DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
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DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5d ago
Aha! The misuse of the play face might be why evil clowns are terrifying: a betraying and malicious violation of the group safety mechanism. (And that mechanism misfiring or being overly precise might be why even the most benign clowns are creepy to some people.)
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
14d ago
That's a wild ride. Thanks for letting me know the idea's been done before; I'd never heard of that other IP before.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
15d ago
Idea for future Harry Potter ratfics: House Elf is not a lowered subspecies of human, but rather a magically uplifted captive tribe of naked mole rats.
- Eusocial, going mad if they’re not allowed to serve a master.
- NMRs are kept in line by their hive’s queen by physical abuse, and House Elf masters liberally smack them about.
- Feel most at home when covered in the smells of their hive’s bodily wastes.
- Naked, or mostly.
- Dobby of the Malfoys might have been more independence-seeking as one of the few breeding studs of the House Elf Queen. Winky, however, was a typical worker and became quite distraught once she was no longer allowed to clean the Crouch family home.
This is pretty much the only way I could think of to make House Elves scientific, rather than just a metaphor for the British servant class/caste.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
19d ago
but why Westerners care is the strange thing.
Because the news says it. Because that’s the oil region of the world. Because it’s The Holy Land. Because The Jews. Because we want sensemakers to explain how bad people aren’t bad, actually. Pick a reason, there are dozens more.
Here’s one I just thought of. A world full of govts has taken the place of God in our lives, and the Middle East is its theodicy: if Civilization is all-powerful, why does evil still exist in the Middle East?
Either Civilization is not all-powerful (which bodes poorly for socialists) or is not all-good (even more poorly), or Israel/Islam is the dualist enemy of Civilization, as powerful as all good governments put together, insidiously worming its way into each and corrupting it (which is too prevalent a conclusion).
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
28d ago
· Edited 28d ago
If they’re really super-geniuses, they can learn socialization from a curriculum and limited practice. Two years of Toastmasters did more for me than twelve years of public school, though I’m autistic smart, not ground-breaking physics smart.
I recommend the club structure and original public speaking curriculum of Toastmasters founder Ralph Smedley, which is in the public domain.
There is a case for segregation by tested mind-type, but untested individuals segregated by stereotypes would be more societally harmful than the gain.
Kazimierz Dąbrowski's book on the labor camps of Germany, as cited in the Christianity on the Spectrum podcast, emphasized the dichotomy of the ongoing war between slaves and free men, those who have choices they can effect upon others and those who have no power to leave off working; that the poets and academics stand upon the backs of slaves to have their platforms.
This leads me to the idea that the elite class, middle class, and labor class are three qualitatively different ways to live:
The middle class must also live with the negative consequences of the choices of all others, and the laborers must live with the negative consequences of the middle class and other laborers. The elites have to deal with each others' decisions, but escape the negative consequences of the rest.
I find it important to note Dąbrowski's category of "free men" conflates the elite and the middle class. The middle class only exist in capitalism, in meritocracy. Meanwhile, socialism elevates some laborers to elites by making the middle class laborers through taxation, and Communism's pre-paradise stage elevates some laborers to elites by making all others laborers through confiscation and murder.
A functional society has more middle class, but if your society becomes so by turning another into laborers, you have become global elites. It's easy to mistake hard-working middle class for laborers, but to see the real difference, check my definitions. Note I'm not saying there's a hard-and-fast line; the middle class are those who get the bulk of positive benefits and negative consequences of their own choices.
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