Trump is cruel, vindictive, selfish, dishonest with a capital D and has less knowledge of and respect for the US Constitution than a nihilist middle schooler.
I’m going entirely by the words that come out his own mouth. No media interpretation is necessary. He is clearly a vile entity. I wouldn’t want him for a coworker, team member or neighbor.
For me there was a button to show the comment. But I have no idea why it was ban worthy. It is about politics but I don't think there is a rule against politics in hidden open thread?
Would what be fair game? They've clearly found the secret name of this website. All curses should be directed at SlateStarCodex which is definitely the True Name. It'll totally work. No more investigation needed.
From what they said in 179, I take it something escalated to the point of jstr saying "go fuck yourself" and Deiseach saying "kill yourself" in reply. Scott seems more concerned with civility than with topic, so while I don't know the subject matter the insults are probably what he found objectionable.
The topic, to summarize very briefly, was that jstr alleged that Trump actually got more votes in California but Biden won through voter fraud, and then got really offended when Deiseach pointed out that this was a lie. It escalated from there. And yes, I imagine it was the reference to suicide rather than the subject matter that resulted in the ban.
Jstr - I didn’t see the exchange, but it has been my experience that when people post links like this and then label them “interesting”, etc, there is usually a hidden agenda to signal boost a conspiracy theory. To me (and possibly to Diesearch), this is a “tell”, which might explain her (over) reaction.
Now, I have no idea if this was your actual intent, and I’m trying to be charitable. I just offer this as a possible explanation.
Oh good. I feel the need to repent. I believe I applauded Deiseach in said thread, (For what to me was her wicked wit, and what to you was bile and venom.) I'm sorry. If I had something to say to you I should have said it directly. Let's all try and be more civil.
Look, jstr. You've posted a controversial article. You've intentionally steered clear of stating any opinion on any single part of it. "Interesting" does not count. Pointing out at least certain parts that you deem to be true, or false, does.
You've read it? OK. I hold that the statement "the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight" is incorrect and misleading. I hold that a lot of other points in that article are correct. In particular, I fully agree with the five paragraphs starting from "This is where people(...)". I don't possess enough verified information to assess the correctness of various other statements.
There. End of example. To the point, let me paste one paragraph from that article which perhaps offers a charitable interpretation of your own case:
> Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real.
The charitable interpretation here would be that you're one of those who latches onto one absurd theory then another, while trying to put a concrete name on something very real (and quite well described in that Claremont review article). Clearly, the concept that 2020's California, of all places, had had the vote stolen to blue, is absolute peak absurd. And given how those Californians who cannot stand Democrat governance have started voting with their feet, that concept will become only more absurd in the years ahead.
The less charitable interpretation would be an assumption of bad faith from your side, that you are signal-boosting a peak-absurd thesis while being fully aware that it is peak-absurd, which contributes to muddying the waters and to discrediting the more clear-headed perspectives on that complex subject.
I don't know you, I don't want to judge which of these interpretations would hit the mark, and I don't profess to mindreading, but look at it this way. If presuming that something is rotten in the swamp of Denmark, and the false flags are as common as the psy-ops, what would be *your* judgement of someone who picks a peak-absurd thesis, and goes boosting it while persistently avoiding to express any of their own stances on it, and then gets pugnacious on someone who calls out that fact?
You're right. The "dupe or troll" is a false dichotomy, and I apologize for having put it forward.
I was trying to think of mental models which would be promoting a story as absurd as California being stolen-to-blue, and at the time I failed to think up anything besides those two categories. I had also been somewhat indisposed because you asked for banning Deiseach, so I didn't think about other categories as hard and long as I otherwise might have. (Deiseach is a long-standing commenter held in high esteem by a lot of the community, including myself)
The passages of that article that you quote here, I also agree with a hundred percent. (Likewise, I am not a US citizen) The part which has perhaps the most resonated with me was "They watched the press behave like animals for four years." Some tectonic shifts have started happening in the mainstream media starting cca. 2010, and it reached insane levels since. By now it feels surrealist to recall how NYT and CNN used to be actually decent news sources. (I can't say for MSNBC, WaPo and NPR, since I didn't really pay attention to them before)
That article is interesting, but it sorely needs citations. It asserts as fact numerous claims that I am skeptical of, so without further elaboration and support, I can only see it as "this is how Trumpists see the world" rather than "this is something true about the world".
The article has about a hundred sentences and about ten links. There's one statement ("/premise") per sentence in median. Let's simplify it to "approx. a hundred statements." If the demand for rigor is "one link per statement", then about nine tenths of that article fail at that criteria, yes.
Not that I know any media article which would meet such criteria; I'd even say that this "one tenth" is in the top quintile of published media articles. I assume your demand is more specific than that, but you haven't been more specific.
First, only some of those statements are empirical. E.g. "the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight" is an empirical statement, which incidentally I deem false.
Even for statements that are hypothetical and not empirical, they still have a given degree of plausibility. E.g. in the chain "a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries / had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper / the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs. Jeb Bush election", the third statement is evidently hypothetical not empirical. But I view it as very plausible.
Empirical statements can furthermore be easier or harder to truly verify. I haven't much dug into the controversy around Hunter Biden, whether it is empirically true, or false, or partially true, and which parts. I have no firm opinion on that. However, the Big Tech censorship campaign against those media who were publishing that information, is empirically true. In contrast, the stories about Russian prostitutes peeing on Trump, originated from US intel agencies, were circulated quite widely in mainstream media, empirically *without* obstruction from Big Tech.
You dismissively speak of worldviews based on false premises. First, it's obviously not a case of all the hundred premises being true nor all hundred being false. Whatever measure you take of a certain worldview, it cannot be a meaningful measure without establishing the relative importance of particular premises, and then combining it with how certain you are about the truthfulness of each premise (*). Also: corroboration.
That the basis of the Trump-getting-peed-on stories was empirically BS, is the lesser point here. The greater point is how Big Tech, Big Media and intel agencies work in concert and unison when it comes to influencing the electoral process. Whether this is something to be blasé about, or concerned about, may depend on your views of the previous centuries of human history.
(*) The meta-recursion here is that worldviews in effect "dictate" what is the relative importance of particular premises -- different worldviews assigning quite different importances to particular premises -- while at the same time being *shaped by* the product of the relative importance of particular premises and the degree of certainty for each one. That's why worldviews are inherently an *open-ended process*, and a quite fascinating one.
When enough people interpret your post the same way you have to wonder if it is you who made the mistake in expression rather than we who made the mistake in interpretation.
Conventionally if you are posting a link to an article whose thesis you do not endorse you would want to signpost it somehow. For example "this article is interesting, although I do not endorse its thesis." Posting the link with no commentary at all will be taken for endorsement of the contents of the link. Note that this is an empirical and pragmatic fact about the world, not a normative claim about the way people "should" interpret such posts.
If you don't like being seen as dishonest, one way you could avoid it is by making it clear from the outset what your beliefs are about the contents of links you post. Because I also suspect that for every one person who calls you out on it, there will be another ten who thought "this guy is full of it" but were too polite or conflict-averse to say anything.
> Perhaps I "made the mistake in expression"; but I know for a fact others "made the mistake in interpretation", because I know my own heart, while they don´t.
It may be that others did not understand the meaning you intended. That doesn't mean they made a mistake.
> Also, please note that I have always been (and always will be) courteous myself
You told someone to go fuck herself.
> If that isn´t enough to avoid "being seen as dishonest"
Why would it be? Courtesy, and extending others the benefit of the doubt, are virtues. But they're different virtues than honesty.
I feel like the punishment mostly comes from the shame and disgrace, not from the actual one day ban. Everyone who read this post will forever associate Deiseach with the person who told someone to kill themselves over an Internet argument. Even if there's 100% proof that she's sorry about it and won't do it again, that association is hard to shake.
You think so? I feel as though about half of all political disputes on Twitter devolve to that level of vitriol, and given the number of Twitter fights there are on a daily basis, that's a lot of death wishes, but no one really cares. If you ever look at David Simon's twitter account, I would estimate he tells a random person he hopes they die of disease about once every three days, for example.
True, but we are still subject to the Online Disinhibition Effect, same as anywhere else, I would say, so while I try not to be a jerk to people, I'm not going to get too bent out of shape if someone occasionally does blow their stack a bit, especially when it's someone whose comments are otherwise quite good.
It doesn't change my picture of her. (and I'm a newbie) She's a smart sharp tongued Irishman (woman). Who you (I) can't help loving. And her sharp tongue can lead to trouble. It's almost a stereo-type. I'm picturing Maureen O'Hara in "The Quite Man". Deiseach, please forgive me talking in the third person about you.
As one of the parties in the kerfuffle, I have resolved not to refight it or litigate it or do anything rather than serve out my ban. I've done so, and now I'm going to hold my tongue on the entire affair.
Which means I won't get into an exchange of views with you either, dionysus.
My girlfriend might want to convert to Judaism when we get married. I am a cultural Jew, am not strictly observant, and don't go to synagogue. She probably would also be a cultural Jew, not very observant, and not go to synagogue, I realize you don't need to officially convert to do this but it would be meaningful to us. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Are there rabbis (presumably Reform) who will convert you no questions asked, or do you need to promise to go to their synagogue or follow halacha or something? Does anyone have any good ideas for next steps?
You might reach out to local Reconstructionist rabbis for advice on this, Reconstructionism being even less traditionalist than Reform. I don't know about the East Bay but there is a Reconstructionist congregation in San Francisco, Or Shalom. I have no personal connection to them, unfortunately.
I know of rabbis who would convert someone on the condition of a commitment to learn for a year, bathe in a mikvah at the end of the process, and make a broad commitment to tether one's fate to the fate of the Jewish people; I assume they'd be quite open as to the nature of the commitment and not require a commitment beyond cultural Judaism...I can ask around...
This is debatably true, not kind, and not necessary.
When someone expresses a preference that you don't share, barging into the conversation with "WELL ACTUALLY I BELIEVE X SO YOUR PREFECENCE IS STUPID" is a rude thing to do. This is extra true about preferences for religious practice and religious community membership, something people are sensitive about because everyone knows it's a topic that's ripe for conflict. It's extra extra true in contexts where there is a pressing reason to be especially kind instead, like when someone has just mentioned that they're getting married. You can see many examples of appropriate responses to this kind of announcement elsewhere in this thread.
You are being mean, and you are making this space worse. Please stop it.
"barging into the conversation", "You are being mean, and you are making this space worse. Please stop it."? This invokes memories of the process that transformed the internet from a fascinating forum for diverse intellectual debate and cultural celebration that expanded intellectual horizons into a collection of walled-off tribal circlejerks, when gadflies and devils advocates started being called trolls and concern trolls.
I'm personally interested in the response to "marxbro's" question because I'm kinda in a similar situation. I've found myself going periodically to a synagogue(an orthodox one) for the first time in my life. I've felt a bit guilty about it, as if I'm attending on false pretenses. I am completely irreligious, secular, and cosmopolitan and am quite certain I will remain so for life. But the rabbi insists that I'm still welcome, apparently concerned only with my blood. I don't consider it an identity issue so much as cultural curiosity, so maybe "cultural Jew" is apt description.
It's an intriguing question...if God doesn't exist, then why would she convert? (The topic actually came up with my rabbi too. My girlfriend isn't Jewish and he said that their position generally is that conversion isn't compulsory, actually being discouraged, and it's technically frowned upon to marry outside the faith). More important than this is the old universalism/cosmopolitanism v. particularism/communitarianism debate. Would his girlfriend's conversion be considered an indication of embracing communitarianism? Scott is one the few popular commentators left that, for lack of a better word(and I realize it's a horrible word), seems 'sane' to me. I feel comfortable including him in a relatively short list of role models. Whatever their motivations for doing this, it could help inform my own decisions going forward. If Scott's not comfortable answering that question and just ignores it, it's all good. But if he is, I'd certainly be curious about the answer. So you'll forgive me for disagreeing that our gadfly above is "making this space worse."
It's true, kind and necessary. I've not been rude or said any swear words.
Marriage shouldn't be a sacred cow either. It's strange to me that a community that says it upholds rationality and truth-seeking is now approaching religious conversion as something that is taboo to criticise.
i don't think this conversation needs to devolve... let me just say i think the response was to the line 'God doesn't exist', which without context could be taken as unkind, but in this context probably isn't. For example, if someone had a sincere belief in a religion, and wanted to convert, "god doesn't exist, so why bother" could seem a bit unkind. But in this context, I think we are assuming the conversion is (as Scott says) 'cultural', and there is no deity belief backing it (Scott has not explicitly said if the fiancé has a belief in god or not, which is why I posted asking if it was the case or not; since I assume the higher prior is they do not).
