Sinity
1yr ago
Feminist utopian larp doesn’t have an answer. Neither does communist utopian larp.
@hydroacetylene: in general yes. There are some disturbing answers / fantasies through. Link
A lot gentler. A lot kinder. A lot more concerned with the feelings of others. The Pony virus changed a lot of things, Dylan. It increased the amount of oxytocin all bodies make. That's a hormone that helps make us care and be nurturing. When mothers care for their children, their bodies are flooded with the stuff. But men used to have very little of it."
"Were men mean, before the Pony virus?" It was a difficult question.
"Well... I guess they were. There were hundreds of wars, all over the planet, all the time. Every single day, there was about one hundred wars going on. Now we don't have any. There aren't any armies anymore. Nobody sees the point of having an army, because all of the money to make weapons and train soldiers is used to feed people, and clothe them, and make sure everyone has a place to live." The world was pretty scary before the Pony virus, Richard had to admit.
"And war stopped because of that oxy hormone?"
"No. Not just that. Oxytocin was only part of it. The virus changed the part of the genes that controlled territoriality and aggression too, and it also... cut the level of testosterone by two thirds. Testosterone is the male hormone. It makes men hairy... or it used to anyway... but it also made them extra aggressive, and extra territorial, and... well... horny all the time. So men were pretty frustrated, and they also were... I guess... a little more mean and prone to anger and violence." Richard decided to leave out the old statistics that showed that 98% of all violence was committed by males alone. Testosterone was probably a very big factor. Maybe the creators of the Pony virus had intended everything after all.
"So... the virus basically made men... less like men." Dylan was a smart kid. He'd pretty much hit the nail on the head.
"Um... yeah. Pretty much. Having breasts is just incidental. The real point was to make males act more like females, to make them more caring, more concerned with feelings, less violent, and less aggressive. That's why there are no more violent contact sports, no more wars, and no more hunger. No man can stand to let another man die in a ditch anymore." Richard watched the boys playing jump-rope. A smaller child wanted to play. They had welcomed him in, and took the time to gently teach him how to play. He couldn't imagine boys doing that when he had been growing up. "But the virus also affected women too, son. It made them even more nurturing than they ever were before as well. Both men and women were made less violent, aggressive, and more caring overall. And it only took eight weeks to spread to every human on earth."
Dylan sat up, hugging his knees to his chest, gently. His painted toenails matched his sisters, they had painted them together the night before. "So basically, the world sucked before the Pony virus."
Richard had to think about it. Decades of masculinity fought in his mind with the reality of the new world he now lived in. Gone was Hockey, Rugby, American Football. Gone was being macho, tough, and hard. The old action heroes and the old war heroes were all monsters now. Being a man was defined more by being pretty than by being rough and tumble.
But there was no war. The world shared, now. It was unthinkable to let people starve. It was even more unthinkable to invade and kill anyone. Rape had ended almost overnight. A night at the pub ended with singing, and not with a fight. And women finally had real and lasting equality in the world. It was like living on a different earth.
But it was a better one. Even though his background, everything he had been taught screamed inside of him, he was a scientist, he was a smart man. Richard had to admit. It was better.
The world had been converted into something new and strange, but it was a safer world. A friendlier world. A less violent and more nurturing world. Whoever those gene hackers were, or whoever it was, had done what all of the philosophers and pundits and saviors had all failed to do. They had made the Earth a planet of peace and relative harmony.
In the comments, author references stats about male violence a lot; shame no one brought up stats about technology and science... I suspect author would just claim it's irrelevant and it's all because of women being kept down by men tho.
Sinity
1yr ago
Taking an oath is not weird at all.
I was saying that forced oath is weird. I mean, just force someone to serve. Sure, it might be immoral but whatever.
But... forcing an oath? Kinda defeats the whole point of an oath.
Sinity
1yr ago
Feminists! Where are you, when the motherland calls for reservists?
Paulina Januszewska
KP journalist
DECEMBER 9, 2022
"Where are the feminist organizations when men get drafted into the army?" the graduates of the University of Peasant Reason ask. Let me now explain.
("Peasant's reason" is an idiom roughly equivalent to "common sense")
If I were to use the same rhetoric as the University of Peasant Reason, which demands compulsory conscription and military service for women as well, and preferably for feminists ("after all, you're all about equality, aren't you?"), I would have to write that you, dear men, have wound the whip on yourselves.
The patriarchy you have established generates conflicts that are later resolved violently and forces you to be cannon fodder, in certain circles called reservists. You are the ones who have decided that gender determines who is fit to fight and who is not. I don't know about that, but I do know that in your battles - those fought in or out of uniform - women also die.*
The argument "women, now you have what you wanted, now go to war" is in fact a misunderstanding of the flagship assumptions of the drive towards emancipation.
No - the fact that a woman becomes a soldier, even a General, is not a celebration for feminism. Just as it is not, for example, when women head greedy corporations or referee soccer matches at the World Cup, which violates human rights, exploits, promotes homophobia and sexism.
While the establishment of quotas in the army may appear to be an equalitarian demand, and indeed rubs the nose in the face of gender stereotypes that assume women are physically weaker than men and unfit for military service, it actually represents an extremely neoliberal and ignorant approach to gender justice that ignores opposition to oppression.
