#ozymandias271

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Frank do you know what a bus is?

I do not, but I hope it is a train and not an evil flying machine that eats your soul.

[fragariavescana]

But, as @ozymandias271 points out, one worker *can't* look after many children (at certain ages). The absolute maximum for babies is perhaps four.

childcare is financially viable if one worker looks after many children, and even more so if the worker is funded by taxes on people that don’t currently have young children but still benefit from their production.

[silver-and-ivory]

ozymandias271 said: I have no idea if either of these things will help or hurt but this is what I thought reading this:

(a) you are Asian (iirc?), Asian people *also* experience racism

(b) it is Actually Racist to treat black people differently from white people based on their race.

-like that has to be nuanced– applying the rule “try to respect other people’s cultures” will lead to doing different actions for different people, but it’s the same basic *rule*. and normal non-abusive black people do not want you to sacrifice everything to help them, any more than normal non-abusive people of other races do.

it is okay to go “I am opposed to actual racism, and some of the racism I’ve internalized is this weird pedestalizing bullshit that is harmful to both me and to normal black people”.

© do you know Alison? Might be good exposure therapy to talk to her

Wow, responses!

Thank you, and I think these are interesting. I appreciate very much your advice!

I do however want to comment on them, and by this I don’t mean any particular disrespect etc.

(a) Yes, but only as a technicality. I experience basically zero racism. (My one experience with racism was a hilarious story concerning a woman in an airport who thought I didn’t speak English so she repeated what she had just said in English, EXCEPT LOUDER.)

All in all, I think I’ve been hurt far more for being conservative (well, “conservative”) than I have been for being Chinese.

But yes, this is true, and thank you.

(b) This is a good argument.

But I don’t know if it’s useful for my purposes. I think it’s like “white guilt is racist and harmful to everyone”. It’s true and indeed accurate, but it’s framed as a thing emerging from white supremacy, which white people need to stop doing, for the benefit of black people, in order to Fight Racism and to Stop Being Racist.

This feels odd to me, because this kind of “protect them at all costs” pedestalization is not one of the ways that black people have historically been oppressed in the US, nor does it ever seem to be part of racism against nonwhites. To me, this seems like a wholly new reverse discourse, rather than an extension of preexisting racist structures.

© Yes! I do know Alison! In fact, like many people, I am dating Alison!

My brain kept (unendorsedly) discounting her as a real black person, since she’s Too Nice and obviously Not Angry Enough At Me. I think my ex-friend would probably revoke Alison’s ~official black card~.

If I could convince my brain to start counting my interactions with her as Interactions With a Real Black Person Who Is Black, that would be really good.

[sinesalvatorem]

TFW you develop a special interest in devout Christian social groups, but most writing by devout Christians about their subculture is either boring af or makes you want to gag.

Where are the good Christian writers who don’t say terrible things about gender? :(

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Seeing a reblog of a high quality dead ozymandias271 post with a bunch of notes and that classic “Then perish!” smugness at some lowly anons like damn there should be a poem for this

[a-man-adrift]

My April Fools Confession

[hat tip to @ozymandias271.  Also, it’s not April the 1st.  Um… April Fool!]

1.

I want to go home.

I was born into this universe some decades ago now; every now and again something happens to me that reminds me of how things are back home — how things… dammit, how things should be! — and I content myself with a Dream of returning there.

It never occurred to me to give my home universe’s analogue of Earth a name: I never studied astronomy but superficially, and the texts I worked off of just referred to it as “the planet”.  Hm, let’s see: I think I’ll call it Web.  We did invent crypto-currencies, onion routing and the vending machine before the idea of the telephone occurred to any of us, after all.

Web as a planet is the same size and shape as all the other Earths out there; Web as a human society is a deal smaller than this one.  There might be a couple of millions of us, spread over roughly the same territory claimed by the nation of Venezuela here.  We’re pretty spread out, and we like it that way. Elbow room.  Fortunately, as you’ll see, our birth rate is fairly low, so we’ll have all the elbow room we need for a while yet.

For us… I guess we’re Spiders, aren’t we?… For us Spiders, life is divided into three realms: Work, Dreams and… well, the closest thing to a one-syllable word for the other thing in English is probably ‘Life’, as in ‘Work-_ Balance’, or ‘Get a _’: I mean hanging out, socialising, all that.  The fact that you people call that ‘Life’ is all a self-respecting Spider needs to know about this universe, according-to-my-scale-of-values (that’s all one very short word in my language).

2.