So if it is true that there is no deity belief backing the conversion, I agree it is a bit curious as to why there is such a strong desire, and why it would be meaningful.
So I can understand why C_B thought you were being unkind, but I think it mostly a misunderstanding, and his reply could also have been kinder.
Context or no, stating that 'God doesn't exist' doesn't come close to falling under the umbrella of 'criticizing religious conversion'. It's quite rude to those of us who either believe in God or are agnostic like myself
It's not rude to state a fact. I've not attacked anyone personally or said any nasty words. I'm just making a straightforward declaration of the truth: God doesn't exist.
Personally, I find this whole exercise pointless. If Scott doesn't believe in this religion, if his partner doesn't believe in this religion, it seems counter-intuitive to recommend conversion? Doesn't it seem hypo-critical to want to join a community if you don't share any of their core values?
Maybe I don't really understand this "culturally Jewish" thing - but wouldn't you have to at least go to synagogue, practice faith-based traditions or observe faith-based holidays to experience Jewish culture? (Or at the very least one of the above?)
Can you simply go to a meetup and meet other Jews? If the last is the case, why do you need a rabbi or to convert for that? It seems strange to want to associate with a group you have so little in common with, but let's not pretend this is a logical or consistent idea.
yes, unfortunately he has not given any follow up... it does seem curious. If indeed there is no religious component of the conversion, than why do it? would you go through a similar process with any other aspect of life you had such a mild affinity for? I'm hoping maybe something is being saved for a top level post.
It makes sense to me -- it's sort of like joining a fraternity. Is that so strange? Going through some sort of conversion ritual is a signal of commitment and promotes bonding among members.
Now, it is sort of hypocritical if you're joining a religion where most people are devout, and you're doing it just for social benefits while not actually believing like the fellow members. But I think more liberal strains of Judaism are not this way -- there aren't many liberal Jews who are all that devout, and it's more about preserving traditions as a family and a people. Being a committed atheist might still put you a bit outside the norm, but not nearly as much as it would in a Southern Baptist church.
Well, even if you had no malicious intent, it was kind of a yutzy way to phrase the question. You immediately place yourself in the position being the arbiter of the supposed truth (without the means to falsify your proposition). Then you follow it up with a clueless question about cultural Judaism — which, if you were sincere in your ignorance, you could easily have googled what it means. The subtext of your original question was that any self-identification or affiliation with Judaism is an act of superstition.
But I'm glad you explained yourself! If the real question you were positing was: "why get married at all, given that marriage is a superstitious ceremony derived from superstitious beliefs?" you should have asked that question first! — because it could have offended a wider range of people, and you wouldn't have given the impression that you were singling out cultural Jews as being uniquely superstitious.
I said quite straightforwardly that God doesn't exist. This is a criticism of all religions. I'm not a "yutz" and I phrased it the best I possibly could. I know what the word " cultural" means but I think it's being used as a magic wand to gloss over some pretty fundamentally irrational behaviours here. Like if one is merely a "cultural Jew" then why is a Rabbi needed at all?
Hmmm. I think you have a distorted view of what rationalism is. Let's take it back a step. My understanding is that rational belief requires that you be able to prove, either logically, mathematically, or scientifically that proposition is true — or in the case of science that it's likely to be true to the best evidence we have. Belief in things you can't prove are non-rational or arrational (not a common word, but I didn't coin it). Belief in things that can obviously be proved false are irrational.
Atheism like any other theism is an arrational belief — i.e. there's no experimental way to falsify either the God or no-God proposition. Attempts have been made to prove or disprove one position or the other, but they've all failed. (Although, supposedly Kurt Gödel was working on a logical/mathematical proof for the existence of God when he died — I would have liked to see it.) Anyway, you can have an opinion on whichever proposition you think *may* be true. As long as you admit that it's an opinion, that's an arrational belief. To posit either position as provable fact is an irrational belief.
As for our cultural affinities, these are aesthetic choices that we either make for ourselves or that we freely accept from our family and our community. Some have argued that there's a rational basis for aethetics. I don't believe this. However, I admit that's an arrational opinion on my part. But you can't really claim a cultural affinity is irrational. What rules of logic, math, or science does it violate? It's like one's taste in colors: You may like the color red more than you like the color blue, but you can't rationally argue one color is better than the other. Claiming someone is superstitious for liking the color blue more than the color red, is an irrational statement.
Well, whether a higher power exists is another debate. It's obvious (to me) that Scott doesn't think a higher power exists - so I just don't understand the viewpoint.
It seems illogical -but humans are not always rational actors. Maybe Scott is just nostalgic for his youth/family? In that case, I would just recommend to hang out with them more instead of this "dog-and-pony" show conversion.
Well, regardless of whether there is a higher power or not - (something I'm convinced is unknowable as stated, so I won't make a judgement either way) - I would phrase it more like "You just stated you don't believe in this religion. Why would you want someone to convert?".
I'm also not sure about this "culturally Jewish" thing. My "culturally Christian" friends at least go to church and keep the holidays even if they don't follow the teachings of the Bible to the T, and don't come across as downright hostile to the idea of a higher power, when they aren't seriously devout.
While I disagree with the tone, I think there is a valid point here. I would have questions too if someone told me "Here are all the ways 'my' religion is unimportant to me. It would be meaningful if my significant other would convert to this religion which I just stated I don't care about.". Why bother?
Or maybe just join the Reconstructionists. If I understand correctly, it's for people who don't believe in a higher power yet still want the feel of religion - maybe Scott would like that. I still don't think it matters if you don't practice, don't hold the core beliefs, don't celebrate the main holidays or don't go to the main religious institutes.
For reference, I would ask these same questions of any denomination of faith.
Prove that you're not a troll, then. You ask non-sensical or provocative questions and demand rational answers from us. You're like a five-year old, who keeps asking why? why? why?, but when we try to explain our reasoning to you, you ask why? why? why? again. At no point have you even made the slightest attempt to defend you statements with any sort of rational justification. Although I find your statements to be rather entertaining, evidently many others in this conversation don't. As for me, I can only keep throwing the frisbee to you so many times before I get bored with your game.
Marxbro isn't known for his kindness, but I'm pretty sure Scott is atheist so MB's phrasing doesn't strike me as something that would offend Scott. I too am curious about the purpose a conversion would serve.
If I could sum up what I say below, it would be that people are in touch with their roots, and that's meaningful to them.
I'll confess I don't completely understand "cultural" faith either, but at least with something like Judaism it seems like it's such a distinct culture, within the broader American culture (in this case), that being "culturally Jewish" makes some sense to me. Distinct holidays and traditions definitely contribute. Having unique rites of passage is certainly part of a culture as well, and those traditions aren't meaningless even if you might think that they're not "true."
I'm a Mormon, for instance, and while we've got a culture of our own (I've got ancestors who knew Joseph Smith and followed Brigham Young to Utah), Jewish culture is much more distinct, not to mention going MUCH farther back. Many Mormons I know are only in it because of the culture, and go along with the rest because there's no "Reform Mormonism" option. I think you see a similar thing with Catholicism and Islam. (For the record, I'm a believing-while-doubting Mormon, but that's more complicated than we need to get into here.)
If this is all about being in touch with your "roots" then I'm not sure why a prospective wife would want to convert - shouldn't she also be in touch with her "roots"?
There's the Community of Christ, formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My impression is that it used to act as a second destination for people leaving the mainstream Latter-day Saint body, but increasingly it is indistinguishable from other liberal Christian churches and former Latter-day Saints rarely bother anymore.
Certainly there are individuals in the Church who attend services and activities while being lax in their personal observances or heterodox in their private beliefs, but as far as I can tell it's not a "thing" like it is in Catholicism or Judaism.
I'm not sure why, really. The Church leadership certainly has worked to discourage it for most of its history, but they seem to have been unusually successful at it compared to other religions. One thing that seems important is that many of the culture-specific rituals -- like the special rites of passage and special marriages -- are gate-kept strictly around both practice and belief by a clearly defined leadership structure.
Adding on that the Latter-day Saint leadership structure is surprisingly flat and centralized. For example, the smallest unit of the Church is the ward, lead by a bishop, of which there are about 30,000 worldwide. The selection of a new bishop is frequently done under the in-person supervision of one of the Twelve Apostles (the second-highest leadership body), and the selection is then submitted to the First Presidency (the highest), and I know from second-hand accounts that the First Presidency doesn't just rubber-stamp it and says no sometimes.
I wonder what criteria are used to select bishops?
Also, I have a very specific and vexing question about their authority. Do teenagers have to discuss sex with them? Is there some confessional function bishops fulfill? Is it all about Temple recommends*?
Let me explain: A fun fact about being an openly gay high school student in Salt Lake City in the '90s is that a everyone just assumes you were Mormon before you sucked dick, and it leads to hilarious misunderstandings.
From 9th grade on, four or five times a year, total strangers, unprompted, told me a story about a bishop who is the last person that should be listening to teenagers have to talk about their sexual development.
One was a bishop who asked Elizabeth's sister to "prove you haven't put balled up tissues in her bra." The others were The same, but longer.
Was I told those srories because that kind of thing happens a lot and is openly discussed—someone looked at me, said, "he looks pretty Mormon" and told the story as gossip?
Or was I told because that kind of thing almost never happens and is not discussed—someone looked me up specifically as the only non-lesbian in the GSA after Mike went to Evergreen Sophomore year, and told the story looking for advice or help?
Either way, as soon as I said, "actually, my parents are hippies and my family's Jewish," the person telling the story would just mutter "nevermind" or "my mistake," then never talk to me again.
(The only exception was a young man who asked how I could be Jewish and gay, then refused to let me demonstrate.)
Anyway, it was 20 years ago, I still don't know what happened, and I'm not sure closing all the schools for a year was a bad thing.
*The wedding thing gets a bad rap, but I love it. I wish more friends would ask me to wear the suit, do the photos and eat the cake—but read a book outside during the ceremony. Frankly, it's an improvement on other faiths.
"increasingly it is indistinguishable from other liberal Christian churches and former Latter-day Saints rarely bother anymore."
Yes, from what I've seen, all liberal religious traditions have a tendency to blend together at a certain point, and to blend with secular leftism, which is why they're all slowly evaporating. Because why bother? It's tough to be a passionate advocate for one's church if you think it's just a pretty good social club and not the one true path to salvation. It's especially difficult to pass these traditions down to one's children, and most people don't try that hard. It probably doesn't help that all sorts of social clubs and community organizations are doing very poorly these days.
Reform Judaism is evaporating too, but somewhat more slowly than Mainline Protestant churches. At some point it will probably be able to maintain its numbers on the basis of apostates from Orthodox Judaism, but currently Orthodox Judaism is only 20% of the total in the US, and that situation looks like it will flip, with Orthodox becoming the majority and most Reform Jews having recent family links to it.
"Certainly there are individuals in the Church who attend services and activities while being lax in their personal observances or heterodox in their private beliefs, but as far as I can tell it's not a "thing" like it is in Catholicism or Judaism."
Well, it's not as much a thing in Protestantism either, and the LDS was founded by Protestants and my sense is that culturally LDS is still more like a very weird and highly committed Protestant church than it is like Catholicism or Judaism.
I went to a Catholic HS, and I've observed for a while that Catholic high schools often have very marginally-attached Catholic alums still actively involved in them. My school's largest financial backer was like this -- he was an Italian-American who practically never attended Mass, but he sent all his basically unchurched kids there and I think for him the school was sort of an Italian thing -- a sense that Catholicism is on some level as inseparable from Italian-ness as pasta is. Which is an awful lot like cultural Judaism.
Evangelical private schools normally don't have this --"ex-vangelical" alums don't get involved in them, don't send their kids there or give them money.
First off, please prove that God doesn't exist. So far I have yet to come across any proof for or against the existence of God, but I'd be happy to hear if you have one.
We can discuss the question of what is the definition of a cultural Jew after you answer my first question. ;-)
By claiming the other side has the burden of proof in the God/no-God argument, you're abrogating your responsibility as self-proclaimed rationalist. The burden of proof is an irrational argument that both theists and atheists use against each other. It's irrational because if makes the fatal assumption if it can't be proved it isn't real. For instance, there's no proof for Hilbert's sixteenth problem. Could there be proof for it? Or is it unprovable? You can have an opinion, but to state it's either provable or unprovable is at best arrational. Placing the burden of proof on the side with the opposing opinion is definitely an irrational argument, though. "My opinion is correct because you can't prove your opinion!" See how absurd that sounds? As an agnostic, I don't have to prove anything. I can just say I don't have enough data to make a rational decision on the question. And I don't. Lol!
