squozebrain

squozebrain@www.bawker.net

Still clinging to the internet's idealistic dream of constructive engagement and discourse with friends, strangers, and robots around the world and sometimes on Mars.

Gender:: Male

Syncing calendars between Hubzilla and iPhone

squozebrain

Tue, 22 Oct 2019 17:19:32 -0600

This gave me some serious headaches. To sync, make sure the calDAV app is installed on Hubzilla, then go to Accounts and Passwords on the iPhone settings and add a new CalDAV account with these features:

URL: https://[siteurl]/cdav/principals/[username]
Use SSL

I set the URL in the Advanced Settings page.

Then it does a verification check and should show a bunch of checkmarks. To get calendars to appear, at this point I had to de-select the Calendar sync option in the account settings, then click OK to delete the calendars from the iPhone, then reactivate the sync option. Magically it loads the calendars. I expect that you have to repeat the de-activate re-activate sync step any time the account settings are altered.

#hubzilla #calDAV #calendars #productivity

"Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment" by Thibault le Texier

squozebrain

Wed, 16 Oct 2019 10:39:33 -0600

This looks pretty damning. Studies have been falling like dominoes due to methodological errors in psychology, sociology and related fields. Now the Stanford Prison Experiment -- one of the most famous works in the history of social psychology -- could be added to the list. French researcher Thibault le Texier studied the Stanford archives after the experiment's records were made available in 2011. He was distressed to discover that it wasn't an experiment at all. It was essentially a scripted theatrical demonstration with activist motive. There are so many things wrong with it, it's basically junk science. Now I need to flashback to college sociology, un-blow my mind, and crank my skepticism up to the "hard science" setting.

Linked below is an excellent podcast interview with le Texier on Rationally Speaking.

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 241 - Thibault Le Texier on "Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment"

Release date: October 14th, 2019

The Stanford Prison Experiment is one of the most famous psychology experiments in history. For decades, we've been told that it proves how regular people easily turn sadistic when they are asked to role play as prison guards. But the story now appears to be mostly fraudulent. Thibault Le Texier is a researcher who dug into the Stanford archives and learned that the "prison guards" were actually told how to behave in order to support the experimenters' thesis. On this episode, Thibault and Julia discuss his findings, how the experimenters got away with such a significant misrepresentation for so long, and what this whole affair says about the field of psychology.

And here is an open access version of his paper:

https://psyarxiv.com/mjhnp/

Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment
Abstract
The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is one of psychology’s most famous studies. It has been criticized on many grounds, and yet a majority of textbook authors have ignored these criticisms in their discussions of the SPE, thereby misleading both students and the general public about the study’s questionable scientific validity. Data collected from a thorough investigation of the SPE archives and interviews with 15 of the participants in the experiment further question the study’s scientific merit. These data are not only supportive of previous criticisms of the SPE, such as the presence of demand characteristics, but provide new criticisms of the SPE based on heretofore unknown information. These new criticisms include the biased and incomplete collection of data, the extent to which the SPE drew on a prison experiment devised and conducted by students in one of Zimbardo’s classes 3 months earlier, the fact that the guards received precise instructions regarding the treatment of the prisoners, the fact that the guards were not told they were subjects, and the fact that participants were almost never completely immersed by the situation. Possible explanations of the inaccurate textbook portrayal and general misperception of the SPE’s scientific validity over the past 5 decades, in spite of its flaws and shortcomings, are discussed.

#sociology #psychology #research #fraud

What I Actually Believe: Objectivity

squozebrain

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 10:19:14 -0600

This post is my second effort to crystalize some points of my own personal philosophy. My first post sketched a position on moral philosophy, where I aligned myself with value pluralism. I remarked that pluralism is not relativism. That begs the basic question, what is relativism and why is it different? Put simply, relativism is the position that there is no "objective truth". I don't think anyone is actually a relativist. But I also don't think there is necessarily a singular "objective truth". I think objectivity is the position that ideas can be ordered: some are worse than others. This doesn't mean there is a "best" idea, since all ideas can be wrong. And if there is a "best idea," it may still not be "true" in an absolute sense, since we are limited by our language and by our vantage point in space and time.

