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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5953 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 22, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Black Americans are not particularly stressed in the first place; and their problems are not explicable by being stressed out, and accordingly worries of liberals about their potential mental anguish as a result of some scientific paradigm change are on weak footing, and might just be projection born out of inability to conceive of other minds generally and engage with black people specifically.

On top of that, Science has shown that

Blacks and Whites tend to base their self-esteem on different domains and that the tendency of Whites to base their self-esteem on the approval of others provides a partial explanation for the Black self-esteem advantage.

In other words, white=cringe, black=based, in a pretty rigorous technical sense.

Accepting HBD as a valid explanation would have the benefit that, at least, such misconceptions would stop being instilled in the consciousness of Americans, generating unproductive guilt and mental disfunction among liberal white women, likely suppressing fertility and driving up antidepressant prescriptions. It would be an interesting focus area for Effective Altruists to explore, should their therapists allow it.

I do wonder if effective altruists are missing cognitive enhancement as a neglected area considering they're concerned with economic growth.

They might be, but the optics for the quick option are bad- amphetamines are generally illegal unless you convince a doctor you require them to function, and unlike weed, it's not something half the population is already using under the table.

It's understood that they're a treatment for mental illness and that doesn't have the same connotations as "now I can focus for 8 hours", and encouraging widespread use honestly might be a bad idea because if that happens you've created (a limited form of the) Deus Ex problem and it's something you might eventually have to take advantage of or else be left behind in work or school... so even if it's found to fuck with you in other ways you functionally won't be able to stop.

Technically speaking, tobacco does this too, but as far as I can tell widespread nicotine use is more anti-anxiety than anything. Still, the greatest human technological achievements were made when smoking among the US population was at an all-time high, so...

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