eyechoirs's recent activity
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Comment on Angine de Poitrine - Sarniezz (2026) in ~music
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
eyechoirs Link ParentA lot of replies to my original comment seem to be rejecting it without even really trying to understand it. So I appreciate that you are willing to actually engage with my arguments in good...A lot of replies to my original comment seem to be rejecting it without even really trying to understand it. So I appreciate that you are willing to actually engage with my arguments in good faith, even though you might disagree with some of them.
First, black people in the US, as a whole, on average, are disadvantaged to this day. They have lower overall wages, higher rates of poverty, higher obesity rates, shorter lifespans, lower rates of literacy and so on than the general population. This stems from either modern racism, or the echos of historical racism that propogated until the modern day. You can't divorce crime statistics from those facts.
We are 100% in agreement about that, which makes the following all the more puzzling.
Men are not disadvantaged all in all. There is no pervasive discrimination against men in modern society.
Men absolutely face pervasive, systemic disadvantages and discrimination in modern society. Granted, quite a bit lower in extent compared to women, or black people, or various other demographics, but I don't think it's constructive to make this into a contest. Moreover, the fact that an apparently well meaning comment can make such an absolute form of the claim does not bode well for the state of discourse on this topic.
A lot of discrimination against men relates to how they are perceived as intrinsically dangerous, especially to women and children. One example is the stigma of men being around children in public. I'm at an age where lots of my friends have started families, and basically every dad I know has at least one story of being treated with suspicion for watching their own kid play in a playground, or reproached for helping someone else's kid down from the monkey bars or whatever. This stigma exists in a systemic form too - during divorce, men are often seriously and baselessly disadvantaged in custody battles (though this does vary somewhat with jursidiction). Likewise, stigma against men makes it far more difficult to them to become elementary school teachers - which is particularly impactful due to the already worsening lack of male role models in early childhood.
Some discrimination against men has improved over time. For instance, military conscription has, in recent Western history, been exclusive to men. It was unheard of for women to serve as soldiers and face the attendent dangers of that role. Nowadays, however, it is common for women to serve in the military, and at least in the USA, we haven't had a draft in a while, to the point where most people don't consider this a serious men's issue.
Conversely, some discrimination against men has worsened. For instance, as recently as a few decades ago, men moderately outnumbered women in higher education, and going further back the divide was even wider. But now, the trend has begun to flip, and women modestly outnumber men. It's a complex topic, but personally, I think a lot of this stems from gender differences in learning styles making success in primary/secondary education more difficult for boys, especially in the digital age. This is bad enough by itself, and it's compounded by how so many people fail to recognize (or aren't even willing to recognize) this as discrimination. The lack of male educational attainment is absolutely a crisis in the making. It's even more serious when you consider how education (or lack thereof) intersects with right wing political movements.
None of this should be controversial. I don't know your personal willingness to trust Wikipedia, but there's a fairly large article that cites sources for these issues among many more.
And finally, and perhaps most importantly, black people are white people are almost identical, biologically. Overall, similar brain sizes, body sizes and configuration, hormone levels, and so on. The only real differences are superficial.
Men and women are not biologically identical. Their bodies are quite different. Their brains are different. One isn't better than the other, but the idea that men are more inherently prone to violence is wayyyyyyyy better supported in science than the idea that black people are.
Here's where the argument gets really interesting, I feel. I completely agree with you that there are no significant biological differences among races, and that any kind of statistical correlation between race and criminality is entirely due to historic reasons, and the resulting poverty, racism, discrimination, etc. that continues to this day. I also agree with you that men and women are not biologically identical, and that men are biologically prone to aggressive (and sexually aggressive) behavior.
However, a society that adjusts to the reality that men have a greater tendency towards violence creates laws and social mores that make violence more likely even among men who wouldn't otherwise be violent. I didn't even get into how men face discrimination in criminal sentencing, and that may be an understated factor here - imprisonment often forces men to inure themselves to violence, and that experience follows them even after leaving prison. And it's not just violence, but other male traits, like emotional processing as well. A slight biological tendency towards stoicism traps men in a vicious cycle where expectations enforce behavior which then further enforces expectations. This is a subject which feminism actually provides considerably insight about.
But more importantly, the exact distinction between which historical forces, biological tendencies, and social structures generate statistical outcomes in these two demographics turns out to be, I feel, not actually all that important. The crux of my original comment was an unequal standard for assigning blame and responsibility. Of course, it's perfectly valid to say that any correlation between race and criminality is due to social factors outside of the effected individuals' control, and to temper the blame and responsibility accordingly. But then, aren't the biological factors that make men as a whole more prone to violence also outside of their control? And so too aren't the systems which react to that general tendency and treat men as a monolith? On a societal level, there doesn't seem to be any real reason to assign blame and responsibility any differently here.
I suspect a lot of people think 'well, men should just learn to control their aggression - it comes from inside of them, so surely they can be responsible for it.' But it's not as though men choose their biological makeup. And while it certainly possible for a naturally aggressive man to figure out a way to cope with that tendency, to work on themselves and attain control over it, this is not really much different from any other person whose ability to behave well is hindered by forces that are not initially within their control. For instance, it's an unfortunate reality that many black people are faced with a need to figure out a way out of poverty, gang culture, etc. In the end, none of us asked to be where we are, and we are all challenged by factors that stand in the way of our moral development.
We should ALWAYS consider those factors when assigning blame and responsibility to misbehavior. The fact that so many people seem to exclude men from this consideration is the main thing I am arguing against. It doesn't even really feel like a big ask; it's perfectly compatible with so much of feminist philosophy. And I think that rectifying this attitude would do a lot to help with a lot of gender issues facing us today.
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
eyechoirs Link ParentI think you're misunderstanding me - I only bring up that statistic as a rhetorical example. It's not a direct comment on all of these masculinity-related issues we're discussing. And I thought it...I think you're misunderstanding me - I only bring up that statistic as a rhetorical example. It's not a direct comment on all of these masculinity-related issues we're discussing.
