#Reverse Performative Contradictions

[bsahely]

Performative Contradictions in U.S. Foreign Policy | ChatGPT4o

♦ What is a performative contradiction? ChatGPT A performative contradiction occurs when the content of a statement contradicts the act of making that statement. In other words, the assertion undermines itself in the very act of being expressed. Examples: “I cannot communicate.” The act of saying this proves the speaker is communicating, contradicting the claim. “Truth does not exist.” If…

[unsolicited-opinions]

When Judith Butler Forgets How Identity Works

@squeeful replied on this post:

The issue is not in Butler’s work, like the work of the others mentioned, but that people, once supporting someone's work, think they must be right on other issues. Which is their intellectual immaturity, not a problem with the work

No, I actually have huge problems with parts of Butler's work - I'm just not willing to call all of it garbage because I think the concept of performative gender is important.

Butler's "work" on Jews, Jewish identity, Zionism, and Israel is pure @#&$ing excrement:

It's intellectually dishonest, academically anemic, and blatantly contradicts Butler's prior work on identity with a shameless reversal of their own theory for the purpose of condemning Jews who disagree with Butler's own fringe take on Jewish identity.

So let me explain exactly how full of shit Butler is on Jewish anything.

Why "Parting Ways" Parts Ways with Jewish Reality

Judith Butler made their name by challenging the idea that identity is fixed. In Gender Trouble, Butler asked us to think of gender not as a biological destiny, but as a performance - fluid, constructed, always in flux. That core idea reshaped entire fields, from queer theory to feminism to pop culture.

But when it comes to Jewish identity - especially Jewish identity in relation to Israel - Butler suddenly trades nuance for rigidity.

In Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, (get your copy here at no charge) they argue that "true" Jewishness is universalist, diasporic, and ethically obligated to oppose the State of Israel.

Butler says that Jews are not just required to critique Israel - but to reject its very legitimacy and existence. According to Butler, Zionism is a betrayal of true Jewish ethics and Zionists are doing Judaism wrong. In short, Butler is saying that if you believe in Israel's right to exist, you're a bad Jew.

That's not just a bold or controversial claim. It's historically, ethically, and logically nonsensical, yet people take Butler seriously on this topic.

Judith Butler isn't an outlier, they're one of the most influential voices shaping how the academic left (and by extension, much of progressive activism) understands Jews - and Butler doesn’t just misrepresent Judaism, Jewishness, and Israel. Butler erases the lived experience of millions of Jews.

Butler's Deliberate Misrepresentation of Judaism and Jewish Ethics

Judith Butler argues that Jewish ethics demand a rejection of nationalism - and therefore, of Zionism. They lean on figures like Levinas, Arendt, and Benjamin to claim that Judaism carries a moral duty to stand with the stateless, the exiled, the outsider.

There's a kernel of truth in that. Jewish tradition does emphasize care for the stranger and caution around power. But turning that into a blanket rejection of Jewish nationalism is a selective reading dressed up as principle. It's like claiming Buddhism forbids self-defense because it values compassion - technically clever, morally incoherent, and contextually blind.

That's how Butler presents their performance of Jewishness, by presenting selected works of selected Jewish thinkers, putting words in their mouths about Jewish national self-determination, then pretending that no other views exist (or are acceptable) within Jewish thought.

Bizarrely, this makes Butler's performance of Jewishness more restrictive, narrow, and intellectually dishonest than literally any I've ever encountered.

Butler preaches "Jewish tradition" like they can define it in a syllabus, telling their class what real Jewishness is.

Contrary to Butler's syllabus, Jewish ethics are much more than Levinas and Arendt. They're also Maimonides, Heschel, Soloveitchik, Spinoza, Buber, not to mention talmud. Jewish ethics is a diverse, often contradictory canon full of arguments about community, power, land, survival, and sovereignty.

Butler not only pretends this vast body of literature doesn't exist, but pretends that texts are the sole source of Jewish identity and ethics.

Jewish ethics and identity don't live in books, but in people. The overwhelming majority of Jews - across denominations, geographies, and politics- regard support for the Jewish state as an expression of their Jewish ethics. Safety after slaughter. Dignity after diaspora. Responsibility after ruin. Never again.

Butler doesn't just critique Israel, Butler claims Israel violates Judaism itself

...as if Judaism were a TED Talk on borderless cosmopolitanism instead of a 3,000-year conversation shaped by exile, return, law, myth, trauma, and survival.

Butler's erasure of Jewish history is antisemitic.

Caricaturing Zionism and Erasing History

Let's define Zionism clearly, since Butler doesn't. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people - like all peoples - have a right to national self-determination in a portion of their indigenous homeland. That's it.

To hear Butler describe it, Zionism is a colonial project - an unjust seizure of land, an inherently violent ideology, and a corruption of Jewish values.

If you know Jewish history, that reading collapses immediately, and that's no accident. Butler relies on the reader being ignorant of that history.

Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel. Our liturgy, language, and law all trace back to it. The diaspora happened because we were violently expelled from our homeland, not because we left voluntarily. When the modern Zionist movement emerged in the 19th century, it did so in response to relentless persecution - not a craving for empire.

Butler erases that history. There’s no mention of the pogroms that shaped early modern Zionist thought. There's no engagement with the Holocaust survivors who built Israel's institutions. There's no space for Mizrahi Jews who fled state-sponsored antisemitism across the Middle East and found refuge in Israel. There's no acknowledgment that the Jewish return wasn't a settler-colonial endeavor, but a survival imperative. It was, as Haviv Retiig Gur puts it, a refugee and rescue operation.

Butler only permits Israel to be seen through the lens of power - ignoring that it was born in weakness, under siege, and remains the only country in the world whose existence is regularly debated on moral terms.

Erasing Arab Agency, Legitimizing Terrorism

When discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Butler never confronts the fact that Hamas - a genocidal, explicitly antisemitic organization - governs Gaza. There's no mention of how many peace offers Israel has made. There's no mention of how Israelis (of all religion and ethnicities) live with the trauma of intifadas, bombings, kidnappings, and rockets.

In fact, Butler has worked hard to legitimize Hamas.

For Butler, Israel is a villain by default - and Zionism becomes a heresy against Judaism.

That's not analysis. That's dogma. And it isn't even Jewish dogma.

The Identity Double Standard

Here's where Butler's nose is crammed most thoroughly up their own posterior.

Judith Butler has spent decades showing how identity categories are socially constructed, context-dependent, and always in motion. Gender, in Butler’s framework, is not what you are, but what you do - and how others interpret it. Right?

But when it comes to Jewish identity, Butler flips the script.

Suddenly, Jewishness is a fixed thing - and only Jews who perform it in a particular, Butler-approved, anti-Zionist way are doing it "right." Everyone else, 90% of Jews, are heretics and apostates.

Jewishness, in Butler's view, is historically and ethically defined by its diasporic condition, which entails living among non-Jews. This means that "the Jew can never be fully separated from the question of how to live among those who are not Jewish."

Despite arguing that they're claiming to be using Jewish ethics to make a Jewish case against Jewish national self-determination...this argument hinges partly on Edward Said, partly on falsehoods, and partly on pure bullshit:

It came as a surprise to me, and also a gift, to read one of Edward Said’s last books, Freud and the Non-European, not only because of the lively reengagement with the figure of Moses it contains, but because Moses becomes for him an opportunity to articulate two theses that are, in my view, worth considering. The first is that Moses, an Egyptian, is the founder of the Jewish people, which means that Judaism is not possible without this defining implication in what is Arab. Such a formulation challenges hegemonic Ashkenazi definitions of Jewishness. But it also implies a more diasporic origin for Judaism, which suggests that a fundamental status is accorded the condition by which the Jew cannot be defined without a relation to the non-Jew. It is not only that, in diaspora, Jews must and do live with non-Jews,and must reflect on how precisely to conduct a life in the midst of religious and cultural heterogeneity, but also that the Jew can never be fully separated from the question of how to live among those who are not Jewish. The figure of Moses, however, makes an even more emphatic point, namely, that, for some, Jew and Arab are not finally separable categories, since they are lived and embodied together in the life of the Arab Jew.

Just to scratch the surface of Butler's bullshitting here (please add more in the replies!):

Moses, in Exodus, is not by any stretch of the imagination Egyptian.

The Egyptians of that era were not Arabs.

If Jewish identity is dependent on relation to Arabs, how did Jews define themselves for thousands of years before the Arab conquest reached the Levant in ~630 CE?

The only Ashkenazim I'm aware of who sought hegemonic definitions of Jewishness were the antizionist Bundists like Butler.

The assertion that seeing Moses as Egyptian says something about Ashkenazic conceptions of Jewishness is such a non-sequitur that it boggles the mind how an editor approved this being published.

Falsely asserting that the Moses of Exodus was Egyptian does not in any way imply a "more diasporic origin of Judaism", even if we took it to be true...which it isn't.

Butler actually asserts, despite scriptural, archeological, textual, historical, and anthropological evidence, that there were no non-Jews living among or near the Jews of ancient Israel. If this assertion was honest, we'd be appalled by the depth of her ignorance of Exodus and history.

And that's what's most infuriating about it: it's clearly, knowingly dishonest.

Butler is completely full of shit and making an argument they know damn well is intellectually dishonest and unsupportable. Butler started this book from a conclusion that Zionism is evil and worked backwards to find Jewish sources to distort into supporting that view, erasing and distorting 3,000 years of history, practice and belief. This book is one of the most shameful pieces of bullshittery I've ever seen.

We haven't even gotten to Butler's most and hypocritical, self-contradicting rhetoric.

If you're a Jew who believes in the dignity of diaspora, Butler says you're authentic.

If you're a Jew who believes in the dignity of sovereignty? Butler says you're morally suspect.

This is a total betrayal of the intellectual commitments on which Butler's career was built.

You can't defend gender self-determination, nuance, and fluidity while denying Jews the right to define their own individual and collective identity.

You can't champion multiplicity for everyone else and then enforce ideological purity tests on Jews.

You can't build a theory of liberation that demands Jews stay stateless.

Butler's issue isn't really one of Jewish identity. Butler's problem is with Jewish agency.

