domain:astralcodexten.com?page=2
Throwaway05
19hr ago
I don't agree with your characterization of the fence, previous message describes why.
With respect to test, previously I said:
"Do patients ask for these? What's the ratio of people who actually need them versus just think they need them? Are their side effects? Are they bad? Are the risks something that someone can easily understand and make informed decisions based off of? Are patients willing to try safer and more effective interventions first? What's the evidence base and recommendations, how sure are we about them? Are their bad actors involved who are incentivizing certain behaviors? What is the level of excess supplementation that production can carry? How many of these questions can you answer?"
Given your lack of response and changing the subject I think I can safely assume you can answer none of these things.
--
-Benefits and risks of a given action exist, for oneself and for others.
-In order to determine the benefits and risks of this substance as a medication you need to know the answers to those questions, and others.
-You do not know the answers to these questions.
-Therefore you do not know the benefits and risks of testosterone.
-Other medications may or may not have similar risks and benefits.
-You do not know them.
-Therefore you do know if medications are safe, for the taker or for others.
-Expanding on that, you do not know the cost to the patient or others have a given medication.
-Decisions should be made with an awareness of the costs and benefits.
-You personally, and patients in general do not have the information to make these decisions.
-Therefore you shouldn't.
Smuggled in there is the premise that people should not be allowed to grossly harm themselves or others, if you are fine with that ....then sure, but if that's the case I'm not sure how you are going to argue against me putting one in the head when someone hurts others with their decisions.
You may say "well sure but they can harm themselves a little bit" but the same frame holds and you don't have the knowledge to know what actions will cause no, a little bit, or significant harm.
OliveTapenade
19hr ago
For what it's worth, from the perspective of someone who's very religious, the worst and most frustrating attitude I've ever run into from non-religious people is the idea that because religion is "a choice" it must always come second to other identities. A gay person (supposedly) can't choose not to be gay, but a Christian can choose not to be Christian, or can choose not to be an anti-gay Christian, so gay identity comes first.
But that's not how any serious follower of any religion I've ever spoken to experiences their religion, and it's certainly not how I experience it. I'm not just choosing this or that on the basis of arbitrary preference, such that I could change my mind. Faith is not like picking which car to drive. I'm practicing a particular religion because it's actually true. Telling me "well, you could just choose not to be Christian" feels like, ironically, someone telling a scientist, "well, you could just choose not to be Darwinist, look, Lysenkoism is a perfectly good choice, why not believe that?"
The atheist who thinks that I'm wrong and my beliefs are false is, to my mind at least, better and more tolerable than the atheist who thinks that my beliefs are mere affectation or aesthetic preference. No, I can't just believe something else, because that would be switching from something true to something false. If you want me to change my beliefs, you have to actually convince me that my beliefs are false. There is no shortcut.
yofuckreddit
19hr ago
While Visual Studio and C# are my drugs of choice, the worst thing about them may be the default linter & style guide's insistence on Allman.
K&R has always been the best, and as you say, it's not close.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
19hr ago
To steelman her, not committing to an LDR which is longer than the period of dating beforehand, after just three months is pretty reasonable.
Since she presumably told you how long she will be gone, she can't really string you along endlessly. So keep it casual for the time being, but also make your feelings clear, and that you intend to start again right where you left off once she's back. If she does as well, great, if she finds new excuses or breaks it off after a few dates again, don't fall for it again. You can also offer to visit once if it's not crazy far away and not too hard on your wallet and just see how she reacts. Especially if it's a place you plausibly might have wanted to visit independent of her.
Dunno though how much you should listen to my advice. I've only ever had one serious relationship, with my wife & mother of my kids, and intend to keep it that way. I also always hated casual dating, in particular never used any apps, and made it clear that I only date with the goal of an eventual, stable family in mind.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
19hr ago
Oh, you touched a third rail for me here, Bro.
Modern Family is satanic. It's a show that makes fun of loser normies to their face in such a way that they, the losers, not only don't get that they are the punchline, but they actually like it.
The Phil-Claire family (the most "traditional" of the three featured) is a weird reverse domme fantasy wherein Claire, without a job, enjoys the success of her pliable and doting husband, Phil, as if it were her own. Phil is apparently a Real Estate salesman of some skill - how else can they afford their home in that part of California? But his success isn't the product of a shrewd and hard-working businessman - he's a human gold retriever who sells houses because he's just so darn nice!
