bbwbsb (u/bbwbsb) - Readit News

bbwbsb commented on The Responsibility of Intellectuals (1967) nybooks.com/articles/1967... · Posted by u/andsoitis

smitty1e · 2 months ago

The article was hilarious to me. To whom are we responsible? And who manages the "truth" supply?

If we're assuming a postmodern stance that there is no objective truth, or even a utilitarian stance that truth is a consensus, then life is reduced to some extended chemical reaction, and there is no difference between a Stalin and a Mother Theresa.

If one posits some religious definition of an objective truth, then at least there is a definition to measure against beside "Do as thou wilt".

I'm not a huge Chomsky fan anyway. Despite his appeal to truth, he tends to ring false for me.

bbwbsb · 2 months ago

Responsibility is to those that give status. Duty of the pro-social sort is what you buy status (regard) with.

Neither subjective or consensus accounts of truth (neither of which correspond with postmodernism or utilitarianism in the way you imply) are obviously inconsistent. Philosophers would not bother talking about them if that were the case.

Funnily enough, I can't tell which of Stalin and Mother Theresa you are worried will be confused with the other, given that many people have opposite ideas of which was moral and which was immoral.

Modern religions define objective morality, not objective truth (excluding metaphysical assertions, which are not what one usually means by truth).

bbwbsb commented on Show HN: Autism Simulator autism-simulator.vercel.a... · Posted by u/joshcsimmons

Glyptodon · 5 months ago

A lot of the behaviors this seems to force I don't understand - like railroading whether to skip breakfast or not. I am well aware that for kids with autism frequently there are feeding issues, but what's going on in the "simulation" is very not clear to me.

Similarly, I don't understand the decisions related to the driving environment: it appears to be a personal vehicle, surely you, as the owner, can make the interior environment something that's as close to personally comfortable as possible? Maybe I'm missing the takeaway from the driving decisions.

Related, what is or isn't masking seems very confused. To begin with, it's not just code for "hiding or not hiding behaviors that appear socially irregular." But it's also not the case that deciding whether to participate in a non-working-hours event is or isn't masking in of itself.

Presenting behavior in a socialized way when necessary is a skill that's harder (as I understand it) for those on the autism spectrum, but I don't think that makes every application equivalent to masking.

bbwbsb · 5 months ago

Of course you don't get it: you're not autistic. Did you expect to get it?

There's what's that quote about good art disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed.

Eating is very stressful for many autistic people because of trauma and lack of (non-enmeshing) support in childhood. They don't learn how to make a comfortable environment for themselves or that it is even possible. Every meal becomes stressful. Force feeding or depending completely on others.

Masking goes so deep, it's just not possible to easily convey with words, because after a lifetime of masking you don't even notice all the things that you do that count.

"Presenting behavior in a socialized way when necessary" has a hidden part. Presenting what behavior? To whom? Presenting autism-coded behavior around autistic people is stress-free.

bbwbsb commented on U.S. autism data project sparks uproar over ethics, privacy and intent washingtonpost.com/health... · Posted by u/perihelions

0x1ceb00da · a year ago

One thing this will do is disincentivize high functioning autists from identifying themselves as autists, which is a very good thing IMO. Just look at this channel https://www.youtube.com/@NationalAutisticSoc/videos. There is a lot of survivor-ship bias on this channel towards high functioning autists who can talk in front of a camera.

Just to give an idea to those not familiar with the difference between high functioning and low functioning autism, high functioning autists face problems like not being able to communicate properly some of the time, and low functioning autists face problems like not even being able to tell their caretaker which part of their body is in pain, or which kid in the group punched them.

Edit: The National Autistic Society is UK based but the situation is not that different in other countries.

bbwbsb · a year ago

Yup, these people are perfectly fine. They don't need to identify each other and band together. No one is targeting them[0]. They need to stop making mountains out of molehills[1]. It's not like anything bad has ever happened to these 'high functioning' whiners[2]. I mean who cares if they are 'treated' by withholding food to force them to pretend to not be traumatized[3]. They should understand that if they stop identifying with the label or as oppressed victims it will be better for them[4]. Just like all those people with drapetomania[5] who don't realize what's best is a tough hand to guide them. Don't you miss how things used to be?[6] Back when there was more tough love[7].

--

0: lol

1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-h...

2: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9087551/

3: https://autisticadvocacy.org/policy/briefs/intervention-ethi...

4: citing a source for this one would be an insult to the reader's intelligence

5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania

6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamber_pot

7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dully

bbwbsb commented on Apple says it will add 20k jobs, spend $500B, produce AI servers in US bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/helsinkiandrew

monero-xmr · a year ago

I am a free trader in principle. However you have a country (China) with an authoritarian government that makes favored industries subsidized.

Of course the standard economic argument is that China using its GDP to make goods cheaper for our own citizens to purchase is better for us - they are subsidizing our economy. However it ignores the strategic disadvantage by our country losing its manufacturing capabilities.

The graphs may show economic advantage. It’s hard to quantify the long term strategic and militaristic disadvantage to not being able to make anything yourself if a world war occurs.

bbwbsb · a year ago

Pricing in externalities (such as national defense impact) is a basic function of economic policy.

I searched 'economics 101 strategic industries' and found this[1] within 30s which includes an overview of 'national self-sufficiency'. It presents the standard argument, including the parts you claim the standard argument ignores.

I personally favor decentralized planning over markets, but I find it unnecessary to slander economics.

