Sil's recent activity
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Comment on Writing Club #2 Submissions in ~creative
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Comment on Leo Moracchioli - WAP (2020) in ~music
Sil Link ParentA bop is a good/catchy song. It's maybe more relaxed than a banger and more intense than a groove. UrbanDictionary is a pretty good first stop for slang terms, by the way.A bop is a good/catchy song. It's maybe more relaxed than a banger and more intense than a groove.
UrbanDictionary is a pretty good first stop for slang terms, by the way.
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Comment on Writing Club #1 Submissions in ~creative
Sil Link ParentHonestly, I'm completely ignorant about poetry and most of writing in general. The rhyme scheme was probably an artifact of not knowing enough about good writing to transition to something a...I'm not particularly studied in poetic meter, but I like whatever form it is you've chosen.
Honestly, I'm completely ignorant about poetry and most of writing in general. The rhyme scheme was probably an artifact of not knowing enough about good writing to transition to something a little less restrictive. It was based on pattern recognition instead of any meaningful understanding of how to write, and by the end I was feeling more and more like a monkey riding a tiger.
I cut some lines at the end of the poem that were going to flesh out that the narrator was a drunk guy, alone on Valentine's. I wanted to try to add in a smell of the increasingly ungrounded thought patterns an isolated person may get into, after exhausting all sensible or societally-condoned approaches to dating. Maybe also some of the reductive treatment love gets from the commercialization of Valentine's... that the logic behind more bug;more love isn't that different from ads selling larger bouquet or assortments of chocolate.
I gave up on that ending partly because of time/not wanting to be a downer, but also because I just ran out of things I could do with the rhyme scheme I got stuck in.
The number of things I've written since age 10ish can be counted on one hand (in binary) and were always for an audience of 1-2, so I've been a bit self-conscious about providing feedback to others or submitting anything when ~creative came up... appreciate the encouragement!
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Comment on Writing Club #1 Submissions in ~creative
Sil Link ParentYes, it's referring to red dye from cochineal insects. I'd heard some trivia that this was one of the earliest dyes discovered and until fairly recently there wasn't a desirable synthetic...Yes, it's referring to red dye from cochineal insects. I'd heard some trivia that this was one of the earliest dyes discovered and until fairly recently there wasn't a desirable synthetic alternative.
The idea/"decomposition" is:
Chocolate +bug guts = Romanticchocolate...and a drunk alone on Valentine's trying to scale that.
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Comment on Writing Club #1 Submissions in ~creative
Sil (edited )LinkPraise be to Dawkins! Cancel Sadie Hawkins! What a wonderful thing I have found! If you give me a moment--to let it foment-- I promise that I'll properly expound. We've long known, under chitinous...Praise be to Dawkins! Cancel Sadie Hawkins!
What a wonderful thing I have found!If you give me a moment--to let it foment--
I promise that I'll properly expound.We've long known, under chitinous bone,
A pigment lurked; expressed when it's ground.Its use to dye clothes or to paint lips and toes,
Was economically viable, sound...Yet narrowed thinking of men not set to drinking
Was tethered and fettered and bound.They lacked the vision to do simple decomposition
Of chocolates from fresh scarlet-crown.Through quirk of evolution, even in great dilution:
Bug guts bring Almond Joy to Venutian Mounds.Heaped sanguine glaze yields a happy pink haze,
So shouldn't buckets leave you spellbound?"Cupid's call comes in clarion with a spoonful of bug carrion"
I can see it already! The respect! The renown!"A coating, cochineal, makes love bloom perennial"
...why are you backing away? Why the frown? -
Comment on Writing Club #1 Submissions in ~creative
Sil Link ParentThis is probably a reference to the movie "American Psycho", which has a similar veneer of culture sitting above brutality. "What am I, chopped liver?" is an expression (mostly older Yiddish?)...the reference to Paul
This is probably a reference to the movie "American Psycho", which has a similar veneer of culture sitting above brutality.
chicken liver
"What am I, chopped liver?" is an expression (mostly older Yiddish?) that someone might use when they're being looked over or feel unappreciated.
Maybe the coincidence of the entree being named "Bridget" and the reference to tossing out the leftovers ("the Ex") is a way of implying the cannibal is a woman named Bridget who killed her former boyfriend who had started dating someone who shared her name? Think I might be missing something as well.*Oh yikes, I completely ignored the title "Armie Hammer invites". Haven't heard much of that news story, but that probably explains a lot...
