One thing I appreciate about rationalists is that they have such a distinct writing style that I already got strong suspicion of reading the blog of one after the second paragraph, even though the inevitable LessWrong link is much further down the page.
(The pun in the blog name might also have been a hint)
As usual, some good practical advice (try to understand the societal context your navigating in; don't attempt to fix a problem before you have understood it in depth) which leads to some questionable conclusions (don't try to fix bad situations at all and just learn to accept the injustice because alternatives could be worse?) and then shifts into weird otherworldly stuff where I'm not sure if I'm dealing with scifi literature or things people are actually believing. (darkworld, Agor).
The whole thing has an unpleasant vibe to it that reminds me of the way "pickup artists" used to talk a decade ago.
One of those articles that's entirely reasonable, and I find myself nodding along, but there's something that feels vaguely off about it I can't quite put my finger on. I think it comes from the inciting observation from the author's friend:
> I feel you’re on stronger ground, Duncan, when you say that the status quo is unfairly blocking some people from activities they spontaneously want to do and (you argue) safely could in a different society.
> I feel less comfortable when you dig for reasons that other people’s aversions to touch or sexual activity or whatever might be “unhealthy” (against some standard I’m not sure you’ve made a case for the universal healthiness of).
It's easy to work backwards from harmful, biased, or just plain wrong conclusions to a strong and reasonable core principle (and vise versa, for that matter). Without knowing the details of what led the friend to say that, it feels a bit, I don't know, manipulative? for the author to present only their strong core principle as a defense of a position they only allude to, when from that quote it sounds somewhat tangentially related and perhaps a little less universally reasonable.
I agree with everything in this article, but there are a few things that make me go hmm.
* The reference to / advertisement of obscure online communities (Agor? Darkworld?)
* The quoted tweet about bloodlines. There are no lines worth speaking of in biology, there are webs. You are not the last one in a very long line, you're a twig on a very big tree. People who talk about their bloodline are often a bit iffy.
So why do I make an issue of it, when I agree with everything they say anyway? Because I actually agree with a lot of what lots of weird sects say - in public. The advertising pitch is often very reasonable even for groups like Mormons or Scientologists, which are 50-250 years out of touch with the trends of the times. This post is very sensible, but it feels like a pitch for something which isn't quite as easy a sell. Maybe this Agor thing.
> The quoted tweet about bloodlines. There are no lines worth speaking of in biology, there are webs. You are not the last one in a very long line, you're a twig on a very big tree. People who talk about their bloodline are often a bit iffy.
A fun thought exposing the silliness: every woman without a daughter is the end of a chain of mothers going back millions of years.
As an only child being the "last of my bloodline" has given me a great deal of anxiety. Evidently out of ignorance. Where can I learn about lineage being more of a web than a line?
You already know about it, just in different terms. You have one father and mother, but two grandfathers, four great grandfathers, four great grandmothers, etc. Which of these is your "bloodline"? Either all of them or none. Each of them is likely (in the general case anyway) also a grandparent to many other children with other intermedaries. Which of these is their descendant bloodline? If you get rid of weird socially contingent criteria like "first son", the answer is obviously none of them. It's just a big web, going back thousands of years at minimum. Billions of years back to the first sexually reproducing eukaryote, if you want to think of it that way.
Just track your genealogy. Go up like 3-4 nodes from your parents and then expand the tree from there.
The expansion gets even more extreme if you start your expansion further up the tree, as the average number of children per household goes up dramatically as you go further back in time.
Genetically, you're just about as close to your great-great-grandfather as his second daughter's son's third daughter's nephew is.
Unless you've been in some sort of clan war for generations or your family has been the target of small-scale genocide, you're unlikely to be the 'last of a bloodline'.
At a complete guess, that may be inaccurate because I don't know you? What you possibly have is a biological imperative to reproduce, perhaps some social expectation or personal desire to have a family, which combine to create the anxiety. Then the anxiety manifest as magical thinking about "being the last" in a way to drive attention to the underlying issues. Is it 'being the last' or 'being alone' that's the real driver?
Webs are made of lines. A twig has a path back to the root. And you are only a leaf node until you reproduce, after which you are a branch and perhaps a shared part of this “web.”
Flutes are not girly. In the first book of paradise lost, the hosts of hell march at the sound of "flutes and soft recorders". Of it's good enough for Satan's army, I say it's good enough for a highschooler.