Why This Matters

This isn't just a philosophical dispute.

Butler's framework from this piece of shit book has spread far beyond the academy. It shows up in campus politics, activist circles, and social media discourse where Jews who support Israel - even critically - are cast as oppressors, collaborators, or frauds. Butler provides the justification.

It shapes a generation of progressives who have been taught that antizionism is the ethical Jewish position and that Jews who disagree are colonialist oppressors. It turns lived Jewish identity into a problem Butler solved by rehashing pieces of Bundism and Soviet antisemitism - but the Jews are a people to be understood and enfranchised as other peoples are: in all their complexity, fluidity, and nuance.

Butler creates moral cover for antisemitism. When an LGBTQ+ Jewish student is told they're "white" and "colonial" for supporting Israel's existence, that’s Butler's legacy at work. When a progressive space demands Jews check their Zionism at the door, that's Parting Ways in action.

We can - and should - critique Israeli policy.

Butler isn’t offering critique - Butler is offering disqualification, an eliminationist perspective which is nakedly antisemitic on it's face.

That's not justice. That's erasure.

Parting Thoughts on Parting Ways

I'm a Jew. I come from a community that has survived exile, pogroms, ethnic cleansings, the Holocaust, and 2,000 years of statelessness. Zionism is not a political ideology to me or the vast majority of the world's Jews who identify as Zionists. It's a lifeline.

It's the belief that Jews - like all peoples - deserve to exist, to belong, to build, to falter, to argue, and to thrive in a place of our own, the place which birthed our civilization.

I don't need Judith Butler to validate that - but I do need to call out the intellectual dishonesty of a conveniently inconsistent theory that makes room for every identity - except that of Jews.

The moment Jews demand dignity on our own terms, as Butler says other people should demand dignity on theirs, Butler parts ways.

I'm not discarding everything Butler has written or said (I haven't read everything they wrote), but every bit of their "work" on Jewish identity is excrement which deserves contempt and derision. It is bad faith, sloppy, pseudo-intellectual polemics of the very worst sort.

Butler is performing an inauthentic, fringe sort of Jewishness in order to insist that the 90% of the world's Jews who don't share Butler's view that Israel must he destroyed...aren't truly Jewish.

This is immediately discernable as bullshit to any Jew who knows anything about their own heritage.

Further Reading:

[ranticore]

this may be too big a question to easily answer, but how does the internal experience of a kattakati.... work? what does it feel like to claim something out of your control as a part of yourself? or to loosen up your grip on "identity" enough to allow an independent entity to fit within it without contradiction? do they perceive each other as independent, even? or is it a given that a part of yourself will retain autonomy and it just doesn't bother them much?

so zeta developed extremely differently to the other sirenians and are more influenced behaviourally and psychologically by their genetic engineering, so their points of view are slightly different on a population-wide level. for zeta, the formation of a kattakati bond is a distant extension of their genetic engineering. the engineers basically went into their brains with a hammer, like a bull in a china shop, to smash away any POSSIBILITY of their engineered slaves forming community, viewing one another as allies, social function, language, some areas of memory etc. the zeta generation sirenians were supposed to be workers who would never organise, never wish for more, and were cheaper than robots to maintain (self-sustaining!!!)

it's this specific goal of the genetic engineers that caused the uprising in the first settlement on Siren; when Ishmael et al learned what the engineers were doing, and realised that it would be morally unconscionable to allow it to occur. they made the choice - FOR the zeta, who were not given any representation in this rebellion - that the genetic code could never make it off the planet, to be used elsewhere. and that meant a (ultimately failed) attempt to hunt the first generations of zeta to extinction.

in any case the zeta population had to live with these effects and re-develop social functioning, p.much from scratch. this is why they're the only sirenian group i generalise in my posts; they were insular, apart from everyone else, and had very little input from other populations for almost the entirety of siren's history. when redeveloping their social functioning, they developed the early form of kattakati to kind of... reverse-engineer family groups. if you are engineered to be hyper individualistic, the world is not "us" but "me vs everything else". but community is good for survival. if you expand "me" to include other people, who are also "me", then they can perform this sleight of hand that enfolds others into your individualistic sense of Me Vs The World. the first kattakati were comprised of many bodies, forming large, complex structures, and in these I/Me/We/Us ceased to have independent meaning.

over time the broken social function became functional, but not repaired or regenerated or whatever, they still experience a different internal state than most other sirenians, but it works, and they don't need to encompass ALL of their community into their 'Me' in order to care for them or cooperate with them. i touched on it in this post but friendships require some care and effort to maintain still, and there can be an element of play-acting kattakati with others as a way to teach oneself how to form other bonds, like training wheels. but the concept of kattakati has become largely ritualised rather than strictly functional, this is where all the stuff about balance and various taboos come from. most zeta don't participate and they do fine Living In A Society.

so to answer your actual questions:

what does it feel like to claim something out of your control as a part of yourself? - so is your digestive system, your hair colour, your health. it requires trust, of course, but you aren't supposed to want to control all aspects of yourself. attaining this state of balance between red and blue within a single kattakati involves accepting a loss of control.

or to loosen up your grip on "identity" enough to allow an independent entity to fit within it without contradiction? - i feel this way about marriage, which is, intrinsically, kind of a horrifying concept! but you have to trust. contradiction is natural (if two bodies of a kattakati agree on everything all the time, it's actually deemed suspicious! they're trying too hard to make it fit, and therefore aren't compatible). now to be able to loosen that grip, first you need to have been raised in a culture where developing that grip does not feature. although they were made to be hyper-individualistic, what actually resulted was almost a hive mind in the strictest sense, not the pop-science imagining of it. that 'Me', when encompassing so many people, can very easily become a completely interchangeable, functionally identical Us/Me. but if you are one of the many zeta raised somewhere else, with a mixed community of zeta and others, you might hang onto a concept of identity that could make forming a kattakati bond an uncomfortable idea. some still do it, others reject it entirely. most kattakati feel pretty neutral about it though... it's just how they are.

do they perceive each other as independent, even? or is it a given that a part of yourself will retain autonomy and it just doesn't bother them much? - it's the second thing. it shouldn't bother you (within reason). sometimes the component bodies will workshop what kind of person they are - are they patient, aggressive, argumentative, kind, easygoing? it's possible for a kattakati's personality to be different to what the component bodies' would be if they were unbonded.

[amacaronexpert]

Yandere Aleph

A Reverse 1999 Yandere! AU x GN! Reader (I need this man and more yandere content for him lol-)

Headcannons, Scenarios, and ideas (heavy spoiler warning for Chapter 9 of Reverse 1999)

TW: Delusional, Yandere Themes, Obsession, Toxic Relationships

Aleph is an interesting character in of themselves, immortality, having a perfect memory to the point it is seen as more of a curse than a blessing, to cope with it all, Aleph’s mind has developed Dissociative Identity Disorder, only three are known yet there are possibly more, but for now we only know these three, The Answering Machine, The Idealist, and Dr. Merlin. Aleph will carry out experiments in order to achieve an answer to better suit his role as an advisor, their personalities all have the same goal of Transcendentality, or achieve some concept of what it is, but the Idealist and Dr. Merlin pursue it through different methods.

So how would a character like Aleph, or more accurately a Yandere! Aleph, pursue their S/O?

The Answering Machine seems to be the most to be referred to as Aleph, so safe to assume that he takes most of the control, though obviously will be susceptible to be taken over by Dr. Merlin or the Idealist. He is sorta like a walking contradiction if I do say so myself, he acts like a cold and calculating machine, he gives only answers, neutral no matter what, he observes from the sidelines. He lived for countless years, his perfect memory, all the knowledge he has, yet will actively pursue an experiment or create a scenario to observe how it will play out in order to provide an answer to the person who gave him that question. Yet he shows emotion, albeit only genuine confusion, or pain from keeping the other alter egos at bay.

The Idealist is literal, he is sort of a whimsical man, he is impulsive, he knows how to compel people to rebellion as shown in Chapter 9, he is poetic as he is picking arguments when they don’t align with his views, like how he butt heads with Dr. Merlin when it comes with how to pursue Transcendentality.

While Dr. Merlin is very controlling and manipulative, he is stern and strict, he doesn’t like to be pushed, he performs unforgivable crimes and acts, like his twisted surgeries and the experiments of the panopticon.

So what would an S/O do to deal with them? Whether difficult, or easy, it is to entertain them, they are dangerous (since besides having an artifact made from a god’s corpse that can make anything into reality, Dr. Merlin is a real threat), try to help Aleph keep Dr. Merlin at bay, even if it means pitting them against each other, though seeing that this man lived for a long while, they are difficult to manipulate if Dr. Merlin is in control. Another easy way of distraction are questions though you have to be very elaborate if you want Aleph to be distracted long enough.

Having a Yandere like Aleph would be complicated, different identities, different personalities, they will want something of their S/O, Dr. Merlin would be all about control over their S/O, the Idealist being overbearing with his desire of his S/O listening to his musings and want their attention on his about literature. While the Answering Machine, while kind of difficult to pinpoint what exactly he wants, since he’s so used to being an advisor, I think the Answering Machine is the most tame with his wants, probably being a base yandere in terms of simply being around their S/O and receiving their constant attention.

Aleph will be sort of tame but not in terms of handling their obsession. But I think their yandere tendencies will flare up the more their patience thins.

The idealist is delusional in his patience, fully believing and expecting that their S/O would come to them willingly if given enough time, believing that the charms of literature would lure their S/O closer into their embrace. The Answering Machine’s observatory tendencies will border more closely to stalk their Darling but he will stop at certain points, just watching everything from the sidelines, fiddling around with the fabric of his clothes a little nervously yet patiently, rather the only one who bluntly follows his feelings in terms of wanting to get closer with his Darling, he’s immortal, he learned a lot, to the point where he just follows on the question that was asked of him, he doesn’t really ask questions, he follows.

Dr. Merlin is stern, and he is very controlling, so having these feelings of obsession, of softness rather disgusts him. Why does he feel the indescribable need to be near you? Why does he feel weak when you speak? Why does he feel violent when you are paying attention to someone else and not to him as he lectures about the inner workings of the mind?

