Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
"Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts."
User ID: 83
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
11hr ago
AMA? What would we even A you about? Come on man, you can do better than this. Give us a little more to work with.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
11hr ago
Yeah, I know. I'm fully aware of it being wishful thinking.
I just really, really hope that "we" (humanity?) find a way to save ourselves from wireheading ourselves to death. It's just such a profoundly unaesthetic way of going out. But then again, I guess natural selection will handle it.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
11hr ago
I wish they made video games that leverage all that engagement and addiction to better the consumer. Teach them useful skills, like the video gaming advocates always claimed games could! If you can make them stare at a screen for hours on end, at least make them come out of it improved rather than impoverished!
I wish. I wish.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
11hr ago
Just consume calorie. Come on man, you're the transhumanist, look past the shape and taste and texture of the meat, consider only what it means for your more abstract aspirations. You are a dyson swarm in the making, what matter whether this brief bipedal interlude speeds towards its rendezvous with destiny fuelled by salami or by Kötbullar? Elevate yourself! Transcend the need for rotund victuals!
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
12hr ago
Please explain the difference.
Not American, and I won't speak to America.
As for Germany though, and the world in general, I'm a "go down swinging"-Doomer. My country is doomed by terminal cultural decline, political idiocy, economic sclerosis, technological ignorance, social atomization and demographic freefall. We're big enough and wealthy enough to muddle on for a long while yet, but there seems to be no reason to expect a reversal of trends.
As for the world in general, I strongly suspect that the age of humanity as we knew it is slowly drawing to a close.
And I don't necessarily mean AI, although that will of ocurse be a factor. LLMs are powerful enough to replace humans in certain niches, sure, but AI as a whole still has a way to go before before it can outcompete us in general. It will, though. Sooner or later. Whether the protagonists of tomorrow's history will be AIs untethered from discrete physical bodies, or robots, or human bodies with AIs living in their heads, who knows. But in the long enough run, human bodies will just be a waste of resources. A little closer to now, we'll see more and more niches taken over by machines and AIs. At first the steam engines came for the hammering, but I was not a John Henry, so I didn't speak up. Then the robot arms came for the assembly lines, but I wasn't a stereotypical blue-collar worker so I didn't speak up. Then the LLMs came for the professional bullshitters, but they still have enough regulations in place to keep their sinecures for a while yet. One day they'll come for the last of us. Maybe some few humans will be rich and powerful even then, commanding legions of AIs and whatever human serfs please them. But one day the universe will take a good look at "humanity", notice that the humans don't actually have a role to play in there, and simplify the equation by removing us. Transhumanism to the rescue, some say - empower humans through technology to outcompete inhuman AIs. But why keep the human in there, I ask? What do we have to offer?
And alright, let's skip the AI topic. Let's pretend they don't exist. Science-fiction does it all the time. Recognizably human protagonists, personally choosing to do things, leading recognizably human lives in which they choose what to do with their lives, whom to associate with, experiment with different lifestyles, engage in adventure and romance, excel in their chosen fields, found families, believe in higher concepts, live with purpose, just like their ancesorts did five thousand years ago, true human lives for true humans.
As if.
Aside: Information technology is rotting our brains. Maybe we'll develop countermeasures (Totalitarian regulation? Social engineering? Neurological modification?) and keep the digital crack in check. If not, then natural selection will cull the susceptible. Alright, problem solved either way. This one was easy. Now let's get to the meat.
Human population continues to grow. There's a lot of us. We're not living in villages and small communities anymore (well I do, but let's not pretend that this is the norm). The growth of states seems to have been checked for the time being by the current international order, but sooner or later there will be pressure to unify further - and if that cannot happen, then states will slowly be superseded by some new order that does not respect borders as they are. Many claim that is is already happening, but in my view it's a slow process. Bigger polities with disproportionately bigger populations, atomized and globalized, welcome to the cyberpunk future in which human lives are individually just not very valuable. Will this future be the turbo-capitalist dystopia in which humans are simply commodities, flitting about from place to place, working 80-hour weeks just to keep from drowning in debt, completely dehumanized and disassociated from each other by a lack of time and the fluidity of the labor market and enjoying a standard of living that's just barely above being a rat in a box, on a good day? Or will it be a hyperregulated totalitarian nightmare in which you are born and bred and raised for the task that society requires of you, you work 80 hours a week because any less and you're an asocial parasite, you're dehumanized and disassociated from other humans because of a lack of time and the rigidity of centrally planned social organization, and you enjoy a standard of living that's just barely above being a rat in a box, on a good day? At least humans are still around, and not governed by AI overlords - but rather by market dynamics or some buerocracy. Either way, it's an inhuman superorganism that humans are little more than cells of. We will live like this. We will breed and engineer and select and adapt ourselves to live like this. At present we are halfway between the feral hogs frolicking in the woods that we were and the domesticated pigs born and butchered in an assembly line that we are destined to be. Pray that the future does not replaces us with synthetic meat.