And I thought it would be obvious from context that I disagree with the way the statistic is typically used. The progressive criticism which comprises the rest of what you quoted from my comment is one I agree with, and one which I expect everyone else here to agree with. It is, as you put it, a distortion of facts - but importantly, a distortion that is based on some vague scrutiny of the facts.
And if the nature of this distortion is so obvious, why is it that so many people are willing to accept the exact same kind of distortion when the narrative blames men instead of black people? Why is it that we empathize with the extenuating factors for one demographic, and practically villainize them for the other? I'm not asking you to excuse the misbehavior of individual men, I'm asking you to consider and empathize with the struggle and suffering that is a major factor in that misbehavior, the same as you would for black people or any other distinct demographic group.
It seems a few other people are misinterpreting that one part of my comment in the same way, and to be honest I don't have the energy right now to respond to each of you individually. One part of me is frustrated that you seem to be missing my point, but on the other hand, perhaps it's instructive for you to have a knee-jerk reaction of shock and outrage at seeing a 'well known dog whistle'. Because for many men, the other statistic I used in my example (or any equivalent generalization that is used by a narrative which blames men instead of understands them) feels exactly as insulting and unfair.
An effective feminism NEEDS to admit this feeling is often justified, and adjust its framing of men's responsibility accordingly. I'm not trying to rile up anyone more than necessary, this is a serious topic which is deeply related to toxic cultural and political trends that are having an increasingly serious impact on people's lives. I live in the USA, and fascism has fully arrived - fascism, an ideology which leverages male discontent into political force. Performative feminist empathy has accomplished so little - can we please for the love of god start looking for a real solution?
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
eyechoirs Link ParentI'll await your full response (and I hope everything goes well at the hospital), but I have a few things to say about your initial comment. I agree with you about the gender disparity in suicide...I'll await your full response (and I hope everything goes well at the hospital), but I have a few things to say about your initial comment.
I agree with you about the gender disparity in suicide attempt rates, but unfortunately the statistics are rarely clear about the actual number of suicidal people (which is arguably what we're more interested in, if we want to relate suicidality to something like loneliness). Dead people can't re-attempt suicide, and unfortunately many unsuccessful suicides are later followed by successful ones. The only source I could find puts the 'multiple suicide attempts' rate at ~7% for women and ~4% for men, but this also doesn't consider the number of additional attempts.
Access to firearms and MDD (an endogenous contributor to suicide) are definitely both factors, but I'm more skeptical about 'women not really wanting to die'. It's a plausible theory, but I worry it's just another narrative to society uses to blame women and minimize their suffering. Maybe you already agree with me about that to some extent.
And finally, I'll concede that suicide rates aren't a perfect reflection of loneliness, but I don't think there is a single datum that is. A person's internal feelings are intrinsically opaque. At best, I think you'd have to consider a large number of factors, and use self-reported loneliness as a relative measure (comparing values when controlled by some of the factors).
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
eyechoirs LinkTo be honest, I find articles like this one to be almost too depressing to get through. I can't help but feel like society is doomed when feminists, despite following an enlightened, egalitarian...- Exemplary
To be honest, I find articles like this one to be almost too depressing to get through. I can't help but feel like society is doomed when feminists, despite following an enlightened, egalitarian philosophy that in theory I should be 100% on board with, and despite generating a considerable amount of valid insight into masculinity, STILL ultimately fail to connect to dots. They are so close to conceiving an equitable, effective response to men's problems, but at the last moment they make a hard turn towards the same resentment that drives a lot of the paradigms of toxic masculinity.
One of the principal failures of this particular article is its apparent unfamiliarity with actual, real life men. It is written as though the 'manosphere' were perfectly representative of the average man. It assumes that toxic, patriarchal narratives and social movements play a pivotal role in every man's experience of their own masculinity, of society, and of loneliness.
I am a man, and I have known a great number of lonely men in my life. The majority of these men were not lonely due to toxic behavior. They were lonely due to mental illness, physical illness, social trauma, a lack of a support system, a lack of time and opportunity to be social, among many other reasons. For most men, loneliness develops out of these issues, and desperate to solve the problem, they blindly grope towards maladaptive 'solutions': various forms of addiction (drugs, alcohol, porn, gambling), self-harm, escapism, obsession with their career or a specific hobby, and yes, listening to grifters who provide a narrative where women are to blame for loneliness.
Some men get really wrapped up in this narrative, and it is certainly worth dissecting and fighting against those men. But for many more men - a majority of the minority that even entertains the 'blame women' narrative - their affinity for it is only casual. They have no strong allegiance to it, their heart is not in it. It's just another futile attempt at relief, that like a drug, feels good for a moment, but quickly stops working, and if its use continues, it only does so in a vestigial, low-grade form, like someone who pounds a six pack after work every day due to sheer habit. Nobody thinks this is actually going to help their problems. If it serves any use, it's as a sort of a compulsive ritual, a way of distracting oneself from unpleasant thoughts and feelings.
Obviously, even this casual sexism can still be harmful (to both its agent and object), but it's a far less ingrained aspect of men's behavior than the author of this article suggests. Surely we've all had the experience of a new male acquaintance who seems more or less normal, well-adjusted in his attitude towards women, but after many cumulative hours together, all of the sudden, he says or does something fairly toxic. Many feminists are eager to construe this behavior as symptomatic of a deeper, more significant toxicity within him - he is pretending to respect women in order to fit in, and as soon as he thinks he can get away with it, he will bare his putrid soul. But in my experience, men's sexism is often fairly surface-level, disconnected from (and often in conflict with) their deeper values, used in a flailing attempt to achieve some unrelated goal - to regulate emotions, navigate a social interaction, to fit in with peers, etc.