--

1: https://www.adamsmith.org/economics-101

bbwbsb commented on The APL Challenge challenge.dyalog.com/... · Posted by u/bjarteaarmolund

bbwbsb · a year ago

The past challenges are available too: https://dyalog.com/apl-challenge.htm

I found working through them was helpful when learning K, and comparing the solutions to other languages can be illuminating.

bbwbsb commented on Archivists work to save disappearing data.gov datasets 404media.co/archivists-wo... · Posted by u/johnneville

bamboozled · a year ago

They might come after you for hosting it ?

bbwbsb · a year ago

i2p could be an option

bbwbsb commented on CDC: Unpublished manuscripts mentioning certain topics must be pulled or revised insidemedicine.substack.c... · Posted by u/KittenInABox

bruce511 · a year ago

I completely agree with all of this. But at the same time your whole argument applies both ways.

I'm not sure it's fair to place the burden of constitutional interpretation on every federal employee. Understanding the constitution is complex, and frankly in many places open to a lot of interpretation.

And of course if unions want to join the fray, they're welcome to.

I will however note this. Your argument gives every federal employee freedom to do anything they like. This is true for left wing and right wing alike.

The problem with the "following orders is not a defense" logic is that it implies the person had choices (feds do, they can quit, guards didnt). Equally it implies that future-winners can retro-determine what you "should have done". It judges your present actions based on some future standard. Which means you need to decide which standard you think will ultimately win.

Clearly every person has their own limit. Lots of people quit their jobs every day. And clearly that is everyone's option.

At some fundamental level though, when you enter public service, you serve at the pleasure of the public. Right now it's hard to argue that this isn't the will of the public.

You may not like it, I certainly don't, but the permissions we tell ourself now are the same permissions that apply 4, 8, 12 years from now.

Which leads to the question- are you happy if a racist working under a Dem president uses your exact argument? And if not, why not?

bbwbsb · a year ago

I was making the deontological argument because I assumed that was the meta-ethical framework you were using, which can be extended by just saying "abiding by moral commitments and oaths is a matter of moral necessity". I think all the arguments you levied can be addressed by that extension.

Trump didn't run on project 2025 precisely because he knew it wasn't the will of the public.

My personal view is that much evil in the world occurs because people who make decisions and those that do them are not the same set. That any one, or any small group, can inflict so much unnecessary suffering seems surely to be a sign of pathology in the structure of our civilization. The fix, in my view, is to reassert direct personal responsibility, and to deny the legitimacy of looking to systems of rules to launder responsibility.

If I was a fed right now I'd probably already have been arrested for breaking people's legs. There are way more feds than there are people telling them what to do.

bbwbsb commented on CDC: Unpublished manuscripts mentioning certain topics must be pulled or revised insidemedicine.substack.c... · Posted by u/KittenInABox

bbwbsb · a year ago

Federal employees swear a constitutional oath that supersedes presidential order and they have civil service protections beyond what most workers have available. Many are in unions.

As executive workers, they have a legal obligation to execute the law irrespective of what is decreed. Even then, they have their own - private - moral principles. The Nuremberg trials were clear: following orders is not a defense.

bbwbsb commented on String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians' sfgate.com/bayarea/articl... · Posted by u/davikr

adastra22 · a year ago

The specific technique here is unihemispherical sleep. Stimulating one side of the body while resting the other (one eye closed) to get one hemisphere to fall asleep. I think Gwen originally developed this trick to probe the mind and see if behavior was altered when one hemisphere was asleep versus the other.

However, it turns out that when you do this, the brain as a whole does not get adequate sleep, even if you alternate hemispheres. People had symptoms of sleep deprivation while still being semi-functional. Ziz took if a step further and had some sort of secret initiation process where both hemispheres were trained differently to produce multiple personalities. At least that was the assumption from those of us on the outside gathering scraps of info being dropped.

Get you 8 hours of sleep everyone. Sleep is important.

bbwbsb · a year ago

The technique might have 'merely' prevented deep sleep due to interruptions; similar to why uberman[1] doesn't work.

When I was younger I stayed up to see what happens. The worst experience of my life was when I lied down to sleep and felt 'too tired to go to sleep' and then started hallucinating sirens. I have no idea how long I was up; after a few days I lost track. I had to paced to stay awake, which I did the entire time. I got pronounced disassociative symptoms - which I'm prone to anyway - ("it's not me in control of my body; there is a mutiny", "my reflection is weird/scary/different; that is not me", "the lines that make up the walls and reality don't seem to lay correctly"), gaps in memory, broken pattern matching (everything looks like a spider, chasing down mundane sounds to figure out what they are), and mixing up memories and imagined thoughts (e.g., fill up a cup, go to drink from it, it is empty and I'm not sure if I filled it up and then drank from it or imagined filling it up or if my memories are out of order).

Given the loss of contact with reality, I could see it being easy to manipulate people if you are in the room with them. I was alone, but if someone told me another me talked to them and then drank from the cup, the mix up could easily seem like evidence that it had actually happened that way, especially if I was trusting, vulnerable and open-minded. And once someone has a model that suggests that, they would probably make up stories on their own to support it.

So, yeah, definitely agree on the importance of sleep.

--

1: https://polysleep.org/wiki/Uberman

bbwbsb commented on String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians' sfgate.com/bayarea/articl... · Posted by u/davikr

positus · a year ago

Most people don't hate trans people, they just think they believe things that do not correspond to biological reality; ie. they have an illness that is negatively affecting their mind and they need compassion and help. Those same people want to minimize social exposure to provably contagious, harmful, and absurd ideas like gender fluidity.

bbwbsb · a year ago

The thing being pathologized here - gender fluidity - is at its heart nothing more than willful insubordination. Hate doesn't require anger, and control isn't love.