Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
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User ID: 102
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5d ago
I won't comment on whether or not he ignored compatibilism, but it sure deserves to be ignored no matter the context. Insisting on materialism yet weaseling out of biting the bullet on lack of free will is just sad.
Don’t like the conclusion of your premises? Just molest the definition of some key terms until it goes away.
Troll_face_problem.jpg
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
17d ago
First of all: It's fun
Motte takes every possible step to be more grownup, but even this place can't escape the ultimate nature of political forums and maybe even human interaction in general - conflict, polemics, trying to appear clever, one upping each other, play.
This place is a bit of an outlier, but internet forums are mostly for enjoying speechcraft skills of others, and exercise my own when (I'm under impression that) I have something witty to say.
I find it inherently rewarding, if you don't, well, too bad.
I don't know what I think until I write it down
Another reason why is to polish your own thoughts.
Writing is inherently more rigorous than just letting thoughts float inside your head and things that feel vaguely sound may turn out to be less so when properly formulated, so you get a lot of the value even before pressing "post"
Yet there's only so much you can think of on your own. Bouncing your thoughts against others helps in ways that are hard to really quantify.
An entirely different human being can say things you'd never think of, bite back with retorts that help you understand your own values and beliefs better even if you ultimately don't change your mind.
Talking to others can force you into creative exercises like "explain this thought as if you're speaking to someone mentally challenged and/or separated from you by great inferential distance" which is also illuminating.
I sympathize with your sense of alienation. People can be vastly different, and can often feel insane and incomprehensible. Overall, most of them are relatively stupid, so their words can be explained away by them being hopelessly confused.
That said, I'm convinced that there exist divides between human mental architectures that are more profound than just political disagreements, and language more often serves to conceal the true depth of that gulf than to bridge it.
Next time you argue with someone saying what is seemingly just stupid and offensive, consider the possibility that if you somehow truly understood him you would recoil, and inherent limitations of language, as well as your mind's reflexive attempts to parse inputs as something you think is reasonable both do you a favor.
Overall, just treat people, especially faceless strangers on the internet less seriously, they don't deserve it.
Let others sink or swim on their own merit.
If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people whose conversation you happen to overhear, you should imagine that you are listening to the dialogue of two fools in a comedy
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1mo ago
Ye, better known as Kanye West has released a song titled "Heil Hitler"
I have to admit, it's quite catchy, especially the unlikely refrain "nigger, Heil Hitler", which definitely has an intriguing ring to it.
Whether Kanye is a truly great artist or not, he's nothing if not a skilled craftsman.
I've long since lost the ability to treat anything on the internet seriously and my reaction was limited to squeezing my eyes shut and suppressing a chuckle, but I suspect that the wider audience is also outraged only in a performative, inertial way. I doubt it will end up making any real impact on anything and waves in the social media will likely fizzle out in no more than a few weeks.
I wonder if we're seeing the first signs of postmodern corrosion eating away at the last grand unifying narrative of our age: WW2 mythos, with Adolf Hitler at its center not as mere historical figure, but as the archetypal villain and the secular devil. In many countries the taboo is backed by legal force, but legislation doesn't truly govern things of this nature. The law may end up hollowed out and irrelevant long before someone cares to remove it from the books
Maybe I will live to tell my incredulous grandkids about how we were all expected to perceive one specific 20th century dictator through a prism of quasi-superstitious dread.
Should this really happen, good riddance. Though on the other hand, we might end up remembering having this kind of culture spanning, unifying narrative as kind of comfy compared to total balkanization
I can appreciate some ruthless will to power edgelord kino myself, but I know how badly translations from distant languages work, especially fan translations, especially of web novels that rarely have good prose to begin with, so I will probably pass.
