RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
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User ID: 2051
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
2d ago
Yeah. But it itself is a genuine piece of non-natural object added to your body that improves its function. So for me it's good enough to count, even if it's with some caveats.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
2d ago
Since I wrote it in another comment and I consider it unfair to "write behind someones back": Classifying "brushing teeth" as transhumanism and equating it with major changes to your own biology is quite silly. Firstly because brushing teeth isn't even necessary in the natural state, it's merely a solution to a problem of modernity, namely excessive sugar. And second, because it's just a variation of the very natural behaviour of cleaning yourself. Similar arguments go for most of the examples; Riding a bike changes nothing about your nature, and clothes have been, evolutionary speaking, long part of our natural state. A genuine example of transhumanism is imo only the pacemaker.
Sure as I said, the beginning was a bit of a digression and it was somewhat mean. But that's because I'm quite annoyed nowadays by the blanket "natural doesn't mean good", and his stated position, as far as I understand it, is that natural shouldn't be privileged at all.
And to that no, actually, natural biology is pretty good, and improving on it is very, very hard. It absolutely should be privileged. Any deviation is most likely bad, which means even if the preliminary evidence looks decent, it'll still probably turn out to be bad. Medical transition already was quite questionable based on the early evidence, and now with more evidence, it seems worse. Which was expected, because see the sentence before it.
Edit: Also, after reading some of the other replies here by him ... Classifying, for example, "brushing teeth" as transhumanism and equating it with major changes to your own biology is far more silly. Firstly because brushing teeth isn't even necessary in the natural state, it's merely a solution to a problem of modernity, namely excessive sugar. And second, because it's just a variation of the very natural behaviour of cleaning yourself.
Good news! You get to choose the entire genome for your next kid.
Bad news: It's only two choices.
Worse: It's a) a naturally occuring genome and b) a randomly generated genome.
So what'll be?
I know I'm being mean here, but the premium natural gets is justified. Natural evolution doesn't really care about us, certainly not our feeling, but it leads to something that works. On the other hand, the average for careless major deviations from natural is oh my god fuck fuck what have I done and the best case is something like Down's.
And don't get me wrong, I'm the kind of guy who dreams about replacing his full body with improved cybernetics one day. But you have to be serious about this. Natural gives us a pretty high floor, all things considered. Especially if you get to choose the best among all natural options (which is what, for example, embryo selection with PRS is). You're correct it's not a categorical difference, but getting over this floor is damn hard. I'm not aware of any currently available major change to basic human biology that a) improves overall wellbeing and b) isn't just a correction towards a different, better natural option. Yes running blades let you run damn fast, no they're not overall better than regular feet.
Unless you're intersex or have other major biological sexual deformities the honest answer to "should I try to change to a whole different sex" is "sorry, we're not there yet". Sure that sucks and it doesn't mean we shouldn't keep on improving, but the current reality of trans medicine is much worse.
That said I have very little problem with letting adults to crazy stuff to themselves out of their own pocket. But it should be discouraged, it shouldn't be for kids, and it certainly shouldn't be paid for by society.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
3d ago
The part many on the left are missing is that puberty itself is a large part of the mechanic by which teens become heteronormal. When I was around 12, I felt disgusted by teens, sexuality in general and was a somewhat odd kid to begin with. At that time there already was lots of talk about nonstandard sexualities and I strongly identified with asexuals. I also thought that I was very far from the average male, among other things refusing any kind of violence (I distinctly remember refusing to even watch shows/movies or play games portraying violence), an intellectual above all kinds of base instincts. Typical arrogant nerd stuff. Especially early puberty then felt like shit, very moody & scared of what happens with me. Then sometime in late puberty all of that went out of the window, suddenly I was a temperamentally fairly stereotypical guy. And even in retrospect, I had been to some degree in denial even when younger. In elementary school I was often beating up other kids for various reasons. I just learned that I was going nowhere with that attitude, so I had to force myself out of it and pretended that it never happened. Which combined with my otherwise bookish personality naturally led to the described intellectual self-image.
