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pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

Current lists of the laws I have in mind, YMMV, but there's some good stuff in here (by which I mean assaults on freedom of expression from one and only one political quadrant).

https://freedomforallamericans.org/legislative-tracker/schoo...

https://freedomforallamericans.org/legislative-tracker/anti-...

FindLaw is a pretty ideologically neutral resource:

https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/book-banning...

https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/understandin...

https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/can-academic...

I could go on and on but you'll see it or you'll find reasons not to.

This comes from one political quadrant.

There is no other side to this issue, which is the issue I've been discussing.

I don't know what to tell you to get you to see that substituting some rioting anarchist self-proclaimed leftists who have no representation in our politics for the liberals I referred to is insulting to my intelligence.

pfkurtzon Down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole

I did not know about the Pro, thanks for planting the seed of desire! I've yet to get into keyboard reprogramming, someday I'll take the plunge and learn to type efficiently.

One thing I really love about the Freestyle is that, with the stands and hand rests, it actually sits very nicely in the lap, for when you want to sit in the living room with the laptop on a coffee table.

pfkurtzon Down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole

I've been on the Kinesis Freestyle Blue for years and I love it. I paired it with a Logitech trackball that's apparently discontinued; I'm looking for a replacement as good. Their setup here is really close.

Long term, what I really want in a split mechanical keyboard: trackballs on both sides, near the spacebar, with intuitive mouse triggers built in. Maybe even a trackpad on one side, trackball on the other. That would be slick. One input device.

pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

I forgot to answer a question you asked, sorry.

I am not saying that he is giving different "moral weights" to anything. I am saying he is invoking an extreme moral context: religious persecution, totalitarian wartime governments. Then he starts talking about how some things (he won't give any example but adverts to some social justice code words as bad) are moral threats like this, insofar as they make us hide our beliefs.

They are not. He is making a bunch of category mistakes. There are in fact numerous specific threats to free speech and human freedom in 2004 and 2022: there are people with specific beliefs, specific identities actually being targeted today. It seems to me that people who want to discuss censorship in the abstract aren't interested in the actual moral challenge this poses.

Taking it at it's word, PG's article should prompt you to explore a thought space you think should be self-censored in many environments. Can YOU give me an example that might convince me? This is a safe space ;)

pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

"If you doubt that, imagine what people in 1830 would think of our default educated east coast beliefs about, say, premarital sex, homosexuality, or the literal truth of the Bible. We would seem depraved to them."

The way I put it is a legitimate if somewhat more abstract (but historically literate) gloss on this. My point is that PG is saying is dumb and ignorant and does not support his fantasizing about being Galileo. I have no idea what point you're trying to make.

pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

Oh, they would so blow our tiny minds that to even think through one hypothetically would ruin the entire article? So I should just imagine how horrified someone (anyone?) in 1830 would be by the fact that I think black and white people, men and women, are moral and political equals? (That's what you just had me read.)

pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

You're right, I'm not a mind reader, I don't know if "discomfort" is the right word; my original comment was snark, meant to draw attention to the moral divergence between his examples.

But honestly: the stuff about "racial insensitivity" and the words "divisive" and "inappropriate" DO get somewhere in the ballpark of "uncomfortable". I'm trying for a neutral word to capture it. None of this is anything like the historical examples—totalitarianism, religious persecution—that inflate his abstract case. These are still problems today on a scale that dwarfs "cancel culture" and "self-censorship".

He gives historical examples. Instead of giving contemporary examples, though, he hand-waves in a way that absolutely will make one side nod vigorously with their priors. Its BS. Tech executives keep getting treated like moral philosophers because they wink and say "why not phrenology?" in order to pose as victims. Galileo was oppressed by religious conservatives engaging in a moral panic. That's happening now, too.

pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

PG proved right!

But honestly, I stated my "priors" unequivocally, with specific examples of current legislation that's coming from only one side, and you went "both sides", didn't answer a specific thing, and left in a huff?

