jake
7d ago
You mean this one?
On June 28, 2017, Kobach, in conjunction with the Department of Justice, asked every state for personal voter information.[6] The request was met with significant bipartisan backlash; 44 states and the District of Columbia declined to supply some or all of the information, citing privacy concerns or state laws.
Make the argument he faced near-total bipartisan opposition, sure. Don't make the implicatively false tie with the 2020 General and the patently false "didn't find any."
jake
7d ago
Judicial power trumps state power, and left-aligned judges have been prolific at stopping Republican attempts at legislating electoral security; why would they be any more cooperative in investigations obstructed by hyperblue municipal bureaucracies? Beyond that, while fraud has been something generally talked about, it was not a matter du jour of the 2016 electoral cycle or the 2020 electoral cycle, its prominence today is novel to post-9/11 American political discourse.
Money is an incentive for defection, but there must be an interested purchasing party and goods to deliver. Daniels is a porn star who had evidence of having had sex with the President, of course she was going to be handsomely compensated for the story. A poll worker would have no story merely saying "This many ballots were fraudulently filed," even an interested party would not likely pay them, because that testimony is worth nothing.
The procedure for striking ballots as fraudulent is not a poll worker coming forward and saying "I fraudulently filled 10,000 ballots." The procedure is the poll worker comes forward and says "I applied a secret watermark to these 10,000 ballots; forensic expert team A will prove all 10,000 watermarks are identical and were indeed produced by the same process and human hand rather than being an artifact of printing or processing; forensic expert team B will prove I am the individual who produced that watermark all 10,000 times."
Goes to court. Forensic teams successfully tie poll worker to a ballot. Yes, a ballot, 1 ballot.
9,999 hearings to go, because every single ballot must be individually proved as fraudulent, else a legal ballot be illegally struck. See the scope of the problem?
You also assume this as a complex process requiring many people be aware. We don't know how many people are required to flip elections because the process is closed to audit. It could take dozens, it could take hundreds, it could take a handful of people placed at the exact link in the chain where boxes of fake ballots can be introduced and laundered with boxes of legal ballots. We don't know, and this by the way is and has been my entire point throughout my time talking about fraud on this site. When I say "We have no way of knowing" I am describing the act of criminal fraud. It is tax fraud for a corporation to have numbers closed to audit and it is electoral fraud for a government to have ballot numbers closed to audit.
jake
7d ago
Stealing an election implies not getting caught.
The essay elaborates specifically on how those programs weren't caught. COINTELPRO was a lucky break-in. MKUltra was uncovered while the government was looking at something entirely different, after decades of nobody coming forward. We know, generally, the CIA was running guns and drugs, but the extent is unknown, and what they do today is likewise unknown. How much does the CIA hold in unaccountable bitcoin, for example? It's certainly not $0.
What are your "priors" for no fraud? I can conceive of what those priors would necessarily include.
Necessity? This assumes consistent electoral legitimacy and this is a necessarily irrational belief. There is no basis for a necessity prior.
Morality? It requires an unwillingness to break the law. It's no longer journalists making the comparison, a general calls him Hitler, Harris calls him a fascist. True or false, there is no basis for a moral prior.
Journalism? The modern media establishment would neither investigate nor report on systemic leftist fraud, as they would be reporting on themselves. There is no basis for a journalistic prior.
Investigations? The FBI has been working against Trump since the Obama administration, they were working against him while he was the sitting President. No evidence supports the impartiality of the agency. Additionally, Republicans have only recently been made aware of the potential fraud occurring beneath them, and the areas for that potential fraud are hyper blue cities of purple states. How do Pennsylvania Republicans investigate fraud in Philadelphia? Who's cooperating with them? More, in states like California and Oregon, who would possibly investigate leftist fraud? There is no basis for an investigative prior.
A note before the last, since your priors can only rationally hinge on this: in the United States, to strike a ballot, it must be proved how that exact ballot is fraudulent. A hypothetical poll worker who fraudulently fills out 1,000 ballots and washes them together with legitimate ballots cast at their precinct has no fear of reveal or recourse because in this instance there is no method to differentiate legitimate and fraudulent ballots. It would not only require the poll worker to admit what they did and the exact number, but also be able to identify and prove with court-accepted evidence what ballots they cast in fraud, as it is illegal to destroy a legitimate ballot.
Courts not hearing the cases is all you have, and it would be fair were it not for the above. The citizenry has no method of auditing elections, and it should surprise no one that a crime that is so enabled by the system its revelation all but requires its perpetrators come forward has such little evidence. I would say in real fairness to the courts, what were they going to do? Pause the process for citizen journalism? I would say it, but leftist judges in random circuits have no problem making sweeping constitutional rulings. It is as simple as this: the matter was not given a full hearing by SCOTUS, their declination to hear the case is the strongest argument, but what would they hear? What results from what formal investigation? No, it is the strongest evidence because it is the only evidence, it is very weak evidence indeed.
jake
7d ago
I wouldn't expect Republicans of a given swing state to be able to thoroughly investigate the electoral procedures of their blue island cities. More, up until 2020 there was no serious consideration on the right of leftist electoral fraud. They weren't looking for it, weren't thinking about it, now that they are, we might expect investigations. Especially with the next Trump administration.
