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[faust]

Hot take: being anti crypto is stupid

the blockchain is the technological implementation of digital scarcity. That's it. Previously, there was no analog to physical scarcity; if I email you the serial number of a bill, we both have it. Now there is. It's such a bizarre thing to be against. It makes about as much sense to me as being anti zero knowledge proof.

The non-stupid argument against using bitcoin and such is that it damages the climate, but this doesn't translate into being "anti-crypto"

It really doesn't help much to think of people who disagree with you as stupid.

In the end, crypto is a tool and can be used in different ways. I'm sure people who are "anti-crypto" are not opposed to the concept of a blockchain itself. For instance, I would say I'm anti-car but I do not think no cars should ever be produced anymore, just that the way we use cars and design whole cities and laws in order to fit the needs of car-owners is detrimental, and that individual transportation needs to massively be scaled back.

My opinion on crypto is less well-formed. There is the environmental impact. Then I find the whole concept of introducing scarcity where it wasn't before kind of weird, considering that generally we aim for less scarcity. I dislike the fact that the main use for all things crypto today seems to be gambling; that is just a zero-sum game and provides no value to society.

On the other hand I like the decentralized open-source nature of it; it would be neat if we could organize money a little more like that. However in its current form crypto is unusable as money because its value just fluctuates too much.

I'm pretty sure the majority of the hate against crypto stems from the fact that weird nerdy guys are into it, and the extent to which most people even care about the environmental impact is that it's a convenient excuse to hate the thing that weird nerdy guys are into without having to explicitly admit that you just hate weird nerdy guys, which is starting to become a bit of a socially questionable thing to say out loud recently.

Yeah this reads like projection to me. Weird nerdy guys have been bullied for the things they like all their life, so now that there is societal opposition to a thing they really like it must be the case that someone is bullying them.

I mean, there might be people who genuinely hate weird nerdy guys but this psychology game can be played both ways.

[Awaclus]

Yeah this reads like projection to me. Weird nerdy guys have been bullied for the things they like all their life, so now that there is societal opposition to a thing they really like it must be the case that someone is bullying them.

I mean, there might be people who genuinely hate weird nerdy guys but this psychology game can be played both ways.

I wouldn't say bullying, it's more the case that people just want to signal to everyone that they're nothing like nerdy guys, which might hurt the feelings of nerdy guys but that's a side effect, not the intention. I mean, there surely have been instances of bullying too, but that doesn't happen to every nerdy guy.

Either way, it's hard to dispute that there exists a consistent pattern of belittling of things that nerdy guys are into for no reason besides that nerdy guys are into them. Why would crypto, of all things, be immune to this? As I acknowledged, there are actual reasons to be against Bitcoin, but as far as I can see, there should be no good reason to be against the concept of crypto in general.

[silverspawn]

Then I find the whole concept of introducing scarcity where it wasn't before kind of weird, considering that generally we aim for less scarcity.

Generally yes, but there are plenty of exceptions.

Like money.

Or votes.

  However in its current form crypto is unusable as money because its value just fluctuates too much.

DAI is a crypto coin whose value is strictly tied to the dollar

There's also the CO2 coin idea

[faust]

  However in its current form crypto is unusable as money because its value just fluctuates too much.

DAI is a crypto coin whose value is strictly tied to the dollar

There's also the CO2 coin idea

I mean yeah, these are neat ideas (I'm not sure how big exactly the required energy footprint of a secure blockchain intrastructure needs to be, so it's hard to judge whether something like CO2 coin would do more good than harm.), but you have to acknowledge that this is hardly where the vast majority of the cryptocurrency economy is at today. This is all I'm saying; people who are "anti-crypto" (in good faith) are probably criticizing the current state of crypto rather than denying that there could ever be something positive achieved with it.

[faust]

It's like if I'm saying "cars are bad and we should have less of them and restructure our transportation system", and you say "but ambulances save lives, so clearly cars are good".

[silverspawn]

I do think that's very reasonable; it's not been my experience that this is the position that anti crypto people usually hold. You are definitely not anti crypto by my standards

[silverspawn]

No concessions so far. They have until tomorrow night

[jakav]

Let's make patterns!
Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa  Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa   Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa    Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa     Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa      Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa       Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa         Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa          Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa           Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa            Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa             Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa              Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa               Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa                Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa                 Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa                  Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa                   Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa                    Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa                     Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa                      Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa                        Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa                         Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa                          Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa

[silverspawn]

hi!

This doesn't move on firefox for some reason, but it did move when I looked at it on my phone

[silverspawn]

Okay enough of this family time already. Back to business.

First, no-one in my class chose to confess so I've ordered the four definitely guilty ones in for detention as planned. I anticipate some mild protest but nothing serious.

