Scholar

Yes, I know people don't like this topic, but I will speak about it anyway because it is an excellent example of how language informs and distorts our view of reality and subsequently our moral evaluations. I will use incest as an example here, because I find it is the most obvious and glaring example of language abuse in regards to how science today uses it to marginalize a minority. There is multiple ways you can evaluate what incest is and how harmful it is, and depending on where you draw conceptual lines it will completely determine the policies that you might find reasonable and just. Especially how we construct, use and apply our language will be the determining factor here, and I will demonstrate how this is the case with incest. Now, generally we frame incest as a singular concept that contains all incestuous interactions, and then evaluate whether or not "incest is harmful" on that basis. In that case, incest would include incest rape, it would include parent to child exploitation and so forth. A reasonable person might come to conclude that it is perfectly valid to say incest is abhorrent and dysfunctional, given how much of it would fall into that category. On that basis, one might want to ban incest, or heavily stigmatize it, because obviously nobody wants to say that it is okay to rape. But that is clearly unreasonable, we can just ban rape without banning consensual incest, so we can exclude that from our definition of "incest". We can say there is incest, and incest rape. But obviously there are risks even in non-rape cases of incest, as there are in any relationship between two humans. So now the question is, is it enough to generalize incest as a singular concept, if we have all sorts of different relationship constellations within that concept that are utterly different from each other? You can see here that we can draw the line anywhere, and on that basis make an assertion about how harmful, dysfunctional or risky a particular thing would be. The more granular we get, the more nuanced and sophisticated our notions will become. Obviously incest between a parent and a child is not the same as between two siblings, so does it really make sense to talk about incest as a generality and subsequently evaluate it's "risks"? Clearly we have to be more sophisticated than that, and make distinctions between the various types of incestuous constellations given they all have unique risk factors that will not carry over to each other. For example, we might find that parent to child relationships have a high instance of risk, whereas sibling relationships have a low instance of risk. It wouldn't therefore make sense to congregate those ideas into a singular concept. I want to point out that, we are actually not even that sophisticated in how we use our language even in the context of science. Science, if you look at publications about incest, generalizes incest as a singular concept all the time, and worse, the term, in the scientific literature, becomes synonymous with incest rape. So there is not even an effort made to distinguish incest rape from consensual incest, it is all just one term that is applied willy nilly. There is no need for clarification in the eyes of the authors of papers on incest abuse. The language is very loose and that actually informs how people perceive incest. This is essentual to understand because it shows you how language itself can impact your view of reality. To understand the problem, it would be like conflating homosexual rape and child-abuse with the term homosexuality in general, and given a scientific paper, basically use the word "homosexuality" as synonymous with the word "homosexual rape". The problem of this is obvious and glaring, but given the bias we have against incest, scientists don't really care. In fact, it is encouraged given our views of incest. So, let us be more sophisticated and make proper distinctions. We could say there is vertical and horizontal incest. Vertical incest would be incest between parent-child, grandparent-grandchild, aunt-nephew etc while horizontal incest is between siblings and cousins. The risk profiles for all of these will look wildly different, so if we want to make evaluate the reality we would address each of these individually rather than treat them as a general concept. In fact, even within the category of siblings, we might have wildly different risk profiles. For example, siblings with larger age gaps are susceptible to different risks than same ages siblings. If we are talking about power dynamics for example, it reasonable to believe that twins (independent if same sex or not) actually might have a more egalitarian and equal power-dynamic than the average heterosexual couple. If we are talking about risks of abuse, it might turn out that twins are less likely to abuse and exploit each other than the average couple. There is a further point to be made about how we contextualize data. Let us say we look at the data, and it gives us a certain number on how likely a same-aged sibling relationship is to be abusive. Maybe that data shows us it is more likely to be abusive than the average relationship, and therefore we conclude that same-aged sibling relationships are riskier than the average relationship. But here is where it gets tricky: In what context is this the case? What if, due to stigmatization and legal persecution of incest, it is far more likely that those who are willingly to violate such social norms will also be more likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior? In that case we have a significant selection bias. It might actually be true that, in a society which deems incest between same-aged siblings as permissible, you would see that same aged siblings are less likely to abuse each other than the average couple. In that case, if we wanted to prevent abuse in society, it might be rational to permit such incest rather than prohibit it. It's actually perfectly reasonable to propose that the average same aged sibling would be less likely to rape, abuse or coerce their sibling than the average boyfriend would be to abuse his girlfriend. Just because it is the case that more sibling relationships are dysfunctional than non-incest relationships, does not actually mean that siblings are more likely to be dysfunctional if they pursue a relationship. We can understand this because, given a society in which homosexuality is illegal or highly stigmatized, it will likely be true that homosexual activity in such a society is dispropotionately problematic. In the past, the homosexual community actually had a real problem with grooming, where older, more experienced gay men would groom underage homosexual boys to "show them the ropes". This was driven by the stigmatization, but depending on how you use science, you could have framed it as the risks of homosexuality and therefore might have suggested to ban it on that basis. Imagine if homosexuality was a choice, if people were bisexual rather than homosexual. For how long would we have converted people who sought to engage in homosexual relationship