Thanks for the friendly welcome!
"I'd love to hear more about this: I also like exposing myself to alternative points of view expressed in a non-crazy way, and I'm interested in your unpopular frameworks."
Specifically, I've become increasingly interested in Marxism, especially the varieties of Anglo post-Marxism that emerged from the analytical tradition. I don't imagine this is any more popular here than it is among normal people, but the general mode of analysis is probably less foreign to libertarian types than they might assume - as implied above, we're both working from materialist assumptions (beyond what's implied above, this applies to more than one meaning of "materialist," at least for certain types of libertarians.)
In general, my bias is to assume that people's behavior is more rational (I mean this in a utility-maximizing sense, rather than in the "rationalist" sense) than it initially appears. In general, the more we know about the context of a decision, the more rational it usually appears to be; and there may be something beyond vanity for the tendency of people, who are in greatest possession of their own situations, to consider themselves atypically rational. I see this materialist (in the "latter," economic sense) viewpoint as avoiding unnecessary mulitiplication of entities and (not that it should matter for truth) a basically respectful way of facially analyzing people: "MAYBE they're just crazy, but until we have more contextual knowledge, let's take as a working assumption that this is in their self-interest." This is my general verbal justification for reflexively turning to materialist explanations, although the CAUSE of my doing so is probably just that I studied neoclassical economics for four years.
"Specifically: cryonics is highly speculative, but do you think there's a small chance it might work?"
Of course. The transparent wish-fulfillment seems inherently suspect, like the immortality claims of religions, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be the case; and it doesn't seem like enthusiasm for cyrogenics seems more harmful than other hobbies. So I wish everyone involved the best of luck.
Of course I can't how much I'm generalizing from my own lack of enthusiasm. I don't put a positive value on additional years of my life - I experience some suicidal ideation but don't act on it because I know it would make people I care about incredibly upset. (This doesn't mean that I subjectively find my life to be torturous, or that it's hard not to act on the ideation; I think my life overall averages out to a level of slight annoyance - one can say "cet par, I'd rather not have experienced that span of annoyance" but one can also easily endure such a span if not doing so would cause tremendous outrage in others.)
"When you say you don't believe in human biodiversity, what does that mean?"
I mean I don't believe in what the sort of people who say "human biodiversity" refer to when they use that phrase: namely, that non-cosmetic, non-immunity genetic differences between ethnic groups are great enough to be of social importance. (Or to use the sort of moralizing, PC language I'd use in most any social context other than here: I am not a consciously-identified racist, though like anyone I have unconscious racial prejudices.) As above, politico-moral reasons wouldn't inhabit my verbal justification for this, although they're probably the efficient cause of my belief.
It's probably inevitable that racism will be unusually popular among a community devoted to Exploring Brave Edgy Truths No Matter the Cost, but I'm not afraid that actually XBETNMtC will lead me to racism - both because I consider that very unlikely, and because if reason does lead me to racism, then it is proper to be a racist. (This is true of beliefs generally, of course.)
"And when you say you don't believe in pickup artistry, you don't think that dating and relationships skills exist?"
Dating and relationship skills exist, but it seems transparent that the meat of PUA is just a magic feather to make dorky young men more confident. (Though one should not dismiss the utility of magic feathers!) I find the "seduction community" repulsively misogynistic, but that's a separate issue. (Verbal justifications, efficient causes, you know the drill.)
Being easily confident with strangers is by far the most important skill for acquiring a large number of sexual partners - this is of course a truth proclaimed by PUA, one which has been widespread knowledge since the dawn of time - and for the same time that easy confidence with strangers is the most important skill for politicians, sales professionals, &c. I do think it's here, for game-theoretic reasons, that the idea of "general social skills" can break down: easy confidence with strangers sabotages your ability to send certain social signals that are important to maintaining close relationships. So there are tradeoffs to make, and I think generally speaking people make the tradeoffs that reflect their preferences.
I typically think of Marxists as people who don't understand economics or human nature and subscribe to the labor theory of value. But you've studied economics, so I'm curious exactly what form of Marxism you subscribe to.
I don't think the view that there are genetic racial differences in IQ is popular here, if that's what you're referring to. It's come up a few times and the consensus seems to be that the evidence points to cultural and environmental explanations for the racial IQ gap. When you said "human biodiversity", I thought you were refer...
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