Owl just fit right in here

bewitched forest 

@argumate

owls a flexible and aesthetically appealing building material

So I just spent around 30 minutes looking up weird novelty alarm clocks. They’re all completely useless and accomplish nothing that you can’t do by simply putting your alarm on the other side of the room.

Which I already do.

The problem is not that I literally sleep through my alarm. The problem is that I turn the damn thing off and go back to sleep.

What I would like to do is to have a relatively relaxing morning, maybe even be able to eat breakfast. But what actually happens is that I can’t make myself get up before I absolutely have to.

As I said, what would be great is an alarm with some kind of camera that watches your bed and won’t let you stay in it.

I don’t love sleep. I hate it. If I don’t live to see the day they eliminate death, then I hope to see the day they eliminate sleep.

Though according to the same people on the internet who say immigration and automation are going to make everyone unemployed, the elimination of sleep would apparently have us all working 16-hour days.

I’ve always wondered if I could somehow rig up a dog shock collar to use as an alarm.

This exists: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/shock-clock-wakeup-trainer-never-hit-snooze-again--2#/

I have the general purpose one that lets you zap yourself when you perform bad habits. It's (shockingly) quite effective.

five short poems about “what if people call themselves toasters now”

pervocracy:

[Snip]

Another reason why I support colonising man/woman and male/female and all the other pre-existing ambiguous binaries, and claiming them for the social axis:

These are the terms people are already using in everyday life and use by default. Thus, unless they specifically need to talk about something beyond the scope of these words, they’ll continue to use them.

I am going to experience acute discomfort every time someone uses language to categorise me with cis-men. Sometimes this is going to be important but, whenever it isn’t necessary, I don’t want it to happen.

If someone needs to talk about the set of people with certain chromosomes, or certain hormone balances, or certain genitals - they can do that. I support them having words to talk about this, and not having those words swallowed up by the social axis.

But those words have to be intentional, such that people only use them in the limited set of cases where they’re actually the best words. This is the way to minimise suffering.

In what other contexts is gender relevant actually? Off the top of my head, only bathrooms/lockers, psychology experiments, affirmative action, pronouns. Medicine and sex, and by extension relationships, are a pretty big chunk of the contexts where gender is relevant.

If we taboo the concept “real gender”, we’re left with talking about genitals (most of the time) when referring to people as potential romantic partners, hormones when talking about psychology, appearance when talking about affirmative action and sexism, internal perception of gender when talking about pronouns and bathrooms, chromosomes or genitals when talking about biology. As one of Scott’s arguers said in his post, the “social axis” doesn’t really exist to a large degree - most of what seems to be the social axis is either assumptions about gender roles (which anti-sexism says should stop existing) or assumptions about genitals.

For some reason, having the word “male” and the word “man” refer to internal perception of gender rather than any of the other things is the basis for avoiding a lot of suffering, so the obvious thing to do is to just have internal perception be the default one, that is connected to those words. This sacrifices a very small amount of epistemic efficiency in comparison to the amount of suffering it alleviates.

This is all well and good, but then comes in the possibility of a euphemistic treadmill. People actually care a lot about what genitals and hormones other people have, and when they can’t use “male” or “man” as a communicative proxy for that, and because they can’t say “penis-having” in polite company, (and also often social role and hormones are slightly important, but not the most important), they want a word to capture “definitely has a penis, probably has male social roles and hormones”, and so come up with some word for that, which doesn’t contain an explicit reference to sex parts, and start using it instead of “male”/”man”.

The crux of the matter is the aforementioned category: “definitely has a penis, probably has male hormones and social roles”. This is what the majority of people care about communicating, because this is what people care about when starting romantic relationships.

But the same thing happens as with “retarded”: people think it’s insulting to be compared with that group, so people insult people by comparing them to that group, people outside notice that the word associated with the group now has negative connotations, and so switch the official terminology to a new non-negatively connotated word. But then the previous word is now only an insult word and not a comparison to the group, and so people use the new word. And so it continues.

There are only three ways of dealing with this problem: 1. Have people in general stop caring about that category. (definitely parts, probably hormones) 2. Have transgender people stop caring about other people using that category and only care about pronouns and bathrooms. 3. Stop the euphemistic treadmill somehow.