At this point, I may seem like an apologist for this behavior. So to be clear, the reason for this train of thought is what I feel to be an important distinction between two types of men. There are those inveterate sexists who follow toxic narratives with enthusiastic, almost gleeful hatred (and in some cases use the narratives to grift other men), and whose misbehavior is far past the point where we expect the baseline, bare-minimum level of human empathy and intelligence to kick in and steer the ship. Then, there are the casual, unenthusiastic sexists whose internal experience I've outlined above. And the reasons why this distinction IS important align with the main topics of this article - the matter of blame, responsibility, and fairness.
A lot of this article seems to boil down to this - many men experience loneliness (often just a cover word for 'celibacy') because of the way they behave towards women; only men (not women) are responsible for the way men behave; therefore, it is not fair to expect women to fix male loneliness. The reasoning here is unimpeachable when applied to the enthusiastic sexists. But what about the unenthusiastic ones? Are they fully responsible? Are they offenders, or are they VICTIMS of a society which creates the preconditions for loneliness (REAL loneliness, not just celibacy), which in turn makes sexism a vaguely appealing option?
Reasonable people can differ on how they answer this question. If you believe that all sexism is the fault of those who practice it, I don't have a good argument to make against you. But I can argue against hypocrisy, and I have found many feminists to be hypocrites on this subject. Most feminists are also social progressives who have very compassionate attitudes towards minorities of all kinds. This creates a contradiction when examining the broad tendencies of each of these demographics. Consider the typical social progressive views on the following two superficially true facts:
- Despite being only 13% of the population, black people commit 50% of the murders - Racist, obviously racist. Perhaps technically numerically true, but completely fails to account for confounding factors, like the higher rates of poverty and other systemic disadvantages experienced by black people, and how they lead to specific social problems like gang violence. Society is responsible for this statistic, and we need to collectively do better.
- Despite being only 50% of the population, men commit 92% of the sexual harrassment - Sexual harrassment and other sexist behavior is the result of patriarchy and toxic masculinity. Men have to own this problem, their behavior is not women's fault, nor is it their responsibility.
There's an argument to be had about the exact numbers here, but hopefully we can agree there is at least some disproportionateness in each pair of values. In any case, the main issue is more about how we assign blame. In one setting, we admit the offender is also a victim, we empathize with them and allow their victimhood to explain their behavior, and perhaps even excuse it to a degree, at least when generalizing to the group as a whole. In the other setting, we assign 100% of the blame to the offender. I believe it is intellectually dishonest to apply different standards of blame to different demographic groups. Of course, some might argue that men cannot be victims when they gain so many advantages from a patriarchal society. Except, the unenthusiastic sexists whose victimhood I am trying to highlight are typically the ones who gain the least advantage from patriarchy - most of the advantage is reserved for the few percent of men with power and money and prestige. And furthermore, having some advantages does not magically negate victimhood. If we measure the cumulative impact of both advantage and victimhood on quality of life, most men suffering from loneliness are primarily victims.
Now, most feminists will even go so far as to say that patriarchy hurts everyone. So where does this other blame/responsibility-centric attitude come from? To begin with, I suspect there's just a greater personal salience to sex/gender issues. Not everyone interacts with people of other races or religions on a regular basis. And it's certainly easier to be 'casually sexist' than it is to 'casually violent' (for instance). This naturally turns the conversation from 'how can society fix this problem' to 'how can I protect myself against this problem'. And for the latter question, I would agree that women should not be obligated to deal with toxic men on a personal level. But the author of this article equivocates this reasonable belief with its societal counterpart - that women as a collective (which is just one entire half of society) should not be obligated to deal with the general problem of toxic men. This is a truly insane take. He states 'the actual path to liberation for lonely men is feminism', while absolving feminism of all responsibility towards men. He reiterates how men must work on themselves, and even highlights the many difficulties in doing so, only to dust off his hands at the end and say 'well, good luck with that.'
The optics of this alone are... not good. I guarantee you that someone who is struggling with loneliness, which is almost certainly in part due to factors beyond their control, will not be persuaded by 'this is all your fault, and by the way, you should follow our belief system'. In fact, this exact incongruity is exploited by alt-right grifters as part of the narrative that feminism ostensibly tries to combat. 'Look at all these progressives treating minorities with compassion even when they misbehave. Yet when you do one thing wrong (or perhaps nothing wrong at all), everything is your fault!'. This narrative inflames one of the most basic human emotional instincts, that of unfairness. It's one of the first refined, higher emotions we develop as children, even before we are able to fully develop empathy. And while this is an obvious manipulation tactic to those of us standing outside the circle, it's extraordinarily convincing to those in it.
At a certain point, feminists will need to consider the possibility that they too are inside a circle where unfairness serves as an emotionally compelling but ultimately unhelpful narrative. It starts with a somewhat valid feeling, but quickly degenerates into a poor strategy for managing what is ultimately a societal problem, even developing its own threads of outright misinformation. I've seen a number of people claim the male loneliness epidemic isn't even real - someone here linked a study which showed women are lonelier than men. Except, if you trace this claim back to the original study (a survey/census analysis from ons.gov.uk), we come upon the real finding - 'women reported feeling lonely more often than men' (emphasis mine). When feminists will happily proclaim, that patriarchy makes it extremely difficult for men to express their feelings, how is simply asking people if they are lonely an even remotely accurate judge of loneliness? In contrast, statistics on suicide rate by gender tell a very different story (though I'll admit there's a lot of nuance to the relationship between suicide and loneliness per se).
I've gone on for too long at this point, but overall, I just wish feminists would spend more time actually helping men rather than telling them to help themselves. Obviously, it's okay to draw boundaries about what sort of behavior you're willing to tolerate in person. But at minimum, this doesn't give you the excuse to foster a deep resentment towards men. And hopefully, we adults who can tolerate a little bit of unfairness can use it as opportunity to help people. Whether these people 'deserve' help is a question you should leave the Republicans to ask.
