SSCReader
25d ago
/* Don't @me, you know it's a safe assumption on this issue!
I'm confused because the answer to your question seems to be no, it did not take urban liberal Jewish lawyers to deploy it, because the lawyer in question seems to be a Catholic black latina? Whom you quoted. You don't need to make an assumption at all!
SSCReader
2mo ago
To many religious types, embodied action is a type of prayer.
and yet I can act without prayer. I can build a church without praying about it. The question is does prayer add anything to the action. Is a church built by an atheist stone mason, paid for by the church in any way different than one where the mason is moved by prayer? What ACTUALLY changes? You still have a church one way or another, a church built under material principles, of engineering and physics. Will prayer put a roof in place absent material action? Because material action can put the roof in place absent prayer. And that is the issue that must be overcome if you want to go back to a less materialist world.
In reference to the dragons and monsters, I've never seen one, never met anyone who claims to have. I'd submit that even if they were forced to a different plane (and allowing their existence in the first place of course), the direct threat they pose is much less. If as you say they must now act in ways where they cannot be observed or proven, then that in and of itself has reduced their threat massively.
Indeed, that was the whole idea of the Imperial "Truth" in 40K. The Emperor knew that the warp gods existed, but his plan was to spread "Enlightenment" such that the warp would become what he told his followers it was. So that the threat posed was much reduced EVEN if it meant the odd threat would happen and not be understood, the amount of threats would be near zero. Now of course that plan failed, because half his "kids" got corrupted by said warp entities. But there is a timeline with no Erebus where it succeeds and the lie becomes the truth.
If instead of dragons eating people every day, but people know what they are, dragons only eat someone once a year, but people write it off as an accident or an unexplained event, then the risk posed is still much less than before.
In other words if monsters and demons are real and all the enlightenment did was force them to another realm where they had to act indirectly and with more effort, then that is arguably a huge improvement, even if no-one now understands the true nature of those demons. And reversing that course would be a disaster for humanity.
So if you really believe that reality is created by our beliefs then this is a massive Chesterton's Fence. Should you tear down the protections enacted, just because you are unhappy with the fact people now don't believe in angels and demons? Are you sure going back to where people will think into existence gods and demons and angels is better? Sure, maybe we are more spiritual, but is that actually a good thing?
SSCReader
7mo ago
As an update and as expected it is now confirmed the connection of HS2 to Manchester will now be cancelled. Not that it was any huge predictive power of mine, and I was certainly not alone in my cynicism, but I predicted this near 13 years ago. It was always the weakest link in the plan and any cost increase along with the government always being south facing was going to be its end. When a major local authority (not Crewe) in the Midlands (that I used to work for) reached out to me to ask for advice with putting a proposal together to lobby for HS2 to run through their largest city, I told them, that I would not advise spending much on the campaign as the chances were it would never come to fruition in the first place, and even if it did it was unlikely their bid would be successful logistically. Regrettably I think they ended up spending a significant amount on said campaign regardless.
I'll go on record to predict that the promise of upgrading existing transportation infrastructure in the area using "every penny" saved by scrapping HS2 over the next decade will also almost certainly not come true either.
You could feel that his options are tightly constrained by his thin majority in the House and his opponents holding Senate and Presidency. He doesn't have many good options and is unlikely to be able to cut spending, so avoiding damaging chances for Republicans in the next voting cycle (which a shutdown might do) may be the very best that can be done. Patience in politics is rare, but it can be valuable.
SSCReader
1yr ago
You have to start earlier than that, after all wokeness is a reaction itself.
Did the US have that "conservatism" imported from Europe, assimilated it, had elements react against and create wokeness, then re-export that AND the "conservative" reaction to wokeness again.
Much of the US's cultural information was imported to them. Its why the US is largely aligned with the Anglo world in the first place. Plus Ireland due to high immigration. If not for large amounts of Irish people bringing their cultural exports with them the Presidents wouldn't be touring Ireland so regularly and they wouldn't dye the rivers green (and the beer).
They are re-exporting to us as we once exported to them. Partly because thats what the global hegemon does and partly because of the close relationship.
Lots of funding came from the US for the IRA for example. The US was also a big part of the Good Friday Agreement happening at all.
You have US immigration in Dublin airport so you can fly into a domestic terminal when you reach the US!
The US has a big finger in the Irish pie so to speak (and vice versa) if you believe that nearly everyone i meet in the US after learning i am from Ireland tells me some story about their grandmother being from Meath or similar. Progressivism (or the reaction to it) is hardly only the most recent.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Any organization that relies overwhelming on a patron for its continued financial existence will do what that patron wants. Obviously
Asserted but not proved. Here is my actual experience, it was easier to get ITV to agree to a change than it was the BBC, because the BBC is very prideful about it's Royal Charter and independence.
