Initiateofthevoid
@Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Skyblivion fan project lead reacts to Oblivion remake news with "all love and no hate" 20 minutes ago:
I can’t hit anything with a dagger because I’m too stupid to read” doesn’t come close
This happens 3 seconds into the game, and very few modern gamers will ever RTFM. It’s far more likely to be a hard wall to a newcomer. I wouldn’t blame them, either. Invisible stamina-based dice rolls was certainly a choice.
Oblivion’s system took time to break down - long enough to actually get players invested, at least.
- Comment on Tigers 🐅 🐯 6 days ago:
They do not, like almost all mammals they are dichromatic! It’s mostly us and some primates that can see in three wavelengths. Although interestingly enough, fish and birds can see in four wavelengths. Makes me wonder if that contributed to smaller cats being mostly gray and black, to just reduce as much light as possible?
- Comment on Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? 1 week ago:
You either die a startup, or live long enough to see yourself become the butthole.
- Comment on That's normal, right? 1 week ago:
If I could just “opt out” of human society for like two weeks, I think I could detox.
I, too, thought the same thing. But emotional engagement and human connectivity is requisite for recovery and growth. In other words, you need to keep doing things and being around people. Otherwise you activate and reinforce the most powerful negative feedback mechanism of them all: isolation.
We are not the logical creatures we imagine ourselves to be. We are - ever and always - the emotional animal first. From an evolutionary perspective, the animal brain developed a long time ago, and things like logic and reasoning were only very recently stapled on top of existing structures. From a neurological perspective, the emotional centers of your brain are physically central. They activate first, and outer regions - like the prefrontal cortex - respond after. Often to rationalize whatever it is you just felt.
When you are down (not sad, but down) - perhaps from poor sleep, caffeine withdrawal, etc - your neurohemistry is out of balance. You don’t just feel grumpy, or irritable - you are quite literally less capable of feeling happy or excited. It’s not something you can think your way out of or power through. You don’t have the right mix of serotonin and dopamine to pour a nice cocktail of happy, healthy emotional response.
Instead, you will often find cynicism and apathy. The logical brain is stapled on top, remember. If you don’t feel happy or excited in response to a given experience, then logically, that experience does not make you happy or excited.
You can try to explain to yourself why. Perhaps the thing shouldn’t make you happy. Perhaps it’s just yet another shallow grasp at meaning in a meaningless world, and lesser things like that aren’t meant to make someone like you happy. Perhaps it doesn’t make anybody happy, and we’re all just pretending?
If you notice, these thoughts don’t do anything. You can’t test them, you can’t be moved by them. These thoughts don’t have any way to improve your life or the world around you. They don’t even have evidence behind them. They just go in a loop - I don’t care -> why should I care? -> nobody should care -> nobody cares -> I don’t care.
These ‘rational’ thoughts were triggered after the emotional response. You were apathetic before the experience, not because of it.
Maybe you’re paying attention to yourself, being mindful. Listening to your body and your thoughts and your emotions. Maybe you can recognize that you’re just tired, but that doesn’t change how you feel. The dopamine doesn’t rise, the serotonin doesn’t release. Logically - rationally - stapled on top of the way you feel - is your consciousness, explaining to itself what is happening, and still unable to move the needle of your internal experience. The emotional animal brain is still first and foremost in control and it is not getting its rewards, so it will be even less likely to generate dopamine in pursuit of those experiences again, because it didn’t work last time.
The solution is not to opt out of society, but to opt in. Find things that invigorate you. Embrace new ideas and experiences. You feel you have no time or energy - that the world is too fast and too exhausting to do anything but exist.
But the better you treat yourself, and the more you build of your life - the more exciting things that you plan and do for yourself and others - the more time and energy you will find.
- Comment on That's normal, right? 1 week ago:
The unfortunate truth is that the entire equation is balancing out to a stable - but shitty - equilibrium. Any deviation you make at this point will cause instability and short-term negative consequences.
But a reduction in any (and all) of these variables will bring long-term benefits. The only solution - the only solution - is to endure the short-term consequences for long enough that you replace them with positive feedback loops and stabilize at a better equilibrium.
