps avoiding accidental hypocrisy. If you're an intellectual which leans verbal it's possible that this doesn't make sense to you.
Your views come off less coherent
Yes, and that's despite dumbing down what I'm trying to communicate. If you are having any difficulty with any of my writing, then there's no way you can evaluate Nietzsche. He deals with much higher levels of abstraction than I do here.
There's only so much energy to be had
That's why heuristics are necessary. Statistics are also real despite being unfair. If you go to a bad neighbourhood known for high rates of theft, then you should hold on to your belongings. You have no reason to think that any individual there is a criminal, but it would be silly to let yourself be stolen from enough times that you singlehandedly have enough statistics to prove that the area is unsafe. That would require like 100 different people stealing from you in that area of the city. And you'd have to start over again in the next city, as it's filled with different people!
My almost 4SD pattern recognition has been a great help to me. How can you live without such a thing? Are you one of those upper-class people who can preach left-wing garbage because you live in a gated community where discrimination has much less value for survival? I do recognize that there's a trade-off between psychological health and guarding against negative elements of life, and I don't take it too far and become bitter like Incels tends to do, so there's no need to worry.
Whites on the right might, but I think it's less than other races tend to. Left-leaning whites seem to have a negative bias towards themselves. I found a picture which seems to reveal this: https://tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net/production/883104fdaad1810c8dbbb2a6df5a4b6ed7d5036f-2560x1138.jpg
HBD
I'm not sure thats an explain all of it, but Jordan Peterson did write a good argument towards this. However, given not only who is in power, but how it's used, I think it's fairly certain to say that whoever is in power finds some sort of joy in the destruction of Christianity, white people, masculinity, family values, identity, and so on. While there's a lot of psychopaths in power, I can't see why other white people would destroy their own, unless they're brainwashed (which makes them a separate group from those doing the brainwashing, who are also more intelligent).
I also don't think intelligence necessarily correlates with evil in white people. Nikola Tesla was good to a fault, and died poor and alone. Unlikely highly intelligent non-jews, which tend autistic, intelligent jews seem to be wordcels with good social skills and communication abilities. And if the success of jews is genetic, then couldn't a desire for money or power be stronger in jewish genetics as well?
Feminine: Using indirect methods, using cunning and deception, appealing to feelings and morality rather than logic, hypocritical. Masculine: Bold, simple, direct, not afraid of direct conflict because it's stronger and thus able to win while playing fair. Uses logic or power. Will say the truth even when its unpleasant. Admits its own faults without shame.
But what I mean by "feminism" clusters with oversocialization (Ted's criticism of left-wing mentality), moralization (Robert Greene), mental weakness (used in comparisons like "good times result in weak men" and insults like "snowflake". It's to my understanding that progrssive beliefs correlate with mental illness, including depression and anxiety, so I don't think this criticism is entirely unfair), and "Slave morality" (Nietzsche).
If you compare how women and men compete for social power, there should be some overlap with what I wrote above.
Your question had the premise that jews don't exist, so I just decided to refute that (and to refute the idea that you need to be harmed directly and in person)
And I'm no good at history, I don't know of many of the instances in which jews were "kicked out", but you can't kick out what isn't there, and if a country has built resentment towards a certain group of people, then it would be weird if said group hadn't been involved in something controversial in the country at the time. It would be even weirder if this had happened over 100 times, in many countries, across more than 1000 years of history.
why do you believe you know who they are well enough to determine their relative ethnic distribution?
I don't need to know people personally to know their religion. I also don't need to meet every jew to know what ratio of the population is jewish?
to believe that the jews as a collective are actively making life worse for you?
I don't know if regular jews, outside of elite institutions and rich families, fit known stereotypes. I don't know if they support the plans of powerful people who make life worse for me. I don't even know if they tend left-wing. Lets ask Google: "The AJC survey found that 61 percent of American Jews said they would vote for Joe Biden, while 23 percent said they would vote for Donald Trump". Seems that they do. I also don't know what ratio of these people support feminism and its nonsense.
I don't even know if I've ever met any jews in person. I don't ask people about their religion or race.
On the other hand, there are countless old books filled with nonsense, including conspiracy theories I meant books like 1984. It warned against something that we could see happening in real time.
What do you think about this quote? "Media: lords of public opinion The American media is a willing recipient of Soviet subversion. I know this, because I worked with American journalists and correspondents in Moscow while on the Soviet side, and after my defection to the West. People habitually refer to the American media as ‘free’, ignoring the obvious and commonly known fact that most of the most powerful media in the USA, is already monopolized both financially and ideologically by what are referred to as ‘liberals’. American media ‘chains’ belong to fewer and fewer owners, who, do not seem to mind that the media is being almost totally ‘liberalized’. Liberalism, in its old classical sense, means above all, respect to individual opinion and tolerance to opposing views."
It was published 40 years ago. The idea that American media is left-learning, that it's owned by a few elites, and that modern "liberty" is different from classic liberty (that is, becoming pretty much it's opposite) is not exactly new, but to call it obvious as long as 40 years ago is impressive to me.
