astrolabia
1yr ago
Why is she friends with them?
I like your advice overall, but I don't know how I could ask this particular question without making the other person feel like it's an attack.
astrolabia
1yr ago
Okay, but I guess the question is how crappy it can get before there is a viable alternative.
I think ChatGPT is rapidly becoming that alternative. Its politicization is probably the most important front in the culture war right now.
astrolabia
1yr ago
So they'll eat their own, but then continue to operate mostly the same?
astrolabia
1yr ago
Interesting thesis. Perhaps this is part of why some people find things like kids, homeownership, getting degrees, getting promoted at work as meaningful, since those all fit in between "easy" and "almost impossible".
astrolabia
1yr ago
I agree, and this is something I've been thinking about for a while in terms of our larger culture. In the presence of any sort of incentives for growth or change, it's not clear how anyone or anything can meaningfully survive without first paying a huge one-time cost to conquer everything around it, then kill itself to some degree by removing its own ability to grow and change.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I apparently have not been cynical enough with regard to sovereignty in the middle power Western nations.
It sounds like that makes two of us. I agree with the rest of your comment, too.
astrolabia
1yr ago
With more acts like this there will be more pressure to limit immigration.
Maybe it's just learned helplessness, but I can't imagine the Canadian federal government ever reducing immigration. It's never happened in my lifetime. Even when they shut the borders due to covid, they made up for it by granting free permanent residency to almost all foreigners who happened to be working in Canada.
I'm not saying it's impossible, just that my naive model of the world would have predicted a reduction years ago, and I don't have a good model to replace it with.
astrolabia
1yr ago
What's the difference between "trust but verify" and "don't trust"?
astrolabia
1yr ago
Thanks for quoting, yes that's most of what I was referring to. But I maintain my characterization of what he said. I think it's pretty clear that he doesn't know how to create new values, and is just saying it would be great if we could.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I'm curious about what makes your life a living hell these days. I went through a similar "fun believing period" (not as intense as yours) that was very rich and rewarding. And losing that life was painful. But I guess now I see it partly as withdrawl from a "spiritual superstimulus".
I'm sure you've heard the arguments that God is perfectly shaped to fill the hole in our hearts because the memes evolved to. Kind of like how porn is optimized, now that I think of it. In any case, after a while I re-equilibriated emotionally, and now moral non-realism is just priced in, and doesn't depress me any more than say, being mortal and fallible does. Plus, I don't have to hear terrible philosophical arguments from people I otherwise respect as often.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I love Nietzsche, and maybe I missed the point, but on dealing with the death of god it seemed like he mostly said "Wouldn't it be awesome if someone came along and gave us new values?". Kind of like "my plan is to come up with a plan".
astrolabia
1yr ago
I've heard that in the Israeli Defence force, young conscripts are generally treated with kid gloves (e.g. not ordered around much or expected to suffer) to the point where boot camp is referred to as "summer camp", apparently because even the children of the powerful have to do it.
astrolabia
1yr ago
Oh, thanks for clarifying, I didn't realize Hughes was talking about West Indian blacks, I was thinking more like Bangladeshis.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I think that the CRT zeitgeist is evolving in response to this, focusing more on "anti-black racism".
astrolabia
1yr ago
Yes, they happen without the framework religion provides all the time in the animal world, where we see pair bonding, leaders, and parents teaching children. I agree that religions shaped these institutions in the human world to some extent, but I claim that since these behaviors and institutions can clearly survive on their own merits, something like them would have arisen even if early humans somehow weren't religious.
astrolabia
1yr ago
That makes total sense, I agree that framing things in terms of tradeoffs is a huge upgrade from how most people think about what problems to go after. But that doesn't sound much like the stoicism I've heard about.
astrolabia
1yr ago
Do people who try to change things usually not accept that the things are in a state they don't like?
astrolabia
1yr ago
I mostly disagree. Almost everything in the world can be influenced to some degree or with some probability. If you dedicated the next year to it, you could probably shut down that puppy mill, or somehow make them a little less profitable.
Picking battles is absolutely necessary, and happens whether you choose it or not. I think that's a better approach than trying to divide the world into "under my control" vs "not".
astrolabia
1yr ago
All of these things happen all the time without religion, and also happen to a lesser extent amongst animals. And even sovereigns notionally beholden to god didn't keep power long without armies.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I'm glad you wrote what you did. I too was supremely disappointed by Eliezer and Scott's bending of the epistemic knee. Though it probably would have meant burning tons of social capital for both of them to have approached the issue with their usual candor.
Perhaps we just have to accept that each prophet can only smash idols until he has enough to lose personally, then he inevitably becomes a new idolator, or gets cancelled. I'm trying to think of counter-examples. Sir Thomas More seems like a great example of someone who held their principles and was cancelled because of it. Maybe Hume stood tall until the end? Dawkins?
astrolabia
1yr ago
I agree that religion was de jure central to life for most of human history, but it's not clear to what extent its details actually made a difference. Certainly they do matter a lot in some contexts. But most of the things that you say they're central to, such as rebellions, schools, and marriage all existed before and after any given religion and, I claim, mostly don't depend on the details of religious texts.
As for "who gets to mate with whom", that's what the OP was discussing.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I'm not sure the "don't pursue AA because people will adjust their expectations" argument holds, since it fails a simple reversal test: would you also be neutral to discrimination? By your logic, discrimination wouldn't hurt a group once people's expectations adjust to be extra-impressed that they managed to overcome it.
astrolabia
1yr ago
The GRE (At least 14 years ago when I took it) had a proctored essay portion.
astrolabia
1yr ago
*bobs
I broadly agree, but I think "if she's still a feminist, you're not the guy" is too strong. My wife had a long enough history of outspoken feminism when I met her that it would have been ridiculous for her to pretend not to be one. But I also never pretended to agree with something I didn't. It worked out fine and she eventually became a stay-at-home-mom.
Most political convos start with her thoughtlessly repeating some slogan, and if I can't reframe the convo immediately, usually instead of saying she's wrong or being dismissive, I ask what it means concretely, as Gaashk suggested above. This usually makes her mildly upset and embarrassed when she notices she hasn't thought about it much at all, and so she's learned to not to do that as much. But in terms of day-to-day life or child-rearing decisions, even though politically we're worlds apart, we usually almost entirely agree on the concrete steps to be taken.
On the few times when something completely beyond the pale (from her point of view) has come up ("you really believe ___!?"), I tell her she needs to talk to me respectfully even if she disagrees, as I am doing to her, even though from my point of view, she's equally misled.
I used to have a trad girlfriend who said something like "if a man is taking a love interest's political opinions seriously in the first place, he's doing it wrong."
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