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Comment on US immigration officers assert sweeping power to enter homes without a judge’s warrant, memo says in ~society
eyechoirs Link ParentI think some of this mentality stems from ego defense mechanisms against a world that seems to grow more complex by the day. It's impossible to really understand everything that's going on, and a...I think some of this mentality stems from ego defense mechanisms against a world that seems to grow more complex by the day. It's impossible to really understand everything that's going on, and a reasonable response to this is to admit what you don't know, and that other people know more than you, and to learn from those people. But this makes some people (maybe even most people) feel inferior.
Somehow, the actual, full-bore idiots tend to feel this way the most, perhaps because of early life experiences being unfairly punished for idiocy (what child isn't an idiot on occasion?) leading to a whole inferiority complex, but also probably due to some Dunning-Kruger-related effects.
Some of my relatives are Trump supporters, unfortunately, and a common thread in arguing with them is how instinctively resistant they are to any form of being corrected on the facts. Even something minor and tangential to the actual argument - "actually, Jerome Powell was originally nominated by Trump back in 2017, Biden only re-nominated him" - is met with a death glare; you can tell it's taking some self control for them not to start a physical altercation. And why? A reasonable person would go "oh, is that so? okay..." and continue talking about the Fed's monetary policy or whatever.
Deprogramming this kind of person needs to account for this emotional reaction. I've had some limited success in commiserating about how complex the world is and how people can't know everything, but this also can undermine your position of justified authority on a particular subject.
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Comment on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shoots and kills a woman during the Minneapolis immigration crackdown in ~society
eyechoirs LinkI am going to try to preempt people coming into this thread and saying they feel hopeless about the state of this country. It's not an unreasonable feeling. But consider who has a vested...- Exemplary
I am going to try to preempt people coming into this thread and saying they feel hopeless about the state of this country. It's not an unreasonable feeling. But consider who has a vested interested in you feeling this way. If you feel hopeless, stop, and do the thing the people who want you to feel hopeless don't want you to do - act. Connect with your community. Get involved in a protest. Arm yourself in self-defense. You may quail at this last point, but the violence is already here. Renouncing firearms will accomplish nothing.
I could be wrong, but I have a gut feeling that the utterly brazen cruelty of this (and how clearly it was caught on camera) will cross a line for enough people that we will see them fight back, at least locally in Minneapolis. If this happens, there's a good chance it will be bloody. But again, don't feel hopeless about that - it's bad news (there is currently no good news option), but it would be worse news if people were to lie down and do nothing.
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Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk
eyechoirs Link ParentGood recommendation, I actually just finished reading it for a political book club I'm part of.Good recommendation, I actually just finished reading it for a political book club I'm part of.
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Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk
eyechoirs Link ParentI tried to make it clear that I condemn discriminatory language policies, but maybe I wasn't explicit enough about the scope of the harm they cause. So to start with, I want to emphasize my...I tried to make it clear that I condemn discriminatory language policies, but maybe I wasn't explicit enough about the scope of the harm they cause. So to start with, I want to emphasize my agreement on that point. Perhaps it is naive of me to think that we could discuss the philosophy of prescriptivism separately from language policies that use prescriptivism as a cover for racism. But I think it is worth the effort to distinguish those two things - it's similar to the difference between eugenics (a downright evil ideological system) and gene therapy (an incredible, life-saving scientific project), which both hinge on the same (essentially prescriptive) idea that it is possible improve people's genes.
To wit, you claim that descriptivism "necessitates an utter lack of care towards elements of style pervades the rest of your arguments, when that is not and has never been what's being argued." - but this exactly what I am arguing, and doubtlessly what other (non-racist, philosophical) prescriptivists would argue. The mindset of there being 'a correct way to use language' is essential to actually using language effectively. Let's not forget that language is really goddamn hard. I've revised these very paragraphs numerous times and they are still not as clear as I want them to be. It is only through the mechanical adherence to what I consider the norms of 'correct' language use that I stand even a remote chance of communicating well.
I want to emphasize my use of the term 'norms' (and not 'rules'). There is nothing morally inviolable about norms, they are just a convention that gets people on the same page. The descriptivist stance here is that such linguistic norms are emergent features among language users. Now, certainly some norms are emergent, but if you want to take that generalization to its logical conclusion, you'd have to be opposed to native language classes (e.g. English classes for native English speakers). After all, what is a native language class if not a presciptive handing-down of norms? But the unfortunate reality is that many people need these classes. Not everyone is gifted enough to intuitively figure out the most effective way to use language. And for those who are gifted, in many cases it is better to be instructed on norms so that they can be broken well.
And if I am drifting dangerously close to elitism here, let me acknowledge that for someone whose native language is AAVE (for instance), taking a standard English class is sort of like taking a second language, and we absolutely ought to be mindful of how challenging this is, and how the potential for discrimination exists in this dynamic. A socially conscious solution might be to offer native AAVE instruction, and to allow curricula to be tailored to each student's intellectual and cultural needs. But let me also point out that AAVE language classes would also be fundamentally prescriptive. Ultimately, social justice concerns do not really impact the philosophical argument at play here.
Separately, I take issue with you calling prescriptivism a "scientifically invalid idea that some languages and dialects are better than others" and that they mandate "arbitrary, unnaturalistic standards". Certainly some prescriptivists support these ideas, but you can also prescribe norms which are respectful to their corresponding speech community, and which do not make value judgments about other languages and dialects. In fact, much of our current discussion is not so much about the validity of prescriptivism, but the definition of it, which is itself a prescriptivist argument. And this actually touches on an important social function of the prescriptivist attitude. You claim that "attempts to improve language through resistance to natural language change are utterly ineffective at best", but again, this presumes that prescriptivist ideas must come from a formal authority. In fact, prescriptivism is equally common as a grassroots, person-to-person phenomenon, with norms that are adopted by many voluntarily and propagated by the social pressure of individuals.