What conclusion do you actually think I'm drawing about this interaction. You posted on my comment.

pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

Liberals haven't done anything of the sort, and no one "is using morality as an excuse to cause harm". Morality is about the harms that exist in this world. Conservatives have false beliefs—about trans people, homosexuality, etc—leading them to do things that are good, but are actually evil. No liberals are using state power in anything like the same way, and disagreeing with people is as old as people.

If he can't take a public stand on an issue of the day, because some people will disagree with him—why should we listen to him on any issue? What's he self-censoring? Something important? Millions protested the invasion of Iraq; why didn't they self-censor? And if he were standing with me in 2004, talking about WMDs and how right Bush and company were to have plotted this—he would face my moral disagreement.

Morals are not "long-term frail". Just the morals of rich men like Paul Graham. Right and wrong exist. There's a battle in the public space right now because some of the things happened are wrong.

You either get good and evil, or you don't.

pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

We don't need to look to Catcher in the Rye.

Conservatives are banning books and outlawing kinds of self-expression, kinds of self-identity, in many countries, RIGHT NOW.

What opinions, in 2004, or 2022, does Paul Graham not think one can express safely? I'm skeptical it's the list of opinions that the state is actually being used to suppress, just opinions that many people find morally objectionable.

pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

This is a fair point, that he is discussing abstractions.

I almost wrote "I wish people would read moral philosophers on moral philosophy, not tech founders."

He does give some examples, and they seem to fit in two categories: things done by tyrants, and other people thinking you should expand one's moral categories.

I think it's clear that the ones that bother him, in his actual life, are the latter.

pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

I am implying, and in no way do I take myself to be doing anything more noble than shitposting here, that the kinds of forbidden opinions he is probably imagining himself to suffer for, are radically different from the kinds of opinions that people who actually end up suffering for their opinions have.

MY big opinion that I'm violating right now: Never Post. Especially about "cancel culture".

Cheers

pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

The word "defeatist", for example, has no particular political connotations now. But in Germany in 1917 it was a weapon, used by Ludendorff in a purge of those who favored a negotiated peace. At the start of World War II it was used extensively by Churchill and his supporters to silence their opponents. In 1940, any argument against Churchill's aggressive policy was "defeatist". Was it right or wrong? Ideally, no one got far enough to ask that.

We have such labels today, of course, quite a lot of them, from the all-purpose "inappropriate" to the dreaded "divisive." In any period, it should be easy to figure out what such labels are, simply by looking at what people call ideas they disagree with besides untrue. When a politician says his opponent is mistaken, that's a straightforward criticism, but when he attacks a statement as "divisive" or "racially insensitive" instead of arguing that it's false, we should start paying attention.

So another way to figure out which of our taboos future generations will laugh at is to start with the labels. Take a label — "sexist", for example — and try to think of some ideas that would be called that. Then for each ask, might this be true?

pfkurtzon What You Can't Say (2004)

His historical examples of when you need to keep your opinion to yourself: in circumstances of chattel slavery, totalitarianism, world war.

His problem in 2004 (the year the United States launched an attack on a foreign country): people disagree with him and that makes him uncomfortable.

The idea that all humans don't self-censor by default in front of all sorts of people is pretty myopic.

pfkurtzon The Overlooked Masterpieces of 1922

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristin_Lavransdatter

Sorry to see this one not mentioned.

pfkurtzon Imagine if a lemon law penalized schools for rotten educations

People have fewer children as economic opportunities increase.

All over the world birth rates are falling—even India is approaching below-replacement.

So you can probably move on from your concern, and focus on getting the benefits of economic development to everyone, problem solved!

pfkurtzon Imagine if a lemon law penalized schools for rotten educations

Make it easy to get contraception.

Make it easy for young men to get and then reverse vasectomies.

Invest much more in the education system and children in general.

