omfalos
Nonexistent good post history.
User ID: 222
omfalos
7mo ago
This is a troll post where you pretend to make an argument that 38% property ownership is not high enough to justify discrimination against Jews, while intending for the reader to ignore your argument and just react to the 38% figure as being too high.
omfalos
27d ago
It shouldn’t just be first-world, it should be rich.
And North Korea should be South Korea.
omfalos
1yr ago
https://samkriss.substack.com/p/all-the-nerds-are-dead
For the last decade, mass culture has been nerd culture, and a nerd is someone who likes things that aren’t good. This is not to say that everyone who likes things that aren’t good is a nerd. Fast food is bad food: cheap, tasteless, unhealthy, and unsatisfying. But if you grew up eating frozen burgers as an occasional treat, and you still find it nice to sometimes stumble drunk into a McDonald’s late at night and wolf down a Big Mac—because it reminds you of something, because it’s the sign for a certain vanished pleasure—then you are not necessarily a nerd. But imagine a person who collects the boxes from every McDonald’s order he’s ever made, who’s yapping with excitement about the new McDonald’s partially hydrogenated soybean-canola oil blend, who can’t wait for them to release the McBento in Japan so he can watch video reviews all day, and who acts incredibly smug every time McDonald’s posts its quarterly earnings and they’re growing faster than Burger King’s. You know exactly what this person looks like. A total failure of an adult human being. Fat clammy hands; eyes popping in innocent wonder at every new disc of machine-extruded beef derivatives. An unbearable, ungodly enthusiasm. Does he actually like eating the stuff? Maybe not. It hardly matters. His enjoyment is perverse, abstracted far beyond any ordinary pleasure. It signifies nothing. This person is a nerd.
I found this essay on hipster culture and nerd culture to be interesting and enjoyable to read. I'm linking it because it seems relevant to some of the topics discussed here. It raises questions about what effect AI will have on art and cultural production.
omfalos
1yr ago
Exploring the Set of all Possible Story Ideas
There are a set of tropes which one may call woke tropes that seem ubiquitous in television and movies. Genius women vs. stupid men, black heroes vs. white villains, mixed race families with a black father and a white mother. They seem ubiquitous, though perhaps they only seem that way because they stick out more than the polar opposite tropes. Has there ever been an attempt to quantify the prevalence of particular tropes in television and movies? Somebody posted a compilation of "anti-white propaganda" in the SSQS, which was rebutted with a random sampling of Superbowl commercials that were not noticeably anti-white. Many people here agree that woke tropes are overrepresented in Wheel of Time and Rings of Power. It seems to me that woke tropes are a real phenomenon, but the question is why... and relative to what?
To truly quantify the overrepresentation of tropes would require taking the set of all existing television shows and movies and seeing where they fit within the Set of all Possible Story Ideas. For every television show with a black hero and a white villain, there is a polar opposite show with the races reversed that never got made. Some spaces within the Set of all Possible Story ideas have been explored thoroughly, while others are unexplored. Books with protagonists that are professional writers seem pretty well done-to-death. Plays set in New York City, plays-within-plays, movies set in Los Angeles, movies about making movies. These ideas have all been thoroughly explored because authors and screenwriters write what they know. One explanation why movies and television have woke tropes is because professional writers live in New York and Los Angeles and know a lot of genius women and genius black people in real life.
By contrast, a novel which captures the inner life of a mentally retarded person is elusive and largely unexplored. Writing a book is beyond the means of most mentally retarded people, and professional writers have trouble portraying characters who are so vastly different from themselves. Even the lives of ordinary people are largely unexplored, because ordinary people do not write novels, and professional writers have trouble writing ordinary characters. It is easier to create a clown or a buffoon than it is to write an accurate depiction of a person with slightly below average intelligence. Another reason why stories about ordinary people are unexplored is because audiences demand stories that are extraordinary. There is a realm of possible story ideas that do not get explored because they are boring to audiences. Every person's life is a possible story, but most people's lives are not extraordinary. Audiences will not see a movie about a store clerk who does not have a wicked sense of humor and does not get up to crazy hijinks.
A writer can take an ordinary story and make it extraordinary by tweaking a number of variables. A natural or man-made disaster can be added to an ordinary situation to make it extraordinary. In a sporting event between a strong team and an underdog team, it is ordinary for the strong team to win and extraordinary for the underdog to win. By definition, underdogs should lose more than fifty percent of the time, but a survey of television and movies would reveal an underdog win rate approaching 100%. The underdog trope is an inherent feature of story-telling since it is the most basic way make an ordinary story extraordinary. Many of the tropes I called woke tropes can be seen as variations of the underdog trope. Maybe the reason writers have genius women vs. stupid men and black heroes vs. white villains is because they think of these as extraordinary role reversals of the ordinary state of affairs in real life. Or at least, they think they are subverting the expectations of the audience.
