Categories For later read
7 days
30 days
All time
Recent
Popular
#DavidAttenborough annoys me, because he's had an extremely privileged life at the expense of his own race & of our planet's biodiversity he has devoted much of his life to documenting.
He doesn't recognise this, of course, but means well, dissolving my annoyance into sadness.
Of course, he has hope for the future, because to recognise the truth would destroy his self-image as a fabulously successful individual.
The truth is that he & the White elite he belongs to have totally fucked up.
What does this have to do with Race (the fact that #DavidAttenborough is White), you ask?
Race is our largest kinship group, contempt for which lies at the heart of our civilisation's self-destructiveness. You can't truly care about anything, if you don't also care about that.
As a biologist, of all people, David Attenborough should recognise this, & how civilisation perverts & corrupts evolved human nature into prioritising personal POWER & advantage over kinship, but like #RichardDawkins & all the others, he fails to do so.
Why this failure, even of evolutionary biologists, to recognise the importance of kinship?
1) The state (#BigBrother) has always demanded that we prioritise loyalty to itself over kin.
2) The bonds of kinship are TRIBAL, which, in overreaction to Nazi tribalism, is demonised.
He doesn't recognise this, of course, but means well, dissolving my annoyance into sadness.
Of course, he has hope for the future, because to recognise the truth would destroy his self-image as a fabulously successful individual.
The truth is that he & the White elite he belongs to have totally fucked up.
Western civilisation has a fatal flaw, which is leading to its self-destruction. It's a flaw inherent to ALL civilisations, which is why they NEVER last.
— Philosopher Kin vs Big Brother (@rogerahicks) July 12, 2019
It can be fixed, I believe, but only if recognised & understood, which demands an evolutionary perspective.
What does this have to do with Race (the fact that #DavidAttenborough is White), you ask?
Race is our largest kinship group, contempt for which lies at the heart of our civilisation's self-destructiveness. You can't truly care about anything, if you don't also care about that.
As a biologist, of all people, David Attenborough should recognise this, & how civilisation perverts & corrupts evolved human nature into prioritising personal POWER & advantage over kinship, but like #RichardDawkins & all the others, he fails to do so.
Why this failure, even of evolutionary biologists, to recognise the importance of kinship?
1) The state (#BigBrother) has always demanded that we prioritise loyalty to itself over kin.
2) The bonds of kinship are TRIBAL, which, in overreaction to Nazi tribalism, is demonised.
the whole point of Dunks was you could go cop them at VIM whenever you wanted for $65. this shit is like having to enter a raffle to buy milk.
like seriously why not make a ton more of them if they're gonna be so sought-after? they land at outlets? so? nike still makes money off that.
the only reason to keep making them so limited is that they KNOW all that matters is the profit on the flip and if they were readily available FEWER people would want them, not more
the whole system is super broken, but it's just gonna go the way it goes, because at this point it all caters to the secondary market. the only reason Nike can sell Jordan 1s for $200 is because the people buying them can flip them for $500
adjusted for inflation, a $65 AJ1 in 1985 is like $160—and modern-day AJ1s are made from cheaper materials in factories staffed by cheaper workers. they don't HAVE to be $200 retail. but the secondary market nuked the whole concept of what sneakers are "worth"
\U0001f91e ONLINE RAFFLE is available from @bodega for the upcoming "UNLV" Nike Dunk Low Retro. Open until 5 PM ET on 2/16.
— Kicks Deals (@KicksDeals) February 15, 2021
\u27a1\ufe0f\u27a1\ufe0f https://t.co/JxJlyPuJVo pic.twitter.com/zenWOCDg4L
like seriously why not make a ton more of them if they're gonna be so sought-after? they land at outlets? so? nike still makes money off that.
the only reason to keep making them so limited is that they KNOW all that matters is the profit on the flip and if they were readily available FEWER people would want them, not more
the whole system is super broken, but it's just gonna go the way it goes, because at this point it all caters to the secondary market. the only reason Nike can sell Jordan 1s for $200 is because the people buying them can flip them for $500
adjusted for inflation, a $65 AJ1 in 1985 is like $160—and modern-day AJ1s are made from cheaper materials in factories staffed by cheaper workers. they don't HAVE to be $200 retail. but the secondary market nuked the whole concept of what sneakers are "worth"
I should mention, this is why I keep talking about this. Because I know so many people who legally CAN'T.
How do I know they have NDAs, if they can't talk legally about them? Because they trusted me with their secrets... after I said something. That's how they knew I was safe.