Conditionals are obviously hard to prove, but I could easily see my pre-puberty self taking puberty blockers to not become a disgusting, violent, sexual men. Especially with the argument that oh, it's reversible anyway, so just try it out. It would have been a grave mistake, but I wouldn't have known, and in particular it's easy then to then just stay the course and tell yourself you took the right option.
My wife is very similar in the other direction; She always was a tomboy who felt more comfortable with boys, then puberty hit and she changed. She also could see herself mistakenly choosing to take puberty blockers in her youth. And now our daughter is just the same, so we make sure to always tell her that her mom had the same struggles. Imagining her mistakenly getting talked into puberty blockers is horrifying, and worse, very plausible.
So overall while I have quite some sympathy, going through puberty seems like the less-bad option even for the majority of those who feel somewhat uncomfortable with their sex.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
6d ago
You're leaving out the part where abortion is only legal the first 12 weeks, which progressives in the US think is a far-right abortion ban but which here in germany is considered perfectly fine by most.
The CDU explicitly campaigned on being responsible stewards who abhor the proposition of new debt by the Ampel. "The green stuff" is, according to german lawyers, directly hamstringing current efforts to build up important infrastructure, such as energy, especially since it's overly vague and german courts tend to err on the green side when given the leeway.
Also, abortion is already legal, easily accessible and the implementation is a broadly popular compromise - what the SPD wants is late-term abortion & allowing doctors to actively advertise/promote abortion services, which is the equivalent of spitting into conservatives' faces.
Pretty much everything the CDU is doing right now is exactly the opposite of what they have been campaigning on right up to the vote. It's ridiculous.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
9d ago
On the topics of MMOs, nothing ever managed to match GW1 for me. Amazing build variety, deep mechanics with interesting interactions, easy to get into PvP, good, regularly updated balance, minimal grinding except for variety & visuals. Especially in retrospective it was far ahead of its time. GW2 was such a letdown in comparison, despite not even being a bad game in the grand scheme of things.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
9d ago
How familiar are you with consoles? Imo N64/PS1+2/Gameboy/N(3)DS all have a fuckton of amazing games that can be played, easily and for free, on most mediocre modern PCs. Wii & Switch are also great because of their unique controls, but unfortunately need to be played properly.
I don't want to be mean, but there are far, far harder games than the DS series. DS is normie-hard; It's the maximum amount of hardness that you can afford while keeping most of the casual audience, and as oats says, it has multiple design decisions that allow you to get past content you consider to difficult (online co-op, single-use items, simple rushing, cheese/OP gear, or in the worst case, plain ol' grinding). Especially in co-op it's arguably quite easy.
What reason is there to think it isn't? He who controls the null hypothesis, controls the world.
Edit: For the record, my personal null hypothesis is that we should always assume the money was mostly wasted with very little to show for it. People are very good at doing minimal, ineffective work in a maximally photogenic way unless you give them good incentives to actually get anything done. And even then they'll try hard to game the incentives anyway.
Additional evidence that the mainstream left increasingly takes over the role of the status-quo conservative; If you're in control of the arbiters of good behaviour and virtue, critiquing it in your enemies is essentially free. This has been a conservative strategy for basically as long as humanity exists. This is especially obvious here in germany, where the churches increasingly openly align with the left (the Katholikentag [catholic day] barely even bothers inviting CDU politicians anymore, and the catholics are the less progressive wing of german christianity).
For this reason, "traditional conservatives" like Schmitz are in reality impotent regressives, harkening back to an old order nobody really believes in anymore.
People like Musk make much more sense in this framework; Obviously a shitposting technofuturist who wants to smash the status-quo has absolutely nothing to do with conservatism. And on the other side, Biden; A senile old nominal leader who not only doesn't, but simply can't, change anything is the archetype of (dysfunctional) conservatism.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
14d ago
The CDU has openly stated multiple times that it is not willing to work with either, while it is already working with the Grüne in many local governments. They're already breaking multiple promises, but from my personal experience with local CDU politicians and voters (my childhood region votes > 50% CDU, including my mother and many old school friends), fighting communism and faschism (though the former is ironically more tolerated) alike is a core part of their ideology. Working with die Linke or AfD would be a serious ideological break difficult to talk away.
