path: root/microblog/_.md

# Runxi Yu's Microblog

This is my *microblog*, a place for me to jot down random thoughts that
I want to keep, but are too small enough to constitute a real
article/post. Reverse chronological order.

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Sometimes I just need to understand that most people have different
politics than I do, and that I'm not in this role to explain my politics
and beliefs to them. I think this is particularly prominent in
gender-related issues. I get really pissed without sufficient empathy
taking into account of the fact that it is fine to stick to social norms
as long as they don't try to actively disrupt others. Moving between
extremes has been normality to me for quite a while and I'm tired of it.


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我好像已经习惯了把自己很痛苦的想法捂在心里，即使想说应该说出来的时候也很麻木……？


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I would like to take a moment to reflect on how I’m somehow prejudiced
in the Israel–Hamas war.  
I grew up in an environment where I was taught about the acts of
terrorism by the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban, with terms
such as “muslim suicide-bombers”. Even when consciously understanding
the concept of religious freedom and personally being agnostic, I’ve,
arguably subconsciously, sided with Israel.  
I haven’t really noticed this, until realizing my lack of reaction and
internal dissent towards what was committed by Israel’s military. I
strongly disagreed with arguments that justify Israel’s actions based on
the Jewish experience in the Holocaust—the Holocaust was worse by three
scales of magnitude, but it is irrelevant and does not justify bombing
civilian targets. But there was something inside me that didn’t want to
criticize Israel. Perhaps it was just because Hamas performed the first
attack on October 7th? That, however, was based on stringent Israeli
occupation and blockades for half a century…


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Rain doesn't wash anything away, it just soaks me with the sky's ashes.


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我就会在那里  
等待着  
有人能救救我  
  
我会将我以为  
对我最重要的人  
拽入那个漩涡  
他们一一挣脱；  
远去  
我仍然倔强地伸出我的一只手  
试图引人注意  
乞讨  
展现自己  
所谓的  
无助  
渴望找到一个人  
与我一起  
沦  
陷 

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消逝殆尽  
心逐渐变得透明  
茉莉花散落在淡蓝色的玻璃上  
我祈祷着  
若许能快点结束 

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我的灵魂，  
出  
窍  
凭空蒸发消失。  
穿上刺猬的皮，  
吞掉河豚的肝。  
吞噬  
  
吞噬。  
  
浸润。  
  
自己用独角兽的肉体搭建出的城堡  
摧毁，让其分崩离析  
麻木不仁地破坏  
我才不会失去一切  
  
一滴滴血，多么具体  
  
全身皮肤析出点滴的脓  
点缀着我令人恶心的体毛  
我内心却依然是颗黑洞  
祂让自己枯竭，而又迭代  
毁灭所谓的理性  
才不会失去它，和  
  
一切。 

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In Thaler v. Perlmutter (2023), the Federal District Court for D.C.
ruled that "Underlying that adaptability, however, has been a consistent
understanding that human creativity is the sine qua non at the core of
copyrightability". 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) says that "Copyright protection
subsists \[...\] in original works \[...\] either directly or with the
aid of a machine or device".  
My question is outside of the scope of this lawsuit: do prompts to AI
count as a human using the "aid of a machine or device" to create a
creative work? Or, is the transformation from a simple textual prompt to
a graphical representation considered transformative under Campbell and
17 U.S.C. § 107, such that the AI is the creator of the secondary
graphical work, to the extent that it is not a derivative work of the
text prompt? Or would the prompt simply be considered an idea, which is
not copyrightable under Baker v. Selden?


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Should the federal government prevent overreach of *state* governments?


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Disclaimers and definitions: This post is written in the context of my
school and my group of friends therein. Please note that this post is a
pattern-based generalization, and is hopefully not consistently true.
Please also note that terms such as "female" and "male" below refer to
biological sex, as it is biological sex that this pattern applies to.
Due to the small sample of transgender students, and complete lack of
intersex students at our school, this conclusion may be unrepresentative
in a wider context. Additionally, "homosexual/homosocial" and
"heterosexual/heterosocial" when applied to myself are relative to my
male biological sex for the sake of this post. However, the essence is
likely the same.  
  