Human life will change. It will either change by becoming completely obsolete, or will (either as a transitional period before total obsolescence or as a terminal state) change by becoming increasingly optimized towards producing value while demanding a minimum of resources. If you think otherwise, please tell me why. Historically we've gone the other way, right? Humans are more free, more individually wealthy and comfortable than ever. Why should the future be the opposite? Why in the world should we have reached peak human flourishing already?
Because in my view, either information technology or social technology are becoming ever-more suitable for the instrumentalization of humans by superorganisms, be they markets or buerocracies or AIs. Historically human agency was a key component in human value, but as we coalesce into and are subsumed by larger entities, individual human capabilities become increasingly inadequate to navigate the world. I'm no scientist, no futurist, nor even very smart like many mottizens. I can't do a good job of pinpointing why I think this. Please disagree with me. Tell me I'm wrong.
Anyways, what can a reasonable approximation of a real human being like myself do when the future looks like that? Becoming one of the beautiful elite who rules over the unwashed commoditized masses seems exceedingly unlikely. Becoming a transhuman god like some here (you know who you are) expect to be seems laughably unlikely because, as said, that god doesn't need a human component. When the future looks like a nightmare either way, the best I can do to meet it is to just carry on and say bring it. We'll cross those bridges when we get there. It's not like any ending other than death and oblivion were ever in the books, for anyone, be they man or machine or godlike superorganism or the universe itself. Consolation prize: In the end, we're all equally gone.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
13hr ago
Would they be happy to be scammed in this manner, with inferior goods? Is there a single recipe on the planet which accommodates such mutilation?
My wife makes those kinds of substitutions work all the time. Just shrug, close your eyes and chew harder.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
14hr ago
Presumably this is a pointless post on my part, since you have already "crashed out" and thus, assuming you are a serious person and not some kind of attention whore, you will never read it.
But I'll say it anyways: Your post is in very poor form. If anything, complaining about "tainted by racism" and "could be valuable" smells a lot of you being a culture warrior who came here to do a victory lap around the deplorables rather than to engage with the site's actual purpose. Maybe that's wrong. We'll never know, since you're gone. But it's one more data point, one more anecdote in favor of the narrative that the left runs on purity spirals and echo chambers and cannot tolerate dissenting opinions. Presumably because current-day leftist thinking is built on lies and wishful thinking and cannot stand up to outright disagreement. Maybe that too is wrong, but again we'll never know. Not from you anyways.
Which is, quite honestly, a shame. I don't want The Motte to be an echo chamber, racist or otherwise. I'm racist enough myself, thank you very much. But of course you're right, we live under conditions of culture war, not culture polite exchange, and you presumably want to actually fight that war. You want to punch the nazis, reeducate the stupid masses susceptible to outmoded populism, and live in a world in which everyone is educated and enlightened and on the right side of history, and like all good leftists you are, of course, too good to waste your own time with the enemy.
Right? Wrong? No point in caring, you're gone.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
14hr ago
The pioneers of yesteryear most likely would have turned out just like Harold, had they lived in a Schlaraffenland where you get paid for existing and sugar comes in through every pore.
That said, I absolutely understand the nostalgic mewling. Wanting to preserve and contribute to the legacy of one's forbears, in their and one's own country, seems perfectly natural and like a desire that society ought to promote, if not for aesthetics then in its own good interest. And the failure of western societies to square this outlook with immigration is, IMO, a pretty severe one. Widespread national self-hatred leading to and giving space to the exaggerated self-confidence of immigrant ethnicities is a very fine recipe for ethnic tension even in a sometimes-purportedly post-ethnic world. It's hard not to see immigrants as invaders and parasites when your personal ancestors put a lot of work into making a place for themselves, and you yourself put a lot of work into maintaining it, but in comes a foreigner whose allies overty and epxlicitly hate you, and who retains his distinct and foreign culture, who send money back home, and who inhabits not the remnants of the old localized and intergenerational country that you yourself might see yourself in, but its modern, atomized, globalized replacement.
It's not like this is uniquely American.
My German ancestors immigrated to the village I still live in five generations ago, having come from and brought in wives from places as far away as...another village a few hours' walk way. To them, it was perfectly natural that you stay in one place, or very close to it. You maintain your social connections without even thinking about it. You constantly exert yourself to improve the commons. You behave well and work hard and accept that if you deviate from that, you will be shamed into the ground. And so they behaved and worked, for generations, and went out of their way to keep the commons ing ood shape, and here I am in a world of lies and distractions and addictions aplenty, sticking to the straight and narrow, do-the-hard-work-and-obey-the-rules, neither living beyond my means nor resting on welfare, paying taxes on taxes, trying my best to help rather than harm the rotting edifice of "the commons", in no small part because that's what generations before me did and I'll be damned if I'm the one to break with that.
