Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
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User ID: 102
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
3mo ago
I didn't quite reach Marcus Aurelius yet, but I've read a few books on Roman history this year and it's more or less a story of how Roman citizens just can't catch a break. I'm somewhat less impressed with Hoppean "kings have low time preference" argument now
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
3mo ago
Forget Americans for now, what do you make of Europe and their "infinite flood of sub-Saharan Africans and Arabs" (as opposed to Mexicans and Guatemalans) predicament?
I'm a libertarian too, and I see it as something that obviously puts the existence of (Western) European civilization as such in peril.
I think there's a problem with priorities here.
If self defense is illegal...
if carrying pointy objects of wrong shape, let alone firearms is illegal....
if freedom of association is outlawed...
if natives are heavily taxed, but foreigners are subsidized...
if you live in an anarcho-tyranny state and the "authorities" are happy to prosecute natives for violation of one of the arcane regulation clauses written down in one of the many tomes of legislation, but are terribly afraid to investigate, prosecute, sentence, let alone deport a Muslim foreigner for rape and plunder...
letting open borders be used as a weapon against you seems rather short-sighted, even if in a better world something as crude as building a wall and physically removing aliens from your country might be less practiced.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
9mo ago
There is a Twitter account called "Trump history" and it's somehow the funniest thing on the internet I've seen in a while. It's like a historical trivia account, except every post alleges Trump's role in every conceivable historical event, backing it up by an AI-generated illustration.
There's something hilarious in the idea of Trump as a fixture of human civilization, guiding and guarding mankind through millennia.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
6d ago
I finished the latest installment of Sun Eater the other day.
Unlike a certain infamous fat garden gnome, Ruocchio is a fruitful writer - he puts out a book every 1.5 years or so, with the conclusion of the series planned for next year. I might as well shill it and share some of my impressions here, he well deserves it.
1.Sun Eater is a space opera about a traitor and genocidal murderer to some, hero of mankind to others. Told from his own perspective, as a memoir that he writes at the dusk of his life. From the first pages, Dune and Warhammer influences become apparent, but I quickly forgot about this: don't let anyone say that Ruocchio doesn't have his own creative voice.
2.The quality of writing—the way the books are written word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence—is where Ruocchio really shines, and that's fortunate, since I consider this to be the backbone of any work of fiction. In this regard, Ruocchio mogs...wait, the spell checker is upset with me for using zoomer dialect...I meant to say dramatically outperforms most authors I've ever read, and the vast majority of modern writers overall. He will make you open a dictionary a few times if you want to understand some sentences fully, but the prose is by no means overly ornate. It's elegant, memorable, and quite detached from modern conversational English, fittingly for something presented as the writing of a far-future aristocrat. Maybe there's something to say in favor of the more down-to-earth style most common in modern prose, but my guess is that most other writers don't write as Ruocchio simply because they lack the wits and sufficient command of their language.
3.I find evil/irreconcilably antagonistic aliens to be a much more interesting direction to take than the Star Trek approach, or, god forbid, "humans are the real evil". It's not just that it's terribly overdone and tediously misanthropic in practice, hostile aliens seem inherently more plausible. Finding common ground with beings that share our own nature is challenging enough. Competition for resources might not be the most plausible cause for conflict when interstellar civilizations are concerned, but there are any number of others to explore.
4.I enjoy speculations on alien cultures and theology, and here Ruocchio doesn't disappoint either. We humans can observe our flaws and some of the worst animal inclinations in ourselves easily enough.
The Cielcin can as well, and as their condition is more degraded and repulsive, even given their habituation to it, they draw more radical conclusions than most human religions. They remind me of Gnostics, believing this universe to be corrupted and seeking release from it. They also resemble Muslims in their rejection of the visual arts.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
7mo ago
This seems to be just a regular mildly charitable interpretation to me?
Per Merriam-Webster, Hunka would be a Nazi if he was either a
1.Member of the Nazi party
2.Supported Nazi ideology.
He wasn't a party member, and superficial search doesn't give any indication of him being an ideological Nazi.
There's a small matter of him fighting under Nazi command but given the historical context, it's entirely plausible, indeed probable, that him volunteering had nothing to do with a sympathy toward Nazis, but rather hatred of communists
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
8mo ago
Ukraine put the Pope on official list of enemies.
