cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
2yr ago
I empathize a lot with this comment. I did not go through a drastic life change like you did. I was just always a skinny guy whatever I ate ... until I turned about 22.
I started gaining weight slowly. An additional 10 to 15 pounds a year, but I went from skinny to pushing the obese BMI weight category in 5 years. And then suddenly I started losing a bunch of weight. I thought it was great until I visited a doctor ... my liver was getting destroyed by sugar. I had type II diabetes and I wasn't even 30.
Its been a few years. I've managed to get my blood sugar levels in line. I completely quit sugar, started intermittent fasting, and I'm on metformin which gives me explosive diarrhea anytime I fail myself and eat too much sugar (and no, the punishment of explosive diarrhea was not enough to really stop me from eating sugar).
I think quitting sugar has easily been the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Not that I've racked up a whole bunch of difficult life experiences. But quitting sugar is always gonna be on that list of metrics.
I had a lifetime of good diet and exercise habits, until I didn't.
I had a lifetime of bad diet and mediocre exercise habits. And it took 25 years before I paid the price. In an alternate world where obesity related problems aren't treated as a medical issue, I'd be fucked. The battery of blood tests that diagnosed the diabetes and liver problems wouldn't have existed in that alternate world. I would have just blissfully kept eating sugar for a few more years before organ failure and possibly death.
I'm glad you seem to be doing better. I'm glad there is another tool in toolbox for dealing with obesity.
cjet79
2yr ago
No, I checked my library on steam. Nothing. Then I checked for the game on steam to see reviews and description. No space exploration game by that name came up. So I go and search for it on the internet, and find this wikipedia entry. If that is the game then holy crap. It was released in 1996 almost thirty years ago. No wonder I hadn't played it.
cjet79
2yr ago
The only rub being, that I'd like space exploration to be part of the game, and getting bogged down in a solar system for too long would turn exploring the cosmos into a bit of a drudgery. Of course we could just have the early systems be relatively undefended, and have the massive solar system scale war be the Last Stand of the game.
I always feel like I've wanted a space exploration game, but also every space exploration game I've ever played has felt like a disappointment. Even the latest version of No Man's Sky has kind of boring exploration mechanics. Its just that they made so many of the other mechanics in the game workable and good that the lackluster exploration has fallen off as a point of criticism.
Realistically, Space is a whole bunch of nothing. A bunch of rocks, some glowing balls of fusion, and lots and lots of nothing. Freespace in particular is in a rough position to make exploration interesting. I'm not even sure what level of mechanics are allowed, but I feel that traditional space exploration would be limited to obtaining new skyboxes, or reading text of something happening off screen.
The only interesting thing a freespace player can really explore are new ships and new mechanics.
cjet79
2yr ago
Additional thoughts:
The shields are for protection within subspace travel. The faster you want to go, the stronger the shields need to be.
Rule of thumb: fast travel between solar systems needs dreadnaught sized shields. Fast travel between planets needs frigate sized shields. Fast travel between planets and their moons can be done with fighter sized shields.
The shields can pull double duty and be used in combat as well.
Not sure about these:
- maybe the subspace engine energy can also be tuned for use in a weapon that can bust subspace shields. But it would mean longer engine charge times. So fleets might be forced to choose between fighting or escaping.
- The shields are large so that smaller entities can travel alongside the bigger ships.
- Shields can merge. Smaller shielded entities can "pop" through a bigger shield with a bit of pushing. And if the shield has been weakened a bit with subspace beams.
cjet79
2yr ago
I would maybe be interested in getting involved.
I have programming experience. Usually front end web UI type stuff, but I've done lots of weird one off things in other areas.
Here is my late night sorta drunk take on an idea that I haven't seen before:
Solar system scale wars, with fleets of frigates, one or only a few super large scale ships, and a system of assymetric information warfare.
You would not know what your opponents are doing, only what your own ships are doing.
You'd be slowly capturing orbits with the solar system to expand your awareness.
Dreadnaughts are needed to take down dreadnaught shields.
If your dreadnaught knows the positioning of an enemy dreadnaught, if they are close enough it can take a shot and take out the shields.
The shields take a while to regenerate.
In the meantime frigates can do damage to the dreadnaught.
I'm having trouble fleshing out the full explanation of what I have in my head. But it gets you different size fleet engagements, with a long view of preserving your frigates, until you can get a decisive victory by destroying the enemy dreadnaught. You are trying to hide your dreadnaught from the enemy fleet while also positioning it for the kill shot.
