Oceans Yet to Burn
Month
Instead of catcalling people, let’s catcall ducks.
Oy, Anon-kun, this isn’t a Boyhair Collection Blog.
I know what you’re thinking - isn’t someone who parades around in some future-past military uniform the type to do anything for money? - but I’ll keep my cloning vats for my own purposes, thank you very much!
we walked through berkeley, south of campus, today. there was some kind of major sports event and everything was covered in crowds of, predominantly, young people in dark blue and gold, walking around and enjoying themselves. these people were very, very gendered—clothing, affect were not just loosely bimodal, they were *partitioned*.
we felt oppressed by these people: looking at them hijacked visual information processing because they’d so neatly split themselves into exactly two types of people. this felt like a violation, like they were forcing me to pay attention to their weirdo kink in order to understand my environment. it also made me dysphoric about those items of clothing i wore which could be worn by at least one of (exactly one of) College Sports Fan (M) and College Sports Fan (F), since they were observing me and being forced into their frame, even in the mind of another where it did not affect me, would be horrifying. they exerted pressure on the social field and forced it to reshape itself to fit them through sheer strength in numbers, so that i felt it pressing on me just by being around themif it was a sports event there should have been four types of people
Couldn’t someone feel oppressed by the opposite as well?
Refer to England as “a mysterious and warlike nation off the coast of western Asia”
The bloodthirsty English hordes once conquered and subjugated a vast empire.
where is the lie tho
Does this mean I’m not a Liberal? After all, I have stopped identifying as one.
I guess I’ll have to think about that.
In other words, the core of the problem is that women would choose the “wrong” people to marry, so they should be forcibly restricted in who they can marry for the good of society.
That is fucked up.
Given that we already live in a monogamous society, and 1) the Middle East is significantly more fucked up than our society, and 2) the proponents for polygamy will not make the necessary ideological trades in order to avoid the outcome of becoming more fucked up like the Middle East?
It doesn’t bother me.
Because the argument is generally based on “rights” and “freedoms,” the option “only let men marry stacks of women in proportion to the rate that women marry stacks of men" is not really on the table.
Oh, and, if I were in charge of the country, I would tax junk food. For your “how anti-freedom is Mitigated Chaos” calibration purposes. Additionally, I would ban new cousin marriage out to the second or third degree.
Edit: Oh, and I suppose you don’t support racial anti-discrimination laws, do you?
Maybe the real gender is hormones we got along the way
I think that is simultaneously the hardest and yet the most subtle insult I have ever seen.
What was that one post on Argumate’s blog?
I’ve never been catcalled and it kind of bothers me. Like: why not? Am I just not dressing in the right way? Am I not going to the right places? What do I need to do to have this experience? I already walk home from school every day!
God but I kind of want to be catcalled, if I’m going to be mistaken for a woman at least I want to be a /desirable/ woman.
[insert standard disclaimer about catcalling not being fun]
Might I propose that cat-calling frequency varies a lot by location and local population/culture?
I will admit, when I realized that each generation must raise the next, and I mean really realized it, not just in passing, I became more right-wing.
@silver-and-ivory why did you
If some subset of society just does whatever they want, as long as it’s not too big, then it doesn’t risk imploding society.
However, for society to continue and be good to live in,
- Each generation must have and raise children
- These children must be raised to be of at least average virtue
Thus, the family is, in fact, one of the primary core units of society, and of great importance. How people live, in the aggregate, matters a lot. The education and raising of children matter a lot. There is a maximum number ratio of wine-drenched spinsters and perpetual bachelors, beyond which, long-term, any nation will crumble.
How people live determines the wealth of society, the general pleasantness of society, and so on.
The nice thing is that no matter what, the next generation will (on average) be of average virtue! (Although disappointingly, some percentage of them will stubbornly remain below average.)
I think there are some places in our country where the process has been sufficiently fucked up that we’re looking at below-average.
I will admit, when I realized that each generation must raise the next, and I mean really realized it, not just in passing, I became more right-wing.
@silver-and-ivory why did you
If some subset of society just does whatever they want, as long as it’s not too big, then it doesn’t risk imploding society.
However, for society to continue and be good to live in,
- Each generation must have and raise children
- These children must be raised to be of at least average virtue
Thus, the family is, in fact, one of the primary core units of society, and of great importance. How people live, in the aggregate, matters a lot. The education and raising of children matter a lot. There is a maximum number ratio of wine-drenched spinsters and perpetual bachelors, beyond which, long-term, any nation will crumble.
How people live determines the wealth of society, the general pleasantness of society, and so on.
The traditional family is likely not the only way children can be raised in a fashion that doesn’t lead to everyone’s doom. It seems like if one worries about the risk of the changing family model imploding society, one should worry about various other similar risks brought by changing lifestyles. Have you similarly become more anti-technology?
No, on the grounds that increasing technological efficiency is a vital necessity to avoid resource exhaustion collapsing society. If we operate with 50′s or 90′s or 2010′s tech indefinitely, we will run out of metals, oil, etc.
If we had far more resources and double the lifespan, I’d say to take each technological change about half as quickly as we do, but we don’t. Instead, we’re in a race against catastrophe.
Edit: I mean yeah, I’m worried about the effects of all this screen-time on toddlers, and I believe that giving smartphones to anyone under about 14 should be socially discouraged, but many of the reasons I want other policies are also reasons I want tech.
I will admit, when I realized that each generation must raise the next, and I mean really realized it, not just in passing, I became more right-wing.
