cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
17hr ago
There are two ways to evolve the pallet. One is to go to nicer restaurants and eventually wind up in high cuisine where food is optimized for human consumption. The other is to go dumpster diving for unique tastes.
cjet79
19hr ago
Eh I disagree. Some table stakes can at least let the girl know you are serious.
I met my now wife at work. And she was the third person I "dated" from a work environment. (The other two might not count for different reasons).
I was aware while dating my wife that if things in the relationship went bad I'd have to leave that organization. She is/was well liked and well known there.
Life has trade-offs. You gotta decide what finding love is worth. If the answer is it's worth "nothing" and you'll take no negative tradeoffs in the search then I think you'll be searching for much longer. (All else equal of course)
cjet79
1d ago
This is right in line with standard government policy on all products:
Restrict supply and subsidize demand.
The end result is skyrocketing prices.
The opposite would look like:
only families with kids under 18 get to buy single family homes. - restricting demand
Housing construction companies get massive tax write-offs for each house they construct. - subsidizing supply
I guess that's closer to China policy.
cjet79
1d ago
I don't really know why I don't like Brandon Sanderson stories anymore. If I had a checklist of boxes that needed to be filled in for me to enjoy a story, most of his stories would check all the boxes. I did enjoy quite a few of his books, I'd estimate I've read about 10 of them. Mistborn series, some of Alloy of Law, steelheart, way of kings, elantris, etc.
There is something that feels samey about the plot and arcs of all the books. And I often find my mind wandering to other topics while I read his books now. Its possible I just read too much of him.
cjet79
2d ago
I had some fun for maybe the first time ever doing some clothes shopping for Christmas. The main reason was my daughter was along with me and enjoying herself.
We were picking out clothes for her and her younger sister at Walmart. I was partly amazed at just how low in price some items could get. $3 t-shirts seems a little crazy to me. The most expensive item was a $12 sweater made of a fluffy white material.
It was also nice not having to try anything on. At their age you just buy on the slightly larger size and they'll grow into it within a year.
The crowds were also not as bad as I feared, or at least Walmart had it down to a science getting them all through the few dozen self checkout points.
I'm an unabashed capitalist, but even I sometimes forget the modern marvels right in front of my eyes.
cjet79
2d ago
Yeah I just think you are misunderstanding some fundamental incentive structures man.
Race to the bottom gets to the bottom when there is only a singular driving incentive. And modern war often seems that way, but its not.
An example of something that is ruthless is biological evolution. Any tactic works. Any genes that can replicate and gain energy are acceptable. You get parasites, viruses, mind controlling fungi, etc.
Human war (especially in the modern era) is not really like that. Politicians at the top would like it to be that way for the sake of their own success. But they have to operate through lots of intermediaries. And those intermediaries are playing iterated prisoner's dilemmas with other nations, troops, and their descendants.
cjet79
3d ago
This doesn't seem right.
I get the sense that there are certain weapons and tactics that end up as a race to the bottom. Governments and their soldiers would rather not compete on those things. Even if they have an advantage on one race to the bottom, they don't have it in all areas.
The soldiers themselves are often interested in compliance. American POWs were treated well in Nazi Germany, even while they were sending their own population to gulags and gas chambers.
cjet79
3d ago
The right has almost zero ground game because the left will murder them if they do.
It's a winning strategy, and I think we need more of it. Making journalist, judges, legislators and administrators fear for their life in public is a proven strategy.
This looks like fedposting. I get that it is mostly a criticism of the left for actually engaging in political violence, and I'm hoping that there is a degree of sarcasm in it. 3 day ban.
Last time (7 months ago) you got a short ban for something that looked like fedposting you insisted it wasn't fedposting. We gave you a light one day ban at the time. Back then I wrote this in the thread:
As far as I am concerned fedposting is one of the few existential threats that this board faces. The other two are zorba kicking the bucket and a democrat party crackdown on free speech on the web.
