naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
Treat life as a game, and you’ll build something real.
If you haven't read Bernard Suits' The Grasshopper, then... do, I guess.
It's hard to describe, but the thesis is something like "in utopia, all that will be left to us is games." But along the way he defines games (the consensual pursuit of a lusory goal through the overcoming of unnecessary obstacles) in a way that has been extremely influential on the philosophy of games, even though when he originally published the book in 1978 the world of board games, video games, etc. was much smaller than it is today.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
There has been this ongoing trend of massive amounts of white space, where it's basically a single sentence per screen. I find the experience awful on desktop. But only mildly annoying on mobile.
My theory is that this is just the struggle between the Berners-Lee Web (a vast network of intellectual interaction) and the Consumer Web (a powerful tool for buying and selling). (Social media arguably sits between these, as it is primarily concerned with buying and selling human interactions.) Whitespace is mayonnaise: it helps you swallow whatever you're being fed. Phones (and to a lesser degree, tablets) are not Berners-Lee devices; they are consumption devices, which may explain why you find web mayo more palatable when you're on your phone.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
I guess you just want to play childish games.
No: I want you to stop pouring your disdain on this community, and I'm quite serious about that. It's one thing to raise legitimate criticism in a charitable and effortful way. It is something else entirely to go about darkly hinting that mere racism rather than legitimate reason is at the heart of any group's political concerns, but especially the group you're directly talking to, of which you are a part.
And if somehow it was not your aim to air your disdain--though if you said so I could plausibly accuse you of playing "childish games"--then you need to speak plainly. You're a very sharp and educated person, so even if you do this sort of thing by accident it just isn't credible to make that excuse. This is the curse of competence.
So just knock it off. Your comment was out of line, contributed no light, only heat, was not worded plainly, was low effort, take your pick and take the L. I'm not going to get into a philosophical debate with you over what it means to be "bad" or whether there is a difference between saying someone is bad and just hinting at unflattering characterizations with two winks and a nod. I'm telling you, don't post like that, or I will mod you a second time.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Right. By means of ostensibly saying that the group was bad, right? Jesus, what is the point of claiming you didn't say what you said?
You didn't--as you were for some reason anxious to point out--say that anyone was bad. Remember? This is you:
I didn’t say anyone is "bad."
That's true! And it is true in very much the same spirit in which I didn't say that you said it.
It doesn’t undermine your broader point, which is that you don’t want people opining about the motives of members.
No. What I don't want you doing is weakmanning any groups, but especially not this one.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
What did you mean, if not that I was saying that the group is bad?
That you had violated the rule against weakmanning.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
I didn't say that you said anyone is bad.
Yes, you did: "Do not weakman in order to show how bad a group is."
Which word in that sentence you quoted is the word "say" or "said?" Can you bold it for me?
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
I didn’t say anyone is "bad."
I didn't say that you said anyone is bad. I modded you for violating the rule against weakmanning. Since you were apparently confused by the shorthand, here is the rule in its entirety:
There are literally millions of people on either side of every major conflict, and finding that one of them is doing something wrong or thoughtless proves nothing and adds nothing to the conversation. We want to engage with the best ideas on either side of any issue, not the worst.
Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible. General groups include things like gun rights activists, pro-choice groups, and environmentalists. Specific groups include things like The NRA, Planned Parenthood, and the Sierra Club. Posting about general groups is often not falsifiable, and can lead to straw man arguments and non-representative samples.
Avoid posting solely about gaffes, misstatements, or general bad behavior from prominent people. Discussing policy implications is always fine, and concrete criminal or impeachable offenses are also fair game. For example, "Look at Congressman Jones being a jerk" is not OK; "congressman Jones is under suspicion of taking bribes" is fine, as is "congressman Jones's employment law is bad for these reasons . . ."