Smaller engagements will see just a few frigates and their fighter squadrons trying to kill each other off.
Medium engagements might be a dozen frigates engaging each other for prime positioning of a dreadnaught.
Large engagements will have dreadnaughts facing off with multiple dozens of frigates to support them.
Strategic map mishaps and information assymetry could cause any of these fleet types to mix. And victory for your side might mean annihilating the enemy or escaping to bring back information about the enemy fleet location.
cjet79
2yr ago
Feedback about symmetrical: not enough.
Most military designs are perfectly symmetrical. One of the big exceptions is carriers, because they have an extremely pressing design concern that makes symmetry highly costly.
A cheap realistic military ship would have as many identical pieces as possible. Symmetry makes that easy.
The one major lacking piece of symmetry is the single rail gun. If you want to go back of symmetry then truly build the ship around a giant rail gun. Make most of the ship the rail gun.
Also, counterintuitively to most gun designs a rail gun could be heavy anywhere rather than just being back heavy. Most guns are back heavy because the explosion and acceleration happens in the chamber. A railgun's acceleration occurs throughout the barrel. And it could be designed to impart more acceleration anywhere along its flight path. More gradual acceleration is easier.
cjet79
2yr ago
I played eve online for many years and it fully took over the part of my brain that deals with ship size classification. It's pretty similar to yours.
Drone*
Fighter*
Frigate
Destroyer
Cruiser
Battlecruiser
Battleship
Carrier
Dreadnaught
Titan
*the drone and fighter were controlled by larger ships and not actually flown by players. Fighters usually required carrier platforms, while drones were usable by almost any ship size.
cjet79
2yr ago
I've also heard that the over-specifying thing is trivially easy to do in academia. To the point that there are basically no restrictions on importing qualified academic talent. For academia they just write job requirements looking for a person that has written on topics X, Y, and Z. And they will make each of those topics basically the title paper of the academic they want to hire. The end result being that literally only one person in the world is qualified for the job ... the person they want to hire.
cjet79
2yr ago
It probably depends on genetics. Some people can't break alcohol down as efficiently as others.
If your parents drink and they seem to be fine with that amount of alcohol then you will probably also be fine eventually.
I'd also say to enjoy the low tolerance. I have pretty high alcohol tolerance now, and it's not fun. Having low tolerance is cheaper and probably healthier. If I drink too often nowadays then I can get alcohol hangovers without really feeling tipsy.
cjet79
2yr ago
Update:
Some of you might remember that I was playing in a recreational sport and had an annoying person to deal with.
She had reported a fellow player and board member to the national group and was generally disliked by multiple other other members.
We removed her from the email group, and didn't say why. I learned from another board member that she had a history of reporting lots of people, so they probably ignored the report.
After removing her from the email list she noticed a few weeks later. She sent me an email asking about it. I did not respond. I didn't see any way it would go well for me to be the bearer of bad news.
I am not generally a fan of ghosting people, but if someone has demonstrated a willingness to retaliate via reporting to higher authorities then I don't see any reason to stick my neck out. She has brought on the dislike that got her removed, and the ghosting that did not let her know why.
cjet79
2yr ago
We have done topic specific posts on a case by case basis. They aren't needed too often.
And there are a few reasons why we have the rule. Much of it is related to people abusing bare link posting to wage culture war. Some of it is "race to post" problems. Otherwise it's to prevent the flooding of the culture war thread with single topics. If the requirement is to post a long thing about the topic then it is going to slow down the rate of new topics.
cjet79
2yr ago
Please don't drop bare links as a top level post. If you have something to say about a news story then say that in the top comment. If not, then leave the news story alone and give someone else the chance to post an interesting top level comment on the story.
This is your first offense, so just a warning for now.
cjet79
2yr ago
Some thoughts:
One way to kill two birds with one stone: A happily married couple with multiple genetic kids. The parents are of the same apparent gender, but it is made clear in some way that the kids are the exclusive results of a genetic pairing of the two parents. You know there is a male and there is a female. But you can't plausibly tell which is which.
The problem with Trans in our society is that we don't really have the technology to do a successful gender transition. I'm not sure what degree of controversy would still exist if you could press a button, and it would change you at the genetic level to the other gender, and reverse any effects of your previous gender on your body.
