domain:shapesinthefog.substack.com
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
18hr ago
Do you feel like you are more or less protected in the long term from the democrats than you did 6 months ago?
Good and effective politics necessitates revenge. Total revenge in fact.
This can be easily demonstrated as long as one is willing to admit that politics, as a phenomenon, has instrumentally nothing to do with the enactment of some transcendental moral ordering, and everything to do with the accrual and maintenance of power.
Principled agents are bad politicians: they will sacrifice what is necessary on the altar of their principle, and thus be outmaneuvered by less scrupulous agents. Their principles will be subverted by their enemies and become the instrument of their demise.
This is most famously evidenced by Machiavelli in The Prince, from whom we can draw on the necessity of revenge:
So it should be noted that when he seizes a state the new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once for all, and not have to renew then every day, and in that way he will be able to set men's minds at rest and win them over to him when he confreres benefits. Whoever acts otherwise, either through timidity or bad advice, is always forced to have a knife ready to his hand and he can never depend on his subject because they, suffering fresh and continuous violence, can never feel secure with regard to him.
It is timidity you advocate here, a timidity which only causes more bloodshed.
Machiavelli of course had his share of historical examples of this, such as the successful pacification of Romagna which was enabled by Cesare Borgia's cruelty. But we may draw very large numbers of examples from both ancient and contemporary history.
Roosevelt, Mustapha Kemal, Lee Kwan Yew, Peron, Stalin, Abraham Lincoln, Mao Zedong, Charles de Gaulle, Margaret Thatcher, Konrad Adenauer, every successful politician follows a similar trajectory that has them reward their friends and punish their enemies, with what you call "principle" and "policy" being an instrumental concern or a long term vision to rally around rather than the grunt work.
It's the inflexible will to power and the dirty hands that result from it that makes one successful in politics, which is why so many of the people I just listed have "Iron" associated nicknames and quotes.
So if you are genuinely asking yourself what is effective, ideological inflexibility is essentially the first thing to ditch.
Liberals used to understand this, which is why they were very much ready to break their own rules so long as it would enable a larger victory. But you've grown in a world where these people won so long ago that their principles are the background radiation of your morality, much like Christianity was to the people Machiavelli was trying to instruct.
You can either accept that politics is a dirty game and all your fanciful conceptions of rights and liberties and fairness will be muddied if you are to secure anything; or you can lose.
Of course accepting this isn't incompatible with a desire and ability to enact good government that manifests those principles at least somewhat, but none of it will ever be pure, and you have to make peace with that.
Power always corrupts, but that also means the innocent is powerless.
JarJarJedi
18hr ago
Whereas Strateg says Putin is intentionally disarming Russia for a NATO invasion.
This is hilarious. But I hope whoever that fine specimen of humanity is, he's not in Russia, or hides well, because Putin's oprichniks does not care which place you criticize it from, be it from the right, from the left or from the depths of derangement only accessible to a devoted Lovecraftian. The mere fact of criticizing the Boss is enough. Girkin got how much, 4 years I think? I am not sure I will be sad when that specimen is declared Foreign Agent and shut down too, but I would probably prefer it to continue to exist - somewhere far, far away from me - as a proof that the Universe is capable of producing more wonders that I would ever be able to comprehend.
All in all, if the war is fake theatrics
Anything can be derived from a false premise.
ulyssessword
18hr ago
They are so much worse in combination.
- Leaving your passed out friend behind is terrible.
- Making baseless accusations that someone's a groping pervert is terrible.
- Leaving your passed-out friend behind with a pervert who was groping her???? No shit she cut ties.
magicalkittycat
19hr ago
Bernie Sanders isn't a liberal.
You're right, he's a socialist.
Neither am I. That is not a novel observation. I am telling that I am not a liberal.
Correct, you're not a liberal. You're a person agreeing with a socialist about whether or not government should assume control of private enterprise.
I am not an American.
Oh ok then. Perfectly understandable you wouldn't care as much if the US implements good or bad policy if you aren't an American.
A free-market capitalist economic zone is mutually exclusive with the vision of America as a Christian nation.
America has pretty much always been capitalist. Many of our amazing presidents have been both capitalist free traders and Christian. Maybe you haven't heard of him since you're not an American, but we've had plenty of greats like Ronald Reagan (one of the most widely respected and liked conservatives in our history) who fit that bill perfectly.
I have to wonder are you a socialist? You seem to agree with the socialists on policy ideas around government involvement in private enterprise, and think capitalism goes against Christianity.
JarJarJedi
19hr ago
Orwell was a communist. He wrote about what he knew and observed directly. This lends him the ability to describe the bleakness more realistically. Though he was a Western communist, so he hadn't experienced the full measure of what totalitarianism could do to a person and a society.