Some of the people who have reached out to me privately have been sitting with the pain of what happened to them and the regret that they signed for YEARS. But at the time, it didn't seem like they had any other option BUT to sign.
I do not blame *anyone* for signing an NDA, especially when it's attached to a financial lifeline. When you feel like your family's wellbeing is at stake, you'll do anything -- even sign away your own voice -- to provide for them. That's not a "choice"; that's survival.
And yes, many of the people whose stories I now know were pressured into signing an NDA by my husband's ex-employer. Some of whom I *never* would have guessed. People I thought "left well." Turns out, they've just been *very* good at abiding by the terms of their NDA.
(And others who have reached out had similar experiences with other Christian orgs. Turns out abuse, and the use of NDAs to cover up that abuse, is rampant in a LOT of places.)
How do I know they have NDAs, if they can't talk legally about them? Because they trusted me with their secrets... after I said something. That's how they knew I was safe.
And if the environment at the org was toxic or abusive, it is not uncommon to not realize the extent of that toxicity/abuse until after you're out. But by the time you realize that you signed under duress and presumed good faith where none existed, you're out of options.
— Lauren Thoman (@LaurenThoman) February 16, 2021
Some of the people who have reached out to me privately have been sitting with the pain of what happened to them and the regret that they signed for YEARS. But at the time, it didn't seem like they had any other option BUT to sign.
I do not blame *anyone* for signing an NDA, especially when it's attached to a financial lifeline. When you feel like your family's wellbeing is at stake, you'll do anything -- even sign away your own voice -- to provide for them. That's not a "choice"; that's survival.
And yes, many of the people whose stories I now know were pressured into signing an NDA by my husband's ex-employer. Some of whom I *never* would have guessed. People I thought "left well." Turns out, they've just been *very* good at abiding by the terms of their NDA.
(And others who have reached out had similar experiences with other Christian orgs. Turns out abuse, and the use of NDAs to cover up that abuse, is rampant in a LOT of places.)
This country does not *have* to be this broken. But it will remain so as long as it continues to self soothe with white supremacist mythology instead of reckoning with truth.
Make better choices, America
This is a fundamentally violent and abusive
The commitment to the ahistoricism of of "this is not who we are" is not merely objectionable. It is actively dangerous.
You can't fix something that you refuse to acknowledge is
Frederick Douglass, in 1852:
"To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me...?”
https://t.co/wbbsbfdMny
Make better choices, America
This is a fundamentally violent and abusive
The commitment to the ahistoricism of of "this is not who we are" is not merely objectionable. It is actively dangerous.
You can't fix something that you refuse to acknowledge is
Joe has GOT to cut the "this is not who we are" stuff.
— A Shady Dame From Seville (@SorayaMcDonald) January 6, 2021
It's fundamentally ahistorical. The KKK used to openly march down Pennsylvania gotdamn avenue FFS
Frederick Douglass, in 1852:
"To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me...?”
https://t.co/wbbsbfdMny
Nice to discover Judea Pearl ask a fundamental question. What's an 'inductive bias'?
I crucial step on the road towards AGI is a richer vocabulary for reasoning about inductive biases.
explores the apparent impedance mismatch between inductive biases and causal reasoning. But isn't the logical thinking required for good causal reasoning also not an inductive bias?
An inductive bias is what C.S. Peirce would call a habit. It is a habit of reasoning. Logical thinking is like a Platonic solid of the many kinds of heuristics that are discovered.
The kind of black and white logic that is found in digital computers is critical to the emergence of today's information economy. This of course is not the same logic that drives the general intelligence that lives in the same economy.
Help! What precisely is "inductive bias"? Some ML researchers are in the opinion that the machine learning category of \u2018inductive biases\u2019 can allow us to build a causal understanding of the world. My Ladder of Causation says: "This is mathematically impossible". Who is right? 1/
— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) February 14, 2021
I crucial step on the road towards AGI is a richer vocabulary for reasoning about inductive biases.
explores the apparent impedance mismatch between inductive biases and causal reasoning. But isn't the logical thinking required for good causal reasoning also not an inductive bias?
An inductive bias is what C.S. Peirce would call a habit. It is a habit of reasoning. Logical thinking is like a Platonic solid of the many kinds of heuristics that are discovered.
The kind of black and white logic that is found in digital computers is critical to the emergence of today's information economy. This of course is not the same logic that drives the general intelligence that lives in the same economy.