cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1d ago
I think I understood the latter half of that and it was a fun ride, thanks for writing it.
cjet79
1d ago
Nobody I am aware of argues that 2A describes an inherent, inalienable and unconditional right.
I would say that the right to self defense is an inherent, inalienable, and unconditional right. And I'm definitely not alone in that belief.
The second amendment is just an offshoot of that right, as guns are one of the best tools for self defense.
Just like freedom of speech is mostly useless if the government says "you can say whatever you want, just not in a newspaper or online or anywhere we can see it".
cjet79
1d ago
I did find another paper by that org that says they were using a standard definition of 4 victims not including the shooter.
https://nij.ojp.gov/library/publications/nij-special-report-public-mass-shootings-research
Same paper: The 5-year running average for such events hovers around 5-6 incidents per year. And apparently the most common location is at workplaces, so more of a "going postal" situation.
cjet79
1d ago
It turns out that "imaginary" numbers are actually at the root of reality, and most functions we're interested in are rooted in analytic multivalued functions, visualizable in ℂ×ℂ. That's a 2-complex-dimension space, so it's 4-(real)-dimensional, so we're screwed. Best you can usually do is to switch back and forth between plots of output magnitude and phase (or between real and imaginary components of output), or plot magnitude as height along with phase as color. Fortunately we don't have to be able to visualize something to describe and compute with it, but I feel like it could have helped a lot.
I don't think I understood any of this.
The "bag of holding" trick is clever, it gets you the topology of a 3D manifold that can't be embedded in less than ℝ⁴, but to me it "feels" like a very fixed geometry - two parallel 3D spaces, with the "hole" of the bag's opening connecting them.
Its the simplest 4D space I could think of, but I think our touch perception would still work just fine on the most complex 4D space available. In an unobstructed 4D space your 3D senses would continue to work just fine, just as in an unobstructed 3D space your 2D sense of vision works just fine. Its when the space is obstructed that the lower dimensional perception becomes difficult or confusing. A wall obstructs 2D vision. But if there are no obstructions there isn't much to perceive either. In 3D outer space you can turn any direction and see infinite nothing (except the stars). In 4D outer space you'd be able to turn more as you twist into that 4th spacial dimension but you'd feel nothing different. You could do some visually weird things like phase your hands through your own body. But the actual sensation and mental model of you doing that wouldn't feel weird. You can sort of do it right now if you have a big enough beer gut, just press your hand into some soft tissue and move it out of the way, your hand is now where your body normally is. The only difference is that in 4D you wouldn't have the dual feedback of the skin pressing against each other.
I think the best spacial sense would work something like knowing the fluid shape of the area around you. Going back to fantasy, imagine a slime monster. A gelatinous round ball that can only feel its "skin". For a slime navigating any dimensional space is all the same. If you magically found yourself in a 4D space you might be best off acting a bit like a slime by closing your eyes and feeling your way around. Your eyes will lie, your touch won't.
cjet79
1d ago
I made a post on this not too long ago about gun rights being civilization rights. If we don't trust Hassan to have a gun we don't really trust him to exist and live in our civilization.
I suspect this equivalence is true for most people:
(Number of people you trust to own a gun around you) < (Number of people you trust to live in society around you) < (Number of people actually in society around you)
The gaps in those numbers pose very thorny problems, and I think most people would prefer to sweep those problems under the rug.
I think someone like Hassan should be imprisoned and removed from society. We currently keep a bunch of criminals in prisons, and thus prisons are very terrible places to be. I would not want to condemn Hassan to such a place. Mental institutions used to be the kind of prison that would house people like Hassan. I don't think they were pleasant enough either. Either the nicest prison possible, or he remains a ward of his parents/the state.
cjet79
1d ago
Having some thoughts about 4 dimensional spaces.
I've heard it said before that humans can't conceive of or perceive 4d spaces.
I was thinking that this isn't a mental limitation it's a perceptive and specifically a visual limitation.
Vision is basically a 2d sense, so it is limited in that it can only accurately perceive 2d environments (like a map). Our brains are able to do some juggling and work this 2d sense into perceiving our 3d environment. And it helps to have more than one eye to convert the 2d senses into a 3d understanding.
Some of our other senses are what I might consider 1d. Hearing and smell are just intensity detectors. They aren't really for navigating our 3d environment so we don't often think about how limiting they are in that way. Hearing doesn't feel 1d because we have ears that alter the sound and allow our brain to figure out directionality.
Here is the fascinating thing: we do in fact have a sense that it is 3d. Our sense of touch or our basic bodily self awareness.
If you try to imagine 4d spaces visually they make no sense, but if you instead imagine being able to contort your body inside a 4d space it can seem a little weird but not 'my brain is totally broken' levels of weird.
Simple exercise:
Imagine a bag of holding from dungeons and dragons. It's a small 6 inch round bag. But if you reach inside there is about a circular yard of space. This is a 4d space. Visually it's confusing as all hell, especially if you imagine the outer material of the bag being see-through. But imagining reaching in their with one arm while your other hand holds the bag is not all that confusing.
