TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
No bio...
User ID: 616
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
9mo ago
The greedy landlords are the ones that are stopping more housing from being built.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1yr ago
Unfortunately the intellectual commons are just barren nowadays. I think it was a mistake to throw open the doors to allowing everyone to comment on politics/society etc. We should've kept the masses happy with bred and circuses, while a trained aristocratic class a la @2rafa quietly keeps things running in the background.
Ironically it's easier to be liberal when you're in a constrained, elite social group, because you can select for high decouplers.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1yr ago
I think we're getting confused on terminology. In my view the government already owns all the land in a nation and they essentially rent it even to landowners. This is pretty confusing to talk about though.
Idk, I'll have to go back to the drawing board on some of the Georgist stuff. Getting a lot of good objections from this post.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1yr ago
This seems like a problem that could easily be solved with proper tools, especially machine learning models. I agree this is a strong objection to an LVT.
How would you feel about an LVT if the assessing problem were fixed?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
See my reply to you above... but basically this idea that True Science exists is a motte and bailey, and not what I'm trying to talk about. I'm talking more about Scientism.
I absolutely agree that we can have a religious society that embraces the scientific method, and I'd welcome it. I'm not a RETVRNer, I want to move forward once again toward God while keeping the fruits of modern materialist progress.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Hey man, I have difficulty understanding what I’m claiming too! We have that much in common.
To try and come at it another way, I think the word we use for ‘material’ or ‘physical’ causes traps is in a framework or mindset that causes us to lose quite a bit of understanding. While a materialist/scientific framework is useful, I believe we need a more wholistic framework to understand things like consciousness, morality, free will, time, and other high level concepts.
Hence why we’ve made little to no progress with these fields despite incredible investments of resources and energy.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
5mo ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Christianity is at least as unbacked by evidence and reason as transgender ideology.
As @Cirrus explains below, there is plenty of evidence. Thousands and thousands of eyewitness accounts, prophecy, et cetera.
Not to mention the very cultural/political connotations, history and tradition are themselves evidence compared to transgenderism. Just evidence that points to a conclusion you really don't like or can believe is true.
I'm not trying to be antagonistic here, but your strong claims against Christianity show a clear bias and lack of clear eyed, Bayesian priors. I think you need to reassess your own 'objectivity' before you start claiming a high horse.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
Good! If people are intimidated then it filters for people who are serious and willing to grow in their opinions, take criticism, and continue posting. Those are the type of people we want.
If you are so emotionally fragile and/or lazy you can stomach writing a few paragraphs of your thoughts about a link, maybe you aren't the right person to make a top level post.
I don't mean to be a jerk here, but years ago I felt the same way before I started posting my writing online. I ended up just doing it, and realized that my fear was pointless and holding me back. Since then I've been in a much better place mentally, and I think many others would benefit from facing their fears and doing the same.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
I'm saying that people should be open, honest and trusting as a general rule, because that's the right thing to do. If you get burned by that, it's not your fault. It's not your responsibility to be so cynical and closed off from the world that you never get hurt.
However if you repeatedly get hurt in similar ways, it's your responsibility to look at the situation, figure out why you're getting hurt, and either change yourself or your situation to avoid being victimized further.
People still 'count as a victim' although I'm not sure what this phrase means exactly even if they're victimized twice. But the duty of a victim is to grow beyond their victimization into a more actualized human, in my view, and hopefully help prevent the victimization they dealt with in the future.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
9mo ago
But these aren't really 'options', they're destinies. There's no declining one of these paths.
I mean, I strongly disagree. I think the most likely path is that the current elite (or the elite of the next generation) will create life extension technology and effectively rule forever, at least under your worldivew.
I'd like to see a humanity that moves forward and values things more than just base reproduction. I'd like to see us value knowledge, and understanding, and frankly love. Even if it contradicts some of the transhumanist futures some other users believe in.
Demographics are not destiny, and never have been. Memes are destiny, and you'd better start acting like that's the case, or you'll be outcompeted.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
10mo ago
I'm not seeing this at all. First off, while the VisionOS sounds really cool, fundamentally it sounds pretty similar to the iPad - a device for consuming content, not creating it
Do you not think people could dictate essays, draw with their hands, edit music, etc with this tool? Why does this entire OS seem fundamentally based on consumption to you?
Next, even if that was the case, I don't see what VisionOS and related technologies would have to do with it - nothing about it is more physically intense than walking around a room. The number of people of all walks of life who would find anything about it the least bit physically challenging is probably effectively zero.
It's not necessarily about physical intensity - it's about ease of use. Clearly I could expand on this point since many others seem confused as well. I'm betting that right now many people who would otherwise be more economically useful are not because they don't have the temperament, ability, or inclination to learn how to type quickly or move a mouse around quickly. With VisionOS and later generations, we'll see much more 'natural' inputs, or at least have a lower barrier to entry than, say, learning to type at 100 wpm.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1yr ago
I’d hope that most of us are having fun as we’re shitting on the other side. There’s a reason this is called the Culture War thread!
As long as people are reasonably intelligent and polite while doing the shitting I don’t see a problem.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1yr ago
Just like how euthanasia is only ever used for 95 year-olds with terminal brain cancer and Alzheimer’s, right?
The snark combined with the strong claim without a source makes me dubious you're actually trying to 'argue to understand.' At least mention what you're referencing with the 300 bonus points metric?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1yr ago
I’d say that bureaucrats introduced it but landowners are the ones that perpetuate it. Anecdotally I’ve spoken with many bureaucrats in municipalities, many of them hate zoning laws but can’t change anything due to local politics, which are typically dominated by home owners.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1yr ago
I can get behind that framing, and I know many other Georgists argue for that. My issue with that promise though is I think an LVT should be phased in gradually. If you do that it becomes much harder to immediately wipe out income tax.