A low level government bureaucrat probably belongs to the group of people least likely to defect, save for those in criminal groups where defectors are killed. It's their job, for many it's the best they can get, why would they defect? Moral concern begs the question.
jake
7d ago
2016 is a starting point, but it is only a weak indicator of inability or unwillingness. I indict the administration of elections at all levels, so an adequate steelman incorporating the 2016 general election only pushes the question back. Were they unable to inject large numbers of fraudulent ballots? Or were they unprepared and failed to inject enough?
A common oversight on this subject is the thought that stealing national elections requires national coordination. It is in the interest of the California Democratic Party to win California elections, if they are fabricating large numbers of ballots in the general, they can achieve the immediate goal of maintaining local power while achieving the incidental goal of the state's electoral college votes going to the Democratic candidate for president. Same for Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia. It's the simulacra, the copy without an original. Many small groups who benefit from stealing local elections, who with no explicit cooperation steal a national election.
jake
8d ago
What is the steelman for the establishment being unable to steal elections?
Not unwilling, unable. Arguments from unwillingness, such as the ostensible criminality of mass electoral fraud, are tautological, as they assume the ability to read minds. Arguments of it being unnecessary are supremely tautological, as their first assumption is legitimate elections. Tautologies are not steelmen.
That sufficient measures exist to stop illegal voting; that sufficient measures exist to prevent the mass injection of fraudulent ballots; that relevant executive agencies have an interest in auditing elections and investigating to the fullest extent and neutrally charging electoral fraud, so leftist electoral fraud; that the courts have an interest in neutral hearings of electoral fraud, so leftist electoral fraud; that the media has an interest in investigating and neutrally reporting to the fullest extent electoral fraud, so leftist electoral fraud. The caveats of "fullest extent" and "leftist electoral fraud" are necessary, as no national-scope investigation has happened, and while there are rarely stories of left-aligned individuals being charged with electoral crimes, relative to those, stories of right-aligned individuals being charged with electoral crimes occur far more frequently. For the sake of charity, I will agree the inclination to criminal behavior as equal among the left and right, it is however no question that support for criminal behavior is a dominant ethic of the modern left. For these, the probabilistic assumption is one side is caught and/or reported on less often.
Do also consider the history of American conspiracies; principally, that evidence indicates coordination and silence are solved problems.
And to repeat myself, "it's a crime" and "they didn't need to" are not positions of a steelman. Not unwilling, unable.
jake
29d ago
The story was cats.
It's a matter of taboo. If it's normal in Haiti to eat cats or dogs, I would expect a non-filtered-for-assimilativeness population of Haitians in the United States to have members who catch and eat cats or dogs, just as I would expect them to catch geese, which they have done. Also deer, which I only speculate about, but we wouldn't find it expressly unusual for a foreigner living in the US to hunt and eat deer, and this returns to the point above. If it's normal for them to do it there, then given 20,000 normal Haitians moved to the US, the probabilistic assumption is they have done it here.
I also hold above all other Scripture, the Great Commandment, and believe with my whole heart that loving your neighbor as yourself means loving every neighbor.
What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself?
jake
1mo ago
The barely teenage groupies who had sex with guys like Mick Jagger were raped. A 14 year old girl is not capable of consenting to sex with a man of that level of fame. They were adolescents caught up in a wave of historically unparalleled wall-to-wall social and peer pressure. The music was good and they could feel it, but those teenage groupies had no context, they were fans of the Beatles and the Stones because they were that-which-is-most-popular. I'm sure you've seen the Beatles on Ed Sullivan; those girls didn't spend the entire performance screaming because they were there to hear the music. This phenomenon can be seen today with Taylor Swift. She is measurably popular because she is popular, and I say that as someone who likes a fair number of her songs and who doesn't care what she's chosen to do with her life. Back then, what would show a girl's "fitting in" more than for one precious moment being the desired object of one of the most famous men alive?
Much of this applies to the teenage girls who were legal adults, who while I would say in their case had nothing happen justifying prosecution, were nevertheless coerced with a lie. The lie of status, the story is perceived status, but it was always and only ever fake. "For that moment, he wanted to fuck me" for that moment, an immensely famous man on a world tour unsurprisingly wanted to have sex with a young and attractive girl who would do anything for him. She tells that story for the exact reason that she wasn't good enough; else she would have married one of those guys, or we would know her as a model or an actress. I'm sure we do in some cases, but those guys went to a lot of places, and those places had a lot of groupies. They weren't sleeping with future models every single night, even though they could have been sleeping with actual models every single night.
All that aside, of course it's not unthinkable, because we live in the time when it isn't unthinkable. But if you had some method of traveling to 1960 and conveying absolute proof of the consequences of the sexual revolution, it would be unthinkable, and it would have never happened. They would see the evidence and they would know it made everything worse. And even ignoring everything else here, everyone knows we happily indulge in things that aren't bad for us, been to the store lately? Seen the sinful glut of Oreo varietals choking half the shelves of the cookie aisle? Four kinds of Funyuns, ten of Doritos, several dozen flavors of Pringles? Who's that for? (It's me, and I love it. Get it?)
Sexual traditionalism is nominally about safety, they're practicably about preventing all the work required when they forget to put their condom on and blast STDs and unwanted babies out into the commons.
