A Brother Banned the Flute, and He Was Right
No Brother of Mine Will Play the Flute
When Duncan was ten, his older brother flatly forbade him from playing the flute in band, and he chose the clarinet instead. Years later, he sees the decree as a lesson in broken systems: the school really would have tormented a boy flutist for seven years, so the wrong choice was the least wrong one available. He argues that coping strategies exist for a reason, and that pathologizing them is easy while fixing them without making things worse is not.
It was wrong for the people at my school to harass boys for playing "girly" instruments. It was also wrong for my brother to trample all over my personal sovereignty, and (essentially) take away from me the freedom to choose which instrument I would play for the next seven years. But those two wrongs did add up to a right.
- vintermann
I agree with everything in this article, but there are a few things that make me go hmm.
* The reference to / advertisement of obscure online communities (Agor? Darkworld?)
* The quoted tweet about bloodlines. There are no lines worth speaking of in biology, there are webs. You are not the last one in a very long line, you're a twig on a very big tree. People who talk about their bloodline are often a bit iffy.
So why do I make an issue of it, when I agree with everything they say anyway? Because I actually agree with a lot of what lots of weird sects say - in public. The advertising pitch is often very reasonable even for groups like Mormons or Scientologists, which are 50-250 years out of touch with the trends of the times. This post is very sensible, but it feels like a pitch for something which isn't quite as easy a sell. Maybe this Agor thing.
- ksymph
One of those articles that's entirely reasonable, and I find myself nodding along, but there's something that feels vaguely off about it I can't quite put my finger on. I think it comes from the inciting observation from the author's friend:
> I feel you’re on stronger ground, Duncan, when you say that the status quo is unfairly blocking some people from activities they spontaneously want to do and (you argue) safely could in a different society.
> I feel less comfortable when you dig for reasons that other people’s aversions to touch or sexual activity or whatever might be “unhealthy” (against some standard I’m not sure you’ve made a case for the universal healthiness of).
It's easy to work backwards from harmful, biased, or just plain wrong conclusions to a strong and reasonable core principle (and vise versa, for that matter). Without knowing the details of what led the friend to say that, it feels a bit, I don't know, manipulative? for the author to present only their strong core principle as a defense of a position they only allude to, when from that quote it sounds somewhat tangentially related and perhaps a little less universally reasonable.
- xg15
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.
- Isamu
Ultra masculine homosexuality is a real thing, there can be real animosity towards feminine or stereotypical homosexuality, both within and without. Don’t assume if someone is super masculine that it’s because they are straight.
- PowerElectronix
Flutes are not girly. In the first book of paradise lost, the hosts of hell march at the sound of "flutes and soft recorders". Of it's good enough for Satan's army, I say it's good enough for a highschooler.