posted on July 08, 2020 09:51 AM by
u/palind_romor_dnilap
22
u/paxhominibus19 pointsat 1594244629.000000
Alicorn is consistently really good about gender to the actual trans
people in her actual life. The fact she was willing to consider
the possibility her kid was trans at age three, let alone actively
go along with her gender preferences, puts her solidly in the top
centile of American parents wrt gender.
Having looked through the background, she wrote a lengthy eugenics blog post, and two awful pieces of rationalist fiction about it, and who knows how much other shit, well before the child was born, dealing with the notion of gender preferences in a *fetus*, which is even earlier than age 3... so yeah, enough internet for me today.
Possibly unpopular, but this new context makes that post... sadder? Changes the context from "I wish to practice eugenics and erase certain people to stop them from suffering" to "I wish I could've prevented my child's suffering (still using eugenics)", and changes the casting of rationalists from cold and callous people who justify human suffering with a jargon-filled mental toolkit, to victims of an ideology that leaves them unable to process the reality of our times and so rely on fantasies about possible futures.
>changes the casting of rationalists from cold and callous people who justify human suffering with a jargon-filled mental toolkit, to victims of an ideology that leaves them unable to process the reality of our times and so rely on fantasies about possible futures.
Oh that’s how I’ve been thinking about them the whole time
This happens a lot sadly. See how some people become a rationalists (*) because he can't process that people die (which sucks, and I wish it didn't happen myself), there is a reason why the singularity is also called 'the rapture of the nerds'
*: via the 'don't want people to die' -> AGIGod can make that possible -> AGIgod needs to be friendly -> Lesswrong talks about aligning AGI -> Lesswrong, we can't even think properly -> become rationalist.
E: and I hope this causes the parent to do a 180 on their previous statements, and it prob will, they seem pretty empathic.
To clarify, the post predates her first child's birth by a _while._
I'm personally not that concerned with Alicorn's daughter getting mistreated, rationalists are probably _weird_ parents but I doubt they'd get _bad_. That said, I'm more concerned about what Cimorene might think upon stumbling across her mom's writing later in lfie.
> rationalists are probably weird parents but I doubt they'd get bad.
I think they may be bad... they're generally narcissistic (i.e. believe in their own importance, call other people NPCs, always find ways to blame someone else for own mistakes even in most straightforward cases, and so on) and that kind of crap seem to lead to child abuse in general.
There's a subreddit about narcissistic parents in general, /r/raisedbynarcissists . As would be expected on reddit, content is a mix of people talking about some seriously fucked up psychological abuse by parents, and your typical redditor complaining they don't get to drive their parent's car or something.
edit: added a quote of the relevant sentence... to clarify, I was talking of rationalists in general and not this specific person I don't know about. Hopefully in that specific instance it is all turning out fine for the daughter. More generally, it is a cult, and being born into a cult tends to be absolutely horrible.
Right, I don't know who she is. Edited to clarify I was responding to "rationalists are weird parents but I doubt they'd get bad". Their subculture is as full of red flags as any other cult.
I hope to hell she does. Everyone deserves to know whether their parents are bigots and eugenicists. And just because she's nice to her daughter doesn't mean she's not a bigot. Misogynists marry women all the fucking time, for instance, i assure you.
Alicorn is consistently really good about gender to the actual trans people in her actual life. The fact she was willing to consider the possibility her kid was trans at age three, let alone actively go along with her gender preferences, puts her solidly in the top centile of American parents wrt gender.
(Link to the sneerpost on the eugenics post here.)