When you consume less caffeine, you’ll feel tired. When you consume less alcohol, you’ll feel restless. When you consume less weed, you’ll feel agitated. All of this will contribute to shitty days and worse nights.
But when you keep consuming caffeine, you’ll lower your baseline energy level. When you keep consuming alcohol, you’ll reduce the quality of your sleep and your time in REM. When you keep consuming weed, you’ll reduce your focus and productivity.
But you keep going because you are hitting the negative swing of the feedback loop and doing the only thing that will immediately fix it - more.
This shitty self-fulfilling equilibrium is likely a primary - if not the only - cause of your perpetual exhaustion. You don’t sleep enough, you don’t get enough REM while you’re asleep, and you cope with the symptoms enough to muddle through but you also ensure that it happens again the following day. Each little bad decision leads to the next.
Find whatever will help you endure your short-term consequences without jeopardizing your long-term recovery, and you will break out of the loop. Groups, hobbies, therapy, exercise, whatever works for you. Good luck and stay strong!
P.S. I didn’t mean to make so many assumptions or make it all about you, it’s not! But I do think this sort of thing is an epidemic and a lot of people could use some help even seeing it, let alone beating it.
- Comment on Dont worry about your retirement plan, simpsons never fail 1 week ago:
If we can never have any choice other than a 2 party system of Republican and Democrat, maybe we could at least start having something like a mixed cabinet, so that the policies and mandates being created are more representative of different ideas on different issues instead of any single ideology.
I genuinely don’t mean to be snarky here, I promise. I’m sorry to say that you’re literally reinventing congress. The executive branch has become so bloated and overpowered that it sounds reasonable to hold elections for the Cabinet, because it is a group of people that write the policies of the US government. But that just further entrenches the Executive as the central source of power and policy.
The more appropriate and democratic response is to dramatically downsize the power of the presidency. The only reason Trump is able to do so much damage is because Congress gave the presidency in general most of that power and now specifically refuses to take it away from a senile criminal narcissist.
The executive has only grown so large because the parties constantly use the Presidency as a scapegoat and a sledgehammer when it should be a figurehead and a scalpel.
- Comment on The Trump White House Cited My Research to Justify Tariffs. They Got It All Wrong. 1 week ago:
Oh hey! It’s the thing I was talking about!
There is no 4D chess. This administration really is as stupid and incompetent as it appears.
- Comment on What is happening with Tesla (TSLA) stock currently? 📈 3 weeks ago:
Q1 2025 is almost over and there has been no realistic counterbalance against the crimes and coups. Investors are growing comfortable with the new world order. Like many Americans, the wealthy believe that if the riots haven’t started yet, they never will.
Like many Americans, the wealthy have forgotten how bad the 1930s were. Many think they will “cash in” on a downturn but the truth is the wealthy are just short-sighted idiots. The only difference this time is public access to information and communication. I’m not a time traveller believing that the internet will bring us together, but I do think it was a lot harder to plan a fun outing with your friends before wireless telecommunications.
Corporate profits dropped from $10 billion in 1929 to $1 billion in 1932. You might think “oh they still made profit” but a 90% decrease is devastating to a group like that. And they still had to live in a world where society had broken down and dust storms hit the United States capital building.
It took decades for them to rebuild their monopolies, bring down the tax rates, and tear up the market regulations again. Without WW2 and reagonomics the wealthy may never have recovered their power over the world economy. I guess what I’m saying is buckle up for the 30s and 40s everybody. If you happen to get a choice between dishonor and war again, choose the fucking war.
- Comment on Satire is dead 👌 3 weeks ago:
Surely there is eventually a level of stupid that we can agree is just stupid? This is it right here. There’s no plan. No 4D chess. No intentional leak. It’s just a bunch of idiots breaking the law, praying to God, ending lives, and then clapping themselves on the back and sending high five emojis.
- Comment on I don't envy the humans pre-dentistry 4 weeks ago:
It’s odd to me that anyone fantasizes about nature in general being peaceful. Especially when the plot of most nature documentaries can be summarized as “fall in love with this creature, then experience the stress of watching it struggle desperately to survive.”