If aliens are in the game, please don't be boring. One of the fun things about Dr. Who is that some of the episodes with aliens involved are actually ya know, alien. Not just humans in lame skin suits like most of star trek and star wars.
Gender trans people might be super boring in the future. The real controversy is around species trans. What to do with the people that want to transition into a reptile form? They basking in the sun on busy roads, laying their eggs in hospitals meant for human babies, and insisting on eating meat like the consummate carnivores they've transition into.
Creating contrast with aliens might be useful, but to avoid accusations of "you are calling trans people aliens" you can always make the aliens the stodgy ones stuck in their ways. That is what the Star Trek episode did with the halfy faces people. Maybe have an alien race that is unwilling to undergo the slightest amount of body modification. No haircuts for aliens! Or no dyeing their hair. Or no tatoos. Etc. The trick here is just finding some reason why that thing needs to be important to the aliens. Or maybe their gender roles are just much more solid and unswitcheable. The female warrior is not just unlikely, it is forbidden. The male caretaker is forbidden. Etc. Make it a matter of survival to have flexible gender roles.
cjet79
2yr ago
Not worth a post as top level thread on it's own
The expectations of effort and not waging the culture war are the same in this thread as they are in the general subreddit. This post doesn't meet those standards. This is a warning.
cjet79
2yr ago
It doesn't take very many changes, nor does it take rare or unusual changes to make race highly salient. Let's take it outside of the dark street in a bad section of town; should I be more concerned by a black guy than a white guy that fits this description on Michigan Avenue in Chicago? I think so. Let's remove the demeanor and neighborhood, but hold all else constant - would you feel more threatened by a young black man than a young Asian man in a hoodie? Let's keep everything the same, but flip the gender - are black women more threatening than women of Hmong descent? Let's change almost everything and update to a guy in his 40s approaching me in a grocery store parking lot - surely you'd think race is at least somewhat informative on how this interaction is likely to go?
I think in most situations there are other pieces of information that tell you a lot more than race. Certainly it is possible to construct a hypothetical scenario where you remove a bunch of those other pieces of information and race becomes more and more important. I think focusing on race to the detriment of other pieces of information is the wrong direction to go.
cjet79
2yr ago
I'll echo MathiasTRex regarding university admissions not wanting real diversity; they can tolerate anything except the outgroup. I won't go so far as to say they don't believe their own rhetoric - plenty do - but there is a substantial sense in which the whole "diversity" movement is false consciousness and would be abandoned if it actually did produce real viewpoint diversity.
Thank you for reading other people's responses. It is helpful when responding to a bunch of people if they don't all make the same point. I mentioned this in other responses, but yes I forgot to address racial spoils in my original post. I'll summarize and say I think it creates an unhelpful mindset in those receiving the spoils, and that after a generation or two I think there tends to be some bad backlash.
Regarding immigration, there is the issue of ethnic tension to consider. In theory that should be solvable via societal means, but we tried that and it didn't work amazingly well. There's a degree of generative instinct involved there, and it's awfully hard to suppress that.
There is often ethnic tension. I think America actually was quite good at solving ethnic tension. Still good at it in many places, but maybe not everywhere. Melting pot idea seems to have worked. Cultivating shared civic pride seems to have worked. It is frustrating that the main political faction in the US that wants more immigration seems to also want to stop doing the things that have made immigration work well in the past. I think integration has its own sort of momentum though, it is personally beneficial to the immigrants, so even if its not encouraged at a policy level it is still encouraged through economic incentives.
cjet79
2yr ago
I specifically said race is a real thing with real differences. I do believe that in many cases the differences you might see are minor. There is a huge amount of internal variation among people within the same race. Even just looking at the children from a single set of parents there can be a huge amount of variation. Realize, that however much you judge someone based on their parents, you should judge them based on their race far less. Simply because the mechanism for both relations is genetics, but that relation is much stronger for parents.
cjet79
2yr ago
I never claimed race cannot add any useful information.
I'll maybe put it this way:
If you $100 to pay for each piece of information you received you must divide the hundred dollars based on how useful you think the information might be. I think in most every day situations I'd never pay more than a dollar or two to learn the race of someone.
and in general when acquiring information you are spending limited resources. Thinking time, things you can notice, etc. Race is often very easy to notice, so I realize as a Bayesian you'd always quickly check it. But I see it as low cost information and low benefit information.
cjet79
2yr ago
I'm trying to read all of the responses of people that wrote things on here. That leaves me little time to go read someone else's writing on another website.
