antiterra

Maybe where I went wrong is that, even knowing you weren't using a more common meaning of monster, I still made some assumptions based on it, namely: monsters are (or seem) inhuman, irredeemable, undeserving of sympathy, and best removed from society. I also assumed that what made Nathan and Amanda monsters to you is their respective exploitation of others, aka "profiting off of bad behavior."

But, monster is a superlative: there isn't much worse you can be. If you are calling a plurality or majority of people 'the worst kind of human,' does the term not lose utility? Do you use it as a mere stand-in for 'bad person?'

That is why I asked: Is the person who stole someone else's lunch from the fridge at work (an unfathomable act, to me) a monster in the same way that any person in federal prison is?

This may seem less serious than I intend it to be. I do think stealing a colleague's lunch is a sign of severely compromised morality, but I wouldn't default to calling them a monster.

This ultimately matters to me, because I am concerned about the outcome. If we characterize people who do bad things as monsters or 'bad people,' it may follow that they be denied any sympathy, humane treatment in prisons or a path to rehabilitation. None of this is to diminish the harm to victims, whose concerns are a priority. As such, I would posit this is a significant reason that sexual assault in men's prisons is tolerated or accepted as serving justice. The larger and more absolute the category, the more people are subject to that outcome.

I also tend to be a bit hypervigilant about anticipated objections. This may appear as a lack of clarity of opinion when it is intended to be concession for the sake of discussion.

Talking to someone outside of the situation confronts the possible compromising of Nathan's objectivity, and dialog is a common way to process experiences.

I felt it as a break from the intensity and absurdity of the initial half, a lull in the rollercoaster. Then the film reduced Amanda's distance from the subject matter and we were off again.

(I do think the intensity of the first half is partly manufactured by a soundtrack that almost cartoonishly conveys 'unsettling' and 'eerie.' That's probably my main complaint about the film.)

You are responding to things I did not say.

I did not suggest anyone in the film had done a single shred of work towards redemption. Not one person in the film recognizes or admits doing anything wrong, which is a usual first step. Nathan never second-guesses his personal rationalization for making a documentary that financially benefits a subject against his own values. Successfully emerging with clean hands in the end does not fully resolve that.

I did not equate anyone in the film with the lived experience of a gang member. When talking about the categorization of people as good or bad or monster, examples where the dichotomy is extreme are relevant.

And yes, of course, Amanda not having our lived experience is part of why she blends into the film. That's no accident. We are shown her farm, horses and a picture perfect fireside setting. Nathan doesn't need to narrate that "Amanda is comfortable and rich with a farm in the Catskills and a pied-à-terre in Manhattan at one of those buildings where you regularly peek into the courtyard you aren't allowed to enter while you walk past" for the film to make that point.

Whether or not the average person has a different lived experience is still a different question from whether or not the average person is classified as a monster by your measure. And the lived experience of the average HN poster could be closer in relative terms of privilege to that of Nathan and Amanda than to that of the much less privileged, even in the so-called developed world.

I do not believe that the average person would agree with your classification of Nathan and Amanda as monsters. That doesn't invalidate your argument, but it does suggest very broad boundaries, and it becomes unclear what, if anything, prevents a plurality or majority of people being defined as a monster by your worldview. My question was about the utility of the binary classification if it ends up being that overarching.

It really sounds like you would consider most people to be monsters. That is, the vast majority of us participate in exploitation to some degree and rationalize that exploitation as necessary, acceptable, minimal or merely something we cannot change.

That's an arguable position, but the problem with it is that it lacks any kind of gradient. Is the person who stole someone else's lunch from the fridge at work (an unfathomable act, to me) a monster in the same way that any person in federal prison is?

The film is relevant: initially, Amanda felt like a proxy for us, the viewers, someone to point out the abnormality in what we have seen. But then, she showed her unwillingness to even confront the possibility the miniseries was exploitative. She displayed a voyeuristic enthusiasm for more information and involvement. She blended into the film at that point, no longer our proxy as unsullied observer. But, can we really not think of a time we reacted defensively instead of with considered reason? Can we not think of a time we dove into a lurid topic that was fully irrelevant to our lives?

There are a number of cases where people involved in monstrous gang violence appear to show genuine rehabilitation. They devote significant effort toward encouraging others to avoid the mistakes they made. Do they do that because they are no longer monsters, or do they do it because it's one of the few acceptable choices available to someone in their position? I'm not sure we can reliably know.

I don’t think an accusation of ‘apologia’ is justified here. If some particular cognitive process generates deception genuine to the deceiver, that does not make the deception acceptable.

There’s a story in the movie about a magician performing a trick, but where there is no trick. The magician really does the thing he appears to do. I think that’s more where GP’s question lies, i.e.: Is her unusual processing of the world an elaborate conscious construction, or is it automatic, and to what degree?

That isn’t a direct determination about her merit or culpability.

We had some iconic mass market paperbacks with >400k words. The 1990+ version of The Stand, and Cryptonomicon come to mind, though Gone With the Wind and Shogun probably sold more.

I routinely run into Claude Opus and Fable making basic mistakes like misunderstanding a simple negation, which would be on top of whatever reliability issues there are with a source. I think that means it is functionally very different.

While your assessment may be true, I don’t think the mere ratification of the amendment makes the argument. It’s much more complicated.

The passing of the 18th was done through a highly organized and motivated cross-party political bloc that would throw an election to punish anyone that did not align with the dry agenda. This stacked the representative government in their favor, even if it did not match actual sentiment in their state.

The repeal of the amendment however, was by vote and 73% of voters favored the repeal.

Wait, did you actually claim that most work at FAANGs doesn’t require an NDA and that was evidence to support your accusation?

No. Something genuine has been lost.

I used to be able to curate my feed and pay attention to people I knew. I could see the photo projects my friends were working on, hear about life updates from past acquaintances, or reach out if someone was having a rough time.

Now, all cohorts, from recent coworkers to childhood friends I made before the first web browser, routinely spew paragraphs of LLM slop to shill a career coaching podcast. It’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Social networks are only a small part of it. It’s email, mailing lists, billboards, sheets of paper stapled to utility poles, newspaper articles, dentist office phone lines, jigsaw puzzles, home furnishings, homework assigned to grade schoolers, birthday cards and on and on.

Absolutely, I had that in my draft but chopped it out along with a digression into black body radiation.

This is conflating two kinds of pink. The pink made from combining ends of the spectrum is most commonly termed ‘hot pink.’

The other, very often just ‘pink,’ is predominantly a light red. A quick and sloppy way to describe this is a light grey with a raised red component.

Also, you can make hot pink without needing to use spectral violet (the ‘end’ of the spectrum) since there are combinations of blue and red that are ‘metameric,’ creating a perceptually matching response in our eyes.