naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
1d ago
I have removed this post and permabanned the poster, because it is pretty obviously a copy/paste from an LLM, from a user account with no history. I don't know if it is Substack spam or what, and I don't mind if people want to talk about colonizing Mars, but this is not a place for dumping LLM posts.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1d ago
Good for him. This was the virtuous thing to do.
I don't know that it was virtuous, but certainly I would have done the same thing, as a parent. I would not, however, have promised in the first place to not do it. The public discourse on this is disheartening but unsurprising; everyone accuses everyone else of being hypocrites, no one makes any efforts toward not being a hypocrite because hey, then you're just giving the advantage to those other hypocrites.
It's weird reading some of the commentary on reddit, where several posters are bemoaning "this is what sucks about being a liberal, we're constantly doing the reasonable thing while the Republicans break all the rules and take unfair advantage of our tolerance and longsuffering." As if this weren't precisely why the Republican party has been moving away from Buckleyan conservatism.
Would TheMotte really be here condemning Trump if he pardoned Don Jr. in a tax fraud case?
I expect @Folamh3 would; probably others also. I'm not sure why you're referencing "TheMotte" here as if it were a hivemind, particularly when you're only the fourth person into the thread.
It seems unsurprising as realpolitik: he's a lame duck, the election is over, and the corporate news media is currently focused on disasturbating over everything Trump is even thinking about doing. What's anyone going to do about it--impeach him? He was a pretty bad president, he may as well take the opportunity to do one last thing for his son (and also maybe cover his own ass a bit, by making the pardon broad enough to ensure the Justice Department can't use Hunter's Ukraine dealings to get to his dad).
Where are all our "no one is above the law, not even the President['s son]" American news reporters? Presumably explaining that a pardon is a part of the law and so there is nothing to see here! Which they will of course immediately forget should Trump deliver on some riot-related pardons of his own. (In fact I already see many social media comments to the effect of "criticizing this makes Republicans the real hypocrites, actually.")
(See, if it were me somehow in Biden's exact shoes, I would pardon Hunter and the Capitol rioters in the same batch, just to screw with everyone. It would also have been funny to pardon Trump at the same time, if only because I suspect Trump would be inclined to turn it down. Of course, my own mischievous nature is likely sufficient to prevent me from ever holding elected office, much less one capable of extending pardons.)
I would be surprised if anyone cynical enough to regularly post here will be surprised by the pardon, but it really does clear the rhetorical decks for Trump to hand out a whole mess of pardons, should he feel so inclined. "Accuse your enemy of what you are doing" apparently equates, in the Biden administration, to "do what you plan to later accuse your enemy of doing."
I'm often as surprised by which of my posts get nominations, as which do not. This seems to be a running theme with many quality posters; the deeply researched effort post gets ignored, while the drunken schizo-post you tossed off at 2am pulls ten nominations and spawns a dozen quality replies.
I expect there's no single reason for this, but nominations tend to predominantly cluster on novelty, insight, authenticity, thoroughness, eloquence, and effort. Length correlates with several of those. In this case I expect the combination of thoroughness and eloquence on a topic of interest was a driver of nominations. But that is only a guess; those who nominated you are welcome to elaborate, or not.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
I promised to not be whiny but I am just sad for now and had to post this.
This is the sort of thing Wellness Wednesday threads exist for. I'm sorry for your loss. It's real, despite your brief acquaintance, and your sorrow is understandable.
Nearly every comment is blaming them for travelling, some accusing them of being lesbian communist sluts who were travelling to get dicked by backpackers
This is surprising to me; I heard reports of the Laos deaths on the radio here in the United States, and all commentary was really focused on the methanol angle. But I suppose the Internet will do what the Internet does.
We had a lot of fun apart from the bad parts of the night, got drunk, I did some substances
I suspect a big contributor to anyone blaming these girls for their fate is the tendency of humans to turn tragedy into a morality play. Sometimes bad things just happen, and there's nothing anyone could reasonably have done differently. Other times, there are actionable lessons to take away. Very, very often, that actionable lesson is "drugs and alcohol are a completely unnecessary risk." It's unfortunate that your friends, instead of learning that lesson in a recoverable way, are now being turned into an object lesson for others, which I think probably explains some of your sadness. These girls were not a cautionary tale, to you; they were people you knew. And now they're gone, and that's a tragedy regardless of how it came about, or what lessons may or may not be taken from it.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6d ago
Like many, I have Spotify
Quick question: why?