- Comment on Whose bright idea was it to give the morning people enough power to set the "business hours" anyways‽ 5 weeks ago:
Eh, like almost everything else in human experience it initially started because of daylight and agriculture. Hunters and gatherers had fluid schedules, but farms had strict requirements. Without electricity and with a life built around plants and animals, everyone just has to work when the suns up. With most of the population involved in agriculture and not much else, you’re right - you either woke up or you died.
Then candles, gas lamps, and eventually electric lights opened up the darkness for meaningful work, while agricultural technology slowly pushed workers out to other fields (heh).
But out of necessity the hours for schools and markets were originally built around the hours of the fields, and it just stuck.
Now, don’t get me wrong - I think morning people are playing a hand in perpetuating this issue. They probably get to keep deciding the rules because they keep showing up before us, all energized and efficient and judging us for showing up late or tired. Or something.
But I would be curious to see if any studies have checked if there’s a correlation between sociopathy/narcissism and sleep phases, I’ll take a look. Or maybe they’re just signalling that they’re early risers as a way of feeling superior to the rest of us.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
I don’t know if you know how education works, but it takes time lol. But more importantly, they’re beating countries that do invest much more heavily in education. They’re beating everyone.
Like, sure. Yes. We agree. We should invest more in education for a lot of reasons… but guess what? Chip fabrication on their level isn’t a college course, it’s cutting edge institutional knowledge. They are the best of the best in chip fabrication right now. And if you want to provide Americans with the best education, you bring over the best of the best in the field, no?
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
Lmfao what is this conversation? Seriously, what is this with calling me a eugenicist? You really need to go actually learn about the topic at hand. The “chance and circumstance” isn’t birth or genetics lol it’s, like, the chance of Einstein being bored at the patent office.
Chip fabrication is literally the place where global market forces are actively working to cut corners on the fundamental structure of reality. These people shave off nanometers between semiconductors while stopping electrons from hopping the gap between one atom to another. You can’t just “hard work” past them. They’re not like “naturally” better, they’re just currently winning a very challenging race, and it will take time for anyone else to catch up.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
Eugenics themed? Lmfao what?
I’m not saying they’re naturally smarter than other people lol. It has nothing to do with genetics. The answer to “why are they winning the race” isn’t simple, and the answer to “how can the US surpass them” could fill a novel and still not provide a clear answer. They’re beating everyone, not just America, and a lot of it comes down to chance and circumstance.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
For the same reason the world believes it - because its true. They are the cutting edge. Other engineers can take over in the same way that other scientists could have taken over the Apollo program. It’s possible, but it takes time, money, effort, and luck, and in the meantime the other nation(s) will land on the moon first.
All of the other companies are actively trying to beat TSMC and losing. Computer chips are the rocket engines of the digital age.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
Nah. I get it, but no.
We have people here who can do this work
This is the one thing you keep missing. We don’t have people here who can do the work. Straight up. All the big players send their engineers to learn from TSMC for a reason. Of all the labor, of all the capital, these people are the exceptions to every rule.
Capitalists went to extreme lengths to win the nuclear arms race. They will go to the same lengths to keep winning the digital arms race too. These engineers will never be billionaires in their brains alone - because you’re right, they do not own the capital - but they do have a significantly higher value than any other laborers in the eyes of capitalists and therefore will never be deported to a rival.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
Lol again, they’re not labor. They don’t have anything to do with the traditional capitalist-labor relationships. I am well aware of the reality you describe and I can still tell you, it doesn’t apply here. Cutting edge chipmakers are the golden goose of the digital age. For best reference, see anything about the US’ extreme efforts in collecting rocket scientists after world war 2. Capitalists know a golden goose when they see one.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
… You really do not understand the nature of the game that’s being played here, and that’s okay. Feel free to keep thinking of world-class scientists as nothing more than indentured servants. Again, extremely xenophobic to dismiss their intelligence and personal volition, as if they’re just slaves waiting for america to import them.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
So many issues here. I’m sorry but you deeply misunderstand a lot of things about chip manufacturing.
These really, really, really are not laborers. They have nothing to do with labor. These engineers are effectively the same level of cutting edge as the scientists the US picked up after WW2. They are literally national resources - valuable pieces on the international game board.
