JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
I probably would spend less time reading the news than usual, until the election. I don't believe anything short of super-dramatic things is going to happen to change anything - there's probably no dirt on Trump left that could be discovered (if it were possible, they'd do it in the last 8 years), no dirt on Harris, even if discovered (which is unlikely), will be published anyway widely enough to make any effect, and if something like somebody dying happens, I'd hear about it somehow. So, reading any news from now till the election is completely pointless.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
About 95% of programmers never use math beyond basic arithmetics. Exception is when you have to deal with physics and such (games, simulations, etc.) and crypto (but regular programmer would never ever roll their own crypto, they'd use a pre-made library), or maybe financial calculations. Of course, if you consider algorithms, computation theory and things like graph theory "advanced math", it's different but it's not the same kind of math as calculus or linear algebra are, I think.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
It's usually mutual agreement from both sides. NYT would not explicitly produce fakes by themselves, but if they want fakes, they know where to find them, and they know which fakes are to be approached critically and which to be taken at the face value, and the sides play a huge role here of course. This mutually beneficial cooperation gives NYT a plausible deniability - they never deceive by themselves, in worth case they are just a bit too "naive", and the other side of the deal gets to benefit from the seeming reputation that a lot of people, for reasons unclear to me, still attribute to NYT.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
So, why are Israeli soldiers one-shotting children in Gaza? IMO, the most likely answer is that they want to
No, the most likely answer is that this time, as many, many times before that, NYT was taken for a wild ride. Nothing like that happened at all, and the pictures they provided is a perfect proof of it - whatever is on them, it's not a person shot in the head by a military weapon.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Israeli soldiers on field training for a command course noticed some suspicious movement and called reinforcements. Once the forces were gathered, they engaged the terrorists (without knowing who that was) and reportedly wounded Sinwar. He was hiding on the second store of the building (there's a video clip of him trying to fight off IDF drone with a stick) and the IDF soldiers called in tank support (also a trainee on a tank commander course), still without knowing who exactly is there, the tank fired on the building and the building collapsed, taking three terrorists inside with it. During the cleanup, the soldiers noticed that one of the corpses in the rubble looks very familiar.
So yes, it was random, but also not so random - IDF established control over the area and methodically surveyed it and engaged enemy forces wherever they showed up. It's not random occurrence, it's the result of long and methodical work done by many people day to day, and that's exactly why forces on the ground in Rafah were necessary. The time and the numbers were on their side - Sinwar had to get less then perfectly lucky just once, and that's what happened today. Of course, the fact that if were not some elite force but regular bunch of trainees doing regular patrol, adds some pungency to the story.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Not only has he been released, before that, while in jail, he was cured of brain cancer in Israeli hospital.
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is nice I guess, though experience shows me that "fixing" other civilization often results in the death of the one being fixed, or in making it much, much worse.
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You imply Earth is their garden? How comes if they never been here before?
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Only if you happen to be very close exactly at the time it's tested, and open tests have been banned a while ago, very unlikely
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That would be weird. It doesn't allow one to neither physically join any galactic communities nor even communicate with them meaningfully, why would that be a threshold? I'd expect if not FTL transport/communication than at least Expanse-style long range propulsion that makes at least populating the Solar system possible. Without it, the only think nukes allow us is hurt ourselves really badly. That's not a good criteria to join anything but an extreme introvert BSDM club.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
OK got it but how do they explain it? I mean, ok, they did not contact us because we didn't have nukes, and now they contacted us because we do have nukes. But why? Why nukes are so important? Civilization that can travel interstellar distances should have stuff that is to our nukes like our nukes are to a bronze spear.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
I'd expect anybody who mastered FTL travel also master FTL messaging. Though indeed it's not a given (I think Bujold universe had FTL travel but no FTL messaging, leading to passing messages with couriers). Without FTL, there's no point to even bother to send probes out.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
If you talk about regular Earth scientists, then a reasonable way would be sending a person or two in a single boat to land on the beach, or just walk up to them on foot, let be observed and leave some easily recognizable usable things for them. Then if they pick it up, see what they do, maybe leave some more. Maybe they would bring some of their own to do a trade (even monkeys trade, it's basically built in). Once some trust is established, attempt personal contact. One may wear some analogue of a flack jacket, and in case things go really south have some snipers not too far but out of sight. But usually if initial contact was established the chance it will lead to immediate attack on contact in person is very low - if they were reluctant to contact, they'd just ignore your initial attempts.
