cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
No bio...
User ID: 221
cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
1yr ago
Thanks for your perspective.
cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
1yr ago
Thank you for those links. Really fits into my speculation.
cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
1yr ago
My theory: most of what is now called "white supremacy" is just boomers attempting to prolong "boomer reality." (Obviously not all boomers)
What do I mean by "boomer reality"? Boomers are an American cohort born in unprecedented wealth when America was the only intact industrial power. They are also quite large cohort and were therefore over their lives able to use their influence to "fine-tune" America to their specifications. Boomers like to drive, therefore America is easy accessible via cars, not so much via public transport. This is also why gasoline tends to be cheaper in America than elsewhere. Boomers love to see their property values soar, therefore pretty much nothing is legal to build anywhere in America. (or so I hear)
What looks like white supremacy is boomers' dislike towards brown immigrants. But I would argue that the reason is not that they are brown, it is because they are not part of "boomer reality." Hispanics are more used to public transport (compared to white boomers) and are also okay with living in higher density. If lots of Hispanics materialize in America, and have a chance to vote for their preferences, this might result in more public transport (which boomers don't need) and more dense housing (bringing boomer property values down).
This also explains boomer opposition towards global warming. Global warming implies that car-centric culture might not be completely sustainable and anything that implies "boomer reality" might not be sustainable is an enemy.
I do think "boomer reality" is now very toxic, but here's how it is different from old white supremacy: Southern white supremacists cared a lot about their own legacy. They were thoroughly evil people, but they did care for their own white children (and noone else). White plantation owners could picture the world without themselves in it. Not the world without plantations (they fought a war over it), but one with different owners (their sons) running these plantations.
Boomers are fundamentally narcissistic and they cannot imagine anyone else as main characters of life, not even their own children. And that's the black heart of "boomer reality". Real white supremacy would be white male tenured boomer professor retiring and giving his tenured seat to his younger -- also white male -- protege. That's not at all what's happening, instead cushy tenured professorships are being replaced with insecure nontenured positions -- mostly held by brown and female people.
Calling this "white supremacy" almost gives it too much dignity. This is fire sale.
"White supremacy" is simply not the right terminology to describe what is happening. It is also unfair because younger whites are not profiting at all from "boomer reality". Accusing a poor white millenial of "white supremacy" is kicking the chained dog. I suspect the popularity of the concept -- alongside most of "awokening" -- is the result of elite millenials getting radicalized by realization that their Boomer parents intend to spend everything on luxury cruises and leave them with jack shit. In other words awokening is fueled precisely by a lack of actual, working white supremacy. (As well as a lack of any other safety net for precarious millenials)
(Don't get me wrong, I do think it is good white supremacy is no more, my point is that boomer narcissism is also bad, but in a very different way)
Why do I think my theory is correct? Because there was a similar generation divide in my native Serbia (then Yugoslavia) in the early 90's although generations were one step back. It was "Greatest Generation", Silent Generation and some elder boomers, versus younger boomers and x-ers (millenials were still young children or not yet born). The former still lived in "communist reality" while that reality begun to unravel for the latter.
One of the reasons why Milosevic ruled over Serbia for so long is because he promised the pensioners that their pensions will remain untouched no matter what. So there was a bloody civil war with younger generations being thrown into meat grinder which had comparatively little impact on the old people (not zero impact due to inflation, but lesser impact). What Milosevic promised to the old was continuation of "communist reality" till they die. And they followed him.
Not saying that the younger Serbian generations were completely innocent here -- there were some rabid warmongers there too -- but the whole thing would have been impossible without the compliance of the old people.
I don't think it is a coincidence that both Trump and Milosevic have promised to the old people continuation of their respective realities. Hence old people disproportionately voting for them.
Returning to situation in America, what I think is going to happen is that "boomer reality" is going to continue unraveling and it will be replaced with "woke reality." The advantage of woke reality is that it is cheap -- you don't need a car and a house to live it, just internet connection. Problem is that it is not all that much more real than "boomer reality". It is based on throwing around inaccurate inflammatory terms like "white supremacy" (as I explained) and on funding things like DEI offices -- which make people MORE racist. A self licking ice cone. None of it is as toxic as boomer reality, true, but it is still a type of unreality.