Yeah, well enough, though your point might be a bit unclear. Ultimately I'd just stake Chesterton's Fence on the subject, whatever it's ostensibly about, it sure did work for a very long time.
jake
1mo ago
The mitigation of risk is the natural result of technological progress. It isn't always bad, penicillin and the whole of medical research being obvious examples, it's also not always good, see my above comment. Contextually I thought I was clear, it seems not, that I was describing specifically "protection from the highly predictable consequences of poor choices." A person who does something unjustifiably foolish and knows it's foolish if for no other reason than its possible consequences, deserves whatever they get. Living in society means you're going to get sick, it's not unjustifiably foolish to live and go about among other people. Living in temperate climates is a hair different as maybe it would be ideal if most humans lived in a climate like Southern California, but there are resources we need that come from harsh climates, and we've long since adapted to living in climates that require heating in some parts of the year and cooling in others. It's also not the same sort of risk, not today; two hundred years ago if you were unprepared by say, not bothering to get enough wood to burn to keep yourself warm in the winter, you'd deserve whatever happened.
And I say this, people say this, because the American Democratic Party would operate in a categorically different manner if it couldn't campaign on protecting its voters from the consequences of their poor decisions. What would they be if they couldn't deliver on abortion and welfare? What would they be if they couldn't back the mass importation of foreigners who will be dependent on government subsidy? For my money they'd be far stronger, as remaining options and ideological inclination kept them as the natural allies and champions of domestic, native-born labor — the platform they once owned.
jake
1mo ago
Those high-status men are still fucking the help, it's just now they don't have to worry about troublesome heirs. That's why men of status supported the sexual "revolution," not liberty but the libidinous enabled to sleep with whichever women they wanted. It's David and Bathsheba replayed again and again on our entire civilization. Their beautiful wives and beautiful families wasn't good enough, so make it "easier" for the help, rather than harder for those despicable men. Remove the negative consequences from that specific act, which have indeed drastically decreased, but if I compare a maid being tossed out to the subtle and myriad horrors of modern life as a woman I'd say it's at best a tie, and a tie that favors tradition. What benefits some all too often harms most and social pressures and economic interests have a funny way of taking once-niche-choices and demanding them of the whole. Like pressure to become Strong Female Protagonist when most would rather be Stay At Home Mom.
Seatbelt laws are nominally about safety, they're practicably about preventing all the work required when someone gets launched through their windshield and meat crayons the road. Regardless, Big Seatbelt isn't dictating national elections.
jake
1mo ago
This may miss the forest.
The individual abortion may be typically "eugenic," for a particular definition of eugenic, in that it stops poor, unmarried women from having children, or having more children, which means they use less welfare.
Collectively, access to abortion, and welfare, may be highly "dysgenic," though again for a particular definition of dysgenic. Abortion is a kind of incentive, in that it makes a once-risky behavior less risky. Welfare does this too, so do condoms and hormonal birth control. These are prophylactics and contraceptives and treatments centered around the relationship, and since men and women produce children, I'll stick to heterosexual relationships. What's their status? Worse categorically. Dating, courtship, marriage, and childrearing; historically poor, all but nonexistent, also historically poor, a toss-up, some cases best-in-history, many and possibly the mode of cases rife with mental illness. Marriage in particular, the lack of it, the preponderance of single-mother households. What conditions brought this about?
Casual sex. If casual relationships had a positive impact on the psychological growth of a person, making them "better" at being married, we would know. What we see shows they don't. Later marriages, later first children, fewer children, more children in single-mother households. That last of which has categorically poor life outcomes. Why does the behavior persist? What conditions allowed for it in the first place? Abortion, condoms, birth control. Single mothers, add welfare and child support.
That the best of us, the people who should be producing platoons of little copies of themselves and their spouses to help our charge into space, instead have one or two, maybe three, is a tragedy. Yeah AGI is going to solve it, yeah I'm on record about the Simulacra Age and how Japan is going to be so poised for leaping ahead specifically because of their low TFR, but I think a lot of humanity is good and I want it to stick around. Pretty much all of you are pretty cool, I'd like for more of you to be around. I'd like my closest friends to stick around, to have the little copies of themselves to be friends with my kids so when they're grown they'll have some same sense of the joys I've had and continue to have. But most of them aren't having kids, and some of that is motivated by political rhetoric that functions to encourage mostly whites to not have kids, while then complaining about the economics of low birth rates and using those to in part justify dropping tens of thousands of foreigners on middle America.
That rhetoric is why I don't dignify the possibility that all the negatives above are still somehow consequentially "eugenic."