Worth noting that this didn't happen. It's not an official list of Ukrainian enemies (the Pope isn't even in that list, but that's details)
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
8mo ago
I would push even further than Nybbler and assert that "the Holocaust should happen" is not specific and concrete enough to be a candidate for "call to violence" exception.
Given the very special treatment of the holocaust in comparison to other genocides one could make a good case that the holocaust legislation amounts to little more than anti-blasphemy laws.
I broadly agree, and though I don't have inspiration to say too much, I will leave a quote that captures our atheist condition rather succinctly:
...In such a world, you are living your life inside a coffin. Now, this may be a large coffin, and certain things like love and family and rewarding work or temporary artistic experiences may distract you or please you for a certain time, but that time will pass and those things will fail and die, and you will be in the coffin whether you distract yourself from that horrible reality or not
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
2mo ago
Inspired by this post, but it's kind of buried there, and the topic has decidedly nothing to do with culture wars, so I took the liberty of taking it here. After going through a similar line of thought, I've concluded that the best argument in favor of free will I can think of is Magic.
"Magic is Awesome!" approach to free will
I owe Sapolsky for helping me to articulate this.
I recall him putting forward this very argument, complaining about how free will is incoherent and would have to be powered by magic. This got me wondering: does magic actually deserve to be dismissed with such contempt? For the purposes of this post, I explicitly reject the Clarkian definition of "magic" as anything merely outside of our current knowledge, but use it to indicate something that is inscrutable in a far more profound way. Consider two problems:
1. Consciousness. No scientific framework predicts it, no theory can explain it. No experiment can be devised to test it. We have no idea how consciousness works. What's more interesting is that we have no idea how to get an idea of how consciousness works. It doesn't have to be there, yet there it is. If this isn't Magic, what is?
2. Why are we here? Why is anything? One option is that one thing causes another, and another, back-propagating in the past...forever. All the way down. Personally, I find this idea unsatisfying somehow, if not downright annoying. But even if that's how it is, we are still left with the question of why does it do it, and the best you will ever be able to come up with is some variant of "it just does, I guess". This positively stinks of Magic.
The more old-fashioned alternative to an infinite causal chain is a finite causal chain, one that terminates with God—the uncaused cause, the unmoved mover... Magic? Magic.
We could even ask whether God could share a bit of this Magic juice with some of his creations; we could call it a divine spark or something like that.
That's part of the reason why common in these circles brand of autistic materialism doesn't sit right with me. Both the place we live in and our very direct experience of it seem to be a middle finger to rationality.
I don't believe that free will is something spurious and irrelevant to ethics and meaning. I'm also not convinced that linguistic atrocities like molesting the definition of free will until it's compatible with determinism are of any help here.
If you're of the same mind, "magic is awesome!" seems to be a nice motto to live by.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
7mo ago
So what is actually the point of rating random comments? I feel like I missed the memo
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
10mo ago
I would guess a lot of people were betting against Russia invading because they, including myself, thought this would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Year and a half later, I stand by this assessment.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5d ago
Is this right? Fifteen books, ranging from #1-6?
Six main novels, yes. I kind of forgot how many side stories are there, maybe I should read them.
The Book of the New Sun?
I recall reading the first book many moons ago, but I didn't read further. My written down impressions from back then are mostly complaining about overloaded, opaque prose, funnily enough. My taste might have changed, but I would still say that the style is quite different
Does this have an audiobook, and is the narration any good?
It does.
is the narration any good?
No. Though I'm not a fan of fiction audiobooks in the first place
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1mo ago
You mean to say we should call him the computer guy?
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
7mo ago
As others say, you're at best making a semantic argument. I would also like to argue that communism is indeed more genocidal than Nazism.
"Damn everybody other than my ethic in-group" is not that impractical of a life project, it can even be argued that it's simply natural human inclination driven to extreme. "Damn inequality and hierarchy", on the other hand, is at odds with the very bedrock of reality. Hence the disparity in the body count of these two worldviews.