It seems most of you think “solution” 2 is victim-blaming and/or impossible psychologically. I think solution 1 is impossible in the absence of a complete revolution of psychology. Solution 3 is probably difficult, given people have been trying to fix this class of problem for a long time and have not succeeded.

tl;dr - We’re all doomed.

P.S. I’m well aware that there’s probably some typical mind fallacy here. If people adopting a new word meaning the above category would not produce discomfort, as long as it is separate from “man”/”male”, then obviously that’s the best decision.

Wut?

In the vast majority of cases where I use the words ‘men’, ‘male’, ‘women’, or ‘female’, it would make way less sense to be saying it as “person who definitely has [genitalia]”, instead of “person who occupies this social role”. Maybe “person who has this appearance” is a relevant aspect? But mostly because that points to “person who will be perceived as having this social role”.

I mean, “man” and “woman” are among the most frequently used words in the English language. Are people really talking about who they’re attracted to that frequently? I know I’m not. I’m talking about people who tend to like W, do X, participate in groups of Y, be perceived as responsible for Z, etc.

(And does that make me a stereotyping asshole? Maybe. However, it’s often a useful category to generalise over. Gender Roles: They’re (Currently) A Thing.)

If you were to taboo my speech and replace all instances of “women” with “people with vaginas”, you would actually make my statements less accurate, because while “people with vaginas” very much overlaps with the category I care about, it is not the same category.

I am actually one of those people who says “people assigned female at birth” or “AFABs” when talking about the relevant population, because I need to point at this group so infrequently that it isn’t much of a cost to me. I talk about genitals, like, twice a week; I talk about social roles ten times a day.

I don’t understand what it means to say gender is just about social role.

Imagine some cis-female CEO who’s very dominant, very aggressive, married to a man whose husband is the homemaker in their relationship, who hates cooking, who wears her hair short, and who otherwise fits most male stereotypes but very few female stereotypes. If it helps to have a particular figure in mind, we can picture Hillary Clinton, whose situation isn’t quite this extreme but who seems like a good example of a dominant, not very “girly” woman sucessfully taking on a role (presidential candidate) that’s traditionally very male.

Yet I have never felt the slightest temptation to refer Hillary as “male” or describe her with the pronoun “he”. If somebody else did so, I would assume they were trying to be insulting or shame her for gender nonconformity - it wouldn’t even enter my mind that they were just trying to describe her gender based on her social role.  And I can’t think of anything at all Hillary could change about her social role - getting elected president, becoming a lesbian, becoming a pro wrestler - that would make me start thinking of her as male, short of her actually announcing she was transgender.

So if we don’t feel even the tiniest urge to refer to a maximally-male-social-role-having person as male if they’re biologically female (outside the context of a self-declared gender transition), why should we think that our words and pronouns about gender are referring to social roles?

(Also: we can imagine a maximally male-social-role-conforming male - let’s say Hulk Hogan - choosing to identify as female, perhaps without changing her behavior one bit (eg continuing to have sexual attraction toward women, continuing to be a loud aggressive wrestler). In this case, I think I would respect her transition anyway, and I would expect most other people in the set of people who respect the idea of transition at all to do the same)

You are definitely misinterpreting what is meant by “social role” up there. When hillary clinton identifies as and has been sorted by society as a woman, so when she runs for president, she is put in the role of “female presidential candidate”, People ask whether she’ll do the white house gardening, shes accused of playing the woman card, etc.  This is all to do with being in the category of “female” and virtually nothing to do with her genitals, as much as people like to equate the two.

But then you’re turning social role into something other people do to you.

It seems we agree that there are some stereotypically female behaviors, like doing gardening. I’m saying (hypothetically) that Hillary does not have any of these behaviors. You’re saying “but society might expect her to have these behaviors anyway”, which I agree is true. But in that case, my social role isn’t about me, but about others.

Suppose an AFAB in a transphobic community transitioned to male, but none of his friends accepted or believed that. They would still make jokes about whether he would do the gardening and so on, just like they make such jokes about Hillary now. So it sounds like by your theory, that person would still have a female gender role, and so “really be” female, and so we should not respect their transition.