The point of the article is that a specific social group thought that they were. It doesn't make any claim about the general truth, just that certain things have social stigmas that may not make sense objectively, but one still lives in that social group so one has to cope with that stigma in one way or another.
There could have been a dozen other examples. Perhaps dancing, or cheerleading, or computer nerding, or whatever else. All of which have had various social stigmas in various groups at various times.
Ultra masculine homosexuality is a real thing, there can be real animosity towards feminine or stereotypical homosexuality, both within and without. Don’t assume if someone is super masculine that it’s because they are straight.
Coincidentally I just received my (Irish) flute today and started learning to progress from the tin whistle. I can barely get a note out of the damned thing but I love how they sound so I will persist.
I was thinking the other day, "why do we have kids?"
The most noble, selfless reason I could think of is "so that they try again". I say, the "most noble" because people have plenty of more selfish reasons: "they'll make me feel better", "to make me a better person", "to keep up with the expectations of my friends and family", "they'll give me comfort when I'm old and frail", "they will care for me". And then no-reasons such as "it's the way things are", and "everybody does it", and "god wants it".
But I prefer mine: "so that they try again". Try what? To right the wrongs, to succeed where we failed. But that is a mirror: if my kids inherit the world of my failures, can I look back into my soul and say that I tried hard enough? When the day they lose something precious comes, and they understand this world is mostly darkness, will I be able to look them in the eyes and say that I tried hard enough to beget the light they crave?
> can I look back into my soul and say that I tried hard enough?
Imagine, if you will a large endless expanse. Clear skies above, but as you look to the floor you realize it's made of people. Compacted like tetris pieces, as far as the eye can see. You're standing there, presumably atop some people right then and there. What do you do? Do you walk forward? You'll step on the bodies; the people. Do you stand still? Won't that invalidate your life? Aren't you allowed to live?
Making that decision is trying hard enough. We all had to do it, and luckily, we did it at an age we can no longer remember; right when we were born. We decided to venture forth and try. You tried hard enough because you tried, period. That is enough.
There's definitely a cluster of personalities overrepresented in the population of parents.
Historically, there has been a lot of pressure to reproduce, but in the modern era this doesn't always make as much sense. I wish there was more research to clarify this phenomena.
We'd potentially be avoiding a lot of grief and angst during young adulthood for those who choose not to be parents if they more clearly understood why it doesn't "feel right". That grief and angst from choosing "wrong" potentially translates to cases of mental illnesses in the children at best and domestic abuse at worst. Even when couples choose not to have children, they can still be very unhappy. It's as much a matter of social justice as it is health.
Results vary by charisma. I can assure you if a popular enough kid chooses to play the flute, not only will it not invoke bullying, it will redefine flute playing to become cool. And yes, when I was in school said kids would do this, partly as a flex, partly to increase proximity to girls. It worked.
Interesting article. Reality can be discouraging at times, but accepting that truth definitely helps to achieve your ends (or reduce frustration when you can't).
> they left me in the least wrong situation that was actually available, given all of the constraints
This feels like a leap. Is it impossible to support your sibling's self-expression and teach them emotional resilience? And even if not, the long term psychological impact on the younger sibling of feeling alienated and controlled in their own family must be taken into account.
I feel like there is something I am supposed to know that would help the author make more sense about the flute playing. But I don't really understand what he is talking about?
Was this episode in childhood and now he is a young adult? Did he attend public school?
1. it's unfair that boys who chose to play flute got bullied for it
2. it's not good that his brother essentially took his choice from playing flute by reinforcing #1
3. #2 is actually simultaneously the way to minimize the negative effects of the authors choice of instruments
So in spite of those first two things individually being pretty shitty, they actually give you an optimal outcome (socially) in school.
Ideally we get to a place where #1 stops happening, but you won't solve it by going against the grain, you'll just be a martyr for nothing.
What a fascinatingly strange article. The two parallel trains of thoughts, only one of which arrives at a satisfying conclusion, but I suppose that is practicing what it preaches.
Yeah, the entire piece feels like Madlibs for analogies, where one totally disregards the emotional aspect of the substitutions.
I think this is a piece by rationalists for rationalists that escaped the niche it was supposed to remain in.
There was a very interesting video? Article? About how the reason Twitter is so hostile is because it blends people who do not have shared contexts, so ideas are taken out or context and land poorly. This feels like that.
Not a bad piece. Cuts right to the quick in a way I quite like.