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Comment on Why Robinhood disabled buys but not sells in ~finance
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Comment on Andrew Yang is running for Mayor of New York City in ~news
Sil Link ParentFrom what I saw there was some amount of overlap between the Trump crowd and at least the online Andrew Yang, but it wasn't representative of his base or likely to be sincere. He was an easy...From what I saw there was some amount of overlap between the Trump crowd and at least the online Andrew Yang, but it wasn't representative of his base or likely to be sincere.
He was an easy vector for the right wing to complain about things on the left, in the same way Bernie was to some extent. Both were outsiders of the DNC establishment / arguably had some biased media coverage / courted a working class with perceived grievances with "neoliberal" policies / etc.
In any interview I saw he was far from supporting alt-right policies or values.
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Comment on What’s something you have an unusually strong fondness for? in ~talk
Sil (edited )Link ParentIn that vein, I'm fond of both the word petrichor and the smell of rain that it describes. Where I grew up there were some mimosa trees that had a wonderful lightly sweet scent after it rained.In that vein, I'm fond of both the word petrichor and the smell of rain that it describes. Where I grew up there were some mimosa trees that had a wonderful lightly sweet scent after it rained.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
Sil Link ParentScience definitely has some known failures, past and present. There are huge lists of sources of bias that can creep in (e.g., not publishing a study, control over what to measure, control over...Science definitely has some known failures, past and present. There are huge lists of sources of bias that can creep in (e.g., not publishing a study, control over what to measure, control over when to stop measuring, what gets funded). You can see the bias when a company funds research, or by the unusual clustering of results that just barely make the cutoff for statistical significance. There are problems with seniority and dogma, enough to lead to the Planck-inspired phrase "science progresses one funeral at a time"
That said, science has also come a long way, and what has already accomplished is pretty incredible (e.g., the correction for time being warped by mass that is used every time your GPS finds your location). It's increasingly common to have professional statisticians available to help with research, or to to register results/submissions beforehand. We have things like the Reproducibility Project that try to stretch the impact of funding on replications by making the willingness of researches submitting their a proxy for their confidence in their research. Science attempts to self-correct with metascience.
The last I heard of Sheldrake was the controversy about his "The Science Delusion", and the impression I got from that was he was someone like Deepak Chopra, who instead of wanting to improve scientific research and accuracy in predicting/understanding phenomena, wanted to use shortcomings of current knowledge or the flaws of research as a wedge for pseudo-scientific ideas. To kneecap the potency of a scientific worldview because it is what is preventing them from promoting their worldview. "Scientists are unsure about quantum loop gravity or String theory; therefore research about psychics is worth funding. Academics have committed fraud; therefore perpetual motion".
The wiki entry from that time supports that impression, with him saying things like "the evidence for energy conservation in living organisms is weak". Is "Science Set Free" a departure from that? Have his views changed? Or do you not consider them anti-science?
Someone like V.S. Ramachandran comes to mind as an example of someone who is less constrained by orthodoxy in science, who used his creativity to do some great science / come up with a treatment to help with phantom limb syndrome.
(on a side note, his son, Cosmo Sheldrake is a musician that has a lot of fascinating songs that seem like they're influenced by his father)
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
Sil Link ParentI read Candide after playing selections from the musical in band, and it seemed to hold up fairly well. I borrowed the pithy critique of Optimism as a philosophy from it: "Once one dismisses the...I read Candide after playing selections from the musical in band, and it seemed to hold up fairly well. I borrowed the pithy critique of Optimism as a philosophy from it: "Once one dismisses the rest of all possible worlds, one finds that this is the best of all possible worlds"
Is there any other short story that stands out to you as worth reading?
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Comment on Scientism, the coronavirus, and the death of the humanities in ~humanities
Sil Link ParentYou're right, I just hadn't heard enough about Hitchens. Also agree that classifying views seems to be incredibly messy, especially over a lifetime. Heinlein comes to mind as someone that seems to...You're right, I just hadn't heard enough about Hitchens.
Also agree that classifying views seems to be incredibly messy, especially over a lifetime. Heinlein comes to mind as someone that seems to have yoyo-ed a bit on his views.