The executive-holding political faction in the most powerful country in the history of humanity derives significant power from maintaining access to abortion. This is not an appropriate interest of government; maybe it's equally inappropriate for the government to prevent abortion, but I can confidently say on the category, that of the two sides, the "Protect us from the consequences of our own actions" party will in all cases be infinitely the lesser. We are highly intelligent animals, we are meat computers, we learn and improve through consequence. Freedom from consequences is axiomatically harmful to human actualization and that's half our politics. These people vote, their politicians hold office. We sent men to the moon in a decade, now there's an oligarchy-appointed presidential candidate who at least at one time supported funding the transitions of incarcerated illegal aliens and a nontrivial number of her voters support her for no reason greater than her promise of protecting their "freedom" from having children. Abortion isn't eugenic, it should in virtually all cases be understood as the definition of dysgenic behavior, lest words mean nothing at all.
jake
1mo ago
How do we have a discussion when you ignore the evidence staring you in the face? The evidence of fraud is the inability to audit results. If a corporation's books have unauditable numbers year after year, people will go to jail. Why is this not the standard for American elections? You repeatedly present the tautological "They wouldn't cheat; they aren't criminals." You don't get to claim this, one you could know every single elections department worker and poll worker and poll volunteer in Alleghany County and it still wouldn't be an argument, and two, it is insultingly untrue to present the institutional American left as having a moral compulsion against breaking the law, most definitely including "felonies." (Also, Pennsylvania was won in 2020 by Philadelphia, no matter how great your familiarity with the mechanics of Pittsburgh politics, it says nothing about the notoriously corrupt Illadelph.)
Maybe 100 years ago a guy could make it through court by taking the stand and saying "I'm just not the type of guy to have done this." Today, that guy would go to prison. I see the retort, "If there's no evidence" -- there may be no murder weapon, but there's means, motive, and opportunity. Circumstantial evidence yes, people do to go prison over circumstantial evidence, but I only make this comparison for the lack of investigation when any one of these meets criteria. A system closed to audit is means; the transferal of executive power is motive; a dominant ideology among poll workers is opportunity. There should be investigations in every state at a minimum every 4 years. I'd support it in my blood red state, as would almost if not universally the voters in this country who could characterize themselves as if nothing else "not left." Yes, when Trump wins in November, voice your doubts, clamor for investigation, I agree. We should audit every election, in every state. Prove it, everywhere, every time. Behind you 100%.
As for paper trails, we still don't know the depths of MKUltra because Helms had so many records destroyed. We know very little about the CIA's drug smuggling because they learned to keep looser books. They don't need records, they would need conversations, those surely happened, but if nobody's recording, nobody goes to jail. Also keep in mind MKUltra included mid-20th century-cultured-American university personnel giving highly psychoactive substances to individuals who did not consent. Stopping the next Hitler from getting to power? C'mon man. It's also feasible for disparate and especially mostly unwitting actors to converge on one goal. Atlanta is individually corrupt, Detroit is individually corrupt, Philadelphia is individually corrupt. Not hard to see their local corruption being incidentally congruous with a separate national objective. But to be clear, I do take somewhat more to the former, I would argue for some level of national conspiracy, insofar as on election night in 2020, the knowledge Trump was to win was received by a central source and propagated to those separate necessary parties who oversaw the injection of fraudulent ballots. There are also assumptions of numbers, we don't know the process, it is closed to audit, we have no idea if, were we able to examine the system, we would find a glaring "at this step it'd be trivial for a handful of actors to introduce significant numbers of fake votes."
And here we return to the inability of audit as proof of fraud. If an electoral system cannot prove itself to be free of fraudulent activity, like the mass injection of fraudulent ballots, that is itself an act of fraud. I describe a criminal act when saying of the system "It can't be audited," that is itself a crime. Though, even without this, you remain wholly mistaken on where the burden of proof lies, and on this I put most vital emphasis: I owe you nothing, the people owe you nothing, because myself and more than a hundred million of my fellow Americans are under no obligation to prove ourselves when we fear the government as having become criminal. The government however is obligated not only by the intrinsic bindings of our nation, but by the very essence of the social contract to prove, whenever demanded, that they aren't criminal. If they can't, they are.
jake
1mo ago
What has to be understood about this discussion is the American left is better if they commit electoral fraud. It means they believe what they say, that they really do view their opposition as so grave a threat -- to whatever they hold sacred -- they are willing to take extreme measures to protect themselves. That left, who speaks and acts with capricious concern for constitution and law, have spent most of the last decade giving every indication they would steal an election if necessary, and you are calling them a unique kind of liar. You treat them with a cynicism even the most lefty-hating righty commentators don't hold. You won't find MacIntyre musing on the left not believing in what they march for; 0HP might observe on the meta their level of investment in a given position but he wouldn't categorically reduce the movement to having no conviction in what they say they believe. Hyde's most famous lines all implicitly consider their being genuine believers and Carlson knows them as zealots and speaks of them as such.
"They don't need to" begs the question in assuming they haven't. They needed to for most of the 20th century, we know they had fraud machines dominating major cities during that time, through JFK. What, they just stopped? As the economy exploded and the US reached ever greater hegemony, the corrupt interests packed up? Of course not, the system put selective pressure to produce the sorts of bureaucrats and politicians who don't get caught, and who exert control within their hierarchies such that the system further protects their ways of corruption. Pivotally on the election, which when we look at your field of arguments they fall apart one by one until you're left with "Well despite all that, they didn't." A process that produces a quantity result that cannot be audited is necessarily unfalsifiable. In literally any other circumstance an unfalsifiable number would be presumed false. Why not elections? Why not the thing that decides who has power?
"It hasn't been a problem until now," yes, and until the last 10 years the American government hasn't been in a dead sprint toward anarcho-tyranny. We haven't had such material reason to believe they would defraud a nation until now, and raising the novelty of our concern is not an argument.
