Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
43. Writing fiction. Writing a non-fiction book (political manifesto). Trying to improve my programming ability (I've been "learning to code," as it were, since a was a little boy writing in BASIC on an Apple IIc. I took a comp sci class at Caltech where we had to write in Scheme). Fatherhood (which starts with somehow managing to get a date for the first time in my life).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
Law enforcement, the military
Controlled by blue. Because it doesn't matter how red the rank-and-file are, they will always, always, always put obedience to the chain of command ahead of their personal political views. Just ask them: colonels leading coups is something that only ever happens in other countries, but the US military is different — the military is "apolitical," and no US serviceman would ever dishonor himself and the Armed Forces by putting his personal politics ahead of that.
I also remember a forum post online by a Chicago cop, in a 2nd amendment/gun control conversation, saying it doesn't matter how much he might personally support gun rights, if he gets the order to go door-to-door confiscating everyone's guns, he's doing it. First, because 'try telling your boss "no" to a direct order to do something, and see if you still have a job. I have my pension to think about and bills to pay.' And second, since most known, legal gun owners are older and highly law-abiding, he'd be safer and less likely to get shot taking their guns away than he was when he worked dealing with the gangs in the worst parts of Chicago.
When Greg Abbott told the feds he rules the border now, he got away with it, and the border patrol refused to contest this
Because what difference did it make?
the truckers got what they wanted
Funny, everything I remember reading on the topic said the truckers lost badly, Trudeau won, the precedent for "debanking" was set, and remains ready to be used to crush future dissidents.
Reds win regularly. Those victories do not look like random terrorist attacks.
No, we don't. And those "victories" you speak of are nothing of the sort.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
How to deal with demotivation around feeling too old? That is, the persistent feeling that there's no point in starting anything to try to develop a skill, complete a large project, or make an effort toward a large life-improvement goal, because before I can get anywhere meaningful enough to justify the effort, I'll be dead — there's just not enough time left in my life to get anything of note done, so all that's left is to sit down and pass the time waiting to die.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
I am once again surprised to find one of my posts on this list. (I'm always surprised by positive feedback online.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
Like, what if you're wrong Bryan? Where does he go from there: "Well, shucks, I guess we ended up with two Indias after all. My bad."
I vaguely remember an exchange someone had with him on Twitter back when his book with the SMBC webcomic artist came out, where someone basically asked him this, and his response was that it's good to support immigration and open borders because then a world-famous economist can get a job teaching — in English — at any number of universities in any number of countries and maintain his "beautiful bubble" and standard of living. When asked about everyone else left behind, well, that got the usual argument about why the "beautiful bubble" in the first place — being a libertarian means he owes nothing to nobody, doesn't have to care about anyone else unless he wants to, and that he'll support whatever policies benefit him personally, and if those same policies cause you harm, that's your problem.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
Thanks for the clarification.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
Given all the "takes" on Luigi Mangione flooding various online spaces, which is the most odd/surprising that you've encountered?
Mine was from a podcaster I sometimes listen to who, in the context of talking about getting away from the "political binary" and viewing and judging these sorts of incidents through the lens of tribal affiliations, went on to compare Mangione to Beowulf.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
If you are sending out feelers to organize a "gun club," do it elsewhere.
Nope, not my intent. And for clarification, at what point does comparing the relative odds/effectiveness of various methods go from allowed "discussion" to "advocacy" — and thus edge against the "discussing the culture war, not waging it" rule? (Which is the rule which "fedposting" violates, yes?)
it’s inter-institutional warfare that devolves into kinetics.
With what institutions?
the path to total red victory is not individual level violence
I see little evidence that there's any path to red victory, and as for "individual level," that's why the "organize into groups" part was there.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
It would be sad but I think most will vote R again because what’s the alternative?
Violence. Grabbing your buddies and your guns, forming a RWDS and shooting every Blue Triber you find.
Would it work? Almost certainly not, but its odds of success, however small, are still better than those of "voting harder" — which are effectively zero.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
If (as I think is most likely) the “Republican trifecta” accomplishes nothing of note in the next four years, DOGE fails even harder than the Grace Commission, and Trump’s second term proves as ineffectual against “the swamp” as his first, how do you suppose Republican voters would react come 2028?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
I'm looking for if there's a term for a particular style of logically fallacious argument, somewhat similar to both No True Scotsman — in that it involves the rejection of a counterexample – and circular reasoning — in that the proposition under contention is used to ground the argument — but it differs in that rather than redefining the category at question to exclude the counterexample, it uses its membership in the category to deny the elements that make it a counterexample.
