scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/1eiase9.md

[D] Friday Open Thread

• Author: u/AutoModerator *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/1eiase9/d_friday_open_thread/

• Score: 10

• Created: 2024-08-02T14:00:15

Post:

Welcome to the Friday Open Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could (possibly) be found in the comments below!

Please note that this thread has been merged with the Monday General Rationality Thread.

Comments:

u/SvalbardCaretaker [+9] Mouse Army (an hour later)

Turns out, my godchild is the last* heir of Martin Luther, and she has recently started using her newly-learned powers of literacy to nail firebrand letters adressed to her mom to her parents' bedroom door, expressing her dissatisfaction with her parental unit, in extremely strong worded fashion.

*shes allegedly the last-listed entry in the 2015 edition of "Descendants of Dr Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora", published by the club of those descendants. I haven't verified this, and since then at least her siblings and, presumably, other people, have been born.

u/SvalbardCaretaker [+5] Mouse Army (3 hours later)

LUTHERS LAST HEIR* OPENS CHAMBER OF HOTHEADEDNESS AND DOORNAILING

u/None [+3] (3 hours later)

[deleted]

u/Dragongeek [+5] Path to Victory (6 hours later)

My family recently digitized the old "family bible" which has been passed down generation to generation and occasionally written in. Earliest person in there is from the 1500s (!) and the patrilineal line can be followed to today.

Incredibly, It's still sorta readable as German if you convert the rather "freestyle" script into legible letters and sound it out. The biggest problem is that there are many specialty or dead words that we can't figure out, even with context. 

Lots of funny stuff in there though, one guy in the 1600s was pretty free about the type of stuff he wrote about and lived a pretty wild life, and includes random stories in between endless pages of "x married y and moved to z" and similar genealogy stuff.

No nobility though. Two or three were, as best we can guess, some sort of "calculator" or educated administrative official who worked directly with some Lady in managing lands, but most are bakers, cobblers, or similar trades.

u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (3 hours later)

Thats a funny genealogist story! In this case its the pretty snobbish and somewhat evil grandparents who tracked this, so that tracks.

Wiki says the association counts roughly as elligible 27000 people. I'm living in Germany, username is a boardgame reference to a great space game.

Whats perhaps most interesting is the release date of the descendants books:

Richter (1733), Nobbe (1846), Sartorius (1926), Clasen/Schmidt (1960), G. Luther (1987), F. Damm (2001/08) und Jacobsen/Werner (2015)

I.E. Richter had to catch a LOT of work ~190 years after Luthers dead. Must have been interesting source work. And the rapid release cycle today is due to A) exponentials and perhaps B) they can sell their books to the unis, most of the unis around me list their stuff.

u/None [+2] (3 hours later)

[deleted]

u/SvalbardCaretaker [+3] Mouse Army (4 hours later)

Just Luther halo effect I think? We do have lots of theology departments and Luther is one of the most prominent historical figures from the middle ages. One uni even lists their quarterly newsletter!

Its High Frontier 4 All, the third-most complex rated game on BGG, hard sci-fi space colonization sim. Track your fuel according to rocket equation! Have your 15 turn expedition to Mars go up in flames because you rolled badly on the aerobraking roll! Bring about fantastical futures such as SOL neutrino lens or EM lens telescopes for exoplanet hunt!

edit: theres a great module for tabletop simulator, the physical game makes quite nice wall deco, and on ION games discord theres plenty of people to learn the game from. I recommend starting with the Space Diamonds flight tutorial.

u/Rhamni [+6] Aspiring author (7 hours later)

I've been watching House MD (He's a criminal), and it introduced me to a wonderful song, called Enjoy Yourself (It's later than you think). The original song from 1950 is good, but the shortened House MD version is just delightful. It's so ominous. Same content, very different delivery. Spoilers if you're specifically on season 4 or 5, I guess.

u/Zeitfor [+0] (16 hours later)

Have to say it's pretty disappointing to see people straight up lying in the recommendation thread about JK Rowling and getting upvoted. I honestly wouldn't mind as much if they stood up for their position, but trying to gaslight people is something I can't stand.

u/GodWithAShotgun [+12] (a day later)

I'm confused about your goal in making this comment.