FWIW, I also concur with the CDU insofar as I think that either of die Linke or AfD would demand even more than the Grüne demands now.
In other german news, the CDU has successfully finished painting itself into a corner: Thanks to questionable strategic decisions in the run-up to the election, there is literally a single party the CDU can realistically form a government with, the SPD. Worse yet, both want to push through new debts - the highest in the history of germany, and something the CDU explicitly denounced before the vote - which requires an amendment of the debt ceiling by a two-third majority. This is supposed to finance infrastructure + defense, though it's in practice only necessary because social government costs have skyrocketed to such a degree that the budget is full despite the highest government income in the history of germany.
In the new parliament, amending it would be impossible, as die Linke + AfD have more than one third and explicitly reject it. So they have to do it with the old parliament.
This has a multitude of problems; First, the practical one that it needs to include the Grüne as well. For this reason, the CDU has now mentioned the possibility of further amending the amendment to make clear that financing defense can also mean "pro-democracy" NGOs, which in practice means leftwing/green, and that financing infrastructure can also mean climate protection. It's a complete 180 on the proposed former course of cracking down on politically biased NGOs.
Second, while probably not against the letter, it is arguably against the spirit of the constitution on the question of the formation of a new government. That the old parliament still exists after the vote until the new one is formed is explicitly justified only on the grounds of emergency actions, otherwise it is supposed to be only a passive custodian. Of course the CDU now claims an emergency, but if so it is an emergency (well, multiple) that has been running for a decade if not longer.
Third, as already mentioned, the CDU explicitly denounced new debts as unconscionable, so not only making them anyway but even with the old parliament despite being the technical winner of the election reeks of blinking right while driving left, which even before the vote was one of the primary justifications for people to switch from CDU to other parties - If you want left, why not vote for it directly, if you want right, the only realistic option at this point seems to be the AfD. Hell, even the FDP had more spine, and that's considered the historically most spineless party for a good reason.
All of this taken together means that on the question of government formation, the SPD can behave on-par with the CDU despite having roughly half the vote, since the dependence on each other is perfectly symmetrical - neither can form a government without the other. And the Grüne can then basically dictate terms if this already biased alliance wants to get the amendment through at all. In fact, the Grüne has already publicly rejected one CDU offer of 50 billion explicitly for climate-related projects as not good enough. It's not clear whether they even want to cooperate, as a re-vote would probably hurt the CDU the most at this point.
TL;DR: Merkel has now officially endorsed Merz.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
15d ago
I don't think this is a universal idea. It might be true, mostly, in the US, although I would doubt even that. But in places like China, no, not really. You do whatever it takes to prevent further accidents within the lab, and you do whatever it takes to control public opinion, but these are completely separate concerns.
Furthermore, if the research is dangerous but the government thinks it has to be done, I totally see the government deciding to do it anyway, in secrecy if necessary. Especially in China, but really in a lot of other places as well. Including the US.
No disagreements on China, but I don't think that's the measuring stick western politicians ought to be judged by.
It might come down to the definition of "natural origin" then. Does releasing a virus onto a population of (very much not natural) humanized mice and allowing it to naturally evolve in that population count as a natural origin to you? Especially if accidental.
Accidental or not, that's pretty clearly on the non-natural side for me, especially since it involves humanized mice. Genuinely lab-leak + natural + accidental for me would be collected in the wild where humans don't go normally, taken to the lab, and then a human gets infected directly from this sample while testing it and then spreads the disease unknowingly. Beyond that, it's mostly different degrees of non-natural. Maybe if you're just holding lots of bats for a long while and it develops unknowingly, but in a way that is plausible in the wild I'd also rule it natural.
