Trump banning TikTok is a psyop to ban crypto apps using the least sympathetic defendant to set precedent.
Part of why 'woke' is attractive is that it gives people a script to publicly perform atheism/deism/humanism/et al.
The right is mad that leftists found a way to publicly perform virtue too. x.com/nosilverv/stat…
Atheism in the Dawkins/Sagan/Hawking style is silent, there is a sense in which you're missing out if your opponents get to perform their beliefs in public and you don't.
Woke is one possible implementation of public humanism, but by no means the only one.
I'm worried about how much of this 'postrat considers organized religion' trend is just people realizing their current identity doesn't get expressed bodily, socially, ritually, etc.
And instead of figuring out how to do that they abandon their current beliefs for ones that do.
Childhood is having the privilege to get lost in something fascinating and wonderful for months. Without having to worry about how much time it's taking up, or ripping yourself away from it before you've experienced all the novelty it has to offer.
I miss it.
Be slightly evil. x.com/ByrneHobart/st…
Before all this is over, some conniving bastard will convince people that water is bad for you.
"If it's so good for you, why does it taste so bad?"
👏water 👏is👏a👏chemical👏
@WeftOfSoul @drethelin Washington State
@Meaningness @xsplat @kareem_carr The motte is "Mathematics is dependent on axioms that in principle can be changed or repurposed, it's not like the string '2 + 2 = 4' intrinsically means that".
The bailey is "there is no truth only power uwu".
@Meaningness @xsplat @kareem_carr I suspect that the 'postmodern' epistemology arises out of too much time spent dealing with questions like "Are Jewish people white?" where "there is no truth only power" is exactly the case, because the question isn't about inference on physical properties of the world.
@Meaningness @xsplat @kareem_carr Sure, and naive Kegan 5 relativism avoids major investment in systems out of loss aversion. When EY tells you that Bayes is true on pain of paradox he means that your choices are between greater and lesser absurdity. Not all paradox is equal and some systems have outsized power.
@Meaningness @xsplat @kareem_carr Or rather it is, but it's about mapping maps which change in response to you mapping them and that gets anti-inductive very quickly.
slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/11/the…
@nosilverv @BellaRudd1 The standard consensus afaik is that Socrates suicided by cop to prove a point about Athenian democracy.
@nosilverv @BellaRudd1 I mean, when the jury found him guilty and it came time for sentencing...
In Athens, each side picks a punishment and the jury decides between them.
The prosecution submitted Socrates be put to death, and Socrates proposed he be given free dinner for life -- a hero's reward.
@BellaRudd1 @nosilverv Well what I'm saying here is that Socrates became an hero either way. ;)
I'm obviously not in a position to tell the creators what their film is or isn't, but I think this straightforward mapping is harmful to the general dysphoric energy that helps make the film work. A thread. 1/N x.com/NetflixTudum/s…
"The Matrix is trans" is a reductive take. It's a postmodern film for laypeople, and it's good. A core theme of *any* postmodern work is a sort of fundamental malaise with reality, which can often manifest as dysmorphia. Neo is relatable because his experience is general.
This naturally leads to dysphoria, the 'splinter in your mind' as Morpheus puts it. That can be bodily, but it can also be social or existential. The acute stress and anxiety you feel when you look around at the world isn't pathology, it's your values screaming.
Dysphoria is at its core a discomfort with experience, moment to moment. That fundamental feeling of wrongness is amplified by the disconnect between access to a digital world where you can be anybody contrasted against a physical reality where you're nobody.
Neo is metaphorically transgender, but he's a lot of other stuff too. A literal approach chokes that ambiguity, makes it less interesting. Sets in The Matrix focus on liminal spaces: subway stations, hotel rooms, sidewalks, lobbies. Neo doesn't really belong wherever he goes.
So, with all that in mind I guess I get annoyed when people say "the matrix is a trans movie" like that's The Point, like that is all there is to take away from it. Yes it's a trans movie, but it's also about a more general modern experience that trans participates in.
I'm skeptical about a 'meaning crisis'. I think there's a learned helplessness crisis. Religion is usually about control of things that are spatially and temporally far away from us, and we no longer feel we have any control over forces like the state or climate.
@Aella_Girl At some point everyone has to make a choice: between the forces of evil, and the forces evil.
Wait no I mean
If we're not responsible for saving the world, who is? t.co/rs5lNewaqR
Trauma reactions are often rational responses to irrational scenarios.
@vgr Dude is it just me or has everyone gone crazy? Not because they're screaming and stuff, no no, *because they're not screaming*.
@Meaningness Isn't the entire problem the idea that beliefs are sentences rather than models? (And isn't this what Wittgenstein was trying to point out with his 'picture theory'?)
@Aella_Girl The ragebots just look for reasons to be angry, your brand is fine.
What people resent the most is the gap between their practical understanding and what they can logically verbalize.
Few things sting more than being told you have to believe something you know to be incorrect, even if you can't entirely say why. x.com/PrinceVogel/st…
TV network execs are dope peddlers and our societal support of their greed, excess and psycho-social-grift is one of the basic reasons we're unlikely to see the year 2100.
Chapman style postrat is trauma about systems. Bit once, forever shy so you underinvest in systems thinking. Untraumatized Kegan 5 (MMA perspective) acknowledges the inequality of systems, centering itself on a powerful mode of thinking even if it knows that mode is imperfect. x.com/fistlosopher/s…
A key question in my research agenda is if it's possible for the forces of good to attain this quality. x.com/Nomanslandia/s…
My preliminary investigations point towards "yes". I don't see any reason why rationality/et al can't use a Christianity-esque decentralized evangelism strategy:
liberaugmen.com/#evangelism
One of the many lessons of 2020 is that when the final hour is near people won't git gud and step up, they'll crumple and sink deeper into denial and hedonism.