No, they don’t get deported to economic rivals. Ever. They are not cheap labor. They are assets in the industrial military complex.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
H1B recipients are horribly abused, true. But that’s because they’re used the way capitalism uses everyone it considers replaceable - grind them down and move onto the next. Doesn’t apply to - again - the literally best-on-the-planet engineers. They’re not coding for Xitter, they can walk at any time and find employment and citizenship elsewhere.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
cheap indentured labor from Taiwan
The extremely well-paid and literally best-on-the-planet chip manufacturers? The highly skilled engineers with years of education and expertise, who continuously outpace the achievements of much larger companies and nations? The ones who work in a narrow field that doesn’t actually matter for jobs reports, because they’re such a small group of experts and the real gain in jobs for the economy would be the labor involved in building the fabs for them?
Calling them “cheap indentured labor” is just casual xenophobia.
- Comment on Get ya every time 1 month ago:
Three things are true:
- People seek attention, and often lie to get it.
- Seeking attention is not unique to GenZ. People screamed for attention in Pompeii and Ancient Greece, leaving graffiti on the walls and yelling arguments at strangers
- Many symptoms of neurodivergence appear at first glance to be typical to the human condition. This is not a coincidence - neurodivergents are human, and therefore face many of the same problems that neurotypical humans do.
_
The reason autism and other disorders are evaluated as a spectrum is because the human condition itself is a spectrum of experience. We are not simple creatures.
The reason people are diagnosed with a disorder is often because they have landed somewhere on the spectrum of human experience that involves an abnormal level of difficulty when faced with “normal” challenges.
Simple or routine tasks, time management, emotional regulation, conversation - humans universally face normal challenges in these areas at times, but neurodivergent individuals face greater challenges at higher frequencies, to the point where it can be classified as a “symptom” because it directly interferes with their life in a way that is not statistically normal - it produces unhealthy levels of stress or emotional instability, impairs social and professional engagements, interferes with their ability to reason or achieve their own desires, etc. etc.
These symptoms can often be managed or treated. Just as often, they can only be coped with.
In short, “invisible” symptoms, masking, misdiagnosis, and societal misunderstandings all contribute to this very common idea that the average neurodivergent is just an attention seeker.
Is it likely that you have come across someone who has incorrectly self-diagnosed? Absolutely. People will lie on the internet. People will lie to your face. People will lie to themselves.
But it is also incredibly likely that you have come across people with severe symptoms that you had absolutely no understanding of. People who have been driven to the brink of suicide because they couldn’t manage their own mind, people who can convince you they are okay but can’t convince themselves.
It’s a goddamn spectrum, and people who can’t function at all belong on it just as much as people who can mask, treat, or cope with their symptoms enough to blend in. You don’t get to write off their existence just because their struggles aren’t obvious to you.
- Comment on What do you think of anarchism? 2 months ago:
Anarchism uses democracy and consensus to make decisions
Genuine question: Is that not a democracy?
- Comment on I am in the US and its gotten very political but as pretty much a peon do I just tune the stuff out thinking its fear mongering? Or should I closely pay attention to it? 2 months ago:
Aside from the obvious (Trump being a dangerous radical, to put it mildly) has anything changed in the way influence is bought and sold
The world’s richest man did a nazi salute on stage, in front of at least 3 of the other richest men in the world who all showed up to support the incoming administration.
The owners of Twitter, Meta, Amazon, and most recently Tiktok with the “thanks Trump!” obvious power play have all quite openly kissed the ring and bent the knee.
This is very far off from previous years. The wealthiest of the wealthy are making public displays of loyalty to a man who has flagrantly profitted off of the office for four years straight while actively making life worse for everyone except the rich.
Now he flagrantly profitted off of the office again before he was even inaugurated by launching a cryptocurrency, and his first actions in office are all directly and obviously against the best interests of the people but custom-designed for the well-known interests of wealthy conservative idealogues.
Yes, this is new. And yes, this is very, very, bad. Was America an oligarchy playing dress-up as a democratic republic? Yes. Were there massive donors pulling strings behind the scenes? Absolutely. Were politicians and lobbyistsvenjoying a revolving door of public and private sector benefits and making bank on book deals? All true.