I can think of no better example of this than the usage of the word 'gay'. When I was in middle school (from the 90's to early 2000's), 'gay' was commonly used as a general-purpose insult. No doubt this usage originated in homophobic hate speech, but due to evolutionary language shifts, in many cases the meaning came to be completely divorced from the topic of sexuality (e.g. 'my math teacher gave me extra homework for being late to class' - response: 'that's gay'). But in the late 2000's, there was a general push towards correcting the use of this word. It was common to tell someone "hey, you shouldn't use 'gay' like that" - which is about as prescriptive a statement as you can get. I remember distinctly being on the receiving end (and later on the giving end) of this statement. It did not come from a central authority. And importantly, it was not necessarly a comment on content or sentiment that the word 'gay' was being used to express - most people who used 'gay' as an insult were not actually homophobic, they were just using language wrong.
In our current year, where social cohesion seems to be reaching a breaking point, the impulse to find common language norms is all the more urgent. One norm I am personally trying to prescribe surrounds the use of the word 'fascism'. Too often, arguments about whether Trump is a fascist are waylaid by a failure to find a common-ground definition of the word. Many people (especially Republicans) hold a concept more akin to "Hollywood fascism" - jackbooted Nazis marching through streets, relentless state-sponsored murder of Jews, and a complete conversion of all social order to the fascist regime. I spend a lot of time and effort trying to explain to these people what fascism is, or really, why it's important we hold ourselves to a standard of using the word 'fascism' correctly.
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Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk
eyechoirs Link ParentYou don't need to think a certain usage of a word is objectively correct in order to merely suggest people use it a certain way. I'm no hardcore prescriptivist myself, or anything, but I think a...- Exemplary
You don't need to think a certain usage of a word is objectively correct in order to merely suggest people use it a certain way. I'm no hardcore prescriptivist myself, or anything, but I think a lot of dyed-in-the-wool descriptivists lose sight of the social, aesthetic, and most importantly practical implications of language use. Moreover, people tend to view prescriptive and descriptive attitudes as polar opposites, but really they are orthogonal - they have somewhat unrelated sets of goals, and in fact can often be used to enrich each other.
Of course, there are plenty of prescriptivists who are in it for the joy of being pedantic, or worse, to try to enforce linguistic biases which disadvantage minorities. But there are plenty of morally neutral or even morally positive uses for prescriptivism. I think most linguists are in favor of revitalizing endangered languages, but if you think about it, this is technically a prescriptivist project - a normative stance on the way language should be used. In a way, a lot of more conventionally prescriptivist ideas can be thought of as an attempt to revitalize a slightly outdated and fussy form of, say, English.
I'm sympathetic to the 'nauseous'/'nauseated' distinction (and in fact I myself have posted about it on Tildes before) for a combination of aesthetic and practical reasons. After all, if we use the two words to mean essentially the same thing, with more or less identical etymologies, why bother to have two words at all? Wouldn't it be more elegant to observe a subtle distinction in the two words' meanings? Of course, I would never use this opinion as an excuse to browbeat or discriminate against someone. But I don't think it's merely a matter of "fun and games" (as you put it) either.
I think the more fundamental question here is whether certain usages of words can truly be seen as practically superior. The whole descriptivist ethos fails to really grapple with this question. Claiming 'language change is natural, therefore a new usage of a particular word is okay' is essentially a naturalistic fallacy. In a way, linguistic descriptivists taking a normative stance against linguistic prescriptivism is kind of like cellular microbiologists taking a normative stance against antibiotics. The desire to catalog and understand different types of bacteria should not be mistaken as justification for letting all those bacteria exist wherever they are naturally wont to.
And there are in fact many places where snooty, frequently-ignored grammatical rules actually serve a clear function that seems to improve the practical quality of language. For example, rules about ambiguous placement of adverbs - consider the sentence 'people who eat this mushroom often get sick'. The placement of 'often' here could modify either 'eat' (i.e. 'you will get sick if you eat this mushroom often, but you can eat it a few times without issue') or it could modify 'get sick' (i.e. 'it is often the case that people get sick when eating this mushroom').
Now, obviously a conversation about potentially poisonous mushrooms will probably entail more clarifying sentences, but I think there's an obvious utility to certain grammar rules that descriptivism frequently fails to acknowledge. In the descriptivist mindset, words and grammar that emerge 'in the wild' are practical by definition, because people empirically find it effective to use them. Often a parallel is drawn with biological evolution. But we often forget that biological evolution is not optimal - it's often 'good enough' (like the way the recurrent laryngeal nerve takes a big, pointless detour around the aorta, or more importantly how malaria resistance genes can cause sickle cell anemia). And likewise, linguistic evolution is often shaped by compromises, aimless drifting, and (gasp) human laziness. To think that this couldn't be improved upon is a bit shortsighted.
I'm not leaving this comment simply for the sake of being contrary. In fact, I think prescriptivist ideas are wrong like 75% of the time, and there's lots of new, slangy developments in language that fill very useful niches. But the radical embrace of linguistic descriptivism in certain academic or social justice circles is kind of an overcorrection, and often falls prey to the same inflexible puritanism that prescriptivism also historically has.
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Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk
eyechoirs (edited )Link ParentI've always felt the whole discourse around 'literally' misses a major point: it's silly to conceptualize its 'figurative intensifier' usage as a shift in definition because it's pragmatic....I've always felt the whole discourse around 'literally' misses a major point: it's silly to conceptualize its 'figurative intensifier' usage as a shift in definition because it's pragmatic. Namely, it is a common way to indicate sarcasm/irony, and there are hundreds of other words which have a similar usage whose definition we would never argue about.
I'll try to come up with an example. Say I'm driving you somewhere, and complaining to you about how bad my day has been, when suddenly I get a flat tire. I throw up my hands and say "that's just what I needed". Of course, I am being ironic - I very much do not want a flat tire, but I'm pretending to embrace the situation as a sort of emotional defense mechanism. And in fact the word 'just' is doing some heavy-lifting as a irony-marker - the phrase "that's what I needed" (without 'just') could be deployed sarcastically but it probably wouldn't be quite as clear what I meant by that. You could argue that the whole phrase has become idiomatic, but you can find 'just' used elsewhere as a marker of sarcasm or irony as well (internet-popular phrases like 'just fuck my shit up', for instance).