Above all, however, it fails to answer much more legitimate questions about the role of the military and the toxic, impacting everyone "forms of masculinity it creates and supports." This is exactly what Shreshtha Das wrote about, commenting on what happened two years ago in India, and pointing out that "equal roles for women in the army over there are not a victory for feminists." She was referring to a ruling by India's Supreme Court, which, in spite of the government's sexist objections, ruled that gender could not be an obstacle to high-ranking positions in the military and permanent service.
Das recalled that "the military, as a place where blatant hypermasculinity explodes, reinforces hegemonic male notions of aggressiveness, strength and heterosexual prowess in and out of the barracks." Femininity, in turn, is therein an insult and a reason for abuse, as the experiences of harassed, raped, paid less than their male counterparts, shunned from important tasks/positions and ridiculed female members (but also male members) of the armies around the world make clear.
A soldier in the Polish special forces GROM, co-founder and president of the #SayStopFoundation, Katarzyna Kozlowska, once told me about the realities faced by women in the uniformed services:
"You can't avoid the rough advances there. By accepting them, you are treated like a whore, by rejecting - even worse. On top of that, entering the ranks of the military or police, women immediately get the patch of the physically weaker. Men think that since women are inserting themselves over there on their own volition, the hermetic, masculinized and hierarchical environment can dictate any conditions to them. Meanwhile, a female soldier or guard - as a strong woman, after all - should not complain, but manfully endure everything, including when watered down with a coarse, chauvinistic sauce of abuse"
To use a word: putting women in the camouflage, their entry into such male-centered structures, has nothing to do with women's liberation or equating femininity with masculinity. It is merely a gendered "promotion" bestowed by men, a necessity to symbolically put on pants and get rid of everything that could be considered unmanly.
This, by the way, also works against those men who are shown their place in the military hierarchy with aggression and violence (mental and physical) or, for example, who are ridiculed or humiliated there for their homosexuality.
The army is a generator and reproducer of the violence of oppression against which all social emancipation movements headed by feminism are fighting. Therefore, the half-witted expectation that women should join it willingly, with a smile on their lips and male anointment, is nonsense.
While we demand recognition and equal rights, we don't want an equal share of the harms produced by patriarchy. We want those harms to be none - or at least less.
University of Peasant Reason goes on to say, "since we, men, have to go into the army and die, you women must too." (...) it forgets that war means the death of civilians, that it uses a particularly cruel tool - rape. And it so happens that the latter largely involves women, who would often rather die than experience it.
Shreshtha Das reminds us that "the military and the hypermasculinity it promotes also harms women who do not live in areas controlled by the military." In doing so, she cites a 2004 study by Catherine Lutz, clearly showing that rates of domestic violence are three to five times higher among military couples than among civilians, because "the military as an institution that promotes the idea of heterosexual male supremacy glorifies power and control or discipline, and suggests that violence is often a necessary means to achieve its own ends."
You read that right. The year is 2023, Poland. The country is in a panic over military mobilization, triggered by media reports of an increase in the number of reservists in the state army. And Polish male hussars are howling on the Internet: "what about women?".
I'll just reiterate: the main problem of those who insist on the forced conscription of women into the army is that they misunderstand feminism. The coercion to become cannon fodder, on the other hand, is a patriarchal assumption that strikes at any gender.
If the graduates of the University of Peasant Reason wanted to stay in reality for a while, they would learn that there is a not inconsiderable group of men and women who want to join the soldier ranks. And I'm not just talking about the ranks of war-fetishizing nationalists or All-Polish Youth. Maj. Konrad Radzik, spokesman for the Military Complements Headquarters in Rzeszow, told "Wyborcza" that since the beginning of the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, "interest in all forms of military service has increased by about 100 percent - including among women." Besides, there is no shortage of Ukrainian women grabbing weapons of their own volition either.
So there is no doubt that in the face of threats like the one posed by Russia today, the desire to train and defend themselves will grow in societies. If the war escalates, it will force many men and women to adopt defensive measures no matter what their willingness or reluctance to armed conflict.
However, no one has the right to impose on anyone the decision to join the regular army. Indeed, movements striving for equality do not have on their agenda the rewriting of a masculinized world into one that will continue to be violent, with the difference that the oppressors will become women for a change.
The trouble of men sharing idiotic posters on their social media with the slogan "show you're a real femina, fight for equality in reserve exercises" lies in masculine fear. In the Polish state's deprivation of men's choices. You know, the same choice that women in Poland do not have, at least in the matter of aborting a pregnancy.
Your fear of military service, your disagreement with the state deciding for you without you, however, is not the fault of feminists. It is the fault of the oppression of the patriarchy and men in power in Poland. If you choose to oppose them, we will go with you. But don't expect us to be happy that you wish for us as badly as you wish for yourselves.
Sinity
1yr ago
So, in Polish internet, there's currently some noise about mobilization. One user got summoned for the month-long military exercises, which supposedly ends with being forced to take an oath (which seems like a weird concept), and then being moved into 'active reserve'. Which means you can potentially get summoned for such exercises for 90 days per year.
A (translated) summary/context from /r/Polska:
1/ On the first of December, on the Wykop.pl, one user made an submission, saying that he had received a summons to undergo 33 days of training from the WCR (military recruitment center) in Sieradz. He had not done any military service before.
