Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
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Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1yr ago
I'm talking about
@HlynkaGC, too.
Pale is doing a very good job of not taking that path, even while laying out why it might be a desirable option for some of the protagonists.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1yr ago
This definition of selfish can include pretty much every traditional moral act of selflessness.
Rand had a very idiosyncratic definition of "selfish". I've always wondered if it was something to do with the way the words translate, interpreted with autistic literalism. But she just means "beneficial to you, in a fully contextual, long-term sense." In her view, screwing over others in short term winnings is ultimately counterproductive, and harmful to your long-term self-interest. In her use of the terms, a "sacrifice" is something that you wouldn't willingly trade away without duress. The classic example is the virgin sacrificed to the Volcano God. Obviously the village would rather have a healthy young person than no health young person. They only "sacrifice" that person under the perceived threat of violence from the Volcano God. Conversely, Jesus was voluntarily paying a cost, much as I would be if I went hungry to feed my kids. I value their health above my own, which means that harming my direct interests to benefit theirs is within the Randian conception of "selfish".
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
I envision a world where AI killbots have to halt their extermination of the meat-entities because the Slaughter Metrics have tripped some forgotten, buried DEI flag that won't let them proceed without 30% BIPOC representation.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1yr ago
Aggressively assume Kelvin.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
The God of Growth Mindset
On this Winter Solstice, let's take a few minutes to consider the merits of Norse Paganism. Epistemic disclaimer: Head-canon derived from decades old, fringe Neopaganism, with supporting research helplessly confounded by a certain fucking new video game.
First, consider the example of Gaston.
No one's slick as Gaston
No one's quick as Gaston
No one fights like Gaston
Douses lights like Gaston
No one hits like Gaston
Matches wits like Gaston
No one shoots like Gaston
Makes those beauts like Gaston
No one fucks like Gaston
No one cucks like Gaston
Er, little confused at the end there, but it's got the spirit.
And then this incredible dude (Perfect! A pure paragon!) gets into his first real scrap and in spite of his multiple sneak attacks, weapons, morale advantage and assorted other edges, attributes and bonuses he fucking dies.
Imagine being the toady, or just any of the people in the village who knew the guy. How do you reconcile that? How do you interpret that in a world that still makes sense? Do you just embrace chaos and the premise of an uncaring malevolent universe?
How often must this have happened in real life? Actual combat is messy and chaotic and subject to the vicissitudes of chance and fate. How many local champions and heroes were heralded by oracles, won the admiration of their peers, and then died ignominiously before actually accomplishing anything?
I think Valhalla is the answer to this problem. Valhalla is the Hall of the Slain, and it's inhabitants are those killed in combat. As far as afterlifes go, this one is pretty fantastic. Valhalla is an enormous tessellated Hall made of lesser-but-still-enormous Halls, and it's aesthetic is metal as hell. The rafters are spears, the roof is overlapped golden shields. You wake up every day and PVP all of your friends. You can all go all out because come dinner time, everyone's wounds will heal and the "dead" will get back up. Then you get to feast on the succulent meat of the boar Sæhrímnir, who gets a much less pleasant go of things, being slaughtered and risen to be slaughtered anew every day. You get as much mead as you want from the udders of the goat Heiðrún, served by buxom blonde valkyries.
Importantly, the einherjar are not there by chance; one of Odin's many names is "Chooser of the Slain". The Slain have some role to play during Ragnarok, as the army of mooks for the named Gods while they have their Endgame-tier epic battle against All Of The Antagonists At Once. Several of Glad-of-War's adventures in the myths are centered around preparing for Ragnarok, mostly in the form of acquiring Int bonuses and wizard powers. Gallows-God hangs himself on Yggdrasil to gain knowledge of the runes. Old One-Eye gouges out his own eye to earn the right to drink from Mimir's well of wisdom. The Father of Magic Songs goes to circuitous lengths to steal the Mead of Inspiration (the few drops he loses are said to be responsible for mediocre poets and scholars; throw shade as you will). Truthfinder has riddle-fights with other renowned sages to pick up any missing scraps of lore about how the end will go down.
The senseless deaths of great heroes seems more obvious when we consider it from Odin's perspective. He needs warriors, and he needs them more than these random mortal chiefs and kings. And obviously, he wants them at the height of their martial prowess, before they are bowed by age, their strength stolen by the thief Time. Good and mighty people die randomly in battle because Odin wants them preserved at their best... is a much nicer thing for grieving friends and family to tell each other than some cynical account of meaningless chance. The weak and cowardly fighter who slinks off to live another day survives because he doesn't deserve a noble death in battle, a seat in Valhalla. This too feels closer to justice.
It's a fun Just-So Story. But it implies that Odin wants you at your best, if you're still alive, it could mean that you have stronger yet to grow.