Silent trade worked like that between peoples for a long time in history.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
I'm not sure, what nuclear weapons are meant to explain?
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
It just seems very unbelievable that beings that master energies enough to make to Earth from where-ever they came - and it can't be close because we'd notice them somehow already - get here, leave no footprint except some weird artifacts in US govt secret storage and then never show up again in any way. You mean if you look at human exploration, it's not really how it worked, is it? If somebody found some new land, soon tenfold of people would show up, then twentyfold, then hundredfold. Even if the original explorer died without relaying any message, soon somebody would follow their path, and then another somebody, and so on. I could find only two situations compatible with government holding any alien artifacts - a) aliens are very rare and very very far away, and they are essentially launching expendable exploratory probes (biorobots maybe?) at random directions, and one of the random directions intersected Earth but by some malfunction failed to call back so this direction is considered empty for the next N thousands of years until the next random probe arrives; and b) our vicinity is somehow marked in Common Galactese as "exclusion area, do not approach!" - either because we are under-developed, or too weird, or too dangerous, or any other reason - and would remain so basically until the aliens decide otherwise or we develop independent means of discovering them.
The situation even worse for the scenario where they show up, but only as vague images in blurry photos. I mean, a civilization which uses energies several orders of magnitude stronger than we do, dances around among us, and we notice nothing? It's like ants not noticing somebody trying to build a residential neighborhood on top of their ant pile. I think they'd notice pretty soon. They might not understand what is going on but they'd notice.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
I personally find it very unfortunate that it seems like in US political language, there's no way to express what you want to express except by using racial language, even when it's perfectly clear it's not about race but about culture and ideals. And using the racial language presents obvious problems - if Clarence Thomas is "white", while he's also visibly "black", it is easy to accuse him of being un-genuine or "traitor" or somehow abnormal.
You combine two things "lose money just to piss off people you hate" but this is wrong. Their intent wasn't to lose money. Their intent was to piss of the deplorables. Logically, they should have known by now it'll lose them money, because it already happened many times, but that's me trying to model what they should be thinking and not actually their thinking. They might have thought it'll be ok or that the "modern audience" will finally show up with piles of cash, or that their marketing is all-powerful, or they just didn't care and lived in denial. The point is they didn't have to have explicit intent to lose the money in order for their actions to lead to that. You can call it "bad bet", sure, but I think it's clear their primary motivations can be found elsewhere.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
My mind says to me what you are saying is making total sense. But my eyes witness the major culture producers doing exactly that for years now. So I have no choice other than to believe the evidence in front of my eyes - yes, they would sacrifice making a profit to the ideas of xe/xir writer about what the audience really should be liking. Or, alternatively, they think their marketing power is so great the can just force anything through - but enough failures by now happened that should have made it evident to them it's not the case. Yet, they persist - so, however illogical it sounds, there's no other way but to accept that's what they are doing.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
I care when people say that whites should be discriminated against or disadvantaged, because I'm white.
And so should you. That's why "no discrimination against any group for any quality" is the right answer. The law should be blind to arbitrary class categories.
The actual, current black community, or whoever they choose or designate from among that community.
Why do you think such a "community" exists? So far there's no any indication of it. Black separatists do exist, but they are tiny and vast majority of black people has no idea who they are and if they do, they do not support them. If there would be a unified black community that would show interest in separatism, there could be some discussion about it, but what's the point of discussing making deals with entities that are entirely imaginary?
No one of any race has to go there, at all, ever.
So why anybody would? Why they don't just stay right where they are and keep demanding reparations from the US? What is going to stop them?
That would be for them to sort out.
What do you mean by "them"? The US just declares on 1.1.XXXX the US laws stop working in Atlanta? That's not what any lawful framework in the US could ever allow. And I don't see how it wouldn't just invite Sinaloa cartel (or anybody else quick on their feet) to capture the territory by force and not give a whistle about your racist paradise plans at all?