Sometimes we get good discussion about the consequences of gaffes, misstatements, or general bad behavior; for example, "here's Congressman Jones being a jerk, let's talk about the underlying reason why congressmen do this sort of thing regularly". In most cases, these should stand as valuable posts regardless of whether they refer to Congressman Jones or not.
Links to news stories should generally follow the above rules, although cannot be expected to adhere to them exactly. For instance, a news story which uses an anecdote to introduce a concept is OK (this is a very common framing discussion), a news story which is about tweets from non-prominent people reacting to some event isn't ok.
You broke that rule, and in particular the group under discussion was this forum, which I am particularly protective of, as we have discussed.
Don't.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
I haven't assumed anything. But if you're suggesting that Gdanning should have been modded under "speak plainly" instead, your suggestion has been noted.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
This post and this one are a bit too far into "rant" territory. While each has its merits, it's presented in such a blistering way as to drown the light in heat. Snappy rhetorical questions, pithy comparisons, passionate appeals, none of these things are forbidden, exactly, it's just that you've turned the rhetoric dial too high. Please dial it back.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Meanwhile OP doesn't have any goal besides idly amusing himself with rhetoric and all of his logic will never lead him to the truth, only to "owning the libs".
This is all heat and no light. Don't post like this please.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
I would guess that most of the people complaining are more concerned about who he was running against. And for some of those people, more specifically the race of that person.
Do not weakman in order to show how bad a group is. Especially when that group is "this forum," please.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
It pains me to read these tired talking points on the Motte of all places. This reads like the equivalent a woke college student listing off their usual combination of strings handed down to them from the hivemind.
This adds heat to your post, but no light. It's totally unnecessary. Please don't.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
In simpler words, who gives a shit? u know what I meant.
Too much heat--better to step away from the conversation than let others get to you.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Those who bring up the example are simply bloodthirsty warmongers.
Too antagonistic, don't post like this please.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Posts don't appear until approved. Though apparently by linking it you did make it available for people kind of?
Anyway, I've approved the post now. It's technically culture war outside the culture war thread, but also you've framed it as a megathread and those are often allowed with culture war rules applied. On reflection I supposed this constitutes something of a loophole if we allow just anyone to post a "megathread" but so long as it doesn't get abused I, at least, am unlikely to do anything about it.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Apropo, I was recently helping clean-out/de-clutter my mom's basement and came across a Rubbermaid tote full of my old ExoSquad and Dino-Rider toys which we're fixing up and repurposing into Christmas gifts for the eldest. I expect there's probably some collector somewhere cringing at the thought but come on... Kid's already big mecha fan, and actually has a pretty good track record of taking care of his toys.
What a fun Christmas gift! Fasa v. Playmates Toys was actually one of the first IP cases to catch my interest (you may remember how that ended); the Robotech/ExoSquad crossover toys (especially, the Veritech Fighter) occupy a really interesting place at the intersection of fandom and licensing.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Edit: holy crap, for the record, at time of writing I didn't know that @naraburns had already made effectively the same comment down thread.
By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.
Also how am I only just now realizing that Nara Burns was/is an ExoSquad reference?
Presumably you just haven't looked at my profile page or avatar in the last... 12 months? Prior to that, well, it is relatively obscure despite the cameos in 2018's Ready Player One (where both Marsh's Aerial Attack and Weston's Field Repair E-Frames make brief appearances).
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
As a small follow-up, I found this article interesting. Even though all justices on the Colorado Supreme Court were appointed by Democrats, three dissented in this case.
The four Colorado Supreme Court justices who ruled Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot all attended Ivy League institutions or otherwise a top-ranked elite law school on the East Coast for law school.
The three dissenting justices, meanwhile, all graduated from the University of Denver's law school...
The "cognitive elite" strikes again!
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
I don't disagree, but it's not obvious to me that the Court needs to reach the First Amendment question, which sometimes (though certainly not always) means that they won't. The First Amendment question is substantial to the question of insurrection, and however this ultimately plays out I would expect SCOTUS to prefer a procedural holding over a substantive one. So I expect the Fourteenth Amendment to play a more decisive role than the First--but you may be right!