@silver-and-ivory why did you
If some subset of society just does whatever they want, as long as it’s not too big, then it doesn’t risk imploding society.
However, for society to continue and be good to live in,
- Each generation must have and raise children
- These children must be raised to be of at least average virtue
Thus, the family is, in fact, one of the primary core units of society, and of great importance. How people live, in the aggregate, matters a lot. The education and raising of children matter a lot. There is a maximum number ratio of wine-drenched spinsters and perpetual bachelors, beyond which, long-term, any nation will crumble.
How people live determines the wealth of society, the general pleasantness of society, and so on.
I feel like this is wrong but I have no idea why I feel like that, so have a reblog.
False equivalence. The right doesn’t raise their children to be more virtuous than the left. They have different vices and virtues.
Sure, in some ways. Some patterns work even when done by people who don’t believe in having others follow them.
Also, there is more than one way to be right-wing.
What’s right and left can vary, too. Polygmy is bad for children. However, while in the middle east, polygamy would be Trad, in the United States, it would be the Idpol Left that would legalize it, in the name of “religious tolerance” and a bunch of other things.
And thus, within the context of America, my opposition to it is “right-wing”.
Without getting into a long argument about which left wing virtues are actually virtues, could we agree that the right wing virtues are often those which contribute most directly to intergenerational transmission?
(“Right wing” covers a lot of different groups so to be clear I’m taking about social traditionalists mostly.)
It’s the right, not the left, which treats childbearing itself as a virtue. The right has economic productivity as a virtue. These are two things we need in order to keep having the kind of society we currently have, and ideologies which argue against them are arguing for their own extinction.
Memetic virulence is not moral correctness
“It’s the right, not the left, which treats [the divine right of kings] as a virtue. The right has [mercantilism] as a virtue. These are two things we need to keep having the kind of society we currently have, and ideologies which argue against them are arguing for their own extinction.”
~ conservatives in 1650, probably
Why the hell is humanity so important compared to other species, anyway? I’m pretty sure that dolphins could do a better job than we did with civilization once they develop writing and speech and whatnot.
I honestly don’t care if humanity dies out at this point. At the current time we are responsible for the next generation, but basically we have a 99% chance of fucking the next generation up because of our own failings and the failings of the generations who have come before us. People basically have kids for selfish reasons or because they have basically given up on their own lives and that’s about it.
Signed, a perpetual bachelor whose parents really, really shouldn’t have had kids
Dolphins aren’t going to do anything of the sort. The evolutionary gap is too large, and if they managed to cross it (including migrating back to land), they wouldn’t be dolphins anymore.
Chimps are the better candidate to actually happen, and chimps are fkin’ brutal.
I’m not saying that you, in particular, need to have kids, though.
I can maybe see the case for “create close-knit communities that meet together once a week to listen to some guy preach about not doing obviously stupid things,”
@wirehead-wannabe, makin’ the rationale for Rationalism-Adjacent Church
I will admit, when I realized that each generation must raise the next, and I mean really realized it, not just in passing, I became more right-wing.
@silver-and-ivory why did you
If some subset of society just does whatever they want, as long as it’s not too big, then it doesn’t risk imploding society.
However, for society to continue and be good to live in,
- Each generation must have and raise children
- These children must be raised to be of at least average virtue
Thus, the family is, in fact, one of the primary core units of society, and of great importance. How people live, in the aggregate, matters a lot. The education and raising of children matter a lot. There is a maximum number ratio of wine-drenched spinsters and perpetual bachelors, beyond which, long-term, any nation will crumble.
How people live determines the wealth of society, the general pleasantness of society, and so on.
I feel like this is wrong but I have no idea why I feel like that, so have a reblog.
False equivalence. The right doesn’t raise their children to be more virtuous than the left. They have different vices and virtues.
Sure, in some ways. Some patterns work even when done by people who don’t believe in having others follow them.
Also, there is more than one way to be right-wing.
What’s right and left can vary, too. Polygmy is bad for children. However, while in the middle east, polygamy would be Trad, in the United States, it would be the Idpol Left that would legalize it, in the name of “religious tolerance” and a bunch of other things.
And thus, within the context of America, my opposition to it is “right-wing”.
“Hell, we can’t even get the working class to agree Healthcare is a right and not a privilege.”
Found in the wild. Here, again, the language of “rights” obscures, rather than reveals. After all, if it’s a “right” then that tends to be fairly absolute and imply unlimited healthcare spending, unless deliberately qualified. It also implies that it would have been “a right” even back before healthcare in any modern sense even existed.
So this is part of why I think they’ll fuck it up.
“Healthcare is not a right. You don’t have the right to force a human being to provide you their service with a gun to their head.”
Follows in response, which is similarly clueless for other reasons.
Honestly if the Indian government buying the bullet train off of the Japanese in the hopes it repeats its zero-accident track record in Delhi isn’t the most ingenious experiment in human biodiversity theory, please find me a better one.
Wait until Dinesh decides the bolts don’t really need to be screwed on as tight as Takashi told him and we’ll see if they match that record.
Bro, m8, buddy, pal,
We don’t have a non-corrupt India with which to separate out biological factors, including environmental ones (such as poor nutrition), so “does India fuck up the bullet train” does not work as an experiment for your hypothesis.
how about next time we let the elves be Jewish and the dwarves can be, I don’t know, Jamaican.
Dwarves => Japanese, all clan honor and axes folded in 1 million layers.
That would be implying that Asians are short. There is no stereotype that Jamaicans are short, just the stereotype that they’re all bobsledders.