They say that ice is incompressible, but it's only 1/20th as incompressible as steel (9 GPa vs. 200 GPa elastic modulus). I'm not sure how well it would work given that difference.
(The "elastic modulus" of air isn't really a meaningful concept, but if you ignore that then the right number would be 0.0001 GPa, or 100000x as compressible as ice.)
magicalkittycat
19hr ago
You're right. Revenge is bad and unprincipled. I stand ready to applaud your valiant and arduous efforts to convince the Democrats to not seek retaliation or revenge after what gets done to them over the next 3.5-12 years, and to lash them with scathing criticisms for every hypocritical turn.
Just point us to where you're doing that. I'm eager to start applauding.
Thank you Seer for predicting what I will and won't be doing. But sure, I'll do with them what I am doing right now. Posting about it online.
The Dems should not abandon any policy decisions they claim to support as good policy in order to pursue a quest of emotional vengeance. We should focus on the good of our nation and the future, not tribalism.
If you want to argue for disarmament and cooperation, you have to already have a plausible commitment from your own side.
What's "my side"? Also this doesn't address the point whatsoever! If someone truly believed that small government involvement in business was good for the nation and our economy, then what gain is there in doing big government involvement? If you see the left stabbing the country with bad policy decisions, why pick up a knife and join in?
Can you draft up a letter to Gavin Newsome, explaining that he's being a hypocritical, unprincipled fool?
Wait why would I have to draft up a letter to Newsom? I'm not drafting a letter to republican politicians here. I'm posting on the internet.
Because in the real world of Iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas between actual factions that have their own beliefs and minds and aren't just going to be Jedi Mind Tricked into suicide, tit-for-tat is a generally optimal policy. Revenge is a fully sufficient justification when you don't want people to hurt you again, and you don't have a trustworthy arbiter to seek justice on your behalf.
But again, entirely missing the point here! The idea that free trade, government involvement, etc are just questions of morality. That the only reason conservatives shouldn't press the "government owns companies" button is just because of tradition instead of an actual belief that government involvement in private enterprise is bad. If conservatives believe that government ownership is harmful to the nation, then embracing it is like throwing molotovs at your own house and calling it vengeance.
Cirrus
19hr ago
are there any major, visionary projects happening at the moment that have a plausible chance of success?
You could argue that doubling the population of Africans by 2050 to over 2.5 billion people is a visionary project. Bill Gates’ malaria nets and Mr. Beast’s wells may help add a hundred million more Nigerians and Congolese to the global population. That way they can occupy Seoul, Tokyo, Stockholm, and Minneapolis when the native populations there die out due to unaffordable housing and cultural nihilism. That’s a level of human engineering never before attempted, quite visionary.
alsfhwe
19hr ago
The Line in Saudi Arabia
It's under review and construction has scaled back, due to financial issues.
Saudi Arabia is reassessing the scope and timeline of its $500-billion NEOM initiative, according to Bloomberg and CNBC, with officials reportedly reviewing key components of The Line in response to deepening financial strain across the kingdom’s Vision 2030 infrastructure program. The move comes amid mounting vendor arrears and a liquidity crunch that has prompted an urgent reallocation of energy-sector capital and personnel.
According to sources cited by CNBC, planners have frozen development on large portions of The Line, NEOM’s flagship linear city concept, and slashed active construction manpower by 35% since April. The labor cutback reflects a broader slowdown as fiscal priorities shift away from breakneck expansion and toward cash preservation.
magicalkittycat
19hr ago
Principles are easy until you've lost a few elections. Once you realize no one else has them, it becomes difficult to maintain an interest in such a filthy game without playing it.
That doesn't address anything!
Let's say there's a small government conservative who truly believes that growth, national wealth and general national prosperity are benefited through free trade and a hands off government. They want what is best for the country, so they support a small government.
They observe that other people in the world are hypocrites. Being a person who truly believes that free trade and hands off government is beneficial to the nation (and assuming they still care about the nation), they would not change on policy with this observation and would still support free trade and hands off government.
Tenaz
19hr ago
Would he be a god? In the same way Loki in Marvel is a god.
That wasn't my question. I asked if he was God, not if he was a god. I'm asking whether, if the being from the Old Testament showed up and told you irrefutably that he was God, but that the nature of God is somewhat different from Catholic philosophy (only in very esoteric ways--not in any tangible way whose difference you'd ever experience), if you would believe him.
The reason I think this question is important is because on some level the philosophy needs to come after the reality. I, and most others, simply don't find the cosmological argument, the ontological argument, etc. to be convincing in the slightest. The reason I believe in God is due to firsthand experience. That's not to say that I've met him, but I've felt his Spirit and experienced miracles that are difficult to explain otherwise.