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Parties are private organizations, though. They can just disregard the Colorado primary in deciding which candidate to back in the general election, can't they?
It's an interesting question! It depends on what you mean by "back," and also on how each state handles the primary process. I'm not familiar with Colorado's primary election laws so I don't have a direct answer for you, but in general states do not assemble their general election ballots based on what political parties want, but based on how relevant procedure (including primary elections) dictates.
For example, even if, say, Ron DeSantis won the Republican primaries generally, and the Party decided to back him, he could in theory still be excluded from some state ballots for, say, failing to get the right paperwork filed on time.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995) ruled that states can't add additional qualifications for Senators and Representatives. The same rules should apply to Presidential elections.
I doubt this simply because Article I gives Congress a say in the election of Senators and Representatives. Article II doesn't. But you may be right.
And Colorado is pretending that Trump is disqualified by the 14th Amendment, not exercising its discretion to exclude whoever they want.
They're definitely saying this now, but they're saying that Trump's Fourteenth Amendment disqualification can be litigated (very broadly, see this comment) under the state's election laws. This creates a fact/law question (leading to the Fourteenth Amendment problems I tagged but should have pondered at greater length) that SCOTUS seems likely to want to avoid, but... hard to say. It would be interesting to know how far the Colorado court is willing to go to keep Trump off the ballot, but depending on how quickly SCOTUS remands (assuming they do), we may get to find out.
Not as such, no.
The cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God are pretty compelling to me, especially when paired with arguments about living in a simulation. Why does anything exist? Why does reality follow orderly laws? Occasionally a physicist or astronomer will make a bunch of noise about how it isn't mysterious, here have some equations about quantum vacuums or some shit, case closed, but from a philosophical perspective that's no answer at all. If the laws of the universe are themselves responsible for the existence of the universe, you still haven't explained why there are laws. The answer "well we have to stop somewhere" is an admission that they haven't accomplished the god-killing mathematics they've been using to sell their book after all.
On balance these arguments get you a lot less than most theists appear to think, since it seems like an intentional being capable of creating at least one universe is probably so alien that treating it like a loving father figure who wants to help you find your car keys is a stretch, and more than a stretch. And maybe there are just "fundamental laws" that are how everything is and how everything always will be--how could I possibly know? I can't even begin to check. But in my experience, nothing comes from nothing, and infinities exist only in the realm of mathematics, so the fact that I nevertheless find myself existing in a finite universe is pretty damn surprising.
Arguably, then, the most supernatural thing I have any experience with is me and my conscious existence, which for some reason goes away for a while every night. Emergent properties are kind of spooky!
So, closer to home--leaps of intuition and the generation of new knowledge are often kind of spooky. Occasionally--not more than two or three times a year, sometimes every couple of years--I will realize something and at the same time know it is true. (Trivial things, usually--so-and-so is pregnant even though she's not showing yet, they fired that guy because next month the board of directors wants to do this other thing, etc.) Sometimes this involves the prediction of future events. These realizations are almost never mistaken, and they are always arguably discernible based on facts that I actually know, but that I hadn't specifically put together in context. This seems like good evidence that there is a part of my brain that is making connections or processing information without my conscious effort. But I can understand why some people might treat that "aha!" feeling as a revelation from God or something.
But that's not the spooky part. The spooky part is how this sometimes leads to weird coincidences like Leibniz and Newton inventing calculus at the same time. The obvious hypothesis is that there was enough overlapping knowledge accumulated in a particular place at a particular time to generate these ideas, so multiple people arrive at the conclusion simultaneously. But then I read about, like, Anaximander realizing the rudiments of evolution (but not natural selection) in ancient Greece and notice that it took thousands of years for anyone to really do something with that idea, and I find myself re-puzzled by where it is we actually get "new" knowledge.
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