Elisa Chavez + poetry

Has anyone ever brought up to Yudkowsky that this is wrong???? Anthea literally saw a dude on Reddit cite this scene last week as an example of how awe-inspiring and cool science is

[ Alt text: A post by Liberty Memes that shows the Earth at the top, space in the middle, and the surface of the moon at the bottom with an astronaut and equipment. Text over this image reads, "WE ALL KNOW THE MOON LANDING WAS STAGED. IT WAS FILMED BY STANLEY KUBRICK. HOWEVER, IT COST AN INSANE AMOUNT OF MONEY, AS KUBRICK WAS A PERFECTIONIST AND DEMANDED THEY FILM ON LOCATION." ]

[ Alt text: A picture of a funky little guy in a funky little top hat. He has realistic human teeth and is screaming, 'WE LIKE THE MOON!" ]

This is so wild bc it shows in one fell swoop that 1) you can't learn science from this fanfic and 2) yudkowsky doesn't consistently practice rationalism

Anthea called herself petty for this but I find it DEVASTATING

[ Alt text: Black text on a photorealistic image of the moon. The text reads, "Have you ever really thought about how when you look at the moon, it's the same moon Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and Van Gogh and Cleopatra looked at.

they all looked at the moon

they're all dead

the moon is killing people

wake up america" ]

[ Alt text: An antique depiction of Chang'e, the Chinese moon goddess. ]

I never pass up a chance to pursue my woman-centric multicultural agenda, so here's a picture of the moon goddess Chang'E.

[ Alt text: A text post, with a dril-like icon but the handle @drilbot_neo. The text reads:

ok now im going to explain something to you fuckers.

i only had sex with one lady.

and her name was "the MOON"

and although i technically didn't "have sex" with her, she was still a lady

and she deserves the respect of a "LADY"

if you dont like it, then fuck off ]

[ Alt text: The first image is a photo of two children and a supervising adult in a pool. One child is playing happily with the adult, with text over them saying "Neil Armstrong" and "Second man on the moon (Buzz Aldrin)." The second child is struggling and wailing, with text saying "The 3rd astronaut." The second image is a photo of a skeleton sitting in a chair underwater. The text says "underpaid scientists who spent years preparing the mission." ]

Your hosts got something wrong! And not just the Animorphmagus thing. In this episode, I said with my whole chest that an "extremely small" minority of people commit "most" rapes. That turned out to be a pretty big overstatement. And since the purpose of HPMOR is allegedly to teach us to become less wrong, I thought it'd be interesting to map out how we caught the error before the episode's release.

Although I was confident in my statistics, our general policy is to cite our sources when we speak on a topic of sensitivity and/or sociopolitical import. So I went to Google, and there I learned the state of the research is way more complicated than I thought.

Here at HPMORALOR, we do value being correct for its own sake. But we also value being correct in a community. We appreciate every single one of you who takes the time to listen to this podcast, and we do our best to inform you accurately (when we're not swearing and expounding on the minions)! I think it's interesting that in this case, what corrected our error was the relational quality of feeling responsible towards an audience, and of thinking, "What would it take to convince a reasonable person of the point I'm making?" 

That having been said … I maintain that expressing a desire to commit rape is an extremely uncommon behavior. More often, I think people in our society simply don't understand, or won't understand, what sexual violence is, much less say they want to do it.

Yudkowsky tries to have it two ways. He states both that Draco is what any male child would be like "if Darth Vader were his doting father" (nurture argument). But he also says that expressing a casual desire to rape one's enemies is "the default if nothing else intervened" (nature argument).

In refuting me, Yudkowsky might say, "Your own data supports that up to 30% of men will commit rape at one time or another. That's way more in line with what I'm saying than what you are–sexual assault is actually quite normal."

This Strawkowsky would be right insofar as sexual assault is heartbreakingly common. However, the opposite is also true. It is common–up to twice as common–to never commit sexual assault, much less want to. That certainly accords with what I understand about people, and about the men in my life. We can't diminish the impact of rape culture, nor the prevalence of sexual assault. But I think it's also important to not give rapists and abusers the cover of claiming their behavior is normal, boys-will-be-boys-ing, or as Yudkowsky puts it, "the default."

Okay, a few quicker points.

On the topic of how in another reality, the 9/11 hijackers might have been police officers. I would be remiss if I didn't point out that they often DO BECOME POLICE OFFICERS, oppressing their communities in places like Kabul. There are numerous examples, but the documentary Etilaat Roz is free to watch on YouTube.

Rebecca Solnit on rape:

Rape is a profound human rights violation, an act of dehumanization, and an act that says the rapist's rights and desires are boundless and the victim's rights and desires are nothing. It is incompatible with democracy.

Nabokov on Lolita. Interview with Nabokov in the Paris Review | How the Publishing Industry Failed "Lolita" (as told by terrible book covers)

"When I Was Miss Dow," by Sonya Dorman (1966)

Telling a bird your secrets and a baseball player makes it explode. That source is here.