A while back I read a book that talks about different fundamental values of liberals vs conservatives. Since then I've seen some critiques from psychologists that some of the questions moral foundations theory is based on boil down more to "are you an American liberal or conservative" and not "do you value loyalty". Seeing how little things like loyalty are cared about in the context of John McCain or Republicans that are called "human scum" by Trump for not supporting him reinforces those critiques a bit for me.
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Comment on Scientism, the coronavirus, and the death of the humanities in ~humanities
Sil Link ParentI took a look at the wiki on his political views and there was certainly a lot I didn't know about him, appreciate the correction. I knew him from reading "God Is Not Great" and assorted news...I took a look at the wiki on his political views and there was certainly a lot I didn't know about him, appreciate the correction. I knew him from reading "God Is Not Great" and assorted news blips like him changing his views on water-boarding, which gave a pretty inaccurate impression.
Your ellipses cuts out the "if she doesn't want to" which he says multiple times
I didn't mean to misrepresent what he said, just highlight the socially conservative view. He appears to have a view in line with women/men being inclined to being nurturers/breadwinners, and that at least men have a duty to be responsible for women.
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Comment on Scientism, the coronavirus, and the death of the humanities in ~humanities
Sil Link ParentOut of curiosity, what makes you say Christopher Hitchens belong to the left? I'm not the most informed on him, but recall he was a strong defender of the Iraq war and has some fairly conservative...or even comes from the left (e.g., Christopher Hitchens)
Out of curiosity, what makes you say Christopher Hitchens belong to the left? I'm not the most informed on him, but recall he was a strong defender of the Iraq war and has some fairly conservative views like "no, I'm not having any woman of mine go to work" ... "they're called the gentle sex for good reason, I wouldn't want to see them coarsened by the labor market".
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Comment on Why astrology matters in ~science
Sil Link ParentI share your intuitions (and I've had a parent who has been negatively effected by being into many shades of woo), but it's a hard thing to know how history would have played out if you change...I share your intuitions (and I've had a parent who has been negatively effected by being into many shades of woo), but it's a hard thing to know how history would have played out if you change something like that.
Is credit due to the faith of the Catholic priest who conceived of the idea of the Big Bang/expanding universe, because it called for a first cause? Or would that soon be discovered by Hubble anyways, and in a universe without Christianity Newton would have discovered it in the "wasted" latter part of his life because he didn't get into alchemy and Christian mysticism?
There's a Douglas Adams quote I've seen on the topic that stuck with me:
“In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It's just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It's like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that's now been taken away and hidden. The graphite's not important. It's just the means of revealing the indentations. So you see, astrology's nothing to do with astronomy. It's just to do with people thinking about people.”
If you're being charitable, I think you can say astrology is engaging in the most basic of basics of human cognition: story telling and pattern recognition. There's a hundred other similar pseudo-sciences that do the same basic thing, from cracking tortoise shells to cheese divination.
The high IQ of Ashkenazi Jews may come from a culture that plays rules-lawyer with God, in the same way a philosophy major may be better prepared for law school because they similarly struggle with the arbitrary-but-structured views of Kant.
At least with divination via astrology you may fund the glass industry, have some observations being recorded, and by your mere existence and cultural weight invite people like Tycho Brahe to do a better job?
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Comment on The problem of free speech in an age of disinformation in ~news
Sil Link ParentI don't have a background in law, but I don't believe the U.S. has absolute free speech. In 1942 in a 9-0 Supreme Court decision it was upheld that you aren't allowed to call a town marshall a...I don't have a background in law, but I don't believe the U.S. has absolute free speech.
In 1942 in a 9-0 Supreme Court decision it was upheld that you aren't allowed to call a town marshall a "damned racketeer/fascist" because those are "fighting words":
There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words--those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.
Often this ideal of absolute free speech is framed as a slippery slope, an ever-tightening ratchet of what is allowed to be said. In reality, after that 1942 ruling there were repeated challenges and steps in the opposite direction. Most recently, in 2011 actions of the Westboro Baptist Church were upheld, and I don't think anyone would argue that picketing the funerals of American soldiers with signs saying they were going to/deserved to burn in hell and depictions of sodomy are more inciting than calling someone a "damned fascist".