People want to have kids, more often than not. We want to socialize, we want to find partners, we want to find happiness, we want to indulge in hobbies. We are a social species, even when individuals might be deeply antisocial.
Yet we built a society that robs us of agency to try things in private, because we must be advertised to constantly. We built systems that prioritize labor over the health - physical, emotional, mental, social, and otherwise - of the organism. We built media platforms that demand attention, reward controversy, and punish learning.
Like the author’s sibling, we rob our younger cohorts of the agency to decide for themselves the life they want to live by forcing them into holes we deem appropriate and reasonable. Only certain jobs are acceptable, only certain employers have prestige, only certain careers are valid, only certain schools are worthy. Everything you do, everywhere you go, everyone you meet, everything you touch, everything you buy, everything you watch or read or listen to or consume, tracked and logged somewhere for profit-motives. Not safety, not security, not enrichment, not health, and not growth.
Just profit.
And then when those good souls try to build something else - federated social media to break algorithms, private economies to bypass advertisers and payment processors, social circles hiding within encryption to duck government surveillance and identity verification - the cult of convenience and base of power punches down. When a cohort raised on the borderless lands of the internet finds someone they wish to spend their life with, they’re beaten down by arbitrary national barriers and the various -isms and -obias that keep people separate. Thus isolation is reinforced, and withdrawal amplifies.
It’s easier to not search for that thing that interests you but you’re embarrassed about, because then you avoid ads for it. It’s easier to not look for love, because you might find it’s two continents away in a country that hates you or your country hates them, or just hates immigration in general and slaps huge fees on the process. It’s easier to keep your head down working for a Big Tech company because it’s a recognized name even if it hurts your soul to see what it does to humans, and who knows, you might retire from it someday.
It’s easier to choose known misery over the risk of joy. That is the core problem.
One thing I appreciate about rationalists is that they have such a distinct writing style that I already got strong suspicion of reading the blog of one after the second paragraph, even though the inevitable LessWrong link is much further down the page.
(The pun in the blog name might also have been a hint)
As usual, some good practical advice (try to understand the societal context your navigating in; don't attempt to fix a problem before you have understood it in depth) which leads to some questionable conclusions (don't try to fix bad situations at all and just learn to accept the injustice because alternatives could be worse?) and then shifts into weird otherworldly stuff where I'm not sure if I'm dealing with scifi literature or things people are actually believing. (darkworld, Agor).
The whole thing has an unpleasant vibe to it that reminds me of the way "pickup artists" used to talk a decade ago.
One of those articles that's entirely reasonable, and I find myself nodding along, but there's something that feels vaguely off about it I can't quite put my finger on. I think it comes from the inciting observation from the author's friend:
> I feel you’re on stronger ground, Duncan, when you say that the status quo is unfairly blocking some people from activities they spontaneously want to do and (you argue) safely could in a different society.
> I feel less comfortable when you dig for reasons that other people’s aversions to touch or sexual activity or whatever might be “unhealthy” (against some standard I’m not sure you’ve made a case for the universal healthiness of).
It's easy to work backwards from harmful, biased, or just plain wrong conclusions to a strong and reasonable core principle (and vise versa, for that matter). Without knowing the details of what led the friend to say that, it feels a bit, I don't know, manipulative? for the author to present only their strong core principle as a defense of a position they only allude to, when from that quote it sounds somewhat tangentially related and perhaps a little less universally reasonable.
I agree with everything in this article, but there are a few things that make me go hmm.
* The reference to / advertisement of obscure online communities (Agor? Darkworld?)
* The quoted tweet about bloodlines. There are no lines worth speaking of in biology, there are webs. You are not the last one in a very long line, you're a twig on a very big tree. People who talk about their bloodline are often a bit iffy.
So why do I make an issue of it, when I agree with everything they say anyway? Because I actually agree with a lot of what lots of weird sects say - in public. The advertising pitch is often very reasonable even for groups like Mormons or Scientologists, which are 50-250 years out of touch with the trends of the times. This post is very sensible, but it feels like a pitch for something which isn't quite as easy a sell. Maybe this Agor thing.
> The quoted tweet about bloodlines. There are no lines worth speaking of in biology, there are webs. You are not the last one in a very long line, you're a twig on a very big tree. People who talk about their bloodline are often a bit iffy.
A fun thought exposing the silliness: every woman without a daughter is the end of a chain of mothers going back millions of years.
