wslafleur

Karma: 58

wslafleur 17 Aug 2024 15:01 UTC
1 point
−1
in reply to: silentbob’s comment on: Failures in Kindness
Our common agreement is that it’s imperative for anyone with the wherewithal to show up and pay attention when dealing with others. The rest is surely context dependent, but I felt the need to push back a bit against what I see as a pernicious framing where both the empowered and disempowered parties are encouraged to view certain vices as essential.

This worries me because I’m not sure how to escape what I see as a sort of semantic trap. The discussion tends to settle itself around the topic of responsibility for hurt feelings when there are clearly deeper issues and potential consequences for ignoring them. At the same time it’s tricky to argue against the sort of framing you, and others, have presented without seeming to advocate for simple ‘buck up, Chuck’ style tough love, which is not my position either.

I feel that there must be a good number of silent readers who share my trepidation, but recognize the topic as too thorny to seem worth getting into.

wslafleur 10 Aug 2024 14:56 UTC
1 point
−1
on: Failures in Kindness
While I appreciate that you took the time to pay some lip service to ask/tell culture perspectives, the article feels pretty unsympathetic to anyone that wants to draw a distinction between shallow kindness and deep goodness in how you treat others. The unspoken assumption here is that any well-calibrated application of consideration should inevitably lead you to accommodate any potential insecurities, fears and shyness. It places the locus of moral goodness squarely on avoiding hurt feelings. This is just not how I think of the world, and to me it looks a lot like conflating kindness with coddling and then presenting that as a sort of moral injunction against asshatery.

Nobody wants to be shy, insecure and socially anxious. These are not attributes that anybody sets out to cultivate in themselves. I think they are properly seen as vices worth overcoming. And the more we push the idea that well-adjusted, polite society communicate in such a way as to remove friction for peoples’ purely detrimental neuroses, the less incentive there is for people to recalibrate towards confidence, assertiveness and a deep sense of the right to exist as much as anyone else. In other words, the more we enable pathological social anxieties.

The answer to this is obviously not to embrace obliviousness and lionize tactless communication, but this current paradigm of talking about shyness, insecurity and social anxiety as though they are intractable or essential personality traits that we should all learn to appreciate reeks of misguided affirmation culture propaganda to me.

This comment is probably too severe, but I’ve seen a lot of this sort of sentiment floating around lately and it strikes me as unnecessarily fatalistic. We need to work with those who have somehow landed in a place where they experience unnecessary social anxieties so that they cam eventually grow out of it, not coddle them. There are times that I feel being good to somebody is mutually exclusive with being kind to them.

wslafleur 11 May 2024 0:01 UTC
11 points
4
in reply to: sapphire’s comment on: Deep Honesty
Might be an uncharitable read of what’s being recommended here. In particular, it might be worth revisiting the section that details what Deep Honesty is not. There’s a large contingent of folks online who self-describe as ‘borderline autistic’, and one of their hallmark characteristics is blunt honesty, specifically the sort that’s associated with an inability to pick up on ordinary social cues. My friend group is disproportionately comprised of this sort of person. So I’ve had a lot of opportunity to observe a few things about how honesty works.
Speaking as somebody who is inclined to say too much myself, it’s taken a long time to realize that the first thing that comes to mind isn’t always the most honest thing. And it’s surprising how easy it is to think of honesty that way. It’s obvious when you think about it in retrospect how that would be a fraught definition of honesty but, in my experience, it doesn’t prevent you from falling into that trap over and over.
Deep Honesty, if I’m understanding the authors properly, isn’t anything like trying to be universally candid, or being blunt. It’s more like searching for opportunities where you’ve been too conservative and trying to unlock the potential value of establishing more honest communication in those situations.

wslafleur 15 Mar 2024 14:19 UTC
−1 points
0
on: Social status part 1/2: negotiations over object-level preferences
Look, all you need to do is have a discussion that is about the most efficient means of transporting dinosaurs by train. Then you’re talking about both trains and dinosaurs.