"Gish gallop" is also not an argument, nor is your false dichotomy. Even you, which I say apropos your ideological inclination, must understand in the pure hypothetical, fraudulent actors would face extreme risk if they went all-in on flooding the machine with fraudulent ballots before the results are known. If they undershoot they lose, if they overshoot they hazard blowing past the polling margins while producing rows of precincts with ≥100% actual or effectual turnout and thus reveal themselves. It's no stretch to understand this as a priming of the narrative, something that requires no knowledge on the part of the individuals in the PA DOS responsible for actually making that statement, as the fraudulent actors anticipate as, like 2020, they will need some number of fraudulent ballots delivered after midnight November 6th, which is when they will have the totals so they will know the approximate number to inject to stay within the polling margin.
As for arguments from complexity, I wrote on this about a month ago. American history has immediate examples of conspiracies involving very large numbers of actors who never came forward. With "democracy and the future of the country" at stake, the ideological component of conspiring for the greater good is more than fulfilled. But this is just a reiteration of the above, that the only argument is "They wouldn't." They would, and their failure and now continued refusal to build a system that proves they don't is the only evidence anyone needs on the matter.
If I had to guess about you, and of course I am probably wrong, but I know this is the case for my brother and a couple of my dearest friends and so I know for many others -- I know they think my view, this view of the world is very bleak. They don't want to live in a world where the American left needs to cheat to win. There's a frightening finality to it, an upheaval of fundamental beliefs about the way of things. I definitely understand if nothing else the discomfort they have at the Trump Right being the good guys, which they feel is the necessary consequent to admitting a stolen election, but it isn't. Everybody can be and often are wrong about many things, like viewing me as a pessimist. I know I'm more optimistic than anyone I know, I don't think anyone on this site is as optimistic as I am about the future, and my optimism does include anticipation of a very dark period, but I see us getting past the issues of today, without war or calamity, I see us reaching the singularity and becoming post-scarcity and settling the stars. The shadows in the hearts of men don't discourage me, they embolden me, I know we'll make it through, but I know we'll make it through by understanding the world as it truly is. The world is what it is, reality is, all unaffected by our perceptions and by what we want to be true rather than what is true. The things we know in this life that are worth loving and worth working for all still exist, and we love them as they truly are even if we're not quite right about what they truly are. They exist in a world that does have shadows, they exist in great spite of those shadows. We just can't ignore the shadows. Know them, name them, chase them. Win.
jake
1mo ago
Not 20 years, but simulacra will be in their spread to ubiquity in the 2040s. The largest western nations need too much downsizing and too much conditioning for a rapid shift. While by the 2050s we certainly could automate something like 80% of labor, with population projections putting the US over 400 million by then we're not socially equipped for more than 300 million people becoming suddenly permanently unemployable. With controls implemented by 2060, projections assuming a minimum halving effect means by the mid-2100s the US will reach a stable population, this despite post-scarcity conditions being probably common in western nations including the US by 2110.
Any economist who doesn't account for >90% of human labor becoming obsolete by 2100 is either hopelessly ignorant or using economics as a cover for politicking. Because of automation, there is no economic argument behind any effort to increase the population of any country. We need to already be shrinking, the faster (peacefully!) the better.
jake
2mo ago
I find most relevant the announcement from Pennsylvania's Department of State:
Pennsylvanians won’t always know the final results of all races on election night. Any changes in results that occur as counties continue to count ballots are not evidence that an election is “rigged.” See the full explanation at http://vote.pa.gov/FactCheck.
What an odd thing to say. So hire more workers, run campaigns, do everything necessary to ensure you have the results. If significantly poorer, significantly less bureaucratically competent and on-the-whole significantly less organized and civilized countries can manage elections in single days, the continuing tolerance of statements like this -- statements that are expressly narrative primers for fraud -- in the Union is so goddamn insulting. They have the ability, we know this objectively from other countries, and we know from this statement they could but decline to do so. This is ostensible incompetence at counting ballots covering for a highly competent fraud machine.
The general upside is they'll lose the national regardless of fraud in Pennsylvania. The dream upside is they lose the state while posting so many precincts with actual and effectual >100% turnout even the laziest audit torches them.
jake
2mo ago
In 30 years, specifically in the 2050s, the world will look with envy on Japan for their plummeting population coinciding so perfectly with the Age of Simulacra. The foreigners they bring in for their current economic-demographic concerns will be kicked out and they'll begin their cruise toward post-scarcity civilization. A few western nations will adopt mass use of automata, the ones most affected by the wars in Europe might be forced to, the others will argue over the legality of automata and where allowed flourish, and where prohibited languish and fade away. China meanwhile will be working on their population problem, as they'll need to shrink their population by >1 billion, in <100 years, without total collapse. I think it'll be easy for the CCP, but I think the reality of that problem will put a halt to everything else. At least unless western hegemony finally and totally collapses, in which case China will just take Africa.
jake
2mo ago
I don't think it's anything we'd find surprising.
The narrative around its release would fall on political lines, the right would know she wanted dead kids, the online left would say with varying couching the kids deserved it, the establishment would focus at best on some random point about the essay while they continued the exact rhetoric they put out following the shooting: "Psycho murders multiple children, trans most affected." Especially if there are likely superficially true but substantively false allegations about abuse by the school.