One variable I am unsure of is how much of boomer wealth will millennials be able to actually inherit. Are boomers really going to spend it all on luxury cruises and nursing homes? If not, if millennials actually inherit something valuable, they might switch from woke into something similar to "boomer reality," possibly also justified by wokeness. Something something building more housing is racist somehow. Obviously I am not saying that EVERY millenial is going to end up like this, but then not every boomer is Trump voter.
But I am just a millenial from Serbia, and first to admit that I don't know jack. What do you think?
cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
1yr ago
Linked now
Can you link the studies?
Linked now in op
Reposted from Theschism
Recently, there was a series of studies demonstrating that ADHD medications are both much less helpful than previously thought (boost lasts for only two years or so) and with much worse side effects, including heightened risks of dementia later in life.
According to privilege theory, this is impossible. ADHD medications are disproportionately given to white boys, the most privileged cohort on the planet. The System was supposed to protect them from harm. Anything given to that population was supposed to be checked rigorously. Medication that helps short term but ruins you later sounds exactly like something that would be given to minorities.
This is personal for me. I have adult ADHD (and possibly bipolar) so earlier in life I was trying to get Adderall. Ironically, my reasoning was the same as described by privilege theory although I didn't know it back then: "this is the same thing that western elite is using, so it must be good. Surely they woudn't poison their own children. That would be monstrous."
Fortunately, as I live in one of those "shithole countries" and not in the west I couldn't afford to see a psychiatrist. Only recently have I realized what a massive bullet I dodged. Today I am pretty well off and could probably afford any treatment but would never, ever see either psychologist or psychiatrist. Who knows which seemingly sound treatment will be revealed as ruinous decade from now? And that's why this male won't go to therapy. Or trust privilege theory.
In chess there is something called "material advantage". A point system you use to roughly determine who is in the lead. So Queen is worth 9 points, Rook 5, Bishop and Knight 3. So someone with queen and a rook is supposedly better than someone with two knights and two bishops. This analysis is pretty helpful on beginner and intermediate level.
But in chess, spatial positioning of the pieces is what really determines the victor. Grandmasters have no problem sacrificing materially valuable pieces if that puts them in favorable position. This is even more true of superhuman chess engines who play crazy alien chess that defies simple analysis.
I think privilege theorists (I think this is nicer term for wokists) have tendency to assign privilege according to point system which grades things like skin color but can't tell you how well positioned someone is. It is just kinda assumed each white person has access to privilege, regardless whether he truly has access to old boy network or not.
Pharma executives -- most of them white males -- are not going to shield white males outside old boy networks. Hence dementia-inducing medication given to white boys, and highly addictive opioids given to white men. Theorized general connection between white elite and all the other whites is just not there. There is only shareholder satisfaction.
I am uncharitable enough to compare privilege theory to evolutionary psychology -especially simplified version of evopsych as espoused by RedPillians and the similar. Both systems give you simplified toolset that is seemingly applicable to every situation, giving you the illusion of understanding everything while actually explaining little.
We hear how women are hypergamous. And they are. Women definitely do like high-status males. But what RedPill doesn't understand is that there are other countering forces. Namely, women don't like to share. High-status male that is already taken is less attractive than low-status one that isn't. And that's why high-status males generally don't have harems. (Although they benefit somewhat from serial monogamy).
Popular version of privilege theory similarly take into account some forces while ignoring some other forces. Sure middle class has privileges. But they are deeply anxious because transferring those privileges to their offspring is harder than ever. It is much less British aristocracy and more walking the tightrope over the abyss. This makes them deeply vulnerable to anyone promising them nostrums such as pills that would make their offspring better behaved.