There were some errors in my last post! I was unaware of some facts. However, reality is actually even more in my favour than I realised.
I said you could purchase a headphone adapter for $9, but I have since been informed that the iPhone 7 comes with one for free. So if you buy the phone you get a new pair of headphones with a lightning connector, and you get an adapter so that you can use your old headphones too. Win-win!
Yes, if you lose the headphones or the adapter you must purchase new ones. This is how physical objects work in the universe in which we live. I too resent Apple for not having cloning facilities that can replicate matter at zero cost and usher in fully automatic luxury communism, that would indeed be swell.
But you worry that $9 to replace it is “not particularly cheap”! The phone itself costs over $1000 you fucking walnut, so if you have a habit of losing small electronic items you might want to reconsider purchasing one in the first place.
When I said that anyone can make Bluetooth headphones I didn’t mean that you are capable of doing this. But Bluetooth is an open standard and you can buy compatible headphones from wherever you like. Personally not a fan of the wireless, but standards are good.
(The lightning connector being proprietary is bad, and is a genuine knock against Apple, one that I have pointed out in numerous posts, and something actually worth complaining about if you are someone who dislikes capitalism).
But let’s zoom out a little. By myopically focusing on a few trivial inconveniences you are missing the opportunity cost of not making the change, and the future potential for innovation that it unlocks. This attitude will not age well, and the fuss over the headphone jack will seem laughable in the future.
More generally, why so much outrage? No one is obliged to purchase an iPhone and suffer the terrible consequences of having to use wireless headphones or need an adapter for the aux cord. This is an entirely voluntary choice, and as has been pointed out Apple has around 15% market share.
If anything this could be seen as an indirect tax on the wealthy, charging them more for overpriced phones and giving them reduced functionality, while the poor enjoy the benefits of cheap convenient Android devices. How could a leftist possibly oppose soaking the rich?
From a design point of view it is entirely consistent with Apple’s ethos going back to the very founding of the company, so it should not be surprising at all, just Apple being Apple as they have every right to be. One button mice, amirite.
There are ways of reacting to this product announcement that make sense:
“I personally require a 3.5mm headphone jack on my phone, so I will not be purchasing an iPhone 7 for this reason.”
“I would prefer to have a headphone jack but the benefits of owning an iPhone outweigh the disadvantage, so I will simply register my disappointment.”
“Haha by removing the headphone jack Apple has made a foolish decision and will lose ground to their competitors.”
Any of these is a perfectly reasonable reaction! But the sense of aggrieved outrage on behalf of imagined iPhone owners compelled by the Man to upgrade to an expensive new model and then suffering the travails of needing to use an adapter to plug in old audio equipment is just baffling.
Has anyone told you what they’ve done to the home button, btw? You’re going to hate it.
“hey brah, u kno that standard that’s compatible with almost literally every headphone on Earth, as well as indirectly with a variety of hobby, semi-pro, and pro audio equipment?”
“yeah bro?”
“let’s break it in order to sell shtty AirPods that are actively inferior to both wired and wireless headphones, are expensive, get lost easily, and require their own charger lol”
“but brah what r we goin to tell the customers”
“that it takes courage to practice innovation lololol”
Argumate, buddy, pal, the reason they’re pissed off is that 1) the rest of the industry might follow Apple in destroying a valuable, highly-interoperable, non-DRMed standard, and 2) the arguments being made basically everywhere in favor of doing so are transparently bullsht, and as such, insulting. The phone isn’t even too slim for a headphone jack, some lunatic managed to add a functioning one after spending like $1,600 on equipment, and competitors make water-resistant phones with headphone jacks.
As the iPhone is a status object, the way to prevent losing important functionality on other phones and losing the ability to know headphones will be compatible with things without having to think about it, the correct thing to do is lower its, and Apple’s, status by attacking them over this bullsht “lolcourage” decision.
The backlash is therefore quite rational.
Edit: Oh, and keeping track of one small electronic item larger than a dongle is, in fact, much easier than keeping track of two, which is part of *why* smartphones are so popular in the first place.
I mean,
Feelz are important and a key part of our existence as human beings…
It’s just that they exist within the context of the economy, the state, geopolitics, aging, random disease, and so on.
And as such, by pragmatic concerns, there are limits for societies and not just individuals.
@poipoipoi-2016
In response to that last, I’ve heard enough stories about my paternal grandparents to really want divorce to be a thing that happens more often, but at the same time, I heard enough stories about Grandma and her six husbands to be deeply suspect of divorce.
I realized that something related showed up in my life. There was a guy I knew online. Black guy living in a city. His step dad had him working at his small business, and it interfered with his ability to complete school. Then he was of age, and the step dad tried to kick him out, but he didn’t have a job, so he was sneaking into the house to avoid ending up homeless. His resume was terrible, just a few cobbled-together, unformatted paragraphs. I would say “shouldn’t they teach resume writing in school?” but even if they did, the terrible step dad might have had him working or something so that he wasn’t able to attend or complete that! But he was a decent guy, and had a good work ethic, so I went through carefully building a resume with him, and he got a job soon enough after and was able to move out. It’s no wonder he had been depressed earlier! And, like, in between then, we got advice from my ex-girlfriend’s partner, who has lived the low-class life, on how to try to keep him out of the street at night until he could move out.
But how many guys like him are out there, even in this country, you know? Who don’t have a hand-me-down laptop and a connection to a bunch of random nerds who know how to write a resume for him so he can get a stable income?