I mostly agree with Arjin that you're simply wrong on the basic point - I already was a scientist at the time and even the honest-mistake version of the lab leak theory which leaves the possibility of a technically-natural origin open was heavily frowned upon and could get you into trouble with the university administration if stated publicly. Likewise, Drosten & others were not at all ambiguous about whom they meant.
But I want to talk further about this point:
Yes, sure, ass-covering was absolutely a major part of it. Doesn't even need to involve personal links. As long as it's clear that blaming China openly will not help with either cleanup or preventing further accidents, there's no point in doing it. If China says (through less-than-public channels) that yeah, we screwed up, we're sorry, let's stop the blame game and instead let's think how to handle the mess, it makes practical sense to play along.
No, it makes no sense. The first problem is that, even assuming this was a mostly-natural virus spread through a honest mistake, the public needs to be informed to give them a better understanding of the risks of research in this area. If you keep it a secret, you lose one of the most important levers to prevent further accidents. I'm not in virus research, but in medical research, and I don't get the impression that we've done anything at all to prevent further accidents, on the simple and compelling logic that since no lab leak happened, there is just no need, period. Only now that the lab leak theory has gotten more traction, discussions are happening. But not much has been done, only the talk of doing something.
Second, given the unusual structure of the virus compared to its alleged progenitor, even a honest mistake lab leak does actually imply with overwhelming likelihood a non-natural origin.
Assuming we can show that the overwhelming majority of other evidence points outside the lab, the odd structure may be somewhat surprising, but it's not strictly speaking impossible, and a non-natural origin would require some weird additional twists where the virus first gets changed in the lab but then gets spread from a completely different point of origin. Occams razor implies a natural origin.
But assuming we've already established that a lab leak occurred, there are no additional twists necessary - it's already in the lab, that particular lab has already been shown in the past to have played around with precisely the structure that was changed. The structure isn't odd anymore, now it's the other way around: Assuming that the virus just-so-happened to have that structural change naturally is much less likely than that it was simply changed in the lab. Occams razor implies a non-natural origin.
If you think this is weird, think of the old adage of horse & zebra; If you hear hoofbeats in europe, you ought to think horse. If you hear hoofbeats in (specific parts of) africa, you ought to think zebra. The same evidence can point into different directions depending on the environment you're in.
My personal biggest gripe is the increasing alignment between nominally independent groups in general. The idea of separation of powers, even the cynical version, assumes that you have different people sitting in different institutes all working to increase their own power and thus fighting against another. But since I've become a scientist and interact with a wide range of other college-educated people, it's become clear to me that the university serves as a homogenization hub through spreading a mix of information ranging from mostly-honest to blatant propaganda and everything in-between. This has massively negative repercussions, since it aligns politicians, journalists, scientists, lawyers etc. to the same worldview & blind spots, which means they can't meaningfully keep each other in check. The rise of the NGO state-industry complex has strengthened this symbiotic relationship further, since it's a general-purpose honeypot that they all can benefit from with minimal oversight.
I don't think it's a coincidence that this information is released now - not only is the Corona crisis over, even many people have lost interest in talking about it. So it not only gets difficult to justify keeping it a secret, but it's also much easier for the Süddeutsche and the Zeit to pretend as if they hadn't been just as bad as everyone else.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Zeit, two of the most respected mainstream-left german newspaper just released back-to-back articles on the BND (german foreign intelligence) internal evidence pointing to the lab-leak theory being correct with 90%+. Not surprising, you think, and old news too boot? Well, as it turns out, they concluded this ... in 2020. And given the risk of bioweapon development this implies, they'd have been near-required to tell then-chancellor Merkel. And health ministry Jens Spahn. When the administration changed in 2021 to Scholz, he was also told with overwhelming likelihood. According to the two papers, all of them were in fact told personally by then-and-current BND president Bruno Kahl.
Similar to the US establishment, the german establishment at the time went on what can only be described as a hunt against even mentioning the possibility of a lab leak. To quote the top german establishment expert of the time, Christian Drosten: "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. [...] Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus. We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture."