If it's "unprovable" then I'm not sure why you would want to convert to a religion in the first place. There are many things which are unprovable which I would also not worship. How are people even making the decision about which unprovable deity they want to worship?
Question: how uncompromising are you in your anti-religious views? Have you ever sat down with friends for a Christmas dinner? Or would you make a point of shunning them for them for paying lip service to Christian ceremony — even if they didn't really believe that Jesus was the Christ savior?
I was raised by atheists, but when I was kid we put up tree and gave presents. My parents didn't have any problem having fun on that holiday, even to the extent of going out caroling with our Christian neighbors. My parents did however make a point of telling me the truth about non-existence of Santa Claus when I was five. Oh boy! That caused a lot of outrage with my peers when I relayed that information to them!
I'm going to try and answer the question 'What do you mean by "cultural Jew"?'
My grandma taught Yiddish for 20 years and in the late 40s, she got her master's degree from a yeshiva; the subject of her dissertation was ”humanism and Judaism."
The late 40s was a time when a lot of American Jews doubted the literal truth of being a 'chosen people' but also felt personally connected to the worldwide Jewish diaspora.
I can't explain the feeling very well. (If my cousin ever actually scans that thesis, you should read it, because my grandmother could, and did.)
You can speak Yiddish and write about humanism and Judaism without a formal conversion or without seeking out a Rabbi on the matter. If it's simply about speaking a language then I'm sure there are plenty of helpful apps for that.
Well I have not yet found my grandmother's master's thesis, I can promise you that her essay in the January 18, 1991, issue of the Detroit Jewish News will be well worth your time:
I was referring to Scott's question. If this is simply about hanging out with people, speaking a language or taking part in holidays I don't know why a formal conversion would be required.
I don't think it's required, it's just, I can't think of any alternatives to a conversion for a newlywed who wants to adopt their spouse's irrelegious Judaism.
Cultural Jews: not a family, so you can't marry in; not a religion, so you can't convert; not an organization, so you can't sign up; not a philosophy, so you can't espouse it—it may be a group that's literally impossible to join. For a group so tolerant of others we founded the ACLU, we're not very welcoming!
Or maybe we're too Talmudic about the whole thing. Raised Catholic? Spouse mildly Protestant? Have a presbyterian wedding service and bam, you've switched religions and no one will ask you if you believe in God! (Plus, next time you have to go to Church, you'll enter feet first.)
My grandmother's FBI fill was inspiring. Sign one petition in the 50s to make sure the government's secret police spend time and money watching you, then be totally law abiding for seventy years.
J. Edgar Hoover was not Hitler and it would have been wrong to use violence against him——but wasting his time and money is a mitzvah.
There are large parts of Judaism as a religion that provide benefits even if you don't believe in God. Belonging to a captial-P People with its own history and its own rituals and values can be its own reward. Maintaining that belonging may require doing things that aren't 100% justified by evidence (though for Judaism believing in God is often not one of those things), but the rewards can be worth the costs.
I say this as a Christian who teaches at a Jewish school. My students generally come away feeling like part of something bigger and more meaningful than themselves, much more than I think their public-school counterparts do. And I suspect that the majority of them get this benefit despite not believing in God.
I'm not sure why "conversion" is needed for feeling "part" of something bigger than oneself. That's just having friends that you talk to once in a while.
The fact that nearly every culture and religion in history has some sort of initiation rites and/or selective criteria for group inclusion suggests that for most people "feeling a part of something bigger" is more than just "having friends you talk to once in while" and that you are the one who is missing something here.
There are large parts of Judaism as a religion that provide benefits even if you don't believe in every aspect of the religion*. Belonging to a captial-P People with its own history and its own rituals and values can be its own reward. Maintaining that belonging may require doing things that aren't 100% justified by evidence (though for Judaism believing in God is often not one of those things), but the rewards can be worth the costs.
*(and Judaism specifically is not actually big on orthodoxy of belief; there are many see the statistic elsewhere that a large % of active Reform Jews don't believe in God)
I am not Jewish but years ago I dated a guy for several years who was Jewish and we discussed conversion. Having looked a little way down the path, my contribution is this, take her to lots of holidays and see if the “wow” hits. Sometimes new converts fall in love with the tradition and want to go full tilt for a while. She would “probably” be non-observant, but joining a new community can make people feel unexpected things. Let yourself be ok with her falling in love with the tradition if that is what happens, and then see which conversion process feels right. That may be why Zohar commented “learn for a year.” Congratulations again to both of you!
Mazel tov! When my wife and I decided to get married, we wanted a non-religious ceremony presided over by a rabbi (parental pressure, of course, about the rabbi). We were younger then. Eventually we did find a rabbi who was willing to preside, with a suitably modified standard Jewish wedding. I'm sure you could find a rabbi who will agree to such a conversion, either among Reform or Reconstructionist congregations, or check out csjo.org, the home for Cultural and Secular Jewish Organizations. I help run a secular Jewish organization in the Detroit region, but we have no clergy--we do it all ourselves.
"Mazel tov to you two!" says your fellow cultural Jew! Seriously, mazel tov! Honestly, this brightened up my morning, which up until this point was one of those combos of (1) "woke up on the wrong side of the bed" and (2) "Oh noes! I need to rush out in the rain to put out the garbage cans that I was too lazy to put out last night!". In closing, congratulations once more!
Same here. I deleted my comment lower down, because the asker was pretty blunt about it. I feel like I'm missing something and am honestly curious about the desire.
From my point of view, if there's (presumably) no sincere belief in the basic tenants of the faith, little to no intention to observe it, and no desire to experience the rituals or community gained by attending synagogue...what is the "thing" that's being meaningfully converted?
Damn inability to edit the comments! I meant, I replied to someone who asked a question about this, but it was kind of rudely phrased.
For me, I just literally don't understand what it is that would be meaningful in a way that's different from a name change or one of the other marriage traditions.
My mom is Jewish and my dad was Catholic and I was raised Catholic. I have been told by many Jewish people including a Rabbi that I'm Jewish and it was implied that this is very meaningful for cultural reasons.
For all the unique and unusual things about you, this particular problem is well-known to the point of there being an entire subgenre of Jewish humor devoted to it.
As others have said, what you basically want is to find a Reform or Reconstructionist rabbi who you like and who’ll have dealt with dozens or hundreds of such couples in the past. That rabbi might want not only your fiancée but also you to learn more (I’d be curious how impressed they’ll be by the kabbalistic research you did for Unsong!). They’ll ask how you plan to raise your children. But for better or worse, there’s basically no extreme of unbelief or non-commitment for which you couldn’t find a Reform/Reconstructionist rabbi who’d seen even more and who’d work with you … *certainly* in the Bay Area! The conversion (and hence, the Judaism of your children) wouldn’t be recognized by the Orthodox, or for emigrating to Israel under the Law of Return, but most likely neither of those are pressing problems for you.
I think the Law of Return does apply if Wikipedia and my memory are both correct.
From Wikipedia:
"The law since 1970 applies to the following groups:
Those born Jews according to the orthodox interpretation; having a Jewish mother or maternal grandmother.
Those with Jewish ancestry – having a Jewish father or grandfather.
Converts to Judaism (Orthodox, Reform, or Conservative denominations—not secular—though Reform and Conservative conversions must take place outside the state, similar to civil marriages).
But Jews who have converted to another religion are not eligible to immigrate under the Law of Return, even though they are still Jews according to halakha.
Ah, right — the original idea of the Law of Return was that anyone Jewish enough for the Nazis to have murdered, should be Jewish enough for Israel to let in. And it does have clauses that apply even to those who the rabbinate wouldn’t consider Jewish once there, administer a Jewish wedding for, etc., which is a separate determination. In recent years, alas, the rabbinate has taken an increasingly severe line about who exactly is Jewish enough for them.
I am in a similar situation. I think basically the answer is you have to do some work to convert, but no substantial ongoing work is required. I would ask your local reform synagogue; I'm sure they've dealt with similar situations before.
We just took this class (https://www.centralsynagogue.org/engage/exploring_judaism), which is basically designed to convert non-Jewish spouses to Judaism. It was pretty long; I imagine lighter options are available? I haven't really checked though.
As a mostly-cultural Jew myself, I would strongly advise against your girlfriend doing this. There is no point in converting =religiously= to Judaism unless you intend to practice the Jewish religion. (Of whatever brand conducts your conversion; Orthodox don't recognize non-Orthodox conversions.) One may culturally affiliate with Judaism without being by religious standards a Jew. And the conversion would mean a formal disaffiliation with whatever one was before, which is a mighty serious step to take.
I appreciate your comment. Before I posted mine I had a much longer version which wouldn't post last night. As someone who had agreed to convert to Judaism "for" my then-boyfriend, but then we broke up, it unexpectedly started me on a path of religious grappling, where I began to question previously unexamined aspects of divinity, faith, God, tradition and everything else. I don't know much about Scott's girlfriend but there are a lot of ways to get to be an adult without ever having thought seriously about what it means to be religious or have or practice a religion, or have started out in something without learning much about it except political takes one disagrees with. My read of his comment was, he was putting the situation out there because they are at the beginning of thinking about it, and there may be a somewhat standard rejection of "God" in play, so going at it from the "God" side won't happen. But starting a learning process from the cultural side might, and can lead to the "God" side. If she starts a learning and participation process, it could end up a variety of ways, including with a faith-based "conversion" experience and intent to practice the religion. My mental model of religion is somewhat like an attractor, people can get gathered in. You are right, it's a big step to leave whatever you were before. When people couple up across religious differences, it automatically (unintentionally) makes people look a little harder about what it means to be on the team they're on as opposed to any other team. Some people don't want a partner of the same faith, that can be subtle. But I admire Scott and all the commenters for bringing it up and discussing it in "good faith." It's an important conversation. I've seen interfaith couples become miserable about various aspects and that's to be avoided, I think. I think neither partner knows where it's going when they first bring it up, there's the destination you think you have and then (not unusual for matters of faith or mystery) there is where that actually ends up. My relationship, we were terrible for each other and it's much better we didn't marry. But I still think about the religious angle and recently decided to start learning more about Judaism in religious terms (decades later). I encourage Scott and his girlfriend to let themselves have a process (and if they would, give us an update in six months)! Just my take on it.
There's a fantastic book I have not been able to find again (1998), autobiographical sketches of interfaith couples, many combinations of traditions, many different experiences, had one by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala I think, if anyone knows that book, please post.
This is good advice and something I have tried in the past. However, I have no security clearance or money to pay for the process of getting a security clearance at present, which is limiting this as an option at present.
Well, I have a CS bachelors degree but no real coding experience, as well as three associates degrees in networking, information systems, and computer support, but only a year of industry experience in random temp jobs. So I am flexible but not strong in anything in particular. My current job is very customer facing in a sense, so answering phones would be fine, but something in networking or in house support would be ideal. Thank you very much for the help in advance.
I don't know how to do that. I can define a range but I lack both a specific understanding of the industry and a specific narrow interest. What I'd prefer to be is a Linux sysadmin but I don't think I have enough experience for that right now.
You could try going for high level customer support. By that I don't mean answering the phones, but receiving bug reports, debugging them, and providing patches to customers.
In my experience most programmers hate the customer facing side of that, so you can do well for yourself if you take that role and free the team up to do other things.
Are you going for IT because you don't like coding, or just because you don't think you have the experience for it? Because you can probably get hired as a software developer with just a CS degree and whatever coding experience you got from college.
+1 to this. I started at Google straight out of college and they (as well as all the other FAANG's) still hire a ton of new grads. The pay is much better than you'd expect in IT and as long as you find some kinds of coding interesting there is probably a place for you.
If you're curious if you'd pass the interviews, I can give you a practice interview. I've given 80 interviews, historically mostly for new grad positions, so I can probably tell you around what your odds are Google at least.
Hi Dan, horning in here because my son is graduating in less than a year with a CS degree and I have no idea how to properly encourage him to do what is prudent/efficient. Any chance we could chat on Discord as well?
Check postings at your local universities. Especially if you have any kind of in. Get an in if you can. Universities value degrees and are often hiring IT personnel.
For an artistic project related to engineering ethics and the tribal values of engineers, I am interested in writings which are:
0. easily publicly accessible
1. of literary merit
2. either (a) postmortems of significant engineering failures or (b) statements of engineering values, or both.
Feynman's minority report on the Challenger disaster, with its ringing conclusion that "Nature cannot be fooled," is to me a classic example of both 2a and 2b. What other texts are good examples of these?