That doesn't mean the government can't pull strings of course, just that the BBC is really no more accepting of this than private media sources, which is the point. The UK government can squash any story any UK media based platform, the BBC included.
But if you want to know from someone who has been in the role of trying to manipulate the media while in politics, the BBC is more independent than some others that are not publicly funded.
All media organizations are vulnerable to government pressure because in order to exist and run the government must not ban them and allow them to use broadcasting bandwidths and get important interviews and stories and so on. See how ITV reacted after getting a word in their ear about their presenters going off script on Covid conspiracy theories.
The BBC is again in my direct experience no more vulnerable than non-public funded media to that and indeed I would say less vulnerable because of it's position. It does however still have it's own internal biases (pro establishment etc.) that are not linked to its funding status but because of who and where it recruits from.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Except from your own link the author himself goes well beyond the evidence he has:
"Misleading headlines notwithstanding, no one really has the slightest idea how the brain changes after we have learned to sing a song or recite a poem. But neither the song nor the poem has been ‘stored’ in it. The brain has simply changed in an orderly way that now allows us to sing the song or recite the poem under certain conditions. When called on to perform, neither the song nor the poem is in any sense ‘retrieved’ from anywhere in the brain, any more than my finger movements are ‘retrieved’ when I tap my finger on my desk. We simply sing or recite – no retrieval necessary."
If your brain is changed in an orderly way so that you can now sing a song or recite a poem after reading/hearing them, in what way is that different than it being stored? Isn't that the definition of information storage? Even for a computer: The hard drive is changed in an orderly way so that it can recreate a song or poem (with the appropriate software in this case). If the song is not stored and retrieved from anywhere how can you recreate it, even badly? It may not be in the same way as a computer. And it may be vastly complex, but information is stored and is retrieved. I can think about my social security number and think about the numbers. My brain was (as the author states) changed in some orderly way when I first read those numbers and was changed in some orderly way to associate those numbers with "My social security number" such that when I think, "what is my SSN?" that orderly change is accessible in some way to my conscious thoughts.
It keeps saying the information is not retrieved, but then keeps saying "the brain is changed in an orderly way so that it you are able to then replicate experience X at a later point" That is a good definition of what being stored and retrieved means! The standard model may be wrong about how, but this article doesn't actually refute that it is indeed stored somehow, no matter how many times they say just that.
"they can re-experience hearing the story to some extent, although not very well (see the first drawing of the dollar bill, above)."
"For any given experience, orderly change could involve a thousand neurons, a million neurons or even the entire brain, with the pattern of change different in every brain."
His actual argument appears to be that the orderly change is large in scope and different for each person. Which may be true. And that it isn't stored in the same way as in a computer. Which also may be entirely true. But that doesn't mean that change is not storage and retrieval of information/data at all which is what he claims. It must be or you could not re-experience the story. That change must encode some amount of data about the experience. When you re-experience it (or remember it) you must be somehow accessing that stored information. It might certainly be more complex than the standard model suggests which is what his latter portions indicate:
"Worse still, even if we had the ability to take a snapshot of all of the brain’s 86 billion neurons and then to simulate the state of those neurons in a computer, that vast pattern would mean nothing outside the body of the brain that produced it."
"Think how difficult this problem is. To understand even the basics of how the brain maintains the human intellect, we might need to know not just the current state of all 86 billion neurons and their 100 trillion interconnections, not just the varying strengths with which they are connected, and not just the states of more than 1,000 proteins that exist at each connection point, but how the moment-to-moment activity of the brain contributes to the integrity of the system. "
This argument is not saying that the brain is not a computer. This argument is saying the brain is a hugely complicated and unique computer that is only understandable within the confines of the whole brain itself. Which may well be true (and may well be an argument that the most amazing advance in Star Trek is a transporter that can read and replicate your entire mind). But it doesn't prove his closing line:
"We are organisms, not computers. Get over it."