On the one hand, I appreciate you articulating these models. On the other, I’m annoyed by the presupposition of conflict over consilience. I don’t know that it would be helpful to whatever point you’re trying to make, but the lack of any mention of synthesis-oriented behavioral models/approaches is easy to misconstrue as a failure of imagination. The zero-sum fallacy gives me a headache.

wslafleur 11 Feb 2024 21:00 UTC
1 point
−2
on: Believing In
This seems like a bunch of noise to me. It’s not that difficult to distinguish between truth claims and a figure of speech expressing confidence in a subject. Doing so ‘deceptively’, consciously or otherwise, is just an example of virtue-signaling.

wslafleur 11 Feb 2024 20:40 UTC
2 points
−2
in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: Believing In
Surely it’s obvious that these are all examples of what we in the business call a figure of speech. When somebody says “I believe in you!” they’re offering reassurance by expressing confidence in you, as a person, or your abilities.

This is covered under most definitions of belief as:
2. Trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something. (a la Oxford Languages)

wslafleur 10 Oct 2023 14:44 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: sparr’s comment on: Peacewagers so Far
I’m not a board game buff, but I think their critique applies to video-games as well, where I feel much more confident asserting that there is a dearth of such games as do not fall into some sort of zero-sum or adversarial paradigm. Where they do not, they are increasingly strapping on extrinsic reward frameworks that are almost equally harmful to effectance motivation in the sense of being diametrically opposed.

I too would be interested in any examples you have to the contrary, mostly to see what you think constitutes a contradiction here. This is a pretty undernourished subject and the way that people think about these concepts is often fuzzy to the extent that it’s worth exploring common definitions before exchanging conclusions.

wslafleur 10 Oct 2023 14:34 UTC
−1 points
0
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Peacewagers so Far
“I think I have some high level critiques of the way Mako is pursuing this – there’s a stereotype of a game designer pitfall where a designer’s got a vision they’re attached to that resonates with them, but which doesn’t quite resonate with players.”
I find it amusing that, in response to a post dedicated to fundamentally challenging prevailing paradigms of modern games (y’know, the ones predicated on metrics that invariably narrow into adversarial dynamics), you’ve, perhaps inadvertently, suggested that OP might be failing by a narrow extrinsic measure of success. Time to abandon the vision and pursue mass-market appeal!

wslafleur 4 May 2023 21:04 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Timothy Underwood’s comment on: Why do people avoid vaccination?
Though I suspect there are mortality risks in being that isolated that are on the order of ¹⁄_30,000 a year too.
For some reason, I find this implication particularly irksome. First of all, it’s borderline non sequitur speculative analysis. Second, it’s broadcasting contempt for an elective lifestyle, which seems to be the whole motivation for including it. Unless you really think this sort of statistical prestidigitation supports the point you’re trying to make(?)

Would you accept a similar argument based on how fucking dangerous people are to each other? Going outside to touch grass, breath fresh air and get a little sunshine might have associated health benefits, but there’s also traffic, radiation, wild animals and muggers depending upon where you live. All this epidemiology is a massive headache; just try establishing a baseline and see how well you think that data reflects on you, personally.

The average American has $130k in debt, watches 33hr/wk television, spends 2hr/day on social media, 5hr/day on their cellphone, consumes 11 alcoholic beverages weekly and exercises only 17m/day. And you want us to evaluate associated comorbidities of an introverted lifestyle against that?

I apologize for the rant. I know that everybody has a different bright line for this sort of thing, but at some point playing with numbers and interpreting data slips into the realms of less-than-helpful intellectualizing and this… well, it just felt over the line to me.

wslafleur 15 Jan 2023 19:33 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: We don’t trade with ants
Your comment seems like a related aside, which I guess you admitted in a follow-up comment? But anyway, it makes me curious what the axiomatic precepts are for trade. The perception of mutual benefit and a shared ability to communicate this fact?

