BinaryHobo
9d ago
I think you're ignoring that video games are big business these days, with large staffs. You're going to have a lot of people just phoning it in, along with a general regression to the mean. It's possible for a single person operation to knock it out of the park (or completely bomb, but you're probably not going to hear about that game). It's really hard for a 1000 person operation do do anything that far above average (average for a professional).
BinaryHobo
9d ago
Both of those games are over a decade old. It could be a symptom of the drop-off that he's talking about that you aren't listing newer ones.
BinaryHobo
9d ago
Either way I think the most important development in all of this is that post-internet, nationalism cannot really be a thing. It's hard to convince the youth to die for your government after years of telling them that the people who just arrived have as much of a claim to the country as they do.
That seems more like an argument that nationalism is incompatible with a modern, liberal, cosmopolitan society. Which, honestly, I don't think anyone on either side would argue with you on that.
That doesn't mean it can't necessarily be a thing in modern times, it just means that nationalists have to be willing to jettison at least one or more of of [modern|liberal|cosmopolitan]. And in the circles where nationalism flourishes online even jettisoning all three of them is quite popular.
BinaryHobo
11d ago
You're attacking the bailey, not the motte.
The bailey is what needs to be attacked. The motte is generally defend-able position that may or may not have some merit, but is worthy of consideration. It's use in protecting the bailey is the problem.
BinaryHobo
11d ago
Or what do you call bombing another country's consulate?
An act of war, probably. Generally speaking, that's what one state attacking another is considered.
There aren't good definitions of terrorism, but generally speaking, they require non-state actors (or possibly by people from a state pretending to not be state-actors).
BinaryHobo
11d ago
meritocratic systems common in the modern world should churn out a reliable stream of competent generals
Most countries spend most of their time at peace. Meritocratic systems tend to produce generals that are really good at politics.
That's why countries spend the first couple years of a war (if they're lucky) fighting the war they prepared for.
BinaryHobo
23d ago
The list above is non-exhaustive.
The person you're arguing with is probably worried about this part. Specifically that you'll keep adding items to the list until it hits "inhibitions are slightly lowered territory".
BinaryHobo
23d ago
No, but they might be if you forced the NFL to sponsor beer league sports and give a bunch of time/resources to them.
At the very least, the prestige of the term "NFL player" would drop significantly. To bring this back to the original point, the prestige of being a player who beat *insert game* is significantly lower with games that have easy modes. You can be part of the group that beat *insert game* on hard mode, but human beings aren't great at modifiers, and I could see it dropping total prestige.
BinaryHobo
23d ago
or screwing around until they find somethat works against pre-programmed monsters
I mean, that's how I got into software engineering (doubly so if we consider windows 98 to be one of the monsters).
BinaryHobo
23d ago
Only if moral truth rests upon democratic majority, in which case, I have several questions. Chiefly, do different things become good depending on where you are and local sentiments, or do we need to take the majority of the global population? Or do we need to go even further and take the opinion of all people that ever lived? Does ultimate truth require us to know the opinions of all future people as well?
BinaryHobo
26d ago
But, where are you seeing this idea the Democratic ground game in shambles? In reality, in basically every special election for the past few years, plus the midterms, the Democrat's have run past their prior margins, including just this past week, winning a Trump +1 state legislative seat in suburban Huntsville by twenty five points.
With the shift of college educated voters to the democrats, I expect this to be more common. The highly educated are much more likely to turn out for non-presidential elections (republicans benefited from this in previous elections as well). But there's a ton of voters that only show up every 4 years, and only vote for president, and those demographics seem to be sliding towards the GOP.
BinaryHobo
30d ago
Sure, but there's a limit to that. McDonalds is available everywhere in the country.
BinaryHobo
1mo ago
If the government is powerful enough to stop people talking about shoplifting
I mean, I hate the analogy we're on, but given it, I don't think this is automatically true. Speech for 95%+ of the population goes through ~6 companies. Because of how centralized computer services end up being, this is the rough equivalent of all shopping happening in 6 physical stores.
I think the federal government could prevent shoplifting from 6 physical stores, but not thousands of them distributed across the country.
BinaryHobo
1mo ago
It gets a bit more complicated if you want autoupdates.
Put pacman -Syu in a cron job?
BinaryHobo
1mo ago
I think it's reasonable to expect that this God, who I heard of in sermons throughout my childhood, would put in slightly more effort to save the uncontacted heathens than "none at all".
Isn't there an entire strain of christian analysis of history that chalks the rising of the roman state and later the expansion of the european powers as this?
BinaryHobo
1mo ago
But all of them are punished in exactly the same way, according to traditional Christianity.
Maybe "traditional christianity" is doing some work here that I'm unaware of, but I'm going to assume that the text of the bible is still in play.