The source here matters a lot, since both of these are consistently pro-establishment in general and especially so during the Corona crisis. There is very little reason for them to publish this spuriously, and frankly it's a surprise they're willing to publish it even now.
Whether you believe the BNDs internal evidence or not doesn't matter. Whether you personally think that the lab-leak theory is correct doesn't matter (FWIW, I think most foreign intelligence service have an obvious bias towards conspiratorial thinking, so if they say 90%+, it's probably more in the 60%+ range). What does matter, however, is that our own government secretly concluded that the lab-leak theory is correct or at the very least highly plausible, but instead of supporting what they viewed as the truth or at least the open discourse on a key question, they actively supported slander and misinformation.
Tbh, I'm still kind of reeling about what to conclude after Corona. Due to some personal experiences, but also the generally repressive climate of the time combined with the information coming out now that most mainstream talking points were wrong, it was a major step in my own worldview realignment. In particular, I used to have the naive anti-conspiracy view that it's almost impossible to keep an important one going due to a single defection blowing everything up, even if smaller and/or more specific ones may happen. Nowadays I think through a smart combination of only telling people as much as they need to know while also making clear what they're supposed to think through scare tactics, slander and repression, arbitrarily large-scale conspiracies can keep going as long as enough people can be convinced it's important. A single defector isn't a problem, because it's trivial to present them as just an evil person spreading misinformation for personal gain.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
19d ago
I have to concur with Steve here; Upsidedownmotter is clearly just as uncharitable. Noting the Weimars republic obvious failures does not make you a Kaiserlicher, noting post-apartheid SAs failures does not "rehabilitate" apartheid SAs, and the insinuation has been a reliable tactic to shut critics up.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
29d ago
It's a long time since I took a MBTI test, but I'm pretty sure I got percentage results that I could evaluate myself, which is why I always said I'm XNTP despite consistently scoring higher on I than on E (but always only ca 60%). It's not really a fault of the system that many people are lazy that they boil everything down to two categories.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
29d ago
In a democracy you absolutely should never make laws that only work well as long as you're in power but become a giant thorn in the side once you aren't anymore. In fact, while Musk & Trump are certainly trying to change that, the current government staff is still massively left-leaning. So such a law would be a thorn pretty much instantly.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
1mo ago
Lacking adaptivity is a great understatement. I've played multiple entries in the genre in which I was at first amazed, only to find out that the AI is barely functional for several factions - it gets stuck on a small number of planets, utterly mismanages holdings in a way that even a static AI could do better or is completely incapable of running a war in a meaningful sense.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
1mo ago
Ten characters in the top 12 this year.
If we use the criterion "viable", 10 even seems to be a significant understatement. There's multiple players in the lower top 100 that main yet other chars. If that's not viable, I don't know what is.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
1mo ago
I'm also european (german) and tbh this is exactly the attitude that pisses me off about the current EU. We're the equivalent of a guy who moved in with a friend because "it just makes sense, we save lots of money and we get along great". But as our friend moved forward, has a great job and pays more and more, we got stuck in place and increasingly skimp on the rent. And then we pretend to be surprised when he moves out to the big city, disgusted with us.
The US kept their backyard reasonably clean (Mexico and Canada), their economy has been growing tremendously compared to ours, and they invest appropriately in the military to safeguard their interests. We did none of those things. Russia is pathetic, we should have been able to easily defend Ukraine, but we couldn't, so the US had to jump in despite the fact that keeping Russia at bay is far, far more important to us (even if it may be one interest among many for the US, it's their decision whether they continue investing in this one).
Just to be clear, I want the war to continue, I want Russia to get nothing but a bloody nose. And if we had kept our house in order, we could let the US and Russia have their little peace talk, tell them to fuck off, and continue the war in Ukraine on our own anyway. But we didn't, so we depend on them, and we have no-one to blame but ourselves. WE are the dummys, not them, and we're way too far up our own asses to realize that.
I'd rather advice a trip to Southeast Asia, in that case. If you want to retire anyway, it's a great place to stay for indefinite time as well.
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