As an only child being the "last of my bloodline" has given me a great deal of anxiety. Evidently out of ignorance. Where can I learn about lineage being more of a web than a line?
You already know about it, just in different terms. You have one father and mother, but two grandfathers, four great grandfathers, four great grandmothers, etc. Which of these is your "bloodline"? Either all of them or none. Each of them is likely (in the general case anyway) also a grandparent to many other children with other intermedaries. Which of these is their descendant bloodline? If you get rid of weird socially contingent criteria like "first son", the answer is obviously none of them. It's just a big web, going back thousands of years at minimum. Billions of years back to the first sexually reproducing eukaryote, if you want to think of it that way.
Just track your genealogy. Go up like 3-4 nodes from your parents and then expand the tree from there.
The expansion gets even more extreme if you start your expansion further up the tree, as the average number of children per household goes up dramatically as you go further back in time.
https://populationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/a...
Genetically, you're just about as close to your great-great-grandfather as his second daughter's son's third daughter's nephew is.
Unless you've been in some sort of clan war for generations or your family has been the target of small-scale genocide, you're unlikely to be the 'last of a bloodline'.
At a complete guess, that may be inaccurate because I don't know you? What you possibly have is a biological imperative to reproduce, perhaps some social expectation or personal desire to have a family, which combine to create the anxiety. Then the anxiety manifest as magical thinking about "being the last" in a way to drive attention to the underlying issues. Is it 'being the last' or 'being alone' that's the real driver?
Id argue that it’s not ignorant, it’s socially constructed.
Count your blessings; I’m extremely pleased to be the last of my bloodline.
Webs are made of lines. A twig has a path back to the root. And you are only a leaf node until you reproduce, after which you are a branch and perhaps a shared part of this “web.”
Flutes are not girly. In the first book of paradise lost, the hosts of hell march at the sound of "flutes and soft recorders". Of it's good enough for Satan's army, I say it's good enough for a highschooler.
The point of the article is that a specific social group thought that they were. It doesn't make any claim about the general truth, just that certain things have social stigmas that may not make sense objectively, but one still lives in that social group so one has to cope with that stigma in one way or another.
There could have been a dozen other examples. Perhaps dancing, or cheerleading, or computer nerding, or whatever else. All of which have had various social stigmas in various groups at various times.
Ultra masculine homosexuality is a real thing, there can be real animosity towards feminine or stereotypical homosexuality, both within and without. Don’t assume if someone is super masculine that it’s because they are straight.
Coincidentally I just received my (Irish) flute today and started learning to progress from the tin whistle. I can barely get a note out of the damned thing but I love how they sound so I will persist.
I was thinking the other day, "why do we have kids?"
The most noble, selfless reason I could think of is "so that they try again". I say, the "most noble" because people have plenty of more selfish reasons: "they'll make me feel better", "to make me a better person", "to keep up with the expectations of my friends and family", "they'll give me comfort when I'm old and frail", "they will care for me". And then no-reasons such as "it's the way things are", and "everybody does it", and "god wants it".
But I prefer mine: "so that they try again". Try what? To right the wrongs, to succeed where we failed. But that is a mirror: if my kids inherit the world of my failures, can I look back into my soul and say that I tried hard enough? When the day they lose something precious comes, and they understand this world is mostly darkness, will I be able to look them in the eyes and say that I tried hard enough to beget the light they crave?
If you don't hate existence, raising children can also just be seen as paying back for yours. I like that view.
> can I look back into my soul and say that I tried hard enough?
Imagine, if you will a large endless expanse. Clear skies above, but as you look to the floor you realize it's made of people. Compacted like tetris pieces, as far as the eye can see. You're standing there, presumably atop some people right then and there. What do you do? Do you walk forward? You'll step on the bodies; the people. Do you stand still? Won't that invalidate your life? Aren't you allowed to live?
Making that decision is trying hard enough. We all had to do it, and luckily, we did it at an age we can no longer remember; right when we were born. We decided to venture forth and try. You tried hard enough because you tried, period. That is enough.
I think the answer is pretty simple--life is beautiful. And it's great to share that beauty.
There's definitely a cluster of personalities overrepresented in the population of parents.
Historically, there has been a lot of pressure to reproduce, but in the modern era this doesn't always make as much sense. I wish there was more research to clarify this phenomena.