The MP3 format was a game changer for music. My oldest MP3 was encoded in 1998--the year the format was published as an international standard. I am not an audiophile, I don't worry about lossless encoding or accruing complete discographies or whatever, but the ~40GB of digital music I've accumulated in the last 26 years fits comfortably on most any portable device and provides more hours of music, with no repeats, than I can listen to in a week, never mind a day.
I understand that not everyone has been slowly building their personal media libraries since the 20th century, but you can still buy DRM-free MP3s today, depending on the artist and publisher, and you can still buy CDs or even vinyls and encode the audio yourself. Obviously streaming comes with the convenience of you not needing to take that additional step, but once it's done, it's effectively done forever. Take the time to properly tag the files and it's not long before your personal library is miles better than anything Spotify has to offer (unless you listen to Spotify in hopes of discovering new stuff).
I recognize that I am something of a fossil, in Internet years, but it's amazing to me how much culture has shifted in the last two decades, and how much of that seems to be directly connected to media companies asserting greater control over culture-relevant media (e.g. Netflix blackwashing, social media companies doing bad "fact checking"). Just taking the ever-so-slightly affirmative step of disconnecting yourself from other people's libraries and algorithms has grown to be much more liberating than I ever would have guessed, back when I was more interested in the intellectual property questions than I was in the culture war questions.
Most "trans women" are autogynephiles.
If someone showed me a study concluding that "most men are autogynephiles," I wouldn't have any difficulty believing it. I have seen several studies suggesting that a significant percentage of "straight" men find male genitalia sexually arousing. There is also quite a lot of evidence that men are extremely sexually adaptable, i.e. will have sex with anything, if necessary for release--historical accounts of homosexuality at sea or on long military campaigns contribute much to this perception, but also further edge cases like the cross-cultural recurrence of bestiality. So I'm not sure where arguments like this really get you.
I am sympathetic to "empathy" arguments. I gain nothing, personally, through cruelty to others. However "be nice" cannot possibly mean "always affirm that what others are doing is good for them and/or for society." You say:
So anyway, next time you see some dude in a dress, with long hair and breasts but a face and voice obviously male despite his best efforts, think about what kind of emotions must have driven him to that place, and have a little empathy.
This seems fair, but what is the actionable content of that empathy? When I see a homeless person passed out in the street, filthy, half naked, and clearly stoned out of his mind, surely the empathetic response is not, "aw, look at that guy living his best life. It's not what I would choose, but hey--different strokes for different folks!" Similarly, if I see a man wearing a dress, I'm unlikely to say anything to him about it--but if I see a man walking into a ladies' changing room, I might quite reflexively say, "Hey, do you know that's the ladies' room?" So: what should I do if I see a man in a dress walking into a ladies' changing room? Do I try to help him the way I would try to help any man making that mistake, or do I exempt him from the care I normally afford to others, to help them avoid embarrassing and possibly dangerous errors?
("How do you know he's a man!?" Well, if a man in a dress really looks like a woman, then it would not occur to me to stop him from entering the ladies' room. It's true that I am not always a perfect judge of an individual's sex, but I generally do not permit my own fallibility to stop me from helping others when it seems warranted to do so, and see no reason to deviate from that policy in response to the existence of edge cases.)
I have no reason to defend moralizing busybodies who make a hobby of policing even the tiniest of deviations from the social status quo. But I think there are many reasons to, politely but firmly, refuse to go along with trans advocacy of this kind. For one thing, I suspect that for every person with serious gender dysphoria, there are at least dozens of people whose lives will be made worse by indulging trans advocacy--for example, by giving edge cases a nudge to behave in ways that will actually make their lives worse, than if they had just not. When I read that "28.5% of Gen Z women and 10.6% of Gen Z men identify as LGBTQ+," but in 1992 "3.2% of men and 1.6% of women aged 18–49 identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual," I find it very unlikely that this is the result of people being more free to behave as their "true selves." Rather, that looks to me like a serious mental health crisis born of a toxic memetic environment. That is: it looks like social contagion. How does one treat social contagion? I don't know, but I feel pretty confident that acting as if there is just nothing wrong or bad or sad or regrettable or even worth mentioning about transsexuality is the opposite of helping.