I think if it were some astonishing new low in depravity we'd have read it, so we have read it, in the gestalt. It could be a rare bit of wise realism. Nothing will be gained from litigating her words, let the dead rest.
jake
2mo ago
Great to read the new section, keep at it. I think I won't make any more suggestions until you're much farther along/done, or if there's something specific you want checked.
What's wrong here is the particular equivocation of politics and war. Politics is not equal with war, politics are meant to avert war, but they are equal in that both are about the transferral of power. If we were to assign a sex polarity to the practices, politics would indeed be the feminine method to the masculine method of war.
Beyond that, I can tell you where this divide ends. We'll pass the core of this turmoil, enough to stabilize us as we move into the approach for the singularity.
Around 2030 we'll see the first examples of convincing human simulacra. These will be proofs of the concept but they won't be largely available until later in the decade. Boston Dynamics maintaining their exact rate of advancement will have robots with convincingly human articulation by the mid-30s, especially with AI improving at helping research.
In the 2040s, simulacra will be able to replace a great deal of labor and production of simulacra will become the national industry of whatever country that perfects them. My bias is Japan: they're most poised with the combination of established acumen, workforce and key socioeconomic factors, namely their inverted population pyramid. Low TFR will be neatly solved by simulacra taking over labor. As so-ordered a nation and people as the Japanese, they will implement the necessary policies to begin the country's move toward quasi-post-scarcity. Those few other similarly ordered nations will likewise swiftly adopt simulacra, and as tens of millions are produced by the year, and only increasing, simulacra will quickly become a reasonable household expenditure. I expect by the end of the '40s they will be ubiquitous in every country where they are legal.
For the price of a mid-range car, households will be able to purchase a lifetime of service from a chef-maid-assistant. So average households will acquire simulacra, further increasing demand, and lonely men will also buy them for all obvious reasons. That motivation for purchase will not end with lonely men. "She's a 10 (she's a hotter-version-of-pick-your-hottest-celebrity), but she's a robot" won't last. One of your friends will get one, and you'll interact with it, and even if you're obstinate about "it," eventually it will be her to your mind, because she talks, she laughs, she appears to think, she in all ways seems the part. You'll only know because you know, that won't be enough. It won't matter how they aren't "real" because they will be real enough. All but indistinguishable for the existential question of soul in the machine, and it won't be long before you're not so sure about that, either.
At ubiquity they will end dating. The bottom third of men who can afford them for a start, to half, to I'd expect a Pareto 80%. The man is accustomed to not having children, it's our evolutionary history, it may bother them, it won't stop them. What women say won't matter, a guy might want what only they can offer, but not at the cost, especially not if they've never had that success, and that already increasing population will represent an even greater percentage of the next generation. To put in such effort to settle for someone less attractive, less responsive, more burdensome, more risky, to settle for something human when he can have something machine-perfect. Work, go home, play games until she has dinner ready, watch a movie, fuck, maybe play more games, go to bed. His friends can and will talk shit, his base urges are satisfied, he won't care enough about what they say. His true needs will go unsatisfied and it will be a lifestyle harmful to his soul, but it will be so much easier.
Some women will have them, not many. I'd rather not invoke inceldom, I find the specific slant to their ideas irrelevant here, but it's true men pursue while women are pursued and that imbalance defines dating. The asymmetric effort of dating as a man versus dating as a woman, again the man pursues, he works, he pays; the woman is pursued, she is worked for, she is cared for. The simulacra will thus be unnatural as a thing women acquire as a relational prosthesis; why would she pay for what, for good reason, she gets free? The simulacra will have no being (or so we'll reassure ourselves), can father no children, can offer no increase, can offer no status. Women will have them as the chef-maid-assistant models, maybe even more sometimes, but they won't replace, not in the way they will replace relationships for men.
Harems will re-emerge, they will be the only option for most women, so they will be easier. Between simulacra and harems, female sociopolitical power will collapse. They will lose too much leverage with too many low-status men, while high-status men will each become a little king with his court of concubines who will certainly have no power.
The 2050s will see human gestation in synthetic environments, so clinic-based artificial wombs. Here I don't think that it will take that long for the breakthroughs in tech, instead it will be the economics and social impacts of simulacra that will give incentive to developing the tech. Again I expect Japan to widely adopt, as their already low TFR falls off a cliff from their herbivore men taking to simulacra. They will have a reduced need for a new generation from so much of their labor being automated but I expect there still to be decades between the ubiquity of simulacra and those simulacra reaching the capacity to automate >90% of all labor. This will also be the first sight of the real benefit to the age of simulacra, the offer of stability in overseeing the drastic reduction in human population.
Starting in the 50s or 60s we'll see government regulation on reproduction. It won't be severe because it won't need to be, so anyone who really wants a big family will be able to have one with minimal structural hindrance. It will be simple incentive-based, I've referred to the policy as the "Half-Right to Reproduction." Systemically its purpose will be to halve the population with each generation, it'll work faster than that. Every person will be bestowed with one half-right they can exercise at age of majority. Would-be parents can combine to a whole-right and exchange it for their child's addition to the government dole, UBI, which will also exist. As AI and simulacra come from almost all labor, the newly jobless will need placation else promiseless young men become bored and at-risk for chaos. AI-managed industry, so all goods, pharmaceuticals, medical care, farming, and also advances in 3D printing, will see the cost of goods plummet while their quality peaks. It will become progressively harder for the government to not adopt major socialist practices as capitalism finally begins to "win" in competing itself out of existence. The population can't keep growing in such a system, at least not until we have FTL and a thousand shipyards in Sol. Assuming FTL is possible, which I don't, but I sure hope it is.
