MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
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User ID: 1783
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
11d ago
Assuming our current understanding of physics holds, much of this doesn’t matter. If there are Taelons 100 million ly away from us, it is highly unlikely they’d care about us. We don’t have anything they don’t already have. So hiding makes no sense — it would take them millions of years to get here, for no gain. You can find most of the material in our solar system in thousands of other places much closer to the alien planets and can extract them without having to mess with people or other animals.
And from the other end, it’s all speculative. The aliens are undoubtedly weirder than we can possibly imagine, and our views on culture and government are largely based on our own history. And I’m not sure what these aliens have to do with AI. Maybe they solved the alignment issue, or maybe they destroyed all their AI and have been huffing Spice. They might have stalled on on technology before AGI. We don’t know anything and frankly can’t know anything. We found some odd chemical signatures, that’s it. Trying to pointlessly speculate on what this means for the future of space travel, propulsion, AGI, or alien human relationships is premature in my view. This might be something interesting, but it might not.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
11d ago
I would argue that they absolutely are following incentives. The close-knit and shame-based culture in which having a reputation as a good person is necessary to do well in life simply changes the incentive landscape to promote pro-social behavior. If I can lose face and thus lose out on opportunities that would otherwise come your way if you were doing the right thing.
Now the part you quoted I was actually talking about American society in which everyone is highly mobile and atomized and in which you aren’t shamed for being anti-social. In America, even if someone found out you keep the wallet, you don’t face the prospect of having that information follow you around. You don’t develop a reputation because you aren’t likely to stay in the same place and do the same job around the same people. And honestly the fact the the Japanese have so many words for people who do bad things kinda supports my idea here. Social shaming works to promote pro-social be happy especially when a person is rooted in a community long enough to develop a reputation.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
12d ago
I think it’s at least somewhat true. What modern technological society tends to do is uproot deeper communities. Modern societies are often highly individualized, and often uprooted from traditional culture and extended families. And I think the destruction of those things tend to create a lack of empathy in society. In a traditional society, most people are friends, family or acquaintances— people you’d know by name and greet on the streets. Any decision you made you knew was going to either help or hurt the community you actually lived in. And it does make a difference. If I make the choice to lay people off and I work in that factory and live in that town, it’s impossible for me to completely remove myself from the human side of the equation because I’ve actually met the people about to lose their jobs. Maybe they go to my church, maybe my wife plays cards with his wife, maybe I just pass him on the streets, and I worked with him. He’s a human.
And in most discussion of war crimes and the like one of the first things done is to dehumanize the subjects of abuse. They aren’t real people, they don’t have families or needs or wants. Except that especially in the high up positions in society where those decisions are made, we’ve sort of accidentally dehumanized people in our own society through abstraction. The person deciding to lay people off at a factory he’s never been to and in a country he can’t find on a map only sees them as numbers on a spreadsheet. They aren’t depriving a human of a means of supporting themselves and their families, they’re reducing headcount. It’s impersonal, sterilized of any thought that you’re the cause of human suffering. And a lot of decisions made at the top end up working that way. If you’re fighting a war, you do it by drone and aircraft and long range missiles, not stabbing someone with a sword. Make hurting people distant and done at the push of a button and there’s no pause to think about it.
The other thing is that our relationships are shallower. We have a loneliness epidemic in America where very few people have a close friend (someone they can rely upon to help them and who they’d likewise help if they were in serious trouble). Most people have moved away from family and maybe only see siblings and cousins a couple of times a year. This doesn’t help develop empathy and might make people more comfortable dehumanizing other people. If you’re only talking through the screen and rarely close to other people, it’s easy to dismiss the other person.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
12d ago
I think like all things, the dose makes the poison here. The modern diet has so much processed food and sugar in it that it’s a toxin in that high amount. We probably eat and drink more sugar in a day or two than a farmer in 1500 would have consumed in a month.
I have some observations that support the idea that modern flavors are hyper palatable and probably not only encourage overeating at the time, but also make a normal human diet unappealing. I don’t think olive oil and water actually do anything, my personal suggestion is to simply eat bland unprocessed foods until you get used to tasting the subtle flavors of normal foods.
I think the same is true of entertainment— if you don’t do the hyper-stimulating games and tv shows and so on and just do things that people would have done in 1900 you’ll find books, magazines, board and card games, and radio dramas just as interesting as video gaming.