Not accidentally, your entire post could just as easily have been written about drug addicts, schizophrenics, preppers, Nickelback fans... people like what they like. Tautologically! People do what they do. I don't think there's any reason to be cruel to any of those people. I think it's a better world where we are all kind, and thoughtful, and polite, and treat others with humanity and respect. But that doesn't free us from the hard work of making value judgments, and finding ways to act on those judgments. There is a large-breasted man I see on my walks, sometimes. I have never commented on the fact that he looks like an especially tasteless parody of a woman; I'm pretty sure he knows, and I suspect it's even deliberate. There is also an anorexic woman I see on my walks, sometimes, and I don't comment on her obvious mental issues, either. But if either of them were a family member or particularly close friend--I would definitely comment, and it wouldn't be to affirm the validity or goodness of their choices.
I have never used Twitter. Mostly, because I have read Amusing Ourselves to Death. I knew that absolutely no good could come of engaging in 140 characters.
As the platform evolved (threads! 280 characters!), I was occasionally tempted, but never tempted enough. It sometimes seemed like a place where interesting people were having interesting conversations--but with the caveat that, in terms of depth, insight, and "popularity contest" dynamics, Twitter is like attending a very large, very angry high school. Sure, you have some wild conversations at your lunch table, but is it really worth the cacophony? The kibbitzing? The sophomores?
The amount of coordinated astroturfing and, admittedly, occasional not-just-astroturfing I've seen for Bluesky in the last week is quite sufficient to ensure that I will not even dip a toe into it. I think their current marketing is clearly intended to capitalize on the current perception that it is Truth Social for Leftists.
Further strengthening everyone's filter bubble will surely have no negative knock-on effects whatsoever.
naraburns
nihil supernum
12d ago
That one is doing that which is approved by the Cathedral, yes? Left-wing speech is activism, right-wing speech is delinquency.
Well, it's been a while since I was really on the bleeding edge of these cases, but my experience is that it's rarely overtly political, except to the extent that "good student" sometimes codes "left"--which is less often the case in high school than it is in college. Kids who get detention and bully others don't get free speech. Kids who get good grades or excel in athletics do. Leftists may be more inclined toward activism? But at the high school level it tends to be silly stuff rather than serious culture war issues. Though perhaps in the last few years that has changed.
naraburns
nihil supernum
12d ago
I don't necessarily disagree, but pretty much every decision with a through-line to Tinker has eroded Tinker in some way without bothering to overrule it; why would they overrule it now?
(There is actually a discernible pattern in student speech cases post-Tinker and it's not "substantial disruption." Rather, in most cases, juvenile delinquents tend to get slapped down, while "model students" doing activism or whatever mostly win.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
15d ago
Thanks for adding context. It would probably be better without the somewhat blatant culture war bits.
I'm a little ambivalent as to the extent to which this arguably constitutes "recruiting for a cause," but I will, tentatively, allow it.
naraburns
nihil supernum
16d ago
In Aristotle's Politics, he observes that families hold property "in common" while cities hold property privately (but for public benefit). He thinks this is natural, because if cities treated property as communal, no one would have stewardship and freeloaders would be a problem--but with our true intimates, it's actually normal and natural to live communally.
What you are saying sounds to me like kind of a modern take on the same phenomena, or maybe even just a more granular take. The reason we have the law of contract is to facilitate agreement between non-intimates. But the line between family and stranger can be more of a spectrum, and in many circumstances we find ourselves treating strangers as near kin, at least temporarily.
I don't think I have anything substantive to add, really, I just think it's always interesting to observe that these questions have been the subject of philosophical inquiry for all of recorded history.
naraburns
nihil supernum
17d ago
Referring to the removal of healthy organs for aesthetic purposes as "mutilation" seems like a supportable framing, but context and charity matter.
Referring to a major medical condition as "aesthetic purposes" also seems pretty uncharitable.
No--this would require your interlocutor to assume the conclusion under debate. Here you are treating a genuine disagreement as "uncharitable." That is not how charitable discussion works. You should be trying to read the best possible version of the argument being made, without actually departing from the substance of the argument.
