RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
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User ID: 2051
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
20hr ago
The secret ingredient is moralism and ideology. You have to establish beforehand what a good person believes, and what only a bad person would support. This way, a leak can be dismissed as a traitor, a heretic, an inhuman monster. This can and often is substantially emergent (where IMO the term "prospiracy" is nice), but plenty of people actually know perfectly well what they're doing. Another valuable trick in the book is establishing that not only is it immoral to reveal the conspiracy, it is already immoral to even investigate. That way, a conspiracy can simultaneously recruit large numbers of people, with only very few being in on the details in practice.
I've personally seen this in action on HBD, where many geneticists think it's true, yet actively spread slander about anyone who publicly talks because they genuinely believe that revealing it would have terrible outcomes. But the basic principle is always the same, whether it's companies, cults or large-scale activism.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
20hr ago
I've made the same argument in person as well, and it's an irksome topic to be sure. Conspiracies are part of a suite of perfectly normal human behaviour, so normal that we frequently engage in it without being entirely aware, for which I've taken a liking to the term "prospiracy", when people collectively behave in a way that look from the outside like a conspiracy, but without any signs for the conspicuous, conscious communication that is necessary for a "proper" conspiracy. But even for those, once you dig deeper, you'll notice that at least a few people seem to be aware of what they're doing and communicate with each other about it, so the lines get blurry regardless.
For the decidedly implausible kind, I think that "schizo (theory)" is apt. Short and clear distinction from painting all conspiracies alike. But I think it has fallen from favour as a term ever since the left has embraced anti-ism: It sounds mean and ableist, even when employed correctly.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
6d ago
True, but if I understand correctly, these are unedited flyers merely send to the wrong people. The group in question doesn't even claim that it disagrees with the content itself?
Anti-Rep ads on the other hand usually explicitly uses a Dem framing, like the planned medicare changes: Reps say they want to make access harder to make abuse more difficult, Dems say they just hate poor people (Btw, I'm against the medicare change).
That seems qualitatively different.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
8d ago
The Bronze Age Collapse gets some attention at the moment, and there have been quite a few interesting articles on it. WiP had one contender that it simply was Iron's higher availability and the resulting decentralisation of power. But it's hard to tell because we have relatively little direction documentation, it's mostly either archeology on one hand and indirect, mostly mythologized centuries-later stories on the other. These are IMO among the most interesting periods, just enough info to make informed guesses instead mere idle speculation.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
10d ago
What's the goal state for the war exactly? I have a hard time believing that the Africans get their shit together to a sufficient degree so as to cross the Mediterranean, dominate the air and systematically decimate the cities through bombing campaigns, let alone land and conquer in Europe. But at the same time, the insanely lopsided area and population size differences, together with often extremely difficult terrain, make it hard to believe that Europe stands a chance at conquering the whole of Africa in a meaningful way. Even if such a war somehow came to begin, and one side tried to conquer the other, my guess would be a quick stall somewhere early. Maybe the Europeans conquer parts of North Africa, but then struggle to advance past the Sahara. But most likely not even that.
Edit: Also, what's the international help situation supposed to be like? Africa is utterly dependent on outside help to survive, and large parts of that come from (modern) Europe.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
11d ago
All the easily accessible oil, coal, and metals would be used up. So once technology was lost, there'd be no way to restart it. A few million people would live on the ruins of a vast civilization, like the Dark Age barbarians who turned Roman amphitheaters into quarries.
But that's not how it works, certainly not for metals. The Dark Age barbarians used amphitheaters as Quarries precisely because those were so easily accessible. They lost the technological sophistication to support the kind of a large-scale system to build Amphitheaters, but jump-starting civilization from a trash-heap is imo most likely easier, not harder, than doing so from scratch.
There are resources that genuinely get used up like fossil fuel, yes, but since these are to my knowledge all about energy-generation, I'm quite hopeful that this will take so long that we will have a near-endless list of alternative energy sources, even if those may be less efficient pound-for-pound.
While I'm generally in the camp of having as little "smart" appliances as possible due to the obvious problems with hacking, currently I'm curious about going entirely the other way: IF your appliance is already smart anyway, why not run an oversight AI whose sole job is verifying that the appliance runs as intended and which just stops any weird behaviour like the extended defrosting here? Surely some companies will find a way to fuck this up and make the AI itself hackable, but at least in principle this would obviate the need to patch every possible exploit or weakness; As long as the AI is unaffected, it can just overrule obvious nonsense.
And you can go even further, at least once costs have crashed far enough: Imagine each AI just building a custom codebase for its particular appliance, which they only minimally expose to the outside, so that not only are no exploits reusable, even just finding exploits is a completely uneconomical Hacking Blind nightmare.
The future is going to be fucking weird, and scary.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
21d ago
I knocked out 3 suitors within a month of dating each because they didn't meet the bare minimum to me, and then once there was a guy who did meet the minimum, I went all in. Don't regret it for a minute.
I'll just say that this is IMO the way in general, regardless of being a man or woman. "Compatibility" is extremely overrated; You can make yourself compatible, and your partner can make themselves compatible, if necessary. Ideally, you find a way to split the difference. And most importantly, the process of finding ways to be more compatible is itself building a more stable kind of love than mere horny "love" at first sight.
