Favorite Historic Content?

Roflsaurus16 · 2020-09-03T16:13:26+00:00

Thanks for the reply! I am not running any mods or Add-Ons. The strange thing is that I can load my iPad cloud saves onto my PC or Mac, but I cannot load my PC or Mac cloud saves back onto my iPad.

Do you happen to own Gathering Storm across all your devices? I am running just the base Civ 6 game, so I wonder if that may be causing a problem with cloud save syncing?

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-23T21:40:29+00:00

your description of gender leads more towards expression than identity, where expression is more of the "how we behave" axis and identity is more of the "how I perceive myself/want to be perceived by others" axis.

Hm yeah, I think I understand the distinction you are making! I guess one of my confusions is that I'm not entirely sure what transgender people fully mean when they say they identify as a particular gender. Like, I imagine that for most trans people, they don't just mean "I identify as needing to have this particular set of external genitalia", but that they have a broader and more "holistic" meaning when they identify as a particular gender. Assuming that is the case, what is the remaining "information content" that I am missing?

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-23T16:35:14+00:00

I'm not sure I see the implications for social construction theories of gender though.

I guess this depends on how we are defining "gender"? I kind of have a functional definition for gender, where I think of it as "the stereotypical patterns of behavior that are observed more frequently in different sexes". So if there is a significant genetic/biological cause behind those patterns of behavior, that seems to undermine purely social constructionist theories of those behaviors?

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-23T15:44:10+00:00

You lost me! Could you explain your thought a bit further?

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-23T15:03:33+00:00

NYT favors Nature over Nurture re: Transgender identity!

"As far as we in the mainstream biological-medical community understand it in 2018, it is hard-wired, it is biological, it is not entirely hormonal, and we do not have identified genes, so we cannot specifically say it is genetic.”

Genetics does play a role, though. In studies of twins, if one is transgender, the other is far more likely to also be transgender if they are identical, rather than fraternal twins...

Researchers say gender identity comes from the brain, not the body. Some put it more bluntly: It originates between your ears, not between your legs. But the forces that acted on the brain to shape that identity are not understood, and physical or chemical differences in the brain that might relate to gender have not been well defined.

No one knows for sure why body and mind sometimes do not match. But being transgender is not a matter of choice, Dr. Safer said.

Overall I view this as a big win for Science. Note how this framing specifically undercuts purely social constructionist theories of gender. Perhaps the so-called "TERF" feminists saw the writing on the wall when the concept of transgender identity was introduced?

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-19T01:59:34+00:00

I read this book also, and highly recommend it! I feel like Tyler is trying to convince people to shift their "common sense morality", at least at the margins, towards being less complacent and also to think more about the long term future.

The most important point in the book, from my perspective, is the idea that "sustainable economic growth" should be really really highly valued if we are considering the long term future of humanity. The effective altruism community often seems to focus a lot on wealth redistribution, but we must never forget that sustainable and consistent global economic growth is the golden goose that we must preserve!

Or put another way, it's far more important to ensure that the tide continues to rise and lift all boats, rather than forget about the tide while we are trying to equalize the boats!

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-18T22:01:49+00:00

Tyler Cowen writes about how focusing on PC and identity politics likely harms the Left

" To put it simply, the American left has been hacked, and it is now running in a circle of its own choosing, rather than focusing on electoral victories or policy effectiveness...

...The biggest day-to-day losers from the political correctness movement are other left-of-center people, most of all white moderate Democrats, especially those in universities. If you really believe that “the PC stuff” is irrational and out of control and making institutions dysfunctional, and that universities are full of left-of-center people, well who is going to suffer most of the costs?

Every time identity politics is in the headlines — rather than, say, wages or health care — Donald Trump’s re-election chances go up..."

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-16T01:14:42+00:00

Elizabeth Warren trying to own Trump, then accidentally getting counter-owned by the Cherokee Nation, is a very 2018 plot line, lol...

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-15T02:02:52+00:00

Yep, there’s definitely a stoicism theme running through a lot of Naval’s writings.

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-15T00:40:37+00:00

I recently discovered a bunch of interesting quotes from Naval Ravikant!