So I can’t really be a true GOPper, but also the risk with the step parents stuff is real.
@neoliberalismnightly
still though, aren’t libraries a thing?
- Is the library going to let him stay overnight?
- Is the library going to tell him what he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know?
- Is the library going to think to ask him to look at his resume to try and find out why he’s having so much trouble getting a job?
- Is the library going to carefully go over his first draft at a new resume according to an intuition on writing these things by someone who can speak a bit of corporatese?
- How fast can the library improve his professional (not casual, which in this case was fine due to his communicating on the internet a lot before) writing skills? Is it fast enough?
- Is the library going to help him filter the information he does receive in case some of it is junk?
Having libraries is good in part for these reasons, but it isn’t really enough.
Does the US have anything equivalent to the Citizen’s Advice Bureau? They can probably help with 2, 3, maybe 4, maybe 5, and 6, and they’re in at least some of the libraries here.
I’ve literally never heard of such a thing. It might be a suitable use of government funds. After all, markets don’t function correctly without information, right?
I’ve never seen anyone fumble typing “We need to create a gay clone ethnostate of Kim Jong Un to ensure the physically perfect instantiation of Juche Ideology” this badly before, and really it’s kind of startling.
Rationalist Tumblr. Don’t let the name fool you - it’s less “YES, WE ARE MORE RATIONAL THAN YOU”, and more a term for a community of people originally congregated at the site Less Wrong, then SlateStarCodex, and then kind of spread out, and the group of people who argue with those people.
@poipoipoi-2016
In response to that last, I’ve heard enough stories about my paternal grandparents to really want divorce to be a thing that happens more often, but at the same time, I heard enough stories about Grandma and her six husbands to be deeply suspect of divorce.
I realized that something related showed up in my life. There was a guy I knew online. Black guy living in a city. His step dad had him working at his small business, and it interfered with his ability to complete school. Then he was of age, and the step dad tried to kick him out, but he didn’t have a job, so he was sneaking into the house to avoid ending up homeless. His resume was terrible, just a few cobbled-together, unformatted paragraphs. I would say “shouldn’t they teach resume writing in school?” but even if they did, the terrible step dad might have had him working or something so that he wasn’t able to attend or complete that! But he was a decent guy, and had a good work ethic, so I went through carefully building a resume with him, and he got a job soon enough after and was able to move out. It’s no wonder he had been depressed earlier! And, like, in between then, we got advice from my ex-girlfriend’s partner, who has lived the low-class life, on how to try to keep him out of the street at night until he could move out.
But how many guys like him are out there, even in this country, you know? Who don’t have a hand-me-down laptop and a connection to a bunch of random nerds who know how to write a resume for him so he can get a stable income?
So I can’t really be a true GOPper, but also the risk with the step parents stuff is real.
@neoliberalismnightly
still though, aren’t libraries a thing?
- Is the library going to let him stay overnight?
- Is the library going to tell him what he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know?
- Is the library going to think to ask him to look at his resume to try and find out why he’s having so much trouble getting a job?
- Is the library going to carefully go over his first draft at a new resume according to an intuition on writing these things by someone who can speak a bit of corporatese?
- How fast can the library improve his professional (not casual, which in this case was fine due to his communicating on the internet a lot before) writing skills? Is it fast enough?
- Is the library going to help him filter the information he does receive in case some of it is junk?
Having libraries is good in part for these reasons, but it isn’t really enough.
I just don’t really know besides having school teach resume building, personal finance and household ed like they do in Asia.
I don’t really think those are partisan issues, and I expect on balance social conservatism actually help with this regard because of church provides outside mentors.
I just don’t really know besides having school teach resume building, personal finance and household ed like they do in Asia.
I do think schools teaching that would be good. It might not have helped in this case, but fewer people falling through the net is good.
Also, it isn’t like this blog is against “let’s do this one thing they do in Asia,” heh.
I don’t really think those are partisan issues, and I expect on balance social conservatism actually help with this regard because of church provides outside mentors.
See, there’s a reason I’m not all hyped about getting rid of the churches. I mean, multiple reasons really, but you get the idea.
Maybe the answer here is in a kind of community action, of organizations to mentor people at this stuff… but I suspect that’s also going to trend a bit communitarian.
Rattumblr… Actually Not Really That Stunned, to Be Honest
Rattumblr… Actually Not Really That Stunned, to Be Honest
I mean,
Feelz are important and a key part of our existence as human beings…
It’s just that they exist within the context of the economy, the state, geopolitics, aging, random disease, and so on.
And as such, by pragmatic concerns, there are limits for societies and not just individuals.
“cheating on marriage with a prostitute is OK” is Bad News. You’re looking at hyperpatriarchy there - the mortal consequences of it might be more… “contained” than either the anarchy we have today or the polygamy you attack, but it’s still very much not *good* even if you think mankind can permit adultery ever which it can’t.
Well, that’s Futurist Shitposting instincts - i.e., I proposed that combination because I find it hilarious, and also culture-shocking and weird relative to today, but feasible for a regime which is socially conservative in pragmatic synthesis ways, yet having retained a touch of the social liberalism of our time.
On the other hand, there are arguments to be made for it.
…which you’re already aware of, judging by what you just wrote there.
The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao, but for any finite period of time with duration d there is a tellable tao T with duration dT ≥ d.
What is your reasoning for the dislike of serial monogamy and extramarital sex? If your concerns are primarily focused on the continuation of nations/states through good childraising, I would expect an exception for extramarital sex that occurs without damaging the ability of a family to raise healthy productive kids. Privacy of one’s own bedroom and all that?