under the guise "preventing abuse"? We have to be really careful here, because we are talking about severe stigmatization and legal persecution of individuals who engage in consensual relationships, and we might actually drive more dysfunction and abuse through this stigmatization, even though we claim we are trying to prevent it. None of this is even considered. We don't, scientifically, make evaluations about the risks of sibling relationships vs parent relationships and consensual vs rape and so forth. There is not even an attempt made to arrive at some sort of truth here, and yet we confidently assert that we have to stigmatize and ban such things because of our preconceptions about it. Because it is so dangerous, because it is inherently unnatural and dysfunctional. Because most cases are abuse (where is the evidence for this). Because individuals who engage in such things always came out harmed and traumatized (the only evidence on this shows the exact opposite, which I go into later). It's all basically rape and abuse and anything that validates any form of incest as anything other than that deserves to be viewed as highly problematic. People don't even have an intuitive grasp of how risky a certain relationship type would have to be to justify shaming and imprisoning people for engaging in it. If you ask them, they can't even give you a ballmark number. Becaue in the end, it's not about how risky it is. We have no clue how risky it actually is, and even if it was, there are probably ways to mitigate risks without shaming and imprisoning innocent people. All this is about is our revulsion, and science is used to basically justify our already present dispositions. Now, what I described with incest is even true with how we conceptualize inbreeding. We attribute an inherent risk to inbreeding, because of how we conceptualize inbreeding. We just say there is a higher risk of child-defect with inbreeding. It is in one way true, but technically inaccurate. It is only true if your view and understanding of it is unsophisticated. Two siblings might not put their children at a higher risk of birth-defect on the basis of inbreeding, given that they do not both carry the same recessive genes that would have to be present in their parents. Maybe their parents have particularly good genes and don't carry any terrible recessive genes, or the way those genes were transmitted to them was not such that both of them carry the same recessive genes. In that case, they might get a genetic test and it might be the case that there is not a particularly elevated risk of genetic disease. Their potential children might even be less likely to be unhealthy than the average couple. So, you can see how the unsophisticated notion of "inbreeding elevates risk of birth defects", actually does not tell the whole picture. And this is especially important if we want to make decisions about banning certain sexual activity on the basis of prevent birth defects in general. It wouldn't be reasonable to put two siblings in prison for engaging in the "risk of causing genetic defect in offspring", if they got a genetic test and either don't have a significantly elevated risk or can reduce that risk using pre-screening during early pregnancy. In the end they could engage in more responsible reproductive decisions than the average couple does. Saudi Arabia actually mandates genetic counselling before marriage, and interestingly enough, even they do not engage in eugenics the way western societies do when they justify the prohibition of incest on the basis of higher likelihood of birth defects. If you truly care about reducing genetic problems in your population, you would mandate the same and prohibit individuals from engaging in sex if they meet a certain threshold of risk to offspring. That would at least be reasonable and consistent in regards to how we treat inbreeding. You could say that would be an infringement of sexual liberty, but there is no way you could argue that mandating a test is more of an infringement on sexual liberty and reproductive autonomy than putting siblings in prison because they might be at an elevated risk of causing birth defects in their children. If you want to engage in eugenics, you at least have to be fair about it. So, in the case of incest we can see how using language, as well as how we interpret data, is done in a way that enables the marginalization of a sexual minority. You will notice that most people who evalute this topic will do so from an incredibly emotional place, and scientists are not exempt from this given that they are highly discourage from framing incest as anything but harmful. The best data (it is not amazing data but the best we seem to have) on consensual incest between siblings that I have found is from the 80s, in which Finkelhor found that 20% of incestuous interactions between siblings (a survery of 796) were coercive. Overall, 30% of those who made such experiences described them as positive, 30% as negative and the rest felt neutral towards them. 15% of females and 10% of males reported incestuous interactions (seems it is not so unnatural after all). All of this in a society in which incest is highly stigmatized. Finkelhors interpretation of that data was ridiculed, and the data was dismissed on the basis that, even between same aged siblings, there is an inherent power differential in society between men and women, and therefore such self-evaluations cannot be considered as valid. Since then, it does not seem that any research has been done that would look at anything but incest-rape, and it seems to be the case that scientists who do attempt to investigate it face significant professional repercussions and social backlash. Remember that, when homosexuality was viewed as inherently immoral and disgusting, you could have done a study that would have found that a significant portion of those who engaged in homosexuality came out of it traumatized. Not because homosexuality is inherently harmful and traumatizing, but because of the guilt and shame they would feel as a result of societies demonization of such actions. Yet, perversely, society will not take responsibility for causing this trauma and shame. Quite the opposite, they will use the shame and trauma to further validitade how wrong such actions are. Importantly, it is to note that there is no research that has been done on consensual incest between adults. Finkelhor's study still is in the context of adolescence and childhood. To contextualize the 20% number, it is actually the case, given a similar definition of coercion, that 43% of adolescent girls and 36% of adolescent boys experience similar sexual victimization. Should we ban sex between adolescent boys and girls, to prevent abuse? Should we shame and stigmatize them if they do engage in it? Or did we learn that these methods are inappropriate, cruel and cause more harm than good for the development of individuals, and that we ought to find other means to reduce instances of harm that do not involve the fundamental violation of individual's sexual autonomy?