In this vein, Leveson and Turner's "An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents" might be worth checking out. It's available free from Stanford's website:
The middle section of Slide Rule, the autobiography of Nevil Shute. It recounts his experiences designing and building the airship R100, alongside the competing team who built the ill-fated R101. It's somewhat polemic regarding the public-sector-built R101 vs the R100, which was contracted to Armstrong-Vickers.
In the same vein, Shute's *Trustee from the Toolroom* stars a humble hobbyist machinist ("model engineer") who accidentally stumbles into situations where his practical problem-solving shows its worth. It's one of my favourites. Some supernatural weirdness too, but *No Highway* has related themes. And then *Ruined City* is about the moral side of being a good engineering businessman and makes me tear up every time.
Kipling has "The Bridge Builders" in prose and "The Sons of Martha" in verse, also possibly "Hymn of Breaking Strain". "Sons of Martha" was later adopted for the Canadian graduation ceremony for professional engineers, as a poetic codification of the ethical standards of the profession.
"Sons of Martha" and "Hymn of Breaking Strain" were definitely in my plans already, but I haven't read "The Bridge Builders," so thanks very much for that pointer!
Having participated in the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer, read all the related materials and be weirded out/captivated. Professional engineers have a subtly different cultural role here than in the rest of the Anglosphere.
Doesn't fit criterion 1 as well, but the NTSB has a lot of good reports on significant engineering failures. For example, in their conclusion on the collapse of the FIU pedestrian bridge in Florida they deliver the incredible understated burn "To FIGG Bridge Engineers, Inc.: Train your staff on the proper use of Pc (the permanent net compressive force normal to the shear plane) when calculating nominal interface shear resistance."
Doesn't immediately read as ringing as Feynman, but then you realize that it essentially translates to "Your incompetence killed 6 people" passed through a
In the opposite direction, ie more literary and less statement of engineering values / post-mortem, is "The Mighty Task Is Done" by Joseph Strauss, chief engineer of the Golden Gate bridge: http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=3006
'The Boiler codes are written in blood.' I suggest you look up the explosion of the Sultana. This was a steamboat on the Mississippi that was carrying home 2300 Union POWs after the end of the war. The boiler exploded killing about 1800 passengers and crew. This was the accident that led to the adoption of codes for steam boilers, and thus the quote.
I would recommend looking at the story of William LeMessurier and the Citicorp Center. I learned about it in an Ethics of Engineering course, and it always stood out to me as an example of somebody faced with a difficult choice making what in hindsight was clearly the correct decision.
There's a bit about him choosing between silence, suicide and speaking up that made me understand the kind of gut-wrenching horror he must have felt at understanding the mistake he had made.
This is probably not the act thing you want, but there's a podcast called 'Well there's your problem' that looks at engineering disasters, and tackles them from a hard-left/socialist material analysis of history type view.
I won't give it a ringing endorsement as the best thing ever or always correct or fair, but I don't think I've ever heard a socialist engineering perspective anywhere else, and it throws up angles of discussion and analysis and ideas that I haven't seen presented elsewhere.
This may not be "literary" enough but there is an extremely large+influential set of writings from the 50s primarily about nuclear weapons but also about war in general, the most famous of which is probably the Einstein-Russell Manifesto https://pugwash.org/1955/07/09/statement-manifesto/ . Lots more where that came from too and likely some book-length treatments, but I can't think of one offhand. Will edit if I think of one, I feel like I'm missing the obvious here.
The Navy has a database of After Action Reports that *should* be publicly accessible. (There were thousands of reports in it when I got out a decade ago; maybe a couple hundred were classified, most of those unnecessarily, so of course it's all hosted on the classified network. If you happen to have access, I guarantee you'll find a couple interesting engineering problems in it in half an hour. They'll be unclassified, too, though
Though of course getting permission to share unclassified information with people who could learn from it is practically impossible.
I used two of those reports as writing samples on job interviews for years. To be able to, I still had to call in a favor AND they made me black out a phone number, even though we had the same number on our ship's web site!
Don't forget Robert Heinlein! Most of his stories feature an engineer with a slide rule. I particularly enjoyed _The Door Into Summer_ where an engineer re-engineered his own failed state. Very dated, but a wonderful story.
Even if secularism as it’s popularly imagined is derived from particularly Christian ideas - which as an semi-Orthoprax atheist Jew I would contest - it’s just as much a counterculture against Christianity as it is against Judaism. It takes some real conspiratorial thinking to call a countercultural idea a closely-held psyops campaign by the culture its countering.
This reminds very, very much of Jacob Neusner's *A Rabbi Talks with Jesus*, which is a phenomenal book for a Jewish perspective Jesus' words on the Law and Israel.
I think she's also got the record for most non-permanent bans. She was once banned indefinitely but the commentariat complained enough to get her reinstated.
Feels to phonetic. If I'm right that's Gaelic, it's probably pronounced like "Claire" or "Michelle" or something that just leaves you wondering whether the spelling isn't some sort of elaborate joke on the English speaking world.
It's "Deiseach". I always assumed it was pronounced 'desh-ock', but looking it up there is an Irish surname with a fada (accent) over the first 'e', and that would make the pronunciation 'day-shock'.
I am a graduate student in Mathematics. Some of my fellow math grad students are applying for Machine Learning or Data Science jobs this coming year. Although they have taken online courses in these areas and are reasonably conversant in them, they are finding it difficult to get jobs or internships because they're often out-competed by Computer science or statistics students, who inevitably have more experience than them in these areas. What are some things that these math grad students could do to further bolster their profiles?
I'm not sure if it applies here, but the "you must have experience to get experience" catch-22 is real in a lot of fields - obviously people beat it sometimes but it's not nothing to make the jump from internship/projects to real work.
Yeah the nice thing about this stuff is except for very large data sets & deep neural networks (which require expensive infrastructure) you can generally just pick a problem and bang your head against it in public without costing anything but your time
Get together a portfolio of projects. Get more experience in those areas specifically. The issue is probably that their knowledge is too theoretical compared to the CompSci and Stats folks. They're afraid they'll have to train you too much.
This. Also the projects will be a more visible sign of competence/expertise/interest and make you stick out than just having taken the classes (which most applicants will have done at this point).
Generally the answer to this is "lower your expectations". In most cases I've seen, such people are picky about jobs and salaries, and can easily pick up work if they drop their ask. Once they do, they tend to rattle up the chain pretty quick.
Finding "data adjacent" jobs also works. Pick something that matches your skill set in a big company, then ask for a transfer to the area you actually want.
Context: I work at a FAANG and my team is currently trying to hire an ML expert. A big hurdle for many folks is that we also want someone with good programming/computer science skills. I interview a lot of folks who seem competent at ML but don't pass our bar for coding.
To be precise, I think we generally do 2 interviews focused on ML and 2 interviews focused on generic programming (think leetcode/hacker-rank style questions). They are weighted evenly, and performing poorly on both programming interviews would consistently sink your odds.
I would highly recommend getting a grounding in computer science if you/they haven't already. In particular, I'd say do 2-3 programming focused CS classes and an algorithms course.
This advice assumes that y'all are already getting to the interview stage. I'm less familiar with the resume optimization part of the game, but listing more experience, including your CS coursework, and linking to some coding hobby projects are all good ideas.
It's also worth mentioning that cold applications have an absolutely atrocious response rate. I had to apply to 57 internships my senior year to get 2 interviews (I got an offer from both). Referrals are huuuuge in terms of getting to the interview stage.
Thanks! This is a rather complete answer to my question. What is a good way to get referrals for companies if you don't have a lot of friends working in tech? I suppose this could be a problem for a lot of non-CS people entering tech.
@How to get referrals if you don't have many friends in tech: I don't have personal experience here, so take my advice with a grain of salt. I got a traditional undergrad CS degree, and a few of my buddies graduated before me.
You might try to take courses with folks you know are going to enter tech soon, or do projects with them. I haven't had success personally in deliberately cultivating networking contacts, but I've had great success by making friends in nerdy hobbies. Ex. I was referred to my current job because I played DnD with two folks at the company and referred to my last job because my wife (who I met as a fellow CS mentor) worked there.
I more meant to gesture at the terrible response rate for cold entry level applications as a way to say, 'Do not lose hope, it is a crap shoot even for great applicants and the only solution is to apply to tons of things.' Once you have a few years of experience, things get better.
I'll also mention that the experience of referrals leading to recruiting more of the same type of folks has been cited as a problem with the practice. I'm sympathetic to this, but as someone who does interviews I note that referred folks tend to be higher quality than typical. So it's hard to ignore the info that a referral supplies.
Lastly, it's worth mentioning that you 'really' don't want to burn bridges with people. While a good referral may not secure you the job, a bad referral will almost certainly tank your chances. For example, when someone who went to the same college as me applies, I'll get an email asking for a referral if I know them. I've personally only given one anti-referral (to someone who was flagrantly unethical when I worked with them), but I have good reason to believe the anti-referral is why they didn't get offered the position.
Trump is cruel, vindictive, selfish, dishonest with a capital D and has less knowledge of and respect for the US Constitution than a nihilist middle schooler.
That’s all I need to know about him.
I’m going entirely by the words that come out his own mouth. No media interpretation is necessary. He is clearly a vile entity. I wouldn’t want him for a coworker, team member or neighbor.
This is awesome.
It's great, but hard to listen to without looking at the words, because the music is just as loud as the lyrics.
I'm curious what the exchange was that got one user banned and one other user warned. Are we non-subscribers allowed to know what it was?
The exchange appears to have been removed, so I'm gonna go with no.
For me there was a button to show the comment. But I have no idea why it was ban worthy. It is about politics but I don't think there is a rule against politics in hidden open thread?
There was some name calling further down so I guess Scott picked an arbitrary comment to ban from.
Clearly they tried to figure out the True Name of this blog.
That's easy, it will always be slatestarcodex
Of course it will be...
No, the real True Name is s***d314.
Hey Scott, since you've abandoned pseudonymity: is this fair game again?
Would what be fair game? They've clearly found the secret name of this website. All curses should be directed at SlateStarCodex which is definitely the True Name. It'll totally work. No more investigation needed.
sneed314
From what they said in 179, I take it something escalated to the point of jstr saying "go fuck yourself" and Deiseach saying "kill yourself" in reply. Scott seems more concerned with civility than with topic, so while I don't know the subject matter the insults are probably what he found objectionable.
The topic, to summarize very briefly, was that jstr alleged that Trump actually got more votes in California but Biden won through voter fraud, and then got really offended when Deiseach pointed out that this was a lie. It escalated from there. And yes, I imagine it was the reference to suicide rather than the subject matter that resulted in the ban.
Jstr - I didn’t see the exchange, but it has been my experience that when people post links like this and then label them “interesting”, etc, there is usually a hidden agenda to signal boost a conspiracy theory. To me (and possibly to Diesearch), this is a “tell”, which might explain her (over) reaction.
Now, I have no idea if this was your actual intent, and I’m trying to be charitable. I just offer this as a possible explanation.
Oh good. I feel the need to repent. I believe I applauded Deiseach in said thread, (For what to me was her wicked wit, and what to you was bile and venom.) I'm sorry. If I had something to say to you I should have said it directly. Let's all try and be more civil.
Look, jstr. You've posted a controversial article. You've intentionally steered clear of stating any opinion on any single part of it. "Interesting" does not count. Pointing out at least certain parts that you deem to be true, or false, does.
As example, let me post a link to a recent controversial article. https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-disillusionment-of-the-deplorables/ . I recommend you to actually read it.
You've read it? OK. I hold that the statement "the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight" is incorrect and misleading. I hold that a lot of other points in that article are correct. In particular, I fully agree with the five paragraphs starting from "This is where people(...)". I don't possess enough verified information to assess the correctness of various other statements.
There. End of example. To the point, let me paste one paragraph from that article which perhaps offers a charitable interpretation of your own case:
> Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real.
The charitable interpretation here would be that you're one of those who latches onto one absurd theory then another, while trying to put a concrete name on something very real (and quite well described in that Claremont review article). Clearly, the concept that 2020's California, of all places, had had the vote stolen to blue, is absolute peak absurd. And given how those Californians who cannot stand Democrat governance have started voting with their feet, that concept will become only more absurd in the years ahead.
The less charitable interpretation would be an assumption of bad faith from your side, that you are signal-boosting a peak-absurd thesis while being fully aware that it is peak-absurd, which contributes to muddying the waters and to discrediting the more clear-headed perspectives on that complex subject.
I don't know you, I don't want to judge which of these interpretations would hit the mark, and I don't profess to mindreading, but look at it this way. If presuming that something is rotten in the swamp of Denmark, and the false flags are as common as the psy-ops, what would be *your* judgement of someone who picks a peak-absurd thesis, and goes boosting it while persistently avoiding to express any of their own stances on it, and then gets pugnacious on someone who calls out that fact?