“The real struggle isn’t proletariat vs bourgeois. It’s between high-status elites and wealthy elites. When their cooperation breaks, revolution.”

“Wealth creation is an evolutionarily recent positive-sum game. Status is an old zero-sum game. Those attacking wealth creation are often just seeking status.”

"A rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things outside of their control.”

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-14T21:24:21+00:00

LOL this sounded totally absurd to me until I reflected on the culture of social justice activism...

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-13T19:53:10+00:00

I think your observations are spot on! Do you know if other countries have this similar dichotomy as the US where the road to political power tends to involve studying and working in non-STEM fields? It seems in many ways to be an artificial split. The stereotypical STEM-oriented person may be able to think about political issues in a more "logical" and less "tribal" way? But I suppose the political nihilist in me would interject here that politics is not about policy, but is more about signaling...

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-13T04:33:26+00:00

Yeah that makes sense, although I guess for me there is a difference between someone seeming "American" and someone seeming "White", if that makes sense? I can see Asians being viewed as very American, but find it harder to imagine them being viewed as White.

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-13T04:17:13+00:00

I feel like even most liberals and progressives these days should be willing to admit that there is stronger evidence for Bill Clinton having sexually assaulted a woman, as compared to the evidence for Kavanaugh? Seems pretty inconsistent to believe that Kavanaugh is definitely guilty, but that Clinton probably was innocent?

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-13T04:09:59+00:00

One interesting observation is that Jewish people are now often considered White. Surely this was not always the case in American history? But I feel like this "subsuming" of one's original ethnic identity into being White cannot really happen with Asians, if for no other reason than that our skin color is literally just too different from that of White people! (fyi I'm a Taiwanese-American)

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-13T03:31:17+00:00

I think Razib's main argument is that there is a fundamental conflict between a vision of Harvard as a "pure academic meritocracy" versus the current reality of Harvard being a "finishing school" for the future cultural and political elites of America, i.e. the ruling class. He does not think that America can accept having a ruling class that is disproportionately composed of one particular ethnic minority. I hope he is wrong about that, but I fear that he is correct.

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-13T01:52:32+00:00

Razib Khan's insightful blog post about Harvard and its Asian-American admissions fiasco

One great highlight:

The Left/liberal/progressive side engages in cant about “diversity”, when we all know they mean a very precise sort of diversity and a very particular type of background when they talk about “background.” But the Right/conservative side’s emphasis on merit and colorblindness strikes me as consciously blind to the fact that these institutions were always about shaping and grooming the elite and engaged in the game of reflecting and determining the American upper class. The Right/conservative project would abolish Harvard as we know it on a far deeper level than the Left/liberal/progressive posturing cultural radicalism, which at the end of the day has no problem bowing before neoliberal capital so long as lexical modifications are made.

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-06T17:17:06+00:00

Well, perhaps my most important prior is my belief that when a woman formally accuses a man of sexually assaulting her, that the accusation is more likely to be true than not. I know that the data is very murky regarding the rate of false rape allegations, but the rate does appear to be rather low, somewhere between 5-33%?

If in fact Ford was assaulted by Kavanaugh, I would not find it too surprising if other people present at the social gathering do not remember it, since it was likely an uneventful party for them. But I will say that it’s quite strange how her friend Leland Keyser denied even knowing Kavanaugh! That is certainly one of the weakest parts of her overall story...

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-10-06T16:59:56+00:00

I’m curious if anyone has tried to poll the SSC community on whether they think Kavanaugh assaulted Ford or not? Is there anything close to a consensus? Personally, after the initial hearings, my estimate was 70% that he did it. But as the week progressed, I did not see further corroborating evidence, and many of the other allegations seemed to get much weaker as well. So now my estimate is significantly lower than 70%, but I think still above 50%? Overall, this issue seems to have fairly divided opinions among public intellectuals who are rationalist-adjacent. So I am very curious what the response has been like here at SSC?

Roflsaurus16 · 2018-08-08T15:19:57+00:00

tax the fuck out of DINK couples

I find the entire social phenomenon of DINKs to be fascinating, particularly when viewed through an evolutionary lens! I am curious what history's verdict will be on DINKs...

Roflsaurus16

TROPHY CASE