Also OP doesn’t clearly distinguish between broader forms of quid pro quo and trade, so I’m just sort of adopting the broadest possible definition I can imagine.

wslafleur 10 Jan 2023 2:05 UTC
3 points
on: How to Ignore Your Emotions (while also thinking you’re awesome at emotions)
I’m trying to decide to what extent this applies to my lived experience, but finding it difficult to distinguish between maintaining a healthy tranquility and cultivating habitual impassivity. My intuition is that I’ve had both experiences, but the internal feedback for either is very similar. Both seem to involve putting a functional amount of distance between yourself and your emotional response, and—in my experience—the healthy habit does reinforce itself, just like the negative version. But then, sometimes, I find myself noticing the lack of an emotional response in certain situations where I used to have one. Internally, it’s difficult to say whether it’s truly absent or simply impotent, but whether through healthy practice or perverse self-denial it’s lost its power over me.
Neither seems to stem from a particularly unhealthy cognitive locus. I wouldn’t say it’s maladaptive, for instance, to watch somebody lose their temper and subsequently decide you’d rather not embody that particular vice. Although it’s probably pernicious to foster latent contempt towards anybody who fails to exhibit perfect self-control. So, if the impetus and effects are similar then what are we left with? Because I really do feel like there’s a difference, and it’s one that feels obvious in hindsight. Unfortunately, “deep down in your secret heart of hearts you’ll just know” isn’t a very satisfying heuristic and, as I mentioned, it only seems obvious in hindsight.
For anybody who understands this better than I do, the question is: Can you articulate what internal heuristics you’re using to ensure that you can practice healthy stoicism without accidentally running over into unhealthy repression?

wslafleur 10 Jan 2023 1:28 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Steven Huang’s comment on: My resentful story of becoming a medical miracle
The latter, although I don’t think the gruesome details (beyond that) are really topical. I suspect that oral supplementation of this nature is significantly less effective and, other than a little mechanical discomfort, I don’t know why anyone would opt for an oblique approach. The desired bacterial translocation is pretty straight-forward and you can achieve it in a similarly direct manner.

If your desire for details extends beyond mere curiosity, I’ll respond to a DM. Just trying to be courteous to other uses.

wslafleur 22 Nov 2022 17:59 UTC
6 points
0
in reply to: Linda Linsefors’s comment on: The Intense World Theory of Autism
This is relatable. I’m was diagnosed ASPD as a child, but never had any follow-up treatment or therapy. One noteworthy aspect of my transition into adulthood is the sheer amount of deliberate practice that went into learning how to properly socialize. Standing on the other side of all that effort, I feel that I’ve become more empathic than half my neurotypical friends and family members, quicker to accurately and elaborately imagine (in a humanizing fashion) another person’s perspective. People regard me as eloquent and charming to be around, confident and outgoing, etc. Honestly, it’s just a lot of hard work. My tendency is toward seclusion, I’m strongly introverted, and social gatherings of more than, say, three-to-five close friends can easily spike my blood pressure.

When it comes to certain things, I’m definitely having a qualitatively different experience than some of my more neurotypical friends. You brought up lying and that’s one good example. I think that a common manifestation of neurodivergence is an obsession with the true shape of things, so that it’s easy to become hyperfocused, to a detriment, on distinctions that seem very important to the individual.

wslafleur 22 Nov 2022 0:06 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: My resentful story of becoming a medical miracle
That’s super useful. Thank-you, I’ll definitely follow-up on this. I imagine it would be.

wslafleur 2 Nov 2022 22:12 UTC
1 point
on: Pretending to be Wise
Facile to the extent that it doesn’t acknowledge the nuance of withholding judgement. One does not have to pretend at virtue for demanding a higher standard of rigor before committing to one position or another. This is especially true nowadays, when it is quick and cheap to track down the strongest arguments for, or against, any position and exceedingly difficult to thoroughly debunk them; when misinformation is everywhere and having domain specific expertise doesn’t protect a source from bias.
The sort of pretention you’re describing is contemptible, but—unless I’m misunderstanding something—not for the sake of withholding judgement. I cannot help but feel that, in most of the situations you’ve described, there is an implication that the authoritative party is not only negligent, but aware of that negligence. This adds an element of deliberate cognitive dissonance to the list of recriminations against such an actor. Together they make a much more convincing reason to despise your hypothetical fence-sitter than their withholding judgement or the presumption that they’re posturing.
You seem to have a problem with feigning neutrality as a trendy means of signaling sophistication, but what you’ve written here reads to me as more of a criticism against ever thinking better of yourself for withholding judgement. Perhaps I’m misreading, but I don’t think that was your intention. Assigning a confidence rating to your position is often a difficult evaluation, especially given a contentious topic, and withholding judgement is (probably) often the proper course of action. Shouldn’t it should be fine to feel virtuous for withholding judgement when you’ve honestly judged it to be proper?