In any case, it would be insane to argue that the above usage of 'just' is a shift in its definition to mean 'figuratively', even though the situation is basically an exact parallel of 'literally'. The definition of a word does not change simply because it can be used ironically. You might as well say this about every pragmatic usage: do metaphors change a word's definition? What about lies or confabulation?
I think what happened with 'literally', is that it was a common linguistic trope within a certain valley girl-esque social stratum, and people found this usage (and the social stratum as a whole) annoying. The prescriptive notion that the word is being used incorrectly was invented as a way to legitimize this sense of annoyance, and it was further confounded by the fact that the word is itself being used figuratively (which is an antonym of 'literally').
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Comment on What words do you recommend? in ~talk
eyechoirs LinkI saw this thread the other day and couldn't think of a word, at the time. But one just came to mind: arch- No, not the "typically curved structural member spanning an opening", but rather, the...I saw this thread the other day and couldn't think of a word, at the time. But one just came to mind:
arch-
No, not the "typically curved structural member spanning an opening", but rather, the prefix most often encountered in words like 'archenemy' or 'archrival' - essentially a synonym for 'chief' or 'principal'. The etymology of 'arch' is the ancient Greek word 'arkhein' which meant 'to be the first', from which we get the Greek word 'archon', meaning commander, ruler, or chief (a word which has a somewhat archaic use in English as well). 'Archaic' also derives from 'arkhein' along with other words communicating a sense of extreme age, like 'archaeology'. And finally, returning to the sense of 'ruler', 'arch' can also serve as a suffix for words like patriarch, anarchy, monarchy, etc.
But moreover, I've found the 'arch-' prefix, in particular, to be an elegant yet flexible addition to regular speech. I just described Twinkies to my girlfriend as the "arch-snack food". The word is a perfect blend of descriptiveness and semi-ironic erudition. It's easy to remember, easy for anyone to understand, and it's usually at least worthy of an inward chuckle.
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Comment on The case for cultured meat has changed in ~food
eyechoirs Link ParentIt is kind of weird how many ( not all ) Tildes become unhinged over populist boogeymen like 'greedflation' instead of the actual serious harms of corporations, such as oligopolies, lobbying,...It is kind of weird how many ( not all ) Tildes become unhinged over populist boogeymen like 'greedflation' instead of the actual serious harms of corporations, such as oligopolies, lobbying, congressional stock trading, and the military industrial complex. Ah well. Take care.
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Comment on The case for cultured meat has changed in ~food
eyechoirs Link ParentI think you are misunderstanding the plane crash analogy here - whether you ascribe 'greedflation' to abstract market forces or conscious decisions is irrelevant. The point is that, like gravity,...I think you are misunderstanding the plane crash analogy here - whether you ascribe 'greedflation' to abstract market forces or conscious decisions is irrelevant. The point is that, like gravity, the profit motive ('greed') has always been there. If it were sufficient to cause price increases, they would have already happened. There needs to be some other more proximate cause.
Saying that legitimate price increases provided 'cover' for price gouging flies in the face of reason. Do you really think people decide whether or not to stop at McDonalds on the way home from work based on whether they feel their hamburger prices honestly reflect the actual price of commodity beef? No, of course not. For the most part, they consider whether the benefit of the food is worth the cost, and whether there are cheaper options elsewhere.
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Comment on The case for cultured meat has changed in ~food
eyechoirs Link ParentI've never found the 'greedflation' concept to be all that convincing. Companies are always trying to maximize profit, which I think most would agree is definitionally greedy. Blaming greed for...- Exemplary
I've never found the 'greedflation' concept to be all that convincing. Companies are always trying to maximize profit, which I think most would agree is definitionally greedy. Blaming greed for price increases is kind of like blaming gravity for plane crashes - vacuously true, perhaps. But there must be some other factor that is now making price increases profitable when they were not previously.
I think the logical candidate here is an increase in money supply. During the pandemic, the 'American Rescue Plan Act' added 1.9 trillion dollars to the economy, around a tenth of the total M2 money supply at the time - and this is on top of a trend where the money supply had basically quadrupled over the last decade. Now, I think you could argue that there were societal benefits to this stimulus package that outweighed inflation - I would personally get behind the same argument when it comes to UBI. But it would be silly not to expect this to cause some inflation.
I am also open to the possibility that market consolidation enabled grocery stores to raise prices, which is probably more a more emotionally satisfying argument to many people. However, the data I've seen doesn't really support this. Anecdotally, where I live, there are around a dozen different grocery store chains, all selling dozens of different brands of, for instance, meat - and they have all raised prices in more or less the same way. It is unimaginable to think that this large number of competitors could brought into the same pricing cartel.
Side note - lab meat may actually be a good way to better characterize 'greedflation'. If natural meat price inflation is based on opportunism and not monetary policy, then it will be more profitable to lower natural meat prices if lab meat starts getting cheap and popular. If this doesn't happen, it stands to reason the opposite is true, and that even charitable definitions of 'greedflation' are false.
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Comment on Which directors have a flawless filmography? in ~movies
eyechoirs LinkI'm surprised no one has brought up Alejandro Iñárritu. 21 Grams, Birdman, and Bardo are all-time great films, just absolute masterpieces (some people might disagree with me about Bardo, but you...I'm surprised no one has brought up Alejandro Iñárritu. 21 Grams, Birdman, and Bardo are all-time great films, just absolute masterpieces (some people might disagree with me about Bardo, but you gotta admit it's at least wildly ambitious, with significant follow-through). Babel and Biutiful are also excellent, though a little more straightforward in terms of theme/tone and plot, respectively. I think The Revenant gets a lot of undeserved hate because it has such a single-minded aesthetic, and you could also probably argue that Leo didn't deserve Best Actor for his performance in it, per se. But it's still a very enjoyable movie, honestly - albeit something you have to kind of let soak in, rather than obsess over intellectually. And Amores Perros is also really good, but maybe a little rough around the edges due to it being Iñárritu's first film. All in all, maybe not 'flawless' exactly, but it's hard for me to imagine many similarly-sized filmographies are much better than this.