The post was quickly upvoted onto the frontpage and received nearly 7000 upvotes and 2000 comments.
2/ Gradually, from the Wykop portal, the topic began to make its way into our subreddit. One of the first extensive posts analyzing the situation was I got a summons to the army - what's next? by /u/emotional_penalty, which got almost 1500 upvotes and over 1000 comments.
3/ Questions and discussions began to emerge en masse both on Wykop and here to determine the grounds for such an appointment. The same user posted a local radio station's interview with a WCR Sieradz employee, who said that such summons are correct, and failure to appear comes with severe consequences.
4/ The topic began to grow more and more. Someone threw around the idea that the cause of the problem is the amendment to the Law on Universal Defense Obligation passed in the parliament this year, which imposes the possibility of taking a civilian with an assigned category of military fitness for military exercises.
5/ Upon reaching the parliamentary vote, it turns out that all deputies of all parties voted in favor of the law, except for half of the Confederation, who abstained.
Direct link to the results of that vote. Voted: 455, For: 450, Against: 0, Abstained: 5, Didn't vote: 5
6/ At this point, the "Wykop Effect" is now in full force, and the mainstream media are beginning to write about the issue. Examples of publications from more reliable and well-known media: 1, 2, 3
In addition, all sorts of commentators, influencers and various other social media figures + some politicians also write about it, some even manage to enrage their constituents
7/ Here we are.
Note that there are a lot of inconsistencies in individual posts, but also in individual media articles. This is characteristic of this "affair". Some sources say that no one at all except volunteers will be taken for the exercise, others that there will be 200000 people, others that several thousand. The form and timing of the exercises also varies, from 33 days as in "patient zero" from the Wykop, to 2 days as in a recent interview with the WCR's head of recruitment
As for the bill and the vote, it's worth noting that one of the biggest misrepresentations right now is to blame the issue on the current law. Yes, such a provision for the possibility of calling up a passive reserve for exercises exists, and deputies actually voted for this law. However, this is not a new provision.
In the amendment to the law from 2014, adopted by the Ewa Kopacz government, one can find:
1a. The peacetime military service obligation of persons transferred to the reserve who are not reserve soldiers shall consist of military exercises.
The law introduces the possibility of a civilian with a military category being called up for compulsory military exercises. Interestingly, concerns were already raised back then, and the military leadership reassured the public that this regulation is just a legal loophole, and that in practice they will not use it. Sample article from 2015
TL;DR: It is unclear what is true and what is not. Since 2014, the military has had the legal possibility to call up civilians for military exercises. In all likelihood, a summons does not yet imply the necessity to go to the exercises, but only to appear and present one's opinion on the subject and an individual assessment of whether or not the person will take such exercises. Potentially, if there are any such summons at all, they will mainly involve people in the medical field and, for example, professional drivers and mechanics.
@AM_Zukowska is a member of parliament, left-wing. Translation of some tweets:
@KorolukM: I pay mandatory taxes and expect the government to ensure my defense from that, not treat me like potential cannon meat. If it's not enough, I can pay more.
If you like the state shitting into your face, then by all means, no kink shaming. But don't throw that shit at others.
@AM_Zukowska: That is, how exactly, with whom is it to provide defense? Someone has to serve in the army and in case of war the state has to have trained conscripts. Sorry. Ideally, wars would not exist. But there have been wars since the dawn of mankind.
@nalu__xx: For you to write such a thing.... Well, I won't say that I'm not disappointed
@AM_Zukowska: I wrote that, because I feel responsible for the country.
@MoistureBusters: And is Private Anna-Maria going for training too?
@AM_Zukowska: I do not have a military qualification. I think that, unfortunately, with an eye defect of -7 diopters and retinal detachment I would not get one.
@Vimis23: So then what do you think, compulsory service for men and women? What do you say to that? Everyone for conscription. Equality is equality.
@AM_Zukowska: There has been no compulsory conscription for anyone since 2009. Military service is voluntary. There are, however, military exercises for those with a Category A military qualification. Since 2014, they are no longer only for reserve soldiers, because since 2009 we have less and less reserve.
I've also translated a text published by "Krytyka Polityczna", which is left-wing. Relevant context: in February there was a poll asking about support for mandatory conscription, here are the results, by gender. Women: 49% for, 47% against. Men: 39% for, 58% against.
Translation is in the separate comment (reply to this one), due to character count limit.
Sinity
1yr ago
but that's why we historically gave the job of running society to people with the maturity to recognise and admit to their mistakes.
That seems like the opposite of reality.
but also dramatically more severe consequences for mistakes - and if you do fuck it up, the consequences to you - no matter how severe - are microscopic compared to the consequences to society.
This kind of thing (more severe consequences of mistakes) incentivizes ass covering. If you want to incentivize 'admitting mistakes', then again, you'd need to do the opposite.
Sinity
1yr ago
And a fragment from third link; about nature of governments, singletons, in context of automation. I mostly decided to quote that too given similar focus to your post on the old subreddit
Eventually, the balance of power shifted, and the government, in all its organs, exceeded the power of its own people. Freed of the fear of the mob, that power that in its time had removed crowned heads from their bodies and elected officials from their seats, governments experienced a fundamental shift in motive–no longer bound to the whims of that which had humbled even the Tsar, those who governed found that they could direct their nations in whatever idiosyncratic direction they pleased, in directions that did not have even a theoretical bearing on the interests of their subjects, and were in fact often openly hostile to those interests.
