Personal - Death Is Bad

Teenage boys and violence

Jul 252013

My girlfriend recently asked me what level of truth was contained in this article, specifically about item #3 – There’s a reason for that emotional repression. She wanted to know if teenage boys are really that violent. To quote the article:

Almost every adult man walking around spent at least part of his adolescence dealing with sourceless, purposeless anger and a desire for violent catharsis. It’s like having a little devil on your shoulder constantly making the same unhelpful suggestion.

“I don’t know how I’m going to deal with this test Friday, I can’t cope.”

“Have you considered… VIOLENCE?”

“Shut up, shoulder devil, nobody asked you. Hmmm, what do I want for lunch…”

“Have you considered… VIOLENCE?”

“Shoulder devil that is NOT EVEN A FOOD.”

And so on. We spend years learning that our immediate emotional responses to things are absolutely not to be trusted. The first response to an emotional impulse must be to ignore it and repress it, just for safety. The men who didn’t learn that reflex? They’re the ones with criminal records for assault.

Well yeah, of course. I cited a few examples. Most trivially, often I’d simply imagine reaching out and exploding all the stuff nearby, anime-like, just for the hell of it. When inching through a crowded hallway I’d fantasize about pulling out an automatic rifle and mowing down everyone so I could get to my next class without obstruction – including pondering important details like how many clips I’d need based on different levels of bullet-penetration. And when society was unjust and unfair I railed against the world, demanding the existing order be torn down and the world be set aflame so we could fix this shit, ignoring my mentor’s rather reasonable queries as to what I’d put in it’s place (“We can figure that out once the old corrupt system has been swept away!”).

She was surprised by this, and I was surprised by her surprise. I did not realize that this was not common knowledge. Isn’t that what all media marketed to teen boys has revealed? Teenage boys fantasize about violence and power all the time. Possibly more than sex, honestly.

This post isn’t really adding anything to the conversation, simply throwing my support behind “Yeah, this really is what being a teen boy is usually like.” It is the reason I feel such a deep emotional resonance with certain monsters, and write long babbling posts about them.

My Priests

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Jul 232013

My recent brush with people I greatly admire got me thinking about the purpose of hero-worship, and reminded me of something I wrote several years ago. This was written when I was in my alcoholic phase, and yes, I was drunk when I wrote it. I’ve cut out a bit, and it’s still kinda belligerent. But I still agree with the sentiment at the heart of it, the notion that a group of people can nominate the best among them to pursue goals they all wish to see achieved, but which they don’t have the resources or ability to all pursue individually.

And as I mentioned before, I have a very mystical mental architecture. Fighting against it takes a lot of effort. Adapting the vocabulary of the religious and subverting my spiritual nature in pursuit of the goals I’ve concluded are worthwhile is a great hack that both motivates me and harnesses that energy.

You know what… I’m going to come right out and say it.

A lot of people need their clergy. And after a decade of denial, I’m finally willing to admit it – I am one of those people.

The vast majority of people do not give their 10% tithe to their church because some rule in some “holy” book demands it. They don’t do it because they want a reward in heaven, or to avoid hell, or because their utility function assigns all such donated dollars 1.34 points of utility up to 10% of gross income.

They do it because they want their priests to kick more ass than the OTHER groups’ priests. OUR priests have more money, more power, and more intellect and YOUR sorry-ass excuse for a holy-man. “My priest bad, cures cancer and mends bones; your priest weak, tell your priest to go home!”

So when I give money to the SIAI (or FHI or similar causes) I don’t do it just because I necessarily think it’s the best/most important possible use of my fungible resources. I do it because I believe Eliezer & Co are the most like-me actors out there who can influence the future. I do it because of all the people out there with the ability to alter the flow of future events, their utility function is the closest to my own, and I don’t have the time/energy/talent to pursue my own interests directly. I want the future to look more like me, but I also want enough excess time/money to get hammered on the weekends while holding down an accounting job. In short – I want to be able to just give a portion of my income to people I trust to be enough like me that they will further my goals simply by pursuing their own interests. Which is to say: I want to support my priests. But I would STILL give them this money, simply because I want other people to see that MY priests are better taken care of than THEIR priests.

Standard Disclaimer, but really… some enthusiasm is needed to fight Azathoth.