I guess another good candidate would be Satoshi Kon. It's kind of a cop out, because of his untimely death at only 46, meaning he only ever directed 4 movies. But they're all phenomenal - Perfect Blue (the cult classic psychological thriller), Millennium Actress (the poignant, meditative piece about aging and the meaning of life), Tokyo Godfathers (the heartwarming dark comedy slash social commentary), and Paprika (the psychological sci-fi romp that is by turns disturbing and hilarious). Also, the one series that he was a showrunner for, Paranoia Agent, is also excellent, kind of like Twin Peaks in Tokyo. Really sad that he never got to complete his magnum opus (Dreaming Machine - which remains unfinished to this day).
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Comment on [Rant? Vent? Musing?] I've become a surprisingly judgemental semi-sober person in ~life
eyechoirs LinkI suspect that the core of this skepticism is not understanding just how diverse human brain chemistry is. It always astounds me how differently people can react to the same drugs. I've had plenty...But despite people and (liberal) society at large insisting that substances are how you gain clarity or essential perspective, I can't help but now feel skeptical that these substances are really doing anything of note.
I suspect that the core of this skepticism is not understanding just how diverse human brain chemistry is. It always astounds me how differently people can react to the same drugs. I've had plenty of recreational drug use in my past, so I've gotten to see the gamut of human/drug interactions, ranging from literally life destroying to literally life saving. It makes you realize that we are not all just minor variations on the same boilerplate human consciousness.
Take cannabis, for instance. I find that people tend to generally fall into one of three camps: 1) those for whom it causes strong euphoria and relief from boredom/negative emotions, and who may end up abusing it with daily use, ultimately becoming lazy and chronically cognitively impaired; 2) those for whom it mostly enhances focus, with some mood lift or anxiolysis, and who may also use it daily but in a seemingly sustainable way where they are more productive and emotionally balanced; and 3) those for whom it causes excruciating self-awareness, rumination, paranoia, etc. and who tend to either avoid using it or do so with trepidation. I've also seen a trend where after years of use, people in camps 1 and 2 transition (slowly or all at once) into camp 3 (I fall into this category).
It seems like you're skeptical of the existence of camp 2, but I assure you it's real. I know several people for whom daily cannabis use is specifically what enables them to function - to work passionately at jobs, to have healthy relationships, etc. Among celebrities, Seth Rogen and Snoop Dogg famously attribute their ability to thrive in the fast-paced entertainment industry to cannabis.
And of course, there are all manner of outliers. I knew someone in college who, even after smoking a tiny bit of cannabis, became a deranged, borderline-psychotic asshole (the way some people get when drunk) - and when he sobered up, he denied experiencing any sort of negative effect. Also, I am friends with twins who are both seemingly immune to cannabis - no matter how much they smoke, they deny any subjective effect from it, and show no objective impairments (no loss of eloquence, still able to perform complex tasks easily, etc.). Strangely, they still show physical effects like red eyes and dry mouth. I've always suspected they might have mutant cannabinoid receptors, for which THC would have a much lower binding affinity, without necessarily affecting endogenous cannabinoid function.
To bring it back to the topic of 'gaining clarity or essential perspective', it is a common experience in my friend group to have this experience with psychedelics and/or MDMA. I have personally used these drugs to resolve emotional and social problems that I experienced throughout my entire childhood. And in fact there is plenty of clinical evidence of using these drugs to treat anxiety, depression, and PTSD. But it is also entirely possible to have bad experiences with them, especially when they are not used in a controlled setting. And furthermore, they may rarely trigger psychosis in people who are susceptible. So it's entirely up to the individual whether the risks are worth it.
It sounds like you have a good grasp on what your mind needs to be healthy. And if that doesn't include drugs, more power to you. But you need to understand that people have taken the same honest self-appraisal and found drugs to be a part of a healthy regimen.
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Comment on Tech keeps stealing my life, and I want tips on how to make it stop doing that in ~tech
eyechoirs LinkI think the 'problem' you outlined is not even specific to software - it's something that occurs in any tool, invention, handiwork, organization, etc. that mankind has created. On a fundamental...I think the 'problem' you outlined is not even specific to software - it's something that occurs in any tool, invention, handiwork, organization, etc. that mankind has created. On a fundamental level, reality is complicated and chaotic and has its own set of rules that are orthogonal to human goals. There is not a single thing created by mankind that doesn't break on edge cases, fail to adapt to changing environment, or require maintenance (proportional to its complexity).
Now, it's natural to be frustrated by all this. In fact I'd say it's part of the human condition to run up against what I think of as 'the bureaucracy of existence'. I think Franz Kafka does a great job capturing this frustration - he gets a reputation for his commentary on literal bureaucracies, but I think he was ultimately more interested in the metaphorical bureaucracies - i.e. the futile complexity of social organization and the general living of daily life. The main theme of his writing basically amounts to 'what are the rules?'. If Kafka were born in the 90's, he probably would have written about software and other technology.
My point in saying all this is that assigning blame related to this problem should always be fraught with moral considerations. There are certainly situations where, despite the universal quality of these problems, people can be blamed. I think most examples of this boil down to the nature of contracts. If I buy a tool from you, it is a contract where 1) I give you money, and 2) you give me a tool which performs X, Y, and Z properly. There may also be a literal contract (what we'd call a warranty) but there is also a sort of moral contract, is my stipulation. If the tool does not perform as advertised, you are in breach of this contract and my upset is justified. Obviously nothing is perfect, and I try to be cool-headed with the my appraisal of a tool's performance. If my toaster oven breaks after using it for 15 years, I tend to think 'it's a miracle it managed to work for so long!' even if I could view it as a contract violation. But then, there are more obvious or even outright malicious cases.