[silverspawn]

Second. PhD is no more. And I've finished rereading the sequences a while ago. I documented my reactions and I was 328/2/7 on entirely or almost entirely agree with this post/mildly disagree/substantially disagree. I.e., they're almost entirely on point but buried in there are a few philosophical conclusions that I don't think are right, and it turns out those are extremely important.

So what I'll do now is try to provide an alternative. A comprehensive sequence of posts that lay out a different world view. One based on Open Individualism, which asserts that "you are everyone" i.e. on a fundamental level there are no different people, there is just consciousness instantiated at different places, and you are every bit as continuous with other people as with your future self. One that argues well-being may be a fundamental, quantifiable property, rather than a small, subjectively defined region in the 10000 dimensional space of all of our human values. One that argues that there is, indeed, a hard problem of consciousness; "it's subsumed in by the laws of physics, and it only seems hard because we're confused" is not actually plausible. One that doesn't focus on values and preferences but on valence/well-being.

Will this succeed? Will it get traction? The median point in the outcome distribution is probably a no. But so what? My life won't be destroyed if this leads nowhere. I'm now financially secure and quite happy, I can afford to do speculative work.

[silverspawn]

Third. I was thinking about Judith Butler for some reason.

I've made fun of her before, and there is this great Onion video that pokes fun at just how bad of a political strategy the extreme woke rhetoric is by showing an old-school Trump supporter who got converted by reading "800-or-so pages on queer feminist theory"

They quote this part from her writing:

gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which “sexed nature” or “a natural sex” is produced and established as “prediscursive,” prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture  acts

My brain cannot parse this on first try. But! Is this because it's word salad or because it's dense? I was curious so I tried to parse it. I actually didn't expect that it was nonsensical; rather I expected that it was needlessly convoluted but coherent. Here's my read.

[silverspawn]

First, one has to figure out what the relationship between sex and nature is. Unfortunately, I could see two answers here, depending on what 'nature' means. Either it means DNA, chromosomes, etc., in which case the relationship is that the latter determines the former (your chromosomes determine your sex); or it's one's nature as a person, in which case it's that the former influences the latter (your sex has an effect on your nature).

based on the remaining analysis, I conclude that the former is intended. Thus, the first sentence means that culture does not entirely determine gender.

Then she says "gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which “sexed nature” or “a natural sex” is produced and established as 'prediscursive,' prior to culture". A simpler version of this is "gender is also the means by which a natural sex is produced as prior to culture". So what this means is that, before culture gets to do its thing, gender produces something. I'm not entirely sure what that something is (what is "a natural sex?") but maybe something like a set of characteristics.

You can put the complexity back in, but it doesn't seem to do much.

Then, she's saying that culture influences this. Also it's politically neutral.

So my translation of her quote is

Culture does not entirely determine gender. Instead, there is a natural way in which gender influences [parts of your behavior that are related to your sex](?), and this happens very early on in people. The culture you're in will impact this further.

Or in a nutshell, she's saying that gender is not entirely a cultural construct. (Is this surprising coming from her?) I'm not sure if this is compatible with it being a social construct.

So I'd say this is utterly terrible writing because it's horrifically complicated when it doesn't need to be, but it's not nonsensical.

[silverspawn]

While I'm at it, I'll also answer whether gender is, in fact, a social construct, as e.g. Wikipedia claims.

The answer is that this is a stupid question.

Everyone agrees that there are certain expectations and stereotypes wrt sex that develop differently at different points in time and places on earth. E.g., women like pink and horses. These are socially constructed. If you call the set of these things "gender", then gender is socially constructed.

There are also behaviors that correlate with sex as proven e.g. by the research behind the gender continuum test. If you call these things gender, then gender is not socially constructed (but it may still be socially influenced; maybe western women do like pink more than western men but wouldn't if the stereotype didn't exist).

You could also define it as a the set of preferences or behaviors that would correlate with sex if they weren't influenced by culture.  And I'm sure there are other definitions as well.

These are definitions so there is no right answer here. You can't argue what gender is, you can only argue why one definition is better or more akin to what people usually use or have traditionally used or something like that.

A way in which these come apart is arguably honesty. There's a stereotype that women are dishonest, but, at least according to self-reports, women are in fact slightly more honest than men. So with the first definition, dishonesty would be somewhat female, whereas with the second, it would be somewhat male.

[silverspawn]

Back to Judith Butler, there is definitely a failure mode where complicated writing isn't treated right. First of all, it shouldn't be to tolerated no matter what because academia being inaccessible is a bad thing. But I suspect that it really influences reception in the opposite direction; complicated writing is impressive, and it makes it harder to dispute something because you may not understand it right.