wslafleur 24 Oct 2022 19:18 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: theme_arrow’s comment on: My resentful story of becoming a medical miracle
Oh, yeah. I should probably amend that. It’s basically steroids, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories (whichever flavor you can handle) and a strong recommendation that you increase your fiber intake. I mentioned having been given each of these in roughly equal portions, but then failed to include it as a part of the prognosis.

My experience with corticosteroids was hit-or-miss, and I had severe, acute depression as a side-effect (I have never experienced anything like depression before or after, so it was pretty blatant). In any case, I don’t really see steroids as being much better, since AFAIK, pretty much everyone relapses w/ steroids as well, and then they have to be adjusted.

EDIT: I’m not specifically trying to be overly pessimistic/fatalist here, it’s just that I’ve had a very bad time w/ traditional approaches to treatment for IBD. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, obviously. I think that people should do whatever they can to feel better.

I’ll update the post, and thank-you for the reply.

wslafleur 24 Oct 2022 18:06 UTC
35 points
2
on: My resentful story of becoming a medical miracle
I’ve had gastrointestinal issues all my life. They started when I was a newborn; doctors diagnosed me as ‘withholding’, which is a polite way of implying that somebody is causing their own indigestion by refusing to take a shit. My distraught parents consulted several doctors who reaffirmed the original ‘diagnosis’ and finally resorted to administering enemas after other approaches had failed.
Presumably driven to innovation, half-mad with pain, sometime during my toilet training I arrived at a hack solution on my own. Rather than sitting on the toilet, I adopted an improvised ‘squatting’ posture with my feet planted on the seat, which my mother affectionately christened ‘The Spider-Man pose’. I had no way of knowing at the time, of course, that a good chunk of the modern world does their business in a similar-if-somewhat-less-elevated position.
The new posture was a winner in the sense that I could actually move stool. Unfortunately, it did fuck all for my chronic constipation and extreme pain. So my adolescence was full of grueling, agonizing bowel movements that persisted into my teens. For me, it was ordinary to go six or seven days without shitting and then spend a tortured 2-3 hours in the bathroom, passing a frankly terrifying amount of stool in a single sitting and then recuperating for several hours afterwards. This sounds like a gross exaggeration: Let me assure you it is nothing of the sort.

Things proceeded without much fanfare in this fashion for years. I saw several doctors during high school and they amended the consensus diagnosis from Withholding to ‘Irritable Bowel Syndrome’, the less-glamorous-but-equally-nebulous baby sibling of IBD (Irritable Bowel Disease). I was prescribed laxatives, antibiotics and steroids in approximately equal portions on the whim of the prescribing physician. I was directed to the food pyramid and instructed to adjust my intake towards more fiber and grains.
None of this helped and my condition worsened. It wasn’t until after I had graduated high school that things became truly intolerable. By this time I had developed a bad case of hemorrhoids, was occasionally shitting blood, and suffering from chronic abdominal pain and persistent fatigue. My parents trucked me around to several specialists (gastroenterologists), each of whom reaffirmed that I had IBS. I had two colonoscopies, both of which were inconclusive because my body wouldn’t properly flush even when I was following the cleansing instructions zealously (I imagine they weren’t written with people who only shit bi-weekly in mind).