We check goods at the border and confiscate contraband.
You know how well it works on Mexican border, where the counterparty is the actual functioning government that kinda wants to help us with that? Now imagine how well it would work when the government on the other side actually actively wants it not to happen. You will confiscate exactly nothing and you will have zero control over it.
The rest of your questions seem to be predicated on people being forced to live in such a zone
If any of the populated area is turned into the racist paradise, the people living there would be forced to either live there or lose their homes, jobs, social environments etc. Why would they agree to that? Say, why Oprah would want to live in this racist paradise enclave, if she's already a billionaire in America? I think she'd certainly prefer keep living in America - as she does. If there would be any desire on the part of the black Americans to live in something like that, black separatism wouldn't be a political nonstarter. Yet, it is.
Moreover, why limit ourselves to American blacks? There are millions of people who already enjoy this deal - living in a places where US does not control it, and doing whatever they want there, mostly. Yet, we are witnessing millions of them, day after day, at great personal expense and risk, to try to get into America and stay there. Why do you think black Americans - who already enjoy full citizenship right, full access to welfare services, significant representation in all power structures and undying admiration of at least one powerful political movement - would want a worse deal than Haitian blacks want? I see no evidence and no logical reason why they would, and this makes this whole scheme doomed and useless.
so you need to give them a demonstration of good faith,
How do you know they'd take it as a demonstration of good faith? I don't see any indication from them that they would. Again, black separatism is not exactly popular, and if people understood what it actually means - e.g. losing all access to all the welfare state goodies, US citizen benefits, etc. - it's be even less popular. If they think US is built mostly by their ancestors (let's no argue how true it is but assume that's what they think) but they aren't getting their fair share of it, how giving them a soon-to-be-shithole area and absolving ourselves of any responsibility of what happens there would sound like a good deal? They want a fair share of everything, not some scraps that somebody decided to throw to them and lock them out of the rest.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
OK, I can't really talk about the hippy times, I wasn't even born yet then. But given by how many leftists terrorists (Weather Underground, RAF, etc.) existed at that time or immediately after, hippies probably weren't exclusively dominating the leftist mainstream. But those times are long gone, and the hippies are nowhere to be seen, and probably already have been denounced as a racist, cisheteropatriarchal movement (I don't know but it sounds so on brand I am pretty sure somebody already wrote a paper on that).
even SJers very rarely intend massacre as an end
I don't know if they want to massacre their opponents personally, but they are surely A-OK with somebody else doing the job. They are willing to support pretty much any organization that would deploy violence against Western traditional targets or anybody they consider "bad people".
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Blacks will never accept being an underclass any more than whites would,
True, and that's why the only solution is to abandon the framework where the measure of equality is the equality of statistical outcomes between races (or any other large population-wide categories, for that matter). This framework is not something that is inevitable and it's not something that is necessary. I don't care how many people who have the same eye color as me and the same nose length as me are rich and how many are poor. I care if I'm rich or poor, I care about whether my family and my friends are rich or poor. I care about whether I could be prevented from being richer or made poorer by unjust means. But wide-area statistical frameworks are meaningless to me - unless they are made meaningful by adopting them as political and cultural framework that is dominant in the society. There's no inherent reason why US should have adopted the racial framework. To be an "underclass" you should first be a "class", and "classes" are entirely arbitrary. Stop obsessing about them and the problem will be gone.
give blacks an area that they control completely
Who are "they"? Any man that can prove a drop of African blood? That's much more people than you think. What happens to other people living there, if they don't want to live in the racist paradise? What does it mean "control completely" - does it secede from the US? What happens to people that want to keep living in the US and keep being US citizens and keep having US laws? I don't see why for example a black professor at local university would suddenly want to subject himself to a regime that may not be able to sustain any universities at all. Doesn't he have any rights?