Something like that, which is why I haven’t heavily pushed policy along these lines, as I haven’t as heavily considered it and I’m hesitant to bring the iron hand of the state down and accidentally break something.
Some sort of new policy paradigm would be more appropriate, but I haven’t developed one in this case.
@poipoipoi-2016
In response to that last, I’ve heard enough stories about my paternal grandparents to really want divorce to be a thing that happens more often, but at the same time, I heard enough stories about Grandma and her six husbands to be deeply suspect of divorce.
I realized that something related showed up in my life. There was a guy I knew online. Black guy living in a city. His step dad had him working at his small business, and it interfered with his ability to complete school. Then he was of age, and the step dad tried to kick him out, but he didn’t have a job, so he was sneaking into the house to avoid ending up homeless. His resume was terrible, just a few cobbled-together, unformatted paragraphs. I would say “shouldn’t they teach resume writing in school?” but even if they did, the terrible step dad might have had him working or something so that he wasn’t able to attend or complete that! But he was a decent guy, and had a good work ethic, so I went through carefully building a resume with him, and he got a job soon enough after and was able to move out. It’s no wonder he had been depressed earlier! And, like, in between then, we got advice from my ex-girlfriend’s partner, who has lived the low-class life, on how to try to keep him out of the street at night until he could move out.
But how many guys like him are out there, even in this country, you know? Who don’t have a hand-me-down laptop and a connection to a bunch of random nerds who know how to write a resume for him so he can get a stable income?
So I can’t really be a true GOPper, but also the risk with the step parents stuff is real.
@neoliberalismnightly
still though, aren’t libraries a thing?
Having libraries is good in part for these reasons, but it isn’t really enough.
@poipoipoi-2016
In response to that last, I’ve heard enough stories about my paternal grandparents to really want divorce to be a thing that happens more often, but at the same time, I heard enough stories about Grandma and her six husbands to be deeply suspect of divorce.
I realized that something related showed up in my life. There was a guy I knew online. Black guy living in a city. His step dad had him working at his small business, and it interfered with his ability to complete school. Then he was of age, and the step dad tried to kick him out, but he didn’t have a job, so he was sneaking into the house to avoid ending up homeless. His resume was terrible, just a few cobbled-together, unformatted paragraphs. I would say “shouldn’t they teach resume writing in school?” but even if they did, the terrible step dad might have had him working or something so that he wasn’t able to attend or complete that! But he was a decent guy, and had a good work ethic, so I went through carefully building a resume with him, and he got a job soon enough after and was able to move out. It’s no wonder he had been depressed earlier! And, like, in between then, we got advice from my ex-girlfriend’s partner, who has lived the low-class life, on how to try to keep him out of the street at night until he could move out.
But how many guys like him are out there, even in this country, you know? Who don’t have a hand-me-down laptop and a connection to a bunch of random nerds who know how to write a resume for him so he can get a stable income?
So I can’t really be a true GOPper, but also the risk with the step parents stuff is real.
“Race” is not a biological concept. Someone who looks different from you has the same human genes, just a different grab-bag of dominant traits.
vs.
It is exclusively non-African races, such as white people, who still carry hybrid human/Neanderthal genes.
in the same post.
NEW IDEOLOGY UNLOCKED: NEONEANDETHAL WHITE REVIVALISM + ASIA™
As almost all land was once occupied by the neaderthals, only their closest descendants, such as the White Man, hold the ancestral rights to Earth.
As long as I’m picking fights:
“Actually, attacking LGBTs is one of the single dumbest things SoCons have done, because LGBTs do not actually undermine the nation just by being LGBT. In fact, gay marriage is good because stable family units are good, and we can incentivize the creation of stable queer families with similar methods to straight families.
“(Polygamy, as practiced by people that aren’t autistic-spectrum rationalists, is still bad though.) …
“It isn’t enough that I not marry my cousins and engage in polygamy. For my home to not be terrible, I must stop others from doing so as well. And if they want to make a place where those are the norms, then let them, and not me, suffer the consequences of that. I don’t need dumb social policies banned everywhere, only in the places I live in/am responsible for.”
I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.
I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.
Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.
To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.
I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.
Are we immortal yet? No? Then it matters. A lot. Because each generation needs to create and raise the next generation.
The last time I checked, broken families are not good for people, statistically.
You can choose to be single or unattached until you die. It just doesn’t work as a way to structure mortal human societies, unless you are willing to do things that are, hmn… drastic.
I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.
Polygamy is bad along multiple axes.
Polyamory, it hasn’t been proven.
Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.
1. Polygamy is, generally, really polygyny, and married polygyny is bad for women, it’s bad for children, and it’s bad for men.
2. No one actually has to be trying to be an asshole, so long as most people are straight and men marry multiple wives more than women marry multiple husbands.
3. Not everyone is bisexual.
Alright? So what are we supposed to do with all the “extra” men?
To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.
This isn’t about whether individual polyamorous people are mean. It’s about the overall effect on society when polygamy is widely practiced, and “the overall effects on society when polygamy is widely practiced” are backwards anti-feminist-as-in-gender-equality societies when it’s a subset (even in developed countries), or the Middle East when it’s most of society.
When weird autistic (lovable!) internet nerds do it, it stays below the threshold necessary to fuck everything up, unless they’re foolish enough to start normalizing it and spreading it among normal people.
And that doesn’t seem at all cold-blooded to you?