What matters is whether the other person has the potential and the will to dedicate themselves to you. That's it, the rest is up to you, all left is doing the work.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
21d ago
Am I the only one who thinks it's no accident that Marcus Aurelius was literally the last of both the five good emperors AND the Pax Romana? He was the Merkel of Rome, a compelling and competent but fundamentally short-termist manager. He completely failed at imparting his ideology on his own son, who became an indisputably bad emperor. His reforms were largely centered around welfare and disadvantaged groups, a laudable goal, but not conducive to the long-term functioning of the state.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
25d ago
Several people have tried outing Arday before and had scurried away after pressure from his university, from lawyers Arday hired, from activist groups like Unia, or from courts after complaints were filed with them. Now the same groups are actually going through with trying to crush the guy who actually uncovered it, as opposed to merely threatening to crush people who investigated Arday, and your reaction is ... this?
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
27d ago
I used to think this as well, but nowadays I think it is not only wrong, but literally the opposite of reality, i.e. the tabooing of slut-shaming has made it much easier for predators to victimize more women.
The key point to realize about "sluttiness" is that it overwhelmingly describes a women who willingly puts herself into situations where it would be easy for men to take advantage of her. If you're a woman who mostly socializes with people she knows well, who goes everywhere with friends and acquaintances, who rarely gets drunk or otherwise blasted and if she does, only with close friends, who is only flirty if she has serious interest, who only has sex once in an actual relationship, and so on, then it is extremely hard for a predator to take advantage of you. If such a women makes an allegation, it will be taken serious even in a slut-shaming society.
On the other hand, if you get drunk in a club full of strangers, you're flirty with many of them, and you already had clearly consensual casual sex with one of them, you are easy prey. If I'm your friend, I can't protect you if I'm not present. Even if I'm around as a benevolent stranger, I lack critical information to discern whether you simply like whatever happens, or whether you got unduly pressured.
Modern "slutty" culture is basically optimized for two things: 1) Giving predators easy access to hapless women, and b) taking away any and all responsibility from women. Arguably, the former is merely the result of the latter. There is a reason "male feminist" has the connotations it has.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
27d ago
People frequently did do something about it, up to and including killing the rapist soldiers. Generally speaking, officers/generals who kept their soldiers from raping conquered women have often been portrayed as positive.
They also frequently didn't do anything about it, but AFAIK it has been a point of contention in many cultures. Definitionally, nobody can keep the conquerors from doing what they want in the moment (that's the whole point of conquering!), so the only thing you can do is portray benevolent conquerors heroically, and cruel conquerors negatively after-the-fact.
IMO the key difference to today is that it was overwhelmingly seen as one vice among many, not as that singular horrible crime that overrules anything else.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
27d ago
My main gripe with arguments along these lines is that they're basically cope. "From the vantage point of the past" doesn't matter. From the PoV of the Aztecs, we are colossally fucking up. But who cares? The same goes, to a lesser degree, for catholic social conservatives.
The reality remains, the average young man is attracted to the average young women in a way that is not reciprocated. For literally all my acquaintances who are or were single for a sustained period of time, the problem was always that in their peer group, the single women do not judge the single men as worth it. The men are single because they got rejected; The women were single because they are rejecting.
Just to be clear, I even think the argument is largely correct! With the benefit of being a father and family man who has no interest in dating ever again, it seems obvious to me that most young modern women have an inflated image of self-worth, an excessively negative view of young men, and a serious problem with even just acknowledging that any perspective but their own might matter. And, to be further clear, the men aren't great, either; They're merely not worse.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
1mo ago
In the shining light of the future, there is only utilitarianism. No other moral system could keep up with the overwhelming assault of pure logic. There are only a few minor disagreements over the details that need to be kinked out by humanity (or rather, agentry, we don't want to be humanist here!) ...
This is a 4X strategy game set in the far future with mechanically extremely different factions. These factions are:
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The God King, a utility monster (or at least he thinks he is one). The most normal faction, since the God King deems himself a classical monarch, liking monarchy and doing monarchy things. Humans and many other free intelligent life forms like living in his domain because the God King is mostly unconcerned with them and their happiness, he demands only a relatively small yearly tithe and leaves them alone.
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The Adelstein Locusts, an engineered insect-based bioweapon optimized to have the lowest possible intelligence while still being capable of feeling happiness. They are sturdy to almost all imaginable hazards, feel no pain, and take immense pleasure from scouring the galaxy for biomass and replicating, which they do asexually, to avoid divergence from their initial design. Their maker, the eponymous Adelstein, has long been eaten himself, enough biomass to create millions of his Locusts, which was the outcome he considered most desirous to begin with.
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The Benatarians, AI lifeforms who feel nothing. They have concluded that real life has too much capacity for great pain, and decided that all intelligent life has to be sterilized, put in stasis and wireheaded into a much better virtual life. Their ultimate goal is to wipe it out entirely without pain.