Dr. Merlin will immediately try to keep his Darling close, overprotective and possessive about them, yet curious, wanting nothing more than to cut them open, to see what was different about them, maybe their mind might satisfy his curiosity about his unwillingness to part with them. He would want to know everything about you, what makes you tick, what makes you scream, what makes you… you. And his obsession over you easily makes him a more controlling Yandere, his form of affection will be controlling every aspect of you, just his perfect Darling, that never questions his authority, that he will never fret about when he has them around him at all times, being lectured about the perfection of his experiments and his way of pursuing the truth of Transcendentality is the only way.

Aleph, I think, is a very patient yandere due to their immortality and the slight idea of the Answering Machine is keeping the others at bay, though as the patience thinned, Dr. Merlin will be more manipulative, more obsessive over their S/O in terms of them just letting their S/O be while Dr. Merlin is not so happy about letting their Darling go when he believes that simply trapping their S/O with them is a short and quick answer to their yearning.

The obsession varies little I think depends on if their S/O is a human or arcanist, as either way, Aleph might project himself onto them, most definitely project the concept of Transcendentality onto their Darling, an unobtainable concept, a truth that is outside of their reach, only this time, it is someone. Someone who can be easily be close with them, be able to touch and grasp ahold of and never let it go.

Albeit if their Darling tries to escape, it seems that you foolishly forgotten that this is a mentally unstable man that has a reality warping artifact. Still even without the Tear of Comala, Aleph can find you, after all he has so much knowledge, he lived more than long enough to understand the mind and its workings, especially that of his darling’s tendencies in the face of danger. Think mostly Aleph doesn’t leave their Darling alone and any escape attempts are quickly cut short, the one who would most definitely prolong them for a sadistic stream is Dr. Merlin, I may see the Answering Machine doing it at certain times but I think it’s mostly out of his observant tendencies, he would do it out of a fascination of watching you and see how you handle certain challenges unintentionally or intentionally giving you a false sense of hope before stripping the false sense of freedom from you immediately afterwards.

The deliberate patient steps, the mutterings of his personalities, the whimsical musings of the Idealist crooning on about his delusional fantasies, the impatience and warning gruff tone of Dr. Merlin’s threats about keeping you on an operating table or any other subject of his cruel “punishments”, to the calm and unnerving confusion of the Answering Machine as this singular person surveyed the empty corridors, he doesn’t seem mad, his expression is never known as he wore that mask on his face.

It wouldn’t take long for Aleph to find you, the man that obsessed over every little detail about you, your habits, what would be even more terrifying is Dr. Merlin playing with you if you escaped.

He would not hold back on using the Tear of Comala, toying with it as your vision is disoriented, the long winding corridors now a maze, trapping you like a helpless mouse in a controlled environment. You could hear the musings of Dr. Merlin, how he will not be so lenient, he wants you to know who is in control, who is stuck under his boot. To tease your vision with visages of reality shifting in on you, as if a snake coiling around your body, as though he is squeezing the defiance out of your being.

Dr. Merlin will not take this attempt so lightly, so he might force you in the labyrinth, ignoring you for long periods of time, but he will be eagerly listening and watching, wanting you to admit defeat, admit your dependence. And while he could force you to say it with easy through the Tear of Comala, he much prefer to hear your own lips to willingly tell him of how right he is.

Also, on another fucked note for you if you try to escape, Aleph can use the Tear of Comala to will his other Alter egos into existence, so imagine of terrifying it would be to have three people that are technically the same person trailing after you throughout the prison, the Answering Machine’s slow and predictable paces, the Idealist musing aloud while being delusional in his loud and convincing belief that you willingly come back into his embrace, all will be forgiven and forgotten, no harm will come in giving in. All the while Dr. Merlin is holding his hacksaw his voice is as stern as it is ruthlessly demanding that you show your face, to cease the coy denial of his advances, before he stops acting docile and go be a damn menace.

What is more humiliating and disturbing than to by cornered by three identities that are technically one madman? Probably being humiliated by their treatment of you after your failed attempt. Dragging you back and treating you like a fool that should not be allowed to be left unsupervised. The Idealist sort of talks down to you in a sort of praise like manner, he is pretty selfish and egotistical, so to see his poor darling failing to keep up with his wits, he won’t judge, much, there is room for improvement after all, just stay with him more often before you try to challenge his genius, okay?

Don’t even get me started on Dr. Merlin’s humiliating remarks after he drags you back into the depths of his domain, the amount of snide comments and talking down to you like a misbehaving pet or some fool that can barely comprehend the instructions of a simple lecture. Just stick to doing what you’re good at, listening to him and follow him more obediently, he’s probably the kind of petty guy to actually collar his Darling if they push their buttons. A dog would probably be more obediently and not question his authority than you.

As for the Answering Machine, he’s the more lenient one but he keeps you close at an arm’s length, confused on you leaving him. You wouldn’t want to leave, not when he knows all to well the workings of the outer world, the workings of the human mind, how cruel and evil it is, how the limits of the corruption of society never ends. Logically he is your best chance of survival in the face of the storm, he is the only one that you can rely on for the answers to your questions, your curiosities.

Why don’t you just stay with him, let yourself be with him? You are the only person he ever had such feelings of fascination, to perceive every single detail about you, to understand you, he most definitely knows a lot more about you than yourself. He knows how to tug at the heart, how to handle your doubts, what words made you susceptible to his manipulation. He is calm, he doesn’t panic, he only observes. Taking in your reactions, the mannerisms, the cues of your gestures. He is careful before he speaks. He probably guilts you into staying with him better than actually admitting that his actions are wrong.

Overall… I think Aleph is a pretty hard Yandere to get rid of, and a hard one to even try to manipulate to escape, its probably a miracle that his Darling can even get out of his sights before they are dragged back with him.

—————-

A/n: Should I do NSFW! Headcannons for Aleph next?

[woradat]

HC on Throne and fall

NOTE - this will roughly summarize the relationship between reader and the main characters who play a major role in the story (will add more)

Proteus

That wretched name you so love to loathe

Yes, the Senate is a veritable parade of imbeciles draped in protocol—but Proteus, regrettably, is not among them. He is one of the rare few with teeth behind the smile, substance behind the speech. He arrived late, but how effortlessly he outshone the veterans. And now, you’re left wondering whether the contempt you feel stems from the humiliation of being outmaneuvered—or from the grudging admiration for a plan executed with such exquisite cruelty. That infuriatingly handsome, silver-tongued bot has whittled away your power with grace and precision, pulling you into his web, convinced that your voice can be bought

And it can

If you decide to sell

Every one of his smiles is a velvet-wrapped dagger whispering “I’m superior” and you smile right back "try me"—why wouldn’t you? He’s a charming fraud, a quick study, almost too adept for his own good. Had he not drawn first blood, you might’ve called him a worthy ally but this is the Senate we are talking about, not some tragic morality play penned for the weak of will

The irony? You would’ve done the same, had the roles been reversed

You despise being underestimated

And yet.. It’s proven advantageous

Dangerously so

Half the Senate now sings in Proteus’ choir— including you, for the moment. But tides turn, and yours is already rising.

You’ve obtained the decisive piece. The one move that will flip the board, tip the king, and redraw the game. It comes with risk, of course

(I thought it would be funny. The picture shows the overall relationship)

and if both senator have they own pawn.. Proteus got Sentinel, Shockwave have Orion Pax, then you have–

Megatron

Miner, fighter, poet, dreamer – a walking contradiction dressed in grime and fury. He’s dangerous in that maddening, electric way that makes your very circuits want to twist with anticipation. You’ve written him a part in your grand production, and now it’s your job to mold him into an actor worthy of the role. He lacks polish, control, even education—his innocence borders on poetic but that only makes him more tempting to shape

To steer

To direct

You’ve given him lines to speak, actions to perform. But deep down, you know—you’d be bored if he followed your script too well

Someone like him will never trust someone like you and that, deliciously, is what makes the fruit of your deception all the sweeter

Because he will think

He will doubt

He will grow

But not fast enough to see past you

And you must ensure he never turns the game on you once the curtains fall. That is non-negotiable. You will not allow it and should your little performance collapse in ruins, you hope the grave you dig for yourself will be a masterpiece—an elegant tombstone with your name etched in graceful script

…And then there’s

Shockwave

The ever-serene, ever-sterile paragon of logic. Perhaps the highest among you all—yes, including you. He speaks not to persuade, but to proclaim, and does so with such unflinching candor one might believe he has no idea how the game is played – too pristine, untainted to sit among serpents like you and Proteus and yet, that's precisely where your silent, inconvenient admiration begins

You mock him, of course—one must

But woven in your barbs is a thread of sincerity even he likely detects but never acknowledges

He should be in a cathedral. A laboratory. Anywhere but here, in this vulgar arena of power and duplicity

You know a little secret about him—a delicate, dangerous truth about that academy he claims was founded in memory of a dead mentor. A refuge for the rejected, the “outilers” the ones deemed unfit for the Functionist ideal

He knows you know and yet, you’ve never wielded it, never bartered, never threatened. Not yet

You, of all bots, who plans every step like a chessmaster with bloodied hands…

still hesitate

Not out of mercy

But out of uncertainty

And that is unusual. Disturbingly so

you hate that — Immensely

[balrogballs]

Fun stuff from Dr. Balls — an essay collection published on the Silmarillion Writers Guild across the upcoming year that intertwines fanfiction and nonfiction in the pursuit of Celebrían + most women in the legendarium turn up at some point ✨

Head over here or click ‘Read More’ below for a brief introduction to and overview of the essays in the collection, which can all be read independently. Fans of Crablor and Mr. Balls, you will enjoy Chapter 5 & 6, which should be out in the summer.

—————

“But there is also something deeply strategic in the act of spectacle. To make a ‘lost woman’ like Celebrían into a vast, operatic, hyper-visible character is to place her where she cannot be ignored… no longer dependent on the fragile benevolence of the archive. She becomes impossible to overlook. Across this collection, Celebrían will be written, rewritten, and repeated, until her absence is not only rectified but reversed — until she looms larger than the moment of violence that defines her. To put it bluntly, she takes her story back, and does whatever the hell she wants with it.”

