A Jungian would call it an archetype, a cognitivist would call it a schema, a Kleinian would call it an object, a Bayesian would call it a prior.

I’m no expert on the subject, but these all strike me as fairly different things.

That last paragraph demonstrates how the very bias he’s talking about appears on an ideological level.

There’s something vaguely addictive about entertaining offbeat, bold things like cryonics or eugenics or Neocameralism that validate your ego and subtle prejudices. Not even officially accepting them, maybe just reading about them, discussing them, and defending their right to be circulated.

It brings pleasure to entertain these ideas, viewing yourself as enlightened enough to not be put off by radical, offensive ideas like normal people would be while also taking pride in being, “complex” as in willing to accept gay marriage, but also thinking women have the minds of paleolithic gatherers.

At the same time they won’t, “take seriously” ideas which don’t fit their own priors.

The type of person he talks about in this article resonates with me, because it describes people I grew up with, specifically my father.

The most effective way I’ve found to communicate to others the relationship I have with my father is “My words do very little to have any effect on him, no matter how novel the words.”

It caused me some anguish growing up. And it shaped the way I treat others too, moving me in the opposite direction, to be extra receptive to the words and requests of others, for better or worse.

As the years passed, I tried to piece together an explanation as to why my father behaved this way with me. Unfortunately, because of our barrier of communication, it was and still is a puzzle for me. Some of the possible explanations that I’ve gathered include:

• Him growing up in a more conservative time
• Him growing up in relative poverty
• Him growing up under a totalitarian regime
• Undiagnosed anxiety disorder that makes him shut out even the most minor of stressors
• Presence on the autism spectrum that makes communication difficult
• Huge amount of stress at work that made him shun normal interpersonal communication at home
• A particular philosophy about raising children.
• Intergenerational trauma.

and many other factors that are personal to my family, all of them compounding and affecting each other in complex ways.

…..

Meanwhile Scott Alexander: “These people are pretty dumb and irrational, LOL, kind of like people who are skeptical of cryonics”.

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That thought is more weirdly circular than an ouroboros.

So many words just to say he wishes humans would interact via API calls like computers. Transhumanists would rather upload their brains than accept the slightest ambiguity of being a wonderfully messy human being. And this guy is supposed to be a psychiatrist!

Isn’t the whole point of going to a B&B to socialize with the hosts? This feels like someone going to a dinner theater and complaining that the staff didn’t accommodate his preference to be quiet so he could have a quiet conversation with his date. Maybe it’s worth considering whether your preferences are not in line with the circumstances that you have deliberately put yourself into?

holy shit, all this, because he had a bad experience at a B&B where people wanted to talk to him and his friend?

E: the quote is also crazy, taking an idea seriously doesnt have to mean you reach the same conclusion about the idea. Wtf is this weird stuff, if you would take cryo seriously you would believe in it…

Whoa, the second top-level comment there is from someone I went to high school with. Weird.

I can’t take Substack seriously until Maddox starts one.

One thing I noticed is that the whole article is predicated on this:

“I played along - no point in offending people - but I warned that my friend, who would be arriving a little later, was much more introverted, and would appreciate being efficiently directed to her room without the welcome committee.”

There is essentially no useful information here about what that interaction with the B&B owners actually looked like. And then this:

“We concluded that they were just inexplicably bad at some sort of mental gear-shifting.”

Like, how is this even a thing? I just. Huh?

Why do these people blog instead of starting the Ultra Party to raise national prestige through the first batch of (volunteer) Superhumans?

Also, their version of transhumanism implicitly assumes:

1. The ability to improve one’s IQ or other features is restricted by class/race etc. and that transhuman resources ought to go to “the most deserving”
2. That people through (formal) education, military service etc. cannot improve themselves

” Veidt had adopted a curious form of almost objectivist “willpower is all” thinking while rejecting the associated black and white morality. The idea of being special – somehow inherently superior to the average human – was on some level deeply repugnant to the son of German parents who left Germany out of disgust at the policies of Adolph Hitler ”

Ok this B&B thing is weird. It doesn’t seem to occur to Scooter that the proprietors had their own preferences which make their behavior rational, which could include, “I run a B&B with my spouse because I’m lonely and I like meeting new people.” Or, maybe the old people did listen, and didn’t realize how little small talk Scooter’s friend really wanted. It’s entirely possible they were going to cut the conversation off sooner and Scooter didn’t give them a chance. Instead, it’s just straight to nope, old people lose neurons and cognitive flexibility god look at me I’m so much more considerate than they are.