Compare The Way Gymbros/bodybuilding Enthusiasts/etc. Talk About The Influence Of Genetics On Success

Compare the way gymbros/bodybuilding enthusiasts/etc. talk about the influence of genetics on success to the way rationalist/more general social optimizationist IQ enthusiasts talk about the influence of genetics on success.

Every gymbro on the planet will acknowledge that good genetics play a role, often a pretty large role, in how much muscle you can expect to gain—especially if you're a natural lifter (as opposed to enhanced). But this is virtually always said merely as a caveat, never the centerpiece of discussion. The centerpiece of the discussion is always effort and training methodology. Why? Because the assumption is that if you're here, listening to a gymbro talk about gym shit, you want to get jacked. Your genetics are what they are, so why dwell on them? The point is, what can you do, with whatever genetics you happen to have, to get as jacked as possible. And the answer is ultimately "yeah, some people are gonna have a higher natural ceiling than others, but you won't know where yours is until you try—apply yourself as if you have a chance to be the best in the world, and even if you don't reach those heights, you'll probably end up pretty fucking jacked". And this is true. And as far as I'm concerned, it's the best way to think about the notion of natural talent.

IQ enthusiasts are always talking about how we should be testing IQ early and sorting people into social roles based on their scores. I despise this kind of thinking. I'm not Terence Tao, I have no desire to pretend I'm Terence Tao. But I like math, and I'm gonna try to get as good at math as I can possibly be. If someone had tested me at a young age, decided I wasn't cut out for math, and filtered me into a different social role, I would regard that as an injustice (a grave injustice) against me. People should be empowered to pursue their own ends, that's my eternal mantra when it comes to politics. Maybe society would achieve more net productive capacity if we filtered the people with natural math talent into math roles or whatever. I cannot underscore enough the degree to which I do not fucking care.

I have no sympathy for people who want to tell others who to be.

More Posts from Vesperlf and Others

2 years ago

Neurotypicals: Think Autistic people are exceptionally literal.

Autistics: Describe their experiences using phrases like:

My brain feels like it’s filled with cotton laced with barbed wire, it’s not safe for me to make decisions right now.

I’m entering a Wait Mode until we leave.

Just looking at that rotten food makes my skin feel slimy.

Neurotypicals: Assume the Autistics are using metaphorical language to exaggerate common experiences.

1 year ago

also. fellow people of the autism. vital life skill to learn is when people are being polite in order to have an excuse for their abusive behavior. it can be so easy to get bullied, esp. by people with systemic power over you, as an autistic person if they can weaponize politeness in ways that make you feel crazy for being hurt. every time an autistic person (or any ND person) refuses to be gaslit about being targeted/hurt/abused an angel gets its wings. just because you struggle with social cues does not mean you cannot trust yourself and how others make you feel.

2 months ago
Oh No , The Dog Is Drinking The Wave Equation

oh no , the dog is drinking the wave equation

3 weeks ago

Bionicle: Masks of Power - Matoric Conlang Dialogue Files

As you may have seen, it's now been publicly announced that LEGO has asked for the Bionicle: Masks of Power fan game by Team Kanohi to be shut down.

You can read the announcement letter from Team Kanohi here, and also view a walkthrough of the game demo on YouTube, with and without dev commentary. The demo would have been released on 8/10 of this year.

As I've posted about before, the game was slated to feature fully voice-acted lines in the Matoran Language conlang ("Matoric"), and I've been contributing Matoric line translations for this purpose for a few years now. This work amounted to nearly 800 individual lines of Matoric dialogue translated.

Needless to say, this was a very disappointing thing to experience behind the scenes, after the amount of work that Team Kanohi had put into the game, and (in my opinion) it's an extremely poor repayment from LEGO for the enthusiasm that the team has created in the Bionicle fandom over the years, although not unexpected or shocking on LEGO's part.

With that said, there is some solace to be found in the fact that many resources from the game, including 3D models, music, art, and other development materials, have been preserved by the team (for the time being) via Google Drive. This includes all of the individually recorded voice-actor lines in Matoric!

Here is a link to the full Google Drive.

Here is a link to the folder containing the Matoric line recordings.

Here is a link to a spreadsheet containing all of the written Matoric lines and their English translations (along with a few fun easter eggs).