Let us not delude ourselves as to the transient nature of this victory. This was no victory of the powerless over the powered. This was the victory of some with power over others with power, and as such bodes only ill for the future.
The lessons of the current era are clear: with the advent of fully mechanized warfare, and of fully mechanized means of production, if we allow ourselves to fall, or to splinter, or be peacefully broken up, it is only a matter of time until the world is again unified under one government, even if the world must first be buried under another wave of fire to do it. Eventually there will come into being a government powerful and willing enough to hold its grip on power.
And without anything external to destroy it, such a government will be eternal, assuming it does not destroy the species first.
It is impossible to return to the past, or restrict our development, as some still delude themselves into advocating. The lessons of industrialism, of plenty, can never be forgotten. The rightful craving for more wealth, more plenty will always be there. The people, the government–they will crave it, and between them they will destroy anything in their way.
No, while we still live, we should do what we can to become that eternal government, and to ensure, while we still live, that those who follow can never stray from the path. Before we can even begin to do that, it is necessary to know what the path is, and that can only be done by careful study of what the path is.
My allies and I therefore humbly submit to the Committee the following set of guiding principles, or let us be frank about it, ideological tenets:
1) That our future government dedicate itself wholeheatedly to the problem of staying in power forever. This is not a matter of power-lust; it is a matter of what is necessary. Of course, this entails the suppression, ruthless if necessary, of competing ideologies and organizations.
2) That, as much as possible, no one being shall ever rule, or experience what it is like to rule. What Nietzsche called the Will to Power is a fundamental part of the human psyche, and it is this Will which has driven some individuals to seemingly unattainably heights. Yet, if it this Will that has driven some of the worst atrocities and abuses ever recorded. If Humanity is to survive, this will should be chained, and denied ever tasting the forbidden fruit of Power. This should be our unabashed goal.
It seems impossible to construct a power structure simultaneously capable of governing effectively without leaders of some sort, and it may be so. Nonetheless, recent work by our researchers […] have suggested a possibility. By making the leaders mental combinations of their followers, their subjects, it may be possible to construct leaders who would no more enjoy abusing their power than you would enjoy abusing your power to control your own limbs
6) The maximization of the freedom perceived by sentient individuals. It is clear that for any sentient, human mind, the feeling of coercion is wholly repugnant, so much that many other of the other sources of physical and mental satisfaction are often declined in the pursuit of freedom from coercion, or more briefly, freedom itself. And yet the attempt to maintain a true absolute freedom is impossible, impractical, and even unpleasant in many circumstances. The intersection of the freedom of action of multiple individuals, the tendency of individuals to often choose disastrous courses of action…all of these are well-known. In the end what matters is what the individuals involve perceive as being free, and this is what should be sought.
7) The maximization of economic prosperity, defined as both the average and minimal amount of resources that can be accessed by any given sentient. Fundamentally, this was the goal of human economic life since the beginning. Note that this encompasses both an average amount of resources and a minimal amount of resources–the government cannot consent to deliberately allow one sentient to starve, no matter the gain accrued to another sentient or set of sentients.
Example from fiction which goes a little bit into genocidal scenarios: To The Stars (Madoka Magica hard sf fanfic), or rather its backstory. It also explores incompatibility of capitalism with full automation / high unemployment described by @2rafa (specifically paragraph 2 and 9. 1, 2, 3. I brought it up on the old sub already, but I'm unsure how many have seen this back then.
With Vladimir Volokhov’s 2136 unraveling of the principles of AI, the dam finally broke on over a century of economic trends. Steadily rising structural unemployment and slow concentration of wealth became instead soaring unemployment and exponential concentration of wealth. With the advent of cheap, easily programmable artificial intelligence, the world’s industries no longer had a true need for human labor, and relentless cost-cutting left greater and greater proportions of the population out in the streets.
2
The paradox of plenty had truly arrived. Factories were more productive than ever, but even at the lowest prices, the only clients with money were the increasingly opulent capital owners, the hyperclasses the newly emergent economic class that would come to define the following century. Economic production stagnated, even as potential production skyrocketed.
Nations where the hyperclasses sympathized with the masses handed out basic incomes to keep them solvent. Those that didn’t handed out pittances or, often, nothing, content to rely on increasingly brutal oppression.
As the rank-and-file of the MSY isolated themselves deeper and deeper into cocoons of wealth, their cultural connections with the people they nominally served frayed, and increasing portions of the membership began to display attitudes similar to that of their crueler hyperclass peers, evincing contempt for the “handout-seeking layabouts” that now constituted most of the population.
It was only in a certain proportion of nations that it was able to mutate into true Detachment, with the hyperclass extending their beliefs to include the proposition that it was morally correct for the lower classes to be kept down, that it was morally incorrect to hand out relief food or money, and so forth. (...) the nations where the hyperclasses held onto their moral compasses, implementing relief and welfare programs–though never giving up their hold on power – began to form a second visible power bloc
The last meeting of the UN General Assembly, in 2160, collapsed entirely when the delegates of the non-detached faction walked out in protest at the organizations inability to take meaningful action against abuses. The remaining delegates dissolved the organization and formed their own international organization, the appropriately Orwellian Freedom Alliance.