For two toy examples, consider the classic "all swans are white" or the original "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge." Then the counterparty presents a black swan in the former case, and in the latter says "but my friend Angus MacFadden is as Scottish as he comes, and I see him put sugar on his porridge all the time." Now the "No True Scotsman" fallacy would be, in the former case, to try to redefine "swan" to exclude the black swan; and, in the latter to say "no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge." That is, to engage in an ad hoc redefinition defying the swans "swanness" or Angus's Scottishness.
I'm talking instead about the argument that accepts that the black swan is indeed a swan, and instead denies that it's black. It's a photographic error, or it got some soot or ink on it's naturally-white feathers, or your eyes are playing tricks on you, but all swans are white, therefore we know with absolute logical certainty that your "black" swan is white, and all evidence that it is black can and must be summarily dismissed. Angus MacFadden, as a Scotsman, never puts sugar on his porridge. You may think you've seen him do so, but assuming you didn't just hallucinate it, then however much whatever Angus put on his porridge looked like sugar, we know indisputably that it wasn't actually sugar; Q.E.D., full stop, end of discussion.
(Before anyone asks, yes, I have actually seen this style of "argumentation" — with all it's resemblance to a fancified version of a small child's "nuh-uh" — in the wild, most notably with a Tumblr tankie defending East Germany and the Berlin wall proceeding, in an obnoxiously smarmy and condescending manner — to call various people's relatives literal Nazis.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
My entire point is that the western governments, of which the ur example I envisioned in my own case above being the united states, was their own enforcement and military mechanisms.
Yes, and those western governments — or specifically, the parts of them that matter — are in favor of "letting in a billion migrants," and that's not going to change. You can call for them to "close the borders, lock up criminals, deny appeals" all you want, it's not going to happen. The people in charge don't want to do that, so they're not going to do it, and you can't make them.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
Close the borders, lock up criminals, deny appeals.
And how do you propose to do this? With what institutions? And how do you deal with all the other, more powerful institutions that will try to stop you? As the old trope goes, "you and what army"?
If liberals continue whining that this goes against some UNDHR or whatever piece of paper that magically confers authority, then just burn the damn thing
At which point a CIA-run "color revolution" overthrows your government and you die like Gaddafi.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
never ask a white supremacist the color of his girlfriend
IME, the most common answer to that question is "imaginary". (Try naming a "far right"/"dissident right" space that isn't a sausage fest — maybe the Trad Caths, if they count.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
I think that's probably the key. Bus size and usage here in Anchorage is a minuscule fraction of that in large cities.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
Some busses have a door in the front and a door in the middle.
Yes, that's how they work here: the front door is for getting on, the middle for getting off.
No real way to monitor those ones.
Our bus drivers seem to do it just fine. A big mirror that lets them see down the aisle and pretty much the whole bus interior.
Not like the driver is going to notice you walking in throughout the rear door and stop his route to demand you leave.
That's exactly what they do.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
For busses, you could require everyone enter through the front door
This isn't standard? It's how it works on the buses here in Anchorage: enter at the front door, pay at the little podium next to the driver, take your seat, and exit out the door further back (about midway down the bus) at your stop. No tickets, nobody sneaking on, or past the driver, only one employee on the bus — the driver.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
Yes, and? What do you want here?
Suppose indeed that people were angry at Gruber; that there was less anger directed at healthcare CEO, and more at policy architects like this guy. So what? What would it accomplish? Gruber, or someone like him, would still be making these policies. You complain that "will be writing the next "healthcare reform", whatever it is, and one after that - or somebody who is exactly like him," but even if you got your way and people were "directing equal hate to their local congress-critter", that would still be true.
It is the nature of Congress, as it currently exists, to do this sort of thing. And Congress, like most institutions these days, cannot be fixed, only replaced. You don't want Gruber, "or somebody who is exactly like him" writing the next "healthcare reform"? Then start working to overthrow the US government, because that's the only way it happens. Anything else is just pointless venting.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
How are you going to get people to accept that things will suck for them forever?