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The agento tortor, a virus-based bioweapon that spreads itself with even just minor contact and re-wires intelligence into enjoying even the greatest depravities. They murder, abuse and torture everyone and everything they come into contact with, which may be a small amount of temporary pain, but should they manage to spread everywhere, pain will not be possible anymore!
Couldn't help it with Adelstein's latest banger at making utilitarianism sound as bad as possible. Other ideas for factions?
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
1mo ago
The thing I'm most looking forward to are 4X games getting okay LLM AI by default. Doesn't even need to be great, just passable; So many 4X games are imo unplayable beyond the first few playthroughs bc the AIs are just completely dysfunctional.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
1mo ago
I've somewhat noticed that as well, but that "Historical European Martial Arts" are woke is so weird on its face. You'd think that it might be full of RETVRN types, or at least chill conservatives. But nope. I guess it's just too far from anything practical, so it appeals almost only to the neuro-atypical, which are very disproportionally woke.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
1mo ago
For one, I found the interviews with the female jurors unsettling. Presumably, they are not exceptionally selected. I agree we all should discount crazy online opinions we hear.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
1mo ago
I think I already told you this, but in case not, you really need to get away from wherever you, ASAP. You're miserable, and all your encounters with the (un-)fair sex sound unhinged.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
1mo ago
Putting all the other crazy things about this trial beside, I can't understand why she is even going with a defense at all. If I had done what she did, I'd want to be dead. I'd long for death. Sure enough, she did try killing herself.
Because of this, I can't really shake off thinking that painless MAID is the the solomonic solution here; If she did do it during a psychotic break and now genuinely regrets it, she deserves the release from her unfathomable pain. If not, death is perfectly appropriate as well. It literally doesn't matter.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
1mo ago
I'd like to stick with non-local models at first, since it's otherwise very convenient. It really feels like working with a personal artist. But yeah, that's an option for the future.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
1mo ago
I've been wondering about how to go about it the right way. Thankfully I'm not in the situation to need it, but maybe once I'm older?
In any case, having kids has also been a blessing to get into contact with more people that I'd otherwise not associate with, but who nevertheless are disproportionally very nice and functional, but it's obviously not easy to replicate.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
1mo ago
This might fit better on sunday, but it's not sunday, and the topic is mostly for fun anyway, so here it goes. Who here generates images/comics with AI? What are you using/recommending?
I'm currently trying to generate a small comic book. The idea is, every time we watch a movie or series together and my daughter sees someone do something that would be a bad idea IRL, she says that's dumb, and she would just stay home and eat cookies (or whatever else is appropriate for the situation; In another movie, she basically just said she wouldn't save the princess, bc she got into the mess through her own stupidity).
So as a gift, maybe for christmas or birthday, I thought about making a short picture book titled "[daughter] doesn't go adventuring", where on every side there is a different well-known story, with my daughter as the main char, and she just refuses about everything in a blunt, matter-of-fact way. There's gotta be some small twist somewhere I'm not sure about yet though, otherwise it's going to be to boring.
But unfortunately I'm hitting a roadblock much earlier. Namely, the (chatgpt for now) AI is extremely trigger-happy to block pic gen for popular movies and the like in anything even just approaching the original artstyle. It only seems to work for the super-generic AI style that I don't want to use. I'm currently trying some workarounds, but it's tedious and seems to involve first starting with an original image and then progressively moving that into the desired direction with very specific prompts like "crisp inked outlines", "flatter color palette" and "simplified background".
Also, even after modification, it's recognizably AI drawn, but that is fine by me for now.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
1mo ago
Strongly recommend long war as well, for both games.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
1mo ago
Interesting, my wife is a city girl and I'm a country boy. We met in the middle and now live in a medium size city. But both of us miss our respective backgrounds.
That said, she has also mentioned big cities feeling increasingly hectic.
For some yes, but one of my PhD supervisors who is otherwise not shy to get into fights has, after a pint in private at the pub, all but explicitly said that he thinks the public is simply not ready. To him, the average person is really bad at parsing statistical average differences as anything but "is better than", the worst racists will feel vindicated, it's just going to result in a lot of unfair discrimination, and it's not even clear if that discrimination will be strictly speaking irrational. I may not entirely agree with him, but I 100% believe that he believes this.
And one part where I've not quite changed, but let's say expanded, my mind on is how bad zealots can be depending on ideologies. I'm convinced the same kind of person who used to mindlessly support the Nazis in the 30s (or the communists in the USSR), has been mindlessly supporting the left in western countries since ca the 70s. It's a person that thinks in black and white extremes and can't handle anything but simple moralistic tales, who is always looking for scapegoats.
This may seem like a terrible indictment of them as people, and it mostly is, but it also means that we've successfully "defused" them, since the left of that time simply wasn't that bad in comparison. Getting them into campaigns for LGBT rights, environmental protections or animal right of some stupid spotty owl or whatever other issue impacting 0.1% of people was actually kind of a good deal. What we really need to avoid is that these people switch again to a murderous ideology, whether far right or far left. The problem is they've been steadily moving towards the murderous far left, and there seems to be no way to hold them in check which doesn't also involve empowering the far right. But they'll never go away, only ever get into different ideologies.
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