Immortality Debate: After-Action Review

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Jul 222013

The immortality panel has passed. Holy hell was that a rush. Here’s the video:

First, this has been another demonstration of the “doesn’t hurt to ask” principle. When PZ first described the FTBCon concept on his blog and asked for submissions I figured “What the hell. Might as well send an email. Worst that can happen is that it’s ignored.” I received a reply in less than an hour, which blew me away on its own. I got Eliezer and Brin just by looking them up and emailing them as well (I also got several rejections from other folks, so it’s not Hax or anything. But I’m still surprised that it works at all.) I’m starting to wonder why more people don’t do this “asking” thing. Has the initiative really been beaten out of us that thoroughly?

Once I got everything in place, I spent a few days freaking out. These are all people who are significantly smarter and more accomplished than me. These are people I idolize… and I was going to be able to talk with them! Personally! (and now I have video proof it happened!) I did my best to smash down the Hero-Worship node in my brain, but damn that was awesome.

The panel itself could have gone better. In retrospect, there’s many things I wish I’d done differently. Apparently it was not clear to everyone that the topic was the desirability of immortality, rather than technical feasibility. I also should have instituted time limits for everyone, and acted as more of a moderator to keep things on-topic (there were several ventures off topic). That would require me removing myself from the majority of the conversation, but that’s entirely something I could and should do. I’ll know better for next time I do this sort of thing. Experience – it helps! Until we fix death, every single generation will have to relearn this lesson at least once. It’s a huge drag on progress. :)

I also didn’t really learn what I was hoping to learn, although that’s mainly my fault for not running this thing well enough. I know my understanding of the opposing view is uncharitable, and I feel like I’m straw-manning my opposition, yet I just can’t seem to wrap my head around how this viewpoint even exists. I know this panel wasn’t about me, but I was hoping to become Less Wrong about my opponent’s views. I will have to keep striving.

By far the biggest disappointment to me was the after-discussion… because I wasn’t there. I had been suppressing my star-struckness, and freaking out about finishing on time and giving everyone equal time to talk and so forth, and when we finally all said “Bye” I was like “Oh shit… what do I do now? How do I stop this thing? Do I just hang-up? I’ll hang-up, that’ll do it…” like freakin idiot. PZ had initiated it and started the live feed, OF COURSE he could shut it down! ARGH!! Anyway, as soon as I hung up I collapsed back in my chair and totally came apart. You know how after a strong fight-or-flight the adrenaline starts leaving your system and you get all shakey and your brain is kinda cottony? Yeah, I totally had that. It was draining and exhilarating! And then I find out that the other panelists stayed behind to talk for another half hour just amongst themselves! :( Oh the shame! I wanted to tear my own skin off in punishment for missing such an amazing opportunity. I still had questions! Or even just *listening in* would have been amazing. Augh. Well, you live and you learn. Another one to chalk up to experience.

Overall, this was absolutely awesome. If you ever have any sort of chance to talk with someone you admire, or someone very intelligent (or ideally, both!) jump on it like a rabid spider monkey! So. Freakin. Cool.

Oh, and I did receive a complaint about the religion shout-outs in the beginning. In my defense I replied – “I’m also uninterested in the religion aspect, but I was trying to tie it into the con’s theme of atheism/religious-skepticism. It’s how I pitched it to PZ in the first place, so I didn’t feel I could abandon it once the show started. If I didn’t think it was necessary for inclusion in the con I wouldn’t have bothered.” So there.

Hail Leviathan

Musings On Present Day, Personal No Responses »

Jul 162013

Our neighbor has an annoying habit. He will sometimes get himself really drunk and belligerent and start trying to pick a fight. One night he moved the potted plants we have out by our front door because he was “sick of looking at them”. There was a confrontation, but it didn’t get physical. Last weekend while I was away he started yelling obscenities at some guests my fiancée had over because they were parked in a manner that wasn’t to his liking. I had to come home when he started threatening to kill people. General drunk threats like “I’ll blow you away!” I was so furious I actually got lost driving home, near my own neighborhood. In retrospect, I probably should’ve have been driving while in that emotional state. He’d passed out or something by the time I got there because I didn’t see him that night. Which was fortunate, because I was at the point where I might have assaulted him.

After cooling down I noticed that this was becoming an escalation cycle. I mentioned yesterday that escalation is bad – things just keep getting more intense until someone ends up dead. I needed some way to halt this momentum. The problem is you can’t reason with a drunken idiot. From all signs, it looks like he’s the sort of person who has gotten through life by threatening and bullying others until he gets his way. I have no compunctions about killing someone who’s threatened the life of someone I love, but I’ve got a lot to do with my life that I can’t do from inside a prison.