You're right. The "dupe or troll" is a false dichotomy, and I apologize for having put it forward.
I was trying to think of mental models which would be promoting a story as absurd as California being stolen-to-blue, and at the time I failed to think up anything besides those two categories. I had also been somewhat indisposed because you asked for banning Deiseach, so I didn't think about other categories as hard and long as I otherwise might have. (Deiseach is a long-standing commenter held in high esteem by a lot of the community, including myself)
The passages of that article that you quote here, I also agree with a hundred percent. (Likewise, I am not a US citizen) The part which has perhaps the most resonated with me was "They watched the press behave like animals for four years." Some tectonic shifts have started happening in the mainstream media starting cca. 2010, and it reached insane levels since. By now it feels surrealist to recall how NYT and CNN used to be actually decent news sources. (I can't say for MSNBC, WaPo and NPR, since I didn't really pay attention to them before)
That article is interesting, but it sorely needs citations. It asserts as fact numerous claims that I am skeptical of, so without further elaboration and support, I can only see it as "this is how Trumpists see the world" rather than "this is something true about the world".
That being said, learning how Trumpists see the world is still very useful and interesting, even if it is based on false premises.
The article has about a hundred sentences and about ten links. There's one statement ("/premise") per sentence in median. Let's simplify it to "approx. a hundred statements." If the demand for rigor is "one link per statement", then about nine tenths of that article fail at that criteria, yes.
Not that I know any media article which would meet such criteria; I'd even say that this "one tenth" is in the top quintile of published media articles. I assume your demand is more specific than that, but you haven't been more specific.
First, only some of those statements are empirical. E.g. "the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight" is an empirical statement, which incidentally I deem false.
Even for statements that are hypothetical and not empirical, they still have a given degree of plausibility. E.g. in the chain "a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries / had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper / the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs. Jeb Bush election", the third statement is evidently hypothetical not empirical. But I view it as very plausible.
Empirical statements can furthermore be easier or harder to truly verify. I haven't much dug into the controversy around Hunter Biden, whether it is empirically true, or false, or partially true, and which parts. I have no firm opinion on that. However, the Big Tech censorship campaign against those media who were publishing that information, is empirically true. In contrast, the stories about Russian prostitutes peeing on Trump, originated from US intel agencies, were circulated quite widely in mainstream media, empirically *without* obstruction from Big Tech.
You dismissively speak of worldviews based on false premises. First, it's obviously not a case of all the hundred premises being true nor all hundred being false. Whatever measure you take of a certain worldview, it cannot be a meaningful measure without establishing the relative importance of particular premises, and then combining it with how certain you are about the truthfulness of each premise (*). Also: corroboration.
That the basis of the Trump-getting-peed-on stories was empirically BS, is the lesser point here. The greater point is how Big Tech, Big Media and intel agencies work in concert and unison when it comes to influencing the electoral process. Whether this is something to be blasé about, or concerned about, may depend on your views of the previous centuries of human history.
(*) The meta-recursion here is that worldviews in effect "dictate" what is the relative importance of particular premises -- different worldviews assigning quite different importances to particular premises -- while at the same time being *shaped by* the product of the relative importance of particular premises and the degree of certainty for each one. That's why worldviews are inherently an *open-ended process*, and a quite fascinating one.
When enough people interpret your post the same way you have to wonder if it is you who made the mistake in expression rather than we who made the mistake in interpretation.
Conventionally if you are posting a link to an article whose thesis you do not endorse you would want to signpost it somehow. For example "this article is interesting, although I do not endorse its thesis." Posting the link with no commentary at all will be taken for endorsement of the contents of the link. Note that this is an empirical and pragmatic fact about the world, not a normative claim about the way people "should" interpret such posts.
If you don't like being seen as dishonest, one way you could avoid it is by making it clear from the outset what your beliefs are about the contents of links you post. Because I also suspect that for every one person who calls you out on it, there will be another ten who thought "this guy is full of it" but were too polite or conflict-averse to say anything.
> Perhaps I "made the mistake in expression"; but I know for a fact others "made the mistake in interpretation", because I know my own heart, while they don´t.
It may be that others did not understand the meaning you intended. That doesn't mean they made a mistake.
> Also, please note that I have always been (and always will be) courteous myself
You told someone to go fuck herself.
> If that isn´t enough to avoid "being seen as dishonest"
Why would it be? Courtesy, and extending others the benefit of the doubt, are virtues. But they're different virtues than honesty.
Does that mean Deiseach got banned? That'd be a bummer; she (I think the correct pronoun) was one of the better regular commenters here.
For a day. Many of the bans here have been for one day. Long enough to get the point across, not *really* disrupting your participation.
mesage 2
XXX edit
Yes, she's a woman.
I feel like the punishment mostly comes from the shame and disgrace, not from the actual one day ban. Everyone who read this post will forever associate Deiseach with the person who told someone to kill themselves over an Internet argument. Even if there's 100% proof that she's sorry about it and won't do it again, that association is hard to shake.
You think so? I feel as though about half of all political disputes on Twitter devolve to that level of vitriol, and given the number of Twitter fights there are on a daily basis, that's a lot of death wishes, but no one really cares. If you ever look at David Simon's twitter account, I would estimate he tells a random person he hopes they die of disease about once every three days, for example.
That's true, but ACX is supposed to be better than Twitter, and it is. The day ACX remotely resembles Twitter, I'm leaving.
True, but we are still subject to the Online Disinhibition Effect, same as anywhere else, I would say, so while I try not to be a jerk to people, I'm not going to get too bent out of shape if someone occasionally does blow their stack a bit, especially when it's someone whose comments are otherwise quite good.
It doesn't change my picture of her. (and I'm a newbie) She's a smart sharp tongued Irishman (woman). Who you (I) can't help loving. And her sharp tongue can lead to trouble. It's almost a stereo-type. I'm picturing Maureen O'Hara in "The Quite Man". Deiseach, please forgive me talking in the third person about you.
As one of the parties in the kerfuffle, I have resolved not to refight it or litigate it or do anything rather than serve out my ban. I've done so, and now I'm going to hold my tongue on the entire affair.
Which means I won't get into an exchange of views with you either, dionysus.
My girlfriend might want to convert to Judaism when we get married. I am a cultural Jew, am not strictly observant, and don't go to synagogue. She probably would also be a cultural Jew, not very observant, and not go to synagogue, I realize you don't need to officially convert to do this but it would be meaningful to us. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Are there rabbis (presumably Reform) who will convert you no questions asked, or do you need to promise to go to their synagogue or follow halacha or something? Does anyone have any good ideas for next steps?
You might reach out to local Reconstructionist rabbis for advice on this, Reconstructionism being even less traditionalist than Reform. I don't know about the East Bay but there is a Reconstructionist congregation in San Francisco, Or Shalom. I have no personal connection to them, unfortunately.
Also, mazel tov on your impending marriage! May it bring you both great joy.
Ultra-traditionalist Judaism might be more hospitable for polyamory, seeing as how many wives King Solomon had :)
I know of rabbis who would convert someone on the condition of a commitment to learn for a year, bathe in a mikvah at the end of the process, and make a broad commitment to tether one's fate to the fate of the Jewish people; I assume they'd be quite open as to the nature of the commitment and not require a commitment beyond cultural Judaism...I can ask around...
I passed on your question to some colleagues and if anyone has a lead I'm happy to connect you.
Why?
God doesn't exist so there's no real reason to convert, as far as I can tell. What do you mean by "cultural Jew"?
This is debatably true, not kind, and not necessary.
When someone expresses a preference that you don't share, barging into the conversation with "WELL ACTUALLY I BELIEVE X SO YOUR PREFECENCE IS STUPID" is a rude thing to do. This is extra true about preferences for religious practice and religious community membership, something people are sensitive about because everyone knows it's a topic that's ripe for conflict. It's extra extra true in contexts where there is a pressing reason to be especially kind instead, like when someone has just mentioned that they're getting married. You can see many examples of appropriate responses to this kind of announcement elsewhere in this thread.
You are being mean, and you are making this space worse. Please stop it.
Well said
+1
agree, but i think OP was just trying to figure out if there is any meta-physical belief driving the conversion, or if it is entirely cultural.
-1
"barging into the conversation", "You are being mean, and you are making this space worse. Please stop it."? This invokes memories of the process that transformed the internet from a fascinating forum for diverse intellectual debate and cultural celebration that expanded intellectual horizons into a collection of walled-off tribal circlejerks, when gadflies and devils advocates started being called trolls and concern trolls.
I'm personally interested in the response to "marxbro's" question because I'm kinda in a similar situation. I've found myself going periodically to a synagogue(an orthodox one) for the first time in my life. I've felt a bit guilty about it, as if I'm attending on false pretenses. I am completely irreligious, secular, and cosmopolitan and am quite certain I will remain so for life. But the rabbi insists that I'm still welcome, apparently concerned only with my blood. I don't consider it an identity issue so much as cultural curiosity, so maybe "cultural Jew" is apt description.
It's an intriguing question...if God doesn't exist, then why would she convert? (The topic actually came up with my rabbi too. My girlfriend isn't Jewish and he said that their position generally is that conversion isn't compulsory, actually being discouraged, and it's technically frowned upon to marry outside the faith). More important than this is the old universalism/cosmopolitanism v. particularism/communitarianism debate. Would his girlfriend's conversion be considered an indication of embracing communitarianism? Scott is one the few popular commentators left that, for lack of a better word(and I realize it's a horrible word), seems 'sane' to me. I feel comfortable including him in a relatively short list of role models. Whatever their motivations for doing this, it could help inform my own decisions going forward. If Scott's not comfortable answering that question and just ignores it, it's all good. But if he is, I'd certainly be curious about the answer. So you'll forgive me for disagreeing that our gadfly above is "making this space worse."
It's true, kind and necessary. I've not been rude or said any swear words.
Marriage shouldn't be a sacred cow either. It's strange to me that a community that says it upholds rationality and truth-seeking is now approaching religious conversion as something that is taboo to criticise.
i don't think this conversation needs to devolve... let me just say i think the response was to the line 'God doesn't exist', which without context could be taken as unkind, but in this context probably isn't. For example, if someone had a sincere belief in a religion, and wanted to convert, "god doesn't exist, so why bother" could seem a bit unkind. But in this context, I think we are assuming the conversion is (as Scott says) 'cultural', and there is no deity belief backing it (Scott has not explicitly said if the fiancé has a belief in god or not, which is why I posted asking if it was the case or not; since I assume the higher prior is they do not).
So if it is true that there is no deity belief backing the conversion, I agree it is a bit curious as to why there is such a strong desire, and why it would be meaningful.
So I can understand why C_B thought you were being unkind, but I think it mostly a misunderstanding, and his reply could also have been kinder.
Context or no, stating that 'God doesn't exist' doesn't come close to falling under the umbrella of 'criticizing religious conversion'. It's quite rude to those of us who either believe in God or are agnostic like myself
It's not rude to state a fact. I've not attacked anyone personally or said any nasty words. I'm just making a straightforward declaration of the truth: God doesn't exist.
Personally, I find this whole exercise pointless. If Scott doesn't believe in this religion, if his partner doesn't believe in this religion, it seems counter-intuitive to recommend conversion? Doesn't it seem hypo-critical to want to join a community if you don't share any of their core values?
Maybe I don't really understand this "culturally Jewish" thing - but wouldn't you have to at least go to synagogue, practice faith-based traditions or observe faith-based holidays to experience Jewish culture? (Or at the very least one of the above?)
Can you simply go to a meetup and meet other Jews? If the last is the case, why do you need a rabbi or to convert for that? It seems strange to want to associate with a group you have so little in common with, but let's not pretend this is a logical or consistent idea.
yes, unfortunately he has not given any follow up... it does seem curious. If indeed there is no religious component of the conversion, than why do it? would you go through a similar process with any other aspect of life you had such a mild affinity for? I'm hoping maybe something is being saved for a top level post.
It makes sense to me -- it's sort of like joining a fraternity. Is that so strange? Going through some sort of conversion ritual is a signal of commitment and promotes bonding among members.
Now, it is sort of hypocritical if you're joining a religion where most people are devout, and you're doing it just for social benefits while not actually believing like the fellow members. But I think more liberal strains of Judaism are not this way -- there aren't many liberal Jews who are all that devout, and it's more about preserving traditions as a family and a people. Being a committed atheist might still put you a bit outside the norm, but not nearly as much as it would in a Southern Baptist church.