Those are not mutually exclusive categories even if materialism is incorrect. He takes a valid criticism of the standard model but then runs way too far than that criticism and his own evidence actually points towards. That the human brain does not store and retrieve information/memories in the same way a computer does is probably true. That thinking of it that way, might push people into misunderstanding is also probably true. That "no image of the dollar bill has in any sense been ‘stored’ in Jinny’s brain. She has simply become better prepared to draw it accurately, just as, through practice, a pianist becomes more skilled in playing a concerto without somehow inhaling a copy of the sheet music." is not actually supported however by evidence the author provides. If some information about what a dollar bill looks like has not been in some sense stored somewhere then Jinny would not be able to be better prepared to draw it again. He even states that you can detect activity in the brain when people are recalling memories. He says that isn't information storage and retrieval but he doesn't actually provide any proof. The fact we draw things badly from memory is not evidence that we're not storing and retrieving information, it's evidence we are storing and retrieving information badly. The fact we can detect brain activity when doing so indicates the brain is involved somehow in this storage and retrieval.
Now perhaps it is only as a conduit to the Platonic plane of metaphysical thought or as a translation device from our soul where consciousness and memory actually rests but the author doesn't provide any evidence for any alternatives.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Maybe, but then the scissor would be that statement not the shooter's actions as stated.
SSCReader
1yr ago
It's always immensely amusing to see the people crying about being persecuted and oppressed starting up their own Crusades and Inquisitions and heresy-hunts and witch-burnings for not falling in line with the new orthodoxy.
I mean given the examples you yourself invoked of what Christianity itself did I am not sure there is much of a leg to stand on. Christianity was the underdog and was persecuted, rose to power, did its own persecution in turn and now some of the groups it doesn't like/thinks are sinful have banded together and are repeating that cycle and doing something similar to it (though without yet launching actual crusades or priest burnings I suppose). I guess it's darkly amusing in a schadenfreude kind of way. Live by persecution, die by persecution?
In other words if a church says a group is sinful, they can't exactly be surprised when that group isn't well predisposed to them, and that if said groups gets the chance may well choose to try and reduce the power and influence of the church and its followers. Sure maybe in an ideal world LGBT groups and the like should take the high road and forgive and forget, but given Christianity itself struggles with getting its followers to do that, I'm not sure that is anything we should actually expect.
And specifically with Mormon's its not as if they didn't mostly do an about face on race:
"In 1978, apostle LeGrand Richards clarified that the curse of dark skin for wickedness and promise of white skin through righteousness only applied to Indians, and not to black people.[3]
In 2013, the LDS Church published an essay refuting these ideas, describing prior reasoning for the restriction as racial "folk beliefs", and teaching that blackness in Latter-day Saint theology is a symbol of disobedience to God and not necessarily a skin color."
So politically I think you could see the LDS reversing their stance on homosexuality at some point (assuming you think the racial reverse was done for pragmatic reasons and not because God told them to) so it makes sense to put pressure on them to become more "correct".
SSCReader
1yr ago
My vague recollection is that theMotte investigation based upon Maxwell Hill being a location in Malaysia and some Malaysia specific info/comments made by the poster was that it was more likely they someone from/in Malaysia. But I don't recall the specifics, so I could be wrong.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Well to be fair switching it from Atlantis, given that Aquaman beat them to the punch movie wise (though Namor was first in the comics) is not a bad idea. Half human- half Atlantean dickish prince of Atlantis is already out there in the DCEU. You're already having to cope with the daft wings on his ankles and his switches between hero, anti-hero and outright villain, let's not make him have to climb too high a mountain
And Namor and Wakanda did have a war in the comics as well so they are pulling from that storyline pretty much whole cloth. Talokan is Atlantis just with a rebranding. Exact same storylines, war on the surface world etc. But it differentiates them a bit with DC Atantlis. I thought that part actually worked pretty well.
Then one day I woke up and half of my fellow countrymen were pro-censorship. I am still confused by this.
They were always pro-censorship. Even your teachers were. After all they probably would have stopped you swearing in class, or engaging in blasphemy or calling for violence (depending on location and timing). You just weren't saying the kind of things they wanted to censor.
It's one of the thing I find surprising where people are surprised that majorities of the population support authoritarian things like lockdowns or vaccine mandates or censorship. And think this shows some kind of overnight sea change. This is the the default. Liberalism is a deal in the absence of one side (in whichever scenario) having more power, they agree not to censor pragmatically. Once one side has more power, and you try to say something they dislike then they will favor that censorship.
Standard caveat for the three principled Libertarians in the corner, trying to start seasteading to escape the whole thing. I know you are there.
SSCReader
2mo ago
To the extent that True Detective challenges this dynamic by treating two women as hypercompetent, dogged, logically-minded badasses, it’s doomed to fail. I haven’t seen any episodes of any season of the show, so I can’t comment on whether or not that’s the case,
They certainly weren't hyper-logical and hyper competent. Dogged, probably, yes. I think there is also the fact, that of the female police officers I know, they do seem to act more masculine, presumably because they are in an overwhelmingly masculine space. If you are going to portray female cops I think you should show them as more masculine acting than the average woman, because they probably would be in real life. Female cops are likely to be more aggressive, because those who are not, are not likely to want to be cops at all.