In any event, I just hope that the author had the wisdom to finish his story and attach the file to a dead man switch
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1mo ago
Speaking of the legal force. Maybe you will have better luck on YouTube, or failing that just use VPN.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1mo ago
Agree on LGBT, but for mental illness, it might be too lax, actually
We can't easily filter for "a total bitch who will drive you insane if you will have the misfortune to put a ring on her", so the next best thing is diagnosed mental illness. These categories heavily overlap, but the bitch category is almost certainly larger.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
17d ago
I endorse the rest of this take, but libertarianism has no problem with joint ownership, and countries can be conceptualized as intergenerational, publicly owned enterprise, so the doors are opened if you ever feel like coming back
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5mo ago
"To have an opportunity to talk with actual people" sounds like a really low bar to clear for an internet forum. Even if your AI slop tasted exactly like the real thing, it would just be good manners to refrain from clogging our airwaves with that.
Knowing that you're talking with something sapient has an inherent value, and this value might very well go up in the coming years. I can't say I even understand why'd you think anyone would find AI outputs interesting to read.
or maybe just ban me, I'm too old now to just nod and play along with gingerly preserved, increasingly obsolete traditions of some authoritarian Reddit circus. Anyway, I like that post and that's all I care about.
Bizarre reaction. But I like a sincere, organically produced tantrum better than simulation of one, so I'd rank this post as higher than the one above!
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
11mo ago
I'm mostly indifferent to Trump, but he really displayed protagonist level of charisma and plot armor here.
Bullets miss, but slightly graze him for effect, he gets his wits together to both duck after the first shot and strike a pose at the right moment.
I like our scriptwriter.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5mo ago
Speaking of fences - do you have any guesses how did the US survive with government spending per capita dramatically lower than now for the first couple hundred years of its history?
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5mo ago
Every time I hear this...line of thought I feel frustration with some black amusement mixed in.
NATO is problematic, if not irresponsibly hostile, while very literal aggressive expansionism from Russia itself, when it's not outright 'dindu nuffin', is complicated and needs to be understood in context, and it's their backyard, and nothing is ever black and white like that, you know.
All of this, and more, is possible at the modest price of dramatically lowering the standards to which Russia is being held.
One would be forgiven for thinking that Russia in this frame is something akin to a rabid dog that just can't be blamed for trying to tear every careless passerby's throat out.
I almost agree, though somehow the proposed solution always amounts to sticking one's head in the sand, sending thoughts and prayers to those unable to afford the luxury, and hoping everything will work out somehow, while simultaneously trying best to create the impression that this is the tough, sober, "realist" approach to international politics.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5mo ago
Okay, now I see you were joking, good thing I decided to check before sperging out with a serious rebuttal
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr 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
7mo ago
I haven't noticed an algorithmic bias against liberals in Musk's Twitter, but the suspects themselves seem more upset not about Musk restricting them, but about lack of such restriction on the vendors of "hate speech" and "misinformation"
There seems to be a motte/bailey dynamic here. You put it more mildly, so maybe you will disagree somewhat with the bailey, but it's common enough that I hope you indulge me.
Motte: It's reasonable for states to care about their international influence, more so when their neighbors are concerned. When a highly culturally and linguistically related people and a former colony attempts to steer away, expect attempts to prevent this.
Bailey: It was predictable all along that these attempts include abrupt abandonment of other options in favor of an all out war, with all of the inevitable costs that would ensue in the best case scenario. It also includes doubling down for years when the best case scenario did not materialize.
Just tragic geopolitical dominos falling and rulers forced into ugly decisions, nothing to do with a septuagenarian autocrat gradually detaching from the real world, ending up spending fortunes and immolating hundreds of thousands of both his enemy's and his own citizens on sacrificial pyre of boomer retardation
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5mo ago
Take a hard Look into evolution and realise that natural selection is not enough to explain how we (humans) came to be in our current form. I'm curious. Do you have specific problems, questions in mind?
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
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.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
7mo ago
That would be a lot more convincing if we didn't incur permanent damage to our bodies merely by staying alive.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
4mo ago
Rest assured, morality is not a factor in what I'm talking about here
Politicians say lots of things all of the time, it's practically their job.