The most important thing about the three realms, that every Spider learns at a very young age, is that ne’er the, um, thrain shall meet. I mentioned crypto-currencies and onion routing earlier: anonymity is built into our version of the Internet to the point where it wouldn’t function without it.  Actually, Work has been run on an anonymous basis since before anyone invented computers — reading about the silent trade was one of the emotional moments that brought memories of Web flooding back.

The romantic ideal of Work is that of a Spider who builds something huge, like the Internet, or a new kind of power plant, or what have you, completely solo, then generates a new ’nym — er, that’s a unique base64 identifier in a many-to-one relationship with a Spider —, uses it to advertise what he’s achieved, and then never uses it again.  I mean, sure, the royalties flood in, or the usage fees, or what have you, but besides drawing the coin to spend on your Dreams and your Life, you never do anything under that ’nym again.

If I may digress: that’s always been the hardest part of living here for me: the idea that who you are in your Life depends on the Work you do.  Life is Life: for a Spider, who you are in Life depends on, well, who you are in Life, if for no other reason that nobody in your Life necessarily knows anything about your work.  And if they do, they’ll pretend they don’t, or you’ll cut them out of your Life, and nobody’ll blame you.

Anyway, of course Work isn’t like the ideal for almost anyone.  For one thing, of course, most Works need more than one Spider to get them done, and for another, most Spiders spend their Working life under one or two ’nyms at most, because they need a reputation associated with a stable (but still Work-exclusive) identity to draw in enough cash to meet their goals.  Having said that, if you’re not ambitious, you can live fairly comfortably on anonymous piecework: the climate in the inhabited regions of Web is temperate enough that you really have to work at going hungry, and, well, it’s generally considered the done thing to divide up the Work you’ve designed into jobs that are small enough, and well-enough documented, that any scrub can come along, assign themselves to it and get it done quick.  Where possible, of course.  I’ll be honest and admit that Web has a pretty chronic labour shortage, and our infrastructure isn’t the best in the world, but it’s weathered more disasters than it looks like it can, because it’s so decentralised.

I could go on and on about land tenure, education, our version of patents, and how we’re all armed to the teeth when we’re on our own ground, but hopefully you get the basic idea.  I will just mention that when a Work absolutely has to be done face-to-face, like medicine, or the poor souls who learn better from spoken interaction than documentation, dealing with one another if/when you encounter each other in Life is rather like here if you happen to meet socially with a health professional who’s treating you for a stigmatised condition, or a sex worker, say.  Some people are fine with having people they know they Work with in their Life, some even ‘talk shop’, as you Earthlings say, but the safe assumption absent any signalling to the contrary is that you should act like you don’t recognise one another.  Actually, that keys into a principle of Life in general, but that’s Life, of which more anon.

3.

First, Dreams.  Ah, sweet Dreams: my favourite part of being a Spider. The term, as you may have guessed, encompasses everything you’d put under the heading of “entertainment”, or at least the consumption thereof.  Creating Dreams, of course, is Work.  Some of your art forms are immediately recognisable to any Spider.  Novels, for example, have been around Web even longer than here, and video games are absolutely huge — VR was about where it is now when I… left, and I’m willing to bet by now it’s way ahead of you.  Um, no offence.  Moving pictures trend more towards TV than movies, — you’d likely find our movie/TV analogues maddening, like they weren’t finished — and the visual arts and music are valued rather less than they are here. Works like these aren’t treated like they’re the point, in the way art here sometimes is: they exist to be used as adjuvants to a Spider’s own Dreams, something to stimulate the imagination.  The romantic ideal of Dreaming is a Spider who contains a multitude of worlds in their own head, that nobody ever sees.  Once again the ideal falls short of the reality, since any Spider who can pull it off either has to sell some of their Dreams as Works, or devote time they’d rather be Dreaming to more industrial Work to make ends meet. Serious Dreamers sometimes get teased in Life because we… uh, they… oh — who am I kidding? — we walk around with glassy eyes and sometimes you have to repeat yourself when you’re talking to us.  “In a world of their own” is a saying with some hefty resonance for a Spider who’s very into their Dreaming.

I have a little cache of Earth-produced DreamWorks I hope to find a way to take back to Web some day, by the way.  All my fellow Spiders will have to see is the way the highly sensible Solarians in Asimov’s The Naked Sun and Robots and Empire are supposed to seem creepy, and they’ll know exactly what I’ve been through.  Single-player RPGs should be big hits, too.  Actually, that might be my personal taste coming through… I’ll try to take as many games as I can with me: a hardcore Dreamer can build lore around even the most superficial game mechanic.  There’s still something to be said for an immersive world as a Work, though, as long as there’s just enough left blank for a Dreamer.

