Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

One thing I appreciate about rationalists is that they have such a distinct writing style that I already got strong suspicion of reading the blog of one after the second paragraph, even though the inevitable LessWrong link is much further down the page.

(The pun in the blog name might also have been a hint)

As usual, some good practical advice (try to understand the societal context your navigating in; don't attempt to fix a problem before you have understood it in depth) which leads to some questionable conclusions (don't try to fix bad situations at all and just learn to accept the injustice because alternatives could be worse?) and then shifts into weird otherworldly stuff where I'm not sure if I'm dealing with scifi literature or things people are actually believing. (darkworld, Agor).

The whole thing has an unpleasant vibe to it that reminds me of the way "pickup artists" used to talk a decade ago.

The vibe that I get is that the author is trying to write down as much of their idea as possible without violating social taboos, such that what is written down is not exactly what they think, but the maximal intersection between what they think and what they perceive they are allowed to say.

Like how he somehow fails to mention that he is indeed gay.

>The whole thing has an unpleasant vibe to it that reminds me of the way "pickup artists" used to talk a decade ago.

I found it quite odd and a bit unsettling as well.

He says

>“Something like 9 out of 10 people that I’ve met who had strong touch aversions were also visibly maladjusted in the same way that you would expect from the stereotype of an animal that was cringing away from normal touch (e.g. from other members of its own species).”

In an article where he clearly has a touch aversion. Another post of his describes physical intimacy as "slimy pushups" and clearly has an issue with sex. It just feels like a call for help or nod to issues he's dealing with when he says that people with touch aversion usually have other issues while he rights a lot about touch aversion.

In terms of the pickup artist vibes he talks about orgasms (not sex) as incentivizing him to "Try to convince some other cool and interesting person to drop all of their cool and interesting activities to do some slimy pushups with me"

This whole thing is much weirder yet: https://homosabiens.substack.com/p/on-puberty-identity-and-s...

I sympathize. It just gives the writing a feeling of beating around some bush that we cant see.

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