Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
No bio...
User ID: 102
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr 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
7mo 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
8mo 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
9mo 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
8mo 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
1mo 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
8mo 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.
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
8mo 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
11mo 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
1yr 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.
Disagree. Satisfying social needs with AI is like satisfying sex needs with an inflatable sex doll, and both will stay incredibly low-status. Especially in the scenario of dramatic automation: if you have the time, you really run out of excuses to just sit in your room and chat with computers.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
Picked up Golden Oecumene at recommendation of someone here and got much more than I expected. Exploration of society and the individual in post-scarcity environment, immortality, AI, and other sci-fi themes. Beautifully and eloquently written, unlike so much otherwise good science fiction, and also centers around Ayn-Randesque narrative about a promethean figure going through great hardship to fulfill his potential and advance mankind, which turned out to be something I wasn't aware I had a soft spot for.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
Little unrelated, but why I see "You’re unable to view this Tweet because this account owner limits who can view their Tweets" from my account, but not from incognito window? If it's a block notification it's quite amusing, because I never interacted with him in any way
I'm trying to figure out what I should be thinking about AI (largely in attempt to get away from rat-sphere's alarmists and their uncomfortably plausible arguments), so I started by doing the first obvious thing: looking for notable AI skeptics.
Here's the punchline: I used chat GPT for that purpose. Not without mistakes, but on cursory look it seems like the answers are largely correct, most of these are actual people matching the criteria. It gave me five, then I asked "give me some more" and it gave me more. Few months ago something like that would take me a lot more effort in googling, unless I lucked out and someone already did the job for me and I could find it somewhere on internet's surface.
Fuck.
This woke plague kind of ruined many themes and tropes, and by extension many pieces of media that perhaps didn't deserve it, at least for me. My inner critic is always on alert, looking out for wokeness, ready to dismiss anything that sets off enough alarms.
I might exaggerate a bit, but it's at least partly true for me. Maybe that's my flaw, but the general instinct to use heuristics like that for quick judgement is sound and useful. So there's an ironic dimension to it - overflow of wokeness and focus on quantity, instead of quality of woke propaganda likely keeps a lot of people from treating it seriously. Well, I guess it's better than the alternative.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
9d ago
I finished the latest installment of Sun Eater the other day.
Unlike a certain infamous fat garden gnome, Ruocchio is a fruitful writer - he puts out a book every 1.5 years or so, with the conclusion of the series planned for next year. I might as well shill it and share some of my impressions here, he well deserves it.
1.Sun Eater is a space opera about a traitor and genocidal murderer to some, hero of mankind to others. Told from his own perspective, as a memoir that he writes at the dusk of his life. From the first pages, Dune and Warhammer influences become apparent, but I quickly forgot about this: don't let anyone say that Ruocchio doesn't have his own creative voice.
2.The quality of writing—the way the books are written word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence—is where Ruocchio really shines, and that's fortunate, since I consider this to be the backbone of any work of fiction. In this regard, Ruocchio mogs...wait, the spell checker is upset with me for using zoomer dialect...I meant to say dramatically outperforms most authors I've ever read, and the vast majority of modern writers overall. He will make you open a dictionary a few times if you want to understand some sentences fully, but the prose is by no means overly ornate. It's elegant, memorable, and quite detached from modern conversational English, fittingly for something presented as the writing of a far-future aristocrat. Maybe there's something to say in favor of the more down-to-earth style most common in modern prose, but my guess is that most other writers don't write as Ruocchio simply because they lack the wits and sufficient command of their language.
3.I find evil/irreconcilably antagonistic aliens to be a much more interesting direction to take than the Star Trek approach, or, god forbid, "humans are the real evil". It's not just that it's terribly overdone and tediously misanthropic in practice, hostile aliens seem inherently more plausible. Finding common ground with beings that share our own nature is challenging enough. Competition for resources might not be the most plausible cause for conflict when interstellar civilizations are concerned, but there are any number of others to explore.
4.I enjoy speculations on alien cultures and theology, and here Ruocchio doesn't disappoint either. We humans can observe our flaws and some of the worst animal inclinations in ourselves easily enough.
The Cielcin can as well, and as their condition is more degraded and repulsive, even given their habituation to it, they draw more radical conclusions than most human religions. They remind me of Gnostics, believing this universe to be corrupted and seeking release from it. They also resemble Muslims in their rejection of the visual arts.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1mo ago
You mean to say we should call him the computer guy?
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
8mo ago
I found myself agreeing with both of you and my synthesis is that I shouldn't fuss over the regulars, but strongly avoid downvoting newbies to groom them into staying
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
10mo ago
I wonder what makes this line of thinking so tenacious that I have to keep having this conversation again and again. Maybe its time to compose a copypasta for this occasion or something...
Anyway, a state with a nuclear triad just doesn't suffer the same risks as Russia did during the times of Napoleon or Hitler. It's true that any state would prefer to not have potentially hostile neighbors on its doorstep, but for Russia, this train has departed long time ago. As for Ukraine, it didn't look like they would be invited to NATO anytime soon, especially not after annexation of Crimea. (I would say that, at least, was a well executed operation, but still argue that it did Russia more harm than good).
Moreover, let's say they seized Kiev, and everything to the east of Dnipro. Now what? You still got an aggressive "anti-Russian" half of Ukraine on your border. Let's say they conquered Ukraine in its entirety. It has to be pacified, at quite a steep cost. What is achieved? Security against Western land invasion (really outlandish scenario)? Not even that, there is still Baltic border, even closer to Moscow, and Kremlin would never have the balls to invade a NATO country.
As it is, I'm actually mad at Putin for not being able to present an alternative to the West, a multipolar world as he says. He had infinite money, common cultural heritage that he could leverage to expand influence in eastern Europe, instead he preferred to get high at his own supply, believing that Ukraine is a pseudo country that would collapse the moment Russian soldier's foot stepped into it, and that Ukrainians are Russians anyway, and decided to play conqueror.
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.
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