The Incubators added their own input to the situation, warning direly that Humanity was at substantial risk of a “low-productivity, low-utility” end-state, and even offering direct intervention, if requested (this was refused).
Events crystallized in 2163, with the revelation of the so-called St. Petersburg atrocity. The local hyperclasses had resolved to do the unfathomable: annihilate an entire segment of the city’s population for anti-governmental behavior.
9
Eventually, agonizingly, and cataclysmically, the FA collapsed under weight of its economic inferiority, its own ideologies rendering it incapable of effectively mobilizing its populations, or even preventing its populations from being co-opted by the other side.
The following is somewhat less relevant, but it implies that things turning out fine is unnatural. Similarly, figuring out friendly AI (in 2136) wasn't either (through it's not explained in the text here).
By 2200, while a few UF governments were still nominally in power, they existed with armed forces commanded by EDC commanders, economies commanded by EDC AIs, censorship imposed by EDC regulations, and it was abundantly clear that the EDC was the UF, and was unlikely to cede any power as long as there was still an enemy left to fight. As it turned out, the EDC never ceded power at all, absorbing the few remaining independent governments at the end of the war with the bluntly honest explanation that the EDC believed that future peace could be best secured under its own, direct rule (...) removed any remaining illusions that the EDC was anything other than an oligarchical, unelected, secret military junta.
(...)
If the UF could successfully rebuild the world, its directors hoped to use the gratitude of the populace to entrench their ideology and successor government forever. To this end, on top of its ambitious rebuilding objectives, the Council promised grandiosely to construct Eudaimonia on Earth (...) the Council inaugurated a set of projects ambitious both in scope and name, intended to be Manhattan Projects for a new age: Project Eden sought clinical immortality, Project Janus sought FTL travel, and Project Icarus sought to use solar satellites to harvest the light of the sun, making energy not just cheap, but free.
When the Council finally ended martial law ten years later, dissolved itself, and made way for its successor, Historians were already considering it one of the most successful governments ever, despite the fact that its most ambitious projects had yet to bear fruit. In recent years, there has been speculation that the Council’s ambitious goals and seemingly ludicrous optimism were prompted indirectly by the Incubators, via MSY intermediaries. No evidence has ever emerged to support this claim…
The ten-year post-war saga of the EDC seems almost impossible, more dream than reality, and the official explanation, that this effectiveness was due to the successful incorporation of AI planning and modeling, seems to many unsatisfactory. The idea of a group of oligarchical technocrats governing so effectively, despite the well-known flaws of human nature, had more in common with the fever dreams of early twentieth-century utopians than anything the weight of history would suggest. (...) vast majority of records remain sealed, allowing an immense amount of speculation to pour into the gaps, especially with the recent revelation of the existence of the MSY and the Incubators. It is suggested the MSY used its magic to keep the EDC under its thumb and help propel research innovation, or that the Incubators regularly advised the interim government, providing experience and examples of social structures, economic designs, and even technology. Additional speculation focuses on the nature of Governance, whose opaque operations engender distrust. The EDC, some allege, was the site of a quiet takeover of Humanity itself, by its AIs, by its magical girls, by the Incubators, or by some combination of the three.
Sinity
1yr ago
I don't know, is it inconceivable that UBI+light wireheading through superstimuli could keep the vast majority of people sufficiently placid to prevent widespread upheaval until the problem solves itself through birthrate collapse? This would have the same effect as a genocide of the poor, but not involve a lot of violence or even generally offense to revealed ethical preference.
And what would be the appeal? Disregarding morality entirely, I think I'd prefer ~postscarcity + large population to small population.
Fine I believe that you and other HBDists are motivated less by a desire of truth than by a desire to see your preexisting prejudices validated and that the refusal of others to provide you with that validation is indignant anger.
Does it include Scott
I suspect that race issues helped lead to the discrediting of IQ tests which helped lead to college degrees as the sole determinant of worth which helped lead to everyone having to go to a four-year college which helped lead to massive debt crises, poverty, and social immobility (I am assuming you can fill in the holes in this argument).
I think they’re correct that “you are racist and sexist” is a very strong club used to bludgeon any group that strays too far from the mainstream – like Silicon Valley tech culture, libertarians, computer scientists, atheists, rationalists, et cetera. For complicated reasons these groups are disproportionately white and male, meaning that they have to spend an annoying amount of time and energy apologizing for this. I’m not sure how much this retards their growth, but my highball estimate is “a lot”.
and Gwern?
the massive fall in genome sequencing costs means that large human datasets will be produced, and the genetics directly examined, eliminating entire areas of objections to the previous heredity studies. And at some point, some researcher will manage the study - some group inside or outside the USA will fund it, at some point a large enough genetic database will be cross-referenced against IQ tests and existing racial markers.
I don’t know when the definitive paper will come out, if it’ll be this year, or by 2020, although I would be surprised if there was still nothing by 2030; but it will happen and it will happen relatively soon (for a debate going on for the past century or more). Genome sequencing is simply going to be too cheap for it to not happen. By 2030 or 2040, I expect the issue will be definitively settled in the same way earlier debates about the validity of IQ tests were eventually settled (even if the public hasn’t yet gotten the word, the experts all concede that IQ tests are valid, reliable, not biased, and meaningful predictors of a wide variety of real-world variables).
