Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
No bio...
User ID: 102
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
11mo ago
I'm mostly indifferent to Trump, but he really displayed protagonist level of charisma and plot armor here.
Bullets miss, but slightly graze him for effect, he gets his wits together to both duck after the first shot and strike a pose at the right moment.
I like our scriptwriter.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
Forget Americans for now, what do you make of Europe and their "infinite flood of sub-Saharan Africans and Arabs" (as opposed to Mexicans and Guatemalans) predicament?
I'm a libertarian too, and I see it as something that obviously puts the existence of (Western) European civilization as such in peril.
I think there's a problem with priorities here.
If self defense is illegal...
if carrying pointy objects of wrong shape, let alone firearms is illegal....
if freedom of association is outlawed...
if natives are heavily taxed, but foreigners are subsidized...
if you live in an anarcho-tyranny state and the "authorities" are happy to prosecute natives for violation of one of the arcane regulation clauses written down in one of the many tomes of legislation, but are terribly afraid to investigate, prosecute, sentence, let alone deport a Muslim foreigner for rape and plunder...
letting open borders be used as a weapon against you seems rather short-sighted, even if in a better world something as crude as building a wall and physically removing aliens from your country might be less practiced.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
2yr ago
You had me wondering for a minute what could possibly happen to Contrapoints that he managed to become a conservative Warhammer enthusiast.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
This is all so tiresome. Since we are going wild with ambitious proposals, how about we deport the Jews instead?
This would have to take place some decades in the future, when the space tech matures a little. That, or we just give the Jews longer deadlines. Everybody (by that I mean mostly the US) does their best to convince the Jews that the promised holy land is, in fact, on Mars. They are then strongly incentivized, both through threats, as well as generous funding, to use their superior IQ to settle the red planet. The place is admittedly somewhat drier, but on the other hand, a lot more spacious and with no neighbors to complain. I'm sure they'll do fine.
Benefits of my plan:
-Space development dramatically accelerated.
-Final solution to Jewish settlement problem. Jews don't bother anyone and no one is bothering the Jews.
-The Palestinians can have their cursed patch of desert all to themselves.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
It is a website, that "publishes a running list, and sometimes personal information, of people who are considered by authors of the website to be enemies of Ukraine" but without any official backing.
In post Soviet parts of the internet it's treated more like a meme, and sometimes site owners seemingly lean into unseriousness as well, but that some gullible American conservative picked it up and started wringing hands about "Ukrainian kill list" fails to surprise me
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
There is a Twitter account called "Trump history" and it's somehow the funniest thing on the internet I've seen in a while. It's like a historical trivia account, except every post alleges Trump's role in every conceivable historical event, backing it up by an AI-generated illustration.
There's something hilarious in the idea of Trump as a fixture of human civilization, guiding and guarding mankind through millennia.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
Ukraine put the Pope on official list of enemies.
Worth noting that this didn't happen. It's not an official list of Ukrainian enemies (the Pope isn't even in that list, but that's details)
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5mo ago
"To have an opportunity to talk with actual people" sounds like a really low bar to clear for an internet forum. Even if your AI slop tasted exactly like the real thing, it would just be good manners to refrain from clogging our airwaves with that.
Knowing that you're talking with something sapient has an inherent value, and this value might very well go up in the coming years. I can't say I even understand why'd you think anyone would find AI outputs interesting to read.
or maybe just ban me, I'm too old now to just nod and play along with gingerly preserved, increasingly obsolete traditions of some authoritarian Reddit circus. Anyway, I like that post and that's all I care about.
Bizarre reaction. But I like a sincere, organically produced tantrum better than simulation of one, so I'd rank this post as higher than the one above!
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
7mo ago
I haven't noticed an algorithmic bias against liberals in Musk's Twitter, but the suspects themselves seem more upset not about Musk restricting them, but about lack of such restriction on the vendors of "hate speech" and "misinformation"
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
I would push even further than Nybbler and assert that "the Holocaust should happen" is not specific and concrete enough to be a candidate for "call to violence" exception.
Given the very special treatment of the holocaust in comparison to other genocides one could make a good case that the holocaust legislation amounts to little more than anti-blasphemy laws.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
I'd say you're both being overly dramatic because the intensity of this war and the number of casualties on either side is nowhere close to the last big conflict fought in these lands
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
22d ago
First of all: It's fun
Motte takes every possible step to be more grownup, but even this place can't escape the ultimate nature of political forums and maybe even human interaction in general - conflict, polemics, trying to appear clever, one upping each other, play.