It also makes it so people who don't understand it get to fill in the gaps themselves, and may think they agree even if they don't in fact agree with the intended message. I'm not sure my interpretation is correct, either.

All of these are bad. And the discourse around gender is, in fact, terrible, so I'm tempted to blame Judith for this. She's definitely not making things better. People BS themselves about how much they understand even with much simpler writing; this is just asking for poor discussion quality.

[silverspawn]

I also think it's extremely stupid to proclaim that gender is binary. This is both claiming that a definition is correct, and defending a definition t hat seems obviously not useful. If gender is binary, it's the same as sex; why would we need two words for the same thing.

[silverspawn]

Forth, so my sister has recovered from Covid, but she's had a pretty tough time, being quite sick for like a week or something. No idea yet how if at all this has influenced her views. It doesn't seem compatible with claiming the pandemic isn't real (which, in theory, ought to be a separate question from how dangerous the vaccines are or whether the pandemic was engineered deliberately).

[Awaclus]

First, one has to figure out what the relationship between sex and nature is. Unfortunately, I could see two answers here, depending on what 'nature' means. Either it means DNA, chromosomes, etc., in which case the relationship is that the latter determines the former (your chromosomes determine your sex); or it's one's nature as a person, in which case it's that the former influences the latter (your sex has an effect on your nature).

based on the remaining analysis, I conclude that the former is intended. Thus, the first sentence means that culture does not entirely determine gender.

Then she says "gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which “sexed nature” or “a natural sex” is produced and established as 'prediscursive,' prior to culture". A simpler version of this is "gender is also the means by which a natural sex is produced as prior to culture". So what this means is that, before culture gets to do its thing, gender produces something. I'm not entirely sure what that something is (what is "a natural sex?") but maybe something like a set of characteristics.

You can put the complexity back in, but it doesn't seem to do much.

Then, she's saying that culture influences this. Also it's politically neutral.

So my translation of her quote is

Culture does not entirely determine gender. Instead, there is a natural way in which gender influences [parts of your behavior that are related to your sex](?), and this happens very early on in people. The culture you're in will impact this further.

Or in a nutshell, she's saying that gender is not entirely a cultural construct. (Is this surprising coming from her?) I'm not sure if this is compatible with it being a social construct.

So I'd say this is utterly terrible writing because it's horrifically complicated when it doesn't need to be, but it's not nonsensical.

Well, I read it differently. My reading is:

When you separate gender and sex into the cultural construct and the natural construct, you are establishing that there is such a thing as natural sex which is unaffected by culture, by juxtaposing it with the cultural gender. This separation itself is a cultural construct, and society does this on purpose to allow for political agenda to masquerade as objective natural truth.

She doesn't actually say the second sentence, but it sounds to me like it's being heavily implied.

But yes, it is utterly terrible writing.

[Awaclus]

To me, the "means by which -- is produced" structure signals that someone is using gender as a means to produce something. It's a description of the nefarious things the enemy is doing, while being vague about who the enemy concretely is, which is a common tactic in politically charged writing.

[silverspawn]

one student has objected to the ruling on the basis that "probabilities aren't proof"

I partially blame the German language for this atrocious argument. Our words for 'evidence' are so rare and weird sounding that everyone uses 'Beweis' for both 'evidence' and 'proof' (literal translation is 'proof'). This is a major shortcoming.

[silverspawn]

You're probably right just because my reading would more surprising

[silverspawn]

But wouldn't that mean that she's saying gender itself is the misrepresentation? "Gender is the means by which ... is established", not "discourse about gender is ..."

[Awaclus]

But wouldn't that mean that she's saying gender itself is the misrepresentation? "Gender is the means by which ... is established", not "discourse about gender is ..."

My guess would be that she's using gender itself as a metonymy for the discourse about gender.

[silverspawn]

But wouldn't that mean that she's saying gender itself is the misrepresentation? "Gender is the means by which ... is established", not "discourse about gender is ..."

My guess would be that she's using gender itself as a metonymy for the discourse about gender.

yuck

this moves it from "you have to try hard to parse it" to "you literally have to guess". Unfortunately, I still suspect that your interpretation is correct.

[Awaclus]

I'm a huge fan of Brian D. Earp. His way of framing the sex/gender issue is so reasonable, considerate of different perspectives and easy to understand that it has actually helped me feel somewhat more at ease with my gender even though I didn't even know I could potentially benefit from that, being a masculine cis guy and all. And it makes trans issues seem less overwhelming to try to wrap my mind around, which is certainly helpful when I'm trying to convince people that trans people should have rights.