One day bans are minor and basically nothing. That is us saying "yes really, this is a rule we will enforce, don't do it". For anything resembling fed posting I'm also willing to hand out bans like candy. Don't fucking do it. We can choose to be lenient when it is just the rules we care about enforcing. But this is a rule that the world will enforce upon us if we don't self police. Be annoyingly verbose and add a bunch of disclaimers if you insist on doing it. We still might ban you, because again we aren't really the ones making the rule on this. Sorry it sucks, I don't like it anymore than you do.
So to reiterate: do not fedpost. Do not jokingly fedpost. Do not look like you might be fedposting.
cjet79
7d ago
Is the connection supposed to be that healthy == unchanging?
As if I imagined that connection out of nowhere because it's such an amazing idea rather than it being the entire implication of the post?
cjet79
9d ago
A diabetic can tell me all day they are only going to eat "healthy desserts". It's the "desserts" parts that matter.
cjet79
10d ago
I'm currently watching the ken Burns documentary about the revolutionary war. The 13 American colonies were a relatively prosperous place, and the absolute value of the taxation they were facing was relatively minimal to what British citizens were paying, and what most Americans would have to pay after the war ended.
In 1773 they could be described as loyal subjects of the crown. They thought the differences and problems they were having with England were reconcilable. Many thought the King would help by supporting their cause in parliament. Three years later they are declaring independence, calling the king a tyrant, and fighting a hot war.
It gives you a sense that things can kick off real fast. And I think people know this in their gut as well. The time to signal your loyalty is not once things have started kicking off, that is way too late. You need to let people know where you are beforehand.
There is a difference between prepping for a bad situation and wishing it to actually happen though. Anyone with two brains cells to rub together should know that a revolution or civil war in the US at this time would be completely awful, so they talk a big game just in case, but no one tries to make it come about.
cjet79
10d ago
Stagnant memetics were more of the problem.
Memetics impacts technology and vice versa.
Ideas of who is in charge and who is the shitty underclass will also remain stagnant.
cjet79
10d ago
Its best not to go down this route of AI paranoia. I'd suggest reporting things as AI rather than calling them out yourself.
cjet79
10d ago
I see descendants as very disruptive. I have one daughter that is very like my wife. One daughter that is like neither of us, but maybe like my mother in law or brother in law, and one daughter that is too young to guess. Neither I or my two siblings are anything like my parents in terms of occupation. Neither of my parents were like their parents in terms of occupation. Neither of my mothers parents were like their parents in terms of occupation. (i dont know much about my father's grandparents, but what little I've heard suggests the same pattern). I didn't marry some foreigner, I married someone that is at least three generation American, probably 5 or 6 generation, but they didn't fully keep track. My ancestors were once upper class Americans. They owned slaves, attended the revolutionary war state conventions as representatives, served as officers in that war, and then subsequently the civil war. We then became upper middle class Americans. Doctors, engineers, etc.
I've shared this sentiment on here before. I am American via ancestors that have been here approximately 400 years from England. I find the gatekeeping of people that arrived after my ancestors to be silly and pointless. This has always been a country of immigrants and memetics, and never a country of blood and genetics. I feel like WWII was the definitive answer to countries of genetics like Germany and Japan. We kicked both of their asses at the same time.
China is a country of genetics but not of memetics. They have bounced around to radically different philosophies as the ruling class has changed over the last century.
cjet79
10d ago
I think the Amish are a nice outcome. If the world went this route it would look like Anthem.
cjet79
11d ago
A society that looks like church #1 sounds like a dystopian nightmare to me. Something like the society in Ayn Rand's book Anthem.
Stagnant in every aspect. No social mobility, no new technology, no new ideas. I suppose the Amish live this way, but even they have a sort of safety valve that allows their young men to leave.
But the Amish can only exist because a much stronger more competitive society shelters them from the rest of the world.
cjet79
12d ago
Thanks for sharing, a few of those had me laughing out loud, and I couldn't explain them to my young children.
cjet79
12d ago
On AI use:
Having gone through this comment and others I don't think this needs to take any action.
No one here really wants to talk with an AI.
