Obsidian
11mo ago
Because then you're back to giving people money and selling government services, with everything that implies (inequality, disproportionately privileging people with low time preference, etc)
Obsidian
11mo ago
It is paternalistic and egalitarian.
Obsidian
3mo ago
The main theme is about how slavery obliterates everything it comes into contact with, and specifically, the identity of the enslaved.
C. V. Gheorghiu's The 25th Hour, a whirlwind tour of European labor camps and concentration camps during World War II, also does a lot with this theme. It's fairly didactic though. His other book La Seconde Chance is a work of genius, and much better written; unfortunately it has not been translated to English.
Obsidian
3mo ago
I want to understand more about what you're working with/where you're coming from.
Obsidian
4mo ago
What aspects turned you off? I liked the political plays, the tension, the insurgency, the Mafia-style social deduction games. If you completely ignore the subplots having to do with spirituality and mysticism, it's a good show!
Obsidian
9mo ago
Meanwhile the African Americans at the Top 20% percentile of the income distribution have a higher arrest rate than white American's at the bottom 20th percentile.
Where could I find a source for this?
Obsidian
11mo ago
Look into ChatGPT plug-ins, tool-using AIs are already here and it's a matter of years before they're able to replace ~every mid-skill labor job, if not necessarily cost-effectively at first
Obsidian
4mo ago
I don't think technocracy is once-in-a-generation hard, I just think our democracies are optimizing for something entirely incompatible
Obsidian
3mo ago
It also makes such posts cattier, which is a disincentive in and of itself.
Obsidian
3mo ago
I’d say what distinguished the forum originally was more a commitment to free speech than to civility, though it had both of course.
In my mod days we experimented with keeping to a particular Overton window, above and beyond what was required to continue existing on reddit, in order to keep posters broadly comfortable. Drawing the line was frustrating and arbitrary and I hated doing it. Stuff like, don't insist on conspicuously misgendering trans posters, and don't lay 100% of the blame for any given issue on Mexicans/Jews/whatever. In any given specific situation we could have reasonably ruled in either direction, but if we'd radically committed to either free speech or civility the moderation would have become exploitable and the forum would have blown up.
Obsidian
4mo ago
I, a frog, would wish to team up with you on a peaceable separation campaign.
Federalists on either side are wretched people.
Funny, I very much experienced the "spiritual" aspects as cheap filler. They definitely set an intriguing mood, but they didn't populate it with a message.
It's vanishingly rare that we see spirituality or mysticism well done in sci-fi. The Starcraft II single-player campaign was another otherwise-decent story that was held back by poorly engaging with this. I just don't think most sci-fi writers have a connection with the divine. And godly men don't write sci-fi, mostly they write about the world they belong to.
I've been thinking that BSG with the "spiritual" bits expunged would be a much greater show. Though I'm sure something else would jump out as begging to be cut.
Obsidian
4mo ago
The devs quit way too early on that one. The learning curve is all over the place, and the horror effect lasts maybe one hour. Shame, it's such a cool game.
Obsidian
4mo ago
@FCfromSSC origin story is iconic. I relate to the terror and depression of cancellation, but I could never put it down like you did. I'd say "go on The Bailey" but that'd be missing the point.
Obsidian
4mo ago
As an independentist, what you're saying is true but irrelevant. People are fully economically illiterate, there is nothing close to a popular consciousness that we'd hurt from missing those transfers. We expect short-term economic injury from the turmoil, but that's pretty much it.
Obsidian
7mo ago
If this is done at anything less than world-ending scale, technological society will hormetically adapt to prevent future instances. It is all but hopeless.
Obsidian
5mo ago
Started the Bible (TOB translation). Integral Notes version.
It's a very busy text. I slightly regret not going with the Essential Notes version.
I tried starting Thomas Cook's 1728 translation of Hesiod's Theogony, picked at random. I'm having the opposite problem here; I'm failing to contextualize anything.
Read The World Beyond Your Head. Might get you out of your rut, might, not, either way it's interesting thought on the topic of discipline, motivation and flourishing.
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