The implicit/instinctual patterns of social interaction in relation to
biological sex is uncomforting. It is common to see friends of the same
biological sex engage in intimate or intimate-like interactions but are
perceived as completely normal, such as written communications involving
Unicode code-points often associated with love e.g. the heart emoji
("❤️") and emojis related to kissing ("😘", "😚", "😗", "😙"), physical
display of affection which is likely platonic e.g. hugging and patting,
et cetera.  
  
I find it possible to engage in such behaviour with friends of the same
biological sex, but generally impossible with friends of another
biological sex. This disparity is uncomforting, and definitely violates
my postgenderist theory. In fact, should this cause tangible differences
in advantages or qualitative changes in relationship because of
differences in biological sex, this would satisfy all criteria to be
considered a unduly discriminatory act.  
  
Perhaps it's just people gossiping? Although I have multiple recorded
precedents across four years to demonstrate how gossip is likely to
arise in platonic heterosocial relationships, but I hardly come across
gossip even in obvious instances of homosexual affection. I don't want
to just throw it to vague social concepts and just blame the
heterosexual-normative social context; after all, fear of gossip is not
an effective mitigator for potential undue discrimination.  
  
Or perhaps, based on the same social context, intimate interactions
without explicit consent are more likely to be interpreted as sexual
assault, under 18 U.S.C. § 2242 and YKPS Behaviour Policy § 5.4.3?
(Technically any intimate interaction with any possibility of a sexual
interpretation must be under a contractually valid and informed mutual
consent, but it's hard to draw the line, and playing on the safe side
would mean asking "may I hug you \[for the purpose of …\] \[no later
than …\] \[no more than …\]", which seems rather ridiculous. And that
doesn't solve the question why there's a boundary when it comes to
biological sex.) This doesn't make sense for me either because I'm
pansexual, and there is nothing that makes an act of intimacy with a
biologically female person more sexual than that with a biologically
male person.  


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Shock  
  
Squeeze—  
For a drip of blood  
That bitter-sweet  
Drip of blood  
My heart's still an enigma  
Mysterious, nebulous  
—Galling.  
  
That shadow approached me,  
Interrogated me,  
Tortured my spirit,  
Yet spared my hollow body  
  
Squeeze—  
For a sour drip of  
Inflammed fester,  
I fought, but barely  
  
The apocalypse;  
Sepsis.  


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我觉得喜剧和现实之间常常有着太大的落差。在读喜剧的剧本的时候（我很少看
production），如果我能把自己的情绪陷进去，会形成一种很奇怪的感染性的
optimism；但是这种感觉在现实中会很
illusional。至少从我的那一部分理性考虑，相比于梦幻的乐观主义和…有希望的那种感觉，我更希望让自己理解现实，虽然
evidently 我不怎么会这样做。 On the other hand, tragedies do in general
have a fatalist element consistent with my view of my subjective
experience of reality. I don't think in terms of a reIigious deity, but
I like to see exaggerated mirrors of "natural events" and fate that
appear in life, rather than attempting to experience an imaginary world
that might be deceiving me. 

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Quite a significant part of the national sentiment here in China, is
that everything doing by the Japanese is somehow bad, somehow wrong.
They don't want to learn what tritium and carbon-14 is, they don't look
up what the relevant international standards are. They just assume that
we'll be making mutated radioactive robotic fish.  
Sorry, no.  
Problems such as biomagnification are indeed concerning, but it's just
counterproductive and unconducive to make claims that it'll poison
everyone and appeal to emotions. The world isn't going to implode.  
And oh well, what hipocrisy these historical claims are based on.


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Pybeerhaps what I hate or fear isn't the entity itself, but is rather my
relationship with that entity. My concept of that entity is integrated
into my "self", it's not distinctly an "other"...?


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it's being alive that makes them lie, and being almost not alive makes
me sort of accidentally truthful...  
—Brick, Act 3, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams


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Looking back, reading opinions, journal entries and poems I wrote a
while back, ranging from two years to a month ago. There's something
pinching and squeezing my heart. Candle smoke intoxicated my eyes, yet I
still could not blow them out. Tears create craters on my dusty face. I
need to have a rest, perhaps reflect on my experiences throughout the
years. There will not be any sort of "new beginning". History exists,
reality is not romantic, and the apparent me of the present is
responsible for the past. The most destructive kind of feeling is not
loneliness, not even guilt for other people. It's my guilt towards the
apparently innocent version of myself of the past.


