ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
No bio...
User ID: 1012
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2d ago
A pharisaical association, then?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
3d ago
You know, I started to write a post but I think my thoughts just boil down to the same old idea I always reach about GDP and economic measures, which is: economic measures have a narrow definition and meaning and are useful when used in a very specific context, but our society overuses them as a measure of societal health and wellbeing because we've lost all moral common ground as a society save for a horror of poverty and physical suffering. And so, because the means to alleviate poverty and physical suffering (wealth) is the only metric we can all agree on, it de facto becomes the sole axis on which to measure the health of a society. Laymen mistakenly think that this is because The Science has proven that GDP is the best metric, but it's really just an accident (or maybe a legacy of Marxist economics, I dunno).
There's no objective definition of "the economy," but people act as though there is. Like many other soft "sciences," (looking at you, social "science"), the common usage of "the economy" smuggles in assumptions about what has value. In a 4x game framework, modern economies would have resources like "oil," "metals," and "information." But in a medieval economy (let's borrow CK2), it might have been "food," "artisanal wares," "piety," and "prestige" or something. If the Duke of Aquitaine's realm produced 9 trillion tapestries a year and had a glut of food, but there were no churches and his family was widely derided, I don't think he would consider his realm fully productive.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
3d ago
How was After Humanity? Any new insights based on recent developments, or just an exposition of the core theses of Abolition of Man? I've never heard of the author, Michael Ward.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
3d ago
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
3d ago
There's a difference between not wanting "low human capital people" (as the kids say these days) to come lower the average quality of life in your town/city/country, and, say, proposing grinding up all the Congolese into Soylent Green while telling them it's nothing personal. No microscope required, it's quite visible with the naked eye. In fact you'd almost have to be trying not to see it.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5d ago
Maybe he meant family annihilator.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6d ago
I don't blame Todd. His sick days don't roll over.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
7d ago
FWIW half of my office is out sick, enough people that we've had to cancel end of year events due to lack of attendance. Seems like it's really getting around this year.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
8d ago
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
8d ago
- Do something monthly and then combine it all after 4 years and give it to her (maybe add 2 months for an even 50 months). It could be writing a little postcard, or a note, or whatever would have sentimental meaning
- Plan and save for a luxurious trip that has symbolic importance for the two of you, like where you proposed or first met
- Make a scrapbook or photo album for each season and write a sentence under each photo that you stick in it
I enjoy romantic gestures and I've had success with them in my decade plus of marriage, FWIW. IMHO the key is not originality, but sincerity.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
8d ago
I don't think there's enough American patriotism or anti-Chinese sentiment to go around to keep the economy afloat without seeing blood in the streets
This is also my prediction. The only thing MAGA Americans love more than America is consooming large amounts of low quality goods. Conservatives aren't patriotic or nationalistic enough yet to stomach a reduction in their consumption of cheap plastic crap and electronic gizmos in order to benefit their fellow Americans.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
8d ago
I buy beer from Trappist monasteries.
Because the IQ stats are fake. They're obvious nonsense if you've ever left a tier 1 city and spoken to actual Chinese people in Mandarin, which I have. The vast majority of China is either Soviet dystopia or 3rd world hellhole. There's plenty of low IQ behavior on display. Going off vibes and Lived Experience™ I would wager their average IQ is around 95 or so.
If China becomes a dominant power, it will be by virtue of having a ton of warm bodies, a large overall number of >120 IQ people simply due to population size, and a very powerful government apparatus unhindered by Western moral concerns and that rules over a populace that has long been content to submit to authority as long as at least a little of the sweet corruption money trickles down. You don't need to have an average IQ of 104 to win if you have those advantages.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
20d ago
it's a real thing
Yeah, real in that people make the claim. As @hydroacetylene pointed out, tons of people also claim descent from Muhammad. This lineage also has a wiki page, does that prove that it's "real?"
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
20d ago
This doesn't seem to be the case in China. Even today, there are people who can trace direct male lineage to Confucius who lived around 500 BC.
I saw one of these guys in Qufu when I was a student. He was writing and selling calligraphic scrolls on the side of the road. He had a sign with his portrait on it and some official-looking, diploma-like certificate stapled to his sign. "Wow, is he really an actual descendent of Confucius?" I asked my professor, who was born and raised not far away. "Probably, I don't know. There are a lot of them." she replied. She seemed completely unimpressed. And that was when I began to wonder if I was a bit naïve.
