BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
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User ID: 3614
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
1d ago
I’ll light a candle and pray for you to overcome your traumatic time-travel travails.
I’ve chipped in my 10 quid at enough popup RSPCA booths on British Town High Street that I think I’ve bought an indulgence or two. The sad dog posters always get me.
My primary concern is the ghost of Hector haunting me for my presumptuousness.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
1d ago
Going back in time to create your own cloning and quick aging vats is deeply respectable commitment to your transhuman philosophy, and, if you’re looking for literary criticism, a bit of a ripoff from Warhammer 40K.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
1d ago
Fast forward to now. A US Airman has died, allegedly because the service pistol fired a round while it was sitting in a holster on his desk.
You spent a considerable amount of words digging away at the foundations of “The Gun That Goes Off For No Reason,” but if it turns out this is true,* would you consider it a gun that goes off for no reason?
*One hopes that everyone discussing this understands that “no reason” means “without purposeful human input.” The guy bumping his desk as he stood up is a reason in the causal sense, but obviously not the sort of thing you want your holstered gun to do.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
3d ago
- Two hours by car
- Two hours by car
- Five minute walk (wheat)
- Hour and a half by car
- 8 minutes by car
- Two hours by car
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
5d ago
One thing I’ve found absolutely fascinating about these sorts of “live like it’s X year” experiments is just how surprising and even interesting the “analog” real world is once your brain adjusts to it.
Any links to examples? How far back are some of these people successfully resetting their clocks, as it were?
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
5d ago
ENTJ
I just did the Meyers-Briggs a few months ago at the suggestion of some people I work with. Unknown to me at the time, the office consensus had settled on ENT already and was only undecided on J or P.
Once I got my results, J seemed pretty obvious to me, but I guess I hide it well or come off differently to people in real life.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
7d ago
It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people.
It’ll be nice to see siege warfare make a return.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
10d ago
Didn’t realize you are Russian. Good luck, don’t get hit by shrapnel, hope the war wraps up soon.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
10d ago
Aladdin 3: King of Thieves is pretty alright, on the basis of a strong third act.
Can’t say I know of any other good ones.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
12d ago
In surveys like this, "household" normally is defined so that 15 unrelated adult occupants of a single house count as 15 one-person households.
This is insane. I love a good example of governmental statistical fudging, thanks!
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
12d ago
Do you really think shoving all the gays back in the closet and teaching masturbation is evil will fix everything?
A practical Church-oriented solution would probably wind up looking like homosexual desires are a cross some people wind up bearing, like some people have kleptomania. It doesn’t matter how much you desire to steal, or how seen and valued it would make you feel, or what great justifications wordcel kleptomaniacs can generate to justify themselves. Civilization just isn’t going to let people steal all the time. The ordered solution is to not do it.
I imagine Richard Simmons was the optimal gay guy, from the Church’s perspective. Did he break down and sin from time to time? I’m sure he probably did. He was discreet enough that we will never know for sure, though.
But when society condones disordered living, it causes real harm to both society and the individual. Just like when society condones shoplifting, for any reason, SJW or otherwise, eventually stores start shutting down, harming society overall and the individuals who were doing the stealing.
Addendum: This stance presumes that homosexuality is, in fact, irresistibly based in biology, which I am not aware is proven.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
12d ago
And this is a fair way to say it.
If I am a Martian Elm on Neptune, I’m not concerned much about the plight of the Neptunian Elm. But I also don’t want the Venusian Elm to move in on my nice spot by the river, either, and start competing for water. Even if I am supremely confident I’ll win, there’s nothing I really gain out of the situation.
Besides not speciating into a Quokka Elm, I guess.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
12d ago
I got sniped by your edit, RIP.
Sorry.
To respond, you seem to think of the “weak but strong” mindset as recognizing the enemy’s strength but thinking oneself still capable of taking them on.