You cannot charitably read this to say "children are being mutilated,"
I disagree.
Then you are wrong; I just gave you a more charitable reading which adheres to the substance (and literal wording!) of the line under discussion, and you have furnished no warrant for believing your less charitable reading to be true. This may be a problem with your perspective on "charity," since you don't seem to grasp what "charity" means in this context--maybe this is why you also have failed to read others charitably.
A lot of posters here are in fact doubling down on "actual under 18 children ARE having surgeries".
Indeed, several have provided you with evidence of this actually happening. You seem to have learned something from them about the world, though you do not seem interested in revising your beliefs accordingly. That's okay, you're under no obligation to do so. But you remain under obligation to read others charitably. I have done my best to explain what that requires; at this point I don't know how I can make it more clear what you did wrong. So hopefully you've figured it out and can avoid it, next time.
naraburns
nihil supernum
17d ago
Some distinctions: zeroth, you didn't get the job, and you didn't find out until later, and both of those things matter. First, even had you gotten the job, the laptop would not have been the difference between you and "tens of thousands of dollars," but between you and the opportunity to earn tens of thousands of dollars. Options are valuable, but they are not equal in value to the exercise of the option. Second, "only" a twenty is a similar offer, proportionately, to $10,000 to a multi-billionaire--or even a million dollars, if we factor in diminishing returns. So while I do not think it was cheap of you to sacrifice a twenty, I do think it was maybe impolite of you to ask. People are conditioned to refuse rewards for their good deeds. Aesthetically, I would have offered her the twenty; aesthetically, it would still be appropriate for her to turn it down, if she just had no particular need of twenty dollars.
But probably I get most of my aesthetics from fantasy novels and video games.
naraburns
nihil supernum
17d ago
How much of a debt do I owe the person who lent me their charger?
Owe? Nothing! In the scenario outlined, there was no offer, and no acceptance; no bargain was struck.
If I were personally made a muti-billionaire in this scenario, and the real alternative was in fact me becoming destitute, I would probably give the cord lender a million bucks as a show of gratitude. Someone who gave the cord lender less than, oh, $10,000 in this scenario I would regard as tastelessly cheap. But I would also regard it as tasteless of the cord lender to anticipate such a reward. In moral or legal judgments, it is appropriate to feel that one is due what one is owed, and that one owes what others are due. But I think aesthetic judgment applies better to scenarios like this one, where no contractual or moral obligations seem to be in play. It is a more beautiful world, where people penny-pinch neither their helpfulness nor their gratitude.
naraburns
nihil supernum
17d ago
I'd actually be curious if you'd ban gwern for the 2012 comments linked in that thread, btw.
Maybe! But Gwern seems pretty cognizant of context in those comments:
real-time chat cannot and should not be held to the same high standards like, for example, LW posts or comments
Gwern perceived IRC as a sort of "locker room," speech-wise, while Startling disagreed. I wasn't there so I have no opinion as to who was right, beyond a tendency to suspect that it's always a bad idea to bet against Gwern. My guess is that a hypothetical Motte-posting Gwern would express himself a little differently, when posting here.
The SSC subreddit and the Motte are different contexts, too. Has the Motte shifted left? I don't think so, but then I am pretty regularly accused of bearing some personal responsibility for this place shifting right. We're not explicitly conservative, so Conquest's Laws say we will eventually become progressive. But maybe the foundation counts as an explicitly conservative alignment, for such purposes? We've definitely had more mods bail because they found this space insufficiently progressive, than because they found this space insufficiently conservative. On balance, I remain pretty satisfied with this space (when I'm not feeling surprised that it has managed to continue existing for as long as it has!).
But like... if you don't like entryists, you really should stop giving the mod team shit over moderation decisions, ever. We're not perfect, we make mistakes. But even our most progressive moderators are much more committed to the foundation than they are to advancing any particular political narrative.
naraburns
nihil supernum
17d ago
But you can't let the place stray too far from leftist Orthodoxy, can you?
I appreciate you.
It honestly warms my heart to know that I can still generate responses like this in the same thread where I'm getting responses like this:
Would you really allow this sort of insulting language to fly in the other direction? Can I talk about how conservatives are routinely voting to kill women? Is it fair to say conservatives have once again elected a fascist rapist?
naraburns
nihil supernum
17d ago
If we're in agreement that "child mutilation" is an insulting and deeply uncharitable description, then my objection is pretty well resolved.