Westerners often credulously believe claims like this because (1) Chinese have a radically different view of "lying" that Westerners don't have natural defenses against unless they've lived in China or a similar third world country, (2) Chinese (individuals too, not just the government) find it in their interest to promote stories that prove China's equality or superiority to the West, (3) all the sources that would debunk nonsense claims like this are written in Chinese and this unable to diffuse into the Western consciousness.
"China" does not have 5,000 years of history any more than "France" has 3,000 years of history.
Chinese did not invent soccer, or sashimi, or beer, or the seismograph.
Chinese cannot trace descent from antiquity with a level of confidence that would be taken seriously in the West.
"Truth" in China is not the same as "Truth" in the West.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
24d ago
In blue tribe areas maybe, but support for punishment (as opposed to rehabilitation) is still quite strong in red and purple areas IME.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
24d ago
After learning about how difficult it is for sub 80 IQ people to function in society, I honestly became open to the idea of some form of light slavery or second-class citizenship to prevent them from causing too much harm to themselves and others. Sounds terrible, but so did institutions before we had tent jungles and streets filled with poop and needles.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
24d ago
Is he just saying whatever he thinks will be most convincing depending on the context to arrive at the conclusion he has already decided is morally correct?
Probably, because the idea underlying Scott's belief that imprisoning people is equivalent to torturing children is that those people are blank slates whose actions can be >80% (but for convenience just round up to 100%) attributed to socioeconomic factors and "um, purely socioeconomic factors" and so they have no real moral culpability for their crimes. But that sounds too insane to state directly outside of rationalist circles so you have to reach for an argument that normies are willing to consider. I agree that 2014 Scott would have been a lot less sloppy.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
26d ago
I had the same thought and looked into this a few years back and found that it long predated European contact with American Indians. But historical context didn't matter for niggards or sniggerers, so maybe it's just a matter of time.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
28d ago
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
28d ago
I like the narrator. He has a very German sense of humor, it's goofy and endearing.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
30d ago
If conservatives have been ‘pearl clutching’ about sexual morality for this long maybe it’s not performative
Because the majority of pearl clutchers get divorces, use contraception, get abortions, let their sons and daughters fornicate in high school and college, consume internet porn, watch gratuitously violent and sexual movies/tv series, etc etc.
I don't doubt that principled conservative exist when it comes to sexual mores -- I think I (and you?) would probably count, but we're now a very small minority. My conservative religious family members are all okay with gays now, 20 years ago they absolutely were not.
So my point (perhaps poorly expressed) was that the media is engaging in a sort of cargo-cult appeal to Christian morality ("Can you BELIEVE he cheated on his wife/had sex with a student/posted raunchy comments on a forum/etc.??") to the ever-dwindling number of people who can muster anything more than lukewarm outrage to that stuff. There's a "smoke and mirrors" effect of the same type as a woke Twitter outrage mob. Some outlets repeat the story, Twitter addicts tweet incessantly and spam memes and shit up the victim's Twitter threads, and risk averse corporate/political consultants label the victim "high risk" and endorsements get withdrawn. The Kamala campaign astroturfed the heck out of the internet for weeks, we just saw a very pure example of this phenomenon.
More to the original point, they tried the same stuff with Trump. He's a philanderer, he has sex with expensive prostitutes, grab em by the pussy, pee tapes, etc. I'm pretty sure that (most) conservatives in the 90s would have been genuinely affronted by Trump's behavior, but (most) conservatives in the 2010s, while unhappy with his antics, apparently didn't find them disqualifying.
But the performative surprise that others might is disingenuous.
Uncharitable and frankly surprising since your posts are usually pretty high quality. I'm not performing anything. "Performative " describes people who act outraged when a 42 year old bangs a 17 year old but don't care when a 43 year old bangs an 18 year old.
It’s not some made up woke shit.
Conservatives were performatively butthurt about this stuff way before the Woke. "Won't someone think of the children!" is an ancient meme. I never said it was "made up woke shit." Conservatives have a way longer history of disingenuous pearl clutching, that's why I brought up Lewinsky. I'm saying that I think both wokies and self-righteous moral majority types who express offense at this are inconsistent and ridiculous.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1mo ago
I looked up the scandal on Wikipedia. He allegedly had sex with a 17 year old (who he claims he thought was 19)? That's what's made him radioactive? Is there anything else I'm missing? The wiki section for this says "UNDERAGE SEX TRAFFICKING" so I was expecting he was ordering 9-year Ukrainian war orphans to his house or something, but this really underwhelming. Technically a crime, yes, blah blah blah, but reminds me of the pearl clutching over Lewinsky.
Cool, I'll probably check it out then. I'm interested in the context in which the book was written.
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