You can run out of undesirable racial groups to kill, but you absolutely cannot run out of your betters. Communist project is completed when the last proletarian shoots the last kulak in the head. Perfect communism in not possible in practice, much like a perfect circle must remain in the realm of platonic forms, but you can still go quite far - current world record of communism belongs to Pol Pot with up to a third of Cambodia's population dead
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
8mo ago
I can't speak for others, but I downvoted that comment (and yours) not just because I disagree, but first of all because I thought it would be funny. Sue me!:D
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
8mo ago
It is a website, that "publishes a running list, and sometimes personal information, of people who are considered by authors of the website to be enemies of Ukraine" but without any official backing.
In post Soviet parts of the internet it's treated more like a meme, and sometimes site owners seemingly lean into unseriousness as well, but that some gullible American conservative picked it up and started wringing hands about "Ukrainian kill list" fails to surprise me
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
8mo ago
I found myself agreeing with both of you and my synthesis is that I shouldn't fuss over the regulars, but strongly avoid downvoting newbies to groom them into staying
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
11mo ago
Sure many basic human needs can be satisfied using the path you outlined, at least this might make you too busy for existential frustration, but one might ask - is that what's life really about? Would it be insolent and foolish to ask "is there more?" Is that a solution, or a way of preventing yearning for a solution from driving you mad?
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1mo ago
I'd say you're both being overly dramatic because the intensity of this war and the number of casualties on either side is nowhere close to the last big conflict fought in these lands
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1mo ago
Great idea, but I must admit I find it rather annoying to use, not even taking the lag into account. It would probably be more useful if implemented just with some hyperlinks, tags and collapsible lists
Well, as I was saying - anarcho-tyranny.
Governments create a mess by deliberately not trying to fix it, while using its full capacity to "solve" certain problems that make the aforementioned mess worse. A more classical state, unlike anarcho-tyranny, would at least have borders in order. I think even the segment of the Right that likes to scowl at "lolberts" will concede that open borders would be more practical with some or all problems I listed in my first comment fixed.
Anyway, what would you like to dispute? Unless you're saying that France/UK/Germany with migration policies of Poland would make the problem worse, I don't think we disagree about anything.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
7mo ago
Perhaps an analogy might help: I have ancestors who fought in the Red Army, but I would never stoop to branding them communists just because they decided to take part in fighting off Nazi invasion
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
8mo ago
A lot of heat in this discussion, so I will just go ahead and throw in a cut-the-Gordian-knot style solution here: complete separation of education and state. Negotiations as to who has a right and duty to what are held between the parents and the school before enrolling. Minute details like whether it's completely privatized or funded by the government in a roundabout way like charters don't matter here, so insert your preferred arrangement.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
9mo ago
Idk man, "everything is futile and we are doomed, but it's fine, actually" was never a position I could wrap my head around. It feels...lazy? Indecisive? As if you are shrugging the problem off.
It might be easier for you to relate once you understand that it's not just fear we are talking of. I'm still young and full of vigor and death feels very much remote, but here we are. In the first place, it only took me a couple of years of my adolescence to surpass "obnoxious atheist" phase and think "wait a minute, something's off here"
Maybe our gap in understanding is caused by a missing element, like some inner romantic sentiment, or belief in fundamental human dignity. We are special beings endowed with the capacity to look at the material realm not only as participants, but as observers. And so, I claim, we can look beyond, see the insufficiency of mere matter. We can see that we are in a cage, so we deserve a way out. This here might cause you to raise an eyebrow, and maybe it's not the most logically robust claim, but it's fine. It's my intuitive conviction that comes from deep within, there's nothing I'm more sure of.
If all hopes come to nought and materialism is roughly correct, I'm ready to avow that it is not me, but the entire universe that is sick and misshapen and insane.
This is all so tiresome. Since we are going wild with ambitious proposals, how about we deport the Jews instead?
This would have to take place some decades in the future, when the space tech matures a little. That, or we just give the Jews longer deadlines. Everybody (by that I mean mostly the US) does their best to convince the Jews that the promised holy land is, in fact, on Mars. They are then strongly incentivized, both through threats, as well as generous funding, to use their superior IQ to settle the red planet. The place is admittedly somewhat drier, but on the other hand, a lot more spacious and with no neighbors to complain. I'm sure they'll do fine.
Benefits of my plan:
-Space development dramatically accelerated.
-Final solution to Jewish settlement problem. Jews don't bother anyone and no one is bothering the Jews.
-The Palestinians can have their cursed patch of desert all to themselves.
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