Edit: originally I linked, but I decided against it for now. While it's technically publically available, one only as an archive and second, on someone else's website...
Sinity
1yr ago
There's an update; tho it doesn't exactly change anything about credibility
https://unknought.tumblr.com/post/699908646940901376/so-kelsey-has-confirmed-in-a-fairly-public
It's darkly amusing to be proven right. People thought that technology will disrupt traditional governance, and instead we're seeing bureaucratic sanctions effectively enforced against abstract cryptographic protocols. Social technology and human networking keep trampling over nerdy bullshit.
HN comment
Clickbaity title. As the article outlines inside 63% of currently produced blocks are OFAC compliant. With an ETH block time of ~12 seconds. There is a 1-(.63^n) chance that an OFAC non-compliant block will be included in n blocks. Once you hit 90 seconds, there's a >99% chance that an OFAC non-compliant transaction will be written to the chain.
Maybe it's not quite over? It doesn't seem to be getting much worse.
Kiwifarms
Which now operates in the clearnet without issues, seemingly.
Sinity
1yr ago
I don't think this in particular is alien to most of the people. Male expendability is mainstream, and maybe apolitical.
Well, I suppose it's better that people get their rocks off on some seedy website. After all it's just fantasy, and the people running the site make it clear they don't condone anyone actually trying to do this sort of stuff.
This reminded me of... this story. But here, author does make it clear that she'd really like it to happen. (especially in the comment section)
"There was a virus. It was an artificial virus, and it infected the entire world. It was called PNY-1, for Polytranscriptase Nuclear Y-chromatin, and the one was because it was the first, and hopefully only, virus of its kind."
"There was a fan of the show, or maybe a small group - that part is not known for sure - that had a lot of smarts. He, or they, understood biochemistry and genetic recombination. Whoever it was called themselves 'The Conversion Bureau'. They were kind of like computer hackers, only they hacked biology instead. A lot of people in the early decades of the century had laboratories in their garages, and played around with home genetic engineering, hacking DNA. The 'Conversion Bureau' made the virus because of that show."
"Why? Why did they do it? And what does any of that have to do with..." Dylan dropped his eyes "...With boys having to wear bras?"
"[Humans are] A lot gentler. A lot kinder. A lot more concerned with the feelings of others. The Pony virus changed a lot of things, Dylan. It increased the amount of oxytocin all bodies make. That's a hormone that helps make us care and be nurturing. When mothers care for their children, their bodies are flooded with the stuff. But men used to have very little of it."
"Were men mean, before the Pony virus?"
"Well... I guess they were. There were hundreds of wars, all over the planet, all the time. Every single day, there was about one hundred wars going on. Now we don't have any. There aren't any armies anymore. Nobody sees the point of having an army, because all of the money to make weapons and train soldiers is used to feed people, and clothe them, and make sure everyone has a place to live." The world was pretty scary before the Pony virus, Richard had to admit.
"Oxytocin was only part of it. The virus changed the part of the genes that controlled territoriality and aggression too, and it also... cut the level of testosterone by two thirds. Testosterone is the male hormone. It makes men hairy... or it used to anyway... but it also made them extra aggressive, and extra territorial, and... well... horny all the time. So men were pretty frustrated, and they also were... I guess... a little more mean and prone to anger and violence." Richard decided to leave out the old statistics that showed that 98% of all violence was committed by males alone. Testosterone was probably a very big factor. Maybe the creators of the Pony virus had intended everything after all.
"So... the virus basically made men... less like men." Dylan was a smart kid. He'd pretty much hit the nail on the head.
"Um... yeah. Pretty much. Having breasts is just incidental. The real point was to make males act more like females, to make them more caring, more concerned with feelings, less violent, and less aggressive. That's why there are no more violent contact sports, no more wars, and no more hunger. No man can stand to let another man die in a ditch anymore." Richard watched the boys playing jump-rope. A smaller child wanted to play. They had welcomed him in, and took the time to gently teach him how to play. He couldn't imagine boys doing that when he had been growing up. "But the virus also affected women too, son. It made them even more nurturing than they ever were before as well. Both men and women were made less violent, aggressive, and more caring overall. And it only took eight weeks to spread to every human on earth."
From "Author's note":
Every single thing in The Friendship Virus is based on fact. More, these facts are acknowledged by all the educated, professional men of the world. Not a bit of any of this is the least bit in dispute. I know these things because not only do I study and research, had a parent involved in enforcement, but... I can use Google.
As you can. Everything above is just the first of ten thousand pages verifying everything I wrote.
I have received a lot of crap about this one, single story among my more than one million words of storytelling, and every bit of it comes from one thing: boys who don't like hearing the truth - a truth understood and recognized by all real men in positions of power, authority and enforcement of law and order.
Within FimFiction, she has her own section in the CB universe called “The Chatoyaverse”. JDR authored an enormous number of stories herself, some as part of a series, others as one-offs. However, they generally share the same elements: The magical barrier is expanding and will not only kill all humans, but destroy their civilization too, erasing mankind’s entire culture from existence. In the original story, the exact nature of the barrier was left vague, other than it extends from Equestria, would “heal the Earth”, is harmful to Humans, and humanity is already dying out. But in JDR’s stories, Celestia deliberately created the barrier to wipe out humans.