Also if you have some money, but not enough to afford attorney from petty cash, you are much more vulnerable to any regulation that the powerful dream up. Because unlike the underclass, you are much more legible to the system. You have a job you and all your property is easy to find. I think that's what conservatives think by "anarcho-tyranny".
When you declare such people as privileged, you are declaring that you are simply not interested in helping them with any of those issues. And so, just as the pole is greasier than ever (due to outsourcing), those slipping are being scolded harder than ever.
But you know what? I am probably the last person who should complain about this. Ultimately, all this is to my advantage, as outsourcing that ratchets western middle class anxiety to the point of madness is directly benefiting me. I as a non-westerner am getting those jobs. So please continue belittling your middle class. Please continue ignoring all their problems.
Edit:
Studies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063150/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110220193013.htm
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0161813X06000921
Here's something annoying I found on liberal part of reddit (doesn't matter where, and I don't want to accidentally create drama by linking to it):
What’s really sad and frustrating is how the education system has completely distorted the actual concept of restorative justice. In criminal justice, restorative justice is intended to allow the victim or family of the victims to have a say in how the convicted criminal should be sentenced, while focusing on rehabilitation and a compromise between the two parties. Regardless, the offenders are still held accountable for their actions, but they’re given the opportunity to repair the relationship between themselves and their community - it’s not a free pass to do whatever you want and face no consequences.
Here's the part I found annoying. People have basically never been more atomized in the entire human history and the above text is unironically talking about repairing relationship between a criminal and some made up community. Back when communities were actually tightly knit, criminals were hanged.
I don't even care about restorative justice all that much. I can even see myself supporting it in certain situations. For example, If I happen to be a criminal.
What I absolutely find grating is that this person takes the existence of community for granted when it's for most people no more real than bigfoot. At least conservatives recognize this lack as a problem (tho they don't have any real solutions ) while liberals kinda always assume that communities exist when they mostly don't. They don't even realize that they are talking about phantasm.
It gets even more annoying when they talk about e.g. fandoms as "communities." Are people you met on comic book convention going to build you a house? Help you find a wife? Are they going to watch over your children?
Could we have tightly knit communities without brutal punishments? Should we? I have no idea. But any analysis has to start from the fact that we mostly don't have communities right now.
cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
1yr ago
I find it much more probable that Russia is going to lose gradually then suddenly, because it is less supported by outside forces and their weapons are obviously obsolete.
cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
1yr ago
My understanding is that it was still considered disappointment given the expectations and investment. Movie industry is weird like that.
cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
1yr ago
It's standard enough. Or at least it is more standardized than it is gonna be when genetic engineering comes.
Here's my opinion on how to defuse many aspects of culture war: reduce copyright length to at most 40-50 years.
Consider. Lots of people were upset when Rian Johnson deliberately made the Last Jedi to be about fighting "toxic masculinity" and "fan entitlement". But he is not the problem. I am not here to criticize RJ. His interpretation actually had some interesting ideas even if it was badly executed and inconsistent with my general concept of what SW movie "should" be.
The problem is that Disney anointed him to be the one to save Star Wars from smelly nerds. And there's nothing you could do unless you had a billion dollars to buy SW from Disney. Except in the end this didn't work out for "woke" cause either, because TLJ did poorly at the box office so Disney hired Abrams who overrode every RJs decision. Everyone loses.
I think part of the reason why "culture wars" are so bitter is that all sides are essentially reduced to pressuring (or begging) large, faceless corporations into reflecting their values. This creates mutual distrust because both sides know that corporations will drop your values the second they stop being profitable. It is fundamentally toxic.
But if noone owns IP then we can have both "based" and "woke" version of every franchise. Fans will rise to the occasion to make both. Hence, less bitter culture wars.
Of course, there's zero chance Disney ever allows erosion of copyright, but it is fun to speculate.
cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
1yr ago
Dunno what that even is.
cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
1yr ago
I think that the AGI is far less probable than genetic engineering, even fairly advanced genetic engineering. Of course, both might happen, but genetic engineering will happen hella sooner.
Seriously, you gave a nice "just so" story but are there any actual studies correlating lower libido with higher success?