We'd potentially be avoiding a lot of grief and angst during young adulthood for those who choose not to be parents if they more clearly understood why it doesn't "feel right". That grief and angst from choosing "wrong" potentially translates to cases of mental illnesses in the children at best and domestic abuse at worst. Even when couples choose not to have children, they can still be very unhappy. It's as much a matter of social justice as it is health.
Results vary by charisma. I can assure you if a popular enough kid chooses to play the flute, not only will it not invoke bullying, it will redefine flute playing to become cool. And yes, when I was in school said kids would do this, partly as a flex, partly to increase proximity to girls. It worked.
This would definitely only happen in certain locales.
Interesting article. Reality can be discouraging at times, but accepting that truth definitely helps to achieve your ends (or reduce frustration when you can't).
> they left me in the least wrong situation that was actually available, given all of the constraints
This feels like a leap. Is it impossible to support your sibling's self-expression and teach them emotional resilience? And even if not, the long term psychological impact on the younger sibling of feeling alienated and controlled in their own family must be taken into account.
When was the last time you were a 13yr old boy and had even heard the phrase "psychological resilience"?
Isn't it one of those things impossible to know which is best?
I feel like there is something I am supposed to know that would help the author make more sense about the flute playing. But I don't really understand what he is talking about?
Was this episode in childhood and now he is a young adult? Did he attend public school?
I guess flutes and to a lesser extent clarinets were seen as "girly" (or maybe gay) instruments and boys were bullied for playing then.
The association isn't new, see the related slur for gay people.
I think the main point is that
1. it's unfair that boys who chose to play flute got bullied for it
2. it's not good that his brother essentially took his choice from playing flute by reinforcing #1
3. #2 is actually simultaneously the way to minimize the negative effects of the authors choice of instruments
So in spite of those first two things individually being pretty shitty, they actually give you an optimal outcome (socially) in school. Ideally we get to a place where #1 stops happening, but you won't solve it by going against the grain, you'll just be a martyr for nothing.
This was about a middle school kid choosing their instrument for band class, in their case they played through high school.
What a fascinatingly strange article. The two parallel trains of thoughts, only one of which arrives at a satisfying conclusion, but I suppose that is practicing what it preaches.
The jump from flute playing to sexual touch is weird.
Yeah, the entire piece feels like Madlibs for analogies, where one totally disregards the emotional aspect of the substitutions.
I think this is a piece by rationalists for rationalists that escaped the niche it was supposed to remain in.
There was a very interesting video? Article? About how the reason Twitter is so hostile is because it blends people who do not have shared contexts, so ideas are taken out or context and land poorly. This feels like that.
Not a bad piece. Cuts right to the quick in a way I quite like.
People want to have kids, more often than not. We want to socialize, we want to find partners, we want to find happiness, we want to indulge in hobbies. We are a social species, even when individuals might be deeply antisocial.
Yet we built a society that robs us of agency to try things in private, because we must be advertised to constantly. We built systems that prioritize labor over the health - physical, emotional, mental, social, and otherwise - of the organism. We built media platforms that demand attention, reward controversy, and punish learning.
Like the author’s sibling, we rob our younger cohorts of the agency to decide for themselves the life they want to live by forcing them into holes we deem appropriate and reasonable. Only certain jobs are acceptable, only certain employers have prestige, only certain careers are valid, only certain schools are worthy. Everything you do, everywhere you go, everyone you meet, everything you touch, everything you buy, everything you watch or read or listen to or consume, tracked and logged somewhere for profit-motives. Not safety, not security, not enrichment, not health, and not growth.
Just profit.
And then when those good souls try to build something else - federated social media to break algorithms, private economies to bypass advertisers and payment processors, social circles hiding within encryption to duck government surveillance and identity verification - the cult of convenience and base of power punches down. When a cohort raised on the borderless lands of the internet finds someone they wish to spend their life with, they’re beaten down by arbitrary national barriers and the various -isms and -obias that keep people separate. Thus isolation is reinforced, and withdrawal amplifies.
It’s easier to not search for that thing that interests you but you’re embarrassed about, because then you avoid ads for it. It’s easier to not look for love, because you might find it’s two continents away in a country that hates you or your country hates them, or just hates immigration in general and slaps huge fees on the process. It’s easier to keep your head down working for a Big Tech company because it’s a recognized name even if it hurts your soul to see what it does to humans, and who knows, you might retire from it someday.
It’s easier to choose known misery over the risk of joy. That is the core problem.