Eugenics. Deep breaths ......... Okay, so on the podcast we're silly about everything, including stupid and harmful pseudoscience like eugenics. But it actually IS a subject I care deeply about, and there's way too much to say, so I made a YouTube playlist with what I consider to be some good starting sources on how eugenics has played out specifically in the United States. I HOPE I made myself clear on HPMORALOR, but I think the Stuff You Missed in History Class episode on Carrie Buck articulates my own views in a more serious way. (Elisa, is that playlist titled "Eugenics!!! The Musical" ...? Ok well seriousness is not my strong suit.) A few other sources: The Eugenics Origins of IQ Testing | The Eugenics Cult (Clarence Darrow, 1926) | The Black Politics of Eugenics (Ayah Nuriddin) All that having been said ............ on a slightly ironic note, if you have zero tolerance for words like "idiot" or "moron," this podcast is definitely not for you, because we use those liberally.

Some thoughts on Yudkowsky's writing Ron. I've been musing about the author's note we discuss at the top of the chapter, where Yudyud takes care to note that he "doesn't have a grudge" and that "when you start dropping anvils on a character, it's hard to stop." This is pretty clearly a reference to Yudharry's constant negative inner monologue about how Ron is a dumdum, but I think it's really interesting that he feels the need to call it out. I think it indicates two things: 1) Yudkowsky struggles to contain his contempt for those he believes are unintelligent. Otherwise, he could've pared back the anvils. 2) Yudkowsky knows on some level that he cannot justify this contempt, which is why he gives this half-assed explanation of "oh the story just gets away from you." Thanks for that, Rational Man! What happens when your rationalist main character is wrong? In this episode, as in others, I call out when we get information that indicates Harry's wrong about something. Yudkowsky has said "not everything Harry does is a lesson in wisdom," and defenders of HPMOR will frequently say that, well, Harry isn't meant to be perfect. He has to grow and learn, and Yudkowsky trusts readers to know when that's happening. I think this falls down as an explanation in a work where the entire point is whether or not you're right about something, and what you're learning is how to become, as it were, "less wrong."

On this episode, I say the words "Occam's Creek" without even once making a joke about the hit teen TV show of the 1300s. I deeply regret this error.

In this chapter, Yudharry refers to a technique to make himself remember being Obliviated that he learned from a sci fi book, which Anthea was unable to find. I humbly submit that the Doctor Who episode "Blink" first aired on June 9, 2007.

Tentacles and claws! I looked this up, and it turns out the colossal squid DOES HAVE hooks on its tentacles. Which, while not claws per se, is close enough that I think we can count it. Nature is wild!!!!

I obliquely reference Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. I can't recommend this book enough, it is fantastic, please read it.

I also reference Inuit child-rearing practices, and I was sort of right but sort of wrong in what I said! Here's a resource I found compiled with input from Inuit elders. I do think it's fascinating that a number of these practices, passed down as generational wisdom, are in line today's best practices for raising resilient children here in what I'll loosely call white settler culture.

Remember when we lived in the swamp in a chicken-legged house? Remember when Hera wished for a son and whipped ordered eggs to parthenogenesis? Remember when the husband laid down  at the feet of his wife? Remember the lamb? Remember when property was a sin? Leave all things you have. Remember what the wolves did under scarcity? Remember when all the witches got together  and hanged the town fathers from a linden tree? Me neither.

Remember when the regiments came?  Remember fire? Chaos from orders. Remember when my homegirl taught you  to play vinyl backwards and reknit Osiris? Remember when the girls were turning into laurel trees and the boys were turning into swans? Remember when the angels came down from heaven and fucked the shit out of us? Remember how this poem is not a biography? Remember Gaia? She loved all her children  the same. Alpha and omelas. Remember when I gave birth to you? Remember how you told your mother the material world was an illusion and she smacked you with her jewel-encrusted spoon? Remember the queen who was feted  with her own two sons? Chaos from hors d'oeuvres.

Remember when love was a commandment? Remember when the girls were wine,  how their laughter fizzed like champagne floats and we drank and drank?  Remember when the men stiffened with milk? How we drank and drank! You mistook the trees for the harvest again, orgasm from chaos. Remember when you were wet with miracles?

Remember when we could always tell what not to do by the little piles of ash? Every natural law looks like chaos while you're inside of it. Remember how late you got to the vineyard?

Remember more things in heaven and earth? All that is seen and unseen? Remember all the things we can't see? Remember when the world was an egg? Remember before it all went wrong? Remember when pride was a catalyst? Remember how I stopped apologizing for my body and now my body lives rent-free in your head? Remember when I was made of flowers? Remember when I was made of blood? Wearing Hecate's three faces of maiden, multiplier, swamp. Remember when I went skinny-dipping in an ocean of milk? Remember how physiologically, you're bigger than me with more upper body strength, and how spiritually I don't care? Remember when I hid my heart in a knotted oak so I couldn't be killed? Remember how I danced the night after  my wedding was spoiled: Drowned and dragging seaweed, order from choreography. Remember how this poem is not a biography?

Remember when flesh was a prison? Life sentence. Remember the lady in a cage? Remember how we really lost Eden? Remember how evil is not just good backwards? Remember when the mask of your face sloughed off and all that was left was a hole no man could fill? Remember that this poem is a biography?

Remember when love was a commandment?

Do you remember when pride was a sin?

-Elisa Chavez