It certainly reduces the chance of doing something stupid on the job and getting fired, as HR is tightening the reins. Depending on how much control over personality we gain we might be able to create a man that can only be aroused by working overtime and not by women. People who are essentially in love with their jobs.
cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
1yr ago
I think that's apples and oranges comparison. Those immigrants still have standard human hardware, so are capable of becoming discontent (or their children are) I am not worried about that. But when you create people with customized personality, you can remove any possibility of rebellion forever.
cincilator
Catgirl Alignment Researcher
1yr ago
Hello, everyone! I was unable to post for a while due to connection issues, but now I can. Here's something I meant to post months ago:
I think people who are worried about genetic engineering tend to be worried about all the wrong things. Often, someone says that in the future it might be possible to increase IQ or athletic ability and everyone else is worried about "playing god." But neither of those is particularly worrisome. I in fact agree with Scott Alexander that making hundred clones of Von Neumann to combat global warming might be a great idea. Dunno if it would work, but worth a try. What we should be worried about instead are attempts to alter human personality.
We know that personality is to a worryingly large part genetic. Also, I am getting the sense that pretty much no "side" that exists today is satisfied with people as they are. Nearly everyone will have interest in replacing vanilla humans with something more pliable.
Woke west will be interested in altering men to remove "toxic masculinity." Islamic countries might want to make women more submissive and thus prevent any possible future feminist rebellion (i wrote this before disturbances in Iran, so i guess I predicted something). Chinese might want to make everyone more obedient to the State.
In the west, there probably won't be any laws mandating genetic modifications of humans, but there won't be much need to be. Western helicopter parents are already looking for every advantage they can possibly get. They will pay for whatever genetic improvements necessary. And when improvements in IQ get maxed out, they will look for ways to make personality more competitive. Reducing libido is a no-brainer, not only will it make him pay more attention in school, it will also make him less likely to get in trouble with HR.
And in authoritarian countries, it will be even more simple.
This will likely be disastrous long-term. Progress happens because people are dissatisfied with the way things are and put in an effort change things. But once governments can simply replace discontent people with content ones, we'll likely see less progress. In fact, I have seen theories that proliferation of psychiatric medications is basically a weaker version of this. Some psychiatric medications are necessary, but the role of other seems to be to placate people as it costs the fraction of what an actual solutions would. Much cheaper to alter people's brain chemistry to be satisfied with depressing wagie environments than to change their depressing wagie environments. And generic engineering is potentially even more powerful.
I was thinking lately why I -- despite largely agreeing with the progressives on policy -- can never see myself as a progressive (or as a "leftist" or whatever you want to call it). I thought the answer was "wokeness", but it isn't. Not really. There's actually something deeper. None of things below should be read as endorsement of conservatism, which I also disagree with.
There's one thing the progressives keep doing which I wish they would stop. I don't think they can ever stop. Every once in a while, progressives annoint one group as basically saviors of humanity. All other groups, by implication get relegated to essentially NPCs at best or scum of earth at worst. The annointed group never lives to those high expectations, of course so progressives eventually discard them and annoint some other group. The discarded group is sometimes just ignored or sometimes declared scum of earth depending on circumstances and on whether kicking down such group would be considered racist or not.
Interestingly, this is not that disimilar to how a narcissist acts. A Narcissist tends to first lure the victim with love-bombing, and later devaluates and discards it.
Some 120 years ago the first group to wear the starry crown was undoubtably the working class. Progressives were marxist then and working class was the class. They were the one who will overthrow capitalism and establish the New Civilization. Not only was the working class better than other classes, they also deserved to act contrary to any common morality. To kill not only the fat cats but the kullaks too.
We all know how this ended. Although some good things did came from communism and the labour movement, like 40 hour work week, it was a disaster overall. The worker's paradise never materialized, but corpses did. Today, progressives are not overtly interested in the working class any more, and the white part of it is held in near total contempt as Trump base.