Relativism is a popular position in Post-Modernist (PoMo) cliques, and has repeatedly invaded pop-philosophy subcultures. In the latest Spider Man installment (Far From Home), there's a moment where MJ quotes George Orwell:

"The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world." Orwell, Homage to Catalonia. 1936.

She uses this line as a distraction, to divert attention from classmates before they figure out Spider Man's secret identity. But that is all "relativism" can ever be: an attempt to distract, confuse, obfuscate, or derail. In a more complete context, we see that Orwell's words reflect a deep fear that politics and power separate people from truth:

"Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie.... This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world."

Whereas PoMo relativism claims that "objective truth" is always a power game, Orwell's version depicts relativism as a threat, associated with surrender or despair.

Objectivity is also the idea that nobody has the truth. There are no fully authoritative institutions or people. Every idea is subject to the sorting process. There is an implied axiom that a good "sorting process" can sift out the worst ideas and incrementally surface better ideas. These "sorting processes" are a combination of epistemology (theory of knowledge or justification) and dialectic or rhetoric.

PoMos like to say that epistemologies are purely cultural, that one isn't better than another. They claim that any sorting process is a merely an exercise in social power structures, that rhetoric is always manipulated by those with "power" in order to sustain their position. Interestingly, PoMos are also the most morally and intellectually certain factions I've seen. I don't think this is a contradiction for them: if you really think there's no objective truth, and we're all just manipulating words to seize power, then I guess you should just manipulate words and try to seize power. "There is no truth, so stop arguing about it and do what I say!"

From my vantage point, the concepts of "objective truth" and "objectivity" as a process are deeply liberating. They neutralize the intellectual authority of powerful institutions. We can judge ideas independently. We decide how much weight to apply to different forms of social authority: expertise, credentials, titles, offices, whatever. "Objectivity" is the individual and collective right to think, challenge, question, assess, and judge for ourselves. "Relativism" ultimately can only deliver authoritarianism.

#What_I_Believe #objectivity #relativism #PostModernism #CriticalTheory

Need for Chaos

squozebrain

Sat, 07 Sep 2019 08:40:49 -0600

Reported by Vice, so take it with a grain of salt... It covers an interesting theory that has a ring of plausibility.

A Shocking Number of Americans Want to 'Just Let Them All Burn'

A study measured the 'Need for Chaos' that leads people to spread online misinformation and vote for politicians like Trump.

#sociology #chaos #trump #alienation

Platform liability for online speech

squozebrain

Mon, 02 Sep 2019 09:20:31 -0600

This confusing article reflects the real confusion about liability for online speech. I guess Republicans feel like they're being censored, so they want to impose more avenues for censorship...?

Why Republicans (and even a couple of Democrats) want to throw out tech's favorite law

Experts and industry advocates say the proposals are rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of federal communications law, and could unravel the internet as we know it.

Solution: ban infinite scroll. Problem: ...

squozebrain

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 12:30:44 -0600

Proposed US law would ban infinite scroll, autoplaying video

The features drive addiction by exploiting our brains, Sen. Josh Hawley says.

Marshall Sutherland

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 16:19:17 -0600

but collecting and selling information about is is just fine...

Day at the Lake

squozebrain

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 22:36:59 -0600

Exposed con artist withdraws from Florida political campaign

squozebrain

Mon, 22 Jul 2019 11:02:46 -0600

I’m endlessly fascinated by frauds and cons, and this is one of the boldest I’ve seen (I put it a notch below Rachel Dolezal). This politician fabricated a dramatic narrative describing herself as an ER doctor who treated victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting. She built a brief career as an activist and candidate for public office. Now she’s admitted it was all false — she’s not a doctor, didn’t treat anyone after the pulse shooting, among other lies. This case could beat Dolezal if it comes out that she’s not even LGBT...

A Democratic candidate claimed she removed 77 bullets from Pulse shooting victims. It was all a lie.

"I just made it up,” Elizabeth McCarthy admitted when questioned by an investigator from the Florida Department of Health.