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I think I still have some blind faith in science and logic, like, I know
some statements are not absolutely scientific as they're not repeatable
or falsifiable, but are still \*intuitively\* (aaaaaaa) undeniably true


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After all, moral theories are a approximations of the moral conscience.


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One part of me: "C'mon I don't want to have to demonstrate my existence
every time I talk to a conservative and why trans experiences exist"  
Another part of me: "You must, as far as politics is concerned, hear
full arguments of both like-minded and opponents, and exert no
censorship over their ideas whatsoever."  
Also, guilt towards myself is the most annoying feeling I have to date


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Uhhh things seem to boil down to [two concepts of
liberty](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/)
which then boil down to what we consider to be *internal* or *external*
to a particular being. 

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I love how "traditional family values" is the reason that justifies
antifeminism, patriarchy, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, and
everything in between. Also, I don't understand how it could be valid to
consider a cis person arguing for "trans experiences do not exist". It's
a personal experience that exists in some individuals. Not existing in
everyone, or one particular person independently chosen, does not mean
it doesn't exist. 

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I'm seriously considering the moral intuitionist argument of "if
anything's wrong, it's wrong for someone to do something that they
believe to be wrong". But this still leaves the questions around the
legitimacy of the criminal justice system to punish acts that may be not
"wrong" according to the previous statement but still harm society.
Sure, the agency of the criminal justice system (or actually the
legislature that creates it) may believe that deterring people from
doing socially harmful acts, is moral, but the use of force here still
bugs me. I like the argument that only one specific act performed by one
abent under specific conditions has moral content. Moral descriptions of
abstract classes of acts are systematically necessary, but they aren't
the same as moral content because there is no acting agent.


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Random thought: Any historical analysis, and interpretations of
evolution (in the biological sense, for why some organisms have their
current traits), are not science because conclusions reached therein are
not falsifiable 

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Hm, do you think advancements in the understanding of physics could
improve understanding on causality, determinism and free will?
("Interpretations" of physics is not my expertise and I'm a bit
skeptical, but I'll try to be careful not to get into mysticism…)
(Warning: disgusting) The common argument that collapsing superpositions
leads to inherent randomness and thus makes free will possible seems to
be misaligned with what people mean when discussing free will. I'll
explain my skepticism with an analogy: A scientist will do something
differently if they detect that a radioactive sample decays in five
seconds. The scientist's state and actions depend on random decay of the
sample, and I won't call this free will of the scientist. I don't think
there's something fundamentally different about the supposed (and really
interpretive and perhaps mystic) collapse of superpositions in the brain
causing things to go differently, and my example on radioactive decay.
No matter if they're inside or outside the body, truly random events are
still spontaneously random 

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Evaluate the claim that "the mere act of giving birth to a child
violates the child's consent by coercing the social contract upon them".
Actually, this is called
[Antinatalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism).


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The consciousness of AI, or the lack thereof, is irrelevant.


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The null hypothesis is haunted. It appears in almost any
reasoning/proof/etc. Typically, when discussing a policy, the null
hypothesis is the status quo; when evaluating a statement, the null
hypothesis is the current best understanding (which is often unclear),
or is simply a negation of the statement. Where does the burden of proof
fall? 

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I used to not really understand utilitarianism, the lack of a universal
standard bugged me. But that was Bentham. Mill's theory of
utilitarianism seems to be more acceptable to me, it seemed to look into
the future and cover how individual cases affect a decision entity, be
it personal or systematic, in the long term. Generally when applying
Millian utilitarianism, I obtain similar results to when I using
existing principles. This somewhat reaffirms my hypothesis that these
moral principles still arise from a utilitarian analysis of cost and
benefit in the long term.  
I wonder if we have a subconscious intuition to morality anyway, and
we're attempting to rationally derive theories that seem to cover the
underlying intuition. Is this, dare I say, motivated reasoning?


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(Rant) In any social movement, we're dealing with real, live
individuals. Individual people. Not some uniform social group as a
whole. Every single time. 

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Is freedom of speech absolute? Why do we traditionally see it as a
fundamental right? Is it really inalienable?  
I think a great portion of this lies upon the dangers to democracy when
censoring political speech. Is that a sufficient reason to accept
freedom of speech as a universal right, that protects e.g. hate speech
and inciting violence? 