I think it might be better to say that transitioning is requesting to be placed into a different gender role; that is, that person would be asking members of his community not to expect him to garden (even though in this example the members of the community are not honoring that request).

But I think even this would be wrong. If you ask Hillary “what gender are you?”, I am sure she would say “woman”, but that doesn’t mean she is positively requesting that we believe she is a stereotypical woman or likes to garden. As such, if (within the context of transitioning) gender is a request for a gender role, then that’s much different from the sense in which we think of gender outside the context of transitioning.

This is why I am saying that right now almost everyone uses gendered words to mean biology, that any theory of transgender that doesn’t accidentally make Hillary male or prevent a sufficiently gender-conforming person from transitioning has to be based on self-identification, and that part of such a theory would be a request that we use gender terms differently than the way we’re using them right now (or the way we use other words like “toaster”). I think such a request would be justified, but I don’t think it makes sense outside an understanding that that’s what’s being done.

I feel like at least one issue here is the distinction between a perfectly gender equal society, where anyone of any gender can perform any activity and be treated the same, and the society we actually have, in which people of all genders are pretty much allowed to do anything, but they're still treated differently when they do. In the first case, which I believe is the world Scott is evoking, Hillary-who-conforms-to-male-gender-roles would be treated the same as a cis man in nearly every respect - if she were replaced by a cis man, nothing would change except perhaps who would be sexually interested in her. Therefore the only difference would be biological.

However, in this world, there's still a difference between a person-coded-as-female who conforms to all male gender roles, and a person-coded-as-male who does the same. Women are allowed to be aggressive lawyers by society, but they're treated differently from aggressive male lawyers. Different aspects of this could be considered positive or negative (people opening doors for you, being read as strident rather than powerful, pay gap, positive/negative discrimination, etc.), but I can see why someone would prefer one set of behaviors over the other.

To take the example from Scott's post: I think Hillary is requesting that we believe she is a non-sterotypical woman who doesn't like to garden - and this is different from believing she is male.

For myself as a cis woman, if I instantly started being coded as male, I would be very uncomfortable - not because different people would want to sleep with me, but because I would be treated differently, even if no one expected any of my actual behaviors to change. I'm not sure I'm entirely sanguine about the idea that I'd be uncomfortable about it (do I really care that much about people holding doors for me? wouldn't I rather have more respect as a scientist?), but it's definitely a fact that I would be, and not because of biology. Even within myself, the parts of me that are non-stereotypical just feel different from the more standard gender role parts. If those were switched around from what society expects, I can see it causing a great deal of cognitive distress.

Part of me suspects that the pushback against Male Entitlement is doing more harm than good. Like, modern feminists are quick to pay lip service to “oh, oh course you can still be a housewife if you want to!” but almost never “oh, well of course you can be the breadwinner who comes home to a clean house if you want!” Ideally, we would encourage people to be open about their desires, communicate honestly, and negotiate in ways that respect each others boundaries and are mutually beneficial. The ideal attitude for a straight man who wants a complementarian relationship with traditional gender roles, I think, is “I want this, but I recognize that I might not be able to find a partner who shares this desire. If I do manage, my partner’s contribution is real and should not be ignored.” Instead, I worry that we’ve set out on a path where we tell men who want this sort of thing that their desires are Wrong, the result of which is denial and, as a consequence, an unhappy marriage.

The key part here is, “my partner’s contribution is real and should not be ignored.” Which is really hard to signal when going along with traditional gender roles, since there’s so much baggage caught up in it.

Every time someone opens a door or lifts a bag for me, I have to wonder - are they doing it because it’s a fun dynamic that we both enjoy, or because they actually buy into it and respect me less because of it? Never mind that I happen to be actually quite self-sufficient and breadwinner-y, I’ve had people completely lose respect for me the instant I put on a cute dress and make a pie, as if the one aspect invalidated the other. Meanwhile in feminist lore, men are allowed to be as sensitive and aesthete as they like, but can’t be assertive or commanding, because then they’re Entitled.

I think actually the safest place for gender roles these days is in the BDSM community. There, at least in the best case scenario, gender roles are treated just like any other role - something anyone can choose to perform for any reason, and which doesn’t necessarily reflect at all on who they are as a person.