When you get right down to it, I kind of suck at this “Utilitarianism” thing that I’ve built my life around. I stumbled ass-backwards into it because I don’t believe in human sacrifice, and “all human happiness has equal value” was the only way I could think of to avoid “some human happiness is worthless and can be freely discarded for the benefit of others.” I could try to build a rational argument for why some people being polyamorous doesn’t automatically lead to a massive spread of male-dominated polygamy that breaks society. But the reality is that after it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from gay couples so they’ll be raised properly, and it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from Native Americans so they’ll be raised properly, I’m inherently skeptical that children raised by folks who’re polyamorous will all turn out broken.
Also, someone tell @pervocracy he’s a “weird autistic lovable internet nerd.” You’re speaking about people like they’re overgrown children who aren’t capable of making their own decisions.
And that doesn’t seem at all cold-blooded to you?
I recently made a post about how the tyranny of resource scarcity significantly limits our ability to provide medical care, so in fact, I can be cold-blooded.
I can even be cold-blooded and petty - I agree with Singapore’s decision to ban chewing gum because vandals were using it to disrupt the transit system.
When you get right down to it, I kind of suck at this “Utilitarianism” thing that I’ve built my life around.
You don’t need Utilitarianism to object to this: what have the “extra” “surplus” men done to deserve their situation?
But the reality is that after it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from gay couples so they’ll be raised properly, and it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from Native Americans so they’ll be raised properly, I’m inherently skeptical that children raised by folks who’re polyamorous will all turn out broken.
Ah, yes, we had all of those gay countries to compare to as an example. So many of them. And someone like me, who routinely suggests forming city-states to run political experiments, would never have suggested actually testing it on a smaller scale, which would have established just how (relatively) harmless it really was…
Look, we know what polygamy looks like in our countries (cruddy polygynous cults/backwards communities with “extra” “surplus” men). We know what polygamy looks like when it’s the norm in a country (the Middle East). We know single parenthood isn’t great, either.
Hypergamy isn’t perfectly established, but it’s probably true enough to matter. And once a social change has taken place, it’s difficult to put it back without great cruelty.
Also, polygamy is more dangerous than polyamory, but I don’t recommend polyamory to anyone. You’ve got increased risk for STIs (much broader network of sexual contact), you’ve got the risk that they’ll fall in love with someone else and leave you, but without the increased transaction cost/friction of monoamory, you’re not their number one priority and if it comes down to a choice between you and someone else, they may pick someone else, you might just not even be poly, you could end up a single parent begging for money in online groups (okay okay, I wasn’t close to that particular drama, but it happens), etc.
(”But those are all risks in monogamy, too!” Sure, but not ones that are part of the very structure of it.)
It’s not some kind of virtuous, enlightened thing we should all aspire to. It’s just a preference that some people have. It’s not even an orientation.
Also, someone tell @pervocracy he’s a “weird autistic lovable internet nerd.” You’re speaking about people like they’re overgrown children who aren’t capable of making their own decisions.
Oh, you think that’s what I meant by it?
And not the more obvious “actually, because neurodivergents are different from neurotypicals, the outcome of neurodivergents doing something may be different than neurotypicals doing the same thing, particularly if there are fewer of them”?
Is serial monogamy a substantial improvement over polygamy?
As practiced in the US especially, the majority of people who get married/start a family do not remain together. Many of these relationships end after just a few years if I recall correctly. Divorce and new step parents can cause a lot of harm to children. I have had friends who have been neglected or abused by step parents or parents due to new monogamous relationships.
I would also love to hear thoughts on the impact of extramonogamous relationships. My understanding is that a large percentage of people in monogamous relationships in the US have had an affair. Do you think that monogamy or stable families are more important?
As practiced in the US especially,
I don’t like serial monogamy, but I’m concerned that making it too hard to divorce might cause abuse levels (among adults) to increase, or just make things miserable for people.
(And yes, from what I understand, non-blood relatives are a major source of child abuse.)
My understanding is that a large percentage of people in monogamous relationships in the US have had an affair.
That’s a tough one. My emotional instinct is to ban having sexual affairs, but that probably isn’t the right call. Some people manage to work it out, and the ability to turn in your marriage partner for violation could lead to leverage for abuse.
My futurist shitposting instinct is to ban sex outside of their marriage for married people, except with a prostitute, then legalize some form of prostitution. But I haven’t actually thought that one through.
Probably, resolving these issues will look weirder than what I have in mind right now. I haven’t put tons of thought into this particular area of policy, other than that I don’t want to replicate the policies of known troubled communities.
I will admit, when I realized that each generation must raise the next, and I mean really realized it, not just in passing, I became more right-wing.
@silver-and-ivory why did you
If some subset of society just does whatever they want, as long as it’s not too big, then it doesn’t risk imploding society.
However, for society to continue and be good to live in,
Thus, the family is, in fact, one of the primary core units of society, and of great importance. How people live, in the aggregate, matters a lot. The education and raising of children matter a lot. There is a maximum number ratio of wine-drenched spinsters and perpetual bachelors, beyond which, long-term, any nation will crumble.
How people live determines the wealth of society, the general pleasantness of society, and so on.
As long as I’m picking fights:
“Actually, attacking LGBTs is one of the single dumbest things SoCons have done, because LGBTs do not actually undermine the nation just by being LGBT. In fact, gay marriage is good because stable family units are good, and we can incentivize the creation of stable queer families with similar methods to straight families.