But it seems like audiences are getting tired of having their expectations subverted over-and-over again. Have audiences become so fatigued by underdog stories that they will pay to see the Bad News Bears lose to the Yankees? Or pay to see an intelligent white male hero triumph over a stupid black villain? Probably not. I think the underdog trope is an inherent feature of story-telling that television and movies will never escape from, and woke tropes will continue to be featured as variations of the underdog trope. I think the solution for people who are fatigued by woke tropes will come from AI story generators. AI story generators work for free and do not have to worry about writing stories that will draw in audiences. That means they can explore regions of the Set of all Possible Story Ideas which are less extraordinary and less laden with tropes. AI story generators will also just produce massive quantities of stories. Regardless of whatever woke biases or trope-seeking behaviors are programmed into them, the sheer quantity of stories generated will result in the Set of all Possible Story Ideas becoming more fleshed out and explored. Maybe most of these stories will never be adapted for television or made into movies. But when audiences tune on their television and see Genius Black Lady #3547 triumphing over Angry White Man #7821, maybe they will draw some comfort knowing that an AI story generator created a simulated universe containing billions of stories where the underdogs lose most of the time.
omfalos
1yr ago
omfalos
6mo ago
I think the US government should legalize freedom of association, allow the formation of ethnic neighborhoods, and devolve more power to the neighborhood level. I don't think what I support should count as white nationalism, per se, because it doesn't explicitly favor white people, and it falls short of creating sovereign ethnostates. I think the USA is like the Ottoman Empire, and I support preserving the empire and creating a millet system rather than breaking the empire apart into nation-states as happened historically to the Ottoman Empire.
omfalos
6mo ago
100,000,000 Africans will immigrate to the United States. I'm calling it now.
omfalos
9mo ago
I was going to see the movie in theaters, but after hearing Richard Hanania denounce the film as feminist propaganda, I watched the camrip instead. I regret watching the camrip. I would have enjoyed seeing it in theaters much better. It is not feminist propaganda to the extent Hanania makes it out to be. The filmmakers leave their movie open to interpretation and don't force any specific interpretation on the audience.
omfalos
1yr ago
How many people here think death is followed by eternal dreamless sleep? I'm an atheist, but I don't believe in eternal dreamless sleep, so that makes me sort of a "soft atheist."
omfalos
1yr ago
The human body below the neck has remained largely unchanged since the evolution of Australopithecus four million years ago. One may conclude from this that the body is well optimized. The human body above the neck has changed continuously since that time and only converged on its present form 250,000 years ago. One may surmise from this that the brain is in some ways less optimized than the body.
omfalos
1yr ago
Welfare states are a way for people who love systems to also love people.
omfalos
3mo ago
What is the name of the fallacy where one claims religious authorities don't believe in their own doctrines and are motivated by desire for power?
omfalos
5mo ago
I've noticed that people very seldom use the plural possessive apostrophe after s.
omfalos
5mo ago
Israel needs to find a way to make Palestinians wealthier so they lose interest in fighting. The only bomb that can pacify a restive population is a money bomb.
omfalos
6mo ago
Human beings have an instinct that makes them lash out violently against oppression, real or perceived. If it were possible to eliminate this instinct through genetic engineering, would it be worthwhile to do so? Would the Palestinians be better off if they were engineered to feel less emotional in response to discrimination and ethnic cleansing?
I have an idea for a way to secure government funding for right wing art patronage. Most governments have broadcasting corporations like the BBC, CBC and ABC. The USA has one called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB is governed by a nine-member board of directors. Board members are selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
My idea is to split the CPB into two corporations called PBC1 and PBC2 which will be controlled by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party respectively. The boards of directors will be selected by the party leaders in the House of Representatives and confirmed by their party caucuses. Annual funding of PBC1 and PBC2 will be proportional to the number of seats held by each party in the House of Representatives.
omfalos
1yr ago
The left recurrent laryngeal nerve and the vas deferens are classic examples of suboptimal anatomical features. One might imagine there are structures in the brain that are suboptimal in a way that is analogous to the left recurrent laryngeal nerve and the vas deferens. Perhaps there are some we have yet to recognize as such because we don't understand how the brain works.