This place is a bit of an outlier, but internet forums are mostly for enjoying speechcraft skills of others, and exercise my own when (I'm under impression that) I have something witty to say.
I find it inherently rewarding, if you don't, well, too bad.
I don't know what I think until I write it down
Another reason why is to polish your own thoughts.
Writing is inherently more rigorous than just letting thoughts float inside your head and things that feel vaguely sound may turn out to be less so when properly formulated, so you get a lot of the value even before pressing "post"
Yet there's only so much you can think of on your own. Bouncing your thoughts against others helps in ways that are hard to really quantify.
An entirely different human being can say things you'd never think of, bite back with retorts that help you understand your own values and beliefs better even if you ultimately don't change your mind.
Talking to others can force you into creative exercises like "explain this thought as if you're speaking to someone mentally challenged and/or separated from you by great inferential distance" which is also illuminating.
I sympathize with your sense of alienation. People can be vastly different, and can often feel insane and incomprehensible. Overall, most of them are relatively stupid, so their words can be explained away by them being hopelessly confused.
That said, I'm convinced that there exist divides between human mental architectures that are more profound than just political disagreements, and language more often serves to conceal the true depth of that gulf than to bridge it.
Next time you argue with someone saying what is seemingly just stupid and offensive, consider the possibility that if you somehow truly understood him you would recoil, and inherent limitations of language, as well as your mind's reflexive attempts to parse inputs as something you think is reasonable both do you a favor.
Overall, just treat people, especially faceless strangers on the internet less seriously, they don't deserve it.
Let others sink or swim on their own merit.
If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people whose conversation you happen to overhear, you should imagine that you are listening to the dialogue of two fools in a comedy
Well, as I was saying - anarcho-tyranny.
Governments create a mess by deliberately not trying to fix it, while using its full capacity to "solve" certain problems that make the aforementioned mess worse. A more classical state, unlike anarcho-tyranny, would at least have borders in order. I think even the segment of the Right that likes to scowl at "lolberts" will concede that open borders would be more practical with some or all problems I listed in my first comment fixed.
Anyway, what would you like to dispute? Unless you're saying that France/UK/Germany with migration policies of Poland would make the problem worse, I don't think we disagree about anything.
I never felt invested in arguing about piracy simply because how unbelievably flimsy the whole idea of intellectual property is.
Utilitarian, practical angle: we use property claims, first and foremost, to avoid conflicts over scarce resources. Ideas and combinations of zeros and ones are not scarce. Maybe IP can be justified because it brings value by incentivizing creation? In the first place, I find it questionable that we should bring certain legal frankensteins into existence to maximize GDP per capita, but is this goal even achieved? How to price in costs of legal bickering over patents and lawsuits, big actors using IP to suppress potential competition? What about indirect consequences of curtailing individual freedoms and ever multiplying victimless crime legislation? Surely there's a better way to do this.
Deontological angle: Material and Intellectual property as similar things - intuitive at first glance analogy, after all we could say that creator makes a certain "thing" that he can then "own" because he made it. However, as mentioned before, IP is not scarce and IP holder loses nothing from piracy, and often gains in exposure and influence. Surely it's clear that this analogy doesn't really work. And how applying this ethical principle looks in reality? Is an Indian kid downloading a western textbook because he can't possibly afford buying western ip for dollars committing an ethically wrong act? Do people actually believe things like this? I imagine an IP advocate might bite the bullet and say that he commits a minor wrongdoing that is balanced out by him benefiting from the "theft" a-la a starving man being justified in stealing bread, but I find this whole thing laughable. Though not as laughable as I find calling breaking IP laws piracy. Ah, yes, sea-faring robbers and murderers is a very apt analogy for downloading certain combinations of zeros and ones. It's so absurd that I can't help but like it.
Edit: strongest argument in favor of IP was voiced by one of the other commenters - basically that by disregarding certain laws of the land, no matter what they are, we compromise our social fabric in an ever so small way. It's a real concern, though it would have more weight if our governments and laws were much closer to perfection than they are. I would rather put the blame squarely at legislators for outlawing mundane, victimless actions, making sure that a big chunk of the population will find themselves committing legal crimes at some point or another, which certainly doesn't benefit society.
Now excuse me, I have some torrents to unapologetically download. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5mo ago
Speaking of fences - do you have any guesses how did the US survive with government spending per capita dramatically lower than now for the first couple hundred years of its history?
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
6mo ago
Every time I hear this...line of thought I feel frustration with some black amusement mixed in.