I'm certain there are numerous records of Western and Russian leaders saying things that totally support any given picture, including this one. It just seems like painting targets centered around a bullet hole in the wall after the fact. "Talking a lot and lying, contradicting, exaggerating routinely" applies to Putin at least as much as to any other big politician.
Are Putin's decisions sound, practical? maximizing interests of his own country, roughly based on reality as it can be observed?
It sure seems like many faulty premises were involved based on what actually happened. Perhaps the inherent unpredictability and dependence on whims of a lone, seemingly unaccountable man should be included in the equation, but it's far from easy, and at this point we are straying from what you were saying.
Ukraine was pragmatically unwise to pursue rapprochement with the West
Based on Russian rhetoric and expecting from them self-interested actions, you might well argue that moving westward was actually more sound of strategy after 2014 than before.
Threats from NATO? Leaving aside the existence of ICMBs, NATO members having veto right about new admissions, NATO states that are already on Russian border...surely that problem was solved already by the festering wound Russia inflicted on the country.
Protection of Russians in Donbass from oppression? Given that war has cooled down substantially and annual civilian casualties reached nearly 0 by 2021, things are looking good. Worst they can be expected to do is what, properly annexxing it?
Maybe Russia wants to have Ukraine in its cultural sphere, advance their language and political influence? Surely they must realize they burned those bridges back in 2014. And it's not like attacking harder will make things better.
Basically, I think there's this 'noble savage' view of Russia/Putin in the sense that there are supposed to be totally sound, realistic, predicable motivations in the driver's seat, they're just not easy to grasp for a Westerner, but I don't believe any of it holds up or amounts to more than wishful attempts to force orderly models on a messy world.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5mo ago
I don’t care about diversity in that sense
At the risk of drawing booing, hissing and throwing of rocks I will confess that I'm super woke in this regard, and actually do care about diversity. Humanity transformed into stirred gruel of averaged out geno, pheno and culture types sounds very unappealing to my sensibilities, even if despite the numerical supermajority of Indians and Africans they somehow fail to dominate this gestalt.
Let the hundred flowers bloom, I say. The only realistic obstacle to what modern left winger would perceive as consummate planetary diversity is ironically the rejection of diversity on the local scale through self segregation and political borders - unfashionable as it is today. Interesting how through seemingly subtle tweaking of what diversity means we can arrive at dramatically different policies.
I'm aware that, to an extent, homogenization is natural in a world made smaller through technological means. With any luck, space colonization will prove a lasting obstacle to this.
I’d be perfectly happy if in 300 years nobody speaks Korean any longer
Idle curiosity: how many languages do you speak fluently?
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5mo ago
On the object level: yes, probably on average the Chinese are indeed less "creative" even with optimal incentives, and this has obvious implications at the tails
Started arguing, seemingly about Chinese HBD, leaned into some tangential points at best, non-sequiturs at worst, gave some half-baked takes about why white people suck, then unceremoniously conceded the argument. Scratching my temple wondering what was your game here
My guess is you had something pent up that might have been interesting had it been properly developed and formatted as a top level post
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr 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
5mo ago
He wants us to wonder.
If you would, during the next prayer, do use your psychic link to relay to God that Exotic_cetacean from the motte dot org is having a rather bad time with the wondering!
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5mo ago
I will note that there's quite a bit of daylight between "the country would not survive" and "abolishing these programs would be a net negative".
Ha, my bad, unnecessary rhetorical flair. Of course, this is a complex topic and big spending can be broken down and justified in any number of ways. I just had strong impression that you're from the team that says "no, it's okay to bulldoze over this fence, you just watch!", not the other one, so seeing you, in the context of this discussion, attempting to wield this weapon left me briefly disoriented.
I'm not sure I understand what would it mean exactly for qualia to be physical. Isn't it like...obviously something fundamentally distinct?
Mainstream secular stance of "conscious states trace material configurations" feels more like soft-dualism where the mind part plays the junior role, but it's still there
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