Thanks Zack!
It sounds like you're using very different expectations for those questions, as opposed to the very rigorous interrogation of base reality. 'Does Santa exist?' and 'does that chair exist?' are questions which (implicitly, at least) are part of a system of questions like 'what happens if I set trip mines in my chimney tonight?' and 'if I try to sit down, will I fall on my ass?' which have consequences in terms of sensory input and feedback. You can respond 'yes' to the former, if you're trying to preserve a child's belief in Santa (although I contend that's...
I had my first jab of the vaccine early yesterday, and last night had an extremely vivid, mystic dream. I recount the exact details here, but suffice it to say that holographic psychopomps led me through the underworld in a search for the archangel Raziel. I have no idea what to make of this.
Do any of you have firsthand experience or close anecdotal experience of strange dreams after the vaccine? I don't find it very likely, but a relative who heard this and referred to some secondhand anecdotal accounts, so I want to check.
Second, is there any value...
I hadn't considered that angle. Still, that heuristic assumes
a) that the field is one where those differences are salient (I maintain mathematics at least is exempt) and
b) that the people you're inviting have sufficient background to make meaningful contributions, contra the orthodox intersectional considerations you mentioned before.
I'm tempted say that this heuristic (diversity of identity) is strictly less effective than diversity of thought/ideology, but that seems to be what Scott runs against. It would indicate that there are insights not available j...
Good points. Perhaps 'intersectionality' isn't the right term. I also considered 'positionality,' trying to refer to ' ideology that emphasizes identity over reasoning.' Or maybe I'm thinking of the 'motte' form, so that [whatever the Scott quote represents] is a weaker form of motte!intersectionality is a weaker form of bailey!intersectionality.
Though I think the Scott quote represents something stronger than 'paying attention to identity X's perspective'. It looks more like 'identity X may provide information and insights in unpredictable ways.'
Thi...
I found a passage in James C Scott's Seeing Like a State that shifted me a little closer towards agreeing with intersectionality.
...I think that a "woman's eye," for lack of a better term, was essential to Jacobs's frame of reference. A good many men, to be sure, were insightful critics of high-modernist urban planning, and Jacobs refers to many of their writings. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine her argument being made in quite the same way by a man ... The eyes with which she sees the street are, by turns, those of shoppers running errands, mo
To me, intersectionality feels like one of those "motte and bailey" things. Yes, seeing things from other people's perspective can be very useful, and yes, it is often better to invite an X to participate in the project than trying to guess how things might seem from X's perspective. This is definitely worth paying attention to!
But it also comes with the political baggage, the official list of "groups that matter" which suggests that it is useful to consider people's gender or sexual orientation, but not that useful to consider e.g. people's social class o...
Looking at the early section on motivational advice, I was reminded of Antifragile (my review, Scott's review). Motivational advice which assures success if one believes hard enough and encourages people to try for things despite long odds doesn't look like it helps those individuals. If this advice is widely spread and followed, who benefits? Possibly society as a whole. If individuals in general overestimate their chances of success, try, and largely fail, then there's a much larger pool to select from, and hopefully the best successes are better than th...
Chapter 3: Why Truth Is More Valuable Than We Realize
Early in the chapter, Galef lays out examples of tradeoffs between Soldier and Scout mindset, most vivid for me in the anecdote of the charity president, who convinces himself that the budget is well spent, helping to gain donations but reducing actual effectiveness.
Two questions which occurred to me reading this: First, is it possible to compartmentalize the Soldier and Scout mindsets to a significant degree, such that one can be used when soliciting donations and the other when deciding which pro...
Cowen doesn't seem to have written his own thoughts on the matter, but has reported on it at the links below, and seems excited. Until recently the project has kept relatively quiet, as they were shopping around for big early investors. It's only recently they've opened themselves up to the public, and they're still focused mostly on attracting local Hondurans. I've known about the project for a few years, but only because I'm close to people who got in on the early stages. If I had to guess, I figure they want to have more built and have a solid loc...
That's a lot of the appeal. Roatan was known as a scuba destination before this, and so long as Prospera keeps the waters clean, that should only increase. Medical tourism, as well as medical research, including pharma, is also a big selling point with the full reciprocity and choice of regulatory environment.
One big point I feel should be pointed out is e-residency. Prospera intends to profit not just from activity on-site, but also from people and companies declaring e-residency in Prospera. If the attraction of its regulatory environment works out, it may well have tax revenue disproportionate to physical residents which it actually has to provide services for.
I think a large number of people would benefit from temporarily adopting a mystic/magical religion. Tantra comes to mind first owing to David Chapman's writing, but Wicca, alchemy, Kabbalah and ritual magic are included as well.
These are systems utterly at odds with normal and socially acceptable modes of living. Ideally, these could serve as shocks to break people out of major ruts in thinking or belief, or as outlets for resolving emotional hangups and releasing socially unacceptable desires. I also know a good few people who, if nothing else, coul...
I try to avoid using the word 'really' for this sort of reason. Gets you into all sorts of trouble.
(a) JBlack is using a definition related to simulation theory, and I don't know enough about this to speculate too much, but it seems to rely on a hard discontinuity between base and sensory reality.
(b) Before I realized he was using it that way, I thought the phrase meant 'reality as expressed on the most basic level yet conceivable' which, if it is possible to understand it, explodes the abstractions of higher orders and possibly results in their dissolving... (read more)