Let's look at your spreadsheet problem. What is the nature of your contract with LibreOffice? To my understanding, it is free, open source software. If you didn't pay for it, what expectations can you justifiably have about its performance?
I'd like to challenge something in particular you said - "all I know is, someone has stolen 2 hours of my life from me". To me, this seems like a ridiculous statement. If I spent 2 hours building a sandcastle and then the ocean sweeps it away, would I say that 'someone has stolen 2 hours of my life'? On an existential level, software is just as much a complicated, chaotic part of reality as the merciless encroachment of the ocean. And unless I'm mistaken, you do not seem to have any sort of moral contract with someone to fix the problem for you. In fact, saying that LibreOffice is obligated to fix this kind of problem is sort of an attempt to steal 2 hours of someone else's life (and perhaps more than 2 hours, given the complexity of software design).
I don't mean to make you sound selfish, but ultimately I think at least some of your problem is attitude. It doesn't help that we live in a world saturated with technology, which tends to make these kinds of frustrations especially frequent. But the more you want to accomplish, the more you will have to deal with petty inefficiencies, failures, and such. It's not anyone's fault - it's just the way reality is. Kafka struggled to make sense of how to live in such a reality. We all struggle with it, consciously or not.
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Comment on Experiences with psychedelics? in ~life
eyechoirs Link ParentMy experiences with it were merely okay. It never really seemed to have the intense euphoria of MDMA or mephedrone, and while it did increase empathy, it never pushed me into that state of...My experiences with it were merely okay. It never really seemed to have the intense euphoria of MDMA or mephedrone, and while it did increase empathy, it never pushed me into that state of extreme, joyous talkativeness and bonding that other empathogens did. I actually felt kind of moody and quiet on methylone, even sad at times, though not intensely sad - more like a bittersweet, nostalgic sadness that the drug was somehow also consoling me about, if that makes sense. None of this ended up being particularly therapeutic, though perhaps my prior use of MDMA had done all the good empathogens would do for me, at that point.
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Comment on Experiences with psychedelics? in ~life
eyechoirs Link ParentI think PCP gets kind of an undeserved bad rap. Most of the hazard in using it comes down to 1) it's illegal but not widely used, meaning it's hard to find high quality, unadulterated PCP, and 2)...I think PCP gets kind of an undeserved bad rap. Most of the hazard in using it comes down to 1) it's illegal but not widely used, meaning it's hard to find high quality, unadulterated PCP, and 2) people generally don't understand how to actually dose it - it's often dissolved in something, and a cigarette or joint is dipped in the solution, but this is so inexact that it's easy to do way too much by accident. Doing way too much PCP is likely a recipe for disaster, but frankly, so is doing too much LSD.
I think the attractive thing about ketamine is that if you do so much that you enter a state of temporary psychosis, the drug also basically renders your immobile. It's hard to assault your neighbor and drive into the side of a 7-Eleven when gravity feels like it's operating at 10x the intensity. K-holes have a whole different set of dangers, of course. But I think in comparable doses, PCP isn't much more likely than ketamine to cause actual insanity. It's actually pretty warm and relaxing, I found, maybe even moreso than ketamine. You just have to be responsible with it.
3-MeO-PCP, on the other hand, is actually kind of dangerous. It has none of the warmth and mildly sedating trippiness of PCP - it is more of a stimulant in some ways, but has a habit of causing amnesia, complete physical anesthesia and a striking loss of sanity at even moderate doses. It's pretty fun if you can handle the risks - I remember one time I took some in the middle of a cold winter night and went out for a walk. It was well below freezing but I hardly felt cold at all (though I dimly noticed that my body was still shivering). The darkness and utter lack of people in what was often a busy part of town gave me the profound feeling that I was walking through an abandoned movie set. Everything looked 'hollow' - every building seemed like just a facade hiding a big empty space, every car seemed like it was probably just an empty metal chassis. At one point I saw people walking in the distance, and I was almost certain that they knew exactly who I was and were specifically put there to observe me and/or to give the environment a certain verisimilitude (one which I had seen through immediately).
Of course, at the same time, I had enough insight to recognize that these thoughts were, of course, not even remotely true. All of these errant, temporary beliefs were the effect of a drug and had no bearing on consensus reality. And knowing what I do about psychiatry, I recognized a resemblance to the typical thoughts and beliefs of a psychotic person. Fortunately, I seem to be very resistant to psychosis - despite using drugs like this one, plenty of psychedelics, and frankly a drastically unhealthy overuse of amphetamines, I have never experienced a real psychosis, nothing that lasted past the duration of the drugs themselves. I imagine not everyone would be so lucky, though.
Ha! I'm surprised anybody remembered my affinity for microtonal music.
Angine de Poitrine is awesome! I've been into them since their album came out back in 2024, but it seems like they've been getting a lot more attention recently, which is great. I hope this means they'll be releasing some new material soon.
They use quarter-tone tuning, meaning the smallest intervals (semitones) that we're used to hearing in Western music are divided exactly in half, giving you 24 notes per octave instead of 12. This is actually a pretty common tuning in Arabic folk music (among other culturally-related folk music styles), but AdP take a very different approach to how they use all these notes.
The scales of Arabic folk music (called 'maqam') tend to use the microtonal intervals more sparingly, and are almost never 'chromatic' (meaning using several notes in a row which are all right next to each other). AdP on the other hand is full of chromatic figures, which due to the naturally closer spacing of quarter tones, creates a particularly gradual (to the point of uneasiness) sense of motion - any closer together, and it would sound like the note was just sliding upward, as on a fretless instrument! Normally, in my own microtonal music, I try to avoid heavy chromaticism, but I think it works well for their somewhat more aggressive and intentionally alien aesthetic.