And in come M'beke and Muhammed, rightfully convinced that us Germans are just sheep that need to be fleeced because what else are we, with our own young women telling them that they have a right to be here and everyone has a right to a high standard of living and nobody has a duty to work and white people are evil and then old Germans will remind them that no, actually, it's Germans who are uniquely evil, and M'beke and Muhammed just laugh fly their own flags and loudly blast gangsta rap and muslim music and swagger through the streets while drab little Germans dodge them on their way to work or to, sheepishly rather than triumphantly, to pick up gibs alongside these immigrants. They're parasites and proud of it. They might learn to speak German, but will do so in an ostentatiously ridiculous accent that marks them as separate.
Meanwhile, the other M'beke and Muhammed actually get jobs and become economically productive members of society...but still remain M'beke and Muhammed rather than become Martin and Matthias, and raise their children as lilttle M'beke and Mohammed, because they see the insanity of German ethnic self-hatred, the decrepitude of our culture, and sensibly stick to what they know. They barely speak enough German to make themselves understood. They're here for as long as the money is good, but even then they associate with their co-ethnics and can we rely on them to stick with us whent he going gets tough?
And then of course there's Nguyen and Pajeet, who come into the country, work their asses off, shame us with their immense productivity and modest standard of living, speak German with barely an accent, bring in their whole family form abroad who all do the same. These are the guys we want, right? Not so sure about that, really. If they can move around half the world and seamlessly make a good life for themselves here...then they can probably repeat that trick once this country goes to shit.
Immigration is touchy. The ideal immigrant comes here not because his home country is a shithole, or because life here is easy and you get paid for showing up, or because his co-ethnics invited him to join their enclave, but because he wants to be German. But who would? Germany hates Germans. Germans hate Germans. Germans teach everyone to hate them. And as with all these tendencies towards national suicide, I suppose it's rather similar in America.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
15hr ago
One of the many things that young people should have screamed at them and be shamed for ignoring.
Played around some more with physical movement in Unreal. Figured out the algebra for it, wired it all up, and I think it downright works. I am making boxes float and point at each other and jink sideways pretty much as inteded. So long as they don't bang into obstacles and end up going into spins. I'll need to add some kind of self-righting behavior, too.
So I added guns to the boxes, and allowed them to fire those as soon as they're pointing at the enemy box. And that didn't work at all. First off the guns are the wrong size and in the wrong place (some kind of relative transform issue?), they don't follow their parent box (parenting doesn't work like I think it does?), and when they fire the guns, the bullets have the same problems of wrong size, wrong place, and not actually moving. Also, when I attach the same gun to my player character, it just gets catapulted all over the map (collision resolution?).
So, yeah. Not exactly hyperrealistic drone warfare, and not exactly working.
Edit: Fixed what I thought was a parenting issue. Turns out that while you can apply physical forces to MeshComponents, doing so will move that component instead of the actor it is attached to. Applying that same force to a CollisionComponent instead will actually move the actor itself.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
6d ago
people covered in tattoos and/or piercings are the human equivalent of aposematism, change my mind.
In some cases and otherwise to some degree, yeah. Tattoos signal any of the following:
- Stupidity
- Short-sightedness
- Addiction
- Insecurity
- Bad taste
- A desire to fit in
- A good sense of what is currently fashionable
Nobody will ever convince me that the one-billionth "tribal" tattoo or chinese lettering down the spine of a non-chinese-speaker is meaningful or artistically valuable.
Most people look like either a toddler slapped stickers on them, or like a derelict wall in a shit part of down.
as @Iconochasm said. Hits the nail on the head.
Who is this booted "you", who's "us" in that quote? Needs more context.
But to answer the question: No. Fortunately. The radicals I know have been radicalized as much by the IRL water they swim in as by online propaganda. This means that the radicalization is both somewhat attenuated by the need to be IRL-compatible and sadly precludes a return to normal because radical is the normal, as said, water they swim it. It's socially acceptable to spew wild theories about Russian or American or Chinese intelligence agencies doing god-knows-what, about the Rich planning to eat us all, about foreigners wanting to skin us alive, about elites not being happy until we live in the pod and eat the bug, about how the planet is doomed and we're all going to die by tomorrow, about how the vaccines / the environmental toxins / the microplastics / the heavily processed food is giving us cancer / making us infertile / turning the frogs gay. Just pick the right flavor for a given audience and you're off to the races.
And some of those theories may well be right, but epistemic humility is thoroughly out of fashion. I do see people go off and and get worked up until they call for race war now gas the kikes / revolution now eat the rich shoot the nazi politicans / deindustrialize now voluntary human extinction save the planet before it's too late. I don't see people talk each other down with anything that even directionally resembles "Wait, that's hyperbole. Have we considered the counterargument?".
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