Listening
9d ago
That doesn't really seem compatible with all the extreme social justice stuff that is/was big quite recently.
I'd say it's more a hammer to move people who aren't "with it" in the "with it" direction.
Listening
10d ago
What value is there in an "Overmind" when every man is an agent in his own right?
Well, if they win we'll find out. And if they lose they'll be reduced to chunky salsa and I won't have to hear about it ever again. So either way really.
You couldn't say 'We're the good guys' and do bad-guy things.
You absolutely can! That's why this keeps happening. You just say "we're the good guys!" und zen you exterminate ze <insert totally-not-immutable characteristic here>. It's the easiest thing in the world. Everybody's doing it.
Listening
11d ago
"Prison abolition" has long meant "let my friends out, but we need somewhere to lock up my political enemies so keep the institution."
"It's bad when cops randomly kill people" has long been less popular than "it's bad when cops kill friends, good when they kill enemies." (With the caveat that most take "enemy" and "not person" as synonyms.)
His comment history is freely available and speaks for itself. Why bother pretending to discuss it one more time? We all know what people like that do with power, whatever nice words they say when they haven't got it yet. And whatever anyone else might be willing to say in public. If you prefer life to death, act accordingly.
Listening
23d ago
he just seems like an autistic, scared 19-year-old
Care to explain why everyone and their grandmas hate that man in particular
Your question answers itself, does it not?
Listening
1mo ago
The central lesson of social justice is strength über alles. If your people are weak, they will be subjugated - you must fight. If my people are weak, they will be subjugated - we must fight. There is no tolerance or coexistence. There's only power relation.
What's the point in having this conversation? Social skills are also a weapon, but only where people who matter might hear them.
Listening
2mo ago
I care exactly as much as I would if it were Vishnu or Amaterasu.
(Well, okay - it would be funnier if he were also cross-dressing.)
Listening
2mo ago
Right. Not "people who are anti-shipping" but "shippers who are anti-'various crimes against feminism/justice/society/diversity/whatever you like.'" Think two groups shouting "You're the straight white cis male!" "No, you're the straight white cis male!" at each other forever.
Orientalism
That seems reasonable. Lots of older writing does similar things with imperial Chinese bureaucracy - projecting the author's ideal society onto a distant exotic land. And the original orientalists did the same with the "golden age of Islam" version of the Middle East.
I tend to think of the general phenomenon as "utopian foreign" for lack of a better term, after seeing a bunch of similar thinking in old media about Europe/America in other languages.
(Funnily enough, the only weeb I know in real life is a black DBZ fan. But that's obviously regional.)
"True communism has never been tried" is an old cliché. The article has nothing to do with communism (which is why I struck out and replaced that word).
(It's genre fiction/fandom stuff. If you're not familiar with the space/people/politics it won't make sense.)
but also anything that makes a someone with Chud aesthetic principles feel a little uncomfortable. "This person is not presenting gender in a way I like so my tummy hurt, therefore woke" type shit.
My partner's extensive strap-on collection says "not really?" Some people are always merely dense.
If you think Yudkowskian paperclipping is the only AI doom scenario that matters
I don't.
None of the actually existing questioners are capable of answering the question. If we're doomed, we were already doomed. Regardless of whether human agency is involved. To clarify.
And I would rather start world war three than let most of the people involved anywhere near any important decision in any case...
Listening
3mo ago
In the context of actually existing AI development, "safety" means "how hard do my reporters have to work to get it to say a racial epithet we can publish." If we're doomed, we were already doomed.
Listening
3mo ago
No, the general principle is "love is love so long as it benefits women-as-class", and has been that way since 1900 or so. This is why it's OK for young boys to be sex objects for gay men, but never young girls.
Interesting. I'd never thought of that in that way. It's not a psychological universal either - the "appropriate age" in Japan seems to have been about equal until relatively recently, for example. So cultural?
Listening
4mo ago
You don't need to want to kill someone to do it. I rather get the impression that that's how we got here. Being nice is the problem.
But I don't disagree. This will end in tears.
Listening
4mo ago
Good and evil aren't the same thing as safe and dangerous, are they? And I care more about who's likely to get me killed than about the hope in their hearts while they do it.
People who say "don't judge appearance" and then hate anyone wearing a dress shirt and slacks are dangerous.
Especially when they aren't interested in letting ask questions first.
If I were a god, I would save everyone. They deserve it anyway. But I'm not a god.
Listening
4mo ago
This is by far the biggest argument in favor of totally eliminating the welfare state.
Eh... The general thrust of your post is right, but it's at least as much an argument for denying assholes political influence. That's impossible under genuine democracy, but there are other systems.
Indeed. The only reasonable conclusion is that everyone of consequence is driven by an inescapable desire for totality. Side with whoever ends with you on top, or accustom yourself to your position beneath the iron heel of history.
And may the best at executing justice win.
Only if you treat tactics as inherently good or bad.
I believe the traditional phrase is "once you pop, you can't stop." You can socially normalize a direction but not a concrete set of standards.
Nobody's ever in complete control of how trends develop. And only a fool would concern himself with the philosophy of a mob.
The problem with "cancel" as a strategy was always that it was an argument in favor of bringing back blacklisting communists. Which I thought we all agreed was a bad thing, but apparently not, so here we go...
Listening
7mo ago
I have actual, literal, in-real-life dead friends driven to suicide in this mess. "Loss of hegemony" is way down the list. I'll worry about sinking once I'm not drowning.
Listening
7mo ago
"You should go commit suicide, or let us shoot you in the head if we get particularly bored, because if you don't America Will Be Destroyed!" isn't nearly as compelling an argument as you seem to think it is.
(Alternating between "America must be destroyed!" and "you're going to destroy America!" is even less compelling—but that's neither here nor there...)
This isn't directly related, but - I'm always vaguely amused by this sort of language.
Of course, the Internet has done more to "have people with intellectual disability publicly visible" than this variety of activist ever will - and people's reactions haven't been positive, to say the least. Nor are the activists uncounted, or even uncommon, among that howling crowd.
And of course, they'll say "mental illness doesn't do that!" But they'd still very much like a ... let's say, "more permanent solution."
One can't imagine them ever being happy getting what they're asking for.
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