Well, even if you had no malicious intent, it was kind of a yutzy way to phrase the question. You immediately place yourself in the position being the arbiter of the supposed truth (without the means to falsify your proposition). Then you follow it up with a clueless question about cultural Judaism — which, if you were sincere in your ignorance, you could easily have googled what it means. The subtext of your original question was that any self-identification or affiliation with Judaism is an act of superstition.
But I'm glad you explained yourself! If the real question you were positing was: "why get married at all, given that marriage is a superstitious ceremony derived from superstitious beliefs?" you should have asked that question first! — because it could have offended a wider range of people, and you wouldn't have given the impression that you were singling out cultural Jews as being uniquely superstitious.
I said quite straightforwardly that God doesn't exist. This is a criticism of all religions. I'm not a "yutz" and I phrased it the best I possibly could. I know what the word " cultural" means but I think it's being used as a magic wand to gloss over some pretty fundamentally irrational behaviours here. Like if one is merely a "cultural Jew" then why is a Rabbi needed at all?
Hmmm. I think you have a distorted view of what rationalism is. Let's take it back a step. My understanding is that rational belief requires that you be able to prove, either logically, mathematically, or scientifically that proposition is true — or in the case of science that it's likely to be true to the best evidence we have. Belief in things you can't prove are non-rational or arrational (not a common word, but I didn't coin it). Belief in things that can obviously be proved false are irrational.
Atheism like any other theism is an arrational belief — i.e. there's no experimental way to falsify either the God or no-God proposition. Attempts have been made to prove or disprove one position or the other, but they've all failed. (Although, supposedly Kurt Gödel was working on a logical/mathematical proof for the existence of God when he died — I would have liked to see it.) Anyway, you can have an opinion on whichever proposition you think *may* be true. As long as you admit that it's an opinion, that's an arrational belief. To posit either position as provable fact is an irrational belief.
As for our cultural affinities, these are aesthetic choices that we either make for ourselves or that we freely accept from our family and our community. Some have argued that there's a rational basis for aethetics. I don't believe this. However, I admit that's an arrational opinion on my part. But you can't really claim a cultural affinity is irrational. What rules of logic, math, or science does it violate? It's like one's taste in colors: You may like the color red more than you like the color blue, but you can't rationally argue one color is better than the other. Claiming someone is superstitious for liking the color blue more than the color red, is an irrational statement.
Well, whether a higher power exists is another debate. It's obvious (to me) that Scott doesn't think a higher power exists - so I just don't understand the viewpoint.
It seems illogical -but humans are not always rational actors. Maybe Scott is just nostalgic for his youth/family? In that case, I would just recommend to hang out with them more instead of this "dog-and-pony" show conversion.
Well, regardless of whether there is a higher power or not - (something I'm convinced is unknowable as stated, so I won't make a judgement either way) - I would phrase it more like "You just stated you don't believe in this religion. Why would you want someone to convert?".
I'm also not sure about this "culturally Jewish" thing. My "culturally Christian" friends at least go to church and keep the holidays even if they don't follow the teachings of the Bible to the T, and don't come across as downright hostile to the idea of a higher power, when they aren't seriously devout.
While I disagree with the tone, I think there is a valid point here. I would have questions too if someone told me "Here are all the ways 'my' religion is unimportant to me. It would be meaningful if my significant other would convert to this religion which I just stated I don't care about.". Why bother?
Or maybe just join the Reconstructionists. If I understand correctly, it's for people who don't believe in a higher power yet still want the feel of religion - maybe Scott would like that. I still don't think it matters if you don't practice, don't hold the core beliefs, don't celebrate the main holidays or don't go to the main religious institutes.
For reference, I would ask these same questions of any denomination of faith.
This is a good post, but:
DON'T FEED MARXBRO THEY ARE A TROLL
Why not? It's fun to tease him. Lol!
I'm not a troll.
Prove that you're not a troll, then. You ask non-sensical or provocative questions and demand rational answers from us. You're like a five-year old, who keeps asking why? why? why?, but when we try to explain our reasoning to you, you ask why? why? why? again. At no point have you even made the slightest attempt to defend you statements with any sort of rational justification. Although I find your statements to be rather entertaining, evidently many others in this conversation don't. As for me, I can only keep throwing the frisbee to you so many times before I get bored with your game.
They're not provocative questions at all.
Marxbro isn't known for his kindness, but I'm pretty sure Scott is atheist so MB's phrasing doesn't strike me as something that would offend Scott. I too am curious about the purpose a conversion would serve.
If I could sum up what I say below, it would be that people are in touch with their roots, and that's meaningful to them.
I'll confess I don't completely understand "cultural" faith either, but at least with something like Judaism it seems like it's such a distinct culture, within the broader American culture (in this case), that being "culturally Jewish" makes some sense to me. Distinct holidays and traditions definitely contribute. Having unique rites of passage is certainly part of a culture as well, and those traditions aren't meaningless even if you might think that they're not "true."
I'm a Mormon, for instance, and while we've got a culture of our own (I've got ancestors who knew Joseph Smith and followed Brigham Young to Utah), Jewish culture is much more distinct, not to mention going MUCH farther back. Many Mormons I know are only in it because of the culture, and go along with the rest because there's no "Reform Mormonism" option. I think you see a similar thing with Catholicism and Islam. (For the record, I'm a believing-while-doubting Mormon, but that's more complicated than we need to get into here.)
If this is all about being in touch with your "roots" then I'm not sure why a prospective wife would want to convert - shouldn't she also be in touch with her "roots"?
Is Reform Mormonism a niche waiting to be filled?
There's the Community of Christ, formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My impression is that it used to act as a second destination for people leaving the mainstream Latter-day Saint body, but increasingly it is indistinguishable from other liberal Christian churches and former Latter-day Saints rarely bother anymore.
Certainly there are individuals in the Church who attend services and activities while being lax in their personal observances or heterodox in their private beliefs, but as far as I can tell it's not a "thing" like it is in Catholicism or Judaism.
I'm not sure why, really. The Church leadership certainly has worked to discourage it for most of its history, but they seem to have been unusually successful at it compared to other religions. One thing that seems important is that many of the culture-specific rituals -- like the special rites of passage and special marriages -- are gate-kept strictly around both practice and belief by a clearly defined leadership structure.
Adding on that the Latter-day Saint leadership structure is surprisingly flat and centralized. For example, the smallest unit of the Church is the ward, lead by a bishop, of which there are about 30,000 worldwide. The selection of a new bishop is frequently done under the in-person supervision of one of the Twelve Apostles (the second-highest leadership body), and the selection is then submitted to the First Presidency (the highest), and I know from second-hand accounts that the First Presidency doesn't just rubber-stamp it and says no sometimes.
I wonder what criteria are used to select bishops?
Also, I have a very specific and vexing question about their authority. Do teenagers have to discuss sex with them? Is there some confessional function bishops fulfill? Is it all about Temple recommends*?
Let me explain: A fun fact about being an openly gay high school student in Salt Lake City in the '90s is that a everyone just assumes you were Mormon before you sucked dick, and it leads to hilarious misunderstandings.
From 9th grade on, four or five times a year, total strangers, unprompted, told me a story about a bishop who is the last person that should be listening to teenagers have to talk about their sexual development.
One was a bishop who asked Elizabeth's sister to "prove you haven't put balled up tissues in her bra." The others were The same, but longer.
Was I told those srories because that kind of thing happens a lot and is openly discussed—someone looked at me, said, "he looks pretty Mormon" and told the story as gossip?
Or was I told because that kind of thing almost never happens and is not discussed—someone looked me up specifically as the only non-lesbian in the GSA after Mike went to Evergreen Sophomore year, and told the story looking for advice or help?
Either way, as soon as I said, "actually, my parents are hippies and my family's Jewish," the person telling the story would just mutter "nevermind" or "my mistake," then never talk to me again.
(The only exception was a young man who asked how I could be Jewish and gay, then refused to let me demonstrate.)
Anyway, it was 20 years ago, I still don't know what happened, and I'm not sure closing all the schools for a year was a bad thing.
*The wedding thing gets a bad rap, but I love it. I wish more friends would ask me to wear the suit, do the photos and eat the cake—but read a book outside during the ceremony. Frankly, it's an improvement on other faiths.
Thanks, I've learned some things here.
"increasingly it is indistinguishable from other liberal Christian churches and former Latter-day Saints rarely bother anymore."
Yes, from what I've seen, all liberal religious traditions have a tendency to blend together at a certain point, and to blend with secular leftism, which is why they're all slowly evaporating. Because why bother? It's tough to be a passionate advocate for one's church if you think it's just a pretty good social club and not the one true path to salvation. It's especially difficult to pass these traditions down to one's children, and most people don't try that hard. It probably doesn't help that all sorts of social clubs and community organizations are doing very poorly these days.
Reform Judaism is evaporating too, but somewhat more slowly than Mainline Protestant churches. At some point it will probably be able to maintain its numbers on the basis of apostates from Orthodox Judaism, but currently Orthodox Judaism is only 20% of the total in the US, and that situation looks like it will flip, with Orthodox becoming the majority and most Reform Jews having recent family links to it.
"Certainly there are individuals in the Church who attend services and activities while being lax in their personal observances or heterodox in their private beliefs, but as far as I can tell it's not a "thing" like it is in Catholicism or Judaism."
Well, it's not as much a thing in Protestantism either, and the LDS was founded by Protestants and my sense is that culturally LDS is still more like a very weird and highly committed Protestant church than it is like Catholicism or Judaism.
I went to a Catholic HS, and I've observed for a while that Catholic high schools often have very marginally-attached Catholic alums still actively involved in them. My school's largest financial backer was like this -- he was an Italian-American who practically never attended Mass, but he sent all his basically unchurched kids there and I think for him the school was sort of an Italian thing -- a sense that Catholicism is on some level as inseparable from Italian-ness as pasta is. Which is an awful lot like cultural Judaism.
Evangelical private schools normally don't have this --"ex-vangelical" alums don't get involved in them, don't send their kids there or give them money.
First off, please prove that God doesn't exist. So far I have yet to come across any proof for or against the existence of God, but I'd be happy to hear if you have one.
We can discuss the question of what is the definition of a cultural Jew after you answer my first question. ;-)
The burden of proof is on the god-believers to present proof that a God exists.
By claiming the other side has the burden of proof in the God/no-God argument, you're abrogating your responsibility as self-proclaimed rationalist. The burden of proof is an irrational argument that both theists and atheists use against each other. It's irrational because if makes the fatal assumption if it can't be proved it isn't real. For instance, there's no proof for Hilbert's sixteenth problem. Could there be proof for it? Or is it unprovable? You can have an opinion, but to state it's either provable or unprovable is at best arrational. Placing the burden of proof on the side with the opposing opinion is definitely an irrational argument, though. "My opinion is correct because you can't prove your opinion!" See how absurd that sounds? As an agnostic, I don't have to prove anything. I can just say I don't have enough data to make a rational decision on the question. And I don't. Lol!
If it's "unprovable" then I'm not sure why you would want to convert to a religion in the first place. There are many things which are unprovable which I would also not worship. How are people even making the decision about which unprovable deity they want to worship?
Question: how uncompromising are you in your anti-religious views? Have you ever sat down with friends for a Christmas dinner? Or would you make a point of shunning them for them for paying lip service to Christian ceremony — even if they didn't really believe that Jesus was the Christ savior?
I was raised by atheists, but when I was kid we put up tree and gave presents. My parents didn't have any problem having fun on that holiday, even to the extent of going out caroling with our Christian neighbors. My parents did however make a point of telling me the truth about non-existence of Santa Claus when I was five. Oh boy! That caused a lot of outrage with my peers when I relayed that information to them!
I'm going to try and answer the question 'What do you mean by "cultural Jew"?'
My grandma taught Yiddish for 20 years and in the late 40s, she got her master's degree from a yeshiva; the subject of her dissertation was ”humanism and Judaism."
The late 40s was a time when a lot of American Jews doubted the literal truth of being a 'chosen people' but also felt personally connected to the worldwide Jewish diaspora.
I can't explain the feeling very well. (If my cousin ever actually scans that thesis, you should read it, because my grandmother could, and did.)
I wish there were an edit function so I could tack this joke into my post: I'm a-theological: arguments about the existence of god don't exist.
You can speak Yiddish and write about humanism and Judaism without a formal conversion or without seeking out a Rabbi on the matter. If it's simply about speaking a language then I'm sure there are plenty of helpful apps for that.