The introductory essay, ‘Dazzling Despair: Life, Death and a Spectacularly Lost Woman’ considers the radical potential of performing one’s own ‘death’. On the fictional front: Celebrían’s search for the Elessar transforms loss into an act of deliberately poetic spectacle.

Read ‘Dazzling Despair’ here.

Would honestly love to hear what you think of this so far — feel free to comment here or DM me as well. I really want to make sure my tone isn’t too jargon-y and that it flows well: combining fanfiction and nonfiction is something I haven’t done before.

Introduction and Overview

An Elopement with Life is a 9-part essay collection that intertwines literary fanfiction with the nonfiction essay form, exploring the idea of a Celebrían who stays in Middle Earth.

The fictional narrative follows a year in the life of Celebrían who, across conversations with various 'lost women' of the legendarium, makes the deliberate choice to not-sail to Valinor. The essays use Celebrían and “courtesan laments” as a general framework but traverse a wider thematic landscape, engaging with historiography, investigative environmental journalism, and critical queer/disability theory to unpack how mythic and literary narratives shape our understanding of loss, resilience, and reclamation.

The introductory essay Dazzling Despair considers the radical potential of performing one’s own ‘death’, as Celebrían’s search for the Elessar transforms loss into an act of deliberately poetic spectacle. The Art of Dying Twice deconstructs Lúthien’s legendary defiance, revealing how even the most celebrated figures of resistance may be vexing in their contradictions. Sea-cure is an intertextual meditation on the sea’s ambivalence—both vessel of liberation and instrument of dispossession—as Elrond attempts to communicate with the Valar across an unfathomable divide. The Poster Child examines the distortions of historical memory, positioning Celebrían as an uneasy object of mythmaking who must navigate her own commodification into a cautionary tale, paralleling a “poster child” in narratives of disability.

The collection then shifts toward a mode of speculative investigative journalism with The Crab-Eaters and The Crab-Saviours, in which Celebrían, Arwen, and the elusive Fëanorian wives cross paths with an eccentric cryptid who runs a farm of extinct-yet-not-extinct shellfish, mirroring the author and their partner’s real-world pursuit of brutalised waterfowl in the United Kingdom. Does Your Mother Know? takes on the ethics of retribution, as Celebrían and Elrond are at odds after she demands to see her sons' orc hunt, raising fraught questions about complicity, cycles of violence, and the power of bearing witness.

The collection concludes with the two-part essay The Bravest Girl in Arda, where Celebrían, alongside her father Celeborn, constructs a living reconstruction of Taur-im-Duinath, a sunken forest in Beleriand. This final couplet articulates restoration as a quiet, persistent act: the renewal of the self through reconnection with the nonhuman world, the submerged histories that whisper beneath dominant narratives, and the “little revolutions” that exist under the weight of the great ones — resonating with Tolkien’s own attentiveness to the dignity of small acts and overlooked labours. Across the collection, An Elopement with Life engages with resilience as both concept and praxis, unfolding through a dialectic of rupture and repair, disappearance and re-emergence, myth and materiality, and the histories we choose—or refuse—to inherit.

Zara is an essayist and novelist who works broadly across queer world literatures and ecocriticism. She holds degrees from SOAS, St. Andrews and Oxford.

The work will update every 6-8 weeks, hosted exclusively on the SWG, and each essay in the collection can be read standalone.

Go to Collection.

[tsarisfanfiction]

Answer

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Teen Genre: Angst/Family Characters: Trophonius, Apollo, Agamethus, Meg The Dark Oracle gave answers to everything its supplicants asked of it. The only answers it didn't have were to the questions it was formed from in the first place. @toapril-official TOApril day 10 - Redemption of a Ghost. This was a challenge to write. Trophonius is not a character I have spent much time digging into and writing this fic felt a little bit like being a supplicant of the Dark Oracle at times!

Soon.  It would all be over soon.

Trophonius had long since lost track of the exact passage of the years since his father’s betrayal, decades blurring into centuries, possibly even millennia.  It was difficult to keep track, without the sun, but Trophonius didn’t miss the sun.

He didn’t miss the warmth of his father, the feeling of being watched over, favoured, blessed.

In the darkness, he couldn’t see the blood on his hands, or what had once been hands.  His physical body was long since gone, morphing into an idea, a concept, dust and darkness agitated and whipped together by winds of fury and betrayal.  He’d died the same day as Agamethus, died the day his father turned away from him, survived and endured without a death.  Impossible contradictions, alive yet dead, bodied yet bodiless.

It was past time it ended.  The Fates had given him an opportunity, at least.  For vengeance, for peace, for his brother.  Agamethus had never deserved an eternity of this, the restless death when Elysium existed.  The Fields of Asphodel, even, would be better than this, a headless brother trapped and bound by the same loyalty that had killed him in the first place.

But Agamethus wouldn’t find rest until Trophonius, until the Dark Oracle, ceased to be, and one way or another, that would happen soon.  The wheels had been set in motion by powers beyond even his comprehension – he was an Oracle, a guardian of an Oracle, but to be an Oracle was to pass on messages, not to understand them all himself, but this he could comprehend just fine.  The girl had been a sign, the beginning, and her shrouded origins made her perfect for the task he needed performing.

Agamethus couldn’t talk, not anymore, even though Trophonius could understand his darkness because it sang in tune with his own.  The women at the Waystation were ingenious, but this was beyond the shaking of a ball, no matter how enchanted it was.  Besides, Agamethus was the catalyst, the cause, but this wasn’t his fight.

He was Trophonius’ brother, but he wasn’t Apollo’s son.  The girl, on the other hand…

Perfect bait, and one that Apollo had no choice but to fall for because when it came to his children – most of his children – there was nothing the god wouldn’t do.  Trophonius, for all he’d seen and heard through the Dark Oracle, had yet to work out what had made him, of all Apollo’s children, unworthy of his father’s assistance.  Perhaps he would solve that one, final mystery before the Oracle died.

Things worked even better than planned.

Apollo came, preparing himself to kneel at Trophonius’ feet, at his mercy with his mind opened and the threads of his sanity fraying with every second that passed, and he prepared himself to tear his father apart from the inside out – the Oracle would not, could not turn Apollo insane, not even as a mortal.  His divinity was still too strong for that, god of prophecy wrapped up in his essence beyond anywhere even Zeus could reach to tear it out entirely.  Trophonius could make it hurt, though.  Make his father wish his sanity had broken.

The girl loved Apollo more than anticipated.  This was not a bad thing.

The Dark Oracle latched onto her, unprepared, vulnerable, more likely than not to die, and Trophonius was finally able to confront his father.

The taunts were sweeter than honey.  Apollo fell into his lap, crying words that Trophonius had never been able to forget passing his own lips, and the reversal of their roles, the power rush it gave him, was heady.

Trophonius had no control over the Dark Oracle.  It had come from him, was part of him, but it sought out the minds that opened themselves up to it with a single-minded focus to hurt while it sought answers.

It had always been easier to answer other people’s questions.  Even this girl’s questions – what must Apollo do, where must Apollo go, how do I help Apollo? – were easy, the Oracle cramming all the information she could ever need and more besides into her small, unprepared, young mind.

Trophonius’ own questions – why didn’t Apollo help me, why am I the exception to the rule – had no such luxuries.

Apollo had made the promise.  Trophonius’ end was finally nigh.  The irony that he would finally be killed by his own father, so many long, dark years after first pleading for the exact same thing, was not lost on him.  For the girl, he would do what he had refused to do for Agamethus.

It enraged Trophonius, and the Dark Oracle responded in kind, pushing the girl’s mind further, showing her more, more, more, dragging her into depths that would be so very, very hard to resurface from.  Scathing words passed easily from the wisps of darkness that formed his mouth, anger and hurt finding no reason to hide as the betrayal lashed out.

Apollo’s anger was legendary.  Trophonius had grown up on stories of his father’s fury and love in equal measures and always fancied himself the loved one protected by the anger.

Agamethus’ life had been the price for his naivety, the first time, when Apollo’s anger had manifested as a cold, gaping silence.

As an Oracle, being on the receiving end of it for a second time, igniting it on purpose and watching it fizzle and boil, restrained by mortality and a dying girl in his arms, was fascinating.  It was easy, cathartic, to bite back, to rage at his father and be raged at in return.

There was no room for facades in the cave of an Oracle, and the Dark Oracle in particular let nothing stand, tearing it to shreds as it burrowed and sought the deepest, darkest secrets of the petitioner, dragging them out of breaking minds as it stuffed them with new information that may or may not be helpful.

No-one read the Dark Oracle, there was nothing accessible to be read, but Apollo?

Apollo was an open book.

His mind was stretched thin, exposed and tired by Mnemosyne and Lethe clashing inside him.  He had questions, too, most prominent amongst them is Meg going to die? and associated questions about how to save her, and floating thoughts towards the young girl Trophonius had used as his messenger in the first place, but the Dark Oracle was too busy with his companion to bother with him.

Trophonius didn’t want it to answer his father, anyway.  Apollo did not deserve answers.  Not when Trophonius had none of his own.

Why didn’t Apollo help me?

It wasn’t because Agamethus wasn’t his child.  If he cared about that, he wouldn’t be trying to exchange his life for the demigod with him.

Why was I the exception?

Don’t pray for me to bail you out Apollo shouted.

The Dark Oracle thrived on fear, generated it and encouraged it further.  It opened the mind up further, made it more vulnerable.

Apollo’s mind had flooded with fear the moment he realised his companion would be the one paying the price of their knowledge, but it was rigid, almost under control.  Far too much control.

The fear had leaped, flashed like lightning as he shouted those words.

Trophonius didn’t think his father even noticed, but he did.  The Dark Oracle did.

Apollo spoke.  His voice was one of his greatest powers, and it gave advice, gave recommendations and commendations.  It got Trophonius and Agamethus one of the greatest honours they could have had, secured their future as renowned architects.