I agree that "mutilation" can be unnecessarily inflammatory rhetoric. I would stop short of calling it inflammatory per se, however. Referring to the removal of healthy organs for aesthetic purposes as "mutilation" seems like a supportable framing, but context and charity matter.
I do think I've been consistent in my stance: SRS is a surgery like any other, and calling it "mutilation" is ridiculous hyperbole.
That can be your stance, but you aren't entitled to its adoption by others. Many humans object to cosmetic surgery generally, and those kinds of surgeries do not usually interfere with bodily functioning. Interfering with bodily function seems to raise the stakes. "Mutilation" may be ridiculous hyperbole in some contexts, but it does not seem per se to be so.
Calling it "child mutilation" is doubly ridiculous, since as far as I know, kids under 18 genuinely are not having surgery. I'm not saying kids don't transition, I'm saying they don't get surgery under 18, and that it's not mutilation.
The main reason I am replying to you again, here, is that you still don't seem to have grasped where you went wrong in the first place. WhiningCoil did not say "children are being mutilated," but rather that children were being put "on a path towards mutilation and sterilization." You cannot charitably read this to say "children are being mutilated," but rather "children are being channeled toward life outcomes that eventually include sterilization and the removal of healthy organs." Demanding evidence of children having functional tissue removed for aesthetic purposes is failing to address what WhiningCoil actually said, and hence a rules violation.
(For whatever it's worth, "gender affirming mastectomies" clearly involve the removal of healthy organs for aesthetic purposes, and do not appear to be terribly rare in adolescents aged 12-17. If someone were to call that "child mutilation" I would probably need to spend some time weighing whether I regarded the rest of the comment as inflammatory, "boo outgroup," or otherwise rules-violating, but that characterization of the data in isolation does not look like a per se rules violation to me.)
I am responding to what was literally said.
Your response was insufficiently charitable.
Would you really allow this sort of insulting language to fly in the other direction?
First, other people's bad behavior is irrelevant to your own. Second, I already banned WhiningCoil for comments in this thread. If that wasn't enough to stifle your whataboutism, then I don't know what else I could possibly do to assuage your persecution complex.
Can I talk about how conservatives are routinely voting to kill women? Is it fair to say conservatives have once again elected a fascist rapist?
There are ways to make substantive assertions along these lines, and people often do. But they have to do so within a context of following the rules, which you have failed to do here.
naraburns
nihil supernum
18d ago
I mean, if guys had a Shaving Club, I'd imagine some women with PCOS might benefit from showing up. If the club is really about shaving, that shouldn't be a problem, should it?
This is a remarkably terrible analogy. Consider instead a support group for sufferers and survivors of prostate cancer. Having a bunch of women show up to talk about their experiences with cervical cancer would not really fit the discussion prompt, even though there would be some obvious overlap in experience of, say, chemotherapy or medical malpractice or whatever.
The article didn't say anything about language policing or otherwise acting rudely. It's just upset that there's women at the shaving club.
No, it's upset that there are Men at the Women's club. It's upset that an organization dedicated to the advancement of women's health is being co-opted for the advancement of men's preferences and desires.
Presumably learning more about male lactation would help the mission of infant health and breastfeeding: either it turns out to work and we have a cool new option, or it turns out to be a bad idea and now we can articulate specific concerns and help people understand why it's a bad idea.
I am doubtful that you will ever find anyone who is able to do the actual science without their political biases fucking it up. But if you could, like, okay? That has nothing to do with this case; if you want to make this argument, do the actual science first, instead of doing the activism first by filling women's spaces with men.
naraburns
nihil supernum
18d ago
First of all, am I being moderated for the tone/content of my posts or for ban evasion as a suspected alt?
We moderate on tone, not content. Your post was uncharitable and antagonistic.
I'm assuming from your comment that there was a previous user on this forum who used to engage similarly to me
More like "a never ending stream of users," actually. Bad faith posters who use "just asking questions" rhetoric to troll the forum are a dime a dozen; in the parlance of the age, "ya basic," sorry. "New" users who jump in on election day and seem immediately comfortable navigating various community norms are suspicious enough. Following up by "just asking questions" rules lawyering in response to moderation dramatically increases my suspicion that you are a repeat customer. We've had hundreds of new users over the years, and to put it mildly--you do not fit the profile.