Well I have not yet found my grandmother's master's thesis, I can promise you that her essay in the January 18, 1991, issue of the Detroit Jewish News will be well worth your time:
https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/djnews/djn.1991.01.18.001/74
Also, I apologize if I gave you the impression that my grandmother was a Rabbi. She was a communist.
I was referring to Scott's question. If this is simply about hanging out with people, speaking a language or taking part in holidays I don't know why a formal conversion would be required.
Glad to hear she was a communist.
I don't think it's required, it's just, I can't think of any alternatives to a conversion for a newlywed who wants to adopt their spouse's irrelegious Judaism.
Cultural Jews: not a family, so you can't marry in; not a religion, so you can't convert; not an organization, so you can't sign up; not a philosophy, so you can't espouse it—it may be a group that's literally impossible to join. For a group so tolerant of others we founded the ACLU, we're not very welcoming!
Or maybe we're too Talmudic about the whole thing. Raised Catholic? Spouse mildly Protestant? Have a presbyterian wedding service and bam, you've switched religions and no one will ask you if you believe in God! (Plus, next time you have to go to Church, you'll enter feet first.)
My grandmother's FBI fill was inspiring. Sign one petition in the 50s to make sure the government's secret police spend time and money watching you, then be totally law abiding for seventy years.
J. Edgar Hoover was not Hitler and it would have been wrong to use violence against him——but wasting his time and money is a mitzvah.
There are large parts of Judaism as a religion that provide benefits even if you don't believe in God. Belonging to a captial-P People with its own history and its own rituals and values can be its own reward. Maintaining that belonging may require doing things that aren't 100% justified by evidence (though for Judaism believing in God is often not one of those things), but the rewards can be worth the costs.
I say this as a Christian who teaches at a Jewish school. My students generally come away feeling like part of something bigger and more meaningful than themselves, much more than I think their public-school counterparts do. And I suspect that the majority of them get this benefit despite not believing in God.
I'm not sure why "conversion" is needed for feeling "part" of something bigger than oneself. That's just having friends that you talk to once in a while.
The fact that nearly every culture and religion in history has some sort of initiation rites and/or selective criteria for group inclusion suggests that for most people "feeling a part of something bigger" is more than just "having friends you talk to once in while" and that you are the one who is missing something here.
I don't know why there would be an "initiation" for someone who doesn't actually believe in the religion anyway.
There are large parts of Judaism as a religion that provide benefits even if you don't believe in every aspect of the religion*. Belonging to a captial-P People with its own history and its own rituals and values can be its own reward. Maintaining that belonging may require doing things that aren't 100% justified by evidence (though for Judaism believing in God is often not one of those things), but the rewards can be worth the costs.
*(and Judaism specifically is not actually big on orthodoxy of belief; there are many see the statistic elsewhere that a large % of active Reform Jews don't believe in God)
Came across this quote from Karl Marx. Thought you'd get a chuckle out of it...
"'atheism' ... reminds one of children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the bogy man."
-- Karl Marx, Letter to Engels, 30 November 1842
Oh this is great, congratulations on your upcoming wedding!
I am not Jewish but years ago I dated a guy for several years who was Jewish and we discussed conversion. Having looked a little way down the path, my contribution is this, take her to lots of holidays and see if the “wow” hits. Sometimes new converts fall in love with the tradition and want to go full tilt for a while. She would “probably” be non-observant, but joining a new community can make people feel unexpected things. Let yourself be ok with her falling in love with the tradition if that is what happens, and then see which conversion process feels right. That may be why Zohar commented “learn for a year.” Congratulations again to both of you!
Mazel tov! When my wife and I decided to get married, we wanted a non-religious ceremony presided over by a rabbi (parental pressure, of course, about the rabbi). We were younger then. Eventually we did find a rabbi who was willing to preside, with a suitably modified standard Jewish wedding. I'm sure you could find a rabbi who will agree to such a conversion, either among Reform or Reconstructionist congregations, or check out csjo.org, the home for Cultural and Secular Jewish Organizations. I help run a secular Jewish organization in the Detroit region, but we have no clergy--we do it all ourselves.
"Mazel tov to you two!" says your fellow cultural Jew! Seriously, mazel tov! Honestly, this brightened up my morning, which up until this point was one of those combos of (1) "woke up on the wrong side of the bed" and (2) "Oh noes! I need to rush out in the rain to put out the garbage cans that I was too lazy to put out last night!". In closing, congratulations once more!
Congratulations on the wedding!
The conversion should be substantive and centered around learning. A "good" Reform Jew knows all the commandments they decide not to follow. I suggest going through a torah cycle, reading a portion each week. Here is a good book for that: https://www.amazon.com/Etz-Hayim-Commentary-David-Lieber/dp/0827607121/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=torah+in+english+etz&qid=1626088761&s=books&sr=1-5
Also, any of the books by Joseph Telushkin are terrific introductions.
would love to hear more about the reasoning behind this is you are willing, and what makes it meaningful
Same here. I deleted my comment lower down, because the asker was pretty blunt about it. I feel like I'm missing something and am honestly curious about the desire.
From my point of view, if there's (presumably) no sincere belief in the basic tenants of the faith, little to no intention to observe it, and no desire to experience the rituals or community gained by attending synagogue...what is the "thing" that's being meaningfully converted?
Oh and congratulations to Scott!
Damn inability to edit the comments! I meant, I replied to someone who asked a question about this, but it was kind of rudely phrased.
For me, I just literally don't understand what it is that would be meaningful in a way that's different from a name change or one of the other marriage traditions.
*if* you are willing ( not 'is' )
My mom is Jewish and my dad was Catholic and I was raised Catholic. I have been told by many Jewish people including a Rabbi that I'm Jewish and it was implied that this is very meaningful for cultural reasons.
I don't have any substantive advice but congrats to the two of you!
Mazel tov Scott!! I’m so happy for you.
For all the unique and unusual things about you, this particular problem is well-known to the point of there being an entire subgenre of Jewish humor devoted to it.
As others have said, what you basically want is to find a Reform or Reconstructionist rabbi who you like and who’ll have dealt with dozens or hundreds of such couples in the past. That rabbi might want not only your fiancée but also you to learn more (I’d be curious how impressed they’ll be by the kabbalistic research you did for Unsong!). They’ll ask how you plan to raise your children. But for better or worse, there’s basically no extreme of unbelief or non-commitment for which you couldn’t find a Reform/Reconstructionist rabbi who’d seen even more and who’d work with you … *certainly* in the Bay Area! The conversion (and hence, the Judaism of your children) wouldn’t be recognized by the Orthodox, or for emigrating to Israel under the Law of Return, but most likely neither of those are pressing problems for you.
I think the Law of Return does apply if Wikipedia and my memory are both correct.
From Wikipedia:
"The law since 1970 applies to the following groups:
Those born Jews according to the orthodox interpretation; having a Jewish mother or maternal grandmother.
Those with Jewish ancestry – having a Jewish father or grandfather.
Converts to Judaism (Orthodox, Reform, or Conservative denominations—not secular—though Reform and Conservative conversions must take place outside the state, similar to civil marriages).
But Jews who have converted to another religion are not eligible to immigrate under the Law of Return, even though they are still Jews according to halakha.
Ah, right — the original idea of the Law of Return was that anyone Jewish enough for the Nazis to have murdered, should be Jewish enough for Israel to let in. And it does have clauses that apply even to those who the rabbinate wouldn’t consider Jewish once there, administer a Jewish wedding for, etc., which is a separate determination. In recent years, alas, the rabbinate has taken an increasingly severe line about who exactly is Jewish enough for them.
I am in a similar situation. I think basically the answer is you have to do some work to convert, but no substantial ongoing work is required. I would ask your local reform synagogue; I'm sure they've dealt with similar situations before.
We just took this class (https://www.centralsynagogue.org/engage/exploring_judaism), which is basically designed to convert non-Jewish spouses to Judaism. It was pretty long; I imagine lighter options are available? I haven't really checked though.
Is there a meta physical belief driving the conversion desire?
As a mostly-cultural Jew myself, I would strongly advise against your girlfriend doing this. There is no point in converting =religiously= to Judaism unless you intend to practice the Jewish religion. (Of whatever brand conducts your conversion; Orthodox don't recognize non-Orthodox conversions.) One may culturally affiliate with Judaism without being by religious standards a Jew. And the conversion would mean a formal disaffiliation with whatever one was before, which is a mighty serious step to take.
I appreciate your comment. Before I posted mine I had a much longer version which wouldn't post last night. As someone who had agreed to convert to Judaism "for" my then-boyfriend, but then we broke up, it unexpectedly started me on a path of religious grappling, where I began to question previously unexamined aspects of divinity, faith, God, tradition and everything else. I don't know much about Scott's girlfriend but there are a lot of ways to get to be an adult without ever having thought seriously about what it means to be religious or have or practice a religion, or have started out in something without learning much about it except political takes one disagrees with. My read of his comment was, he was putting the situation out there because they are at the beginning of thinking about it, and there may be a somewhat standard rejection of "God" in play, so going at it from the "God" side won't happen. But starting a learning process from the cultural side might, and can lead to the "God" side. If she starts a learning and participation process, it could end up a variety of ways, including with a faith-based "conversion" experience and intent to practice the religion. My mental model of religion is somewhat like an attractor, people can get gathered in. You are right, it's a big step to leave whatever you were before. When people couple up across religious differences, it automatically (unintentionally) makes people look a little harder about what it means to be on the team they're on as opposed to any other team. Some people don't want a partner of the same faith, that can be subtle. But I admire Scott and all the commenters for bringing it up and discussing it in "good faith." It's an important conversation. I've seen interfaith couples become miserable about various aspects and that's to be avoided, I think. I think neither partner knows where it's going when they first bring it up, there's the destination you think you have and then (not unusual for matters of faith or mystery) there is where that actually ends up. My relationship, we were terrible for each other and it's much better we didn't marry. But I still think about the religious angle and recently decided to start learning more about Judaism in religious terms (decades later). I encourage Scott and his girlfriend to let themselves have a process (and if they would, give us an update in six months)! Just my take on it.
There's a fantastic book I have not been able to find again (1998), autobiographical sketches of interfaith couples, many combinations of traditions, many different experiences, had one by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala I think, if anyone knows that book, please post.
Currently looking for my first real entry level IT job (preferably remote) after my knee exploded during work training. Any pro tips?
This is good advice and something I have tried in the past. However, I have no security clearance or money to pay for the process of getting a security clearance at present, which is limiting this as an option at present.
What sort of IT? I've got a lot of experience in hiring remotely etc and happy to help how I can.
Well, I have a CS bachelors degree but no real coding experience, as well as three associates degrees in networking, information systems, and computer support, but only a year of industry experience in random temp jobs. So I am flexible but not strong in anything in particular. My current job is very customer facing in a sense, so answering phones would be fine, but something in networking or in house support would be ideal. Thank you very much for the help in advance.
I should have led with that: what type of position are you looking for and what are your salary expectations etc? Any particular industry?
40-60k would be terrific. And I am unsure. I don't even have a good feel for the topology of the industry to be honest.
Well, you'll need to do that first: pick a type of job you want to do and think you're well suited for.
I don't know how to do that. I can define a range but I lack both a specific understanding of the industry and a specific narrow interest. What I'd prefer to be is a Linux sysadmin but I don't think I have enough experience for that right now.
You could try going for high level customer support. By that I don't mean answering the phones, but receiving bug reports, debugging them, and providing patches to customers.
In my experience most programmers hate the customer facing side of that, so you can do well for yourself if you take that role and free the team up to do other things.
Are you going for IT because you don't like coding, or just because you don't think you have the experience for it? Because you can probably get hired as a software developer with just a CS degree and whatever coding experience you got from college.
Lack of experience mostly. Though there are certainly types of coding I am not fond of. I will look into it, thank you.
+1 to this. I started at Google straight out of college and they (as well as all the other FAANG's) still hire a ton of new grads. The pay is much better than you'd expect in IT and as long as you find some kinds of coding interesting there is probably a place for you.
If you're curious if you'd pass the interviews, I can give you a practice interview. I've given 80 interviews, historically mostly for new grad positions, so I can probably tell you around what your odds are Google at least.
Can't hurt I suppose. My discord handle is Ruby Gogh#3876 if you want to hit me up there.
Hi Dan, horning in here because my son is graduating in less than a year with a CS degree and I have no idea how to properly encourage him to do what is prudent/efficient. Any chance we could chat on Discord as well?
Check postings at your local universities. Especially if you have any kind of in. Get an in if you can. Universities value degrees and are often hiring IT personnel.
For an artistic project related to engineering ethics and the tribal values of engineers, I am interested in writings which are:
0. easily publicly accessible
1. of literary merit
2. either (a) postmortems of significant engineering failures or (b) statements of engineering values, or both.