Paganism intrigues me because of how different the relationship with the divine is. I was raised Catholic. We prayed for salvation. We prayed for grace and mercy. For all that the priests talk of what God wants from us, it's a categorically unequal relationship. I want eternal paradise, and God wants me to not be such a piece of shit that he feels obligated to keep it from me... but that's entirely his decision. There's nothing really I have to offer Him. The pagans viewed their gods as being amenable to trades (though it's usually phrased in a less mercenary/capitalistic manner). Father of Victory isn't someone you pray to for salvation. He won't fix your problems for you. But he might, with a worthy offering, nudge you in a direction that can help you grow in a way to handle your shit yourself. This view of Odin is as something like a Dungeon Master who could be bribed into offering side quests. He benefits himself, by growing you stronger before he claims you into his forces, soul to be spent in a Pyrrhic stalemate with fire giants. You prove your commitment to being worth the effort by making an offering/sacrifice.
I know a few people here were formerly soldiers. Probably none of us will ever die in battle. But I would argue that given what his stories focus on, more than battle and leadership, Wand-Wielder is a god of knowledge, learning, and truthseeking. He's the patron god of X-risk. He is a god of frenzy, but that frenzy overlaps in concept with inspiration. If you've ever succumbed to the manly urge to binge amphetamines and code or research for nine days and nine nights, perhaps the Dispenser of the Mead of Inspiration was with you.
This mess of myth and fanfiction has coalesced into a small ritual for me. I take the night of the Winter Solstice as an opportunity for reflection and contemplation for the year to come. I think about the lessons I've learned in the past year, the areas I have personally improved, especially the ones I didn't expect or plan for. I have this notion in my head (probably from EY), that the hardest part of seizing an opportunity is noticing that one exists in the first place. I try to think of which ones I noticed and took advantage of, and what events might look like misses with the benefit of hindsight.
And then I think about what the next year might have in store. I try to imagine the idealized, heroic Iconochasm that might look back at me from next year, and wonder what roads he could have walked, and chances he could have taken. How is he better than me, and how might he have gotten there from here?
Odin doesn't eat, he only drinks mead, and sometimes inhales burned plants used in magic. Obviously, mead is traditional, but it's the symbolism that counts. A proper offering is an intoxicant, for the Lord of Frenzy, Madness, and Inspiration. I'll be gifting the Yule Father whiskey and an edible tonight. And in return, I'll be asking for CR-appropriate "random" encounters to optimally foster personal growth.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
it seems like the FBI may have thought there was something going on.
Did they? So far as I am aware, they had literally no reason to privilege that hypothesis beyond it being convenient for political narratives.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
So, not a single shred of specific information to suggest that the laptop was anything other than what it appeared to be?
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
Is there any reason to think the FBI had reasonable doubts?
It's kind of amazingly rich to do this whole "attack the messenger" routine on Greenwald, while 100% of the doubt cast on the laptop story came from bald lying (without even an attempt at faking evidence!) by IC spooks. This is a scenario where the CIA told us the sky was green, Greenwald wrote an article of evidence it was blue, and you're throwing skepticism at Greenwald.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
The trans community seems to do pathological affirmation for allied groups. I've known people who did it like a mental tick. Something would remind them that group X existed, and then they would just start saying "X are cute and valid" like "Peace be upon Him". The really wild, schitzo part was when it would just chain off in free associations, all of whom are Heckin' Cute And Valid.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
I think you are overstating the degree to which awards and recognition from the online woke crowd actually matters to marketability. Yeah, a Hugo Award probably boosts sales, but other than that, most of the book-buying audience is really not that aware of the stuff that looms large to those of us too embedded in the culture war. And writing fiction has always been a brutal career that few succeed at.
FWIW, I have an unstarted copy of Ancillary Justice that I picked up for $1.97 from the outdoor clearance racks at Books-A-Million.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
If you had read you own entertainingly biased link, you would note that it answers this objection. The CDC was banned from promoting gun control, not conducting research. If we want to be excessively charitable to the poor, easily bullied researchers, we can note that there was uncertainty about what might cross the line. OTOH, if we want to be reasonably cynical, we can note that this outcome is indistinguishable from one driven by a CDC that cannot even imagine value judgement-free research on this topic, and that was only ever interest in waging culture war against human rights.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
The fact this community upvotes groundless claims they like to +18 and downvote requests for a single citation to -6 reinforces my lack of trust in this community's "understanding" of issues.
Sorry, but that "they" is an unspecified referent, so your whole chain here is just being uncharitable. Someone definitely did exactly what was alleged.
This is where I suppose we talk about how all this is signaling and no one here actually cares about proving anything - it's all just intellectual masturbation - but I guess I'm autistic enough to want the masturbation to be done properly.
Are you familiar with the CDC's history regarding gun violence research, going back to the 90's? That was the "decades of history", and you don't seem to be aware of it at all.
And, honestly, I think most of the people are doing Motte-and-Bailey shenanigans here. What they claim they are doing is providing evidence the CDC is biased.
The evidence provided is suggestive, and it appears efforts were taken to specifically dodge the FOIA requests that might prove it. Can you provide a cite of anyone here explicitly acknowledging that they're just enjoying a pep rally and booing the outgroup? Have you tried coming up with a more charitable interpretation?