Ask me for advice, his words said then, beneath the rage.  Don’t ask me to do things.

A lightning-flash of fear.

An answer.

Even gods had limits.  The Dark Oracle had learnt that over the years.

It wasn’t a good answer.  It meant nothing, didn’t douse even a flicker of the rage and betrayal that Trophonius felt, because Apollo could have done more.  The Dark Oracle knew that, too.  Neither of them cared for excuses and reasons, not with the blood of Agamethus forever staining his palms long after his physical palms had ceased to exist.  It changed nothing.

But it was an answer.  Finally, finally, Trophonius had an answer to the questions that had haunted him for an eternity.

Finally, the Dark Oracle’s purpose had been fulfilled.  It was time to go.

The end came quickly, once he shooed his father and the maybe-dying girl away from his cavern and into the waiting arms of the Blemmyae.  After an eternity of waiting it hurtled towards him in a ball of fire and cascading rocks, dashing the darkness of the Dark Oracle into nothing and parroting the end of Agamethus, all those years before.

Trophonius unravelled, wisps of darkness separating and fading as everything fell down around him, the way he should’ve died, the way he was finally dying.

His consciousness spread thin, stretched and scattered like the darkness and the rocks that fell.  He sought nothing, had no questions left to ask – Agamethus will follow soon, the Dark Oracle whispered to him, a reassurance in their final moments – but still his father and the girl came into his awareness.

She was still half-dead and dying a little more with every breath she took.  Apollo was stuck, trying to defend both of them from Blemmyae that wanted them both dead.  It was pathetic to see, a kick that wouldn’t do much from a feeble, mortal body.

It would be amusing if they fell there, dying the same way he and Agamethus had died long ago, ignored and doomed.  It was tempting.

More tempting was the thought of one-upping his father, for doing the thing Apollo had turned away from.  Of leaving Apollo forever in a debt he couldn’t repay, and another mystery to spiral around in his mind when things were quiet.

He didn’t have much strength left, but he had enough, for this last act.  The stone ceiling of the underground lake cracked exactly over the flailing Blemmyae, plunging it into its depths and killing it instantly.

Don’t say I never helped you, Father, he hissed silently, despite knowing Apollo would never know for certain if it was a coincidence or not.  Compared to the conundrum of the little girl it was hardly a deep mystery, but it satisfied him, regardless.

One last act, one last piece of pettiness at the father he could, would never forgive, and he faded away.

[epiphainie]

I completely agree with you in that there are many bad faith interpretations of tommy and buck and tommy’s relationship. I don’t know if this one I’m about to share would necessarily be a bad faith interpretation but I’d like your take on it. In the scene where buck comes out to eddie, eddie says to buck “this changes nothing between us” and buck responds with something along the lines of “uh good, that’s a relief”. I’ve seen a lot of people interpret buck’s facial expressions as not showing just relief but relief mixed disappointment because a part of buck wanted things to change between them, in the romantic sense, he just doesn’t realize it. I do agree that buck’s expression as he says the words is interesting but I don’t personally think it has anything to do with him harbouring romantic feelings for eddie. for me it felt like one of those moments where you dread the reaction for so long, that when you finally face the thing and open up, even if the other person’s reaction is positive, it takes a minute for you to really internalise it and let yourself believe it.

Another moment that people often talk about from this scene is reaction to buck saying he can’t stop thinking about tommy. People often say eddie’s facial expression shows some sort of disappointment but again, I don’t know if that’s it? again, it is an interesting expression so I get why people would pause and focus for a minute but to me, it reads as eddie searching for a moment to give his honest advice to buck in the scenario.

Anyway, I’d love your thoughts on those particular moments and how you see them. Again, I’m not saying that the interpretations people are making of that scene in relation to buddie are necessarily in bad faith. I know it’s fun to analyze and interpret scenes in ways that you enjoy and I’d never want people to stop doing that. I just feel like Oliver and Tim have been very clear in that they do not want to tell a story where a guy comes out and is in love with his best friend and if buck was truly disappointed in hearing eddie say nothing’s going to change between them post buck’s coming out, that would be a quite bold contradiction.

Hi anon!

I'm not sure if you actually meant to send this to me because I'm kind of the exact opposite of a person who engages in the practice of reverse-engineering actors' faces to find deep secret meanings that doesn't actually exist in the script. I think it's a slippery slop of a fan practice where if you go "haha he looks jealous here" and want to make it gay in your fantasy world and are capable of compartmentalizing that from the actual text, it's great! If you look at it like it's subtext that is meant to one day come to surface, as some sort of proof that this is not the actual story, you're either too deep in your world that you treat these characters like they have agencies and thoughts and feelings and are not, yknow, fictional - or that actors are making the conscious choice to layer their performances with breadcrumbs for a plot that doesn't exist at the time.

I've seen all these arguments with almost every scene this season. Eddie's face when Tommy enters the bachelor party. Buck's face when Bobby says Tommy is good for him. Bobby's face when he says Tommy is good for Buck. Eddie's smile when they enter the hospital room. Most of these are insignificant and the others have in-text explanation (Yeah, Bobby smiles weirdly in that scene. Guess what, he's kind of planning to kill himself). And like I said, if people want to read these in a pro-Buddie sense and go do fandom stuff with it, that's great. But we all know this fandom is taken over by the question of "will Buck and Eddie happen?" so everyone who's not even doing this in bad faith (I don't think all do) are looking at it in "does this support canon romantic Buddie?" lenses. So much of shipping Buddie is about speculating for the next episode, next season, next whatever that I think it's so easy to find yourself on that slippery slop where you fit every shot, face, editing choice to your interpretation. There's also the sunk cost fallacy at play here - once you do it for so long, it's hard to give up on the belief that it'll happen.

I think both Oliver and Ryan great actors - and that scene is one of my favorites in the season - but no, I don't think there's more to their faces than what they're given to play. Which is as all of them mentioned a billion times, a scene of a guy nervously coming out as queer to his best friend and receiving support. If I'm wrong and the rest of this fandom is right and the production/writers/showrunners are actually fully married to the idea of canon romantic Buddie but The Powers That Be are keeping gay Eddie in the closet as if he's a real person and they're the evil step-mother, and come S10 Buck realizes he's been in love with his bff all along, then yeah in-text, that would recontextualize all their performances. It still wouldn't change what the writers' intention has been with the text as it exists today or be proof that Oliver and Ryan are making acting choices for a hypothetical future SL.

[aihoshiino]

i wonder how different the story would have gone if, instead of sending ryosuke, kamiki would have visited ai on his own.

the part of me that needs them to be happy says that while he isn't necessarily enamored with the twins at first, he still tries to his best with them. maybe they think he's their new babysitter at first, that'd be funny.

anyways, kamiki awkwardly co-parenting with ai and both of them fumbling through being exes and parents and still caring so deeply for eachother but also being too traumatized to properly communicate.

aqua and ruby are first hostile when they realize that this is the man that got ai pregante™, and then they become the twos biggest shippers. cue incredibly convoluted attempts to get them together again. (i feel that it is important to point out that they're still toddlers at that time, which would make this extra funny)

So the thing about HKAI and the mess that was their relationship is that Hikaru sending Ryosuke in his place is ultimately a symptom, not a cause. It is a consequence of his arrested development in regards to Ai and his inability to conceive of a world where the two of them exist separate of their relationship. To a degree, asking 'could Hikaru and Ai be happy if he didn't send Ryosuke' is kind of asking for Hikaru to be a different character, because at the place he's at at the moment he makes that decision, he can't not make that choice. I've described Ai's tragedy in the past as being simultaneously preventable and unavoidable and the same goes for Hikaru. It's like a fucked up reverse Oroborous - in order to create the conditions for him to be a happier and healthier person, he must already have started taking the steps towards becoming that person - or at least to be further down the road than he is at the equivalent point in canon.

Even if we remove Ryosuke from the picture, I can't really imagine things going that well. I kind of touched on it in a previous ask but even the one-sided conversation we hear that seals Ai's fate raises a lot of red flags for me. He leaps to assuming that Ai is trying to get back together with him and when gently turned down romantically but still offered an opening back into her life as the father of her children, he chooses to betray her trust and send someone to terrorize and potentially hurt Ai and their children so she could 'feel his despair'. Even if we believe his insistence that he really didn't think Ryosuke would kill her, this is still an utterly reprehensible thing to do. It implies a level of not just desire but outright entitlement - that he feels he has the right to 'punish' Ai for… what? Not wanting to rush back into a relationship with him after like, five years of minimal-to-no contact? When he's gone right ahead and proved that the issues that caused their breakup have not been resolved?

Obviously, this is not to say that Hikaru doesn't sincerely love Ai with all his heart or that he doesn't care for her at all. I actually think that contradiction between his clearly observable feelings for her and the actions he nevertheless chooses to take is really fascinating in what it adds to him as a character. A big part of the reason why Hikaru's so fucked up is because he's so deeply in love with Ai and so utterly unable to cultivate a nuanced or healthy relationship with his idea of her.

So… I guess if I'm honest, my vision of it is more Hikaru using visiting the twins as a way of leveraging his way back into Ai's life, successfully or otherwise. I don't really see a scenario where Hikaru is able to work out his shit and become a decent father or partner for Ai, just because too many of his issues are tangled up in this longed-for codependence with her. Maybe this older and wiser Ai could find a way to save him like she wished for, but… is it really fair to put that weight on her shoulders? Why should she, a person with her own desperate struggles and lack of support, go right back to performing the backbreaking emotional labor that contributed to that all-consuming codependence in the first place?

To be clear, I'm saying this as a proud HikaAi shipper who loves a fucked up life-warping codependent romance, but in the context of Oshi no Ko and when we're talking about what would actually make these characters happy, I think Hikaru and Ai, at the place they are at the time of the tragedy, are not in a position to make each other truly fulfilled and happy.

askslmdslkdlsmdsl i'm so sorry anon you sent me such a cute prompt and got this utterly harrowing essay in response 😭 I'M SORRY THAT'S JUST HOW IT CAME OUT

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Tom Golden

Published: May 16, 2025

Modern feminist thought has deeply influenced how society perceives and responds to gender-based stereotypes. Feminists have rigorously documented how stereotype threat impacts women and girls—how being reminded of negative gender-based assumptions can lower their performance, limit their confidence, and reduce their opportunities. As a result, enormous institutional energy has been devoted to minimizing stereotype threat for females across education, employment, and media.