And Claire hates his niceness and quirkyness. She is often, obviously, embarrassed by him. But the living is good and, gosh darn it, she just loves that big old goofball at the end of the day. Even in the infamous "Godfather" episode, wherein Phil is attempted to be portrayed as a cunning genius, it's all tongue-in-cheek and sophomoric. Simply put, Phil offers no real danger, competency, or capability and lustfully pines away for his father-in-law's second bride, Gloria. He's also financially stable and a devoted father. He's in good shape. He has his hair.
Phil is also an awful father despite, you know, being presented as a good dad. His oldest daughter dates a notorious dufus (in whom Phil sees himself) and is speedily on her way to Stripperdom. If I remember correctly, the later season had a literal teen pregnancy arc. The middle daughter, Alex, feels both a lack of attention from her parents and a sense of dread that she is obviously smarter than everyone she shares a home with. Although the show had to pivot once the actress playing her developed, that character was hurdling towards Sarah Lawrence levels of political lesbianism. Finally, Phil's son, Luke, is a profound idiot and bonds with his father, mostly, during his most intense bouts of senselessness. Remember, Phil is a multi-millionaire somehow.
I won't cover the other two families. The two gay men adopting an asian female child is so on the nose that the show makes fun of itself for that. The Gloria-Jay dynamic with the wise cracking Manny is some sort of weird Frasier redux. The eternal craziness of the original mother (name forgotten) is Hollywood stating firmly that yes, once you are old and a woman, the world hates you.
Modern Family is not a sincere gesture towards the changing realities of family life. It is a cruel imitation of all the dark patterns of family mis-formation that Hollywood feeds back to the masses to perpetuate a system that's already failed, but still has viewership to capture. We're starting to see this with fat people in health ads and perpetual man-children dating stand-in mom's in Taco Bell ads.
These people hate you, they will say it to your face, and then you will ask for more.
Folamh3
19hr ago
The new trans woman in Congress who was making video threats about bashing their female colleagues head in the bathroom seemed very threatening.
Do you have a source for this?
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
19hr ago
If you get paid by the line, then it certainly is.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
19hr ago
Do you think he has a ghostwriter, er, ghostplayer? Because the run itself looks legit: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859304361547182451
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
20hr ago
He was part of the corruption. If you tamper with (e.g. bribe or threaten) a jury to obtain an acquittal, jeopardy does not attain, so by analogy even if a deal was enforceable in the general case, it should not be here.
TwiceHuman
20hr ago
I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. It requires a rather high intelligence to notice that everything is necessarily relative, and people usually don't if they can convince themselves that something is fundamental. Convincing yourself, for instance, that the earth is the center of everything, or that god is the center of everything, or that morality is objective, gives you a reference point, and it takes a lot of questioning to realize that neither of these are true.
Whenever there's a conflict between A and B, A will be correct from As perspective, and B will be correct from Bs perspective. A parent perspective C can be used to judge A and B, but there's no perspective for which you cannot create a conflicting perspective such that both seem equally value, and you're in need of a parent perspective. If two Christians disagree, then then a priest may be the judge. If two priests disagree, then the bible may be the judge. If two religions disagree, then what? You always need something "higher", but there's no "highest". It's also for this reason that there cannot be an authority of truth. The authority will be unable to judge itself, so it won't know if it's mistaken. This limitation applies to everything from the government, to cultures, to mathematics itself. Something merely seems universal when everyone agrees on it. If humanity could agree on morality, it would seem universal until an alien race came along and said something different. Who judges the judges? It's judges all the way down. Who created the universe, god? Well, who created god? Math is based on set theory, well, how do we prove the axioms of set theory are correct? The problem of infinite regres is everywhere. You can arrive at it by thinking, which is why ancient philosophy often says "There's no one true path". It's why Nietzsche said that there's no facts but only interpretations (perspectivism). It's also how Einstein could discover relativity. The axiom "everything is connected" is also derived from this line of thinking.
When you try to orientent, compare, and judge things, in any field, you run into infinite regress. This is generally why thinking too much leads to nihilism, you realize that everything is arbitrary and mistakenly believe that this means that it's counterfeit.
Magusoflight
20hr ago
He’s basically gwern but seems more interested in taboo and political stuff than gwern is
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
20hr ago
I am once again asking you to have a little empathy for people you find disgusting
Tried that. They turned tail on me, defined me and mine and disgusting, and started persecuting in earnest. That's a large part of the culture war.