So we filed a complaint with the police instead. They took down what we said and gave us a number to call, saying we should call them immediately if he does anything belligerent or abusive. I gotta say, I never really realized on a gut level how useful and important this institution is. If I were to take matters into my own hands I’d surely get an escalating cycle of violence and property damage. If it did come down to killing, I’d now have to deal with friends and relatives seeking vengeance. This is no way to run a civilized society. Having a massive force that has been licensed by society to use violence without retribution is vital for anyone who wants to live a decent peaceful life free from aggressors and/or drunken idiots. Hail Leviathan.

The real downside being, of course, what happens when evil people gain control of this tool.

Zimmerman’s Escalation of Violence

Musings On Present Day, Personal No Responses »

Jul 152013

It’s a bit of a joke that “You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.” But there’s a more important principle that it seems some people were never taught: You don’t bring a knife to a fistfight.

A few years ago I was on an attempted-murder jury. Two young minority men (one black, one Hispanic) got into an argument which escalated to a fistfight, which escalated to one of them stabbing the other in the neck. The trial lasted 2.5 days, with a half day of deliberation. The act itself was caught on tape (security camera footage) so there was no dispute as to what happened. The defendant’s claim was that he was in fear for his life, so it was self-defense to pull out his knife. He claimed his opponent had yelled something to his sister about “Get the gun from the truck!” There was no audio aspect to the recording.

It took half the day (which surprised me, in my opinion this was not a difficult case), but we the jury finally found the defendant guilty of attempted manslaughter. Because the two of them were having a fistfight, and the defendant turned it nearly-lethal – not his opponent. There was no other weapon produced. Perhaps the defendant was scared, likely he was going to lose the fight, but that doesn’t give him the right to initiate lethal force. How often do people get into arguments with neighbors, or even strangers? Those arguments should never turn lethal, and the party who escalates to physical force, and/or lethal force, must be held responsible. Always.

Florida has decided that someone can now stalk, threaten, and harass an unarmed black teenager, and if there is a physical altercation, that man can summarily execute that teenager as long as he was losing the fight. Florida has (again) legalized terrorism against a minority portion of its population. I’m ashamed to share a country with those people.

On Being Attractive

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Jul 092013

I was never very attractive in my younger years. As a teen I was scrawny and dorky. In my 20s I was kinda fat and oafish. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve started working out and taking care of how I look. And I’ve discovered something – I’m somewhat attractive.

Lest I be thought prideful or vain, I hasten to add that I’m obviously not overly attractive, people aren’t falling over themselves to be near me and I’ll never have a job modeling. And tastes vary, so not everyone feels this way. But I’ve been told directly a number of times that I look good, and I’ve noticed some girls occasionally checking me out or flirting with me. These are all very new things to me, and at first I couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. I look in a mirror and I still don’t see anything special. I can see flaws for hours. But enough evidence has accumulated over the past years that I have come to accept it on at least an intellectual level.

Additionally, I learned something surprising: being attractive is a fucking super-power. You’d think it only has application to mating… or at least, I always did. Boy is that wrong. I’ve come to experience The Halo Effect for myself, and it’s almost scary. I was unattractive just a few years ago so I can still clearly remember the difference. Everyone already knows that you’re treated nicer when you’re more attractive – by people of both genders. What they don’t tell you is that this goes beyond just “niceness”. Nowadays my arguments are considered more persuasive and my statements more authoritative. My opinion is more valued. I am more respected by my coworkers and boss. I even get better service in professional environments, such as banks and courts. Even my parents think I’m more responsible now. It’s ridiculous.

On the one hand, it’s a little frustrating, because not that much has changed internally. My ideas are largely the same, it seems a bit unfair that I’m being treated better based on image and, to an extent, the slight attitude adjustment that comes with the extra testosterone. On the other hand – this is a hack in reality that’s absurdly useful.

I don’t know how this works for girls, but guys – seriously, take some effort to look better. Get some well-fitting nice clothes, make sure your hygiene is good, and work out. I used to think spending hours per week working out was a waste of time that could be better used elsewhere. But the three hours a week I spend working out has yielded dividends far greater that what I had originally anticipated. Being attractive is a force multiplier – it improves every part of your life that requires interacting with other people (and several that don’t). Not just new people, all people. Yes, there’s only so much that can be done. But just putting in a few hours effort per week is enough to make a difference for most people. It is too useful a tool to be ignored.