It sounds like you are frustrated that people in this forum don't hold the same political views as you, and that you had a disagreement with someone that didn't get resolved well. You said they were lying and gaslightning you. I poked around that thread and do not think they were lying, let alone gaslighting you (an aside: it is a pet peeve of mine that gaslighting has made its way into the common lexicon to describe things as mundane as "uttered an opinion I disagree with". I really want to preserve gaslighting's definition as a pattern of behavior that is intended to make someone question their own capacity for reason because such a concept is immensely valuable for contextualizing some types of abuse). They might be wrong, there were certainly things they said I disagreed with, but I really don't think they're lying or gaslighting. Perhaps the disagreement is just that - a difference of views, or a dispute about what sorts of words should be used to describe a set of facts.

More personally, many people vote based on tone - I know I do. I find your comment here fairly abrasive, so it's possible that the reason they were receiving upvotes was because they moderated their speech. If you want to have a disagreement about JKR and earn internet points (I don't think this should be your goal) or convince anyone that you're right (more laudable, although also not especially important in the grand scheme of things), then lessening the aggressiveness of your tone would probably serve you well.

In particular, I think these tips would help you:

• Make accusations specific and well supported. Rather than claim "gaslighting", you might claim that one specific thing they said was incorrect.

• Use emotionally charged language sparingly. For example, rather than claiming that the person you're disagreeing with is a "lying bigot who is gaslighting you", you might describe them as "flatly incorrect".

• It is okay if someone is wrong on the internet. I'm engaging here because I wanted to think through what was bothering me about your comment and the form of "helpful advice that will probably be ignored" was pleasant enough for me to engage in the activity. If it were important to me that you change your mind, I would be upset, and I do not think that responding here would be good for me nor would it make me persuasive.

Anyways, hopefully you find this comment a helpful shift in perspective.

u/Zeitfor [+2] (a day later)

You don't think the people that were saying that JK Rowling isn't anti-trans, or being pedantic about how she totally wasn't accusing the boxer of being trans, that these weren't straight up bad faith arguments? It's not like this is new. She's been doing this for so many years at this point and it's incredibly tiring and pointless to deal with this stuff fairly, because every time you try to argue this they'll just try to weasel out.

Just because they couch their language in anodyne terms doesn't make it any less offensive to me. In fact it makes it more offensive because it's all the more cowardly and deceptive. I tried to make a post to gauge the temperature of the room and if this is what the subreddit wants, then that's fine, but I want no part of it.

u/GodWithAShotgun [+10] (a day later)

I assume you're talking about:

Rowling is [...] anti trans

Is she really though?

I think if you had stated plainly something JKR had said that demonstrates that she is anti-trans (by your understanding of that phrase) and said "No, really, she is anti-trans, link:", you would have been much more persuasive. I know very little about JKR beyond her authorship of the first 7 books of harry potter, so I'm entirely disinterested in litigating her beliefs and don't know enough to gauge if she is anti-trans or not.

In fact it makes it more offensive [to speak in anodyne terms] because it's all the more cowardly and deceptive.

I don't think you actually believe this. I think that if someone uttered what you believe to be their quiet beliefs aloud and were net-upvoted, that you would be more offended that the anti-trans beliefs are explicitly endorsed here (note: I think you are incorrect about the extent to which other the other poster endorses TERF-y beliefs, and this IMO mistaken belief is upsetting you. Obviously I might be wrong instead since we're both speculating about the hidden beliefs of some third party.)

Calling them cowardly and deceptive is also the sort of emotionally charged accusation that makes your posts less persuasive and more abrasive to me.

u/Zeitfor [-1] (a day later)

I can't convince you, nor do I aim to. It's an online message board where we have no relationship outside of a few paragraphs of text. I can't nor can anyone else really change your opinion in so short a time and in such a lack of meaningful connection. I can merely state what I find to be the truth and hope that other people don't fall for misinformation.

Since you're not aware of the subject matter, then you're probably also not aware that it's an incredibly common tactic for anti-trans apologists to act like the poster I was discussing. They'll state that they don't believe she's anti-trans when they know full well that she is. That they're just a fan of the books or the like and why won't anyone think of the poor woman who's been so mistreated by all these mean trans folk. And then people that are not as invested in the issue will believe them. This happens all the time.