Simulacra will play a critical part in stability in keeping men satisfied. Advancements in entertainment, so another 20-30 years of development in video games, the arrival of UBI and the removal of needing to work to live. The population will need to be distracted until most can die childless but "happy enough." Half-rights help this goal, because people can sell their half-rights or buy other's half-rights, all at government exchanges. The exchanges will always buy half-rights, subject to reversible sterilization. A guy will go to a clinic next door to the exchange, maybe incorporated into the exchange, get whatever implant that stops sperm from working, get the cash to order a simulacra, sail into the sunset. Easy.
I don't expect western nations to swiftly automate labor like Japan. We'll need to acclimatize to the idea, begin the inculcation of no-work-to-live in successive generations so that when they're older, or their kids are older, they'll be prepared for not having jobs. With that and the shrinking population, by the turn of the century Western nations will be ready for post-scarcity life. New generations will still be needed in the interim, artificial gestation is pivotal here for the other paradigmatic social change.
As relationships and childbirth are "solved," as countries most adopting simulacra and bespoke children grown in vats enjoy golden ages while their men break productivity records, why would a country not produce as many sons as possible and as few daughters as necessary? There will be outgroups, so the Amish and the like, potentially a new movement of tech-circa-1999, but they will be small, none meaningful political factions, or where meaningful, supportive of the new power structure. I'd also expect a "reserve" population for practical concerns of catastrophe and ovum stocks, but most women will belong to the elite population. This above all is why we will see minimal and then no opposition to sharp sex-demo disparity with the great decline in the population of the human female: with so few, being a naturally born woman will be a position of immense status, inherently aristocratic. They will necessarily be the best of the best. Those chosen, those expressly wanted few. A new nobility, and it will indeed be so easy.
Women will "benefit" first, eventually men will, as again the purpose will be to shrink the entire population. So each generation will more-than-halve itself until the population is at an "acceptable" – at least stable – level. The sex distribution will once again be at parity, and those naturally born biological males will also be inherently aristocratic, as all civilized humans belong to the new nobility.
And all of this will just work. What I describe will happen because it isn't fighting back, it isn't trying to undo anything, it doesn't require conquest over more than a century of culture, it doesn't require recovery from war or calamity. It will work according to slopes and entropy, it will work in congruence with human nature. It will be the easiest path through, so it will just work.
If it's physically possible we'll break the tyranny of the rocket equation and achieve FTL travel. We'll begin spacefaring regardless and when, in however long, man reaches frontier planets to settle and dominate, they'll return to lifestyles us today find familiar. Those humans will begin the real work, of understanding and healing the light scarring on our gestalt soul from the depravity of human civilization, culminating in what was necessary to pass through the 20th and 21st century – with what was necessary to pass the Great Filter.
It didn't have to be this way, now it has to be this way. Or else we're all fucking dead.
jake
2mo ago
The Byzantines were dealing in solidi, easy to collect gold in fines and then use it for paying mercenaries. A hiring-mercenaries-level-conflict in the States would mean the dollar and economy collapsed. There'd be dealing again in precious metals, and bartering. Weapons, food, medicine, and those soldiers could well be offered another certain kind of good: women. If a faction pays in women, those women have no power.
jake
2mo ago
Low regional pricing (currency, Steam regional prices are set by currency,) discounts/e-rebates for store credit, free keys. Valve isn't freewheeling in China, Steam China operates through Perfect World.
But I just saw I was wrong about Cyberpunk's peak, SteamDB has it at 1.05 million. The difference isn't so stark now, and like I said above, the game is clearly very good, and I'm sure I'll play it eventually.
It can also be true that something other than the even very high quality of the game as responsible for its popularity. 2 million concurrent is incredible but I want to know is this a single player experience truly worthy of those numbers, or is it something else. I think we'd be seeing those numbers soaring among western gamers if it were paradigm-defining. It might be, in a month we might see over 3 million, with a million playing in the west. Maybe not, but even if it just playing to market, that's absolutely valid. MiHoYo of Genshin Impact, Honkai, Zenless Zone Zero, play to the western market in having attractive women and no hamfisted politics in their games. China could do nothing but publish AAA knockoffs with fanservice and no politics and devour the market, and they'd be valid to do it, but that wouldn't make the games amazing themselves, and that's what I'm interested in.
The concurrent player record could be inflated. It's a new IP by a foreign studio and while covered by culture war circles before its release, it was only after release and the record-breaking numbers that I saw it brought up among normies. A good comparison is Cyberpunk 2077, its peak was 250K just over 1 million, from a somewhat-established IP, the at-the-time preeminent studio, Keanu Reeves, and years of hype.
That said, if it were bad, Steam would show it, and the negative reviews I see are mostly "Game too hard", with a complement of "My computer can't run this." Some have better criticisms, "Invisible walls everywhere," "Buggy AI", "Repetitive", "Poor world design" and "Not enough variety in attacks." So probably a mix: something was done to inflate the numbers, but for a very good though not paradigm-defining game.
jake
2mo ago
I've finished with suggested edits in the doc. It kept signing me out, that may be why it looks like several people were making suggestions.