“(Polygamy, as practiced by people that aren’t autistic-spectrum rationalists, is still bad though.) …
“It isn’t enough that I not marry my cousins and engage in polygamy. For my home to not be terrible, I must stop others from doing so as well. And if they want to make a place where those are the norms, then let them, and not me, suffer the consequences of that. I don’t need dumb social policies banned everywhere, only in the places I live in/am responsible for.”
I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.
I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.
Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.
To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.
I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.
Are we immortal yet? No? Then it matters. A lot. Because each generation needs to create and raise the next generation.
The last time I checked, broken families are not good for people, statistically.
You can choose to be single or unattached until you die. It just doesn’t work as a way to structure mortal human societies, unless you are willing to do things that are, hmn… drastic.
I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.
Polygamy is bad along multiple axes.
Polyamory, it hasn’t been proven.
Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.
1. Polygamy is, generally, really polygyny, and married polygyny is bad for women, it’s bad for children, and it’s bad for men.
2. No one actually has to be trying to be an asshole, so long as most people are straight and men marry multiple wives more than women marry multiple husbands.
3. Not everyone is bisexual.
Alright? So what are we supposed to do with all the “extra” men?
To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.
This isn’t about whether individual polyamorous people are mean. It’s about the overall effect on society when polygamy is widely practiced, and “the overall effects on society when polygamy is widely practiced” are backwards anti-feminist-as-in-gender-equality societies when it’s a subset (even in developed countries), or the Middle East when it’s most of society.
When weird autistic (lovable!) internet nerds do it, it stays below the threshold necessary to fuck everything up, unless they’re foolish enough to start normalizing it and spreading it among normal people.
And that doesn’t seem at all cold-blooded to you?
When you get right down to it, I kind of suck at this “Utilitarianism” thing that I’ve built my life around. I stumbled ass-backwards into it because I don’t believe in human sacrifice, and “all human happiness has equal value” was the only way I could think of to avoid “some human happiness is worthless and can be freely discarded for the benefit of others.” I could try to build a rational argument for why some people being polyamorous doesn’t automatically lead to a massive spread of male-dominated polygamy that breaks society. But the reality is that after it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from gay couples so they’ll be raised properly, and it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from Native Americans so they’ll be raised properly, I’m inherently skeptical that children raised by folks who’re polyamorous will all turn out broken.
Also, someone tell @pervocracy he’s a “weird autistic lovable internet nerd.” You’re speaking about people like they’re overgrown children who aren’t capable of making their own decisions.
And that doesn’t seem at all cold-blooded to you?
I recently made a post about how the tyranny of resource scarcity significantly limits our ability to provide medical care, so in fact, I can be cold-blooded.
I can even be cold-blooded and petty - I agree with Singapore’s decision to ban chewing gum because vandals were using it to disrupt the transit system.
When you get right down to it, I kind of suck at this “Utilitarianism” thing that I’ve built my life around.
You don’t need Utilitarianism to object to this: what have the “extra” “surplus” men done to deserve their situation?
But the reality is that after it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from gay couples so they’ll be raised properly, and it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from Native Americans so they’ll be raised properly, I’m inherently skeptical that children raised by folks who’re polyamorous will all turn out broken.
Ah, yes, we had all of those gay countries to compare to as an example. So many of them. And someone like me, who routinely suggests forming city-states to run political experiments, would never have suggested actually testing it on a smaller scale, which would have established just how (relatively) harmless it really was…
Look, we know what polygamy looks like in our countries (cruddy polygynous cults/backwards communities with “extra” “surplus” men). We know what polygamy looks like when it’s the norm in a country (the Middle East). We know single parenthood isn’t great, either.
Hypergamy isn’t perfectly established, but it’s probably true enough to matter. And once a social change has taken place, it’s difficult to put it back without great cruelty.
Also, polygamy is more dangerous than polyamory, but I don’t recommend polyamory to anyone. You’ve got increased risk for STIs (much broader network of sexual contact), you’ve got the risk that they’ll fall in love with someone else and leave you, but without the increased transaction cost/friction of monoamory, you’re not their number one priority and if it comes down to a choice between you and someone else, they may pick someone else, you might just not even be poly, you could end up a single parent begging for money in online groups (okay okay, I wasn’t close to that particular drama, but it happens), etc.
(”But those are all risks in monogamy, too!” Sure, but not ones that are part of the very structure of it.)
It’s not some kind of virtuous, enlightened thing we should all aspire to. It’s just a preference that some people have. It’s not even an orientation.
Also, someone tell @pervocracy he’s a “weird autistic lovable internet nerd.” You’re speaking about people like they’re overgrown children who aren’t capable of making their own decisions.
Oh, you think that’s what I meant by it?
And not the more obvious “actually, because neurodivergents are different from neurotypicals, the outcome of neurodivergents doing something may be different than neurotypicals doing the same thing, particularly if there are fewer of them”?
I will admit, when I realized that each generation must raise the next, and I mean really realized it, not just in passing, I became more right-wing.
Well, see, here’s the thing. White people (broadly) have been largely not-marrying-their-cousins for a while now, and they live in societies in which cousin marriage is fairly taboo. So when white people marry their cousin, it typically is a one generation thing, preventing a whole bunch of snowballing consequences.
I’m sure it seems otherwise on this blog, but I actually don’t have a strong disgust reaction towards cousin marriage. And if we continued to see rates around 1%, I wouldn’t really care.
But some populations have cousin-married at much higher rates, for much longer times. So one generation of cousin marriage for them isn’t the same as one generation of cousin marriage for other people.
It isn’t “too late.” Humans are resilient. We just have to have them stop doing it now.