4.

And finally, Life.  From what I can tell, this is the part of the Web y’all Earthicans would probably feel most at home in.  On Earth, terms like “meeting new people”, “society” and “community” are generally recognised as being hurrah words in a way they really aren’t, or at least aren’t necessarily, on Web. Life is fine and all, and no Spider can truly, um, live without it, but it’s not all there is to, um, life (see how much trouble you’re being?  Stupid Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), and like I said before, it’s a separate thing from Work and Dreams.

I think the best analogue to Life on the Web is the social customs of gentlemen and ladies in the late-19th, early-20th century Western world.  We have the same polite fiction that we’re all too well-off to soil our hands with Work — and if a Spider should mysteriously not have much time for Life, well, we’ve all been there.  And crucially, your standing in Life has nothing to do with your Work, like I said. You’re doing well in Life if you’re good company, if you’re always there for your friends… if people love you.  It’s as simple and as vertigo-inducingly complicated as that.

There are some differences, of course.  The concept of the “cut direct” is unremarkable Spider behaviour: it signals that you’re Working or Dreaming, or just not in the market for new acquaintances right now.  Life is always an explicit-opt-in thing.  To facilitate this opting, we have codes of dress that look positively baroque, but lots of people have put in some good (mostly volunteer) Work documenting them, so with a little study in advance you can tell down to a nicety what kinds of relationship a Spider is open to just by glancing at their clothes.  And if somebody’s wearing unadorned block colours, you act like they’re not there.  Or nod and smile, tops. I’ve been told I have a bad habit of doing that.

Life is about as many-splendoured a thing on the Web as here: we’ve got everything from cliquish Neo-Victorians like me to non-stop naked cuddle piles or whatever it is you people are into.  And honestly, I’m not bothered by that, because I know that my signs aren’t some nebulous pheromonal body-language thing that some people just really suck at reading; they’re right there on my chest, and if you try to go beyond my limits people will take one look, and in general they’ll agree that you’re the asshole.  In general it works: “Live and let Live” is another Earth saying any Spider can relate to.

Life is also, of course, the place new Spiders come from. Child-rearing is considered a Work, of course.  In that sense, every Spider is a Work, although one that doesn’t go on the market for sale, thankfully…  To have a child, you have to get close enough to someone in Life to be comfortable talking about your Work, so you can compare notes on how you’re going to fund the Work of raising a sprog. Spiders tend towards monogamy, at least in parenting, because it’s difficult for most of us to let even one person in far enough to embark on a collaborative Work like that, let alone more.  Aand, now you see what I mean about the low birth rate.  Having said that, it’s a bell curve: we have a small poly minority, and a slightly larger minority of asexuals.  Our Work and Life norms make poly more difficult, and Dreams make asexuality seem like the obvious choice for those that already lean that way.  “Sex should stay in Dreams where it belongs,” is a Spider saying I’ve been guilty of now and again.

5.

Mmm, now, what have I forgotten?  Oh, right, names.  Names on the Web are something anyone can give you.  A Spider will tend to be called the same thing by everyone in a particular community in Life where they hang out, but in a different community, they might go by a different name.  And at Work, everyone has their own directory of pronunciations for ’nyms they know of.

If you want to spot a Spider stranded on Earth, there are some English words and phrases that might make them smile.  The word “workaholic” can be calqued straight to or from English from our written language, and of course the analogues of “dreamaholic” and “lifeaholic” exist too.  If you mention “work/life balance” and they say “What about Dreams?”, then that’s conclusive, of course!

Now that I mention it, social media, that’s another thing we sort of don’t have. Our Internet was built for Work, heck, for that matter our written language was built for Work, so when I left we were only just exploring the possibilities of using it for Life.  Life centres around a Spider’s local area, generally: rural/forest areas with wide open spaces between homesteads for us Dreamer folk, and slightly more densely-populated areas for Lifeaholics.  Having said that, the use of telephony and webcams and such for Life is taking off.  By the time I get back they’ll probably have VR telepresence going.  If you mention Second Life to someone and they laugh for no reason, I’ll be sure.

6.

Lastly, I want to expand a bit on the whole “Live and let Live” thing.  One of the things that most baffles me about Earth is the way all y’all seem to have your priorities set when it comes to finding things out.  Seems like for humans, your first choice for a way to find out about the world is to find someone in your Life and ask them.  For a Spider, of course, learning is Work, so we find things out by reading them, by experiment, or at the talkiest by Working with a teacher.  It just seems obvious to me that using Life for learning is subject to these awful failure modes: I mean, look at that business with the mass of the electron.