This implies the main barrier is a mental model of effective action, not incentives or the fear of death.
@nmgrm An important developmental moment was reading Taylor Gatto in early high school, and doing my best to try and get away from school determining what I was allowed to have time to know.
@TheClarksTale @eigenrobot IMO you should be able to condense the buried lede down to a tweet before you insist something is the most important story of the last 4 years.
You're competing with lots of stuff for that title.
@leaacta I'm more or less already there, in terms of expectations.
Finishing up projects, be less risk averse, tell people how much I appreciated my time with them, etc. Letting go is a social, physical process, the big barrier isn't expecting to die but other people expecting I'll live.
When I was in the 1st grade the teacher (literally) wrung my neck because I prioritized helping a kid with a leg brace grab his pencil box over sitting down when ordered to. x.com/deplurabel/sta…
@ChangKelong People have trouble with the idea that they don't get to choose whether they're the hero or the villain. Other people decide that, haters and lovers both provide attention.
The important thing is to give a good performance even when you're the heel.
Trump gets this.
(Boooo!)
Amazing they won't #LetYangSpeakDNC considering he was the least depressing part of the 2020 presidential election.
@selentelechia @AskYatharth @eigenrobot @acidshill Those that can't poke fun, those that can restore that which was destroyed with better typography:
slatestarcodexabridged.com/And-I-Show-You…
What if 'radical leftist' just means 'person who supports the Democrats with a coherent policy platform based on tangible values rather than eclectic special interest lobby mystery meat'? x.com/thesravaka/sta…
@thesravaka I wonder if there's any research on whether voters are primarily voting for specific policy proposals or overall strategies.
The people screaming are the ones untraumatized enough to still want to live.
See, I can tell this one wants to live. x.com/sonyasupposedl…
I consider myself an optimist in the sense that I think our total annihilation and doom isn't 100% certain.
@GlitchesBrew I frankly feel lucky it isn't something like MERS, with its 35% CFR.
@GlitchesBrew "The usual way to avoid being taken by surprise by something is to be consciously aware of it. Back when life was more precarious, people used to be aware of death to a degree that would now seem a bit morbid."
- Paul Graham
Never should have stopped IMO.
Time and money are the units of caring, you can tell roughly how much someone cares about something by how much of those two things are going towards it.
Hint: Most people don't care about most things they talk about.
The idea that you have no impact on anything is absurd when anyone is allowed to participate in the fetid meme sewer we've foolishly plugged our societies managing firmware into. x.com/jd_pressman/st…
Just finished an anthology of some of the best SlateStarCodex posts:
slatestarcodexabridged.com
@VulpesOkamis @PomoPsiOp https://t.co/rzQ49xXtTP
I was just saying that the natural evolution for the Culture Wars is professional wrestling - heroes, heels, and performative fights & stunts that maximize audience engagement. t.co/rhY0gKIr9S
This is part of why Trump does so well, he is a culture wars heel and he is great at playing the villain.
@vgr @kneelingbus Be careful, some people thrive on being trash talked. :)
There is now an EPUB edition of SlateStarCodex Abridged available:
slatestarcodexabridged.com/attach/SlateSt… x.com/jd_pressman/st… https://t.co/cv5RFKu36R
@4xi0m @selentelechia The main website already has printable PDF chapters.
The noise level is definitely off the charts, being heard over the sound and fury is pretty much impossible atm. x.com/thegrugq/statu…
I'll go you one further: This should just be how the lawmaking system works, not an add-on. Laws should be passed with the expectation they will do X, Y, Z (and not A, B, C). If the expectations turn out to be delusional, chuck it. x.com/justinkan/stat…
@PrinceVogel @EpistemicHope I mean, I don't think anyone sane presents Aristotle as a serious authority on epistemology in 20XX.
It was more the part where EY criticizes Aristotle without actually reading Aristotle, which is beyond disrespectful to one of the founders of Western Philosophy.
@CarlZha As far as I know our nuclear warfare capabilities aren't set up to send "a couple missiles". There's basically one set of orders you give that launches everything at pre-chosen targets.
Source: Command and Control by Schlosser
@CoughsOnWombats @PrinceVogel @EpistemicHope I actually don't and can't find it, but I remember it being a point of controversy some years ago.
@prafmathur @vimota Part of the reason for this is fundamental (and pretty constrained) bandwidth limitations in human computer interaction.
The book *Silicon Dreams: Man, Information, Machine* by Lucky explains using information theory. Written 1989 but about people so it's not out of date.
@micsolana Obligatory SSC: slatestarcodexabridged.com/Against-Tulip-…
The death of mythological and legendary figures in your culture is a sign that you've given up on even the hope of becoming a divine being.
The pattern "This great new technology lets us do X, Y, Z; BUT should we?" isn't what a sober discussion of risk/reward looks like. It's a trauma response to past breathless enthusiasm giving way to harsh realities about incentives and second order effects.
@selentelechia outsidertheory.com/control-societ…
The truth is that I don't think human instincts are equipped for what's coming. Your ancestors didn't evolve to deal with takeoff runaway hivemind superintellects.
slatestarcodexabridged.com/Meditations-On…
@ntaverna Any thriving subculture will eventually develop an outsider faction that compensates for its lack of status by carefully inverting the sacred values while maintaining the flesh of the original. This voodoo zombie can become more popular than what it initially orbits.
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