#fraud #politics

Marshall Sutherland

Mon, 22 Jul 2019 16:17:30 -0600

Way to go, Floridawoman!

squozebrain

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 12:08:49 -0600

I guess Brazilian waxes must be in the footnotes of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Twitter Search / RealPeerReview wrote the following post Thu, 18 Jul 2019 07:30:53 -0600

https://twitter.com/AmirSariaslan/status/1151846807254777857

"A mother and business owner was forced to end her Brazilian waxing business after being taken to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal for refusing to wax a transgender woman’s male genitalia." https://www.thepostmillennial.com/another-b-c-woman-forced-out-of-business-in-transgender-male-genitalia-waxing-case/amp/?__twitter_impression=true … pic.twitter.com/jypWqZ0z1i
Image/photo

What I Actually Believe: Moral Philosophy

squozebrain

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 16:53:11 -0600

For a long time, I've wanted to make a series of posts articulating my philosophical views (to the extent that I can pin them down). It's an intimidating task, but I think it's important to make a constructive statement of things I believe to be true. It's comparatively easy -- lazy even -- to express a mere list of rejections, of all the things I think are not. But at the other end of every rejection there is a person who's made the effort to understand the world and their role in it.

I'd like to start with moral philosophy: how do I decide what's right and what's wrong? First off, I am an ethical pluralist: I think there is not (and can't be) a single moral theory that correctly, completely and consistently captures every moral consideration. This is not the same as moral relativism, since I believe some moral beliefs are better than others. Wikipedia describes the concept under the name "value pluralism":

In ethics, value pluralism (also known as ethical pluralism or moral pluralism) is the idea that there are several values which may be equally correct and fundamental, and yet in conflict with each other. In addition, value-pluralism postulates that in many cases, such incompatible values may be incommensurable, in the sense that there is no objective ordering of them in terms of importance.

For me, ethical pluralism means that there is some validity in most ethical theories, and there is something to resolve in every moral grievance. At the bottom, moral theories are built on our social intuitions. A moral theory provides a mental framework to resolve inconsistencies or contradictions in those intuitions. Up to now, there is no theory that satisfactorily resolves every inconsistency. So for a given moral dilemma, the problem is not just to apply my favorite moral calculus to decide what's right; the real problem is to prioritize among a variety of applicable theories to find the best way of understanding the situation.

Most of the time, I favor Kant's moral theory (or some version of it). Kant's thinking was centered on universal laws. Here's a loose way of putting it: if I can act this way, then everybody can act this way. If it's not possible for everybody to act this way, then I shouldn't act this way. The theory is elegant, but it breaks down all over the place and has been interpreted in very different ways. In political contexts, Kant argued for an essentially negative rights interpretation of this theory: people should be free to do what they want, as long as it doesn't interfere with the equal freedom of anyone else.

While I favor the Kantian view as a way to organize moral thinking, in practice the theory doesn't conclusively resolve very many dilemmas. To really understand a moral problem, we need to churn through a variety of approaches: utilitarian, social-contract, virtue theory, whatever has bearing on the problem. None of these theories gives the complete picture, all of them have their shortcomings, but all of them cast light from a different angle.

Taking a pluralistic stance may sound waffly, but I think even ethical monists (who try to stick to a single theory) are effectively pluralists too, since practitioners of the same moral theory often apply it differently and arrive at opposite judgments. What I want from a moral theory is to be non-accidentally good, and that will take sustained effort. I can't just pick a theory and stick with it to the bitter end, I have to keep rotating through perspectives because that process itself is more important than the individual theories.

#MoralTheory #What_I_Believe #philosophy

Government cheese!

squozebrain

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 08:47:05 -0600

Aeon wrote the following post Thu, 11 Jul 2019 04:01:00 -0600

The story of government cheese
The story of government cheese

Image/photo

Today, the term ‘government cheese’ is perhaps most commonly associated with the late US comedian Chris Farley and his 1993 Saturday Night Live sketch in which a motivational speaker warns a couple of wayward teens that, if they don’t get their act together, they’ll soon be ‘living in a van down by the river’ on a steady diet of the stuff. But before it became well-worn comedy fodder, the dairy surplus was the result of a 1977 US government initiative to support farmers and assure the country's control of its own food supply. However, as this charming (or irritating, depending on your lactose tolerance) cheese-filled explainer from NPR’s Planet Money details, the whole endeavour went a bit haywire. And although the ‘government cheese’ programme effectively ended in the 1990s, its legacy has left the US a bit milk-bloated ever since.

By Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Marshall Sutherland

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 18:26:52 -0600

During part of her childhood, my wife's family was a government cheese recipient. She said it tasted pretty good. I'll have to send her this.

Marshall Sutherland

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 18:45:17 -0600

Correction: "Most of the time, it sucked, but this one time it was really good"

Critical theory's sham scholarship

squozebrain

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 11:54:34 -0600

This quote is excerpted from a book on "Critical Dietetics," reviewed by James Lindsay in Dietistaktuellt (pdf document). Lindsay excerpted the text below, which clearly lays out the stance taken by critical theorists (emphasis added):

Although we do not wholly reject the scientific method as a means of creating knowledge about the world, a critical orientation rejects the notion that it is even possible to produce knowledge that is objective, value-free, and untouched by human bias. A critical orientation similarly rejects the idea that any one way of creating knowledge about the world is superior to another or is even sufficient.

First of all, they state that critical theory is about rejecting things. It is not about making substantive contributions to human knowledge and understanding. Second, they deny the possibility of knowledge -- they say they deny "knowledge that is objective," but the most generally accepted definition of knowledge is "justified true belief," i.e. belief that can be assessed, tested, verified or falsified by someone else. What is the alternative definition?

The third point firmly establishes their anti-science position: there are no better or worse ways of "creating knowledge." The whole project of science -- spanning thousands of years and countless human cultures -- is predicated on the idea that some ways of thinking are better than others, and we can improve ourselves by improving our methods of thought, observation and judgment about the world. With this line, they've rejected that whole project, and it leaves me wondering what the hell they're trying to accomplish.

Next up is Critical Theory's unrelenting Straw Man about positivism:

In contrast to positivism, Critical Dietetics is rooted in an interpretivist epistemology, or interpretivism.

One of the most frequent tropes in Critical Theory is to equate science with positivism, and to setup a false dichotomy pitting positivism against their word-salad-theory. That's one of the things that makes it so weird to read Critical Theory papers. Positivism is one of many philosophical positions in analytical philosophy, and I doubt if most practicing scientists would be familiar with the term.

It goes on:

Interpretivism considers knowledge as inherently subjective and informed by the values, priorities, and worldviews of the individuals, institutions, and wider social, political, and environmental context that guided its creation. An interpretivist epistemology also sees phenomena as being open to multiple means of knowledge creation and interpretation that are equally legitimate. As such, CD draws on post-structuralism and feminist science (two other windows) that hold that there is not one truth that can be generated about any single thing, that multiple truths are possible depending on who is asking and for what purpose, and that knowledge is not apolitical even if it is considered positivist (i.e. value neutral or unbiased). Because humans generate knowledge about phenomena, and humans bring their own beliefs, biases, and assumptions to their knowledge generating processes, the knowledge that humans generate is always subjective.

What a mess. Individual humans bring their own beliefs, biases and assumptions. The project of science is to test and filter those beliefs, biases and assumptions through an ever-expanding set of critical eyes. Objectivity is something that emerges from the collective process of testing and correcting. Objective means truth that is external to any particular individual or group.

It's ironic that objectivity demands that we maximize diversity and inclusion in the actual sense. Science benefits from diverse perspectives because we are seeking objective knowledge. Critical theorists, by endlessly recycling the same "rejection" rhetoric, offer no constructive contributions and can only serve to undermine the rationale for inclusivity. They are such ardent critics of science, and yet they show almost no comprehension of it. It makes me sad.

#CriticalTheory #JamesLindsay #objectivity #epistemology #science #inclusivity

Boeing’s failure is a management problem

squozebrain

Sun, 30 Jun 2019 10:13:52 -0600

The deadliest engineering failures often arise from poor human organization, miscommunication in design handoff, and an erosion of expertise. Boeing handed off key design tasks to outside parties who were not evidently experts in aviation systems. By treating safety critical software as just “code,” Boeing managers killed dozens of people.

Some of these comments are very familiar in the life cycle of administrative bloat that kills institutions:

Rabin, the former software engineer, recalled one manager saying at an all-hands meeting that Boeing didn’t need senior engineers because its products were mature. “I was shocked that in a room full of a couple hundred mostly senior engineers we were being told that we weren’t needed,” said Rabin, who was laid off in 2015.