Hyper stimulation is a real phenomenon and I think it’s generally good to occasionally “fast” from those things, and learn to slow down and get back closer to the kind of lifestyle that was normal for most of human history.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
12d ago
Even if none of that is true, you’re also dealing with the added costs associated with outsourcing child-rearing. Daycare generally costs enough that the second income doesn’t go as far as it would on paper.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
12d ago
I think you’re correct that it’s a selfishness problem more so than a trust problem (the trust problem is developing as a response to the selfishness problem. And I think the cause or at least a major cause of selfishness has little to do with government, but more to do with atomization.
Communities, civic pride, and rootedness in a place have all declined rather rapidly over the course of the last 50 or so years. People don’t stick around the same places, the don’t keep the same jobs, they don’t form deep lasting relationships with people around them. And without a sense of tribe, a lot of pro-social behaviors don’t make sense. Why return a lost wallet when it belongs to someone you don’t know, and you’re not going to get social credit for doing the right thing anyway? Why not cheat Red Lobster? Do you know the owner? Do you worry that friends and neighbors will notice you cheating the system? Even if they do, what social control is there that they could leverage to shame you? Or on the negative end, who in your area knows or cares if you never contribute to society? If you decide to do nothing but game and eat? Who’s going to shame you for being a burden on your family or the government?
The thing that jumps out at me about the so-called high trust societies is the degree of social conformity and shaming that happens in them. There’s a shame to not working hard in those societies, but it’s not the theoretical “grind-core” thing like we have, it’s people you work with (and might work with for decades) noticing that you leave early all the time. Or noticing that you’re not producing as much as they are. In social relationships, they’re close enough that you’ll be shamed if you do something that the society sees as wrong. And the informal social credit system works pretty well most of the time, producing the kinds of pro-social behaviors we actually want. If you want divorces to go down, having a lot of negativity around getting a divorce AND having a network of people willing to gossip and shame you for getting a divorce keeps most people together.
I think shame works for the most part, and the loss of it makes trust-breaking a much more rational decision than it would be in a shaming culture.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
14d ago
The settlers are far right religious extremist so I don’t really see much surprising in the video at all. They’re a small portion of the country, but a fairly large part of the Likud Party base. Personally, I think most of the Gaza overkill wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the settlers. They’ve been fairly open about wanting to settle in Gaza, in fact I’ll have to find the interview again but one of the settler leaders was a woman who works in real estate, and obviously stands to make a lot of money once Gaza is open for settlement. Bibi doesn’t go after them because they’re his base.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
15d ago
I think the self domestication is clear in history. In Europe, interactions were tightly controlled, free speech and action were often curtailed by elites and power structures that could kill those who went to far out of line. The Church killed heretics and the state killed the non compliant for centuries leaving behind a population that had survived both. And thus knew how to behave. Asia has a similar history of social control via Confucian culture— your actions were tightly controlled and outliers didn’t make it very far.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
15d ago
Vetting happened for the most part because your first interaction with the person was not a date.
Pre-app, the dating pool was restricted to two groups: people you knew personally and who were in your personal social circle, and friends of friends who were introduced by those friends to you. Yes in 1910 the parents were involved deeply, but really, even if they aren’t, it’s hard to bypass the vetting process of having to become known to the person you want to date in person before actually asking her out. My parents met in college on a date arranged by their friends. My grandfather sat behind my grandma in elementary school. The vetting was that you could observe them in lots of social contexts before deciding to date them. You’d go to the same school and likely the same church. You’d see him out and about on the streets. If he yelled at store clerks, you or someone in your circle would know about it.
The difference between that situation and an app, to me explain the exact reason why modern dating sucks for both parties. You’re not dating someone you know, and the only information available is either public records or information on his very curated social media feeds. Other than that, you’re going by looks. It’s super easy for a jerk to thrive in an environment where he cannot be held to account for his previous actions.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
16d ago
I’m gonna sort of disagree on the causes, and I think it’s a misunderstanding of how powerful things like culture and education are. I don’t think it’s a cabal deliberately trying to create divisions, but I do think the cathedral is.
Just to take your Islam example. The cathedral wants them accepted because they need worker drones and Muslim immigrants are it. Having other people rag on them for being different is bad for business and national Stability. There’s a lot of ways to go about making Islam less dangerous-seeeming. Put Muslims on TV as good people, or victims. Don’t educate people on what the religion is really like, don’t teach people about the Hadiths especially the violent ones. And add in the culture memes of diversity and inclusion and religion not being a serious thing, and you’ve got kids who think they can simply try out Islam.