Feynman's minority report on the Challenger disaster, with its ringing conclusion that "Nature cannot be fooled," is to me a classic example of both 2a and 2b. What other texts are good examples of these?
You might look into literature (as in actual literature) written by engineers or scientists. It bleeds through a lot in my experience.
Any specific recommendations of that kind of literature?
In this vein, Leveson and Turner's "An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents" might be worth checking out. It's available free from Stanford's website:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs240/old/sp2014/readings/therac-25.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjRp5L17d3xAhUDRTABHdM_ADAQFjAAegQIAxAC&usg=AOvVaw3ThXt5sAnljLPJ4xYaaiVF&cshid=1626104294987
Perhaps Dan Luu:
https://danluu.com/postmortem-lessons/
https://github.com/danluu/post-mortems
Nice sourcebook, thanks (and the substance jibes with my own experiences).
The middle section of Slide Rule, the autobiography of Nevil Shute. It recounts his experiences designing and building the airship R100, alongside the competing team who built the ill-fated R101. It's somewhat polemic regarding the public-sector-built R101 vs the R100, which was contracted to Armstrong-Vickers.
Neat, thanks!
In the same vein, Shute's *Trustee from the Toolroom* stars a humble hobbyist machinist ("model engineer") who accidentally stumbles into situations where his practical problem-solving shows its worth. It's one of my favourites. Some supernatural weirdness too, but *No Highway* has related themes. And then *Ruined City* is about the moral side of being a good engineering businessman and makes me tear up every time.
Kipling has "The Bridge Builders" in prose and "The Sons of Martha" in verse, also possibly "Hymn of Breaking Strain". "Sons of Martha" was later adopted for the Canadian graduation ceremony for professional engineers, as a poetic codification of the ethical standards of the profession.
"Sons of Martha" and "Hymn of Breaking Strain" were definitely in my plans already, but I haven't read "The Bridge Builders," so thanks very much for that pointer!
Having participated in the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer, read all the related materials and be weirded out/captivated. Professional engineers have a subtly different cultural role here than in the rest of the Anglosphere.
"To Engineer is Human: the role of failure in successful design" by Henry Petroski.
_Cryptonomicon_ by Neal Stephenson
Also, less directly: _Anathem_ by Neal Stephenson
Have you read any Henry Petroski? "The Pencil" and "To Engineer is Human" come to mind.
Doesn't fit criterion 1 as well, but the NTSB has a lot of good reports on significant engineering failures. For example, in their conclusion on the collapse of the FIU pedestrian bridge in Florida they deliver the incredible understated burn "To FIGG Bridge Engineers, Inc.: Train your staff on the proper use of Pc (the permanent net compressive force normal to the shear plane) when calculating nominal interface shear resistance."
Doesn't immediately read as ringing as Feynman, but then you realize that it essentially translates to "Your incompetence killed 6 people" passed through a
https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Documents/2019-HWY18MH009-BMG-abstract.pdf
*passed through a filter of precise engineering language. Curse you, lack of edit button.
In the opposite direction, ie more literary and less statement of engineering values / post-mortem, is "The Mighty Task Is Done" by Joseph Strauss, chief engineer of the Golden Gate bridge: http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=3006
'The Boiler codes are written in blood.' I suggest you look up the explosion of the Sultana. This was a steamboat on the Mississippi that was carrying home 2300 Union POWs after the end of the war. The boiler exploded killing about 1800 passengers and crew. This was the accident that led to the adoption of codes for steam boilers, and thus the quote.
I would recommend looking at the story of William LeMessurier and the Citicorp Center. I learned about it in an Ethics of Engineering course, and it always stood out to me as an example of somebody faced with a difficult choice making what in hindsight was clearly the correct decision.
There's a case study available here: https://www.theaiatrust.com/whitepapers/ethics/LeMessurier-Stands-Tall_A-Case-Study-in-Professional-Ethics.pdf
and a New Yorker article here: https://people.duke.edu/~hpgavin/cee421/citicorp1.htm
And him explaining the whole incident to the MIT engineering colloquium (look at about 35:45 to skip a lot of engineering discussion)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um-7IlAdAtg
There's a bit about him choosing between silence, suicide and speaking up that made me understand the kind of gut-wrenching horror he must have felt at understanding the mistake he had made.
This is probably not the act thing you want, but there's a podcast called 'Well there's your problem' that looks at engineering disasters, and tackles them from a hard-left/socialist material analysis of history type view.
I won't give it a ringing endorsement as the best thing ever or always correct or fair, but I don't think I've ever heard a socialist engineering perspective anywhere else, and it throws up angles of discussion and analysis and ideas that I haven't seen presented elsewhere.
This may not be "literary" enough but there is an extremely large+influential set of writings from the 50s primarily about nuclear weapons but also about war in general, the most famous of which is probably the Einstein-Russell Manifesto https://pugwash.org/1955/07/09/statement-manifesto/ . Lots more where that came from too and likely some book-length treatments, but I can't think of one offhand. Will edit if I think of one, I feel like I'm missing the obvious here.
The Navy has a database of After Action Reports that *should* be publicly accessible. (There were thousands of reports in it when I got out a decade ago; maybe a couple hundred were classified, most of those unnecessarily, so of course it's all hosted on the classified network. If you happen to have access, I guarantee you'll find a couple interesting engineering problems in it in half an hour. They'll be unclassified, too, though
Though of course getting permission to share unclassified information with people who could learn from it is practically impossible.
I used two of those reports as writing samples on job interviews for years. To be able to, I still had to call in a favor AND they made me black out a phone number, even though we had the same number on our ship's web site!
Don't forget Robert Heinlein! Most of his stories feature an engineer with a slide rule. I particularly enjoyed _The Door Into Summer_ where an engineer re-engineered his own failed state. Very dated, but a wonderful story.
I am writing a series in defense of the Law, in general, and Jewish law, in particular, against the critique from Paul and Buddhism. Here's the introduction https://whatiscalledthinking.substack.com/p/secularism-as-christian-psy-op
I enjoyed reading the post!
thanks!
Part 1 is here, paywalled (sry) https://whatiscalledthinking.substack.com/p/defending-the-law-part-1 and part 2 is here, free and open: https://whatiscalledthinking.substack.com/p/defending-the-law-part-2
I’m an Eastern Orthodox Christian and this is an interesting perspective, thanks for writing it
I appreciate it!
Even if secularism as it’s popularly imagined is derived from particularly Christian ideas - which as an semi-Orthoprax atheist Jew I would contest - it’s just as much a counterculture against Christianity as it is against Judaism. It takes some real conspiratorial thinking to call a countercultural idea a closely-held psyops campaign by the culture its countering.
This reminds very, very much of Jacob Neusner's *A Rabbi Talks with Jesus*, which is a phenomenal book for a Jewish perspective Jesus' words on the Law and Israel.
What is dieseach?
She's a cranky but well loved long-standing commenter.
I think she's also got the record for most non-permanent bans. She was once banned indefinitely but the commentariat complained enough to get her reinstated.
Where is the list of bans these days? How long did she get?
The ACX comment policy / register of bans is here, but it doesn't look like it's added this one: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/register-of-bans
The old register at SSC has since been taken down, but IIRC the 'indefinite' ban was the first one back in June 2016 and lasted 2 months.
Thanks, good to know.
Indulge my curiosity, people. How does one pronounce Dieseach? I gather this is some kind of Gaelic name? Celtic?
I believe it's pronounced something like the pair of English words "Day shock", though I may be wrong about that one.
Feels to phonetic. If I'm right that's Gaelic, it's probably pronounced like "Claire" or "Michelle" or something that just leaves you wondering whether the spelling isn't some sort of elaborate joke on the English speaking world.
"too phonetic."
It's "Deiseach". I always assumed it was pronounced 'desh-ock', but looking it up there is an Irish surname with a fada (accent) over the first 'e', and that would make the pronunciation 'day-shock'.
What is dieseach
Long time commenter on ACX and its predecessor blog.
Thank-you.
I am a graduate student in Mathematics. Some of my fellow math grad students are applying for Machine Learning or Data Science jobs this coming year. Although they have taken online courses in these areas and are reasonably conversant in them, they are finding it difficult to get jobs or internships because they're often out-competed by Computer science or statistics students, who inevitably have more experience than them in these areas. What are some things that these math grad students could do to further bolster their profiles?
What precludes “simply get more experience”?
I'm not sure if it applies here, but the "you must have experience to get experience" catch-22 is real in a lot of fields - obviously people beat it sometimes but it's not nothing to make the jump from internship/projects to real work.
Yeah the nice thing about this stuff is except for very large data sets & deep neural networks (which require expensive infrastructure) you can generally just pick a problem and bang your head against it in public without costing anything but your time
Get together a portfolio of projects. Get more experience in those areas specifically. The issue is probably that their knowledge is too theoretical compared to the CompSci and Stats folks. They're afraid they'll have to train you too much.
They're afraid that if they train you too much, you'll move somewhere else before they recoup their investment into you.
Also that you just might be untrainable. You might be a brilliant mathematician and absolutely awful at machine learning.
This. Also the projects will be a more visible sign of competence/expertise/interest and make you stick out than just having taken the classes (which most applicants will have done at this point).
I'm not at all qualified to answer this, but perhaps doing well in a few Kaggle contests would help? It's an easily distilled metric for the resume.
GitHub portfolio, contributions to open source projects?
There are very good online courses in ML (e.g. Andrew Ng on Coursera is a classic) - take them and really get into the practical coding exercises.
There are also good applied ML courses in many universities now, they can take that in their university.
Also, they can go interview in a few places, see what places are looking for, and when they get a reject ask for feedback.
Generally the answer to this is "lower your expectations". In most cases I've seen, such people are picky about jobs and salaries, and can easily pick up work if they drop their ask. Once they do, they tend to rattle up the chain pretty quick.
Finding "data adjacent" jobs also works. Pick something that matches your skill set in a big company, then ask for a transfer to the area you actually want.
Optimize your breakfast and write about it
https://www.ethanrosenthal.com/2020/08/25/optimal-peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwiches/
Thanks, sounds like you had a lot of fun!
Context: I work at a FAANG and my team is currently trying to hire an ML expert. A big hurdle for many folks is that we also want someone with good programming/computer science skills. I interview a lot of folks who seem competent at ML but don't pass our bar for coding.
To be precise, I think we generally do 2 interviews focused on ML and 2 interviews focused on generic programming (think leetcode/hacker-rank style questions). They are weighted evenly, and performing poorly on both programming interviews would consistently sink your odds.
I would highly recommend getting a grounding in computer science if you/they haven't already. In particular, I'd say do 2-3 programming focused CS classes and an algorithms course.
This advice assumes that y'all are already getting to the interview stage. I'm less familiar with the resume optimization part of the game, but listing more experience, including your CS coursework, and linking to some coding hobby projects are all good ideas.
It's also worth mentioning that cold applications have an absolutely atrocious response rate. I had to apply to 57 internships my senior year to get 2 interviews (I got an offer from both). Referrals are huuuuge in terms of getting to the interview stage.
Thanks! This is a rather complete answer to my question. What is a good way to get referrals for companies if you don't have a lot of friends working in tech? I suppose this could be a problem for a lot of non-CS people entering tech.
@How to get referrals if you don't have many friends in tech: I don't have personal experience here, so take my advice with a grain of salt. I got a traditional undergrad CS degree, and a few of my buddies graduated before me.
You might try to take courses with folks you know are going to enter tech soon, or do projects with them. I haven't had success personally in deliberately cultivating networking contacts, but I've had great success by making friends in nerdy hobbies. Ex. I was referred to my current job because I played DnD with two folks at the company and referred to my last job because my wife (who I met as a fellow CS mentor) worked there.
I more meant to gesture at the terrible response rate for cold entry level applications as a way to say, 'Do not lose hope, it is a crap shoot even for great applicants and the only solution is to apply to tons of things.' Once you have a few years of experience, things get better.
I'll also mention that the experience of referrals leading to recruiting more of the same type of folks has been cited as a problem with the practice. I'm sympathetic to this, but as someone who does interviews I note that referred folks tend to be higher quality than typical. So it's hard to ignore the info that a referral supplies.
Lastly, it's worth mentioning that you 'really' don't want to burn bridges with people. While a good referral may not secure you the job, a bad referral will almost certainly tank your chances. For example, when someone who went to the same college as me applies, I'll get an email asking for a referral if I know them. I've personally only given one anti-referral (to someone who was flagrantly unethical when I worked with them), but I have good reason to believe the anti-referral is why they didn't get offered the position.