Furthermore, it gets trickier in gray areas
There are a lot of tricky and gray areas. That's life, and we have to do the best we can to work with that. Does an individual magically become an adult at 16-18? No. Are we better off having imperfect laws on the age of consent instead of getting stuck on the edge cases? Probably?
A lot of society is set up to try to do an okay job in a complicated world. Civilian jurors, discretion of what is chosen to prosecute, human judges, or appealing to representatives to make new laws are ways of adding in some human course-correction. I'd argue that is how we go from a 9-0 against calling someone a damned fascist to begrudging acceptance of the WBC.
I think you can have prudent rules on free speech or what's required of social media platforms without creating a Ministry of Truth. And it's not like the current U.S. gov't didn't scrub out references to climate change, lie about 3-5 million illegal voters, use a sharpy to change the path of a hurricane, or a thousand other things as is. Would it be better or worse if there was a precedent/framework to contest it when a president claims there were millions of illegal votes?
The internet as a platform also is fundamentally different from other types of speech that have existed in the past.
Not all are exclusive to the internet, but some jumping-off points are:
- What do you do with chilling effects? If Call of Duty decided to ban aggressively for racist/misogynistic voice chat, and as a result women or other voices that hadn't felt comfortable or incentivized to talk talk more, is speech more or less restricted?
- By function, Google and a lot of other technologies have to rank things by relevance. They have the stats on how many people read to the second page of search results or look past item #3. Is Google censoring or preventing free speech when it chooses to rank things past the first page?
- When Google is faced with giving a parent looking for information on vaccines information how should they weight results that a) increase engagement/ad revenue they get, b) correspond to the consensus opinion of medical experts, c) the parent would find most relevant, d) come from government-endorsed sources, or e) represent a breadth of opinions (including anti-vaxxers and retracted studies like Wakefields')?
- As things like text/profile generation or other astroturfing tools increasingly get better one individual is able to masquerade as tens of thousands of unique individuals and put out a firehose of free speech. At what point (if at all) does this need to be restricted?
- Is someone who posts a thousand times a day at all analogous to a person with a megaphone drowning out what other people are trying to say? What about a million times, where those million posts are machine-generated but perfectly in line with what the person already wants to say? Are protestors who shout to drown out a controversial speaker engaging in free speech or suppressing it?
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Comment on On the 18th October, Finland celebrates National Fairy Tale Day – share childhood favourites, recommend lesser known tales, or even get a little creative and make up your own in ~books
Sil Link ParentI always liked the Irish equivalent of King Arthur, Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool): He obtained the ability of foresight by accidentally sucking on his thumb he burned while cooking the Salmon...I always liked the Irish equivalent of King Arthur, Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool):
He obtained the ability of foresight by accidentally sucking on his thumb he burned while cooking the Salmon of Knowledge for the poet who spent 7 years catching it. As a result, he would sometimes suck his thumb before wars to gain some salmon insight.
The folk explanation of a landmark on the north coast of Ireland known as the Giant's Causeway
is that Finn got into a feud with a Scottish giant, Benandonner.The causeway was made by Finn (described in the story, but not typically, as a giant himself) to get over to Scotland to fight Benandonner. Upon seeing that the Scottish giant was much larger than him he fled home.
When Benandonner crossed over to Ireland to seek out Finn, Finn's wife fed the Scottish giant bread with iron inside and asked if he wanted to meet their baby while Finn was out hunting. The "baby" was Finn swaddled in a cloth. Seeing how big the "baby" was and what hard food Finn ate, Benandonner decided to flee back to Scotland.
I think the moral is that discretion is the better part of valor, but it might be missing one as well..?
Definitely.
You interleaved humorous/flavorful language (e.g., "Jiminy-Christian", "perhaps not much more than one-Prince tall") throughout, and balanced that very well with the dialogue, the descriptions, and the insight.
You were able to pretty concisely talk about the main ideas (optimism/your skepticism/"law of attraction") in a way that didn't cut out the nuance. It felt accessible in a way that I've never been able to pull off, having had a lifetime of opportunity with a similar member of my family. What could have come across as judgmental didn't due to the even-handed treatment.
Some parts I liked were:
...
...ending it with "for her, everything was magic" rides that line of ambiguity you keep throughout. That cynical (read: correct) perspective of yours that calls out the survivorship bias of people peddling things like the "law of attraction" or prosperity theology is tempered by your own self-criticism. Your sister makes remarkable things happen. Her optimism works magic--whether that's on her mood, or in discovering opportunities you think aren't worth exploring-- and she met a fellow practitioner in Mr. Polyanna.