So you will go on the Bridges Podcast?

@Salvijus posted a video in another thread about a person, or I guess a body, that is inhabited by two souls. I was very skeptical but watching the video, I am not sure what to make of this. Is it fake, a lie? Is it some sort of neuological condition? Or maybe an actual spiritual phenomena? Could this be related to reports of people switching bodies in India, and various reports of reincarnation? If it is just completely fake that is some genius level stuff to pull of. Maybe it isn't as impressive as I'm thinking, given someone were to practice this all day every day for years.

This is a child talking. AI getting bored of us because we are too slow? How is that in any way insightful? And there is no evidence that neuralink will be able to do anything, it's all a hypothetical fantasy. And how will any of it make us be able to compute things faster?

Thank you for taking the time to respond, I have more questions. But why is it grooming? If they are an adult, and they consent to it, in what way would that constitute grooming, especially if they intiate it? But the same arguments you are making now can be made about homosexuality. Animals avoid it as well, and it seems humans inherently have a disgust reaction towards same-sex activity so as to maximize procreation. I certainly have overcome any disgust I feel towards incest, why do you believe that there is no component of nurture in this regard? Homosexuality is not something humans are driven towards, it is an abnormality in human sexual behavior, why would incest be any different? Why does something being unusual or unnormal make it dysfunctional in your eyes? How does that indicate dysfunction in any way? Homosexuality is not the norm, yet we would not classify it as a dysfunction. What makes the differentiation here? Many things in human sexuality are rare and yet you would probably not describe them as dysfunctional, or claim their abnormality was a indication of dysfunction? But if you have no idea, why do you have such a strong stance on incest being so muh more risky in regards to grooming and manipulation? What if the opposite were true? I have to correct you here. There is a phenomena described as "Genetic Sexual Attraction", and it relates to blood relatives who have not grown up with each other being more likely to have high sexual attraction when they meet as adults as a result of their genetic similarities. Why do you believe this is a malformed love? Where did you get this idea from? And why do you think it is in any shape or form dysfunctional or bad? I understood you to say that you would be in favor of basically punishing anyone for being in incestuous relationships independent if grooming occured or not, under the guise of wanting to prevent grooming. Is that not the case? Why do you feel comfortable pressuring two individuals who feel love for each other to not engage in it, given that there is no evidence of dysfunction occuring? Do you think there might be reasons why you only see unhealthy examples of this, given that society socially and legally persecutes individuals who engage in these types of relationships? Why do you believe it is apt to condemn or disallow individuals from engaging in mutual love, rather than educating them about things like consent and the risks of sexual relationships in general, such that risks are minimized? Do you believe it is important to make a distinction between vertical and horizontal consanguinamorous relationships, in regards to risk assessments and how we treat individuals who want to be in such relationships? Vertical means relationships between parent-child, uncle-niece etc, while horizontal means between siblings and cousins. So do you believe people who went to the same class together since early age, and eventually started dating in highschool, should not date each other because they knew each other when they were young? What if a boy and a girl grew up in the same apartment-floor, living right next to eah other, and their parents were very close such that the two households were basially like one. They basially were together since infancy and could always enter each others homes. If eventually, as the girl and boy grew older, they developed a romantic relationship, do you actually believe it was more likely to be dysfunctional or unhealthy? Would you not believe the opposite to be true, that they might actually share a far deeper connection and therefore be much less likely to be dysfunctional in their relationship? Why is it not a beautiful thing that these two souls, who grew up together and shared most of their life with each other, could find love for one another? Why is it so inappropriate to you, to share love with someone who you were close with when you were young? Why is that immoral to you? (I want to know what you think about this in regards to horizontal relationships, before we go into the more complicated vertical ones, so basically siblings, cousins, best friends who grew up really close, who are roughly the same age)

