professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
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User ID: 1157
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
1d ago
It's disguised in a wordy way to appear sophisticated
How dare you, my prose is meant to be playfully purple, not sophisticated!
Fine, this particular instantiation of word games was the final straw to a portion of the rationalist-adjacent crowd that had never bothered with Yud's masturbatory sequences, and proved that the considerations of the Bay Arean Social Influence were more important than anything a normal person would call rationalism or utilitarianism for the greatest good of the greatest number of people, and virtually stamped approval of utility monsters- so long as they are utility monsters approved by the Bay Arean Society.
Let's try again: redefining the categories of "man" and "woman" to be useless circular referents makes people less economically efficient and dismantles a functional society that broadly continues to find significant moral, ethical, and economic value in having some legal separation of the sexes.
Better?
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
1d ago
In other words, you just don't like it.
If you want to be reductive, sure. I don't like murder either, or green bell peppers.
Does it make sense to put all those in one category?
Meta discussions about words and meaning have been here since the beginning of rationalism
That is what I call damning with faint praise.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
Like in Iran.
"Some people prefer to be referred to as a gender different from the one they were born with."
"Oh. Okay."
Isn't the Iran solution to force gay men into reassignment surgery or execute them?
It's not exactly a San Francisco of anything-goes roles that you seem to suggest.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
Solitary's always an option, but I suspect the "put men in women's prisons" folx aren't too fond of that for other reasons.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
The old "recreate pillarized civilization from the ground up" retort, really?
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
The problem with this response has always been is that categories vary wildly between groups.
The problem is that Scott's essay was silly, socially motivated, and shot a hole through the chest of Rationalism as being anything more than postmodern word games with a nerd's coat of hobby paint.
Categories are made for man, not man for the categories.
HA! You know, I just realized that in context the phrasing highlights quite explicitly the TERF complaint that most trans discourse is inherently misogynistic. Indeed, the categories were made for man.
Can't believe it took me this long. I wish I could think Scott was being subtly Straussian but no chance of him being less than a true believer.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
Did the British make a mistake in acquiescing to the post-WWII European security architecture?
Undeniably
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
now that trans people are everywhere (thanks to anti-trans activists)
what other causes can so thoroughly be blamed on The Enemy?
very postmodern dao, the enemy of thing is solely responsible for thing.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
3d ago
The innate differences of men and women have been used to excuse systematic denial of women’s rights. Same for white vs. black.
The systematic denial of differences hasn't exactly been a godsend for equality, rights, or anti-racism/anti-sexism as defined by sane people instead of sign-flipped racists/sexists. Quite the opposite!
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7d ago
Millwall Bushwhackers
Huh, fun to have context on why Bernard chooses Millwall supporters to punch him out on Black Books.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7d ago
This is a major plot driver of Law Abiding Citizen, the prosecutor accepts a plea deal to protect his conviction rate.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8d ago
seems like one of those "movement versus ideology" questions.
there are many perfectly normal EAs, but they don't really form EA. They do EA, they don't lead the organizations or write about it that much.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8d ago
You can not both optimize for pulling people's heartstrings and for the actual impact of your interventions. Do the former and you will turn off the people who are interested in the latter.
Fully disagree that they care about the actual impact in legible and clear terms, especially if we're talking about rationalism more than EA. Or at least, the impact they care about is not always the stated impact.
You only have to look at what they won't question to see that, or how badly they fumble when push comes to shove and they have to work with normies.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8d ago
why can't the US incubate some subcultures that are deviant from its prevalent norms?
If anything the US incubates too many subcultures that are deviant from its prevalent norms, such that its prevalent norms have been replaced many times.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8d ago
Here in old Europe, nude beaches have been a thing since at least 1960, I guess. My understanding is that this is very much non-sexual nudity, generally... I think kids should be definitely shielded... even more if it is strangers fucking who might be into all sorts of kinks.
Strikes me that there's a certain cultural gestalt to the consideration too? Nude beaches are A Thing, knowingly nonsexual, from certain kinds of cultures.
One knows that Vibecamp largely pulls from, ah, very different kind of culture. Aella has attended in the past but not this year afaict. There is insufficient cultural gestalt to mix the kind of things they're mixing.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8d ago
Who are all these parents taking their kids to vibe camp and having bad experiences? Who are you offended on behalf of?
isn't it also quite expensive to attend? or does it only look expensive to us lowly peons in the real world and not to folx with more money than brains?
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8d ago
I'm with St. Rev. Dr. Rev.
But also, yeah, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary high openness and social status depends on his not understanding it. They refuse to wrestle with their inability to understand normal human intuitions, they only question the things that are comfortably acceptable to question in their social groups, none of this is surprising and there will be more suffering generated by it than prevented.
I hope that these issues don't completely derail the movement
Possibly my first direct interaction with Scott was commenting that if the movement wanted to reach normal people, the whole poly obsession (during one of its many peaks) was an unnecessary expense of weirdness points. He replied that the people that said that were a much worse cost of weirdness points among people he cared about (or something like that).
Meaningful rationalism is dead, if it ever really lived. The decent parts of EA can live on as ideas but the movement is exactly what anyone should've expected up front.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
13d ago
Woo, me too!
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
13d ago
Denmark, where the left also adopted a moderate anti-immigration attitude. I don't know exactly how successful it's been but at least they're not arresting people for complaining or trying to ban any party that pushes back.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
14d ago
a comment on skibboleth's style and regardlessness for facts of the relevant cases, as you pointed out.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
14d ago
why let facts get in the way of hating the rest of the forum?
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
14d ago
You better believe it's priced in
You can't do much about people already here.
You can absolutely do something about not importing more of the most violent and rapey people in the world.
And yet! Only one European country has done anything to slow down on that, instead of spending billions of dollars bringing them in and billions more covering up that they brought them in.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
I can assure you that it compares to what happened 1939-45 like a sparrow compares to an A380
Completely opposite models of failure play out in different time scales.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
the expression of Europeans' collective preference
Indeed, to stop immigration effectively would likely require destroying the ECHR, and ultimately completely undoing/redoing the EU.
the reality is that if people consistently voted against immigration as one of their absolute upper-echelon top priorities, they would get politicians who actually stop immigration
I think this underestimates the effectiveness of the last 50-75 years of propaganda on what kind of behavior is acceptable and for whom.
I've always thought of it is a certain contrarian approach to questions and attempting to think through things from first principles, which makes it more glaring when you do hit an unquestionable topic. Reading the Sequences and Scott is part of that, but not necessarily required.
Then again I only ever considered myself "rationalist-adjacent" because of the other weird sex stuff that seemed to be a cultural signifier. Rather like EA, I like rationalism as an idea, not as a movement or culture.
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