It was about this time I started to get seriously desperate. All my life I’d been pretty athletic, but I was running out of energy to do anything and that worried me. I broke out the laptop and started digging, trying to keep my wits about me but willing to try more-or-less anything for which I could imagine a plausible mechanism. At this point I had moved out of my parents house and was poorer than most readers here will be able to properly envision, so I didn’t have access to a doctor. The only lever I had was my lifestyle, so I adjusted my diet and tried several supplements (the promising few I could afford). After running the gamut, I hit a bit of good luck.
On a hunch, after reading Gary Taubes’ Good Calories Bad Calories, I started pulling grains out of my diet: The effects were immediate and powerful. My energy levels returned to nearly normal and, for the first time in my twenty-something years of life, my bowel movements got a little easier. I remember running downstairs, tears streaming down my face, to tell my roommate that I had figured it out: I was allergic to gluten.
My initial conclusion was, of course, embarrassingly wrong. Removing wheat had been a good first step, but it wasn’t a cure. My symptoms had been consistent (and consistently worsening) my entire life, but now they came and went, seemingly at the whims of a capricious god, with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. Anybody reading this who knows anything about the reward systems of the brain is going to understand immediately how this engendered in me a sudden, insatiable interest in anything nutrition or gut-health related.
The rabbit hole deepens...
Over the course of much experimentation and several years worth of research I had developed a tenuous control over my condition. The flare-ups and remissions were at least explicable if not fully predictable, and I had become convinced that I was suffering from Ulcerative Colitis (a form of IBD which is really a fancy way of saying Colon Bad: Causes Unclear). Along the way I’d developed a cynical distrust of medical practices (especially in the US and especially where the gut is concerned) as I learned how little is truly known about the human microbiome and how large a role it plays in our health.
Then I had the worst flare-up of my life. I had no energy. I couldn’t get off the couch, and I was losing copious amounts of blood to the toilet. I lost something like 20lbs and if it weren’t for the generosity of my roommates helping to take care of me, I have no idea what I would’ve done.
This went on for about six months until I decided that I would try getting on the formerly useless Medical Carousel again. As it happened, I was able to afford a specialist this time around. They set me up for a colonoscopy and, since I was practically starved already, the results were conclusive this time around: I had Ulcerative Colitis. One of my friends had to explain to the nurse who gave me the news when I came around that—no—she hadn’t upset me, and that I was just excited to be proven right.
The feeling was elation followed by anti-climax; they’d confirmed what I’d already known. Ulcerative Colitis is more of a syndrome than a disease, which is to say that it’s a constellation of symptoms that we frequently see together: It says nothing whatsoever about the underlying mechanism.
What nobody ever tells you about these gut conditions is that they are basically a very slow, unattractive death sentence with a lot of discomfort to look forward to in the interim. The prognosis is something like this: many rounds of consistent steroids, antibiotics and NSAIDS (whichever you don’t react to, if any) to hopefully induce periods of remission followed by unexplained flare-ups until your intestines finally give out, at which point your options are death-by-sepsis or surgically removing them in favor of an ostomy-bag.
Having plunged deep into the available literature, I was resolved to fight the inevitable. By this time, however, I had already tried every fanatical lifestyle change that seemed likely to help. Perhaps you will think less of me for this, but having pored over hundreds of medical journals and listening to specialists discuss what little we know of the gut (which—in its own way—is rather a lot), I have concluded that antibiotics ought to be the very last line of defense, ranked up there with chemotherapy in terms of how much damage they do for the benefit of alleviating your symptoms. At least with chemotherapy, you hope to reduce/remove the underlying problem—antibiotics for an IBD flare-up is really more of a band-aid solution.
Anyway, I was desperate to try something with a little more promise and a little less side-effect. Enter FMTs: It was vexing to discover that here in the United States, FMTs (Fecal Matter Transplants) are an approved treatment to repopulate the gut biome post-chemo, but otherwise unsanctioned; it is apparently a sanctioned treatment for IBD in at least a few other countries. It seemed promising albeit gross. Honestly, most of the pushback seemed to stem from this singular fact: it’s basically disgusting. Having neither the money nor the requisite knowledge to make the arrangements, I discarded flying to another country as an option.
You know what they say about desperate people… (please don’t try this at home I guess)
I’ll attempt to skip the gory details here, but I arranged to perform a homebrew FMT, utilizing a cough-donation-cough from a generous friend of mine who was a stellar specimen of gut health. At the time, he was in the military which meant that he’d recently been screened for all the relevant parasites. In any case, I’d done my homework thoroughly enough to feel confident that I wasn’t going to get myself killed.
The results were immediate. My energy levels came back from all-time-low to better-than-ever, and (sorry) my bowel movements were easy and picturesque for the first time in my life. I stopped bleeding. For those who are curious, there were some unexpected side-effects. Namely, during the subsequent two weeks everything smelt like my friend’s poo (this was apparently an internal thing, nobody else could smell it—WEIRD) and I had sudden, serious carb-cravings; I’d been low-carb for years and this was very noticeable.
It’s been 4-5 years since then and my condition—while not always perfect—hasn’t been nearly that bad since. I occasionally have flare-ups but they tend to resolve themselves and my diet/lifestyle seems to be holding my condition in check approximately 95% of the time. That being said, things seem to be slowly worsening over time and I wonder what I’ll do the next time around. I’ve got no delusions about being cured, since IBD seems to have some sort of underlying genetic component and we’re still pretty foggy on the mechanism.
The whole thing has soured me considerably on the medical mainstream though, and I’m somebody who is staunchly against hokey bullshit like homeopathic remedies. I suspect there’s truth in the nuance here. It’s not as though the scientific method is a bunch of shit, but there’s a lot more that goes into medicine than simple, on-the-ground experimentation. Individual practitioners are experiencing information overwhelm to an extent that was formerly unimaginable and we all know that there are Incentive Structure Issues around drug research and manufacturing.
I don’t know what the moral of the story is. Perhaps that it’s an odd time to be alive. I felt compelled to share my story after reading, but I will admit that—looking it over—I feel pretty exposed. Nonetheless, if there’s a place to share this, it would be here.
I wish every single one of you the best of luck. It seems like we may need it.