Mantergeistmann
20hr ago
The new trans woman in Congress who was making video threats about bashing their female colleagues head in the bathroom seemed very threatening.
I'd heard that there had been threats, but not threats by a member of congress.
Dean
20hr ago
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.
And enforce rules he or she does not like anyway even if they occur at their expense, correct?
'Empathy' is not an exception to social regulation. It may be used to claim it, or demand it, or insist that it should, but the fundamental purpose of government is to tell people 'no' and enforce that objection by force if necessary. This includes, and is especially true, for demands by one on the part of others- be it life (no, they do not have to give you their lives), property (no, they do not have to give you their possessions), conscience (no, they do not have to follow your religion), or presence (no, they do not have to let you into their personal spaces).
It is precisely because the government is in the business of allocating resources and punishments that governments are ethically obliged to not do so on the basis of empathy. Empathy is, after all, easiest for those we already care about and in scarce supply for our rivals or opponents. Empathy is, additionally, easy to fake and yet hard to measure- there are any number of performative appeals to empathy, but few metrics to actually identify those who need it (often because they cannot speak for themselves). A society ruled by empathy is an often cruel place, as it is one which takes from those less emapthizable with and gives to those who are most successful in bullying social pressure to claim the profits for themselves.
This is why virtuous governments are ruled by laws, not empathy. Empathy may be a consideration in the laws a just society creates, but only in accordance with any other virtue or favor, and refusing to enforce socially validated laws in the name of empathy for a select groups is a lack of empathy for other groups.
BurdensomeCount
Apparently "BIPOC" is a racial slur now.
20hr ago
Modern day twitter basically forces right wing stuff on you the moment you go there. I want to read interesting material regardless of political valence (tell me about the history of cookbooks etc.), not see the libs get owned (eventually one gets tired of that sort of stuff) but that's what Twitter has as its "default meal" these days.
ControlsFreak
20hr ago
Let's go a bit slowly here, as you've shown yourself very prone to erratically jumping between different arguments, without much logical connection to what has been said. We were discussing a specific aspect of medicine, and after you struggled mightily in using your vast domain-specific knowledge to make a coherent argument, you invoked Chesterton's Fence, again sort of erratically and not weaved into a coherent argument. Chesterton said:
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
This was your pithy attempt to just tell me to shut up and go away. However, Chesterton explicitly said that one is to come back after they can explain what the use of it was, where usually, this is interpreted to mean that one has understood that reasonably intelligent humans went through the effort to erect the fence, and so this must have happened for some use for someone. In our case, the fence is the requirement that basically every drug requires a prescription.
I'm going to start needing some clear affirmations of the progress we've made if I'm going to believe that you're arguing in good faith and are willing to have an honest back-and-forth rather than just erratically lurching in every which way, mostly trying to wave your degree around and telling me to shut up. Do you clearly affirm that I have, in fact, described how humans found value in setting up this fence and why it came to be?
If you do not agree, then we need to return to that question. If you do agree, then we can come back to where we were. Let's talk testosterone. Let's hear your argument (only after you explicitly agree that we have satisfied the last demand you made, but before we lurch off onto another hundred erratic demands you'd like to make).
Sophistry (and gish gallops) is not a substitute for a coherent argument.
justmotteingaround
20hr ago
Indeed. To take an easy case, I have to constantly admonish secular people have to such empathy and magnanimity towards religious people. Many secular people consider religious folk mentally diseased and morally defective. This is not meant to be insulting. I just take ethics seriously. It would be easy for me decide that all religious people are intellectually and morally deranged; a lost cause. They routinely claim certainty about something I know they are not certain. Almost always they were indoctrinated about what to believe, and then not to question it. Case closed, right?
But that's not the whole story. I know that religion does so much good for so many people. I know what spiritual yearning and salvation feels like. Order. Comfort. Community. Humility that this world is much bigger than we can even begin to understand. To realize that the purpose life - no matter who is controlling it - is to love whoever is around to be loved. To realize that one friend is all one needs in order to be well supplied with friendship. Imaginary friends should count, too.
So yeah, I think being religious means something is mentally wrong with you. But don't let what I have written tell on me. I - the author of this post - actually, sincerely, earnestly, unsarcastically and unironically, have empathy for religious people.
But this isn't about religion.