But now the masks are off, and the worst and wealthiest have taken control with a smile and a laugh. They aren’t playing the world’s biggest and stupidest game of Monopoly. They have the Commander in Chief of the Military with all the checks and balances intentionally removed, so at the very least they’re playing the world’s worst game of Risk.
They aren’t going to make money off of book deals. They will make money off of wholesale looting and dismantling the government, and they’ll blame the inevitable economic and societal problems on us, on immigrants, on un-American citizens, and they’ll do it in broad daylight on 5th avenue.
That’s bad.
- Comment on Based Red Dead 2 months ago:
Maybe that’s your point, that properly understanding the genesis of some term can undermine your desire to use it? And you’re right. Cretinism, the disease, makes me really sad, as does the fact that assholes chose to turn it into a pejorative. So maybe that has something to do with my unwillingness to ever use the word. In my mind, “retard” was more of a vague diagnosis of mental slowness, so it makes it less real as an actual medical condition.
For me, the vagueness of the diagnosis is what makes me sad. To think of how many vulnerable people were left struggling for answers with very little help from that word and plenty of hurt from it for so long. Perhaps this makes it less concrete in the mind than a word with a more specific target, but no less sad to me. Cretinism makes me sad as well, and more so when I think about how many people could have easily avoided it if they just knew more about thyroids.
So yes, precisely! If people change how they feel and think, they change how they speak. Not just their internal dictionary, but the way they use their words too.
I appreciate your time, understanding, and well-reasoned discussion. Thank you!
- Comment on Based Red Dead 2 months ago:
That’s fair, we can step back from the intricacies of this particular word and return to first principles - and I agree, this is an important first principle to discuss. After all this time disagreeing, we may have come back around that big circle to find that we really agreed all along.
I don’t really think I advocate for a concerted effort to change the english language the way you imagine. I want people to change the way they think, not the way they talk. I think if they change the way they think, this will certainly change the way they talk. Not the other way around.
I try to invite people to take a look at the words we use as a vehicle for taking a look at the way we use them - the intentions and the context. Why do we use these words this way? What do they mean? Who can be hurt? Why would they be hurt?
I think that there are a lot of good reasons not to use the word “retard”. And there aren’t many good reasons to use it. I know of plenty of alternatives. So I don’t use the word. And I do have the arrogance to think I’m right, and the gall to suggest that others should stop using the word too.
But for the record I have never advocated for censorship of the word “retard” in this conversation, or anywhere. I don’t think a fediverse instance or any media platform should just ban the word, or ban people for using it. I don’t think people should be silenced for it.
Even below the level of “control”, of authority figures or systems imposing changes from the top-down…
Even down to a personal level - I don’t think I advocate for people to censor themselves or each other. Please forgive me if I have done so here - that wasn’t my intention.
I just want people to be mindful of what they say. To understand what they’re saying, and why, and what impact it can have and what implications it carries. I don’t think the decisions I make about vocabulary are so severe as your question suggests.
I don’t think I’ll ever again find someone to go the distance with me on this topic as you have, and I thank you for that. But if I did? And they listened, and thought, and considered… and they walked away, still saying the word? I wouldn’t want them to lose their voice. I don’t think they should be censored. I might think they’re wrong to continue saying it, but I think a lot of people are wrong about a lot of things.
But I do have to say that I think a large part of this conversation unfortunately has boiled down to “who gets to decide?”.
You have a list of words in your mind that deserve to be abandoned. I’m fairly confident we could agree on all of them. But I’m not certain, because I don’t know your list. I only know my list. Most people only know their list. So I do need to argue against the implication that I have looser parameters from you because my list might be different. I may have added words to my list for different reasons than you added words to yours, but that’s not the same thing as having a lower threshold for what offends me. There are people who will add words to their lists that I won’t add to mine, and for reasons I won’t understand, and I don’t think they’re wrong for doing so.