Grant this area leave to write its own laws as it sees fit
Areas can't write laws. People write laws. Who will be choosing these people? Will it be mass combat or lottery or how are you planning to choose those people? What if there would be 10 groups of people writing ten competing sets of laws - which group is the real one that gets the full control? How this control would be enforced - will US army and police participate if armed conflict happens? Will it blockade the area if there would be threat of violence spreading out? What about if they decide to build a giant meth factory and ship it to the US? Or even much worse, a giant generic drugs factory, without respecting any US drug patents? Will there be a complete trade embargo?
Then declare that outside this zone, racism has been solved. Blacks get the exact same legal status as everyone else
They already have this status, why we need the racist paradise to achieve what we already have?
No AA, no hate crime laws, no special privileges, we implement pure colorblind enforcement of the letter of the law.
Again, we can do it right now - why we need the racist paradise? What if the blacks don't want to live in the racist paradise, but want to keep living in New York and California, only better than they live now? I'm not sure what exactly having the racist paradise zone achieves. If you have a mechanism that can stop the racial grievances, I don't see why you can't use it without that, and if you don't have that mechanism, what did you achieve then?
I think he's right that the colorblind 90s aren't coming back
The past is never coming back, but we're coming into the future, and it can be made better than the present, if there's a will.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
I remember I used to guzzle coca cola like crazy, I just liked the taste so much. Especially when working, I had a cola glass or can next to me all the time and took a sip every minute or so. Then my doctor said to me my blood tests show high sugar, and I have diabetics in the family, so I got a bit scared. So I stopped it completely. There were some cravings for a while, but fortunately I am very caffeine resistant, so it was mostly about the sugar thing. In a couple of month is subsided, and now the taste feels completely disgusting for me, I'd much rather drink pure water than that. I still have a bit of a habit of sipping while working, but it's mostly either water or unsugared tea. I tried carbonated sugarless drinks but their fizziness annoys me for some reason.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
American blacks go their own way,
Go their own way where? Liberia? I don't see them doing that voluntarily, why would they go to some shithole, they are as American as everybody else (and more than myself, a relatively fresh immigrant, for example). Or just ethnically purge Atlanta and ban whites from every coming in there? Why Atlanta then and not New York or Santa Monica? How that's supposed to work without destroying every principle of American society? I mean sure, if you imagined you are building a simulation from scratch, you could add a rule "black and whites live separately" and see if it works. But this simulation has already been running for a while, and I can't even begin to think that "their own way" would mean in this context. What if they think their own way is keep living in America, just as they did - does it mean whites have to get out?
Black-white conflict will never cease in this country so long as blacks continue to lag so far behind other races
I don't think it's true. A lot of countries have ethnically heterogeneous population, and a lot of countries have a lot of issues and concerns connected to that. But nowhere (at least not among developed countries) it's as central to literally everything as in America. And it is getting worse. Which also, paradoxically, means it is possible for it to be better - because it has been. And it has been deliberately made worse, for very practical partisan political reasons. If Americans, as a culture, find in themselves to sacrifice their partisan interests to their common culture interests, if they still want to make it better and not just to win over the other team, no matter the cost - it is possible for it to be better. Will it be all ok and nice? No. Shit's probably will be going on for decades, and there would be low-key racism and low-key hatred for a long time. But it can be much better than it is now, and the only thing that is really necessary if for people to want to make it better.
unilateral disarmament by blacks, despite no structural changes that could plausibly lead to a future favorable outcome for them
The only way there could be "future favorable outcome for them" is a racist regime actively (and by our current standards, absolutely outrageously) discriminating against people who are not them. Nothing less would make a dent. Even if that were possible, it may persist for one generation, while people who saw the reverse regime are still alive and still feel guilty for it. The next generation would not feel this guilt. They will inevitably demand justice. And then what? How do you give them justice? The only way you know?
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
If people fail to empathize with themselves, projected into the past, how can they possibly empathise with other people?