How did we get most people throughout human history to accept it? It's not like your average peasant was entirely unaware of how much better off the local baron was than him, and yet they accepted that this was just the way the world is. Every single Chinese revolution until the late 19th century took "the system" as basically fixed and was merely about changing who sat in the big seat.
The issue is utopianism. You get the difference between "we can make things better" and "we can make things perfect," yes? The position that human ingenuity can be applied to solve a number of problems, and the position that human ingenuity can be applied to solve all our problems? The difference between "we could do more to help the poor" and "we could eliminate poverty"?
Again, it's the idea that every problem has a solution, that we can intelligently design ever-better institutions (superior to any locally-evolved ones, no matter how time-tested), that we can build Heaven upon Earth — this is what I'm against. You seem to think that this view is the natural, default human perspective. I'm with Sowell in pointing out that, historically, it is anything but the norm. You may have absorbed the Utopian Vision so thoroughly that you can't readily conceive people not doing so, but even now in "the Information Age," the Tragic Vision still has its adherents.
I get that irrational persistence and sunk cost fallacy are pretty common human failings, but I've got to hope that after enough failures to immanentize the eschaton, enough failures of liberalism and "enlightenment" thought, enough disasters (or maybe just one disaster of sufficient severity) from attempts to achieve a "perfect system" that gets all the incentives aligned just right… that even the most irrationally persistent will call it quits and accept the limits of human capacity.
(Whether or not this either necessitates or gives rise to a return to religion — given the association of the Tragic Vision with traditional religion, and the difficulty of living with both it and atheism — is another question.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
Underlying our approach to this subject is our conviction that "computer science" is not a science and that its significance has little to do with computers. The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think. The essence of this change is the emergence of what might best be called procedural epistemology—the study of the structure of knowledge from an imperative point of view, as opposed to the more declarative point of view taken by classical mathematical subjects. Mathematics provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of "what is". Computation provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of "how to".
Harold "Hal" Abelson, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
Or then there's this piece (from one B. Jacobs) back in 2005: ""Computer Science" is Not Science and "Software Engineering" is Not Engineering"
If the software discipline is "science", then the scientific process should be available to settle arguments. But it seems to fail. Some suggest that instead it is "engineering", not "science". But engineering is nothing more than applied science. For example, in engineering, bridge designs are tested against reality in the longer run. Even in the short run, bridge models can be tested in environments that simulate reality. Simulations are a short-cut to reality, but still bound to reality if we want them to be useful. If a bridge eventually fails, and the failure is not a construction or materials flaw, then what is left is the engineering of the bridge to blame. An engineer's model must be tightly bound to the laws of physics and chemistry. The engineer is married to the laws whether he/she wants to be or not.
But we don't have this in software designs for the most part. We have the requirements, such as what the input and output looks like and the run-time constraints which dictate the maximum time a given operation is allowed to take. But there is much in-between these that is elusive to objective metrics.
…
So, if physical engineering is really science ("applied science" to be more exact), but software design does not follow the same pattern, then what is software design? Perhaps it is math. Math is not inherently bound to the physical world. Some do contentiously argue that it is bound because it may not necessarily be valid in hypothetical or real alternative universe(s) that have rules stranger than we can envision, but for practical purposes we can generally consider it independent of the known laws of physics, nature, biology, etc.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
I don't particularly have one for much of anything cultural or political except "wait for our Augustus." But just because I, personally, don't have a specific plan for accomplishing the triumph of the Tragic Vision over the Utopian Vision, doesn't mean it can't happen.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
Do you think scientific advances will stop?
Eventually, yes.
We have barely scratched the surface of what is possible.
How do you know that? How do you know we haven't already accomplished ~90% of what's possible?
In 10,000 years, assuming we don’t collapse our society and technology continues to progress
I, for one, think these are both big, unsupported conjectures.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
Then Europe wasn't constantly "tearing itself apart in holy wars," but only doing so part of the time.
Because for me "learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu" would be the project of many, many decades, if ever, given how poorly my childhood karate lessons went given the gross and fine motor skill problems from my Sensory Processing Disorder. (You know the thing that most people call "muscle memory"? Practically non-existent for me. You've ever heard it said of an uncoordinated person "can't walk and chew gum at the same time?" Yeah, part of my bad posture is that I'm always looking down, because I need to be able to see my feet and where I'm placing them to walk.)
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