This is about empathy. Not pity. Not sympathy. And certainly not about condoning actions one finds immoral. Empathy isn't best derived from an analogous personal experience. Thoughts can overcome emotion. As a straight guy, I too find depictions of men blowing and butt fucking one another to be inherently gross. According to John Haidt, this is fairly normal as when some straight men are show such images, areas in brain related to disgust become active. However, I have the analogous feelings of love and lust to fall back on. When a gay person says "I want that too" my emotions are easily overcome. When it comes to trans related issues I'm more at a loss. I have hated myself in one way or another, but never in a way that altering my outward appearance would be useful. I'm quite open to experience, so when a trans person tells me they want to be trans on their own time, I have to felt sense or moral or ethical implication, and am willing to make reasonable accommodations in kind. However, when trans activists make a religion out of woke, I can delineate what and is or is not a reasonable accommodation in kind. Importantly, I can still have empathy for the terminally woke. It probably is genuinely distressing to think the Cass Report is bigoted pseudoscience, or that there is some sort of trans genocide, as is often hysterically claimed. Empathy has a role to play in destroying bad ideas.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
20hr ago
I just woke up from a nightmare where I noticed the top of my head was balding. Even as a man with a very nice head of hair, having a bald dad gives you generational trauma :(
I think most of the recommendations here make sense. I'd personally advocate for topical minoxidil first and foremost, and then finasteride as an option second, if you're willing to accept the risks. If all else fails and you have the money, Turkey or Mexico beckons.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
20hr ago
On the other hand, many relationships I've talked about more in-depth with people include some moment in which one partner, usually the women, has some doubts and breaks it off for a while only to come back (often almost immediately). LDRs are one of the most common causes. And she is kind of right, if you only dated a few months, not committing to an LDR of more months than that is a very reasonable decision. Doesn't mean she isn't open to a proper relationship afterwards, and the fact that she starts the messages again shows that she likely has at least some interest still.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
20hr ago
Since you're being pretty up front about it and accepting the inevitable consequences, I'm only going to ban you for one day, but yes, this is absolutely not the kind of post we want.
Every one of us (including me) has a list of "people I can't fucking stand and wish would fuck off forever." If even blocking them is not enough for you and their very existence causes you to post things like this, that is a you problem. Deal with it in some manner other than this.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
20hr ago
Really? Before the trans debate, do you think men could just occasionally walk into the women's bathroom and pee in peace while only being freaked out at by rare Karens?
Men who were making a genuine effort to dress and pass as women (even if they didn't really pass)? Yes.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
20hr ago
Out of curiosity, have you actually read any books about the history of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Do you think you could accurately summarize both the Israeli and the Palestinian positions in words that they themselves would agree with? Of course there is no single "Israeli" or "Palestinian" position, which is part of my point below, but even narrowing it down to the militant partisans on either side?
Yes, I said that my view was based on those things, not that I was just directly quoting them, and I don't think any individual element of that description is inapplicable. Even pro-Israeli partisans admit they've killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, including women and children - “There are no schools in Gaza, as there are no children left.” was proudly chanted by them in public.
Who is them? The footballers in Amsterdam?
It's undeniable that tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. There is no war, especially one happening in an urban environment, where lots of casualties weren't women and children. This doesn't make their war just, but it does make it unexceptional. Nor are the Israelis exceptional in having some drunken footballers chanting terrible things and soldiers in the field sometimes getting up to stupid and offensive grunt shit to amuse themselves.
I've based my views on quotes straight from the mouths of Likud officials, not Hamas. As I said, I'm not condemning the Israelis as evil (I don't think calling a state evil really has much meaning) - I'm just taking them at their word.
That would require you to describe them as they would describe themselves. Do you think they would describe themselves as "a blood-drenched, bronze-age state intent on ethnic purity and conquest via force of arms to reclaim the territory their god said was theirs"? Again, you aren't using the word "evil" but you're clearly saying, in not so many words, that they're evil monsters and there is no other way to explain them.