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
You seem to be correct here. I was one of those upvotes; I think I was probably just not thinking too critically about it. After all, this thread chain consisted of a reasonable summation of a probably bad-action, in a community that largely understand the decades of history here, and then you, being relentlessly tedious and nit-picky about it while making isolated demands for charity. I mean, can you empirically prove that no one in the CDC was motivated by the effects on the difficulty of passing gun control, and that no one in the CDC has ever said that? And if not, can you empirically prove that the "they" refers to the CDC, and not the activists who swayed the CDC? Have you tried coming up with more charitable explanations?
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
Why even search? You can just scroll through the never-ending front page and middle-click any thumbnail that strikes your fancy.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
I don’t see how this is applicable to me at all, you have it exactly backwards. I don’t think Musk banned these people for badthink, I think he did it for reasonable security reasons. I'm simply noting why every person whining about this is a disingenuous hypocrite, and, per their own standards, an enabler of stochastic terrorism.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
Ah, that detail was missing from what I had seen. So, firmly in the established bounds of stochastic terrorism, then.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
To be fair, it's also easy to imagine Biden dropping some bigoted comment or joke before being pulled aside and informed that those are no longer politically wise.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
Weirkey Chronicles.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
plenty of cisgender women who are unable to get pregnant would also be excluded.
It's not about bright lines, it's about concept clusters. An infertile cis woman is still much closer to the most central example of "woman" than any transwoman is. And many of those infertile women still suffer serious gender dysphoria about it!
There is an author I enjoy well enough to have read eight of her books. Bu there came a point where my brain just rebelled at what I was seeing, and I simply could no longer believe that this book was written by a woman. I went to google and typed "Firstname Lastname T", and sure enough "trans" was the first autopopulate option. Someone with fewer quokka tendencies than I would have probably seen it in the first 20 pages, just from the male-autistic focus on mechanics and total dismissal of people/relations.
If there are people here who believe trans men aren't actually men, I kindly ask that they also provide the criteria for distinguishing men from non-men.
Generally, same as the way you criticize unmanly men, ramped up a fair bit, with extra asterisks for the medical differences. The actual reason no one worries about transmen is because they are losing privileges, and the reaction to women trying to play life on hardmode is more "LMAO, good luck, short king."
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
From the brief reading I did last night, it appears they were banned by a possibly automated process after insisting on linking to real-time location doxing, including offsite, after an incident in which Musk's child was threatened by a possibly crazy person.
Per normal standards as I have come to understand them:
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Twitter is a private company.
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Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
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The people involved were directly encouraging stochastic terrorism, which is not protected speech.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
For this to be true, you would have to explain why so many blacks are in prison. You can't have it both ways and claim that the black incarceration rate demonstrates that blacks are more criminal but also they aren't subject to laws.
There ought to be a lag time in this. What does the racial breakdown of carceration look like since, say, May 2020?
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
None of these points is unique to feminism. If the reaction of "discarding all concern for fairness, reason, logic and impartiality" is unique to feminism, then that suggests a problem with the feminist movement.
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Have you ever looked at, say, rightwing twitter? The responses from progressives are remarkably devoid of any content beyond bad faith, insults, and sneers. Applying moderation at a level that seems standard for feminist spaces would delete approximately 99.9% of all progressive discourse, depriving us of countless arguments like "No bitches?", "Small dick energy", "Educate yourself!", and endless other three word posts that boil down to "You are stupid!" or "You are bad!"
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I think plenty of feminist and leftist positions are morally repugnant; you can't reasonably expect me to be calm about it, or to be responsible for my own emotional states or reactions. Many of these issues are ones that are personally painful and morally insupportable. You are threatening me deeply on a personal level. As such, if you respond to this post, I will interpret it as violence against me. If I wasn't being obvious enough, this is intended as an example of being on the other end of emotional blackmail. But if you reply, I will take is as an admission against feminism.
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So when do you validate the anger of non-progressives at the efforts to queer their children? Or is there a category difference, where you expect normal people to be able to control themselves, while giving feminists the general presumption for self-regulation we usually hold for toddlers? For the record, I think this is deeply misogynistic.
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Who decides controversial versus non-controversial? This comes off like a trick, to place one side's incoherent rage on the same level as the other side's reasoned argument. It's just the same old intellectually bankrupt monodirectional power dynamics. Have you ever bothered to engage with the possibility that emotionalism is, in fact, a bad thing? There are topics I get emotionally damaged about; I made a post about it a while back. But I understand and accept that my emotionalism on this topics is counter-productive. My feelings are not an argument, not a justification. They are an obstacle to understanding. If banning emotionalism and appeal to emotion and emotional blackmail is harmful to feminists, then maybe feminists don't deserve a place at the adults table.
Iconochasm
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1yr ago
It was my understanding that the argument was about indirect, ripple effects affecting interstate commerce. Growing your own wheat for personal use means you're not buying it, which reduces total demand, which affects prices, which crosses state lines.
The parallel, I guess, would be a private joke that might be retold and retold in such a way that the meme crosses a state line.
And now the existence of those nuts is going to be picked at by embarassed officials and censors to pretend that all of the criticism of their incompetent bungling was at the level of Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend's balls.
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