What I propose is not for feminism to stop advocating against sexism towards women. I propose for feminists to look for ways to do so that don’t needlessly cause lasting sexual repression or guilt in a subset of men most sympathetic to feminist concerns. However, this would require considering men’s interests, perspectives, and experiences, not just women’s.

see: https://web.archive.org/web/20200217134031/http://home.earthlink.net/~ahunter/Same_Closet_Diff_Door/hpsissy.html

via: https://nottoby.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-training-boys-and/comment/149005099

Something fundamentally needs to change WRT how we talk about gender on this country. Damn, man…

This is of course the thing everyone swears they don’t mean when they use the word privilege, which is of course how the motte-and-bailey fallacy works. But as soon as they are not being explicitly challenged about the definition, this is the way they revert back to using the word.

see: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2091#comment-326664

via: https://nottoby.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-training-boys-and/comment/149005099

I definitely think there is some internal misleading conflation of actually doing something wrong and having someone think you are. The source of this is not having a solid opinion of your own, a solid self, the confidence of your own views. For instance, I know there’s nothing wrong with hitting on a girl in public, and that’s my view, and I’m sticking to that. That’s what I believe. So if someone says otherwise, I can write that off as some crazy internet person. What do you really think? What do you really believe? Not what you’ve picked up from society, but what you truly believe. That seems to be missing here - like there’s no internal referent you can check in with. Add to that that a lot of this is social anxiety and fear of rejection, which will take any excuse it can get to avoid talking to someone and risking rejection.

Seems like one of the smartest computer scientists on the planet and I have a lot in common.

My recurring fantasy, through this period, was to have been born a woman, or a gay man, or best of all, (completely asexual, so that I could simply devote my life to math, like my hero Paul Erdös did).

At one point, I actually begged a psychiatrist to prescribe drugs that would chemically castrate me (I had researched which ones), because a life of mathematical asceticism was the only future that I could imagine for myself.

see: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2119 via: https://nottoby.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-training-boys-and/comment/149005099

When a black man lives the same day over and over again, he tries changing his behavior to survive a police interaction.

“Better run, better run, outrun my gun…”

Put policy aside and think like the median voter: which candidate fucks?

Unfortunately true.

As per usual, Avilo beautifully articulates an affirmative vision of leftism and dives deep into the history of contemporary American fascism. Du Bois, I will get to step back into the sun again.

Technology advances forced the Census Bureau to use sweeping measures to ensure privacy for respondents. The ensuing debate goes to the heart of what a census is.

This is a great article on a big-name application of differential privacy: it even features an interview with Dworkin! This, to me, seems like a pretty necessary change to preserve the privacy of folks.

via: https://mit.edu/6.1800/www/tutorials/01-intro.shtml

Merging the Trump and CHH personas together: How would I talk about my Substack if I were Trump? / This 15-minute, one-take improvised Trump impression brought to you by mental illness.

This has no right to be this good.

Beyond the fact that plenty of OCD manifestations are just too taboo for public consumption, I think one thing that really irks people is when someone has a high degree of insight into their OCD, but still frequently falls victim to it and is unable to be cured. In their minds, mental illness always has an endpoint. It becomes a weird prior chapter of your life, you can turn the page, and look back on it to say, “Ahh, those terrible times, before I discovered therapy.” They are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that you will be like this forever.

This is also the conclusion I’ve come to in dealing with my own intrusive thoughts. I shall save it for 1:1s w/ my therapist and share with no one else. Otherwise, it’s ultimately too exhausting for everyone involved.

Let’s learn and grow. New things are cool!

Simple economic arguments for why solar, batteries, and other renewable energy technologies are possible RN and clearly the future.

And then some much needed discussion of politics.

Clickbait Title: I’m so tired.

In the United States, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, is a unique legal entity with characteristics unlike any other, which thereby allow its powers to be abused unlike any other. Lawyers have long seen ICE as a threat to American democracy, and for good reason.

Cis people are friggin’ stupid sometimes. Jeez.

Sometimes, a book is a dud.

In this blog post, I have tried to list off every anti-trans policy done by the Trump administration as of January 2025.

Yes, humans are not great evaluators. Yes, algorithms add a level of determinism into the game (this is not to be confused with objectivity: they just aren’t due to being made by humans). Yes, any flaw you can point out in a prediction algorithm can arguably be found in humans, too. Still doesn’t make algorithms significantly more justifiable than human evaluators. Plus, unlike humans, computers can’t take responsibility for management decisions. And of course, as we make predictive algorithms more complex with AI, bias becomes harder to identify and nigh-impossible to fix. Sigh.