It's obvious that he is full of shit, given the Trump interview. His positions are entirely self-serving.

Why do you think an adult cannot make a choice once they are an adult? For example, if a niece grows up, why can she not be in a relationship with her uncle if she desires? Given that grooming did not occur, would you be against that? Do you think this disgust is inherent? For example, many people would argue they feel disgusted towards homosexuality for the same reason, as nature seems to be against it. Yet, I think today many people no longer feel as disgusted by it as they did in the past. Do you think it is possible that your views around incest influence how much disgust you feel towards it? Why do you think it indicates a dysfunction between the siblings? And given your answer, where do you think you got that idea in the first place? Do you think it is possible that siblings might be less likely to abuse and manipulate each other than the average couple? If not, why not? What do you mean by malformed platonic, sibling attraction? And why would that make it dysfunctional? So you believe consenting adults should be imprisoned to prevent grooming and manipulation? Why do you believe this is justified? How will you differentiate victims from perpetrators? Given it is illegal, you would punish both parties, so presumably you would be willing to imprison a potential grooming or manipulation victim if there is no evidence of such a thing occuring? In what other cases do you apply this standard, of imprisoning consenting adults because in other cases there might be grooming or manipulation occuring? Also, how high does the manipulation and grooming risk need to be for you to imprison innocent, consenting adults? Do you think we should apply the same standards to 25 year olds dating 18 year olds, given the risks of grooming and manipulation? Should have age gap laws in general, if it turns out it would reduce grooming and manipulation, and put people in prison for it?

I don't care about any of this, just tell me a single thing he said that you thought was insightful that didn't fall in his area of expertise. I know what Leo is saying, I have no idea what that has to do with anything I said.

Well I am speaking to his maturity as a person. Tell me a single insightful thing he said about something that does not fall in his area of expertise.

Just tell me a single insightful thing he said.

What comments? I never heard Elon say a smart thing.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1823254086126608862 Look at Elon. He has the cognitive development of a teenager.

Basically, Jordan Peterson is the demonstration for how intelligence can be completely subservient to bias and ignorance. Now, AI basially is a subservient intelligence. It has no agency, and therefore no wisdom. With the amount of damage someone like Peterson alone can do, beause of how convincing he can appear to the biased masses, imagine if everyone had a personal Jordan Peterson^10 inside their pockets. That's the world we speak of. People think that the major threats around humanities survival lie in external problems, in conflict between societies or nature. But the reality is, there is a far more sinister threat that is occuring on the informational level of society, that was always present. Due to the interconnectedness of the world, and the development of a sort of global digital mind, that basically rules the perception of our realities, these kinds of technologies introduce something that is equivalently dangerous as schizophrenia is to a tribesman. You can say the most dangerous things for a tribesman are the lions that lurk in the tall grass, or the threat of starvation or other tribes. But really, schizophrenia, such that you can no longer keep reality apart from your personal imagination, is far, far more dangerous, because it exponentiates every threat that exists and creates threats where there should no none. AI basially is like the introduction of a powerful form of imagination into the global digital mind, which could very easily lead to a sort of global psychosis. We don't realize just how bad things can get, before they get bad, and so we are not even aware of how significant the dangers here are. We had the luxury that technology was kind of ruled by more developed human beings. Social media was basically biased towards progress. But this is far from certain, and it seems to be changing now, as you can observe someone like Elon Musk taking over the space. He will amplify his own biases, just as the progressives did in the past.