Those experiences inform my understanding of God. I don't consider myself, or anyone who has ever lived save Christ himself, nearly smart enough to actually "prove" God from first principles, nor should such a thing even be necessary. He simply exists and manifests his love in real life frequently. Just as I see no need to say something like "I am human, and humans have parents, therefore I have parents," since I have met my parents personally, so too do I see no need to logically prove God's existence, nor do I think that such logical proofs can or should define him.
I'm not convinced it's even theoretically possible to prove this kind of thing from first principles--because even if you could, where's your proof that the first principles you chose were correct? We gesture to analogies like the hand-raising one, but those just don't feel true to me or most others, and absent the analogy one only has the bare assertion that the underlying axiom is correct.
Of course there are things I hold to be crucial to the concept of God, but they're much more fundamental than anything you've mentioned. If God were not Good then he would not be deserving of worship. If he is all "good", but his definition of "good" is fundamentally incompatible with mine, then likewise. Otherwise, I'll believe whatever he tells me about the underlying philosophy, which is sure to be greater than anything we can currently understand.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
19hr ago
The best people at giving advice in my experience are sports coaches because most of the job is giving advice, so I'd look at coaches who were successful at building programs into contenders to see if there is anything they share as possible ways to make advise work better.
magicalkittycat
19hr ago
Political conflicts arise because of clashes between incommensurate value systems, misalignment of tribal interests, the competing demands of heterogeneous subjectivities, emotional biases both conscious and unconscious... if political conflicts could be settled through rational argumentation then people would have done so already.
Well yeah that's the point. Changing stances on policy at the drop of a dime doesn't reflect people wanting things they actually believe are good for the country and our future, but tribalist emotional based thinking around personal moral disputes rather than national health.
magicalkittycat
19hr ago
Of course, I would say they are wrong and I am right- I notice that democrats are very hostile to my tribe. Presumably, you disagree, but I think the government should protect my tribe from people who hate us. I don’t think you disagree with me(although you might on the premise). I also want protection from democrats more than I want any particular good policy.
And what part of protecting yourself from Democrats involves things like state ownership of private enterprise?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
19hr ago
Australia numbers 28 million, thanks to a ridiculous amount of recent immigration.
Also, the continent is mostly worthless. There's plenty of minerals but much of it is basically uninhabitable due to the heat and dryness.
Furthermore, the Antarctic claims are perfectly reasonable, Australia is actually close to the Antarctic and there are a few hundred people in stations down there. What the Russians, Norwegians and Chinese are doing down there is unreasonable, Russia and Norway have plenty of Arctic territory and shouldn't be double-dipping.
pigeonburger
20hr ago
An optometrist helped diagnose me with an autoimmune disease. I had been having eye pain for a week or so, went to see a generalist who half-assedly assumed it was a bacterial conjunctivitis, prescribed me antibiotics which only made my eye feel worse. I looked for an emergency optometrist, the one that had appointments on shorter notice was in a small but fancy glasses store downtown. Went there, the optometrist checked my eye and she diagnosed it as a uveitis instead. Started me on steroid drops that helped, but then she asked me questions about stuff that seemed unrelated, like do I often get back pain. Is it at rest or from exercise that I get back pain. Indeed, I had been having back pain for years, that physiotherapist have been trying unsuccessfully to help me with.
Turns out having a uveitis was atypical at my age and in my condition, so she suspected there must have been more. She had me check with an ophtalmologist that specialises in uveitis, who then referred me to a rheumatologist and ayuup, I have ankylosing spondilitis.
Sure, the optometrist helped me by "merely" doing her job well, but to be honest she could have just treated the uveitis and I would never have thought that she had been negligent.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
20hr ago
Drama is a great component of good rhetoric.
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
20hr ago
China has started on Biggest Dam (60 GW peak capacity, or about an entire UK's worth of annual electricity production if it works out): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medog_Hydropower_Station
thinking more about a physical, non-software based major visionary project that's happening in the physical world.
Why? The AI buildout is way bigger than anything else that's remotely feasible in the near-term. I'm a fan of nuclear fusion and nuclear generally, I think it'd be great to mine asteroids. Setting up largescale underwater mines would be cool. Doing something in Antarctica would also be good. Anything besides more welfare programs or endlessly increasing health costs, I'd welcome a big investment in anti-aging.
But I also have a sense of scale, AI is the front-page story even if people feel a bit tired of it. People talk about arcologies and they build data centres. The hyperscalers are spending about $200-300 billion on data centres annually. That's about one Apollo program every single year. The Medog hydro station is supposed to cost a mere $137 billion over 8 years. Even with a 3x blowout that's peanuts compared to AI. Microsoft alone is spending more than that.