What about this one? "Everywhere in the West there are subversive minorities who, sheltered by our humanitarianism and our sense of justice, hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population. One should not, however, overestimate the thickness of this stratum. It varies from country to country in accordance with national temperament. Also, it is regionally dependent on public education and is subject to the influence of acutely disturbing factors of a political and economic nature. Taking plebiscites as a criterion, one could on an optimistic estimate put its upper limit at about 40 per cent of the electorate. A rather more pessimistic view would not be unjustified either, since the gift of reason and critical reflection is not one of man’s outstanding peculiarities, and even where it exists it proves to be wavering and inconstant, the more so, as a rule, the bigger the political groups are. The mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness. Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic." Written by Jung in 1957
I don't think it would be right to dismiss these warnings as conspiracy theories since the consequences they warned about have manifested themselves almost as predicted, and since the idea that these predictions are "mere conspiracy theories" is much newer idea (it seems like the attempt to discredit ideas retroactively and to establish the current consensus as correct in a timeless sense)
And we were warned about this, too, in 1883: "‘Formerly the whole world was insane’ – the finest ones say, blinking." This describes how anti-traditionalists speak about the past. They essentially go "Everyone was evil, the past is immoral and wrong, but now we're enlightened by science and know what's good and proper!" and then they try to rewrite history exactly how "1984" said they would.
I don't dislike Jews because of Nietzsche, and while he has written many things about them (including my claims here, that they subverted values and made them more feminine), his overall description of jews seems positive to me. I'm aware that this reply doesn't respond to what you meant by your statement, but I feel like I'd explain my views better.
Finally - is there no group that you think badly about, that you haven't met in person? And isn't your life influenced by a lot of powerful people who your voice is hopeless to ever reach?
They have never had a Jew apply feminine power against them
Not directly, but indirectly. If you see some powerful people do some terrible things, and these people just happen by sheer coincidence, to be jewish about half the time (despite only 2% of the population being jewish), who could blame you for associating the two? Many people have hated "old white men" because most powerful people in the world have been old white men. But at least you can explain this by "well, the country was like 99% white when these people started solidifying their power". And that it's men, rather than women, who are powerful, can be explained by the statistical distribution of personality traits. Some groups also hate "The rich", "The government" or "The elite", so it seems that most people just agree that the top is rotten and filled with terrible people, and that we merely disagree on which trait to identify them by (money, gender, religion, race). You're correct that I have never met any of the powerful people who are actively making life worse for me. They're just jewish at surprisingly high ratios. And the non-jews which I hate still have a distinct feminine way of thinking and acting. It may be that society has lost enough good taste that what I'm calling feminine is simply the dominant strategy.
And it makes sense to distrust the elite, and even to hate them, for they know the consequences of their actions. Countless books (some dating back over 100 years) warn against what's currently happening in society.
I'd like to point out that your example is misleading. Math has advanced over time, and all inhuman things advance over time. But all human things simply do not. This is why the Tao Te Ching and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius still hold up today. Most wisdom does not seem to advance over time.
Some truths are universal. "For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away". This is still true today. Feedback loops makes it easier to get more the more of something you have. If you are intelligent enough, you can see truths like this, even if they won't be named or made into concrete concepts for another 500 years.
Now, I haven't read Marx, and while I don't know if his ideas were wrong, I think he was wrong as a person. His work is a reflection of who he is, and the attempt to legitimize his own values and ideals. But even if his theory is largely correct, one cannot prove values. There's one more factor which complicates matters further, it's that at the high ends of intelligence, a slight difference in beliefs can lead to vastly different conclusions. Jordan Peterson, Nietzsche, and Jung agreed on a lot of things, but their takes on religion and human life are very different.
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No online communities feel like home to me anymore, and it's because they feel "Public" and "Official", and not like private spaces at all. I think this is because the separation is gone, anything I wrote on here could be traced back to me, and it could also be interpreted badly by people from outside of the community. A private space doesn't work like that.
Most "new" spaces which can be created are created inside of other spaces, and these spaces are hostile in a sense, or at least inhuman (part of 'the system' which has to enforce human behaviour in a top-down manner). So when you make a new sub-reddit you're still on Reddit, so the Subreddit is not yours. And if you make a new Discord server, you're still bound by Discords rules, so the Discord server is not yours. With old forums, you could make your own, since you just copied the code. You could own your own website in the past, and you can't anymore unless you make your own infrastructure.
Also, in the past, nothing I did in a community mattered outside of the community. It's borderline insane that this practice stopped. Imagine if your local shopping center had to refuse you entry because of an email you sent, and that it would be accused of enabling whatever behaviour you did in your own personal life otherwise. That's basically what we're starting to do with the internet.
Another thing which has changed is something I hinted at earlier: We're not expected to be human anymore. I think this is because we have lost the benefit of doubt. Any behaviour which is ambiguous is a "red flag", and you may be punished for it. So you have to internalize what you would look like from outside, and constantly monitor yourself, so that you are not misunderstood (this is rather harmful to our individuality, since it punishes worldviews and attitudes which diverge from the norm). Furthermore, mistakes are not really forgivable anymore. Things like racism, sexism and so on used to be negative traits, but nothing more than that. You could get away with having negative traits, they were just a tiny part of who you were and what mattered was your overall character. Finally, in order to really learn how things can be misunderstood, you have to learn about everything ugly in the world. You're forced to learn that you can't talk about the CP (combat power) of your Pokemon Go Pokemon without making the context clear, and you're forced to learn why. After all, innocence is punished (as it leads to be behaviour which can be misunderstood)
Sorry for hijacking your comment in order to vent, but I feel like I've understood some of the social changes quite well, and I hope that it makes the dynamics clearer for you (I'm adding these, I think the things you mentioned are factors as well). Happy new year!
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