Anyway, the worst part is that you seem to use Life to make your ethico-moral decisions.  You decide right from wrong by seeing what your friends and family seem to think, and to a Spider, that’s… crazyballs.  One constant in our culture is that you’re not an adult until you’ve worked out your value system.  As a matter of romantic ideals, again, you’re expected to choose your terminal values and work out your choices mathematically, but of course nobody’s that rigorous, at least not all the time.  And because we consider having your own value system to be a sign of maturity, naturally letting people make their own mistakes is just basic respect from one adult to another.  It doesn’t stop us teasing the people in our Lives for their crazy values, but it’s all in good fun. And if it’s not, you can just take your insignia off and tap out.

Hm, writing this has been rewarding Work.  I guess I’ll answer questions if you have any, or maybe another stranded Spider will chime in under another ’nym. Maybe it’ll be me under another ’nym instead. Or maybe, just maybe, by the time you read this I’ll be back on the Web, compound interest will have done its thing, and I’ll be checking out the latest Dream hardware!

Regards,

fe7ba17d-80ae-426e-8ae4-976aeb1c7e5a

[wolffyluna]

good job Tumblr for keeping to the important facts of “SAM is BLACK” and not to the silly boring irrelevant facts like “SAM HAS WINGS AND A JETPACK”

[millievfence]

Gender Identity and the Ideological Turing Test

@ozymandias271 has been running an Ideological Turing Test on Gender Identity vs. Blanchard Bailey theories of transness (supporters of one or the other write essays for both as if they were a supporter of it), and it has driven home for me how much these are in different categories of things.

I hadn’t intended to vote, and don’t think I voted on a single Gender Identity entry.  But I found myself spontaneously forming opinions on the Blanchard Bailey ones and voting.  The truth isn’t out yet and it’s possible I was very wrong, but even so I think the fact that I could not even form an opinion on the Gender Identity essays points to an important thing.  

I have a gears level understanding of Blanchard-Bailey.  I could see how changing an input would change its prediction, and I can see how changing their model would change its reaction to the same input.  This gears level understanding lets me say things like “I can see the evidence that those things exist but why on earth would you insist those are the only two possible cases?”

Not only do I not have a gears level understanding of Gender Identity theory, it feels to me like a gears level understanding is impossible.  GI says that what goes on inside people’s head is a black box that we must just accept.  What makes someone a woman?  She says she’s a woman.  But why is she choosing that over being a man?  Because she’s a woman.  What is she basing that choice on? She feels better as a woman.  What are the implications of choosing being a woman over a man? Whatever an individual decides...

I could pass an ideological turing test on gender identity, but as a Chinese room, where I could pass blachard-bailey with actual understanding.  I’m also left with the vague feeling that trying to have a gears level understanding is shameful, which I super do not appreciate.  

My own theory that the phrase gender identity is increasingly doing the work of “identity”, full stop, feels better to me.  It’s not predictive now because we’re in a weird transition period where several definitions are in flux to the point of uselessness.  But it predicts we will stabilize with fairly well understood definitions of what people mean when they say “Being Male/Female is an Important Part of My Identity”, and people for whom those predictions aren’t valid will say “yeah, I have a testosterone/estrogen type body but it’s not an important part of my self-identity, it’s more important you know I am Christian/a nerd/a tiger.”  The same way that for some people race is a physiological trait and for others it’s a deep part of who they are.

I wish the commenters were focusing on “is this person making a good argument for the side” and ignoring “is this person using the quirks of phrasing you’d expect from this side.”  Some of that is because humans like to win, but I think another part is that the phrasing is the most there part of gender identity.  It’s not a theory of transness, it’s a signaling mechanism for demonstrating you are emotionally safe for trans people.  Which is a good thing to have.  I just wish it wasn’t marketing itself as a scientific explanation

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

sbubby: eef freef

It's all fun and games until Eee-Freef arrives to drag your blog out of the brothel and rush you home to your parents

[fnord888]

I don’t know if it’s quite what you had in mind regarding a special interest in #babies, but it’s nifty and it made me think of you @sinesalvatorem @ozymandias271

[fierceawakening]

https://funereal-disease.tumblr.com/post/159265488460/ozymandias271-people-who-are-very-angry-about My big thing is I don't know what it's supposed to be contrasted with, and I see things labeled toxic all the time where I can see why, but I also think there is a fairly obvious nontoxic way to do the thing or version of it that never even gets mentioned. I also have to admit to a sore spot about people making fun of bodybuilders. I know that the idea is to make fun of a particular subculture, and what I do when I exercise really can't be considered bodybuilding. But the exercise I do is a tool to mitigate my dysphoria, so when I hear people making fun of Muscles McLiftBro I kind of want to throw dumbbells at them (if I'm feeling aggressive) or peel my skin off (if i'm internalizing shame or having a dysphoria flare up in response.)