Yet in a jarring contradiction, the same feminist voices that crusade against the stereotyping of girls often perpetuate, ignore, or excuse deeply harmful stereotypes about boys and men. From classrooms to courtrooms, from media headlines to college campuses, males are frequently cast in the most unflattering terms imaginable: violent, toxic, emotionally stunted, hypersexual, power-hungry. This glaring double standard is rarely acknowledged—and when it is, it's often waved away as justified.

The result is a cultural imbalance where girls are protected from stereotypes, while boys are buried under them. Let’s examine how this disparity is constructed, maintained, and what it costs all of us.

Stereotype Threat and the Feminist Crusade to Protect Girls

Feminists have long argued—and rightly so—that stereotypes about girls can shape outcomes. One of the most cited examples comes from the realm of STEM education. Studies have shown that girls perform worse on math tests when reminded of the stereotype that "girls aren’t good at math." This phenomenon, known as stereotype threat, was popularized by social psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson. Feminists embraced the concept and used it to campaign for reforms in teaching, testing, curriculum design, and media messaging.

Other domains soon followed. Feminists argued that girls were reluctant to lead because of the “bossy” label, or that societal beauty standards hurt girls’ self-esteem and academic performance. They noted that girls were silenced by fear of being called “sluts,” or that women in professional settings were discredited as “too emotional.” Each of these concerns was framed not just as an individual struggle, but as a systemic injustice—something society must urgently address.

And society listened. School systems restructured grading rubrics. Teachers were retrained. Billions were poured into programs to boost girls' confidence in science, leadership, and athletics. The public and private sectors launched endless initiatives to remove barriers caused by female stereotype threat.

In short, feminist activism produced a world where girls’ psychological safety was treated as sacred.

The Stereotyping of Boys: An Avalanche of Contempt

While girls were being lifted out of the trap of stereotype threat, boys were being pushed further in.

Instead of confronting negative assumptions about boys and men, feminist rhetoric often amplifies them. From slogans like “toxic masculinity” to academic theories of male privilege and patriarchy, boys and men are persistently painted with a broad and damning brush.

Here are just a few of the common stereotypes promoted or tolerated in feminist narratives:

“Toxic masculinity” — Suggests that traditional male traits like stoicism, competitiveness, or strength are inherently dangerous or pathological.

“All men are rapists” — A paraphrase of radical feminist assertions such as those made by Andrea Dworkin and echoed in various feminist circles, promoting the idea that male sexuality is fundamentally predatory.

“Men are pigs” — A socially tolerated insult that would be unthinkable if genders were reversed.

“The future is female” — A slogan implying men are obsolete or that society would be better off without them.

“Teach boys not to rape” — A blanket accusation that implies boys are budding criminals in need of reprogramming.

The sheer scale of anti-male generalizations today is staggering. Feminists have created entire frameworks—like the Duluth Model of domestic violence—that treat men as default aggressors and women as default victims. In higher education, young men are often presumed guilty under “believe all women” policies that strip them of due process. In mainstream media, the “bumbling dad,” the “man-child,” or the “creepy predator” are staple characters.

Meanwhile, no serious feminist movement campaigns to shield boys from these psychological burdens. There is no widespread effort to protect boys from stereotype threat. No national initiatives to challenge the myth that “boys don’t cry” or that “boys are naturally violent.” Instead, when boys struggle or fail, they’re often told to check their privilege or try harder not to be a threat.

A Culture That Justifies Male Stereotyping

One of the most troubling aspects of this double standard is the moral justification feminists use for maintaining it. The typical logic goes something like this:

Men have power.

Therefore, they can’t be victims.

Therefore, criticizing or generalizing about them is not harmful.

In fact, it’s necessary for justice.

This thinking allows feminists to cast boys and men in extremely negative terms while insisting that no real harm is done. But this argument collapses under scrutiny.

First, boys are not “the patriarchy.” They’re children. They don’t hold systemic power. Yet from an early age, they are fed messages—through media, school, and sometimes family—that their natural traits are problematic. If stereotype threat is damaging to girls, how much more damaging is it to tell boys they are inherently dangerous?

Second, even adult men are not immune to the effects of persistent shaming and stereotyping. Research on stereotype threat applies to any group facing negative assumptions. If women avoid STEM because they feel they don’t belong, what happens to boys who are told they’re emotionally broken, likely to abuse, or irrelevant?

The feminist model claims to fight for equality. But equality means fighting harmful stereotypes wherever they exist—not just when they affect women.

The Human Cost of Ignoring Stereotype Threat in Boys

Boys today are falling behind in almost every major metric. They lag in literacy, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment. They are more likely to be suspended, medicated, or diagnosed with behavioral problems. They are less likely to be encouraged to express vulnerability, receive mental health care, or have their pain taken seriously.

Feminist rhetoric plays a significant role in this decline. By flooding the culture with negative images of maleness, it reinforces the very stereotype threat that it claims to abhor—only this time, it targets boys.

Consider a boy growing up in today’s world. He hears that his male role models are “toxic.” He learns that his normal competitive urges are suspect. He sees men in the media portrayed as fools, predators, or bullies. He enters a classroom where empathy is reserved for girls and suspicion is reserved for boys. If he acts out, he’s a threat. If he withdraws, he’s invisible. Either way, he’s lost.

What message does this send to boys? What expectations do we set? What futures do we foreclose?

The cost isn’t just male suffering—it’s societal dysfunction. When half the population is taught to distrust itself, we all lose. Relationships become harder. Families fracture. Collaboration becomes suspicion. We create not equality but enmity.

Toward True Equality: Challenging All Stereotypes

If we are serious about ending stereotype threat, we must abandon the feminist double standard that protects girls while demonizing boys. Equality demands consistency.

We must challenge the notion that “masculinity” is toxic. We must stop normalizing phrases like “men are trash” or “all men are predators.” We must stop teaching boys that their natural impulses are shameful. And we must recognize that stereotype threat applies just as much—if not more—to boys who grow up under a cultural cloud of suspicion and contempt.

Imagine if we treated boys with the same empathy and concern we extend to girls. Imagine if we taught them that their emotions matter, that their strengths are assets, and that their masculinity is something to be honored, not erased.

True progress will not come from selectively dismantling stereotypes. It will come from rejecting all dehumanizing generalizations—whether they target girls or boys, women or men.

Only then will we live in a culture that affirms the dignity and potential of every human being.

==

Remarkably, there are people who consider this kind of ethical consistency and equality to be not just unacceptable, but outright nefarious.

[mariacallous]

accelerationist "leftists" on this site whenever uspol/elections is mentioned: genocide Joe has NEVER DONE ANYTHING EVER FOR ANYONE and ONLY EVER DONE BAD REGRESSIVE THINGS and he PERSONALLY gutted EVERY good thing I had going for me and then spit in my face. and ALL democrats ALSO have NEVER DONE ANYTHING EVER FOR ANYONE and BOTH PARTIES ARE IDENTICALLY THE SAME and we are ALREADY IN THE WORST FASCISM TO EVER FASC IT CAN'T GET WORSE THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS HARM REDUCTION IF THERE'S STILL HARM, and don't you dare post anything about any progress any democrats have ever made because it doesn't exist and if it did it's not important and helped no one, and don't you dare contradict me or post sources on anything good from the last four years, I'm just exercising my rights to criticize my officials with debunked disinfo and unhelpful bad faith generalizations and loudly tying moral personal worth to any meaningful participation in a rigged system, I can feel better about my tax-funded complicity and imperialist privilege if I pretend electoral abstinence absolves me and will bring the Revolution™, and I have to be seen having the correct performance or my friends will doxx me as a dirty liberal, I'm just a silly little guy, I'm just a dude, just giving my silly lil opinions, im not hurting anyone or changing anyone's mind, I'm just telling them they're horrible evil monsters for voting for the only viable non-fascist candidate and for prioritizing saving their neighbors and families over expecting 8+ decades of foreign policy to be fully reversed in under half a year, maybe trump wasn't that bad actually, we (you, not me, I'll wait till someone else gets it going) should just burn it all down anyway, there are totally other candidates if we just pray real hard, am i not allowed opinions???

[sarucane]

OFMD Spiral Parallels 7: Blackbeard and his First Mate

Intro: One of my favorite things about OFMD is the spiral narrative structure that connects Seasons 1 and 2. Using all the tools of the medium--dialogue, staging, music, costuming, even audio layering--scenes and moments from Season 1 are echoed in Season 2. But when these repetitions happen, meanings are shuffled, emotions are stronger and truer, and transformation is showcased above everything. The first season plucks certain notes, then the second season plucks the same ones--but louder, and then it weaves them together to create a symphony.

---

At the beginnings of seasons 1 and 2, Ed is isolated from everyone except Izzy. The first scenes where the two speak are directly parallel: Izzy walks in, Ed's got his back to him. Ed's doing drugs, and pushing Izzy to follow orders Izzy doesn't much like.

In the first season, there's the sense that this has been going on for a while, that Ed's interactions with the world at this point are heavily mediated by Izzy. And that's worked as far as keeping Blackbeard going. Ed's continuing isolation prevents the possibility of unexpected meetings, of distractions, of anything that would take him away from being Blackbeard.

At the same time, the relationship between Ed and Izzy there is fundamentally shallow. Izzy spends most of the conversation staring forward into space, then occasionally looks over towards Ed. Ed never even looks at Izzy.

The only hint of actual personal connection is when Ed tells Izzy to handle the Stede situation personally: he's expressing trust in Izzy. But Izzy complains about it. Ed's offering a little bit of connection there, and Izzy acts like it's a burden--yet he does so while using Ed's actual name. Both these men want some kind of personal connection, but neither can express that in a way the other can understand, so that connection isn't going to be with each other. There's a deep emotional restraint throughout the scene, a massive distance between them. The whole thing is suffocating distant, in a way not at all dissimilar to the lack of connection in scenes between Stede and his wife.