SSCReader
3mo ago
Mods are judge, jury and executioner, and the legislative branch. They are the ones who set up and run the space, therefore they get to decide everything. If Zorba wants to shut the site down entirely that is his prerogative. We don't have any rights in a space, we didn't create and don't help run. We don't even pay taxes!
In other words this is not our house, it is Zorbas and as per the Castle doctrine, he is quite entitled to "shoot" anyone he doesn't want here. Think of yourself as a guest, and consider the host has an absolute right to throw you out, if you do not behave the way they want you too.
The fact Zorba handles that generally with a light touch (as do his deputies) is irrelevant. That is the cold hard truth of the matter.
SSCReader
6mo ago
Just open free Halal McDonalds and Pizza Hut, free supermarkets packed full of goods with high fructose corn syrup and give out free Steamdecks and Starlink access and flat screen tvs. Free cellphones with TikTok and Insta and Tinder baked in. Free condoms, free birth control pills. Start up the Real Housewives of the Gaza Strip and make a whole bunch of tv shows ostensibly set in the Islamic Middle East but pushing Western sexual mores. Open free pharmacies giving out opiates and antidepressants. We can do so much better than blue jeans and rock music nowadays.
Bring the full force of Western Decadence against them, and see who the strong horse really is.
SSCReader
1yr ago
SSCReader
1yr ago
I don't have a dog in this fight having skipped the main post until i saw the back snd forth. But i interpreted theNybblers response in exactly the same way ymeskhout did.
I don't know if that was what he meant, but it is how it read to me.
SSCReader
1yr ago
"We've got about 20% of the locations out there where there's an issue with the tabulator, where some of the ballots that after people have voted they try and run them through tabulator, and they're not going through," said County Chairman Bill Gates in a video posted by the elections department.
Not only that but the person in charge is called Bill Gates. The memes write themselves honesty.
SSCReader
1yr ago
I'll go with slight Republican over performance against 538's predictions but not a Red tsunami. I do think abortion will cap the wave just a touch. Fundamentals point to a Republican Senate and House. Bad economy, unpopular president, mid-terms often swinging away from the governing party. Plus some unforced errors. Putting Fetterman into debate for example. Whichever aide allowed that should be fired. Ducking the debate looks bad, but his performance was worse. So they should have sucked it up, talked about how debating Oz not worth his time to give Democrat leaners an excuse to believe and moved on. He may still win but it is looks to be much closer than it should have been as Oz is not a good candidate himself.
So 53-54 seats in the Senate, 235ish in the house. But it does depend on how the pollsters have been adjusting their polls. Silver claims they have been trying to unskew the Democratic lean they had recently, but if they get that dynamic wrong (in either direction!) , with poll herding it is possible the whole thing is way off.
SSCReader
20d ago
The Sexual Revolution pitch was that we could remove shame from sex completely, that everyone could have all the sex and everything would be fine.
I don't think that was the pitch, because like every change, there was no single one movement responsible for it. What you had was a coalition who wanted slightly different things, one part wanted gay sex to be accepted, another wanted women to have more freedom outside of marriage, another wanted men to have more freedom without getting married, another felt sexual urges in general should not be shamed as much, etc. etc. There were few would if you asked would have said for example, should we stop shaming sex with animals or corpses? Almost no-one wanted to remove shame from sex entirely.
To be clear almost everyone is shamed under the old model. They just use that shame to behave differently. Every kid who felt guilty about masturbation. Every husband who felt shame at cheating, or even having thoughts of cheating. Every woman who felt shame at sex outside of wedlock, or who had a sex drive society felt was too much. Every gay person who felt shame at being attracted to their own sex. All of those groups constitute probably a majority of people. That's what I mean by a tipping point.
Now as for why Puritan America did not change, well Puritan America was a result of people fleeing from cultures that shamed differently. There is a reason we call them Puritans after all! So they in fact are a product of a "Revolution" of their own (among other things of course). But even more the 20th Centuries Sexual Revolution I would say the sexual norms of the Puritans did not last, they were relaxed within decades. It's just in the New World there was a lot of space for people who felt differently to just..go somewhere else. And practice things differently. But that isn't the case in the US anymore.