I don’t necessarily agree that the right is nihilistic. I think the left has some of those tendencies, but not really on the right. The Benedict Option isn’t nihilistic in the least, in fact the main conceit of the BO is exactly that the white Christian community is worth sacrificing to save. A nihilist would look at a culture like ours not aligned with the good life and not care about it. They wouldn’t care if John decides to become Jill because it doesn’t matter, it’s another life choice in a sea of other unimportant life choices. Nihilism means nothing matter so do what you want to do.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
17d ago
That’s not surprising. Games are on streaming services and rarely on network TV. Going to a ballgame is expensive for families— somewhere between 150-200 dollars to attend a game and get a snack and a drink. Even youth baseball is harder to access, it’s mostly select teams after first or second grade. All of this means kids aren’t watching as much baseball as they used to.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
18d ago
I’m reading Hyperion right now. I find the first story — the priest who had to basically crucify himself to finally die — the kind of science fiction that makes me think a bit.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
18d ago
Even then people can and do learn. And I don’t see why people assume that computer and network issues are that much more complicated to learn than any other security or safety concerns for anything else you might do or use. People can be taught this stuff. We managed to learn electrical safety and gas safety and safe driving and thousands of other problems that came along with new technology.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
18d ago
I think it’s a distinction without much of a difference. Security in IOT is safety from crime and hacking and so on. The point being that because of the fact that people learned about those features and why they were important, people did due diligence on making sure that those features were in the cars they bought. Sure some poorer people had to do without airbags in the early 1990s, but that was a cost issue.
I still think that it’s better to educate and demand due filling simply because the law moves much too slowly to keep up with technology and even then people making the rules often have no idea what the dangers are or how the things being regulated actually work. Having an octogenarian who has trouble with emails try to anticipate the issues of an IOT camera in your kids bedroom isn’t going to work well. Teaching parents to make sure their devices have strong password protection, good encryption, and virus protection is easier and would keep up with the field.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
18d ago
I’m gonna agree here. We haven’t had a situation like this since the civil war — both sides absolutely believe that the nation will be in grave danger if their guy doesn’t win. They’re not going to simply cower in the corner and do nothing when they believe that the country’s future is in the balance. There’s a not insignificant number of people on the left who believe that Trump is Hitler with a bad combover, and likewise a substantial number or people on the right who believe that Biden is a Mao or Stalin. Furthermore, the belief on both sides that the election is being manipulated in various ways creates even more tension as the losers can absolutely believe that the president in question cheated.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
22d ago
I mean ideally people should be aware of the issues around network security to the point of being able to make reasonable decisions on whether a given networking device is safe to use much like they do every day with other devices and vehicles and activities. No one looking at a lot full of cars doesn’t make sure the car has airbags and seatbelts and antilock brakes. That’s not a super deep understanding of automotive technology, it’s pretty basic. And in home network security I think you should know enough to look for the basic security features. I wouldn’t buy a networked baby monitor that didn’t have at minimum password protection and encryption. I’m not an expert but I know enough to know that unencrypted information can be viewed by anyone with the appropriate receiver and that a device not protected by a fairly strong password is open to hacking. I think people are treating PNP devices differently than they treat other similar devices. It’s not that they are incapable of due diligence, it’s that they see computer devices and the systems around them as too complex to understand. They aren’t.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
22d ago
I think a big problem that has come up for IOT products is that they’re much more common than they were in the 1990s and are often connected to critical infrastructure either for private homes or to cameras inside the home. It might not have mattered how hack able a system attached to a dorm refrigerator is when it counts the beers removed and orders more. It’s not a well known system in 1998, and even if someone got into it, the worst that you could do is either change the program to never order beer, or maybe order a lot of beer. Attach the same system to 100,000 homes and have it use your credit card to order food from Amazon and you have a lot of actual damage you can do. You can steal credit cards. You can order stuff and have the address changed to your address. You can muck with whatever system it’s using to order from Amazon. Connect an automated door lock on a dorm room that can be opened by smartphone isn’t as dangerous as the same system on the doors of a business or government building.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
23d ago
Is fuentes encouraging people to move to the country and form a community? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him saying something like that. I wouldn’t have a problem with people advocating that they and people like them form close knit communities in the country and adopt whatever they consider to be the ideal lifestyle. I’d only really object to people imposing that lifestyle on other people.