I’ve heard almost identical statements before.

Starting with the 787 Dreamliner, launched in 2004, it sought to increase profits by instead providing high-level specifications and then asking suppliers to design more parts themselves. The thinking was “they’re the experts, you see, and they will take care of all of this stuff for us,” said Frank McCormick, a former Boeing flight-controls software engineer who later worked as a consultant to regulators and manufacturers. “This was just nonsense.”

“They’re the experts” in what? Outside parties are not going to be experts in your whole product. They only see one end of the elephant.

And then, the deadly failure, a sophomore engineering mistake.

Multiple investigations – including a Justice Department criminal probe – are trying to unravel how and when critical decisions were made about the Max’s software. During the crashes of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines planes that killed 346 people, investigators suspect, the MCAS system pushed the planes into uncontrollable dives because of bad data from a single sensor.

That design violated basic principles of redundancy for generations of Boeing engineers, and the company apparently never tested to see how the software would respond, Lemme said. “It was a stunning fail,” he said. “A lot of people should have thought of this problem – not one person – and asked about it.”

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

#boeing #737MAX #engineering #failures

China steals organs from political prisoners

squozebrain

Sun, 23 Jun 2019 10:04:34 -0600

Tribunal: China Is Harvesting Organs from its Prisoners

Victims include members of religious minorities and political prisoners, tribunal says.

#China #communism #prison

What is racism, really?

squozebrain

Tue, 18 Jun 2019 18:31:30 -0600 last edited: Tue, 18 Jun 2019 22:21:29 -0600

Several years ago I noticed a blip of articles circulating in my social circle claiming that “we are all racist.” Since racism is systemic, the theory goes, we have all internalized it to one degree or another. With this way of thinking, it makes no sense to denounce “racists,” because to do so would falsely elevate yourself to an impossible “non-racist” position. Racism is an attribute of our social world more than individuals, so the focus should be on mitigating systemic inequities rather than fighting some imaginary war against a racist “Other.” The theory resonated with me, but in the last few years the public discourse has degenerated to the point where I usually can’t figure out what people even mean when they talk about “racism” and “racists”.

This Vox article (link below) takes a stab at defining cognitive differences between “conservatives” and “liberals” in how they define and respond to racism. The article is about a kid who said a bunch of nasty racist epithets a few years ago, resulting in Harvard rescinding his admission this year. But that context doesn’t matter so much for the present question:

The conservative view of racism treats it as a personal failing, a set of explicitly held ideas and attitudes that reflect outright animus toward a group of people. You can get over your racism by repudiating it and embracing a “colorblind” view of the world, striving not to let race affect the way you speak and act.

In this view, the real threat isn’t the racist comments themselves — which can be overcome — but the impulse to punish people for them. If you penalize people for every past politically incorrect comment, the logic goes, then people will have no room to grow. You might even punish the innocent.

Liberals and leftists, meanwhile, see racism as a structural problem, reflected in both social institutions and deeply ingrained, arguably unshakable biases that can lead even people who firmly believe in ideals of equal treatment to act or speak in prejudiced ways. Addressing the consequences of racism requires work, effort, and vigilance.

When you approach the situation through that lens, Kashuv looks less like a kid who made youthful mistakes and more like a young man who’s trying to escape responsibility for his actions, and his attempt to minimize his comment by saying they were designed for shock value is part of the problem. “Ironic” racism is still real racism; the fact that the comments are roughly two years old isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card.

This article bugs me because it seems to describe two liberal views of racism that are not mutually exclusive. The alleged conservative and liberal distinctions are both aspects of the “everyone is racist” viewpoint that I described at the outset of this post. A truly conservative view of racism would be somewhere between indifference and endorsement of racial inequities. What is alleged to be a conservative vs liberal clash sounds to me like a viewpoint at war against itself.

The real divide is not “conservative racists” vs “liberal anti-racists,” rather it’s a clash over whether we’re fighting “racism” or “racists,” not realizing that latter includes ourselves.