I think it is most essentially revealed in that Tyson quote. It is unsurprising to me that uneducated Iron Mike, via practical training and competition at the highest levels, stumbled across the idea’s purest distillation. Throughout training, he is deeply concerned that his opponent is too strong for him. This leads him to train harder. He does retain a certain degree of confidence in his own strength, though, or else he wouldn’t be willing to face this guy’s challenge. At the moment of decision, he then switches over to the idea that his opponent is too weak, that he knows he has him. But he still has to respect his opponent’s strength, because Tyson demonstrably fought hard and tactically. He is just utterly confident that he is the strong one now.
It’s important to note he wasn’t always right! He was one of the greatest, but I think it’s fair to say that when he lost this “too weak and too strong” mentality, he also lost bouts he could have won.
As I see it, and as how most applications of the term I’ve seen look like, it’s a cognitive trap that does improve morale, but usually does so at the cost of epistemic clarity(e.g. “Republikkkans are literal fascists, we can surely defeat them with protests and slogans!)
I think this is just a side effect of, what I would Chudishly call “ivory tower thinking.” A sort of over-academicizing of thought. Despite this, the concept is extremely practically useful in real life.
The way it is tossed around by overeducated people who do not have any actual experience with low-information, high-friction contests is what leads to the cognitive trap version that I think you do correctly identify.
I think this is why colleges and universities used to be so big on amateur sports for as much of the student body as possible. I’m sure the logic would have been “It’s just good for the young men’s development,” but I think this is kind of practical learned knowledge is an element of what they meant by “good.”
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
12d ago
people can and do come to definitive conclusions about the world all the time
But this is different from truth. A definitive conclusion is just a definitive conclusion. People conclude wrongly all the time. The truth will be discovered in the contest.
Are the #resist libs correct in assuming themselves the underdogs?
We’ll find out, won’t we? But at every moment, it is best for me, Joe Chud Reactionary, to treat them as both strong (they control many commanding heights of information warfare and have copious quantities of the sinews of war, among other advantages), and weak (I must believe that they can in fact be defeated, implying that my side is stronger than them due to some combination of factors.)
They would benefit from doing the same thing, so I hope they don’t.
Righteous is irrelevant, though?
True is also irrelevant because your enemy is always a mystery. Lacking 100% knowledge of your enemy (because how could you ever have it?), it is impossible to know the truth of your enemy. So it’s best to plan with humility and act with confidence.
And I say good in the context of healthy, as in, likely to lead to a better and more predictively successful life
So, adaptive wins, as it always does.
Edit: Probably worth saying that I think this is also a good and righteous state of mind. When God told the Israelites he was giving them Canaan, they didn’t just waltz in and wait for God to vaporize their enemies. They sent in spies, scoped out the land, enjoyed a few odds-evening miracles, engaged in effective battle strategies, suffered and died to defeat (partially) enemies that were simultaneously too strong (to be defeated solely by the Israelites) and too weak (to resist God’s will).
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
12d ago
I think this is just healthy psychological sentiment for any human trying to competitively get things done vs. another human. Mike Tyson has a good quote about this:
While I’m in the dressing room five minutes before I come out, I’m breaking my gloves down, I’m pushing the leather to the back of my gloves, so my knuckle could pierce through. When I come out I have supreme confidence. I’m scared to death. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of losing. I’m afraid of being humiliated. But I’m confident. The closer I get to the ring the more confident I get. The closer, the more confident. The closer the more confident I get. All during training I’ve been afraid of this man. I think this man might be capable of beating me. I’ve dreamed of him beating me. For that I’ve always stayed afraid of him. The closer I get to the ring the more confident I get. Once I’m in the ring I’m a god. No one could beat me. I walk around the ring but I never take my eyes off my opponent. Even if he’s ready and pumping, and can’t wait to get his hands on me. I keep my eyes on him. I keep my eyes on him. Then once I see a chink in his armor, boom, one of his eyes may move, and then I know I have him. Then once he comes to the center of the ring he looks at me with his piercing look as if he’s not afraid. But he already made that mistake when he looked down for that one tenth of a second. I know I have him. He’ll fight hard for the first two or three rounds, but I know I broke his spirit. During the fight I’m supremely confident. I’m making him miss and I’m countering. I’m hitting him to the body; I’m punching him real hard. And I’m punching him, and I’m punching him, and I know he’s gonna take my punches. He goes down, he’s out. I’m victorious. Mike Tyson, greatest fighter that ever lived.