Just to point out, I do think shame is important, as is empathy. They are evolved mechanisms given humanity is a social species. And they are important in ensuring societal stability. I'm not saying that shaming sex is bad, or that not shaming sex is good. I am saying that our history shows that shame has limits and ANY society or culture that wants its beliefs and conditions to continue is on a tight rope. Can't shame to much for too many, can't shame too little. Both will result in the destruction of your system. The good (depending on your point of view!) news is that also is true for whatever comes next. I think there are signs that the shame mechanisms invoked by "wokism" are also going too far and will fail.
Social dynamics mean we are not good at simply arriving at a pretty good spot and just staying there. We almost always push too far, or not far enough.
SSCReader
27d ago
If CO2 emissions really as as catastrophically dangerous as they are made out to be, then nuclear is the obvious, guaranteed-to-work, 100% solution that would completely have already solved this problem by now
Unless the same people also fear nuclear power to roughly the same extent. And unfortunately many people who drive environmental concerns grew up in an era where fear of nuclear power was rampant. The Cuban Missile crisis, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island. In other words if you think A will be a catastrophe and can be solved by B, which will also be a catastrophe then it becomes easy to see why people look for options C through F.
The real test is once those people die/retire/age out of leadership roles will the movement reorient itself.
Same as generals still fighting the last type of war instead of the next one.
Notably, they can of course be wrong about how catastrophic A or B might be, but from direct exposure to very many high level "climate alarmists" it is my opinion they are absolutely sincere in being worried about the climate. They are just also worried about nuclear catastrophes. And a whole bunch of other things. In fact I would say the thing that connects them (or most of them), is they worry way too much about a lot of things.
After all if this fear of climate change is driven by hysteria, what makes you think their other fears are going to be rationally evaluated against climate change in order to solve climate change?
SSCReader
2mo ago
Christianity is pretty disordered itself. So I am not sure Christianity really has much of the moral high ground here. Even setting aside the truth value of the existence of God. Why else are there 85 different sects which have had (and still do have) their own violent confrontations?
Which exact Christian sect is going to be at the head of this Christian nationalism? I suspect there will be some pretty big push back coming from inside its own house. Are you really wanting to bring back Catholic vs Protestant as a live issue?
Being from Northern Ireland, I can tell you, that might not go as well as you would like.
SSCReader
3mo ago
That protesters were allowed into the Capitol has resulted in the largest political victory for either party in my lifetime. And that really should mean something to anyone discussing the events of that day.
The problem is that says too much. Under this metric any action that gives ammunition to one side of the other is suspect. Increased immigration at the border is an opportunity for Trump to use against Biden, does that mean Trump is secretly funding caravans in Mexico? Did Democrats organize Trump getting enough SCOTUS seats so they would overturn Roe V Wade and thus bring abortion back on the table to energize their base?
In other words there are so many things that happen that look bad for one side or the other that you have to have something other than that to be useful for this determination. The fact it can be used as ammunition tells you nothing about whether it was manufactured or simply a mistake that was then exploited.
To consider, what would look different in a world where J6 was a frame and a world where it was not? From a media and attacking Trump point of view, I would contend nothing. The media would jump on it either way, his opponents would jump on it either way. So those actions after the fact don't give you any actual information about whether it was an inside job or not.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Note Sovereign citizens aren't trying to redefine words and meanings themselves. They believe there is an underlying "programming" language to the legal system which they believe they can use to short curcuit it.
Things like saying "understand" means they stand under the authority of the court and so should never say it. Or that courts are based on naval courts and the like.
So they think they are using secret government use of language rather than redefining it themselves. They believe if they know and discover the "true" use of this language that was hidden they can use it. Kind of kabbalah but not divine knowledge but conspiratorial knowledge.
They believe the government has a true definition of credit and then the fake one they try to fool the public with.
I had extensive dealings with them when i worked in government and every one of them followed that same kind of logic.
If anything they are closer to the conservative side in that they believe the meaning of the words cannot be redefined away no matter how hard the government tries.
Which makes sense, they are a kind of Libertarian offshoot.
The mental stats in DnD have always been in this weird place. How does your 100IQ player or GM portray an INT 25 Psychic super genius? The answer is badly in my experience. All it usually comes down to is a stat that impacts your skill rolls, spells modifiers and so on most often. Do your spells key off Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma? What are you adding to your skill checks? It very rarely comes down to anything beyond that. Dumping INT as a Half-Orc Barbarian and then playing it with your own level of intelligence outside of stat modifiers is pretty common. And having an Int 20 Wizard played by someone who doesn't even themselves know what their spells do, or how many they get.
Should the player whose bard has 22 Charisma have to roleplay making a speech to convince the king to spare you or is their nigh supernatural charisma and a single die role the way to go?
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