Since we don’t have the full lineages of everyone, and I don’t want to go by other categories, I’d rather just throw the (very tiny) baby out with the bathwater and ban it for everyone.
Also, a big chunk of the tight family control aspect is cultural transmission. So now I’ll have to actually make that post about cultural transmission (generally) at some point, seeing as some things like FGM are cultural so cultural transmission isn’t all nice things like ethnic foods.
I’ll put the people happy about the PewDiePie copyright strike on blast: This is terrible precedent, and you should know it.
Forget for a moment the issue of “giant corporations like Google deciding who can speak and how”. Let’s table that.
This is JUST about the copyright strike. We also will leave aside PewDiePie’s racist incidents. Why? Because the copyright strike does not depend on them. It is independent of anything PewDiePie did, EXCEPT for post videos of himself playing the game.
The precedent from this strike is thus: Any dev can, at any time, copyright strike any Let’s Player who’s ever played their game for an audience. The real moral here, if one supports the strike, is: Let’s Plays are illegitimate. (Streaming too, even if Twitch might not have the same type of copyright-policing apparatus… Yet.)
If this precedent were actually enforced, you can say goodbye to your Game Grumps, to all your favorite personalities on Twitch, etc. But it won’t be enforced, not in a real and consistent way.
It will be a different kind of bad. This issue is now bigger than just “megacorps like Google can shut you down on the biggest platforms”. No. This is even more insidious: As long as three fuckers with an axe to grind are willing to strike you, then you’re gone. Even if we think that Google should be the arbiter and decide who can speak (and I don’t), placing this control in so many hands is even worse. Imagine an internet where on any given platform, there were hundreds of people who could destroy you if they felt like it, and they all had different ideologies and preferences and things that offended them. Navigating that maze would be nigh-impossible. (And yes I realize I’ve just described social media, and why it’s hellish.)
“Ok, but that only applies to Let’s Players and streamers; this is overblown.”
Yes, this only applies to people who use bits of copyrighted works in their content… Even if it were ONLY the destruction of people who play games for an audience, I would mourn it. But imagine all the reviewers, all the people Seriously Talking About Games. This precedent could easily stretch to them. (Or to people criticizing movies, TV etc.) And in fact we know that Content ID is already used to chill media criticism. We should not cheer the empowerment of these tools.
If you say “this strike is fine because PewDiePie is a racist”, then you’re fucking unprincipled. Say “this strike is fine because Let’s Players are illegitimate and should be shut down at the will of game devs, or better yet altogether”.
I hope no one ever streams Campo Santo’s games again.
finally, no more video games!
Beings of undefined race and sex, posting in strange blogs, handing out memes, is no basis for a system of government.
Ender’s Game call-out post?
In the modern Irony Economy, if you don’t engage in at least one multi-layered self-deprecating post each day, you risk losing your blogging license.
How many layers of irony must one be on?
Every post on this blog is serious, except for the ones that aren’t.
As long as I’m picking fights:
“Actually, attacking LGBTs is one of the single dumbest things SoCons have done, because LGBTs do not actually undermine the nation just by being LGBT. In fact, gay marriage is good because stable family units are good, and we can incentivize the creation of stable queer families with similar methods to straight families.
“(Polygamy, as practiced by people that aren’t autistic-spectrum rationalists, is still bad though.) …
“It isn’t enough that I not marry my cousins and engage in polygamy. For my home to not be terrible, I must stop others from doing so as well. And if they want to make a place where those are the norms, then let them, and not me, suffer the consequences of that. I don’t need dumb social policies banned everywhere, only in the places I live in/am responsible for.”
I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.
I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.
Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.
To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.
I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.
Are we immortal yet? No? Then it matters. A lot. Because each generation needs to create and raise the next generation.
The last time I checked, broken families are not good for people, statistically.
You can choose to be single or unattached until you die. It just doesn’t work as a way to structure mortal human societies, unless you are willing to do things that are, hmn… drastic.
I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.
Polygamy is bad along multiple axes.
Polyamory, it hasn’t been proven.
Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.
1. Polygamy is, generally, really polygyny, and married polygyny is bad for women, it’s bad for children, and it’s bad for men.
2. No one actually has to be trying to be an asshole, so long as most people are straight and men marry multiple wives more than women marry multiple husbands.
3. Not everyone is bisexual.
Alright? So what are we supposed to do with all the “extra” men?
To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.
This isn’t about whether individual polyamorous people are mean. It’s about the overall effect on society when polygamy is widely practiced, and “the overall effects on society when polygamy is widely practiced” are backwards anti-feminist-as-in-gender-equality societies when it’s a subset (even in developed countries), or the Middle East when it’s most of society.
When weird autistic (lovable!) internet nerds do it, it stays below the threshold necessary to fuck everything up, unless they’re foolish enough to start normalizing it and spreading it among normal people.
Beings of undefined race and sex, posting in strange blogs, handing out memes, is no basis for a system of government.
Ender’s Game call-out post?
In the modern Irony Economy, if you don’t engage in at least one multi-layered self-deprecating post each day, you risk losing your blogging license.
Also at some point around 2014 the old philosophical neoreactionaries had an internal dustup and either disappeared or unmasked themselves as horrible fascists.
Oh, is that what’s going on?
People keeping asking if I’m someone else. Maybe they think I’m some former True Neoreactionary that became disillusioned, deconverted, and sought out a new path from the shadows.
Beings of undefined race and sex, posting in strange blogs, handing out memes, is no basis for a system of government.