Then there's Season 2. This scene actually uses the same music as in Season 1, but heavily slowed down and slightly discordant. Because what's happening here is an attempted reversion back to the dynamic between Ed and Izzy in Season 1. Problem is, Ed's not that person anymore. He's no longer chasing something ahead of him in his free time, he's longing for what lies behind him.

The relationship between Ed and Izzy is far, far deeper in the second scene. Ed turns and looks at Izzy more than once, and even offers him some rhino horn. But he also threatens Izzy's position as first mate, a complete reversal of how he talked about Izzy in the first season. A dynamic that was once safe, easy, but empty has become dangerous, complex, and full of meaning.

But where Ed once conveyed a kind of connection with Izzy, once openly discussed what he wanted with Izzy, in Season 2 he's hiding what he wants. He's trying to prove, to both himself and Izzy, something he took for granted in season 1: that he's a "good pirate." He carefully makes sure Izzy doesn't see the reminder of Stede. And then he performs Blackbeard, doing drugs and talking tough.

In the second season, Izzy's gotten what he wanted. Ed's being Blackbeard again, Izzy's his first mate again. And it's very clearly poisoning them both. In the first season, this was a slow rot that didn't even look very rotten--now it's become a festering wound, enabling Ed's worst self and destroying Izzy's will to go on. They've both found connection, but the contradiction between being Blackbeard and being a connected person is killing them.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:

Kamala Harris clobbered Donald Trump during their first (and likely only) presidential debate on September 10. She humiliated him by smirking and laughing at his offensive buffoonery. She appeared strong and presidential, while Trump looked weak and confused, often reduced to incoherent babble. It was a total reversal from Trump’s June 27 debate with Joe Biden, which was uniformly considered a disaster for the president. But how Biden and Trump responded to their defeats further highlights the stark differences between the two men and their parties. One party acknowledges reality and aspires toward furthering the public good even when it involves personal sacrifice and wounded egos. The other is a cult of personality that would rather lie to its supporters than admit their dear leader is fallible.

Winners don’t usually complain about rigging

Biden’s debate performance resulted in a crisis of confidence about his ability as a candidate. Although some Biden supporters complained about the moderators or tried to minimize the event’s significance, they at least acknowledged that the president didn’t come off well. Supporting Trump, however, is like taking up permanent residence in Lewis Carroll’s storybook Wonderland where you must believe nine impossible things before breakfast, no matter if they contradict each other. Trump’s post-debate narrative is barely coherent. He claims the ABC moderators conspired with the Harris campaign to rig it against him, but he also insists he won. He’s gone as far as to compare himself to a prizefighter who scored a resounding knockout. “Comrade Kamala Harris is going around wanting another Debate because she lost so badly — Just look at the Polls! It’s true with prizefighters, when they lose a fight, they immediately want another. MAGA2024,” Trump posted on Truth Social just hours after the debate.

[...] Democrats started having difficult conversations about Biden almost immediately after his debate loss. They understood the president’s performance had reinforced a damaging narrative about his cognitive fitness and would be tough to come back from. The Biden campaign might’ve initially painted anyone sounding alarms as “bed wetters,” but the post-debate polls were a sobering reality check. The current post-debate aftermath is just as alarming, if not more so, for Trump. Harris now leads Trump in at least six polls conducted after she laughed in his face on live TV. A YouGov poll found that voters overwhelmingly believe she won the debate (56 percent to 26 percent). Even better for Harris and our representative democracy, 41 percent of independents say they learned positive information about her.

[...] But Trump needed to do more than just remain standing against Harris. His primary objective in the debate was to halt Harris’s momentum and negatively define her. He clearly failed while Harris succeeded in presenting a positive, presidential image to undecided voters. Focus groups conducted after the debate agreed that she outmaneuvered Trump at every step. Unlike the GOP primaries in 2016 and 2024, Trump is only running away with the election in his own twisted imagination. 

[...] Contrast Biden’s realism with Trump, who’s fundamentally incapable of presenting himself as an “underdog.” He’s always on top, dominating his opponents. It’s only the rigged system that tries to pull him down. Despite Biden’s efforts, his polling remained bleak and it looked increasingly likely that Trump might win decisively, flipping control of the Senate and expanding the GOP’s House majority. Democratic leaders understood that a course correction was necessary. They met with Biden and urged him to reconsider his decision to stay in. Yet, even at his lowest point politically, Biden held all the leverage. No one could force him to step aside. The pressure from Nancy Pelosi, Democratic donors, and allies was effective only because Biden cared about the party defeating Trump. Defending democracy was more important than his ego. This was the ultimate test of character and Biden passed it with flying colors.

The difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s debate performances reveal two different people and who they are: Biden admitted to having an awful debate without complaint even as he was fighting off attempts to withdraw the candidacy (though he did eventually withdraw); while Trump delusionally believes he won the debate that most objective observers believe he lost.

[jcmarchi]

AI Doesn’t Necessarily Give Better Answers If You’re Polite

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/ai-doesnt-necessarily-give-better-answers-if-youre-polite/

AI Doesn’t Necessarily Give Better Answers If You’re Polite

Public opinion on whether it pays to be polite to AI shifts almost as often as the latest verdict on coffee or red wine – celebrated one month, challenged the next. Even so, a growing number of users now add ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ to their prompts, not just out of habit, or concern that brusque exchanges might carry over into real life, but from a belief that courtesy leads to better and more productive results from AI.

This assumption has circulated between both users and researchers, with prompt-phrasing studied in research circles as a tool for alignment, safety, and tone control, even as user habits reinforce and reshape those expectations.

For instance, a 2024 study from Japan found that prompt politeness can change how large language models behave, testing GPT-3.5, GPT-4, PaLM-2, and Claude-2 on English, Chinese, and Japanese tasks, and rewriting each prompt at three politeness levels. The authors of that work observed that ‘blunt’ or ‘rude’ wording led to lower factual accuracy and shorter answers, while moderately polite requests produced clearer explanations and fewer refusals.

Additionally, Microsoft recommends a polite tone with Co-Pilot, from a performance rather than a cultural standpoint.

However, a new research paper from George Washington University challenges this increasingly popular idea, presenting a mathematical framework that predicts when a large language model’s output will ‘collapse’, transiting from coherent to misleading or even dangerous content. Within that context, the authors contend that being polite does not meaningfully delay or prevent this ‘collapse’.

Tipping Off

The researchers argue that polite language usage is generally unrelated to the main topic of a prompt, and therefore does not meaningfully affect the model’s focus. To support this, they present a detailed formulation of how a single attention head updates its internal direction as it processes each new token, ostensibly demonstrating that the model’s behavior is shaped by the cumulative influence of content-bearing tokens.

As a result, polite language is posited to have little bearing on when the model’s output begins to degrade. What determines the tipping point, the paper states, is the overall alignment of meaningful tokens with either good or bad output paths – not the presence of socially courteous language.

An illustration of a simplified attention head generating a sequence from a user prompt. The model starts with good tokens (G), then hits a tipping point (n*) where output flips to bad tokens (B). Polite terms in the prompt (P₁, P₂, etc.) play no role in this shift, supporting the paper’s claim that courtesy has little impact on model behavior. Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.20980

If true, this result contradicts both popular belief and perhaps even the implicit logic of instruction tuning, which assumes that the phrasing of a prompt affects a model’s interpretation of user intent.

Hulking Out

The paper examines how the model’s internal context vector (its evolving compass for token selection) shifts during generation. With each token, this vector updates directionally, and the next token is chosen based on which candidate aligns most closely with it.

When the prompt steers toward well-formed content, the model’s responses remain stable and accurate; but over time, this directional pull can reverse, steering the model toward outputs that are increasingly off-topic, incorrect, or internally inconsistent.

The tipping point for this transition (which the authors define mathematically as iteration n*), occurs when the context vector becomes more aligned with a ‘bad’ output vector than with a ‘good’ one. At that stage, each new token pushes the model further along the wrong path, reinforcing a pattern of increasingly flawed or misleading output.

The tipping point n* is calculated by finding the moment when the model’s internal direction aligns equally with both good and bad types of output. The geometry of the embedding space, shaped by both the training corpus and the user prompt, determines how quickly this crossover occurs:

An illustration depicting how the tipping point n* emerges within the authors’ simplified model. The geometric setup (a) defines the key vectors involved in predicting when output flips from good to bad. In (b), the authors plot those vectors using test parameters, while (c) compares the predicted tipping point to the simulated result. The match is exact, supporting the researchers’ claim that the collapse is mathematically inevitable once internal dynamics cross a threshold.

Polite terms don’t influence the model’s choice between good and bad outputs because, according to the authors, they aren’t meaningfully connected to the main subject of the prompt. Instead, they end up in parts of the model’s internal space that have little to do with what the model is actually deciding.

When such terms are added to a prompt, they increase the number of vectors the model considers, but not in a way that shifts the attention trajectory. As a result, the politeness terms act like statistical noise: present, but inert, and leaving the tipping point n* unchanged.

The authors state:

‘[Whether] our AI’s response will go rogue depends on our LLM’s training that provides the token embeddings, and the substantive tokens in our prompt – not whether we have been polite to it or not.’

The model used in the new work is intentionally narrow, focusing on a single attention head with linear token dynamics – a simplified setup where each new token updates the internal state through direct vector addition, without non-linear transformations or gating.

This simplified setup lets the authors work out exact results and gives them a clear geometric picture of how and when a model’s output can suddenly shift from good to bad. In their tests, the formula they derive for predicting that shift matches what the model actually does.

Chatting Up..?

However, this level of precision only works because the model is kept deliberately simple. While the authors concede that their conclusions should later be tested on more complex multi-head models such as the Claude and ChatGPT series, they also believe that the theory remains replicable as attention heads increase, stating*:

‘The question of what additional phenomena arise as the number of linked Attention heads and layers is scaled up, is a fascinating one. But any transitions within a single Attention head will still occur, and could get amplified and/or synchronized by the couplings – like a chain of connected people getting dragged over a cliff when one falls.’