Musk is baffoon. AI basically will give underdeveloped, less intelligent people the ability to frame their biases in a more sophisticated manner such that progress will be much harder to achieve, given that people can simply remain within their bubbles of bias. If you were worried how bigots and baffoons were able to convince the ignorance masses in the past, prepare for hell. You can already see this happening, as I predicted when the models initially surfaced. And like with social media, there is literally nothing that anyone will do about it until significant damage to society is done. This is why giving biased apes powerful technology is such a bad idea, because it allows them to get away with even less wisdom than before.

Actual infinity. It's just insane. It's actually insane. It's unfathomable, it is eternal, it is everything. Like, think about what that means, it is actually infinite, and it has been infinite for all of eternity. Everything you have so far experienced, as you can remember it, is an infinitesimal small part of what you have experienced and what you will experience. There is no end to it. You could live every single life of every single being that has ever existed on earth and it would be nothing. Just think about how far you have come, and you have no fucking clue. You have no clue where you are going, where you have been. There is no end to exploring yourself, coming to know yourself in the most intimate way possible, through pure being. Existing is basically having sex with yourself, it is the most intimate act possible. And think of where you are right now, how precious this moment is, how utterly mindblowing. Forget about all the human bullshit for a second, just look where the fuck you are right now. You have probably been interdimensional fruitflies or some such for your past billion lives, and now you here. Catch your breath, look at what you are. This is a rare moment of self-reflection on your infinte journey through your own self. You can connect right now to those moments of clarity, of which you already had an uncountable amount of.

You are not engaging with what I said. What's the point of asking a question if you will ignore my answer and then give the laziest response.

Also, the point of believing in stuff you can't be conscious of should be fairly apparent if you just inspect the reason for why you are here and treating us all as if we existed as separated entities. In the end you could just make an argument for the principle of caution, in that, it would not be good to assume others do not exist if they do exist, as you might have no reason not to inflict suffering onto them, if that suffering doesnt exist in the first place. This faith is such a fundamental part of being human, and an entity in general, that it would be silly to pretend you could just throw it out and pretend it wasn't a thing.

This is all bias. Reality is perfect as it is. There are infinite beings who will live "unawakened" lifes, who have done so for eternity and will continue to do so for eternity. There is nothing fundamentally special about awakening. You will experience everything anyways.

It very much depends on what kind of rape it was. I'm assuming it wasn't a violent rape but more so statutory rape, with maybe coercive elements. Either way, we, largely, live in a societies that put consenting adults in prison for being in sexual relationships under the pretense of eugenics, so it is not very surprising that people would go bonkers in clear abuse cases such as this.

The point of having faith in the appearances of the divine is love. You can project a deep love towards the connection you share with others, if you recognize in them a selfhood. It allows for a deeper intimacy between different parts of God. In other words, it allows for connection where, metaphysically, connection should not be possible (with the wisdom of the divine). There are things that have impacted me before I have been conscious of them. In the end I trust in the divine order and believe we have developed fundamentally truthful intuitions about the nature of existence, such that, despite a fundamental disconnectedness, we can still perceive each other and hold each other within our minds. That to me is part of the genius of creation. I think while you cannot become conscious of other minds in this way, due to the nature of selfhood, you can become conscious of divine intention. I believe faith to be a fundamental component to existence as it relates to self-hood. I think attempting to translate it into propositional logic will undermine the entire point of the existence of these dynamics. These are delicate things that will dissipate if you use the clumsy hands of your rational mind to grasp for them. In that way, faith is what sustains these things, as it is keeps your greasy fingers off of the delicate forms that you have been gifted so you could connect intimately with all the parts of yourself that exist outside of this selfhood. You cannot be conscious of anything that isn't part of your consciousness.

This cannot be possible by the very nature of what a soul or mind is. That doesn't exclude the existene of other minds, it just excludes the possibility of becoming conscious of other minds. The claim here is that they are both separate experiences and they can individually experience different aspects of the body-mind. For example, they said that from the perspective of the guy, he basically blinked out of existence for 5 years and then reentered the body having no recolletion of what had happened to him. The biggest claim I guess would be the fact that they are saying they are basically in the same body, dividing it up to share the space in it with complete lack of awareness of what the other "personality" is doing or feeling. They say they can each inhabit one of their arms and then touch each other and it is just like touching a stranger.

You just put more effort into the arguments. Who is and isn't a fool is relative.

That's basically your whole career as well.

Yeah it's like saying Awakening will make you give up sex because you realize you only have sex with yourself.

Think about this: If it turned out DNA didn't exist and it was all a big illusion and actually the body is just smooth spirit-matter that has no processes other than shaping itself to function itself the way it does. Literally nothing about our ideas of what women and men are would change.