I've done a lot of anon editing in /lit/ /wg/ threads, most of what I've read there is the kind of bad writing that editing can't fix. Yours is good, and you can see that in my edits being almost all words and parts of sentences you could omit. Using a few too many words is an easy fix. I liked it, I'll be reading more as long you keep us updated.
I meant to put these in my previous comment -- "That" can often be omitted, and there are some rules on writing numbers. The article says and I'll summarize, it's just narrative consistency, always writing them as numerals or always writing them as words. That is narrative, so in narration you'd write them all as numerals, and as dialogue you'd write them as the full words (though there are specific exceptions to this, the one I can name is street addresses, which are always written as eg "123 Main").
If you want, make a copy and DM me an anonymized/open commenter link and I'll suggest edits on the entire story.
Your writing is quite good, there are disruptions in flow from you doubling and sometimes tripling up on adjectives. Most instances you could omit one or all, two examples:
In the station, an ever-present soundscape practically smothers us, heavy and ominous and oppressive
Soundscape implies atmosphere and ubiquity, I think there's probably a better word choice. Heavy/Ominous/Oppressive aren't exact synonyms but here they're redundant because of "smothers."
"The ocean smothers us with sound" conveys it in fewer words.
I hear Whitlock faintly stirring* in the bunk underneath me. The bed creaks as he slowly, gingerly* sits up and begins to vomit into a bucket, choking and heaving and gasping* as the contents of his stomach unceremoniously escape his body. Once* the retching is over, there’s laboured breathing and a soft, low thud;* the low sound of a head being rested against a bunk pole.
"Stirring" implies a quietness, you could go with "I hear Whitlock's weak stirs."
"Slowly, gingerly" gingerly implies slowness.
"Choking and heaving and gasping" like the above, your omission of commas is meant to emphasize the unpleasantness but just "choking" captures it, and we already know he's having a bad time from the context, before and after.
"Once" is a word for temporal specificity, "when" is a word for temporal generality. When also reads better, "When the retching is finished there's laboured breathing"
"soft, low" redundant
I might omit to "there's laboured breathing and the low sound of a head being rested against a bunk pole"
Last notes: the rules for italicizing apply to titles of works, words not in English (though this would be often, not strictly always), and scientific terms. In prose you can style how you want so you can use italics for names like "Proteus" and "Mazu" but there are times it hurts the flow, especially back-to-back with "Caelus, Qianliyan."
Spirulina is proper when referring to the organism, for a food product it's just "spirulina cakes."
What do you dislike about the man that is original to your person? Your specific and personal preference, informed to the best of your ability from neutral sources? And what do you dislike about the man that actually or effectually originates in those with TDS?
Take my brother. He doesn't have TDS but he has beliefs that come from it via journalists with TDS. He likes Trump-as-the-comedian, but hates the effect he views Trump as having on the degradation and divisiveness in political rhetoric. Degradation maybe, I can't be partial as I'm on record so often talking about my contempt for WASP decorum. Divisiveness no, that causation is backward. They could have taken the constituent concerns behind Trump's success, chiefly economics. "Doesn't matter how outsourcing benefits the wealthy, it hurts domestic jobs." Done. "Racism and xenophobia are bad but it's not racist to understand the basic economic impacts of minimally restricted immigration on the labor pool." Done. Legitimize those concerns, Trump loses issue-level success. Acknowledge voter concerns, Trump loses structural-critical-level success. A pivot, a good economy, they win easily, if not in 2020 then 2024 and beyond. They didn't. They screamed racist and ran hoaxes and every time one failed instead of pausing for contemplation they doubled down. Again and again. We are in Year 8 of them doubling down on Trump. We are in Year 12 of ever-intensifying racial rhetoric.
I could go to other issues but I won't save this. Some of my friends often talk about whatever latest bad story of Elon Musk. I think when I listen to them, how pleasant it must be to live in such a world; that everyone who disagrees with you is incompetent and evil.
There's nothing aligning about acknowledging a person's strengths. I'm a fan of Dropout and especially Brennan Lee Mulligan, and I'm amused, probably in some way like the father is at his four year old being petulant but in a fundamentally innocent and harmless way, when the guy rants about capitalism. His life is the hyper-niche product of the absolutely relentless process of profit-finding in capitalism. He would be nothing without it, or in a communist paradigm, a scarily effective apparatchik. Still, he's brilliant, funny, earnest and full of love, however misguided, and he is just terrifically naive. (As many but not all good artists are.) Liking the guy doesn't mean I agree with him, and that I disagree with him isn't an indict for the many things he's good at. Trump is the living embodiment of "being good at things," that's just first-principle truth as extrapolated from language. To be "effective" is to be described in terms that categorically apply to Trump, so for him to be "not" those things, not competent, not effective, not intelligent, a conman, a huckster, those indict the language rather than the man. You would need to invent new words, and the etymology of those words would just be "Yeah he's competent, but he's an asshole."
Doesn't mean you have to like him, doesn't mean you have to agree with him. The world is as it is and has always been because the groups of people who disagree with each other in and over making the biggest decisions are each very good at what they do. History's decided on the narrow margin between competing competents.
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