What could be more visionary than bringing alien minds into existence? Elon made his fame as a hard-sciences guy with rockets, cars, tunnels but he's moved over into AI because of how important it is.
Come on, are Brits really going to pack up shop and go not to the North of England, not to the Welsh countryside or the highlands of Scotland or even the Falkland Islands... but Antarctica? Infamously uninhabitable Antarctica, with a kilometre of ice covering anything important, with seasonal accessibility, icebergs, vast distances to anywhere else? It's not like there's an asteroid's worth of minerals there.
Vision must be matched by cost-efficiency and prospective gains if it's to be anything but a pipe-dream. The cost of AI development is enormous but the potential gains are staggering. The cost of space colonization is perhaps slightly smaller but the gains aren't so great. While Western civilization underinvests in R&D and capital generally, it should be directed at the most high-leverage targets first.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
20hr ago
Bernie Sanders isn't a liberal. Neither am I. That is not a novel observation. I am telling that I am not a liberal. Observing this is not as effective of a strike as you think it is. And to say 'people pursue policies they personally think are good' is also a observation of little worth. Everyone does this. I am not totally cynical to believe that everyone is lying about their priors. I don't deny they have principles: I just think they're fatally compromised, stupid, quokka principles.
Frankly, we're not really arguing, because you're just stating the obvious and believing that it supports your position.
I am not an American. I do not care about America in the way an American would. But let me tell you this. A free-market capitalist economic zone is mutually exclusive with the vision of America as a Christian nation. There is no 'good policy' that is seen as good by partisans of either. Just ask anyone about the 'trans genocide' and how policy on one end can be seen as the malicious politics of revenge by the other. This is where I am actually cynical. People profess support for self-destructive policy all the time for no other reason that it gets their enemy's goat all the time.
You must accept that people are willing to hurt themselves, and very badly, just so that those who have it coming get what they richly deserve.
But if you don't understand the human impulse for justice, then there's no point in continuing the conversation, either. Darwin's dodos didn't understand humans either. Go hang out with TracingWoodgrains as he embarks on his quest to find the principled liberals of America. Eventually, someone will listen to him. Maybe they will even write a sternly written letter to the illiberal in charge. Who knows? God makes everything possible.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
20hr ago
You're right. Revenge is bad and unprincipled. I stand ready to applaud your valiant and arduous efforts to convince the Democrats to not seek retaliation or revenge after what gets done to them over the next 3.5-12 years, and to lash them with scathing criticisms for every hypocritical turn.
Just point us to where you're doing that. I'm eager to start applauding.
I've gotten testy on this topic here before. Maybe to you. Maybe to an old alt of yours, or someone else. But I'm going to be real with you dawg. Really, really-real. Ready?
If you want to argue for disarmament and cooperation, you have to already have a plausible commitment from your own side.
That's table stakes. That's the cover charge at the door before you even get to enter the building where the table is. Non-negotiable. Because without that, you're just a fool walking up to an enemy army (while your own stands battle-ready, blades still wet with the lifeblood of wounded POWs) and asking them why they insist on fighting. The audacity is just breathtaking.
And I notice, because of course I do, that no one ever, ever, ever, ever, ever makes this argument at Democrats. That they should just stop fighting, because fighting and defection is bad. None of the examples in this post are Democrats leaning into a revenge narrative. Even though that's functionally their entire pathos at the moment, with the calls to counter-gerrymander even harder and apply nebulous violence to all ICE agents.
Can you draft up a letter to Gavin Newsome, explaining that he's being a hypocritical, unprincipled fool?
Are you aware that you won't even try? I honestly wonder how cynical these takes are. Is this the work of Grimma Wormtongue? Or just Retarded Rose Tico?
Because in the real world of Iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas between actual factions that have their own beliefs and minds and aren't just going to be Jedi Mind Tricked into suicide, tit-for-tat is a generally optimal policy. Revenge is a fully sufficient justification when you don't want people to hurt you again, and you don't have a trustworthy arbiter to seek justice on your behalf.
And the way your faction approaches this instead, is something like insane demon logic. When someone chooses to cooperate, progressives defect against them with savage malice. And when someone defects, progressives choose to cooperate (with other people's money).
Slave Morality risen to halls of power, laureled in madness.
So please, show me any sign that someone on the other side is willing to take an L for the sake of peace. Because if you're not even capable of waving a truce flag when you come make the breathtakingly audacious demand for disarmament, then the response need not be civil.
JTarrou
20hr ago
It means they consistently believe this tactic will build them credibility to burn in the future on some more important issue. You're not even close to cynical enough for politics.
Ok, sure. Please show how the tariffs, as implemented, will achieve their stated goals, or any other goal that could not have been better achieved some other way.
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