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An illusion in a dream overpowers reality.


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Hypocrisy is bad. I know, but I'm still complicit in it.


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Continental liberalism and modern populist democracy eliminate the
ruling class external to the people being ruled, leading to
self-governance, preventing tyranny. However, the "people" who exercise
the power are not always the same people who are affected by the power.
The "will of the people", in practice, is the will of the most numerous
or active subset of the people. Democracy is, on these grounds, often
used as a utility for the tyranny of the majority.

A Quote from *On Liberty* by John Stuart Mill:

> The tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held
> in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public
> authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is
> itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals
> who compose it—its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts
> which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society
> can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates
> instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought
> not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many
> kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by
> such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating
> much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul
> itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate
> is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the
> prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to
> impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and
> practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to
> fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of
> any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all
> characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a
> limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with
> individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it
> against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human
> affairs, as protection against political despotism.



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I think my experience of gender dysphoria has became inconsistent in
what I actually think about gender. My belief, in theory, is that gender
should be eradicated (see "Postgenderism") altogether, as it's an
unnecessary construct that limits people, imposes cisnormativity, etc.  
I try to think along the terms of "gender doesn't matter, at all". But
my experience says otherwise: I found myself, perhaps "strangely", more
comfortable with she/her pronouns than with they/them. So when
interacting with people online, who don't know me IRL, I just declare
she/her pronouns and… well, it's a glaring inconsistency in my theory of
gender and society and INCONSISTENCIES BUG ME. I started feeling like a
hypocrite.  
If gender really doesn't matter to me, why do I have gender
dysphoria??.  
To make myself feel better perhaps I could explain it as "I wouldn't
feel gender dysphoria if society doesn't impose gender as a socially
significant construct altogether". And I can, only, hope so, as a
hypocrite.  


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I myself live in a string of characters, through emotionless computers,
running some old protocols. The me of appearance is dead.


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Democracy is the protection of negative freedom and civil liberties, not
the enforcement of general will. 

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Reading *雷雨* and thinking about *A Streetcar Named Desire* and *The
Glass Menagerie* There's a commonality in these plays—and perhaps many
more—that struck me: The presentation of femininity as dependence.  
I've always tried to fight against such interpretations as I found them
to be, perhaps a bit sexist. Yet looking at my own manifestation of
femininity, I find shocking resemblance with my dependence on peopole
(and occasionally also abstract entities like knowledge).  
Perhaps it depends on what we mean by the word "femininity". Is it the
quality of being female? Or is it the behavioral norms traditionally
associated with the female gender?  
(Or perhaps this experience is limited by my perception of my own trans
femininity and isn't a common theme upon modern cis femininity?)  
Also, those who don't experience trans experiences cannot assume that
trans experiences do not exist. 

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I kinda think faith is something we all struggle with, and doesn't seem
to be too relevant to whether we are religious in the traditional sense.
For me there're things like faith in logic, faith in knowledge, faith in
properties of humankind, etc. They seem to be so ungrounded, founded
upon beliefs that I cannot support with my own weight.


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As much as I believe in determinism, I do not believe that humans have
capacity to pre-determine their own fate.


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My world is still of metaphorical illusions. I need to learn to be
afraid of romanticized narratives and perspectives. However, it is
apparently hard to do so—I sink into romantic words that create a color
filter in my perception, they make reality look so beautiful, so...
"sweet", moving me further away from what reality really is.


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I'm probably not the only one who has these dangerous/harmful/unhelpful
thoughts:  
How different, or perhaps "better' could my life be, if I could go back
to the start of Year 9, and make different decisions? Perhaps that would
mean choosing something other than IGCSE History. Or perhaps that
means... when that was still possible, let my yearn and longing for
intimacy with trusted people to discuss philosophy and science with,
stay undeveloped.  
Perhaps I could have became a happy person. The me of the present could
never know. 

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To what extent is "it sets a precedent" a concern that justifies or
warrants declining a request that is on its own, appropriate?


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I hereby discard the structuralist view that people are composed of the
opposing parts "benign" and "malicious". These simple and perhaps
judgemental concepts are insufficient in face of the complexity of the
human condition. 

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