So by string together multiple 3d senses, via our sense of bodily space and touch, we can perceive 4d environments. We don't really have 4d environments so our brain doesn't have any built in hardware to make this easier.
5 spacial dimensions is where things might actually go off the rails. I have no idea how to even describe such a space. Certainty nothing as simple or widespread as a bag of holding. Curious if anyone else can think of 5 dimensional spaces used in fiction?
cjet79
2d ago
The lines are often blurred between state and non-state actors. That is usually part of the problem with corruption, that the state hasn't fully locked down a monopoly on violence.
I was mentally thinking of France and Scotland when I thought of corrupt state actors.
It's been the longest amount of time since they were bad about corruption, but they absolutely were not free of it in 17th and most of the 18th centuries. The king of France would sell these tax collector positions that were basically approved banditry. In England it was difficult to run anything larger than a family business without the backing and often bribing of a noble. These places were absolutely corrupt in a way that we would all call "third world".
cjet79
2d ago
We just fundamentally disagree here. I don't see any path to reconciliation. I didn't realize there was such a large disconnect on the meaning and essence of culture.
But this is also a values disconnect. It's subjective.
cjet79
2d ago
Generally American corporations have spread to everywhere they are allowed.
Poor countries often have more rules and operating a legal business without bribing a bunch of people is impossible. International corporations are unwilling to cross that line for good reasons.
I feel that calling corruption incompetence is disingenuous. Most European nations were equally impossible to operate in legally a few centuries ago. That's just how poor economies and politics tend to mingle.
cjet79
2d ago
I don't think assimilation is harder today, or at least its a wash with the various technological and social changes. Especially for assimilation into and out of American culture, because so much of American culture has become world culture.
What does it matter that they can face time back to Italy when Italy is also watching MTV, eating at McDonalds, buying coffee at Starbucks, and talking about 21st century technology using barely converted English words? This same phenomenon makes traveling as an American simultaneously easier and more boring.
Lets not forget that past immigrant populations found plenty of ways to resist assimilation. Every "Little [Country]" in a big city is usually a past example of an immigrant population congregating together and avoiding assimilation as long as possible.
Matt Yglesias posted on X an argument in favor of immigration (having trouble finding it now).
...
why would presumably smart people like Yglesias make such a sloppy argument?
I think you pre-emptively answered your own question.
Anyways, its not like its hard to find a more thought out exposition on why immigration proponents want more immigration. Bryan Caplan did a whole book on the topic where he tried to make the arguments approachable for laymen: https://www.amazon.com/Open-Borders-Science-Ethics-Immigration/dp/1250316960
Twitter/X is a place where you can throw out a lot of arguments. And see which arguments stink or are good depending on the reactions. You are implicitly buying into a culture war framing on the whole thing by treating arguments as soldiers. You can certainly downgrade your opinion of certain commentators if they make a bunch of dumb arguments, but dumb arguments in favor of a thing does not make that thing wrong or incorrect.
cjet79
2d ago
I'd say that food is a massive and very important aspect of culture. Its behind language in importance. But maybe as important as religion. Definitely more important than holidays (since many holidays are heavily defined by religion and food).
You eat food every day. You share meals with family and the people you like most in the world. Food can lock in memories, and eating it again can bring back those memories. Its one area where attempts to relentlessly optimize everything enjoyable and unique out of life have mostly failed (meal replacement options were only ever popular in small enclaves of weird programmers and rationalist). Food is one the first ways people like to meet their romantic partners. Food is how we celebrate.
Aside from language, what is more foundational to the lived experience of a culture than its food?
cjet79
3d ago
Just finished System Delenda Est. Another good series from the author. Part of the end confused me. Feels like it left out a critical sentence or two.
cjet79
5d ago
I just keep going back to Starship Troopers Extermination. Its 16 player player vs computer (bugs). Not a perfect game by any means, but I just don't want to be in PvP matches, and this game saves me from that.
I play with a light military sim discord which makes things way more fun. 1stmi.gg
cjet79
5d ago
Idea #2: Semi-mandatory service. Want Pell grants or Medicare? Better sign up, 18 year old you. You can join the military, or you can go to a national forest to survey land for a year. Compulsory-but-not-compulsory service might sound like state violence to some, and fascism to others, but maybe we can find a few programs in addition to the military that a supermajority could support staffing with conscripted teens.
Semi-mandatory is a dangerous line to ride.
We have protections from certain kinds of fully mandatory actions. But Semi-mandatory is protected from court challenges, and can really ride the line on "semi" hard enough to make it meaningless. Turning down someone for a job because they have a felony on their record is illegal (unless you are the FBI). But anyone doing background checks is generally turning down felons. Its possible to make something extremely adverse selection. Signing up for the draft at 18 is one of those things that already sort of rides the line. Its not been relevant for a long time, but it can cause trouble for men who don't do it. I was certainly tempted not to when I turned 18, mainly for ideological reasons. Practical concerns won out, and I signed up. I'm now out of draft age. My plan at the time if being drafted was to plead flat feet (I do have that, and all running sports are generally off limits to me).