60 years ago, the mandate of heaven was on boomers. Or at least on part of boomer generation that weren't conservative. It is hard to remember now, but at the time many intellectuals had very high hope for boomers as a new, spiritual, highly aware generation that will clense the world of sins of the fathers. The flower children. And it is not hard to see that those outside of the "counterculture" were considered NPCs. See this 1963 song:
It starts with saying the houses were made out of ticky tacky and by the end it is the people that are made out of ticky tacky. Progressives were calling other people "NPCs" long before Alt-Right did. It is good that there are songs like this or I would no doubt be accused of enacting strawmen.
We all know how this all ended, too. Boomers are now seen as the narcissism generation. At least there were no mass killings this time.
The next group to be deified -- tho maybe not to quite the same extent -- was alienated male. This was actually happening in parallel with Boomers althought I think it only reached true prominence after the "flower children" promise faded a bit. The first work in praise of alienated male actually predates Boomers, it's On The Road by Jack Kerouac. But generally in the 70s and 80s you got lots of movies -- taxi driver being the most prominent -- starring alienated male. The reason for alienation varied but there was usually an implication that the society was at least somewhat to blame. There was also usually an implication that making society more friendly to alienated men was morally good, if not a moral imperative.
Now, this last example is a bit more complex because there are multiple types of male alienation, obviously, but one type that lasted longer than others was a nerd. For a while there was lots of material in praise of alienated nerd, the victim of NPC jocks. The nerd was the one with broader perspective than other crude people around him. He was the one who trully deserved the girl due to being such a nice guy. It is darkly funny in retrospect that back when the columbine school shooting happened, the progressives blamed everyone except the shooters. The bullies, the jocks, the popular crowd.
And then Mother Mercy looked away, as she always does. A nice guy became Nice Guy. School shooting were done not out of bullying but because of entitlement. Nerds are discusting sexists, who have exactly what they deserve, which is nothing.
In 2020 everyone got (rightfully) shocked by what Derek Chauvin did. But the answer was not to remove bad apples, it was to remove all the police. Because the newly deified minorities don't need any police, because they are better than you. So CHAZ was formed. Very shortly, it became more lethal per capita to young black men than the rest of the city ever was. Unlike with previous examples, minorities weren't villified, instead the whole episode just got forgotten. But I am not going to allow anyone to forget.
Another group that seems to be getting deified would be trans children. Now, I got nothing against trans people and think there are legit rights that should be protected here. But the surrounding rethorics still makes me unconfortable. There is very obvious implication that being trans is somehow a more profound experience than being cis. Trans peoples are the ones on a beautiful journey, unlike NPC me. And you got things like Trans Day of Revenge, whatever that is.
And so, not that long ago, first trans school shooting has happened. People who say that school shootings happen because of white male entitlement are silent so far.
Okay, so what all of this means, you might ask?
I want to say right away that it is entirely possible to fight to people's rights without putting those people on a pedestial. Both civil rights in the sixties and gay marriage happened without pedestializing black people or gay people respectively. But all too often, progressives prefer pedestializing.
Progressives -- to the extent that they are aware of this dynamics -- often conclude that the problem is that they have picked the wrong groups. Those damn white male nerds were always too privileged, after all.
In my opinion, the problem isn't that progressives single out wrong groups for annoitment. It is that any group you annoint is all but guaranteed to become worse. Everyone sees that if you tell to an individual person that he is the center of the universe, that he is going to reedem the world, that all his problems are the world's fault, you are then likely to induce narcissism. Not always, because some people's egos aren't inflatable, others are (smartly) wary of praise, but in most cases you are going to end up with a worse person. Why is it so hard to see that it is exactly the same with groups?
Telling to alienated nerds that they are better than the morons around them, that they deserve more than this rotten world is giving to them, is going to turn a few of them into school shooters. If the other people are ants, why not step on them? But the same dynamics can be induced in e.g. trans people too, as we now see.
My current ideology is that the future either belongs to everyone, or it is a shit future. I am with everyone who thinks so and against everyone who doesn't.
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