Also just to illustrate this, the person you're talking about https://www.reddit.com/user/zombie_of_disaproval/comments/ has three visible comments, and all of them are in this thread in the service of going to bat for how JK Rowling is not anti-trans. Like it takes two seconds to realize that something is off about this.

To your last point, yes I would feel better about them straight up saying that they believe JK Rowling is anti-trans and that they support that. At least then when people upvote them I'd know for sure that I wouldn't want to be a part of such a space. When they hide behind deceptions like they are here, it leads to such a miserable meta-discussion and hand-wringing about if they really do support such a position, and I have to spend time seeing if such a sentiment is more widely supported or not.

And I do think it reflects poorly on a community when you let this kind of junk fester unopposed. If you do it starts to drive away people like myself that don't want to be fed garbage and told that it's cake.

u/PekoraShine [+4] (22 hours later)

A lot of people confuse rationality with rationalisation, and thus are highly motivated to craft false narratives for insane beliefs. As true here as in any other space.

u/RaryTheTraitor [+5] The Foundation (a day later)

Maybe I suck at Googling, but I've never managed to find one unambiguously anti-trans statement by Rowling. Can you provide one?

u/Seraphaestus [+4] (3 days later)

She calls trans women "crossdressing men"

She went as far as denying documented Nazi bookburnings, which included transgender research, because to her it is a "fever dream" that trans people have ever been persecuted

She regularly and consistently promotes other terfs who are much more explicit in their bigotry, like actual fascist Posie Parker

She joined in the manhunt against how the cis female boxer at the Olympics with a 9-5 win/loss rate is actually a trans woman beating up on the competition. She, afaik, did not comment at all on the literal child rapist. Just normal behavior when you truly just care about women and girls and don't have a frothing hatred for a minority

The reason Rowling doesn't come out and say "I hate trans people" is so she can engage in dogwhistle concern trolling to keep the useful idiots who are unwilling or incapable of seeing past her extremely thin bullshit on her side.

And I mean this is just off the dome, I could probably go on her twitter and imemdiately find something more to add lol

Edit: literally did that and she retweeted "Two men arriving with the Olympic flame. The erasure of women in all spheres of public life continues", calling trans women men again and more importantly, objecting to their appearance at all in an Olympic opening ceremony with dozens of men and women. How do you reconcile this shit with the idea she isn't transphobic. How else can this be interpreted than wanting to eliminate trans people from every aspect of public life? That if a proportionate ratio of trans women literally just exist in an event they are "" erasing women""

u/Zeitfor [+4] (a day later)

Perhaps something along the lines of https://www.vox.com/culture/23622610/jk-rowling-transphobic-statements-timeline-history-controversy

and if you don't like that source, there are hundreds of others if you google something like: jk rowling anti-trans.
Or perhaps something straight from her twitter: https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1470092815506063365
I don't know how much clearer you can get to being anti-trans other than just saying outright, "I hate trans people", which as we've seen in this very discussion, people are averse to doing because it's harder to argue against people "just asking questions" so they tend to avoid definitely stating their positions.
If you still don't like any of those, then feel free to post your question in an lgbt or transgender sub and get an answer from a source that might be more first-hand for you. I would imagine the fact that almost every single lgbt/trans person thinks she's anti-trans would be a good data point.

u/RaryTheTraitor [+8] The Foundation (a day later)

Yeah, there's isn't anything in that article that's clearly anti-trans. And of course that tweet is merely pointing out the kind of completely insane policy that makes extreme trans ideology so difficult to take seriously.

To be clear, if I had to state a probability that Rowling harbors at least some truly anti-trans sentiments, I'd say something like 50%. She probably has some incoherent brand of gender essentialist beliefs, if nothing else. But the evidence for that is mostly her 'liked' tweets, and the tone of her public statements, not anything solid.

No, the opinions of trans people about Rowling don't mean anything, independent of the evidence they present to back those opinions. Incidentally, I genuinely hope that trans subreddits aren't representative of trans people's opinions about trans ideology, because if so they're all mindkilled and there's no hope of society ever converging on sane beliefs about this stuff.

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