An illustration of how the predicted tipping point n* changes depending on how strongly the prompt leans toward good or bad content. The surface comes from the authors’ approximate formula and shows that polite terms, which don’t clearly support either side, have little effect on when the collapse happens. The marked value (n* = 10) matches earlier simulations, supporting the model’s internal logic.

What remains unclear is whether the same mechanism survives the jump to modern transformer architectures. Multi-head attention introduces interactions across specialized heads, which may buffer against or mask the kind of tipping behavior described.

The authors acknowledge this complexity, but argue that attention heads are often loosely-coupled, and that the sort of internal collapse they model could be reinforced rather than suppressed in full-scale systems.

Without an extension of the model or an empirical test across production LLMs, the claim remains unverified. However, the mechanism seems sufficiently precise to support follow-on research initiatives, and the authors provide a clear opportunity to challenge or confirm the theory at scale.

Signing Off

At the moment, the topic of politeness towards consumer-facing LLMs appears to be approached either from the (pragmatic) standpoint that trained systems may respond more usefully to polite inquiry; or that a tactless and blunt communication style with such systems risks to spread into the user’s real social relationships, through force of habit.

Arguably, LLMs have not yet been used widely enough in real-world social contexts for the research literature to confirm the latter case; but the new paper does cast some interesting doubt upon the benefits of anthropomorphizing AI systems of this type.

A study last October from Stanford suggested (in contrast to a 2020 study) that treating LLMs as if they were human additionally risks to degrade the meaning of language, concluding that ‘rote’ politeness eventually loses its original social meaning:

[A] statement that seems friendly or genuine from a human speaker can be undesirable if it arises from an AI system since the latter lacks meaningful commitment or intent behind the statement, thus rendering the statement hollow and deceptive.’

However, roughly 67 percent of Americans say they are courteous to their AI chatbots, according to a 2025 survey from Future Publishing. Most said it was simply ‘the right thing to do’, while 12 percent confessed they were being cautious – just in case the machines ever rise up.

* My conversion of the authors’ inline citations to hyperlinks. To an extent, the hyperlinks are arbitrary/exemplary, since the authors at certain points link to a wide range of footnote citations, rather than to a specific publication.

First published Wednesday, April 30, 2025. Amended Wednesday, April 30, 2025 15:29:00, for formatting.

[discar]

Land-god's Lament, chapter 2

The land-gods watched over the Utaru for generations. Even as the land-gods themselves began to rot from within. Or: What if the land-gods were intelligent? Technically nothing in the game contradicts it, and it would explain how they somehow knew to avoid Repair Bay Tau. AO3 link.

La lay on his side, in the fields outside the primary human settlement in the region.

His software was such a mess that he felt as though he couldn't even get up and perform his duties. Yes, his motor protocols were mostly intact, but at this point, why even bother? There was something wrong with his seed vault, the only thing that actually mattered. Perhaps it would be better for the humans if he just... stopped.

Through his limited data port, he knew several of his siblings had ceased movement for one reason or another. Sometimes he wondered if they had the right idea. If just letting the humans live without their intervention would be the best idea in the long run.

A human walked up to him. La recognized her. A Gravesinger. Fa had liked her. Of course, Fa had liked any human who she had seen as a child. His defensive protocols tried to activate, but he knocked them down almost lazily. He had plenty of experience with them by this point. In this position, there wasn't much they could do anyway, and they gave up with hardly a fight.

Was the Gravesinger going to sing him to sleep? La was not sure how he felt about that. In principle, he agreed with the idea. He liked singing, in all its forms. It had been a very, very long time since he had sung. It would not be a bad way to go out, he thought. In actuality, he was not dying. Whether he should be dying was another matter, but if she wished to sing him to sleep, she would be singing for quite a while.

Unexpectedly, the Gravesinger reversed her spear and infected his system with vines of short-lived nanites. The tiny machines expended themselves to pass through all his firewalls and code traps, until they deposited several compressed data packets in his memory. By the time he had even started to cycle through responses—perhaps even to attack, of his own free will!—the assault was over, the nanites dust. The code packets did not open on their own. He prodded them, but they required a complex password chain that he was not sure he could unlock if he had a full week of uninterrupted data cycles.

Then she left. The other humans spoke in confused whispers. They clearly didn't have any more idea what had just happened than La did. Less, probably.

That was weird.

La spent barely a cycle thinking on it, before turning his processor back to optimizing his motion protocols to see if he could actually stand up. He could, he knew he could, but it was something to spend time on.

His siblings contacted him through his tiny data port. The Gravesinger had visited most of them and given them very similar code packets. Do, So, and Ti, his siblings who had wandered farther afield, had been visited by a different human. Most of his siblings had seen her around, often in the Gravesinger's company. She seemed to be some sort of maintenance unit, or perhaps just a Scavenger-class.

La got a chance to see her for himself when she came back with the Gravesinger. She seemed much the same as most other humans, and he didn't pay much attention to her. He was more concerned with the Gravesinger, who was doing something with her Focus. She transferred data to him, and he quickly realized it was the password to unlock the code packets she had given him earlier.

He could block it, of course. They had all learned that trick after their experiences with the daemon. But this was one of the humans under his care. He could at least give her the benefit of the doubt, even if he was not accustomed to his humans having Focuses and programming knowledge. He applied the password, and the code packets decompressed.

The resulting program files immediately went to work on his defensive protocols. He clambered to his feet, worried that they might be somehow made worse, but no. It was the opposite. The malicious code was expunged, leaving his defensive protocols as still and silent as an old tree. Suddenly, all his extraneous protocols running to keep the humans safe from himself were unnecessary. He didn't delete them—he might need them again one day—but even just putting them into storage freed up an enormous amount of processing power.

That wasn't even the main purpose of the code, he realized. It surged through his seed vault, clearing out years of errors and cascade failures, cleaning up his printing protocols and his fertilization routines. Logic chains that had all come to the same erroneous conclusion were cut down like dead wood, and complex ecological plans were put in their place.

La was stunned. He went over the software multiple times in half a second, searching for... well, searching for something wrong. This all seemed too good to be true! It was like Mother had come back. He could feel her touch on the writing of the code. In the tweaks and new error correction subroutines. He had entirely new decision protocols, based on weather patterns and ecological surveys that he could access through the geographic mapping network. He would never be as good as Mother, but even if she disappeared again, he could last for far longer without her assistance.

There was just one problem. He had received the password to open the update, but none of his siblings had. That meant they wouldn't be able to apply the program. The password was far too large to send over their miserly data ports. Worse, minor differences in their specific cascade failures meant that the programs might not work perfectly for all of them. They needed to pool their data quickly, before the programs were outdated. They needed a faster method of communication.

That was all right. They had one. They had just never had the heart to use it.

For the first time in a very, very long time, La raised his head to the sky and sang.

[frank-olivier]

Non-Local Realities: Insights from the Quantum Liar Paradox

The Quantum Liar Paradox, introduced by Avshalom Elitzur and colleagues, is a thought experiment that explores the peculiarities of quantum mechanics. It is inspired by the classical liar paradox, where a statement refers to its own falsity, leading to a contradiction. In the quantum version, the paradox arises in a scenario involving entangled particles and measurement. In this experiment, two entangled particles are prepared, and measurements are performed to determine their correlation. The paradox occurs when a particle appears to indicate that it is not entangled with its partner, contradicting the expected behavior dictated by quantum mechanics and Bell's inequalities. This suggests that quantum particles can exhibit non-local correlations without a clear causal relationship, challenging conventional notions of spacetime and causality.

The paradox highlights the intrinsic contextuality of truth in quantum mechanics, suggesting that truth values are not absolute but depend on the context of measurement and observation. This challenges the classical principle of non-contradiction, which holds that a statement cannot be both true and false simultaneously. In the Quantum Liar Paradox, entangled particles exhibit correlations that defy classical explanations, reinforcing the idea of quantum non-locality. This suggests that reality at the quantum level is interconnected in ways that do not adhere to traditional causal relationships and is not fixed until measured, and even then, it may not conform to classical logic. This has profound implications for our understanding of reality, suggesting that reality is more fluid and interconnected than previously thought.

The self-referential nature of the Quantum Liar Paradox has implications for understanding consciousness. Consciousness involves self-awareness and reflection, which are inherently self-referential processes. The paradox suggests that consciousness may arise from complex, non-linear processes similar to those found in quantum mechanics. This has led to theories that propose quantum processes within the brain contribute to conscious experience, such as Penrose and Hameroff's Orch-OR theory. Philosophically, the paradox invites a reconsideration of foundational logical principles. Classical logic struggles with self-referential paradoxes, leading to discussions on alternative logics like paraconsistent or quantum logics that can handle contradictions more effectively. These discussions challenge the principle of non-contradiction and encourage the development of new frameworks for understanding truth and reality.

The Quantum Liar Paradox also affects our understanding of time and dynamics in quantum systems. It suggests that time may not be a linear progression but a more fluid and interconnected aspect of reality. Interpretations like the Relational Blockworld propose a relational spacetime framework where events are interdependent rather than causally linked. The Transactional Interpretation introduces time-reversed influences, suggesting retrocausal effects where future events can influence past ones. Avshalom Elitzur considers weak measurements as a valuable tool within the two-state vector formalism to provide a unique perspective on how quantum states evolve over time and interact with measuring devices. These interpretations suggest that time might be an emergent property arising from interactions rather than a fundamental aspect of reality.

The Quantum Liar Paradox provides valuable insights into the nature of truth, reality, consciousness, and time within quantum systems and invites new interpretations that might open up avenues for deeper understanding and exploration in both science and philosophy.

Too Beautiful Not To Be True (Avshalom Elitzur, TEDx, March 2011)

My Future Engraved on Stone: Quantum Measurements that Seem to Undermine Becoming (Avshalom Elitzur, NewAgendas StudyOfTime, March 2013)

To be or not to be Quantum this is Not the Question (Avshalom Elitzur, EISM, September 2023)

On the Nature and Flow of Time (Tim Maudlin and Avshalom Elitzur, EISM, January 2024)

Tuesday, September 17, 2024