ArmedTooHeavily
Whatever happened? A breach in the very unity of life, a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature. Life had overshot its target, blowing itself apart. A species had been armed too heavily – by spirit made almighty without, but equally a menace to its own well-being. Its weapon was like a sword without hilt or plate, a two-edged blade cleaving everything; but he who is to wield it must grasp the blade and turn the one edge toward himself.
User ID: 2895
ArmedTooHeavily
11mo ago
Things like this are why I sort of support things like Keto or Paleo.
Same, but for me it's fasting, intermittent or otherwise. The easiest way I've found to cut caloric intake without much effort or unhappiness is to just skip 1-3 meals. I've found that once you've done it a couple times, it becomes pretty easy to avoid getting "hangry", which is the main objection friends have given me when I recommend it. "I could never do that, I get so horrible to be around when I skip a meal."
There's a ton of science about fasting being good for you (e.g. it's great for insulin resistance), and I think it makes sense from an "is it lindy" perspective. Certainly our hunter gatherer ancestors didn't eat three meals a day everyday, so it makes sense to me that our bodies would be optimized for skipping meals.
I've fasted for as long as four days. Longer fasts like that are definitely much more difficult, not because of hunger (you more or less stop being immediately hungry after about 24 hours) and more because you have to deal with some physical weakness, imbalanced electrolytes, things like that. Definitely well worth doing, I strongly recommend it, but definitely much more difficult than just fasting for a day or less.
You're making a common, fundamental mistake: the problem isn't that they don't have housing. "Homeless" is a misnomer. The problem isn't where they sleep, the problem is how they act. They aren't homeless because rents are too high, they're homeless because they have failed to hold down a job, or pay their rent, or maintain relationships with friends and family, or stay out of jail, or prioritize their own well being.
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2023/05/hes-just-been-a-wrecking-ball-accused-arsonist-in-sw-portland-apartment-fire-hit-with-stalking-order-day-before-blaze.html This is what happens when you give them free housing (though an admittedly extreme example). This is not a problem of allocating sufficient money, this is a problem of "what do you do with people who destroy everything around them when given freedom."
ArmedTooHeavily
11mo ago
Cognitive decline is an unavoidable part of aging. Every 70 year old i have ever talked to about it will admit they used to be sharper when they were younger.
ArmedTooHeavily
11mo ago
I'll second cjet, this is a stupendous article. Your review of "from third world to first" was one of the first things I ever read on themotte (and I read the book myself because of it), and I'm glad you're still writing.
ArmedTooHeavily
11mo ago
There comes a point where "is it their fault" doesn't matter. If someone is regularly violently criminal, it doesn't matter if it's because of a brain injury or they're just a sociopathic asshole, what matters is that they be stopped from victimizing other people. Whether or not they are morally culpable is a secondary concern over the need to incapacitate them for the benefit of their would-be victims.
ArmedTooHeavily
11mo ago
What's the deal with the ants/gamergate connection?
ArmedTooHeavily
11mo ago
Not having read your article
this seems like a bad-faith article
classic stuff.
ArmedTooHeavily
11mo ago
Actually, thinking about it, I think there's a pretty easy way to differentiate on a policy level: criminal record. People down on their luck, the "have nots", won't have meaningful criminal records. The anti-social, criminal drug addicts, the "will nots" or "can nots", will. Where I live, pretty much everybody who ever gets arrested for criddler shit already has a significant record of violent crimes. You'll see a news story about "man arrested for charging after somebody with a machete", and when you google them they've got years of arrests for similar crimes. A massive amount of the west coast's homeless problems could be solved by simply keeping those people in jail, and it would be easy to deny those people access to resources like free housing if they have any arrests in the last five years (I'd be open to excluding victimless crimes like simple drug possession).
ArmedTooHeavily
11mo ago
What a profoundly shameful and mindless thing to say.
ArmedTooHeavily
11mo ago
As with most things, the ability to identify the groups is hard
No, it isn't. It may be difficult to do at scale in a way that is legally/bureaucratically acceptable, but you can tell the difference between a "I'm in a bad situation and need a little help to get back on my feet" and a "meth just feels better with a machete in your hand" in about two minutes of conversation.
ArmedTooHeavily
11mo ago
Human suffering is not a solvable problem.
Especially and particularly the suffering of people caused by their own decision making. You can't solve people fucking their own life up without preventing them from having the freedom to control their own lives.
ArmedTooHeavily
11mo ago
I can see, perhaps, an argument for benefit to social stability by everyone having buy in. "Stupid, terrible things will happen if enough people can be convinced they should happen, and that's the value of democracy," seems like the strongest argument against democracy.
That being said, it seems like the trend line for social stability is pointed in only one direction, so the argument that we should have democracy to keep things stable is looking pretty weak these days as well.
ArmedTooHeavily
1yr ago
I don't have any particular knowledge of methane infrastructure, but I am an engineer with some relevant general knowledge.
You are incorrect.
Leakage is an unavoidable part of any fluid system, and the larger the system, the more leakage you can expect. Shit leaks, especially on an industrial scale. Your domestic gas lines are very small and minimally manipulated, gas systems in industrial systems are very large, involve lots of things that can break, and are manipulated regularly.
The wrinkle here is that every person who exercises has the experience of using their willpower to overcome the impulse to be sedentary. I get what you're saying, but when I look back on me thinking to myself "it seems like a lot nicer to just sit on the couch than go to the gym, but i gotta go" or "yeah i'm exhausted, but I'm going to do one more set" what I see is me making the hard decision to overcome those sedentary instincts. In every way, it looks like I used to my willpower to dictate my own behavior, and every time I fail at doing so, it looks like a failure of will to me. I personally don't see any reason to think it isn't exactly as it appears to me.
It reminds a lot of CICO discussions: it is obviously true that if you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. There are all kinds of additional layers of complication and justification and difficulty and most of all copes on top of that, but the fundamental facts are simple.
It's the same with willpower and exercise: it is obviously true that whether or not you exercise depends on whether or not you do it (tautological, obviously), and doing it is a matter of applied will against pressures to the contrary. Whether or not you overcome those pressures by force of will does, in fact, determine whether or not you exercise. So while yes, there are lots of different complications and justifications and difficulties and most of all copes on top of that, they're all really just inputs to the equation [willpower]-[forces against]=[do you work out].
When you say that there isn't a universality in how difficult exercise is, what you're saying is that [forces against] has a different value for different people. Obviously that is true. Some people find exercise easy, some people find it difficult, some people have physical ailments that make it painful to exercise, etc etc. It is obviously also true that some people have significantly greater willpower than others. But that doesn't change the fundamental question, which is "is [willpower]>[forces against]".
And in the end, what the inputs are to the equation doesn't matter, what matters is whether or not you can get over the threshold and exercise. Does this have lots of potentially nasty implications about some people getting a shit deal in life because they're mentally weak, or physically afflicted, or even just born lazy? Yep. Not only are there health implications, but like you said, there are massive moral implications to whether or not you are able to overcome your own weakness and destructive instincts. Nobody's burden is the same, life's not fair, sucks to suck.
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