You could set them to ratchet down over time as an LVT increased which I think makes sense, but is far less appealing to the masses than “I’ll wipe out income tax and replace it with something else!”
All that said, interesting framing on the taxation is theft. I think we have common ground in that the main draw of the LVT is that it’s more fair and less game-able in theory.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1yr ago
To be fair we understand viruses far better than we used to. I wish there could be a coherent position around yes we can have lockdowns but only if the virus is literally civilization ending.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
the scientific idea of there being something ‘beyond’ science seems to be such a taboo idea that you can even do race science and get by, but if you posit something like ‘maybe remote viewing is a thing?’ you immediately get anathematized. This is despite the fact that most humans in history have had a deeply-held belief that the material reality we experience is not all-there-is, and many many many people in the past (and today) have had direct experiences not explainable by our current models of empirical reality or even our current ideations of psychological conditioning (e.g.UFO encounters by nuke-launchers).
Yep, this comes down to the fact that while moderns like to believe we are free of myths and superstitions of the past, instead we believe in scientific materialism and constant progress as our societal myths. Now many argue that these myths are fundamentally different from those of our ancestors, and they're right of course. But they're still beliefs based on social consensus and assumption rather than deep thought and 'objectivity' like the vast majority presume.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
I didn’t want to argue the whole damn thing at once. This is likely the most complex topic in existence.
This feels like an isolated demand for rigor. Why do I need to lay out every belief I have in one place?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Or, to put it another way, we realized that we’re animals and, the wool having fallen from our eyes, understand the mechanistic nature of our minds isn’t connected to something greater, isn’t part of some grander system of reincarnation or heaven in which our lives will persist beyond the brief time we have on earth. We understand that life is brutish, nasty and short. We understand - now, increasingly - that the brain is just a Large Language Model trained on the multimodal input of our senses, and that all of our philosophy is simply a product of this banal pattern recognition and prediction.
I feel like you deserve a reply, although your nihilism is so scathing it burns my heart. I just disagree with this, fundamentally.
I don't think that we are coping, I think there's a reason these religious traditions have survived and in many cases have flourished despite this narrative you're packing, which has a TON of power. I mean modern nihilistic materialism is the most extremely powerful framework for understanding the world ever. The more miraculous thing to me is that there are still so many people who believe in God.
Then I started to open myself up to the idea that maybe I was wrong, and well, I began to get undeniable personal evidence. 'Religious experience' as you would probably call it. I know it's not convenient or testable in a lab, but it's real nonetheless. That's the best explanation and response I can give you at the moment, though I'm sure you'll find it wanting.
Yeah, I've seen this approach a lot and this type of thinking helped me draw closer to God. I think it's a good bridge for staunch rationalists and materialists. But at the end of the day, as @Amadan said, I don't buy it. It feels like telling people to delude themselves for positive utility.
I did try this approach over and over again, and it worked for a bit but kept falling apart due to the self-delusion issue. Then I got, as Vervaeke would say, some personal, 'experiential' evidence of God's existence. That changed my tune quite a bit, but I understand not everyone can be as lucky as I am. And I'm sure the rationalists will read this and say it's all brain chemicals or hallucinations or whatnot. They're entitled to their opinion, as are you. But I'm convinced that the universe is far more mysterious than we understand, and that we're not even close to unraveling the secrets of the inner self, and God.
As a side note, many Orthodox Christians have a somewhat similar interpretation while believing in a real God. Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom, an Orthodox Bishop, writes that the way to pray and to find God is essentially to look deep inside yourself. That God is in creation outside us yes, but our deepest communion is found by encountering the spark of divinity and grace placed within each of our hearts.
At a certain point you have to wonder, which is more real? The psychological approach that tries to reduce everything to a 'scientific' understanding? Or perhaps, if the practices and effects seem to be real and work in your life, maybe the religious people were actually right all along?
EDIT: Also yes I tried the path of the mystic and shaman for many years. Ultimately the mental chaos was too much for me. And I firmly believe that without a society and religion that supports and understands the role of the shaman or mystic, it's practically impossible to get true wisdom out of that path. Sadly.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Well no, not quite like a lion. They are beings of spirit, fundamentally different from us physical beings. And by many accounts much older and wilier.
Besides, there are plenty of people who have personal evidence of demons active in their lives. There are plenty of recordings of ghosts and strange phenomenon if yo know where to look. Again, the point is that scientific evidence requires reproducibility on demand.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
Divine authority, basically. Taking Truth on faith or based on testimony of divine powers.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
I have never once said we should take rich people's assets, I'm not a Marxist or a redistributionist. However I can understand why so many are eager to paint me with that brush.
I'd simply like to raise awareness that wealth and money do not equal virtue, and in many cases are anti-correlated. Instead of redistributing wealth, I think a better path would be having a conversation about negative externalities of the market and trying to figure out how to price those in.
On top of that, I'd like to see a scaling back of certain areas like religion and the sacred from markets entirely, although I'll admit having both at once would be a difficult challenge.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
7mo ago
There is no rule against posts that aren't effort posts. Most effort posts are bad. I'm worried were incentivizing people to write a lot of uninteresting wordy posts just so that they can start a discussion on something interesting.
Can you come up with another proxy that keeps intelligent people who do write interesting things coming back to the site, and stops the Motte from turning into the rest of the internet?
The effort is a bar you have to clear to participate here.
Because democrats want to incentivize illegal immigration, for some reason.
The real answer is that immigration is one of the hottest CW issues and has been for decades, so nothing gets done and the byzantine system that grew out of bureaucracy is entrenched as hell.
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