wslafleur 11 Apr 2022 15:55 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Motive Ambiguity
This is incorrect. The example only assumes that your only consideration was your spouse’s view of how much you care about their experience. It makes no assumptions about what your spouse actually cares about.

Your claim, that for the majority of women that behavior isn’t attractive, is just superfluous editorializing and I support Baisius’s attempt to pressure you into more constructive discourse.

wslafleur 4 Apr 2022 23:51 UTC
2 points
in reply to: guzey’s comment on: Counter-theses on Sleep
Does anybody know if there have been any sleep-deprivation studies that attempt to control for belief effects? I’m think about this sort of thing. The knock-on ramifications in either direction seem like they could be potentially significant. Among other things, belief effects could help to explain the swaths of contradictory studies around this topic.

wslafleur 27 Dec 2021 11:52 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Reneging Prosocially
This strikes me as deliberately obtuse. You advocate for externally recognizing a formula that basically amounts to what Razied is getting at, and pretending otherwise by saying he missed the point is, in my submission, obfuscation.

As you have noted, social interactions exist on a spectrum and it’s unwise to disregard that context while discussing your proposal. However, I don’t think there’s any situation where formally acknowledging something to the effect of—

”I realize that, from now on, you will—naturally—be less inclined to invest your resources in me, lower your expectations of me accordingly, have less faith in me, see me as less reliable and generally distrust social engagements of this nature”

- doesn’t reduce your relationship with the recipient to something a little more calculated than most people are comfortable with in most social situations. Seems like you’re taking umbrage at the way this calculation was ‘rounded off’, but I don’t see why. All of the categories you’ve established are the basis of a decent friendship. Since you’re encouraging people to acknowledge that, by breaking an agreement, they are going to take a hit in every category, being just “a tiny bit less their friend” seems like a fair summary of the transaction.

So, look, I realize that what you’re advocating for is obviously a nuanced application of the underlying principles here. In fact, I enjoyed the post and found the whole analysis insightful. Put simply, you’re advocating that people acknowledge when they have betrayed somebody else’s expectations, specifically when they were complicit in establishing those expectations. However, the way that you’ve broken things down invites the sort of itchy palms interpretation that Razied made.

Just because you’re advocating for a more graceful implementation doesn’t mean you get to deny that your analysis reduces social exchanges in a way that will obviously make people uncomfortable on a theoretical level.

tl;dr: The way Razied ‘rounded off’ what you said is a fair interpretation, and shouldn’t be written off.