NATO is problematic, if not irresponsibly hostile, while very literal aggressive expansionism from Russia itself, when it's not outright 'dindu nuffin', is complicated and needs to be understood in context, and it's their backyard, and nothing is ever black and white like that, you know.
All of this, and more, is possible at the modest price of dramatically lowering the standards to which Russia is being held.
One would be forgiven for thinking that Russia in this frame is something akin to a rabid dog that just can't be blamed for trying to tear every careless passerby's throat out.
I almost agree, though somehow the proposed solution always amounts to sticking one's head in the sand, sending thoughts and prayers to those unable to afford the luxury, and hoping everything will work out somehow, while simultaneously trying best to create the impression that this is the tough, sober, "realist" approach to international politics.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
A lot of heat in this discussion, so I will just go ahead and throw in a cut-the-Gordian-knot style solution here: complete separation of education and state. Negotiations as to who has a right and duty to what are held between the parents and the school before enrolling. Minute details like whether it's completely privatized or funded by the government in a roundabout way like charters don't matter here, so insert your preferred arrangement.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
2yr ago
The current model has many costs, and it's not obvious that the benefits are worth it or can't be achieved in other ways. More importantly, this would only justify a thin slice of what is subjected to copyright laws in practice, so it hardly deserves more than a passing mention in this context.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
2yr ago
Having a goal of "the world doesn't end" does have its advantages. Can't wait until 2030, AI still doesn't kill anyone, and Yud saying "you are welcome" graciously lifting his fedora. Though who am I kidding, the world will then be in need of saving from AI killing everyone by year 20XX.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
5mo ago
Okay, now I see you were joking, good thing I decided to check before sperging out with a serious rebuttal
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
2yr ago
On the topic of boycotting woke business: did anyone bother to make a website listing all potential boycott targets and their offenses? It seems like an empty niche that could be filled fairly cheaply, though the list will be quite long. People just forget about yet another woke commercial outrage fairly quickly, having something that could be quickly linked might go a long way.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
2yr ago
it seems to me it's a bit of a cop out to not characterize and end-state here
I know, right? I just don't like the idea of arriving at some kind of end-state and calling it a day.
At the very least, this end-state should be far, far beyond what we can now comprehend. Wouldn't the universe just feel cramped otherwise?
To desire to be more is a part of being human.
Where's the limit to what a human can be? Who's to say? Perhaps there isn't one. If we were to attempt to trap ideal individual in a conceptual box, to limit him to a specific set of characteristics, then at some level, disappointment appears to be inevitable. Any given definition can be retorted with - "That sounds great, a lot better than now, sure. But is it really all we can be?"
When put in theological terms - it's our mission to climb the ladder to God, using tools that he gave us. Estimated time of arrival: one eternity from now.
Ideal human society in this framework is one of multitudes rather than unity, one that allows for experimentation and different ways of being, acknowledging that we don't actually know what is the best way of going forward.
I can appreciate some ruthless will to power edgelord kino myself, but I know how badly translations from distant languages work, especially fan translations, especially of web novels that rarely have good prose to begin with, so I will probably pass.
In any event, I just hope that the author had the wisdom to finish his story and attach the file to a dead man switch
Ye, better known as Kanye West has released a song titled "Heil Hitler"
I have to admit, it's quite catchy, especially the unlikely refrain "nigger, Heil Hitler", which definitely has an intriguing ring to it. Whether Kanye is a truly great artist or not, he's nothing if not a skilled craftsman.
I've long since lost the ability to treat anything on the internet seriously and my reaction was limited to squeezing my eyes shut and suppressing a chuckle, but I suspect that the wider audience is also outraged only in a performative, inertial way. I doubt it will end up making any real impact on anything and waves in the social media will likely fizzle out in no more than a few weeks.
I wonder if we're seeing the first signs of postmodern corrosion eating away at the last grand unifying narrative of our age: WW2 mythos, with Adolf Hitler at its center not as mere historical figure, but as the archetypal villain and the secular devil. In many countries the taboo is backed by legal force, but legislation doesn't truly govern things of this nature. The law may end up hollowed out and irrelevant long before someone cares to remove it from the books
Maybe I will live to tell my incredulous grandkids about how we were all expected to perceive one specific 20th century dictator through a prism of quasi-superstitious dread.
Should this really happen, good riddance. Though on the other hand, we might end up remembering having this kind of culture spanning, unifying narrative as kind of comfy compared to total balkanization
More options
Context Copy link