... fundamentally one of the driving challenges of postmodernism is to actually understand rape
Why do you suspect this?
Yet Western society answers with a firm "NO".
With a stark exception for caffeine (maybe more like an exception from the category 'drugs' than the generalization 'drugs are bad').
Paranoia can itself constitute being fucked over by an agent that can induce it while not being weakened by it, a la cults encouraging their members to broadly distrust the world leaving the cult as the only trusted source of information, or political players inciting purges that'll fall on their enemies.
1Our tastes and desires actually change, as we learn about things like "How safe is it to eat raw pork in Germany?", and "How much sugar is good for my body right now?". That's why you can't tempt me with ice cream right now.
This is important. Food preferences have a cognitive component, they're not just stimulus-response, and the usual way I see evolved preferences talked about doesn't seem to recognize this nearly enough. (This is tangential to the original point about alignment failure — which just requires that preferences be godshatter-like enough, which it seems obvious that they are — but, like you say, matters for understanding ourselves.)
You can pay $50 to get access to the unconference
Link for this / the screenshotted page appears to be waypoint.lighthaven.space/solstice-season .
The Partiful link in the footnote links to Eventbrite.
none of this means Sam Altman shouldn’t be welcome at Lighthaven, and Holly clarifies that even she agrees on this
That is not my reading of the linked tweet (which just agrees that Lighthaven wasn't "dazzled"), and the opposite is my reading of this tweet and its replies.
it's not the kind of thing that is sated by BDSM.
I'm not sure this is true.
My model of the psychology of BDSM has a lot of overlap with Richard's, but I think there are other dynamics that are probably as important as 'renouncing antisocial desires' — in particular, something like 'blocks to perceiving aspects of vanilla sex/sexuality' (which can contribute to a desire for kink as nearest-unblocked-strategy). It makes sense to me that disembodiment could be correlated with such blocks.
I can also imagine other plausible-to-me ways that repression of embodiment (and by extension sexuality, but not because it's seen as antisocial) could contribute to BDSM-orientation, e.g. less integration of sexuality & more influence by developmental [not exactly noise, but things that would be less influential with more consciousness].
1Every protein, including collagen, is broken down in the stomach into component amino acids. And that's why collagen supplements are a scam
I was curious about this, and to my surprise found a couple papers claiming that collagen supplements are incompletely broken down and peptides from them enter the blood and even have effects on the skin. I have no idea if those papers are actually good or if collagen supplements are real, but it's some indication that 'proteins are completely broken down into amino acids' is an oversimplification.
(And if it is an oversimplification, there's a takeaway like, yes rationalists should learn some science, but should also sometimes double-check before dismissing things based on their understanding.)
((though there are other issues with that passage, like collagen isn't essential or in any sense a "vitamin", and a vegan diet will contain zero of it, not 'technically enough if you eat lots of [something]'))
(ETA: also 'every protein is completely broken down' being the whole story is in some tension with food-protein allergies being a thing, and inconsistent with prion diseases being transmitted by food)
Yes, this. That part of the OP reads to me like
but that's not what's going on at all; the entities in question aren't trying to evaluate someone's overall character or enforce norms for social benefit.
Banning someone to protect infrastructure just doesn't extend to banning someone because they abuse their family, it doesn't create a question of where to draw the line.
It seems to me like the OP tacitly assumes (& is confused by) something like 'all punishment/enforcement-like actions should be justified in terms of universal morality, not particular responsibilities and interests'.