...
I like the inclusion of your other sister. If I were going to recommend you revisiting any area to restructure or expand on I might point to that section. You set up yourself as the foil to your sister, similar to the relationship between the condescending/pragmatic assistants and Mr. Dianna. The inclusion of your younger sister seems like it's trying to fill the role of some middle point, and I think you could flesh out the use-and-abuse-of-optimism here, if you wanted.
The ending really hits you. It makes a lot of choices you made at the start make sense, and really drives home your criticism of the post-hoc measuring of the "law of attraction". Your sister's relative lack of success with her ""Visualization"" contrasts with Prince and Mr. Dianna to make the entire practice feel petty and trivial, more down to chance and support structure than anything real.
At the same time it keeps that pseudo-mystical feel you have throughout. Your sister came up with the same number? Maybe the angels have issues understanding chronology in addition to sardonicism..? It captures well what it feels like for a skeptic to witness someone who lives an entirely different sort of life, stumbling through barriers with an improbable consistency that is hard for the skeptic to understand.
As I mentioned earlier, my mom is similar to your sister. I grew up in a house with homeopathy, reflexology, magnet pillows, and co-op groups with women who subscribed to reiki energy healing whose mechanism worked fine as long as you remained subscribed to the email newsletters. Astrology readings were bought at a time she was at risk of losing her home.
I moved back to my hometown a few years ago partly to take care of her as she became disabled. One CAM practitioner she saw for her problems recommended she eat a restrictive diet that consists of only 3 ingredients that she chews exactly 40 times per bite.
Shortly after moving back my mom pushed my visiting brother and I to help her put together a yard-sale. The location had little traffic and the things being sold weren't particularly valuable. The result was a relative's ankle was broken in a drain and we sold barely enough to cover what she had spent on putting it together, including $3 worth of hotdogs that I awkwardly grilled on a Foreman grill on an extension cord.
Later the extent of her disability and insolvency came out, and some of her strange and abrasive behavior made sense. She convinced herself a yardsale could fix things. She somewhat estranged family in her insistence to have Christmas at her house because she was scared it would be the last time she would have it.
Before moving back I had a housemate who studied drug addiction whose favourite book was "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts", which takes a sympathetic view to addicts and advocates harm-reduction policies. It mentions an alcoholic woman whose grandfather used to hold her down and spit on her. In Gabor Mate's drugs are often coping mechanisms. They're flawed, but they might be supporting a person in a way you have to understand if you want to put forth an alternative.
My mom is a smart woman. She pays attention to others, she's willing to challenge authority and call things out that other social convention asks you sweep under the rug. Sometimes that's great (e.g., checking in on an elderly woman whose been seen with bruises) and sometimes it manifests in extremely flawed and stubborn thinking.
I'm writing a bit too much, but the tl;dr is that I appreciated your work for trying to understand and appreciate your sister while not shying away from criticizing the ugly "Just-world" implications of The Secret.
Honestly I don't have any complaints. There are some parts that could be rewritten to be easier to read (per @Grzmot) but that might take away from the style of it. You could include more on what a healthy use of optimism is, but that might clutter it and would probably require changing an ending that I already really like.
A bit of a side issue, but I've been a bit reluctant to participate in any creative/writing things because I don't have any background. I dipped out of writing in 6th grade after a teacher strongly criticized a sweet girl who wrote a story about a smile traveling around the world, and distantly witnessing that girl's downward spiral through the rest of her school career.
I've been around writers enough to know that there are many things that I'm missing beyond the art of compliment-sandwich-criticism. You're obviously a skilled writer, and you seem to have at least enough background to give you an idea of how to structure a writing club.
So my issue is that I don't know how to contribute (via feedback or submission) in a way that actually adds value to writers. I don't have any intuitions on what feedback writers want.
I also have some neck/shoulder issues that are a constant distraction and limit my computer time, and a variety of other life obligations that make it hard to hit submission deadlines or give timely feedback. I've been writing something on the theme of liminality/castoreum (thought you were being literal) but I'm not sure when I'll be able to finish it, or if I should submit it. I'm fine following along as a lurker.
Any thoughts?