Humans are harmed by the magical barrier because they have no magic, which is because they have no souls, which is also why they’re pure evil. Technology is also pure evil, which is why the barrier destroys it too. Men are especially evil, in which JDR claims they’re responsible for 98% of all the world’s violence and rape, and the only way to cure them is to make them more feminine. Failing that, castration works too.
Celestia is an immortal goddess doing this for their own good, as are the other ponies. Not only does the potion turn all evil humans into perfect ponies, but the potion is explicitly said to completely alter the user’s mind by removing any negative thoughts from their brain. It also makes the ponies unwaveringly loyal to Celestia, even if before they were the most hardcore pro-human rebels. Also, they are reprogrammed to be pansexual. Critics have likened this to mind control and brainwashing, making the prospect of being turned into a pony even more disturbing. But it doesn’t stop there; in one particular story, the natural-born ponies are the product of centuries long eugenics program to breed out undesirable traits; ponies are superior because she deliberately made them so.
Her justification for Celestia’s questionable actions is: “In my stories superior beings - truly superior beings - can do things that if a lesser being, like a human, were to do, it would indeed be evil."
Yeah, generally I agree with this now.
(Though while it's a decent argument for subreddits, Discords, small forums like this, etc., it's a lot less appropriate of an argument for larger open platforms like Twitter or Facebook which shouldn't necessarily be expected to have one unified culture. So I'd say bring on the subscription-based jannyism only there.)
Yep; while it wouldn't work that well in communities like themotte, it makes sense on a platform. Reddit, if not for admins interfering, is a pretty good model, I think. Instead of global, unified forum with global moderators, there are subreddits for entire communities, with their own mods. It makes sense.
An improvement on that might be tags-based system - allow posting into multiple places at once. Mods moderate tags they set up. Tags would allow some fancy solutions; for example, mods of #programming might enforce the rule that humor/memes has to be tagged #humor too. And so user can look at "#programming -#humor" if they want only serious posts. And #humor aggregates humor for all kinds of topics.
Through that would cause problems you describe, to some extent, in the comments. But maybe it's still better UX than crossposting?
Sinity
1yr ago
(I also hate how Notch, who literally made the game from nothing, has been unpersoned by his former co-workers, the company who bought his game, and the game's community.
If you're not aware, Notch has a lot of... let's say interesting ideas about the current state of the world and the people in it. There's a lot... but I'll just mention one that is important to me. Notch believes that Trans women are not women, that those who "claim" to be women are mentally ill, and that the concept of Trans-ness is evil. This is the same language that has been used to de-legitimize and put trans women in danger for hundreds of years now.
As a trans member of this subreddit, when I read that milestone, I don't think it reflects what it probably used to. And it's a reminder to me that there are people out there who would excuse the awful views of people who have created things that they enjoy, because it makes them uncomfortable. But I don't think that reflects the user and moderator base of this subreddit, so I wanted to bring up this topic for people to discuss further. Thanks for reading.
Frankly, it seems like there needs to be an explicit other side, which "doesn't tolerate the intolerance". Not right-wing (through inevitably it'd be dominant), just a side which doesn't ever interact/cooperate with the people who engage in these kinds of tactics. I really doubt batshit insane censors are the actual majority.
Like, open source projects with explicit anti-CoC.
Sinity
1yr ago
What this kid tried to do is take over a project he's not a majority, or even substantial, contributor to. That is a faux pas and a no-go in open source, and the project should rightfully be "deplatformed" (*) because of it.
Isn't that what NeoVim did? Some group of devs were unsatisfied with the BDFL, they the project, and now it's basically the main fork. I don't think that at the time it was forked they were majority (tho I'm not sure).
Some people do think it was somehow bad to fork it. Pretty insane.
WDYM by 'deplatformed'?
Sinity
1yr ago
First, on a personal note, this is exactly what I stoner-hot-take predicted Musk would do with Twitter in a prior motte thread. This freaks me out. Not that it's all that creative a take, but it's something I've noticed before when I was spending too much time in narrow epistemic corners (team fan blogs, fashion blogs) where I'd start to think the same thoughts that showed up on the blogs a week later.
Funnily enough, ~same for me. Tho I suggested this nearly half a year ago, so maybe that's a little different... Link
Optional moderation. Say, someone thinks /u/ZorbaTHut is great at removing content which they don't want to see. So they subscribe to his moderation services - and they don't see this content anymore. Some other people think he's doing it wrong - and they see this content.
Twitter could have default list of mods, and it would function exactly as it does now - except interested people could selectively unsubscribe from that.
Everyone wins! Except for the people who want to block people from consensually communicating with each other.
I mean, it wouldn't even be that much of a change on Reddit. Just assume Administrators do not moderate, there's no Anti-Evil Ops, subreddit mods become "default mods" - each of which could be unsubscribed for - and people could subscribe to the nonstandard mods too.
And so there would never be deleted comments/posts - only hidden from the people who don't want to see them.
.........
Shout out to the mods of themotte, would themotte be usable in your judgment without that kind of basic filtering?