Make it easy to get an abortion.

pfkurtzon Imagine if a lemon law penalized schools for rotten educations

Sorry I read "all" but you wrote "also", which is more in accord. Sorry!

Nevertheless I think what you said is a special case of what I said.

pfkurtzon Imagine if a lemon law penalized schools for rotten educations

That is one thing, and it is important, but what I said encompasses a lot more people and needs, so I think it doesn't quite "come down to" merely helping this one specific set of "problematic" adults you personally have some experience with. Maybe some problems are directly caused by what you said.

"Shoveling fiat into the household." We had the biggest drop in child poverty during the pandemic (too bad it's temporary), because we gave people money. If you want to limit the supply of dollars raise taxes on the top, that's where all the "fiat" (lol) ends up after just a couple steps.

What I said is much more general: our society must devote sufficient resources that all children have the opportunity to flourish.

pfkurtzon Imagine if a lemon law penalized schools for rotten educations

It all comes down to being willing, as a society, to devote adequate resources to everyone, and in particular to every child, regardless of circumstance.

pfkurtzon The Simulated World According to David Chalmers

Well before I started learning to program, I was carefully reading David Chalmers' early magnum opus The Conscious Mind. I still find myself convinced by the argument: consciousness is a basic ontological feature of reality, the part of reality that constitutes my existence.

I am horrified that we're taking that Cartesian insight to mean we should actually put our consciousnesses inside little boxes that simulate the rest of the grand mystery of reality—because what's the difference if the lie is good enough?

It makes this atheist want to go out into nature and find the Goddess.

pfkurtzon Ulysses at 100: The Birth of the Modern

Thanks for this comment.

Ulysses very much rewards the reader of the classics, you should give it a try sometime!

You might be interested in the Catherine Project.

pfkurtzon Ulysses at 100: The Birth of the Modern

I'm thinking like page 130 or so.

pfkurtzon Ulysses at 100: The Birth of the Modern

Ulysses gives slowly, then greatly. It rewards return. But it is very hard at first and I know few people who've gotten through it just on their own. I didn't.

My route: 1) I read it out loud with someone I loved at a beautiful moment in my life. I don't know how anyone could simply replicate this, but you should try. 2) Years later, I got the audiobook and listened to it on repeat for awhile, until I started to really know and feel the text. 3) I just keep it around, occasionally reading a chapter, and now the experience is about as extraordinary as one can get from reading a book.

pfkurtzon Pelosi defends stock trading by lawmakers. ‘We are a free-market economy’

Yes, making society worse off, knowingly: that means harming others: yes, be ashamed.

If you're no longer convinced of that, it's because you are looking for justifications for defect in the prisoner's dilemma, rather than cooperate.

pfkurtzon Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

Add a vertical on the other side and achieve enlightenment.

pfkurtzon Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

2560x1080 curved horizontal with editor between two vertical 1080x1920, one with terminal, one with browser.

pfkurtzon Crises of Elite Competition in the East and West

Rupert Murdoch owns the centerpiece of the right wing media empire and has used it relentlessly to radicalize right wing people and undermine democracy.

Charles Koch is one of the great oil magnates and uses his immense wealth to fund, among other evil things, the climate denial movement in politics and the media, especially in the United States.

It's not just these two men, obviously. But they are the real leading figures in the destruction of our society. George Soros isn't even close. Musk and Bezos might be a net positive; I'd at least consider the argument. This isn't just hating the rich. One side is evil and bent on the destruction of our species.

pfkurtzon Crises of Elite Competition in the East and West

That's a bingo.

pfkurtzon Crises of Elite Competition in the East and West

Interesting. There seems to be some debate among the critics, but putting that aside...

If it's all gone to land, the situation seems worse as far as inequality goes. The top 1% of households own 40% of land in the US as of 2017. The next 9 percent own 42%.

So maybe it's inexact to call it "capital" vs. "labor", but... a class of people is dominating.