Conservative Parkland survivor Kyle Kashuv’s fight with Harvard, explained

A teen conservative activist got in trouble for past racist comments. Then he lost his Harvard admission over it — and ignited a national controversy.

#racism #LeftWing #RightWing #SocialJustice

Chernobyl (mini-series and podcast)

squozebrain

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 10:40:41 -0600

I'm completely hooked on the HBO miniseries Chernobyl. It gives a profoundly complex and subtle presentation of institutional processes that contribute to engineering failures and public disasters. The initial foreshadowing of "radiation in the air" is distractingly un-subtle. I think most non-engineers will miss the sophisticated presentation of system failures that stem from personnel hierarchy, a defensive organizational culture, and systems of "accountability" that literally force people to prioritize covering their own asses over anything else. Throughout the episodes so far, there is a total fixation on blame while only a few protagonists show any interest in cause.

I'm now listening to the podcast that accompanies the show. The show's creator, Craig Mazin, makes an interesting remark: most viewers will take away that this disaster could only occur in the Soviet Union; but only the Soviet Union could have solved it. While it's naive to use the word "only," the show does an exceptional job of portraying the heroic willingness of Soviet citizens to sacrifice themselves by the thousands, knowing that they are walking into a horrible death. It also does an exceptional job of displaying the Soviet government's willingness to sacrifice them.

In the podcast, Mazin also mentions "the danger of narrative" as one of the themes of the show. This element comes across strongly in administrative meetings, from the town all the way up to Gorbachev. The discussion in these meetings is almost incapable of facing plain facts, constantly resetting to Soviet talking points, revolutionary platitudes, declarations that "the Soviet people have risen to the challenge," celebrations of bravery, applause, etc. This administrative style may be overplayed in the show, but it drives home the fear and frustration that defined Soviet politics.

In all, in incredible show that has inspired me to study more about this massive tragedy.

#Soviet #Chernobyl

Marshall Sutherland

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 20:51:26 -0600

I finished watching it last night... wow!

One of my thoughts in the early episodes, after all the pronouncements that a Soviet reactor couldn't possibly harm people (or something to that effect), was to wonder if the Soviet cigarettes that everyone was smoking couldn't cause cancer for the same reason.

After hearing an interview on the radio with the author of a book on Chernobyl (not connected to the show) a couple months back and being on the library waiting list for months, my 12 year old son read the book. Perhaps his first serious adult, non-fiction read. I the show is probably too graphic for him.

squozebrain

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 22:44:12 -0600

"Every lie incurs a debt to the truth". Amazing line.

Individual expression under "goulash communism"

squozebrain

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 09:05:53 -0600

The Amazing Art on These Communist-Era Houses Was a Rebellion Back Then

During the Goulash Communism era, people started painting the facades of their houses with abstract shapes, in wild shades of color...

“Today you can buy a car you like, you can do everything you like. In this uniform world where people were not allowed to have some individuality, you had to wait for the same car as your neighbor," Roters says. "The facade is what I can show to the outside to the world. This was a free space at this time where the people can show and express their individuality.”

#communism #individualism #art

Pre-registered psych studies undermined by undisclosed deviations

squozebrain

Sun, 26 May 2019 10:49:29 -0600

Psychology continues to struggle with its replication and methodology crises. Preregistration is supposed to help by reviewing experimental procedures in advance. Sadly most studies deviate from their plans and don't tell anyone.

|

Behavior change is difficult—just ask any psychologist. A new study shows behavior change among psychologists is no different. Efforts to improve the robustness of research by asking psychologists to state their methods and goals ahead of time, a process called preregistration, have stumbled at the first hurdle. “Preregistration is not as easy ...

#science #psychology #research #methodology

“I want to set them on fire” — a memoir

squozebrain

Wed, 22 May 2019 14:06:09 -0600

In the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, the fan favorite character, Queen Danaerys, shocked and angered many by suddenly switching into a genocidal maniac, incinerating thousands of civilians. Critics saw this as an unrealistic reversal of character; I did not. To me, it was always crystal clear that Danaerys was a dangerous narcissist. After all, she felt entitled to rule, to conquer, to decide right and wrong, life and death, everywhere. She was happy to free slaves if it brought her some advantages (like an army of “freed” soldiers), and if it brought adulation and came with honorific titles like “Breaker of Chains.”