Also, Likud is one political party in Israel whose popularity waxes and wanes. They do not speak for the Israeli state and the entirety of the Israeli citizenry. This would be like taking some of the Republicans' most extreme statements and saying they speak for Americans. (Which of course is exactly what they and their enemies would both like to claim, but it doesn't make it true.) Much has been made of Netanyahu's "Amelek" comment. Netanyahu is a sort of Trump-like figure in Israel - he has a lot of supporters, especially after 10/7, but a substantial portion of the Israeli's population hates him. Think of all the outrageous things Trump has said, which a sizeable portion of the American population would not agree with, and then claiming that Trump was clearly speaking for the American people, and reflecting what Americans think. In an abstract sense, this may be true (they elected him, after all), but at the same time, you'd be completely wrong in claiming he's channelling the American psyche and voicing what the average American thinks about everything. Netanyahu, and other militant Likud officials, are pretty open about despising Palestinians, and there's a sizeable portion of Israel that would just like the Palestinians to go away (who can blame them, after all this time?). But most Israelis do not want to exterminate Palestinians because God said to, and you know this and you know it's not an accurate characterization, you're just using that description because it makes Israel sound really super-evil.
I'm just taking them at their word. I think that they're motivated by ethnonationalist impulses
"Motivated by ethnonationalist impulses" is rather different from "literally wants to commit genocide because God told us to," which is what you are claiming.
We have a number of white ethnonationalists here, and while sometimes they will admit that they would be okay with a violent solution to create the ethnostate they want, none of them would accept as uncharitable a description of their motives as the one you are claiming is the Israeli one.
Whether or not you believe ethnostates are bad, people (including Israelis) want them for reasons beyond "We hate other people and want to purify the Earth."
That's precisely what I'm doing
No, you are assuredly and absolutely not. Again, can I ask what books you have read?
I can imagine how insanely hard that would be, to have something wrong with your brain so that instead of having sexual and romantic attraction to the opposite sex, you have it to the same sex. And how hard it would be to have all those feelings of eros, of being-in-love, that scream to you from the rooftops that this is right and good and beautiful and what I'm meant to do, except unnaturally directed towards another man.
Can you?
Because the actual answer to how hard it is, is "not at all, actually". This is way, way more projection than anything any of us actually feel -- save those who have been bullied and belittled into thinking they should feel that way. But as someone who has been anti-religious since early primary school it has not been difficult in the slightest to deal with. If anything, seeing the state of women in 2024, I feel lucky. Blessed, even.
Anyway, I don't think the reason most ordinary people take against trans is disgust in any case. I think it's the entitlement.
99.9% of the population are supposed to change their manner of speaking and the rules for this 0.1%, who aren't ever even grateful for any kind of effort, but just make more and more demands once any inches are given. If you do not believe a man can become a woman, an incredibly common belief, you are supposed to never ever voice this belief, and indeed act and speak contrary to it at all times, because it is your responsibility, your duty, to reinforce these people's identities at all times. But they'll still fucking despise you despite it.
And don't you dare try to exclude them from your dating pool, even if they have the wrong genitals! That's -phobic, makes you a "genital fetishist" and "not really gay, since you only like dick and not men" and that means they get to call for your death on public social media and that's justified and totally fine. Bigot!
Nah. Fuck 'em.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
20hr ago
Genuine empathy cannot be compelled. And to the extent that it could be, it would have no value. We should encourage understanding; that is, a rational understanding of the physical and social causes that make people think as they think and do as they do. But such understanding is distinct from empathy and compassion as emotional affects.
What I find most obnoxious about the contemporary transsexual "movement" is that they have legislated, by social fiat, a prescribed position on a philosophical question that rightly should be a matter of free inquiry and debate: namely, the metaphysics and ontology of gender. This really grinds my gears like nothing else. Possibly more than anything having to do with bathrooms or puberty blockers. The right to open inquiry is one of the closest things I have to a sacred value. When you are forced to refer to an MTF transsexual as "she", you are being compelled, under social duress, to assert as an ontological truth that this person just is a woman (and all parties are aware that that's plainly what's going on here - otherwise it wouldn't be such a heated topic of disagreement in the first place). I can't accept being compelled to assent to such a contentious position.
For my part, the two positions on the ontology of gender that I take seriously are the conservative position - that there are such things as men and women, and the way we usually sorted people into those buckets up until ~40 years ago is basically correct - or the eliminativist position - that no person is either a man or a woman, and thus "X is a woman" is vacuously false for all X. On either position, to say that an MTF transsexual "is a woman" is to utter a falsehood, and thus I do not believe that such a statement should be socially compulsory. There have been serious attempts to develop an ontology that would support the transsexual position, and I treat them with the same respect that I give by default to all positions that I disagree with, but I don't personally consider any such view to be a live possibility.
Also, suspected former CWRer.
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