Dolezal

Rachel Dolezal came to national attention in 2015 when people discovered that she was a White person living and identifying as a Black person. You can read more details in a recent New York Times article and interview.

I would question the standard liberal reaction to Rachel Dolezal–that is, that she’s a waste of space, mentally ill, and worthy of hatred. I am not playing devil’s advocate. Dolezal’s story has been of personal interest to me since I saw it in 2015, because I immediately recognized some of myself in it.

There were obviously many relevant differences between us, and many critiques of Dolezal seem justified. But it bothered me to see her receive so much hatred. Two years later, I’ve now had more time to think about it and sort out the issues.

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Origami: The failure files

Sometimes an origami model just doesn’t work out.  Here’s a collection of some of my failures.

failed flexible polyhedron
One thing I’m interested in doing is finding unusual polyhedra, and designing origami around them.  This here was meant to be Steffen’s polyhedron, which is a flexible and concave polyhedron.  “Flexible” means that it can be deformed even when each of the faces is rigid.  “Concave” means that some of its edges are bent inwards instead of outwards.  Cauchy’s Rigidity theorem states that convex polyhedra cannot be flexible, and Steffen’s polyhedron is an example of why it doesn’t also apply to concave polyhedra.

Anyway, this is tricky to design because I basically need to make a bunch of triangles of arbitrary sizes, and I need some way to attach them together.  At some point, I got the bright idea of making triangle edges rather than triangles.  And I didn’t even have to design my own edges, I just took the “Jade” units from Ekaterina Lukasheva, which are designed to be of arbitrary length.  I carefully cut the paper to size (which required a bunch of oddly dimensioned rectangles, like 10:17), and started putting pieces together.

But it turns out, the design was fundamentally flawed.  The geometry of the jade units doesn’t work out, and you just can’t put arbitrary triangles together with it.  Well, back to the drawing board.

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Clearer thinking about definitions

Do you believe that people waste too much time arguing over definitions?

I do too. But I also have a second problem: I’ve read some philosophy. And so, when I’m frustrated with pointless arguments over definitions, my frustration becomes compounded by the fact that nobody understands the thing that they’re arguing about, and the only way to solve the problem is by spending even more time arguing over useless stuff.

Case in point, in all the time you’ve ever spent arguing over definitions, have you ever once glanced at the relevant articles in either Wikipedia or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy? I’m guessing not, because I never thought to do such a thing myself for a long time.

So now that I’ve made everyone feel guilty, let’s talk about one of the things you’d learn from some basic research: intensional vs extensional definitions.

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Paper: Tops and Bottoms

cn: This post discusses m/m sex and genitals. I don’t joke about sex, so if you’re expecting sex jokes stop expecting that.

When I was reading that article about gay loneliness, I followed a reference to “A Longitudinal, Mixed Methods Study of Sexual Position Identity, Behavior, and Fantasies Among Young Sexual Minority Men” by Pachankis et al.

“Sexual position identity” refers to “top” or “bottom” or “versatile”. I would guess that most of my readers are already familiar with these terms, but I don’t want to be presumptive so I’ll just spell it out. The identity terms refer to sex positions in anal sex, with “top” being the insertive position, “bottom” being the receptive position, and “versatile” meaning no strong preference either way.

I will be upfront about my prejudices. These identity labels don’t make much sense to me. If people prefer one sex position over another that’s fine but an identity labels aren’t really useful unless they convey some information that a lot of people need to know. The only people who really need to know are sexual partners, or I suppose potential sexual partners. And we’re talking specifically anal sex, which contrary to stereotypes is not actually the most common sexual practice between men. So, sex position identity labels might make sense if you have a lot of sexual partners, but not otherwise. Given the prevalence of sex position identity labels, I strongly suspect that they are fulfilling some other function, like being a vehicle for stereotypes.

Yes, there are top and bottom stereotypes. Bottoms are supposed to be more submissive and feminine. I don’t understand it. [Read more…]

Breath of the Wild: A nihilistic view

cn: There are no spoilers in this article, and the discussion is purely about game mechanics.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild has received near universal praise from critics, with Metacritic listing it as one of the best video games of all time. This is an exciting time, as we anticipate the numerous clones that will try (and fail) to capture what makes this game so great.

Like most adventure games, BotW is essentially a power fantasy. What makes the game exciting is the acquisition of power, and the illusion that your power matters. For example, you find better weapons and equipment, which grants you the power to access further game content. If BotW is better than similar games, then it is probably because it maintains a greater illusion of power for a longer period of time.

And indeed, the illusion of power is precisely what most critics praise. BotW is a game that lets you do anything! You can climb anywhere, and paraglide down. You can experience the story in any order, or just skip straight to the final boss immediately, if you so choose.

But as critics praise the extent of power that the game grants you, they are ignoring the other essential characteristic of a power fantasy: the illusion that the power matters.
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Asexual, because reasons

This is a repost of an article I wrote in 2015, primarily for an ace audience.

I grew up in a family that never talked about sex or even really relationships and intimacy. Of course I was still surrounded by sex in media, my peers, etc, but I never got “the talk” or had any discussions about sex within my household. My therapist wanted me to consider if that could have influenced my disinterest in sex and lack of sexual attraction.

–Seen on AVEN

I don’t feel sexual attraction to people but I know my antidepressants repress my sex drive so I don’t know what I feel naturally and what’s been taken away from me if that makes sense.

–A question seen on Asexual Advice

In a world that continually erases Asian (male assigned) sexualities I was coerced into asexuality. It is something I have and will continue to struggle with. My asexuality is a site of racial trauma. I want that sadness, that loss, that anxiety to be a part of asexuality politics. I don’t want to be proud or affirmed […]

–Alok Vaid-Menon

There’s a common theme among people questioning whether they’re asexual. What if I’m really this way just because of _____? Replace the blank with “trauma”, “hormones”, “medication”, “my age”, “gender dysphoria”, “abuse”, “anxiety”, “repression”, or “upbringing”.
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Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem Explained

This is a followup to an earlier post where I talked about Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem. Here, I discuss the Second Incompleteness Theorem, and further implications.

Could you remind me what the theorem was?

The theorem states that a consistent formal system cannot prove its own consistency.

As previously discussed, there are a couple qualifiers. The formal system must include some amount of arithmetic, and must have a computable set of axioms.

What does consistency mean?

A system is consistent if it cannot prove any contradictions. A system is inconsistent if it can prove a contradiction.

Contradictions sound bad. Are they bad?

Yes. The Explosion Principle states that if you can prove a direct contradiction, then you can prove absolutely any statement.

Here’s how the Explosion Principle works. Suppose A and not-A are both provable. Now consider statement B. “(A implies B) or (not-A implies B)” is a tautology. Since both A and not-A, that means we can prove B. Following the same procedure we can also prove not-B.

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