eyechoirs's recent activity
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Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk
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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.
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Comment on Experiences with psychedelics? in ~life
eyechoirs (edited )Link ParentThat's quite an impressive list. I was also into the "research chemical" scene for a while, back in the day, though I didn't try quite as extreme a variety: 1P-LSD 2C-E 2C-I 4-AcO-DMT 4-HO-EPT...That's quite an impressive list. I was also into the "research chemical" scene for a while, back in the day, though I didn't try quite as extreme a variety:
1P-LSD
2C-E
2C-I
4-AcO-DMT
4-HO-EPT
4-HO-MET
5-MeO-DALT
5-MeO-MiPT
AL-LAD
Hawaiian Baby Woodrose (LSA)
LSD
Psilocybin Mushrooms (4-PO-DMT)MDMA
Mephedrone
Methylone2-Oxo-PCE
3-MeO-PCP
Dextromethorphan
Deschloroketamine
Ketamine
Memantine
Nitrous Oxide
PCPSeparately, I don't know that I'd necessarily consider dissociatives like ketamine or methoxetamine to be psychedelic, really - their effects are extremely distinct from the classical psychedelics. Same with serotonergic stimulants like MDMA. Which isn't to say they can't also be very valuable, therapeutic experiences.
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Comment on Tildes Minecraft Survival - Final day scheduled for July 17th in ~games
eyechoirs Link ParentDouble-wielded diamond swords? For me? Lol thanks for adding me! Sad I can't play MC anymore but glad I got to play when I did.Double-wielded diamond swords? For me? Lol thanks for adding me! Sad I can't play MC anymore but glad I got to play when I did.
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Comment on The second Tildes Short Story Exchange is now open to submissions! (June-July 2025 edition) in ~creative
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Comment on The second Tildes Short Story Exchange is now open to submissions! (June-July 2025 edition) in ~creative
eyechoirs (edited )LinkTitle: 'Tonight's Guest' Author: eyechoirs Word count: 3233 Genre(s): Literary Fiction; Satire Expected feedback: Any general/big picture feedback. Should your story be on the EPUB? Yes Additional...Title: 'Tonight's Guest'
Author: eyechoirs
Word count: 3233
Genre(s): Literary Fiction; Satire
Expected feedback: Any general/big picture feedback.
Should your story be on the EPUB? Yes
Additional note to community: I wrote this a few years ago and got around to a 'final cut' edit a few months ago. So I probably won't edit any further, at this point, but I am curious about whether the story has its intended impact.
Links: PDF or EPUB -
Comment on Removed Reddit post: "ChatGPT drove my friends wife into psychosis, tore family apart... now I'm seeing hundreds of people participating in the same activity. " in ~tech
eyechoirs Link ParentThis reminds me of a Nietzsche quote - 'Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.' I think there's a big difference between...I truly hope you are right. Personally, I just don't think it's normal that a convict can manage to become president if most of the people who voted for him are sane. That's just one item in the endless stream of things that in my mind should not have happened / be happening if most of the people approving of it are sane.
This reminds me of a Nietzsche quote - 'Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.' I think there's a big difference between individual, organic, psychotic insanity, and the collective insanity of a society burdened by misinformation and all sorts of other 'perverse incentive'-type problems. It's important to remember that this latter type of insanity comprises individuals who are not strictly insane. They might be foolish, corrupt, intellectually lazy, whatever - but to call them insane absolves them of responsibility to a certain degree, and more importantly tends to make it seem impossible to dissuade them from their technically-delusional beliefs.
I think the Gaza genocide is an interesting example. Certainly, misinformation that leads to false beliefs is a common and perhaps necessary component of getting society to approve a genocide (as happened during the Holocaust, and is currently happening in Gaza). But is delusion actually necessary to be racist, to hate a group of people so much you want to kill them?
I think if you asked one of these racists, they'd first give you some false statements to prove their beliefs. But if you argue well enough, I think you'll drill down to the fundamental, underlying motivation - they just don't like those people. There's no reason for it; it can't be delusional because it's not based on belief. Human beings are hard-wired to hate, we've been having vicious tribal battles for as long as our species has existed. Hell, even chimpanzees commit mass slaughter against rival tribes. The concept of delusion comes into play only as we try to reconcile these feelings with our modern concept of morality, and we are forced to use false beliefs in order to justify hate and murder. But you have to understand that this step of the process is not automatic, organic, inevitable, the way that insanity is. It's something we can shine a spotlight on and prevent, using good ol' human reason. Society is making it hard to accomplish this, but it's fundamentally different from insanity the way most people conceptualize it.