(via sweet-gherkins:gifsboom:Video)

THIS IS BULLSHIT

When something is so cute you get mad at it.

THIS KITTEN SLEEPS IN A PIE

@collapsethewavefunction

Aaaaah can't deal, kitten + pie!

important question

if i get an orchiectomy, will they let me keep my testicles in a jar afterwards?

My mother was not permitted to keep her uterus in a jar after her hysterectomy. I think doctors probably have terrible aesthetics?

If I end up getting a colectomy as is becoming the plan, I want a) a photo and b) my colon in a jar so I can perform a ritual cremation or something.

Lucid Physics RnD: Ultra Soft Body

@nothingismere

I’ve managed to acquire myself a 100% legit prescription for modafinil! (For fatigue from chronic illness.)

I’m excited but kind of nervous. I always get jittery about taking new drugs since I tend to react badly to things. But bad drug reactions are one of the reasons I’m in this situation - I hope it helps! I really need to stop getting lost in the brain fog and get on with living my life.

Just took 100mg about half an hour ago on an empty stomach, and I already feel more alert and less blah and wrung out. Also some nausea and I’m not super interested in eating my lunch that I just acquired, but I kind of had that to start with too. This all may be just placebo/nervousness at this point though.

Follow for more modafinil liveblogging!

Two hours in, still vaguely nauseous and not hungry. I was able to eat a bit though. However, my mental acuity and ability to function is approaching the levels of me-when-not-sick, which feels pretty amazing. I’m a bit woozy, like I don’t want to turn my head too quickly, but it’s not overly bothersome.

I’m pretty sure it did actually kick in when I said earlier, after about 30 minutes, since I don’t feel too different now. It felt like the world was coming into focus, a slow parting of the brain fog. I still haven’t been super productive so far today, but it at least seems conceivable that I could be, rather than out of the question.

(bake me up) bake me up a pie / (one-third cup) of flour for our pie

Where’re all the rationalists at?

Because not all of us are drawn inexorably toward the Bay.

Reblog with your nearest major metro area

Chicago

…Boise.  :/

Silver spring/DC, depending on what is major metro

for the next 4 days, also chicago

Detroit.

DC as well.

Chicago, I guess. Iowa doesn’t really have major metro areas.

NYC.

fashion tip: match your outfit with the math book that you’re carrying around on that day

I matched my outfit to my slide deck the other day. Totally on purpose, definitely. It was very smooth.

The only thing I’ll say about Spoon Theory is that it does very little to close the actual inferential gaps. People already understand the popularized notion of having a “limited battery,” but have no reference point for executive dysfunction or “what do you mean it’s hard for you to get up and move that apple two feet to the left into he garbage?”

To me the main benefit has been in explaining how seriously limiting the limited battery can be. Like, people understand that various tasks take energy, but the spoons make it explicit: getting out of bed takes a spoon, and brushing your teeth takes a spoon, and putting on pants takes a spoon, and and and... I think most people don't have a concept that those things take energy at all, so it wouldn't occur to them that they would drain the battery.

I find it actually makes it easier to explain things like moving the apple, since it gives a sense of every damn thing being a trial. Of course, the analogy doesn't work for everyone.

I just went to comment on a post asking about some weird symptoms and one of the other commenters recommended the spoon theory

as in the post was asking “any idea what would cause this symptom’” and someone said “I advise you to look up the spoon theory”

1) the described symptom was probably adrenaline surges (it could have been other things it was kind of vague) which can be caused by a BUNCH of things and not all of them are even chronic illnesses

2) WHAT THE FUCK??? the spoon theory is for EXPLAINING CHRONIC ILLNESSES not HELPING FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU HAVE how could that POSSIBLY be useful in this context.

3) NOT EVERYONE EVEN FINDS THAT USEFUL ANYWAY

#sometimes it feels like the spoon theory is some weird religion to people

THANK YOU. I find the whole concept of spoons really unintuitive and vaguely off-putting, and it bothers me that it’s become the metaphor for talking about disability. I don’t want to think of my abilities in terms of spoons, and I don’t want to have to.