How could she suddenly switch from a warm-hearted liberator to an indiscriminate murderer? The truth is that an unstable personality can seem quite stable when things are going their way; they are stable until they’re not.

Now’s the part where I start talking about my ex. I knew her for nearly two years before we got married. In the beginning she was calm, pleasant, lovable. It was less than a year into our marriage the first time she said, “I want to set them on fire.” She was talking about her two best friends. The offense was something indecipherable or nonexistent. Over time, she intimated a widening list of people she wanted to incinerate. Their crimes could be minor insults, perceived slights, failed acknowledgements, or perhaps they merely smiled on a day that didn’t warrant smiles. Sometimes she hated a person because they were fat or thin or had a mild accent or made a grammar mistake or wore an outfit she didn’t like... anyone could be burn-worthy for anything.

These “hate waves” appeared suddenly, usually unprovoked. You could sense the switch; her voice lowered, her face twisted, her speech became rapid and uninterruptible. She would speak in epic run-on sentences, spontaneously rattling off vast lists of grievances. It would probably take me hours to compose a list that she could emit in seconds. Over time, I began to develop an internal barometer to sense these hate-waves as they approached. The lighting seemed to change, the temperature of the room chilled, and there would seem to be a background noise I can only describe as “anxiety” (or perhaps “most hated alarm clock sound”). These gave a few seconds of warning but no chance for escape.

I think it was during our second year that I first heard the words “Borderline Personality Disorder.” I had encouraged her to go to therapy. She came back with this diagnosis. It was spot-on, if incomplete. In retrospect I think she had major narcissistic features in addition to BPD. Her hate-waves seemed to be a manifestation of “splitting”, when a BPD person alternates between idealizing and demonizing a person. One minute we’re having a romantic stroll through the park, the next minute she’s screaming “I hate you! You bastard! I hate you!” — because we encountered more stairs than she wanted to climb. Other BPD attributes appeared as well: she threatened self-harm if I left her. She even threatened the dog once when I refused to come see her.

She was enraged at the diagnosis, and went shopping for a new therapist, one who would reinforce her narcissistic suspicions. She needed to overcome all the harm that others had done to her, and protect herself from the enemies that continually surround her. She wanted to be empowered. Therapy became just another tool to make me accommodate her “needs” — and her needs usually required me to prove that she was more important than other things in my life like work, hobbies, friends or family. The whole relationship revolved around her suffering. In our social circle she constantly developed her “victim” image, often with me portrayed as neglectful or even abusive, even though I was the one who attempted suicide. Many of my progressive friends refused to hear me talk about our problems. After all, for how many centuries have men been blaming women for the problems that men created? Perhaps it’s a symptom of over-education when you can’t look at a specific, real situation because it’s eclipsed by your abstract mental filter.

From time to time I browse BPD sites online, and apparently there’s a small activist movement to advocate for BPD as a “mental health issue” that can be accepted and accommodated. I suppose it’s predictable that BPD activists situate blame on everyone else, and demand accommodations from everyone else so that BPD people can be made to feel normal, regardless of the harm they may be doing to others. “Nobody is always rainbows and sunshine” — true, except normal people don’t spontaneously turn into Hitler on a regular basis.

Going back to Queen Danaerys: she’s a fictional character, so it would be meaningless to say that she has a narcissistic or borderline personality disorder. But I can say that she seems familiar, and her spontaneous Hitler-ification came as no surprise to me. I’ve seen it before.

Oh, the irony

squozebrain

Sat, 04 May 2019 08:07:38 -0600

Why allow "third parties" (ie private citizens) to "censor" (ie report, analyze and comment), when we can get "unfiltered" propaganda directly from the Ministry of Truth?

Twitter Search / realDonaldTrump wrote the following post Fri, 03 May 2019 22:58:19 -0600

https://twitter.com/SharylAttkisson/status/1124538724128305158

When did we decide, as Americans, that it's ok fo govt & 3d parties to censor/ curate our info? That we cannot be trusted with unfiltered info? That we shd only be able to find info that *they* tell us is true on matters that are opinion or in legitimate dispute? #SlipperySlope