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Comment on What is a non-problematic word that you avoid using? in ~talk
eyechoirs Link'Nauseous'. Originally, the word actually meant 'causing nausea', not 'feeling nausea' - for instance, you might have encountered 'a nauseous smell' as you enter a public restroom. I think this...'Nauseous'.
Originally, the word actually meant 'causing nausea', not 'feeling nausea' - for instance, you might have encountered 'a nauseous smell' as you enter a public restroom. I think this meaning is more fitting for a word which, to me, sounds particularly nauseous, with its sickly-soft post-alveolar fricative 'sh' sound. It's even more nauseous when certain people pronounce this as a voiced fricative, 'zh'.
I'll still use 'nauseous' to convey its original meaning, which more or less amounts to avoiding it - it's much more common for me to use the word 'nauseated', which is what people who use the word 'nauseous' typically ought to be using. It's such a useful distinction, and I'm sad English speakers no longer tend to observe it.
Also, fun fact, the etymology of 'nausea' comes from the Greek word 'naus' meaning ship, on which one might feel nauseated due to seasickness. This makes 'nausea' and 'nautical' a linguistic doublet.
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Comment on Removed Reddit post: "ChatGPT drove my friends wife into psychosis, tore family apart... now I'm seeing hundreds of people participating in the same activity. " in ~tech
eyechoirs Link ParentWhere did you get 'half the population' from? Only 25% of the US population voted for Trump (it seems like this is the benchmark for delusional thinking that we're both using, anyway), but a big...I mean, if half of the population is in this state, who is going to have the time and patience to help each of them out of it? Will the other half need to become professional therapists? I agree that it isn't as bad as clinical psychosis but from what I've seen, it's still really, really bad. Bad enough to mess up the world economy in a matter of months.
Where did you get 'half the population' from? Only 25% of the US population voted for Trump (it seems like this is the benchmark for delusional thinking that we're both using, anyway), but a big proportion of these people aren't slavish Trump devotees, but rather disaffected, mostly apolitical midwits, who unthinkingly subscribe to the vague notion that Republicans are supposed to be good for the economy. Is that a delusion? Technically yes, but I hope you can agree that these people don't need professional or pseudo-professional therapy. If anything, they need to see Trump fuck up the US economy badly over the next couple of years. No amount of misinformation, LLM or otherwise, will be able to paper over that issue for this mostly-sane subset of people.
You disagree that so many people could be affected but I see people every day on r/ChatGPT who speak of their LLM having emotions, being their friend, being a better therapist than any human therapist could ever be, feeling connected to it, etc. Some say it's clearly conscious and get very worked up about the fact that saying so goes against the current rules (GPT will not entertain the user saying that to it). There are a lot of these people and they behave similarly to those on r/Conservative when called into question. Not equally aggressive, yet, but this phenomenon is very new still so they probably have some degree of social shame holding them back, for now.
Couple of counterpoints here - 'seeing people every day' may ultimately be a tiny but vocal minority in the grand scheme of things. The actual loonies have a tendency to seem more prevalent than they actually are.
Second, some amount of personification is probably inevitable, but may not indicate psychosis. I refer to my laptop as 'complaining about video rendering' but that doesn't mean I actually think it's capable of complaining in the true sense of that word. Likewise, even if people believe abstractly that LLMs are conscious - betraying a poor understanding of consciousness, admittedly a complex subject - it does not necessarily mean they are willing to swallow more obviously spurious technobabble like you'd see in these purported cases of LLM induced psychosis.
I also kind of doubt shame holds any of these people back on their true beliefs. There isn't exactly a lot of shame on the anonymous internet. I feel like you may be exaggerating the extent of delusional thinking at play there.
I don't know if mass delusion on this scale is just the acceptable new normal for Americans now, but I'm over here in Europe watching this, and I'm still as bothered by it as I have ever been.
Mass delusion in the manner it's occuring here has always been normal throughout human history. Religion has typically taken on that role (regardless of your personal views on specific religions, they can't all be true). But aside from the small minority of the truly mentally ill, people can always be reasoned with, though sometimes it takes the real and painful consequences of socially-acceptable delusions to provide a helping hand. I'm not saying all this isn't a problem. It may even be a big problem. But the doomer attitude that it's a sea change beyond all prior reckoning gets in the way of the one thing that will obviously help - connecting with those around us and trying to re-establish a consensus reality.
Good recommendation, I actually just finished reading it for a political book club I'm part of.