For me it’s a helpful metaphor for some things, but not for others. Like, if I’m having major fatigue as a symptom, then yes, spoons can be a good way for me to think about rationing out my willpower.

But sometimes there are things that I just can’t do, no matter what other things I do or don’t do that day. In that case spoons don’t make any sense, and can be a harmful analogy. (No, if I rest up, I still won’t be able to do the thing.) 

How do I form stable, long term friendships?

As a consequence of moving countries every four years, abs my own inherent garbage personality, I don’t think I have any close long term friends. My parents, after the point when I was about 8 or so, didn’t either. I cannot remember a single time they had friends over or went to see friends during middle or high school. I don’t know how to make friends. I go directly from awkward standoffish-ness to uncomfortable familiarity because all my models for relationships come from TV (I’m not joking here).

Once I’m in a place for awhile, I can form a group of people who say they like me and do things with me. But as soon as I leave (for grad school) I basically power contact with them immediately. I don’t know how to reconnect with people after a while - why would they want to hear from me? It’s the same in Internet communities. I get involved for a year them fade away. I don’t know how people sustain these decades of Internet or real life friendships. I guess that there is something fundamentally wrong with me. I find socializing much easier through the computer but I’m even more flighty there.

I’m not actually particularly attached to the idea of having friendships, I guess. I think I may be much less interested in people than normal human beings are. I don’t often spend days alone and wonder what others are up to or thinking. Maybe that’s why I can’t maintain anything? Maybe my real problem is that I’m unwilling to admit I only “want” long term social relationships because I’m “supposed to”. But I’m not good at doing all the things normal girls are supposed to do.

I think this is (yet another) argument against me raising a child,because I’m sure my parents thought it was somehow “normal” to have no adult friends, only socialize at work, never have anyone over, etc.and at this point I am used to it but another person might be very sad. And since I don’t know how to do this I couldn’t teach my hypothetical cold top do it. I guess noisy people would say it’s a pretty big handicap. I could try top learn (hence this post) but it’s a bit late in the game for that. It’s kind of clear to me that had school was a sort of last hurrah in that sense. It feels quite silly to try to fix this thing I’m not even sure is really a problem for me, personally. Maybe the “fix” is letting go of the idea of firing expectations, yet again, the same way I did about my voice and my clothes and my ability to drive a car.

As a data point, I think my parents were pretty neurotypical and quite well-adjusted, but they never had friends over either when I was growing up. Occasionally we’d meet one of their friends for dinner at a restaurant, but it would be like once a month. It seems like their lives were full of work, each other, and raising me, and they didn’t need much else? I’m not sure how typical this is, but my impression is that it’s not particularly abnormal.

Since I left home and they both retired, they now have more dinner parties and social activities with their friends. But before that, I think their relationship with each other was sufficient socializing for them.

For myself, I also think I’m a pretty friendly person who has an average number of friends for an introvert, but I also don’t have a ton of close long-term friends due to past location-hopping. There are several that I talk to regularly (and those relationships also fluctuate in intensity with time), but most are of the “hey, I’m in the area, want to get dinner?” type. I tend to assume that, absent any active developments, my friendships stay in basically the same state I left them at until I pick them up again. If our lives are developing in dramatically different directions, this may not be true, but in my actual life it seems to work pretty well. I’ve never had awkwardness with putting friendships on hold due to distance or time, and then picking them up again when the time is right.

@isometries i’m counting on you to win.

#dethrone derek

please

what makes y’all think i know how to integrate

(i hear knowing how to integrate is important for the GRE, and this would be a good way to study, but also, ew)

Integration bee?

Eeew. 

Integration? Ew.

I went in to math so I wouldn’t have to do integration.

I went into physics so I wouldn't have to do integration. Three cheers for Matlab and finite difference time domain.

I think we here at thoughtcrimegate central are all defining “thoughts” way, way differently, and thus talking past one another.

Like, when I’m talking about “my thoughts”, I’m not talking about “my deeply held beliefs, which inform my way of looking at the world”. I’m talking about all of it - deeply held beliefs, sure, but also random superstitions and uncharitable judgments and sexual attractions and anything that passes through my head. I’m talking about everything from the merest glimmer to the strongest conviction. And I think we ought not discuss all those things as though they carried the same weight.