That being said, you and I appear to be approaching some of the core concepts of linguistics here, and from different angles. You’ve joined me this far for this productive discussion, so I feel comfortable asking you to please follow me on one more twist of thought before we step away from ableism entirely -
How often do you call someone a cretin? The interesting thing about the euphemism treadmill is that we kept replacing the “official” words for the same definitions. We actively changed our clinical language each time. But until the treadmill stopped on “retard”… we didn’t actively stop using those words colloquially.
We struck them from the medical journals, but we didn’t strike them from the social vocabulary. The internet didn’t exist. People weren’t nearly so up in arms about ableism. You couldn’t censor the town square the way you can an online forum. We still use the word moron, and idiot. We even still use the word imbecile sometimes. It’s a fun word to say.
But how often do people use the word cretin? You might hear it in a particularly poetic roast, but you’ll never hear someone say “oh, jennifer? Yeah, she’s a total cretin.”
Medical journals stopped using it because it became a derogatory term… but did we stop using it for that reason? Then why didn’t we stop using moron?
I take a descriptivist approach to language. I believe it is what it does. The only rules for how we talk to each other are the ones humans made up, and because of that language constantly evolves as we keep making shit up. And I don’t set the rules. Nobody does, because we all do. I decide what the language of the future will be as much as you do, which is to say probably not at all.
I don’t think we stopped using cretin for good reasons… I think we just stopped using it. I think we’ll just stop using a lot of words for no good reason, and so it’s not a very big leap from there for me to believe we can stop using a word for genuinely good reasons.
I think that we should try our best not to hurt people. And I think that we will hurt people anyway, no matter how hard we try. No matter our intentions. No matter the context. That’s one of the many curses of being the rising ape, and I agree with you - there is absolutely no way to break that curse. Something we do will offend someone somewhere, and that doesn’t mean we did a bad thing. But that also doesn’t mean we should stop trying.
- Comment on Based Red Dead 2 months ago:
You’re absolutely right. You didn’t say that “autistic” is synonymous with stupid, I wasn’t accusing you of doing so. Neither of us believe it is synonymous, people don’t think it’s synonymous, and it’s no surprise that people will instead use it colloquially to mean “excessively detail-oriented”.
Is that so terrible? I don’t think so. I wouldn’t use it that way, but I also don’t say things like “I’m so OCD” for that same purpose - and I don’t think it’s a terrible thing to do that either! I wouldn’t use those terms like that, for the record, nor do I think others should. But I don’t think it’s anywhere on the same level, and I don’t think it ever will be.
I think it’s insensitive to use “autistic” and “OCD” in this way because it runs the risk of blinding us to other people’s struggles when we normalize their symptoms as “standard neurotypical problem but worse”.
But do you see how specific that concern is? Do you see how far we’ve come? To even care about the idea of not being able to see someone’s symptoms? To discuss how it might be insensitive to not even know someone else has a mental condition?
Being “detail-oriented” is not by itself a bad thing. It doesn’t bear any terrible inplications of your value or worth to society. It doesn’t suggest that you can’t be trusted to make decisions, or hold a job. If anything some people are starting to think the opposite.
Which is also problematic, because we sometimes romanticize symptoms as super powers - but do you see? Do you see how far we’ve progressed, when we have to start worrying that people will assume neurodivergent people are too capable?
So calling someone “autistic” when you want to call them “detail-oriented” is insensitive, sure. It might even be labelled as ignorant - but look how high that bar of ignorance is! “Detail-oriented” is simply the most recognizable symptom of a particular flavor of neurodivergence - and using it colloquially like that suggests that you already know how the disorder works!
In the past, children and adults with autism weren’t called autistic. Even after the diagnosis was added to the DSM, it went criminally underdiagnosed for a long time.
Some of them, the ones that didn’t strongly present symptoms that disrupted their lives, the ones that could mask their behaviors - they were just called “detail-oriented”. They were just “weird”.
But most of them? The ones that had trouble speaking? The ones that had trouble looking you in the eye? They weren’t called “detail-oriented.” They were called retarded.
Do you see how it might be different to call someone “retarded” when you want to call them “stupid”? How much deeper the implications run? How much worse the associations are?
- Comment on Based Red Dead 2 months ago:
Very close, but not quite. It’s like showing up on a post sometime in the future celebrating an end of Palestinian genocide… and saying “it’s good that Jewish genocide stopped”.