What might be other ideas for actionable things to combat the misery and cultural malaise?
Lean into sports and competition. E-sports is a growing area. Find more professional sports to elevate. I wouldn't mind my favored sport of underwater hockey achieving more widespread adoption. But realistically you could go for existing sports that already have international adoption. The Romans held their empire together for a couple extra centuries by just feeding everyone and providing "circuses".
cjet79
9d ago
I am generally against cancellations. But even during the height of the woke cancellations I feel like I remember some careful Republican criticisms of "its insane to cancel people for saying something that half the country believes". So I don't feel like their stance was ever fully principled free speech.
I do have one exception for cancellation: if you've cancelled others then you yourself become fair game. Jimmy Kimmel was fair game. Roseanne Barr, and apparently some band that was on the show were both things he was happy to cancel.
cjet79
10d ago
I've been dreading this a bit too.
My middle daughter is 4 and has been insisting for a year now that she is a boy. That she doesn't like girls or playing with them and only wants to be with boys. We've mostly surrendered on the clothing front, we buy her boys clothes and shoes, but she still has long hair. And we certainly don't introduce her as a boy.
She has been in the same daycare most of her life, and they are not the kind of place that would encourage that sort of thing. The hispanic lady that runs the place talked to me about voting for Trump because of the things the left was doing to kids in school. The pre-k she is in right now is Christian oriented and less likely to pull any funny business on this topic. Our best guess for why she does this is that she had a really good friend at the daycare that was a little boy a year older than her, and she just wanted to emulate many things about him.
But she enters kindergarten at a public school next year.
I wish I had good advice for you. The one positive thing that might be going for me is that class sizes are large and she is likely to go unnoticed.
cjet79
10d ago
Choose your own adventure books exist, but I think that whole genre just fits way better with a game. Multiple ending options based on how you played just makes sense within a game.
Any stories that play off the actions of the player are going to be more powerful in game form. Bioshock is a good example here, but far from the only one in the genre. Dishonored is another one where choosing to be non-violent, or staying completely hidden will change minor details in the following levels.
cjet79
11d ago
I played that a little while back, definitely enjoyable game. Can't remember if I even got to all the biomes they had released at the time.
I might have eventually gotten a mod that allowed portaling metals. I remember travel just sucking up a bunch of my time in the game.
cjet79
12d ago
Is that the second book in that series, or the entire series? I only remember reading the first one. And it was about the time I put down all Brandon Sanderson novels. I think he executes decently well, but he also goes off a formula. Or maybe its the same formula every fantasy writer uses. But things became too predictable and I got hardcore into web novels instead.
cjet79
12d ago
Video game thread.
I played return to moria this past two weeks. It's a survival crafting game. Gameplay wise it is fairly standard for the genre. The setting of middle earth is fun. I'm not a massive LOTR nerd, so I'm sure I missed some subtleties.
There are some mechanics that definitely make the game better suited for co-op. I played it alone and felt like I was missing out. Storage sizes always felt too small, there were legendary gear items that you could only carry one of, and you could be picked up upon death by a comrade if you had one. I eventually downloaded a mod to fix the first two issues. It expanded storage and allowed carrying multiple legendary items.
Progression happens entirely through gear. And gear drops on death. Corpse runs were not as brutal as I feared. The game seemed to handle agro and grave placement in a way that helped corpse runs.
Resource collecting was generally pretty standard but sometimes I'd find myself making fun little mining platforms to get higher.
The map is procedurally generated, but it's more like pre-made rooms that are stuck together in an odd assortment rather than fully new terrain each time.
Navigation was tricky with the map not helping much except to provide general directions. I ended memorizing a lot of tunnel layouts in order to get where I needed to go.
Replayability felt low. I didn't want to totally start from scratch after getting used to all my awesome gear. The next update is supposedly adding NPCs for bases, I'll probably replay the game when that comes out.
cjet79
12d ago
Solid black, we have joked about wrapping it in caution tape to improve visibility.
cjet79
13d ago
Got so close to getting T-boned this morning. 4 way stop, I'd stopped, spotted a car to my right still headed to the intersection. I'm like cool I win. Start driving through the intersection. Car to my right blows through their stop sign. Is turning onto the road like I'm not already halfway through the intersection. Lay on my horn swerve to the left, narrowly dodge the car.
It happened 100 feet from my house, with my baby daughter in the back seat. Fucking asshole drivers, I might have ended up in jail today had he hit me. I am also starting to think that the minivan I was driving is cursed. It would have been the 4th accident in that vehicle in just 3 years of ownership. The other vehicle we've owned for 8 years has zero accidents.
Just to be surei understand you, do you believe in a right to self defense?
Like are we disagreeing that this is a fundamental right, or are we just quibbling about whether guns fall into an extension of that right?
This is absolutely not the equilibrium. If we are gonna use the terms of economics I'd say there are very high transaction costs for violence.
The equilibrium is more like: you can use violence or the threat of violence to protect a few things that you greatly care about. The things you can protect or enact with violence are heavily limited by what others are willing to protect with violence.
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