The bible does absolutely give us at least two classes of sin, with different punishments. For most sinners, once they have committed a sin, they are given a chance to repent and be forgiven. But for those that blaspheme against the holy spirit, this option is cut off (Matthew 12:31). It would seem to be a reasonable interpretation of the words of Christ here that at least 1 sin is viewed more harshly by the divine.
BinaryHobo
2mo ago
I see a difference in that. But that's not what we're talking about here, considering natural born citizenship generally passes from parents to children, not only to people that are born in a place. Being born in a place automatically conferring citizenship is kind of a new world thing, most places in the old world don't do that (source)
In the current world, you can be a citizen of a place you've never been to already. And you can be incapable of giving up that citizenship. And that doesn't seem to be an exception for you, so I'm not sure why it's an important difference here.
The relevant difference is:
- Place your family has history
- Place your family doesn't have history
If that's not the relevant difference, I think you need to start carving out some exemptions to your policy.
BinaryHobo
2mo ago
The bounds of this are interesting. Let's say I'm an absolute dictator in a brand new country in western asia (some breakaway province that it's convenient for the rest of the world to recognize), let's call it Trollistan. Can I keep people unfriendly to me out of your government by declaring them citizens and then not allowing them to revoke the citizenship?
If not, why? If it's because they didn't chose Trollistan, it doesn't seem that different than someone being born somewhere (which they don't chose), and then not being allowed to give the citizenship up later.
BinaryHobo
3mo ago
And they and their followers will always vote for the Democrat.
Yes, but what that means is changeable. I know the "democrats were the party of slavery" line is a little played out, but they were. And a fairly big shift happened within the party without the party ever having a clean break.
The parties in the US are more like coalitions elsewhere, the coalition building just happens before the election rather than after, as would happen in a parliamentary system. There's a ton of factionalism inside them. Democrats holding these views aren't useless to one who isn't a democrat. It means, eventually, democrats with those views running for office. And, at worst, a whole bunch of extra in-fighting happening before things that non-democrats don't like being voted on.
If you're not a progressive democrat, you should probably like what you've described. Control of a few senators and representatives is probably what's going to prevent really strong legislation you don't like from passing next time the democrats have the trifecta.
BinaryHobo
3mo ago
Ahh, my apologies then, that did not come across in my reading of the comment. It came across as pretty standard concern for the welfare of your children. Which, fair, that's a pretty basic human emotion.
Either way. Happy new year. Hope your day is going well
BinaryHobo
3mo ago
This is a fair response, but taking the accelerationist argument seriously for a sec, the argument is generally that it will be better for your granddaughter, not your daughter.
Which, y'know, choosing between the two is one hell of a sophie's choice level decision, but I don't think it can be dismissed off hand that easily if what you value is the safety/comfort of your decedents. I feel like a better counterargument is that there's a decent chance we never get advanced civilization up and running again if the whole thing collapses.
BinaryHobo
5mo ago
Biology might be inescapable, but when you introduce testosterone into a system that may not have been designed to handle it, it's not that surprising that something like this happens a certain percentage of the time (no claims on what percentage).
But, like, testosterone is rough to deal with even for people who were introduced to it in the way nature intended.
BinaryHobo
5mo ago
I believe HBD is a worse explanation for persistent black underachievement than the lingering effect of centuries of cultural disruption under slavery combined with decades of further disruption under racist post-Civil-War legislation
I know this wasn't the point of your post, but the way you sorta phrased this as a binary made something click in my mind. I'm gonna be honest, I can't buy either of these explanations. And both, oddly enough, for the same reason, the Greenwood District in Tulsa (site of the famous race riot). Ok, so not just Greenwood, but there's plenty of examples of functioning black communities from that era.
Modern society is just straight up not as racist as 1920s Oklahoma. And black people were able to build functioning communities within 60 years of gaining their freedom. And by all accounts, communities that worked quite well. I'm aware of the highway system disrupting black communities, but it's been 60 years since that happened, and that can't be as big of a disruption as being enslaved. There has to be, at the very least, a confounding factor.
At the same HBD makes no sense. The argument is generally that black people have too low of an average IQ to succeed, but we have examples of functioning communities. Even if it were true, the most extreme claims of the HBD groups tend to put the average IQ at around 70, and that's roughly where the US as a whole was circa 1900, and there's plenty of examples from that time of people with this average IQ forming perfectly functional communities. That can't be the entire explanation either.
BinaryHobo
5mo ago
does this mean Jewish population goes up or down?
You need to define the term "Jewish population" for this question to make sense because the parent relies on an intermarriage rate.
People with Jewish ancestry? Probably up. People with Jewish ancestry >50%? Probably down. People who identify as Jews? Also probably down, unless it becomes trendy. That's the short term anyways, long term, the numbers could increase with the birth rates that the orthodox have.
What rich people do is take out a loan using the asset as collateral. So long as the asset appreciates faster than inflation, you come out ahead and get to access the money without selling (I believe this is also not considered income in most jurisdictions).
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