I’m not even convinced language revivals in such isolated communities is as hard as you think. The issue is getting enough fluency that the next generation is raised speaking that language, rather than speaking the language of the broader culture.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
23d ago
This might be true, but for most non-humanity majors, they have a degree that signals a marketable skill and therefore they can often get a job that pays decently enough without the need to go and take a second degree to avoid working at Starbucks or something. Humanities don’t teach you skills businesses need or want. And on the art end, it’s almost anti-career skills. Nobody will ever ask you to write a screenplay or make an oil painting in an office. At least the psych degree requires researching and producing reports, often presenting findings to the public or peers.
The other negative of an artist is that quite often they don’t understand just how unlikely success is in their field and thus some will spend a decade or more “trying to make it” and keeping a low wage job that doesn’t make demands on their “art”. I know a guy who was still spending hundreds every month booking himself studio time to make cds of his music into his thirties. He’d spend time on the weekends playing gigs for free as well. Everyone knew he was wasting his life on this — he’d never actually have a career even as a local artist. But at the same time, he wasn’t moving forward in an actual career until well into his thirties.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
23d ago
I don’t see why that would be. I find a lot to admire about heredi Jews, the Amish, Mennonites, and other similar groups. I think as a model for forming stronger communities these groups while different share common features that could be easily adapted to creating enclaves of traditional culture for those who wants that. The secret sauce seems to be a strict set of community rules, dress and sometimes language that differs from the mainstream, and a focal point in religious beliefs and practices.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
24d ago
I think we’ve by and large started yaslighting because of mistaken notions like being nonjudgmental and being supportive. In short, being polite, thus defaulting to whatever media and friends put out in the culture. Telling a kid that his art sucks hurts him and makes you feel like a mean person. Telling him how few people make it in professional art feels mean. And especially in the USA, being nice and polite no matter what harm may come from it is the norm, no matter what the consequences are. I don’t see this as true kindness because it’s often a lie that will eventually come to hurt that person as they make very expensive mistakes or otherwise give up on things they might want. Truth is freeing, and knows that the hobby isn’t going to feed them on the outset is going to allow them to make better choices.
Regarding the hobby-as-career thing, the culture is pushing it in large measure because the older contract isn’t true anymore. Any old job doesn’t give you even a working class life, raises are pitiful, and the cost of living is climbing. One way to keep people from rebelling is to subtly change the contract in the mind of the public. Don’t think about your job in terms of money, think about your job as a calling something that you were born to do. Then you won’t ask for the money or at least not as much.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
24d ago
I don’t see resigning as a good answer here. If you resign you are personally absolved from having to make the decisions that will come up, and also unable to guide the response. It’s a cowardly way out. You know what will happen, you know what it likely means for history on both sides. You just don’t want your personal name on it.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
25d ago
I would consider a different possibility. These people may or may not be in therapy, I don’t know. But the normalization of therapy, and the normalization of therapy speak is that people are less likely to shame or punish bad behavior when the person doing it is suffering from mental illness. So a lot of people use this to their advantage just like people use minority status or being the son of an executive. Being seen that way is used to engage in bad behavior without having to pay a real price for it.
I do think therapy in wider society and therapy when the person isn’t severely mentally ill can be a problem, but I don’t see that as what is happening here. These people seem to know exactly what they’re doing, and they use therapy as a protection against people calling them out on their behavior.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
25d ago
I don’t think it does. You can actually grow your own food. And you can make black bean burgers and so on or cook with chickpeas or something.
I think they have. Aliens are given either by technology or by psychic powers the abilities of former polytheistic gods. They can create wonders in the heavens, they can gift us ideas and technology and revelations. And because they have an aura of the scientific about them, even things that we know make little sense get brushed aside because they’re advanced.
And like everything else, it’s used by people with something to gain from the belief. Space agencies and astronomers and astrophysicists use aliens to get funding. The military uses them to hide black projects. History channel gets views by claiming that every weird text in sacred books is really about aliens. It’s a cheap trick but it works where credulous talk of angels, gods, demons, fairies, and orcs would be mocked and dismissed as crazy talk. I find it rather instructive to mentally substitute “angels” in places where people are talking about aliens. Most of the time the story sounds insane at that point, almost exactly like a religion.
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