Finally, here are the credits for the audio directors and individual voice actors whose excellent work was represented in the game:

Voice Acting Directors Tasch Ritter Gort (Garrett B)

Voice Acting Lewa ……………….. Dane Braddy Pohatu ……………….. Gianni Matragrano Gali ……………….. Tasch Ritter Onua ……………….. Ashley Quills Kopaka ……………….. Tom Schalk Tahu ……………….. Wes Wiggins Makuta ……………….. Justice Washington Mata Nui ……………….. Justice Washington Matoran 1 ……………….. Ethan Godwin Matoran 2 ……………….. Viator Matoran 3 ……………….. Lou Haroldson Matoran 4 ……………….. Tasch Ritter Matoran 5 ……………….. Mark (Markle) Stefely Matoran 6 ……………….. Anna Maguire Matoran 7 ……………….. SyntheticCharmVa Matoran 8 ……………….. Tabitha Bardall Matoran 9 ……………….. Mark Beischel Matoran 10 ……………….. Jordan (Jocool1231) Willis Matoran 11 ……………….. Quinn Stokan Matoran 12 ……………….. Abigail Adair Matoran 13 ……………….. Cody (MasterGir) Littlefield Matoran 14 ……………….. Zane Schacht Narrator ……………….. Justice Washington Announcer ……………….. David Michael Williamson

I was honored to be able to contribute to this project in a small way, and I hope that the Bionicle community will continue to support the team as it rebrands and moves on to future projects.

1 year ago

I hate how everything's called devices and apps now. Those are frail words with no weight and show no respect like machine and program do.

1 year ago

The thing I hate most about transhumanism discourse are the appeals to "humanity". Like, "are you less human if you have cybernetics?" and "does it affect your humanity if you change your genes?"

And I just.. Look man, I'm trans, disabled, and autistic. Half the world already barely considers me human, on a good day.

So I don't think it makes sense to get mad at me for wanting fangs and a gender you can pick up on a Geiger counter.

You're yelling about this being a slippery slope, and meanwhile you pushed me down it. You can't justify annoyance at me deciding to go "weeee" all the way down.

1 year ago

in the future, Braiding Sweetgrass will be assigned to all students to read in school, and mostly they will hate it, because it seems to them like poorly structured rambling about nature and vignettes from the author's life. Soooooooo boring!

We will struggle to explain to them: no, no, this book was actually completely revolutionary for its time. When Kimmerer talks about the honorable harvest, learning to listen to the teachings of the plants, understanding nature as animate and alive, and the relationship of reciprocity and mutual dependence between humans and other life forms, these are ideas that were genuinely new and mind-blowing to us when we were young.

It wasn't just those in power that saw nature as "Resources" or some kind of mechanical system that would be better off without human interference—almost no one else knew another way to think. Yes, yes, we knew about symbiosis, but we hardly ever applied it to ourselves. Kimmerer is serious when she says her cultural perspective was almost wiped out; the culture we inherited as children literally didn't have the concepts she is talking about, and that's why the book was so important!

We will tell the students that it would have been weird even among "environmentalists" of the time to think of trees and insects as your family. I mean, well, yes, we knew that everything was related, but we thought Charles Darwin was the first to come up with that. You don't understand, we will say, most of these ideas about living in right relationship with nature would have been thought of as extra-scientific, sentimental or spiritual crap.

"Did you just not know where food and clothes came from?" they will ask, with eyebrows raised. Yes, but back then, food was mostly grown in enormous fields of only one crop where everything else had been killed with chemicals. We didn't really think of agricultural environments as "ecosystems"—"nature" was a separate thing—I mean yeah, we harvested logs from forests, but that was different. No, we basically thought Earth was divided into "human uses" and "nature," and that people shouldn't be in the "nature" parts. No, really!

The students will be fascinated and ask things like "But what about parks?" "Would a hay field be nature or human uses?" "How about pollinator gardens?" "What about the ocean?" and we will try to explain to them that we really just didn't think that hard about it

1 month ago
Technical Difficulties At The Chute Station

Technical difficulties at the Chute Station

2 months ago

There's this interesting phenomenon where when you're a child, or some other vulnerable minority dependent on a job for shelter, you are actually under duress almost constantly. You can't say "I don't want to work today," you cannot say "I don't want to do the dishes, actually," you cannot choose not to participate. In a lot of cases, the punishment is explicit. Your parents might yell at you. Your boss might fire you. But in other cases, it's implicit. The mood will sour. You lose leeway. People get mad at you. And that creates a really shitty environment where you're constantly being coerced to do things!

And here's the kicker; you're not allowed to acknowledge that. You cannot acknowledge that you are being coerced, you cannot acknowledge that your free will is not being respected, because that's punished too. Your boss insists that you act excited. Your parents punish you for acting surly. You are forced to fake enthusiastic consent, constantly. It's a fucking nightmare. Your hand is being forced, you do not have the option to say "no," and if you ever, for a second, try to acknowledge that, everyone acts like you're the aggressor.

2 years ago
Final Track I Had The Honour Of Working On For Vast Error Volume 5: Side B
Final Track I Had The Honour Of Working On For Vast Error Volume 5: Side B

final track I had the honour of working on for Vast Error Volume 5: Side B

Listen to Vol. 5: SIDE B >> HERE <<

Or listen to GAIAEON (OUTRO) >> HERE<<

Final Track I Had The Honour Of Working On For Vast Error Volume 5: Side B
Final Track I Had The Honour Of Working On For Vast Error Volume 5: Side B

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