Using AI as a copy editor aka fixing grammar, spelling, and sentence clarity is not against the rules. But people will eventually notice and they won't like it. And they will likely call some of your original thoughts "AI slop", and you'll have little to dissuade them otherwise
I think most here would be fine with reading slightly worse grammar and spelling along with the certainly that they aren't reading AI stuff.
cjet79
13d ago
Hmm we might both be right here.
What I meant by making it harder is that if you have a candidate that is crap and gonna lose 40 states, you need to commit probably 20 different instances of election stealing to have a safe outcome.
If the candidate is going to lose the popular vote by two million you just need to commit enough fraud in LA and New York to swing the election.
cjet79
13d ago
It is not conducive to good mental health to simultaneously believe "The [2020/2024] (strike out as necessary) American presidential election was secure and legitimate, but the [2020/2024] (strike out as necessary) election was rigged and manipulated".
I unironically believe all these statements are true. It doesn't take schizophrenia.
US elections are not a monolith. They require every single voting district to behave well and consistently across the entire country. Some districts are going to be very competently run, and some are going to fail real badly. In a close enough election it is possible that incompetent or corrupt districts are enough to sway the election.
This is something that the electoral college protects against, since one state's messed up votes will just impact the outcome of that state, rather than the entire popular vote.
cjet79
13d ago
Yeah "supply and demand" is the explanation here. Reading more into it is as superstitious as reading tea leaves.
cjet79
14d ago
I think you misunderstood one point I had above.
Peak oil worries are about how fast we run out of oil and how soon.
Fast and soon being two different things.
Scenario 1: hit peak oil in 5 years, hit basically no oil in another 5 years.
Scenario 2: hit peak oil in 50 years, hit basically no oil in another 50 years.
Scenario 3: hit peak oil in 5 years, hit basically no oil in another 50 years.
Scenario 4 hit peak oil in 50 years, hit basically no oil in another 5 years.
Only scenario 1 worries me. And I think it is the least likely scenario.
I think #2 or #4 are more likely. I think oil reserves are effectively unlimited right now. Not easy oil reserves. But oil reserves plus some new technology. We already know of a bunch of marginal oil reserves like tar sands that are crappy but semi unlimited compared to current consumption rates.
I might be horribly off base in my assumptions. Willing to be corrected if I'm very wrong on those assumptions.
The fusion technology feels closer than 20 years. Ten years feels too optimistic. 30 years and something has gone horribly wrong in society or technology.
cjet79
14d ago
Peak Oil was a classic Motte and Bailey argument.
The rock-solid highly defensible part is that yes Oil is only a renewable resource on geological time scales. So eventually if consumption keeps going up there is going to be some point at which we "run out" of oil and switch to other resources.
The less defensible part of the argument was how fast and how soon this was going to occur. With some implied and ridiculous timelines being "we will run out instantly just next year". The faster and sooner that peak oil was supposed to hit the more something needed to be done right now to avert the disaster. If peak oil is 50 years off, and will come along so slowly that prices and technology can easily adjust then nothing needs to be done right now.
I personally believe we have reached escape velocity on energy. We are close enough to fusion energy. Fossil fuel reserves in the ground are still pretty large.
The biggest new energy hog in the future will be AI, but AI data centers are sort of a best case scenario for an energy hog:
- They are stationary.
- Their energy demand can be flexible over long time periods.
- They can be located anywhere.
cjet79
16d ago
I agree no one wants data about themselves kept. But everyone is happy to keep data about others.
At the medium sized tech company I worked at it was often impossible to track your own work history beyond a year or two back. Emails deleted automatically. Jira was cleaned up regularly. Git repos were sometimes moved losing all commit history (I know there are ways to avoid losing the commit history, but they didn't do it). In person meeting notes were almost never kept.
However, any American customer data was maintained almost indefinitely. With the right levels of access you could see the full data tables of the first customers from two decades earlier. All of this data was backed up in triplicate to make sure no random data storage problem would cause us to lose it. They spent the time and effort to migrate that data through many schema changes, and multiple SQL database version upgrades.
That is part of the dumpster diving experience in literature, homophone words used consistently incorrectly.
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