What is that but “my enemy is simultaneously too strong and too weak?” And lots of competitive athletes have very similar points of view about their psychology during training and competition. It energizes them and keeps them hungry and competitive.
So I think you’re right, it’s a common narrative and, one step further, it’s a good and healthy narrative.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
12d ago
I was in the gym three times this week. I started the Jim Stoppani Beginner to Advanced program and, after roughly two years away from the gym, my lifts are somewhere between humbling and humiliating. On the other hand, at least I’m doing it.
On the gripping hand, I also did two sparring sessions, for about an hour each, and those went much, much better in the ego realm. I just have years of skill and experience on anyone else at the new club, and so even being very rusty (noticeably so to myself), I was able to spar in a pretty relaxed and casual manner and still do very well. Which is good because I needed the ego boost after the lifting.
On the other gripping hand, while I can do plenty to build up the skill level of the other people at the club, being a big fish in a small pond is the way to stagnate. I’ll have to think about ways to regularly get to other clubs and work with better fighters. In the interim, I aim to at least clean up my own technique so that I, personally, feel less sloppy.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
13d ago
Jeroma, Jerometta, Jeromina, and Jeromabelle
@FiveHourMarathon We’ve solved your problem for you.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
13d ago
This would work great if his name is Jerome and he winds up having all daughters.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
13d ago
Even the parting of the Red Sea would get secularized these days.
19 Then the angel of God who went before the host of Israel moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, 20 coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness; and the night passed[a] without one coming near the other all night.
21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. 22 And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. 23 The Egyptians pursued, and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. 24 And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down upon the host of the Egyptians, and discomfited the host of the Egyptians, 25 clogging[b] their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily; and the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel; for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.”
That’s easily attributable to luck and unusual weather conditions. Even if the whole modern world saw it being broadcast live on TikTok, I’m not sure it would change the priors of anybody, one way or the other, really.
Things like Elijah calling down fire from Heaven, and God speaking to Job from the storm, those might be more plausible. But then…AI and movie magic. I’m not sure those would have any effect on anyone who wasn’t directly present, and perhaps not many of those, either.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
18d ago
That's what makes this 180 so conspicuous. It makes no sense: if you know you're compromised, you wouldn't have campaigned on lifting the veil, if you know you're not, what could possibly convince you to hesitate at the last second?
I think it is at least moderately possible that we live in such a degraded political and media environment, that Donald Trump can rise to the Presidency by just continuously doing the thing that seems like the best idea at the time. So, compromised or not, run on nailing Epstein johns to the wall, because that incrementally improves your electoral chances. Then, once in power, if it turns out there are reasons to not release that information, just do a 180 with no explanation and brazen out the short term consequences because they don’t matter in the long run.
Donald Trump walks the Shortest Path.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
19d ago
The fact that very few of the characters actually had any agency at all in Blindsight is a feature, not a bug. You're not reading about plucky oddballs making decisions and saving the world, you're reading about an extended game of 4D chess between two non-conscious gods in which the humans are a footnote at best. Theseus itself is an analogy for how the book says the human brain works, with the conscious actors being irrelevant at best and actively harmful at worst, and the non conscious actors being responsible for almost everything in spite of the fact they’re usually backgrounded in the plot.
Yeah, and this is where I will defend Watt’s writing in these two books, where Blindsight is his masterpiece and will probably go down as a classic of 21st-century science fiction. Sure, his characters are frequently more like plot coupons, but they’re not really the story. The story is about titanic forces moving around in the background, between the lines on the page, which is pretty cool when he pulls it off and the reader figures it out.
I think that’s basically the theme he’s always writing about, even his early Rifters series was like a first stab at that idea.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
19d ago
You’ve never heard of Thalidomide?
And it’s not about comparing, it’s about Science not being perfect, despite it’s many notable successes.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
19d ago
One day some dudes with erlenmeyer tubes showed up, and they saved half the children. They saved half the children.
They also turned some of them into flippered mutants, so let us not act like Science has ever batted 1.000 here. Not the physical sciences, and certainly not the social sciences.
Would you say that this strategy was successful?
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