omfalos
1yr ago
I found this article to be somewhat informative.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/11/11/what-everyone-got-wrong-on-the-brazilian-elections/
The Democratic Party would lose popularity if they ordered NASA to cut ties with SpaceX. It is possible to take money from the government without being beholden to the government if your companies are beloved by voters. I think SpaceX and Tesla are beloved enough that the government is stuck with them regardless of what Elon Musk says or does.
omfalos
1yr ago
A possible solution to your quandary is that a black criminal underclass did in fact form in the intervening years between emancipation and the creation of Jim Crow laws. The black ghetto subculture that colonized Northern industrial cities during the Great Migration was not a novel development but grew out of a preexisting subculture that had existed for generations in small Southern cities dating back to emancipation.
omfalos
1yr ago
Ban anonymous browsing of the internet. Publicly broadcast all internet users' media consumption habits.
Commenting on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Coronation Sermon
Nobody has made a post about the coronation yet. There weren't any major culture war incidents. It went off without a hitch in other words. I'm reaching to find something to talk about. Here is my reaction to the sermon given by the archbishop of Canterbury during the ceremony. The sermon states the ceremonial role of the British monarch in plain terms and tries its best to skirt around the fact that the king has no power. He likens Charles III to Jesus. Here is the full sermon:
https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2023/05/06/archbishop-of-canterburys-coronation-sermon/
The archbishop likens Charles III to Jesus, not by elevating Charles to the level of a god, but by bringing down Jesus to the level of a man. Christians believe that Jesus was both a man and a God. The fact that he was and is an omnipotent deity is essential to Christian theology. But having the limitations of a man is what makes the telling of Jesus' life in the Gospels a compelling story. The archbishop's sermon depicts Jesus as a very talented preacher who relies on the power of persuasion to save souls. This aspect of the Gospel story most closely resembles Charles III's role as archon basileus of a parliamentary democracy. But unlike the British monarch, Jesus had real power to back up his preaching.
The sermon oversells what Charles III can accomplish with mere persuasion. It states with confidence that "showing unity" and "giving a good example" are sufficient to "bind us together", to "offer a society that is strong, joyful, etc." and to "bear heavy weights". By speaking of the ceremonial role of the British monarch as sufficient to accomplish the duties of kingship, the archbishop leaves no consideration for what happens if persuasion fails to produce the advertised results.
I was raised Christian but became an atheist a long time ago. When I think back on Christianity, there are certain concepts that that strike me as peculiar. One of these is the concept that a one's salvation may hinge on a chance encounter with another person whose intervention changes one's life for the better. It strikes me as chaotic, random and therefore unfair. My naïve understanding of Christianity when I was a Christian was influenced by growing up in an individualistic culture and a school system organized along individualistic lines. Every person was tested by God individually, I imagined. Sharing notes or copying answers from other test takers was not part of the test. I believed my choices in life would just determine whether or not my soul was saved. But the thought that my choices in life could be the determining factor in making somebody else a good person literally never occurred to me, and if it had, it would have greatly discomforted me. I would have perceived it as an added burden. Again, it would never have occurred to me that other people were sharing the burden of making me a good person. I would have perceived the sharing of responsibility only as an increased burden. I imagine that people raised in collectivist cultures perceive the sharing of burdens as generally resulting in a decreased burden. The concept of a mutually supporting community taking collective responsibility for the salvation of their souls is probably much closer to how people thought about Christianity in the past. It almost gives me warm fuzzy feelings, but I still find the chaotic, random nature of it discomforting.
Service and helping people is the unifying theme of the archbishop's sermon, but there is something lacking in his call to service. I like to help people. I like to be of service. I like giving people presents. I like teaching. I'm pretty good at it. But something I don't try to do is influence friends and family and coworkers to make them better people. I shrink from any situation where somebody is doing something immoral that I could intervene to correct. It's one thing teach somebody practical knowledge, and quite another to stage an intervention.
Christianity used to take the collectivist approach to saving souls. It wasn't enough to lead the horse to water. Responsible people had to dunk the horse's head and make it drink. The king was often the one doing the dunking. Since the time of the Glorious Revolution, the power of the state has grown enormously. But liberal democracies impose artificial limits on how they use their enormous power. Faced with equine dehydration, or any other societal problem, the solution must be more education, free counseling and state-sponsored therapy. It's fitting that the land of the NHS should refer to kingship as a service. The solution is always a service. Yet there remain certain classes of societal problems that are best solved—or that can only be solved—by issuing a command.
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