Respite

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Jun 262013

My friend, Autumn Rachel Dryden, is probably known to most of you as the voice of Prof McGonagall from the Methods of Rationality podcast. A number of years ago she wrote a short story called “Respite”, originally published in IGMS and soon to be included in the “Beyond The Sun” anthology. It has now also been picked up and produced into an audio podcast, with Autumn doing the voice of the narrator. Listen to it here!

A horrible old lady

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Jun 182013

This doesn’t have any significance beyond my own personal venting, but I need to vent.

Over the weekend I met an older relative of my fiancé. I hope to never see her again. She put on a friendly show and smiled a lot, but she betrayed herself with a “joking” question.

“You know you’re not the first guy she’s dated right?”

First of all, you aren’t fooling anyone with your wording, we all know you mean she’s had sex before me. So fuck you and your bullshit sex-negative attitude.

Fuck you for implying that women are little more than fuck-dolls and that once they’ve been “used” they are damaged goods and not worth shit. Humans have far more worth to them than that regardless of their gender. And to be quite frank, sex is a skill you get better at with practice – I wouldn’t want a virgin because they don’t know shit and they’re a damned project. Especially if she’s been a virgin up until friggin’ 26 years old!

Fuck you for imply there should be a different standard for men than for women, because you certainly didn’t seem perturbed by the fact that at 30 (when I met my fiancé) I certainly wasn’t a virgin either. I’m not going to hold anyone else to a standard I don’t aspire to, but I guess that isn’t a problem for a hypocritical old hag like yourself. I assume you still hold yourself in pretty fucking high regard, even though you’ve (*gasp*) had The Sex!

Fuck you for implying that I’m the sort of mouth-breathing Neanderthal who considers a woman his property and would be scandalized or even slightly embarrassed that his girlfriend had ever seen another penis! Newsflash: we both have sex with other people and we can’t imagine how horrible your puritan nightmare of a sex-life must be. I wouldn’t want to be the type of person you’d call a friend.

Fuck you for obviously trying to drive a wedge between us within ten minutes of seeing us together for the very first time, as you obviously felt this was a major issue. Did you assume I was shocked she wasn’t a virgin? Do you envision our relationship being shrouded in lies and deceit so that we can’t even know each other’s sexual history, and that this bombshell would shake everything up? Or maybe it was just meant to re-awaken old hurts that I’d somehow gotten over? I’m glad that your shot went so far wide of anything approaching something we’ve argued about that I can only stand aghast of your brazen attempt at vandalism, but I obviously can’t trust you to be around anything I care about because you appear to delight in destruction.

And finally, fuck you thrice over for putting on such a friendly, happy facade that I didn’t even realize what was happening and instead made some off-hand deflection about how I don’t want to take on the project a newb would represent. I never stood up for Good, I never got angry. I didn’t say a single thing in the rant above, when I should have said all of it. I’m ashamed of how hard I failed! It took me days just to realize what had happened, and I had been pre-warned! You are a vile old woman and I’ll do what I can to never interact with you again.

Temporal Self-Cooperation

Personal, Speculations 1 Response »

Jun 112013

Sergeant-Calhoun

I write often about cooperating with myself, as that’s a fairly important aspect for anyone trying to make the world more like themselves (always have a back-up plan in case you succeed!). There more than one way of doing so though – sometimes you can negotiate with your future self for personal gains. It seems like a decent test-case for the self-cooperation principle. Future-me is likely to be very similar to present-me, after all.

A bit over two years ago I was single and I had a goal – sleep with hot chicks. Not the noblest of goals maybe, but not an uncommon one. I already knew I was interesting (Ha!), but I was out of shape and I absolutely couldn’t talk with girls. Both of these would require a lot of work to fix, and I decided to make a deal with future-me. I would put in the work of working out and getting in shape to deliver to him the physical body needed, and he would put in the work of learning how to talk with girls to deliver the social skills needed. Together we might achieve victory!

It has been quite a while, and past-me delivered on his end of the agreement. I’m lookin’ alright. However future-me (or now, present-me) seems to have shirked his side of the deal! The number of girls flirted with over the past year has been negligible! In part this is because I’m in an awesome relationship with an awesome woman, but that is one (1) hot chick, and the goal was hot chicks – plural! :) And honestly, I’m a bit cross with myself. Yes it’s hard! That’s why we had the deal in the first place, to divvy up the labor! Playing guitar is hard too, but you put in 30 minutes a day and before you know it a year has passed and you’re playing passably well at parties. You’re gonna suck at it at first, but I put in 3 hours/week working out, so I can put in a few minutes a week chatting! Before you know it a year will have gone by and you’ll be able to strike up a conversation with anyone. Suck it up and deliver already!