But it's not impossible, so... here we are.
Until this comment I had not received any mod feedback.
We can't moderate every comment, and queue approval should not be taken as a sign of endorsement, beyond perhaps "this isn't obviously spam." Moderation is qualitative and adaptive; we usually mod comments directly, but sometimes we have to take into account a pattern of commenting instead. This is a reputation economy; post lots of good stuff that isn't rage bait, then occasional rage bait will get a shrug.
If not, does this comment act as a warning that all of my previous posts were unacceptable?
Many of your previous posts are bad. But the goal is not to try to get away with being just enough of an asshole that you are allowed to continue being an asshole. Rhetorical brinkmanship is bad. At a glance, your comments with negative karma scores should probably be taken as a sign, to you, that you did something wrong. (This isn't always the case--some substantive positions just get downvoted, which is annoying--but if you can't spot the difference, I don't know what to tell you.)
For some examples, this comment, if I had seen it when you posted it, would probably have gotten you a short ban. This comment's "citation needed" snark honestly tempts me to ban you now.
Be charitable. Be kind. If someone else is breaking the rules, report that instead of breaking the rules in response. The more closely I look at your profile, the more I am inclined to permaban you rather than go through the motions with what appears to be a (so far) consistently garbage level of engagement. If you really would like to continue posting under this account, knock it off.
naraburns
nihil supernum
18d ago
The charity failure in cartman's comment was that WhiningCoil argues that children consenting to sex acts is analogous to children consenting to treatment for reasons of sex or gender preferences, i.e. "if children can't consent to sex acts then children can't consent to puberty blockers, hormone treatments, or sex-altering surgeries, and if parental authority does not extend to vicarious consent for sex acts then it also does not extend to vicarious consent for puberty blockers, hormone treatments, or sex-altering surgeries."
People can argue about whether that analogy is a good one. But if one person builds their argument on the validity of the analogy and another person builds their response on the invalidity of the analogy, then they are not really talking to each other, they are just competing for who can make their take on the analogy into the consensus by being loud and insistent about it.
This is a complicated thing to moderate because we moderate on tone rather than substance, but like most informal fallacies, it's hard to recognize this one without some grasp of the substance of the argument.
naraburns
nihil supernum
18d ago
Hello, and welcome to the Motte!
This response is not sufficiently charitable. You may note that I have banned the user to whom you were responding; one big problem with rule-breaking comments is that they tend to proliferate by encouraging further rule-breaking responses. But responding to a rule-breaking comment in a rule-breaking way does not excuse you!
...actually, looking through your rather fresh comment history, you seem to have a remarkable knack for sussing out problematic posts and making the discussion even worse by responding, not to the substance of the post, but to its rhetoric. Somehow that is, actually, most of your posts! The odds of this are so low as to not be worth contemplating.
Still, in the interest of charity, I will hold off perma-banning you as a suspected alt until the next time I notice this peculiar pattern. Once, after all, may be happenstance.
naraburns
nihil supernum
18d ago
This isn't even "making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike", it's just plain making things up.
This is not sufficiently charitable. Specifically,
we ask that responders address what was literally said, on the assumption that this was at least part of the intention. Nothing is more frustrating than making a clear point and having your conversation partner assume you're talking in circles. We don't require that you stop after addressing what was literally said, but try, at least, to start there.
It's fine to raise questions about source veracity, but if you're going to respond to others, you need to actually be responding to the substance of their posts--not ducking into your motte when they raise points you don't care to substantively address. Actually several of your comments in this thread do the "law of merited impossibility" and "Russell conjugation" thing, where you oscillate between "this isn't happening" and "it's good, actually" while rhetorically re-framing specific concerns. This kind of engagement creates frustration and lowers engagement quality, even though it basically keeps to the rules on tone. If done deliberately and repeatedly, it amounts to a kind of trolling. Please engage with what people are actually saying, rather than substituting your rhetoric for their substantive concerns.
If you think there's a better single-sentence(ish) quote that should be there, feel free to say so. I'm happy to update.
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