That wouldn’t be wrong, it is good to stop genocide, no matter the kind. But it’s suspicious that someone felt the need to show up and say that particular thing in that particular place. That additional context seems to be placed there to implicitly communicate something in particular.
- Comment on Based Red Dead 2 months ago:
Autist” may not be sticky enough to require the medical community to come up with an alternative, more technical (and therefore less appealing) term for that mental disorder. Regardless, people will continue to look for ways to call each other stupid, and the best thing we can do is encourage researchers to come up with long and convoluted names for medical conditions so they don’t get co-opted by teenagers looking for creative ways to insult each other.
That’s not the best thing we can do. We don’t have to waste time trying to avoid giving teenagers ammunition, and we certainly don’t have to do it by giving people with learning disabilities a diagnosis that could be hard for them to remember or understand.
Teenagers don’t need ammunition. The reason “autist” isn’t sticky enough, the reason it’s not used colloquially, the reason it’s only an insult for teenagers and people with the emotional maturity of the average teenager is because it’s an actual diagnosis with an increasingly well-studied list of symptoms, and standards of care, and moral implications.
It should serve the same vernacular niche as “retard” but it doesn’t seem to be doing so. Adults don’t say “that’s autistic” with good intentions. They do say “that’s retarded” with good intentions. Why? Because being a “retard” was a blanket diagnosis with no real treatment options, and no real empirical evidence of its value as a diagnostic label. It was too broad and too vague and therefore effectively synonymous with “very stupid.” “Autistic” isn’t synonymous with stupid.
You have a responsibility to be mindful of those around you. But they also have a responsibility to at least attempt to understand what you’re trying to say.
I really do think we agree completely for the rest of this, this might just be semantics. They do, absolutely, have that responsibility. You are blameworthy for your acts. And they are blameworthy for their’s in response. The whole point is that you and they are entitled to beliefs and feelings, just as you and they are responsible for words and actions. If you are judged poorly for doing the right thing, then you can blame them for that. And they can blame you for the things they’re judging you for.
They’re entitled to that, because yes we are just apes trying to grasp at moral truths that are not written in the stars or the atoms of the world, and in fact some of these moral truths appear to be actively in contention with many of our ape-derived biological and psychological functions.
And we very often get things wrong. And yes, we have to try to be charitable and give each other leeway. I think that you and I do disagree on some fundamental information, and I think you and I have given each other plenty of leeway, and managed to communicate in a healthy and productive way.
I’m asking you - why should that stop here? Don’t the people offended by a term deserve some charitable consideration? Some leeway? They’re communicating a feeling that they have. They feel upset. They feel offended. They feel angry. Are they entitled to those feelings? Yes. Can you blame them for those feelings? You are entitled to.
But many of them won’t understand or believe your intentions are good. Is that their fault? That they can’t see into the mind of a fellow ape, and know your heart is pure?
The transference of “retard” from medical diagnosis to colloquial slang is actually exceptionable. Because it appears to be the last one in the list for this particular group of people. The last one to be so pervasive, so ubiquitous, and so synonymous with “stupid”. There were plenty of others before… but what’s the next one?
It’s not about disarming teenagers. It’s about trying to learn more. It’s about seeing each other’s intentions, and actions, and needs. And it’s about not using a word so stained by bad intentions, so villainous in action, and so dismissive of needs.
When a doctor told a parent their son was mentally retarded… that was it. They just were. For the rest of their life. They were a “retard.” And the parents just had to deal with it.
When a doctor tells a parent their son is autistic, they follow it with “here’s what that means.” Here’s a couple of potential reasons why they might be the way they are. Here’s what their life might look like as an adult, based on these studies. Here’s the coping mechanisms you can try to teach them, here’s the educational methods that seem to work best, here’s the support structure that you need to build.
Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But the whole point is it is far, far better than it ever was with the word “retard”, and we as apes and as a collection of apes know so, so much more now. That’s why “that’s autistic” doesn’t mean “that’s stupid” for most people, and therefore why it also doesn’t replace “that’s retarded” for most people.