I don't believe color blindness has ever been a major problem.
cjet79
2yr ago
You are right, I did miss out on addressing racial spoils systems. I'd meant to address it originally, but it slipped my mind. I had a longer section planned, but I'll give you the short summary, because I'm trying to respond to a bunch of messages.
I believe such spoils systems fundamentally bad for the race receiving the spoils. It creates an unhelpful mindset, and is likely to backfire in the long-term.
I don't believe most people want different people around them. I also don't believe most companies want competition. And I don't believe most politicians want to have an opposition. I do think all of these things are made a bit better by having the things they don't want foisted upon them.
cjet79
2yr ago
Yes, unless there are reports of time traveling vikings raping and pillaging.
cjet79
2yr ago
I think you're using motivated reasoning here to work backwards from a position you wish were true, and selectively looking for evidence that supports your view. It's extremely unfashionable in high society to notice racial differences in any negative way (at least towards blacks), and the fact that your position ends up agreeing with this is a bit too convenient.
Please cutout the attempts to psycho-analyze my position. It is annoying to defend against, because it just invites more psycho-analyses from you, or requires that you take my word on something, which you have already demonstrated you are unwilling to do if you are psycho-analysing me.
I don't believe race adds a ton of information over other available pieces of information.
Consider two scenarios:
- An old man in a suit on the phone is walking toward you. You are in a nice area of town with lots of offices during the day time.
- A young man in a hoody and tattered jeans is walking toward you. You are in a bad area of town, with high crime stats, and it is late at night.
My suggestion is that the race of the man in either case barely adds any additional useful information. You are fine in the first scenario, and you are in more danger in the second scenario.
In America, I agree seeing an Asian guy instead of a black guy would add some useful information in the second scenario. But I wouldn't say this is true in all areas of America (asian neighborhoods are not devoid of gangs or criminals), and certainly not all areas of the world (asian countries certainly aren't devoid of crime). The US has been able to engage in selective immigration with Asian countries for over a century and a half, and we can see the results. We did a form of anti-selective immigration with Africa, the losers in internal conflicts were sold as slaves.
I think it is a minor bad to impose unnecessary social expectations on others. Mostly I feel this way as a sort of "golden rule" guidance. I don't want tons of expectations imposed on me because of my race, so I'm not willing to do it to others.
Genetics is not destiny. If you believe that who your parents are dictates who you are going to be then that is a fundamentally unhelpful mindset.
cjet79
2yr ago
I do not disagree that it is possible to construct hypothetical scenarios where race becomes the determining factor in making a decision. As I said in the original, I am not committed to the strongest possible stance that race is never a useful source of information.
The mixed racial comment was about busing. I mispoke in a semi-hurried comment.
cjet79
2yr ago
I've lived in some pretty bad neighborhoods. The criminals dress like all of the other teenagers. There's not some big divide between normal people and 90s gangster rapper caricatures where you can instantly tell who the bad guys are. I've also lived in poor white neighborhoods. People left trash on their lawn and got into domestic disputes but I never heard of anyone being mugged.
That is because they mostly are just like other teenagers. Young male violence and criminality is widespread. Career criminals don't generally exist as teenagers, because no teenagers have been doing anything long enough to have a career. I was physically assaulted in highschool three different times (not counting the times I playfought with friends). It was just young guys, none of them went on to be criminals, and they didn't dress any different than their peers. But I knew to avoid groups of young men out on the town, a mugging might have been preferable to a physical assault with no purpose but to show off.
I'm usually tempted to stick to the direct question prompt or not say anything at all. But I'm going slightly off topic because I feel like MadMonzer gave a really good response. I'd like to pick your brain on socialism.
I'm libertarian. Your belief set is wild to me. Not the populist beliefs. I disagree with you that those beliefs are uncommon, but maybe that is because they are my polar opposite so I notice them more often, just like you think there are a bunch of libertarians everywhere. Its the socialist beliefs that I find wild.
I just can't ever see economic transactions as very evil, and to me most corporations are just lots of economic transactions scaled up massively. Meanwhile I find acts/threats of violence abhorrent, and see government as just scaling that up massively.
The "exploitation" narrative has never made sense to me. I'm selling labor, the corporations are buying it. Often times many different corporations are buying the labor. That price of labor is cheaper when lots of people are selling it. Just like products are cheaper for me when lots of corporations are selling them.
So that leads me to some questions:
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