I started at Denver Comic Con. After hesitation and doubt, I finally approached an awesome Sargent Calhoun cosplay near the end of the last day. “Approached” is too generous a term – she happened to stash some of her props near me and I used that as an opportunity. Had that not happened, I probably wouldn’t have even said hi. So yeah, ok, I suck. But it was a first step! Gotta start small, you can’t run a marathon your first day. It went ok for several minutes, but I let myself be pulled away before I got her number and was secretly glad that she wasn’t there when I came back. Fail. >< But again – small steps. Can’t berate myself too much. Gonna keep building on this over the summer.

It’s hard to say how relevant of a test-case this is for self-cooperation. Obviously it wasn’t a great success, this action is long overdue. On the other hand, it’s not really a direct comparison, since past-me doesn’t have any enforcement ability or methods to incentivize continued commitment (where a seperate very-similar-to-me actor in the present would. With shaming, if nothing else). The best I have is the knowledge that if I fail in this temporal cooperation now, I’m far less likely to trust future-me from now on, and that seems like a big loss. I don’t want to burn that bridge if I can help it.

Denver Comic Con – Doing Stuff!

Musings On Present Day, Personal No Responses »

Jun 052013

Denver Comic Con is, interestingly, not a con that I would go to as an attendee. The main attraction is the “Exhibitor Hall” which is basically a huge shopping plaza for geek stuff. It’s there to stoke consumerist passions, and then sate them (for a fee). I am vigorously against the Owning of Stuff , and so there isn’t anything there for me. Even if I liked something I wouldn’t buy it, so I don’t go. It’s the same reason I don’t go to strip clubs.

But as a volunteer, it was a TON of fun. As mentioned previously, I think the key to defeating Existential Angst is to Do Things That Matter. Anything. Simply put, Do Stuff is the answer, whereas Own Stuff is the sham cure that Capitalistic Entities are selling you. Do Stuff is cheaper – many organizations will let you simply Do Stuff with them for free. The Denver Comic Con people are one such organization, they were more than happy to take a couple hundred of us, give us some basic training, and organize us into a Stuff Doing force, without charging us a single dollar for the experience. :) I got to meet a lot of cool people, get a lot accomplished, and help put on a large convention for other people like me. I flirted with a couple girls, got to attend the panels I wanted to attend, and made some connections with people who are good at taking abstract dreams and doing the dirty work of turning them into reality. I really recommend doing this sort of thing a couple times a year. It’s no wonder church groups are so strongly bonded, if they’re out doing this sort of thing all the damn time!

Particularly memorable was my brief stint on the Exhibitor Hall, where I was needed for a while. I was told to pass out bottled water to the artists who needed it in the “Artists Alley” section. The Exhibitor Hall is PACKED with walking, talking, sweating bodies from open to close, and it’s a LARGE space. It gets hot quickly, and stays that way. Every single time I offered someone water they looked me in the eye and gave me a heart-felt “Thank you” – even the ones who declined the water. To be thanked like that, over and over, for 30+ minutes straight… damn it makes you feel good!!

I had originally only signed up for one day of volunteering, which comes with a free attendee pass for another day. Before I left I signed up for a second day of volunteering and gave my pass away, because it was much more fun and fulfilling to be involved.

Unrelated, but an interesting side-note:

Initially I walked the aisles with four bottles of water, two in each hand. When doing so, artists were far more likely to say “no, I’m ok” and pass on the water. There was a feeling of scarcity that made people assess whether they actually needed the water, and if they did not they let someone else have it that would need it more. This generosity was very uplifting. Later on I switched to hauling an entire box of water bottles with me, to speed up the process. Now that it was clear there was an abundance of water, nearly everyone took a water bottle, even those who already had one half-full besides them (because if there’s so many available, why not have one saved for later?). Some people requested two. This turned out to be unfortunate, as we didn’t have as much water as carrying around boxes of it seemed to imply. But the artists had no way of knowing that, they were simply responding to the information they were being presented. I’ve read about this phenomenon before, but nothing really teaches you something like actually experiencing it first-hand. I won’t be forgetting this lesson for a long time.

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