The term itself was deeply flawed from the beginning, as was idiot, as was cretin. I do blame the people that came up with it, and used it. But I don’t think they were bad people. I don’t hate them. I think they were acting with good intentions, and probably with the best information that they could find in context.
I just also think they caused a lot of harm by inventing a diagnosis that was far too broad to be medically or socially useful. They can be blamed for that. It was their responsibility to do no harm, and they did harm. That doesn’t make them worthy of shame, or bad people. It just makes them human.
- Comment on Based Red Dead 2 months ago:
I appreciate your good faith and legitimate concerns. But if you could, please answer the question. What is a slur? Your original definition was sufficient for both terms.
There is no such thing as empirical evidence for an emotionally qualitative claim. There is no feasible way to achieve true objectivity there. Trying to call one word worse than another scientifically (rather than philosophically) is like asking people to decide which genocide is worse than another. Not all genocides are the same, of course, and already people migbt rush to say “but we know the worst one!”
But the truth is the answers will vary wildly by the person you ask, and you will not walk away with scientifically rigorous definitions, just a dataset of emotional responses that either agree or disagree with your own internal emotional response.
What - in your opinion - are the qualities of the n-word that differentiate it from “retard”, such that one could be called a slur, and the other is not? Are these differences universally applicable, regardless of the slurs in question? There are more slurs than the “n-word”. What sets those other words apart from the word “retard”?
I really do appreciate your points, because they are reasonable concerns about the nature of human communication and moral philosophy.
- The unfortunate truth is, yes. We are blameworthy for all acts independent of intention or context, because we have to be responsible for everything we do.
Certainly independent of intention, because we as human beings can never truly know another’s intentions with certainty. We can do our best but that’s not useful for establishing moral principles.
But this is the important thing - being worthy of blame is not being worthy of shame. A person can be blamed for an act they commited with all the right intentions and a morally disputable context. Others can tell them “you should have known better”, or others can even choose to no longer associate with that person if they want, because that’s their freedom to do so.
But that doesn’t make them a bad person. Other people’s opinions are not truth. Not in a philosophical sense, not in an objective moral sense. The difference is if that person can accept that blame in the first place. If they can genuinely see why other people blame them, why other people don’t want to associate with them, and genuinely try to make sure what they did and what they do next was right to do.
They may even come to the wrong conclusions. They may genuinely think they’re doing the morally correct thing, and everyone else is morally incorrect, and sometimes people are right when they think that, and sometimes people are wrong when they think that. That doesn’t make them bad people, if they decide to do the wrong thing when their intentions were good. That doesn’t make them worthy of shame. But everyone else does unfortunately have to blame them for whatever they do next, good or bad, because there is nobody else to blame.
To what extent are others entitled to control our personal, private speech on the basis of their own internalized (and possibly neurotic) offense to it? I.e., religious groups getting mad, or autistic people being offended when people call each other “retarded.”
I know this is terribly apropos, but I have to ask… Was the use of neurotic here intentional?
These examples are not control. If you say a word, and another person says “how dare you!” and decides you’re a bad person… have they controlled you?
Sure, sometimes these groups get power and exert control. But I want to clarify that that’s not your stated concern here. You didn’t bring up examples of theocratic governments or religious persecution. Your stated concern is what “to what extent are others entitled… to getting mad… to being offended?”
The answer is to the fullest extent. Others are entitled to be offended, and get mad. They’re not entitled to imprison you or harm you. That’s control.
But to what extent are others entitled to being offended? What do you think the answer to that question should be? Do you think that you should control them? To tell them that they’re not allowed to feel the way they feel about your behavior, and rhey’re not allowed to use the words they want to use to express those feelings?
Or do you think they’re allowed to be offended, just as much as you’re allowed to be upset when you believe someone is insulting you or judging you without cause or justification?
Everyone is entitled - to the absolute fullest extent possible - to their beliefs, and their expression. This includes you. Just as everyone else is entitled - to the absolute fullest extent possible - to believe you’re a bad person for your beliefs, and for the way you express yourself.
I don’t think you are a bad person. But I also don’t think they’re being bad people when they tell you they don’t like what you have to say.