The left's "empathy" project has never been unlimited and all-encompassing. Only the good people (read the correct newspapers to learn who those are today) deserve empathy, and the bad people deserve nothing but hate. The left can be - and often is - horrendously vicious to those that are considered bad people. And that matters absolutely nothing that they may have held the same ideas or were members of the same movement in the past. Once they are declared the bad people, they are outside the empathy circle, and it is very, very dark on the left outside that circle. Is not the "excess" of empathy, it is very carefully directed allocation of it, deployed along very ideological guidelines.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
In their minds, white people spent 400 years playing the racial identity politics game and cheating egregiously at it, and then the second blacks had a window where they could have attained parity (let alone the upper hand) whites decided that it was no longer okay to see race, that game is over with, we should just let bygones be bygones.
OK, I could have a number of objections to this description, but let's say it's mostly accurate. What's the alternative? Have 400 years of anti-white racism? Including against whites which had zero part in playing that game - either because they didn't have access to the benefits of the game, which weren't ever spread equally, as they aren't even in racially homogeneous societies, or because - which is very frequent case in America - their ancestors weren't even in America when the game has been played. Yet, somehow they need not to suffer for the sins of some dead people that share the skin hue with them? If not 400, how many years of racism is enough? How many years of racism would not create a completely broken culture integrating this racism and depending on it? How and who would decide that this is the moment we're even and now we can stop being racist to either side?
Let's look at human history. How the wars end? Sometimes they never do, but sometimes it happens. Do the warring sides carefully calculate who hurt whom, how many times, and hurt the other side back until the account is at precisely zero? Or do the decide, one day, that we should stop hurting each other, and whatever grievances we had in store, we are not going to hurt each other over them anymore? I think that's the only way to end a war. It may not please everyone, but I see no other way.
Let's say you say - that's not enough. For the fact that black businesses were refused loans at the racist times, nobody now can ever refuse a loan to a black-owned business. Would it make black businessmen more successful? I don't think so. First of all, any shrewd business would just hire a black person to do nothing but serve as a token - and that's not going to benefit genuine black-owned businesses and also would put a giant asterisk next to the name of every prominent black businessman. Second, banks either find a way to refuse loans they don't want to give, or will be forced to spread the risk - raising interest rates to everyone, and the weakest businesses would be those who will be hurt. Third, criminals sure will be attracted by the prospect of guaranteed loans, and honest businessmen will have trouble competing with crooks, since the banks would be forbidden from distinguishing between them, leaving to eventual washing out of honest business. So, did we improve the situation or did we make it worse?
Just stopping racism may be not satisfactory to many, but I don't see any way of stopping racism outside of stopping it. All other ways will just be hurting a lot of people and not improving anything.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
It's way beyond "the abuses". It's a complete paradigmatic collapse. The paradigm that there exist some institutions that are ultimately designed to work for our benefit, and while specific people are fallible and corruptible, in general this system is built for the benefit of the people, is controllable by the people and has people's best interests at heart - is dead. The new paradigm is that this system is a self-interested parasite, which will consume any resource the people allow it to, but will act in ways that do not have much to do with the benefit of the people and is absolutely not controllable and absolutely opaque and violently resistant to any attempt to control it. That's how "people" would - and should - view it now. So if you want to deliver some message that people "need" to do this and that, then this message can not be delivered within the framework of the new paradigm and not be received with as much trust as a message from Nigerian prince telling you that you "need" to send him some money to come into your inheritance rights.
Maybe the wolf is there, maybe it's not. I am certainly not qualified to judge that question. What I know though that this boy - and his family, who conveniently made billions on mandatory wolf awareness trainings - is not going to be the input for my decisions on these question. If anything, I'd probably lean towards doing the opposite of what he's crying about.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Maybe it is "big deal", maybe not. That can be debated. But certainly the guys who lied to us for years lost the right to be a source in the decision how exactly big. Their informational quality is negative now.
And sure, "public health officials" bear the majority of the blame. But I don't remember a mass movement of rank-and-file to protest the abuses either. I do remember a lot of "racism is a national health issue" but not a lot of "lying, fraud and tyranny is a national health issue". I'm not saying there weren't dissidents - there were - but most of the lower levels enthusiastically enforced whatever they were told to enforce and pushed whatever they were told to push. So, it's not just some lone officials on top that need to account for that.
Confirming on American Fiction. The race farce kinda drives the plot, but the point of the movie is not that, and I enjoyed it more than I expected to.
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