Zorba responded, explaining why it might not work; not quoting it here because of the length. So probably not(?).
Sinity
1yr ago
I went to Poland and it looked like what Western Europe should look like. The urban areas were clean and seemingly safe. Indeed the people living there are mostly European or Slavic.
Large part of that, at least in common narrative, is due to emigration of problematic people out of the country (as economic migrants). Ofc it wouldn't happen if we were not part of the EU. Because then immigration from Poland would be treated as, IDK, Mexicans in the US. Personally, if we were to somehow exit the EU (which is ~impossible given popular support for staying; if government fucked up that badly they'd probably rapidly lose power), I'd run away from the country.
Huh, 20 years ago? I thought it'd be something new, looking at the title: "The Unbearable Whiteness of Being Polish".
Also "By: authors", lol.
Everyone here is white. They are not ostentatiously white the way, say, Swedes are;
Most obviously, there aren’t many Africans, Arabs, or Asians. The rest of Europe seems a wonderfully Technicolor place these days—the metro in Paris, Rome, and London could almost be mistaken for the subway in New York. Heterogeneity is a tonic; it adds the energy of unexpected combinations—the woman in chador chatting with the blonde woman in jogging gear on the tube. Ah, cosmopolitanism! But alas, Poland is merely Polish, an experiment in ethnic deprivation; the unbearable whiteness of being.
Speaking of cosmopolitanism—Stalin’s favorite euphemism for Jewishness—there aren’t many Jews here, either. There used to be three million, but the Nazis took care of that. Forty percent of Warsaw was Jewish; the deficit now seems overpowering, they fill the empty spaces in the streets. And not just the Jews: Thousands upon thousands of Polish Catholics were killed at Auschwitz, thousands more were worked to death in Siberia; the officer class of the Polish army was slaughtered by the Nazis and the Soviets. Poland was the charnel house of the 20th century.
This doesn't even seem accusatory at least until this point. "Authors" seem to just really, really fetishize 'diversity'.
The economy stopped growing, as market economies will sometimes do. Unemployment stands at more than 18 percent. In the parliamentary election of 2000, the center did not hold. The former Communists, who had gained power posing as social democrats, remained in control, but the center-right opposition—largely composed of Solidarity remnants—collapsed. Two rather unique populist parties suddenly materialized as significant forces. One was the League of Polish Families, a party of Catholic nationalist extremists (which received 9 percent of the vote); the other was called Self-Defense, a frightening mixture of nationalism and socialism led by a bully named Andrzej Lepper (it received 10 percent, but its strength has nearly doubled in recent public opinion polls). By contrast, Freedom Union—the party of the former Solidarity intellectuals—received only 3 percent and has disappeared from the Polish parliament, the Sejm.
And so, the Polish jitters. Pessimists abound in Warsaw and around the country. There is a war between the government and the still-strict central bank over monetary policy. Lepper is making news every day, usually involving scuffles with the police (last Thursday, he tried to stop imported grain from entering Poland by rail) or with his fellow parliamentarians (he was removed from the hall after a scuffle last Friday). It is likely that the former Communists, led now by prime minister Leszek Miller, will attempt to move left, sloppily, in an attempt to ease the pain, outflank the populists, and keep their apparatchiks prosperous.
“Poland is becoming more and more like Latin America,” says Jaroslaw Kaczynski , leader of the Law and Justice party, a reformist center-right political remnant of Solidarity. “People succeed here not because they’re talented, but because they know the right people. There is a Polish saying: Thousands gain, millions lose. This is an oversimplification, but we do pay an enormous corruption tax, and no one seems interested in reform. So we have an economic crisis that threatens to become a political crisis—my fear is that unless the economy improves, the populist parties will become very strong.”
And now he rules, thanks to blatant populism.
Sinity
1yr ago
(Online) people bringing it up since the war started are shunned. Before, it was frequently brought up.
Sinity
1yr ago
a significant component their national myth is of Poles as the bulwark, standing strong against the tide (Polish spearmen held back the Golden Horde, Polish Hussars broke the siege of Vienna, and so on).
Sometimes to a cringe-inducing degree. See Christ of Europe
Sinity
2yr ago
Honestly I'm confused why a bolt gun or some sort of pneumatic guillotine isn't used. Latter is literally impossible to fuck up if you put enough PSI behind a heavy enough blade.
Sure, from the moment you cut the head it's irreversible (maybe technically not quite, given cryonics...).
As a subject, I'd prefer something that disintegrates the actual neural network than letting it die from blood loss.
Sinity
2yr ago
Why the fuck are we messing with chemicals and gas and electricity and whatever random stupid things when firing squads have existed for centuries and are reliable, quick, inexpensive and painless?
Are you sure death (ceasing to exist) is swift-enough following a bullet in the brain? Frankly, I'd feel more comfortable speeding up to 200km/h and hitting a tree.
It might be solvable with modest wealth taxes. The goal would be to gradually bring down wealth inequality. Possibly high taxes on inheritance.
It doesn't collapse to #4 IMO; market still functions as it did earlier, theoretically...
A fic mentions this problem. I already referenced it here days ago, so I'll keep the quote short this time...
Heh, in The Full Stack Of Society: Can You Make A Whole Society Wealthier, UBI is categorized as a feudalist solution.
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