@2centjubilee brought up that thoughts we suppress will often find a way out in some form or another. While that’s often true, I think it really depends on how far-reaching the thought in question is. If it’s an entire structural worldview that you’re trying to suppress - well, yeah, that’ll definitely leak out at some point. It’s informing your every interaction with the world. Same with gendering a person - that informs your interactions with them in a very direct way.

But something like a sexual fetish? I think that’s really unlikely to sneak out somehow, because it’s not relevant to most of my interactions. Sexuality is one of those things that’s private by default. There isn’t a reason why most people in your life should know or even care what you masturbate to, so I don’t think it’s fair to act as though you’ve somehow been duped by not being privy to that information. Whereas something like “does my partner really love me or not?” - that’s information most people expect - rightly, I think - to have.

I don’t think that’s the problem, at least for me.

Let me see if I can formalize my argument: (reasons are in parentheses)

It’s okay to have preferences over things that do not affect the state of your own brain. (whether your children survive after you die, your own privacy)

It’s okay to have preferences over things that are other people’s, including their mind. (you can want someone to like you, you can want someone to stop talking, you can want someone to not be stuck in a cult)

(and also, it’s very difficult to stop having preferences)

All else being equal, it’s good to respect people’s preferences. (I expect this is where the disagreement lies)

Qualifier: -it should not legally required to respect people’s preferences                 -it should not be socially required to respect people’s preferences if their preferences are about things that are yours.

Therefore, it’s good to respect someone’s preferences over whether you fantasize about them.

@funereal-disease

I don’t disagree that it’s good to respect people’s preferences (when you can, which is where “all else being equal” comes in), but I don’t think “respect” automatically equals “concede to”. I can respect someone’s preference that I, for instance, cut off all my hair and move to Alaska, but that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to do it.

I will respect a person’s preference that I not fantasize about them - by which I mean that I won’t tell them I’m doing so, nor will I tell others who might potentially relay the information. That doesn’t mean their preference that I change the content of my private thoughts is something I am obligated to condede to.

Respecting your preference doesn’t mean I have to do what you say. It means I shouldn’t be an asshole about saying no, I won’t do that.

Cutting off your hair and moving to Alaska is different from not fantasizing about a particular person. The first hurts you a lot and helps them little, the second hurts you a little and helps them a lot (well, it depends on the person). This is basic utilitarianism.

I’m worried you’re getting hung up on the feeling that someone is forcing you to do something that is your right not to do. I have repeated over and over that I am not trying to say you should be forced into anything.

This is like EA: you are not obligated to donate money, but it’s better to do so than to not do so.

(Re: “respect”. Spying on me while I’m sleeping or showering is not respecting my privacy, even if you aren’t “an asshole about saying no”. This is a word debate, though, so it doesn’t really matter that much. I won’t use “respect” from now on.)

I am just fundamentally unconvinced that doing something in the privacy of my own head that no one has to know about hurts anyone in any way. That’s really what it comes down to for me. You said yourself that “it should not be socially required to respect people’s preferences if their preferences are about things that are yours“, and what’s more mine than my own brain? Violating my mental model of a person, the one that lives in my head, is very different from violating the actual person.

(Re: “respect” - a person entering your safe space [and I mean literally a safe space, as in your own bedroom and bathroom] without your permission is very much being an asshole.)

Personally, I'm very happy biting the Matrix-style bullet: as long as it doesn't affect my lived experience, it doesn't matter. If someone acts in every way as if they love me, and I never find out that they don't, then my world is the same as the world in which they do love me. If I live my whole life believing that my friends and family will respect my wishes when I die, and then they don't, I don't think there's anything objectively wrong with that.

The issue is that it's impossible to pull this off for any serious interaction where it matters. If I have any inkling at all that my friends won't respect my dying requests, I'll be very sad. It would require a superhuman effort of deception to convince me so thoroughly of one thing and then do another - I'd always have some doubt. Even more so with emotions. You just can't fake love well enough to convince someone effectively, in a complete p-zombie fashion where you can't tell the difference, for any substantial period of time. But if you could - well, as long as you never know you're in the Matrix, I do think it's equivalent to real life.