[silver-and-ivory]

ozymandias271 replied to your post: Does anyone know why caffeine has a terrible,...

have you tried other stimulants?

I haven't! It's possible that this is the case, and I wonder why I'm so sensitive to it.

[sinesalvatorem]

...which glowfic?

ozymandias271 said: is there a specific favorite glowfic or is it like… being convinced to read glowfic in general

kirbymatkatamiba said: I second this question

yumantimatter said: ^^^

It’s the elf fic. It’s exclusively about the elf fic, but I avoid all discussion of glowfic, because the elf fic inevitably comes up. I said “everyone’s favourite glowfic” because a majority of all glowfic discussion that reaches me is about this one fic, so I assume it’s the crowd favourite.

yumantimatter said: And also, if you are OK with talking about it, why is it a trigger?

Very personal bit of #tragic backstory, the going-into of which would being 1) excruciatingly painful, 2) probably start a one of those constantly-erupting community flamewars, and 3) could have severe legal repercussions. So I am very not going to talk about it, sorry.

[onecornerface]

Universal Basic Income conference - everyone is invited!

Hey everyone! Are you interested in Universal Basic Income? The philosophy department of Bowling Green State University, in northwest Ohio, is doing a conference entitled “The Future of Work, Technology, and a Basic Income.” It is Friday, April 7th and Saturday, April 8th. Each day will feature five paper presentations relating to UBI and some related topics, by philosophers and other scholars. It lasts pretty much all day, both days, breaking for lunch.

Here is the schedule, with a list of paper titles and times.

We will have three keynote speakers:

- Dr. Philippe Van Parijs, one of the most influential advocates of UBI alive today! 

- Dr. Evelyn Forget, author of numerous economics articles

- Dr. Matt Zwolinski, founder of the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog

Registration is not required, but it is encouraged and is free. Attending without registration is also free. Everyone is invited!

Registration link.

Motels and stuff.

Getting to Bowling Green.

Location: The BGSU Mileti Alumni Center, on Alumni Drive -Bowling Green State University -Bowling Green, Ohio 43402

(Unfortunately, the special rate for hotels is no longer available, and it is no longer possible to register for the conference’s meals. Sorry, I should have posted about this sooner!)

I can possibly keep up to two people at my place overnight if I know them. Otherwise you’ll have to stay at one of the places around town, such as the Best Western Falcon Plaza (see the “motels and stuff” link above).

I earlier thought this might be a grad student thing, but nearly every speaker has a PhD. (Van Parijs has two doctorates.) I’m not certain of the ideological mix of speakers, but I think all or most of the presenters are in favor of universal basic income (just a heads-up so you aren’t disappointed if you wanted more variety of positions among presenters).

If you’re curious to see a classic Van Parijs paper on UBI and how several other scholars have supported and critiqued it, see here.

An overview of the presenters aside from the keynotes:

-Dr. Michael Cholbi, philosophy professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, who has written numerous published articles on death and paternalism 

-Daniel Hemel, J. D., assistant professor at the University of Chicago, who has written on law concerning taxation

-Dr. Douglas MacKay, assistant professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Dr. Jessica Flanigan, assistant professor of leadership studies and PPEL (philosophy-politics-economics-law, a combined major) at the University of Richmond. From her description: “Her current research includes a defense of the basic income, a series of essays about philosophical methodology and applied ethics, a Kantian analysis of disability rights, and a book project defending the legalization of sex work. Dr. Flanigan is also a proponent of Effective Altruism.”

Dr. Vida Panitch, assistant professor of Carleton University

Frauke Schmode, M. A. (Her page doesn’t have much info.)

Dr. Justin Tosi, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan. He co-wrote (with my professor Dr. Brandon Warmke) an article that analyzes grandstanding, which is either the same as or kind of like virtue-signaling.

For further information, ask Dr. Michael Weber, the head of the BGSU philosophy department: meweber@bgsu.edu

Tagging some assorted people who might maybe be interested I dunno:

@ozymandias271 @theunitofcaring @trickytalks

[shieldfoss]

Did Ozy get their account hacked? When I try to go to (don’t go here) ozymandias271.tumblr.com it redirects to some bullshit sites.

[inquisitivefeminist]

@ozymandias271 said: I feel it would be rude to reblog this and tag it "laugh rule"

nah go for it