promethea.incorporated

veronicastraszh:

socialjusticemunchkin:

shlevy:

socialjusticemunchkin:

nuclearspaceheater:

I was reading about Ethereum.

Solidity is the JavaScript-like programming language designed for developing smart contracts that run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

My intuitions are saying that the language should be functional, simple, high-level and damn well tested. Ideally it should also be close enough to natural language that it would be partially self-documenting and difficult to hide nasty tricks in. And it should have a strict syntax so that there’s only one correct way to do anything ever, and deviating from it would produce an obvious error instead of unexpected behavior and it would be noticed at “compile-time” so that the only programs that ever get to run are Correct.

I’m not an expert yet but these features sound like inspiration should be taken from the likes of Ada, Haskell, Python etc.

…so they chose javascript instead

what has the world done to deserve this

And it should have a strict syntax so that there’s only one correct way to do anything ever, and deviating from it would produce an obvious error instead of unexpected behavior and it would be noticed at “compile-time” so that the only programs that ever get to run are Correct.

Python

Wat

That was more about the “natural language-resembling” part; to my knowledge none of those languages would satisfy all of the requirements, but Python programs are actually readable while javascript is…javascript.

Agreed. Now certainly Python is not an ideal choice. On the other hand, it’s not a terrible choice. First, it is established. Lots of people know it. It’s easy to pick up the basics, so there a low barrier to entry – which, getting all down with “This is based on Haskell, but with a dependent typing layer, and here are some links to research papers that describe the basics, except I’ve add some stuff, which will be maybe published in June. Keep an eye on arXiv. And – hey, are you familiar with co-inductive proofs?”

I mean, I’d have more fun learning the latter, but I can understand how a project would choose something like Python.

Javascript, on the other hand…

Just, no.

And the thing I was thinking of is basically something like that quote, with “…but it looks like Python.” appended

I might add Julia to the list of “languages that have some features that language should have” as it’s good for mathy stuff and has a readable syntax (“sum(primes(2000000))” was the most hilarious one-liner Project Euler solution ever as it’s literally impossible to describe the question in a shorter way) but it lacks in the other departments afaik, just like all of the others in their own way

metagorgon:

speakertoyesterday:

socialjusticemunchkin:

conductivemithril:

socialjusticemunchkin:

conductivemithril:

argumate:

nuclearspaceheater:

sinesalvatorem:

NRx blog: The latest push for transgender activism is designed to inculcate trans acceptance in the most intellectually vulnerable among us and to undermine parental authority.

Me: Haha. Silly reactionaries, thinking that upbringing affects children’s long term behaviour.

It’s actually all a front, on both sides, to deflect the true blame away from Big Plastic, a partly-owned subsidiary of Big Oil.

I want to see the plastic-makes-your-kids-gay meme take off in my lifetime just because of how frickin’ hilarious it’s going to be to watch.

Yo promethea. @socialjusticemunchkin

Plastic makes your kids trans, not gay. Srsly guys we’ve discussed this exact shit already.

Dammit.

As a saving throw, there’s a lot of trans lesbians around here, so maaaaaybe plastics turn cishet guys into trans lesbians?

Of course the reactionaries would define a trans person’s orientation based on their asab, but I can think of at least one pair of trans lesbians dating each other so they’d still consider that gay.

Seems legit, right?

“at least one pair of trans lesbians dating each other”

Technically correct: the MVP of correct!

In reality I seem to be perceiving an excessive predisposition towards poly trans lesbians often dating numerous other poly trans lesbians, which is as close to peak degeneracy as it gets (and they usually tend to be kinky as well). And then they will also be at risk of seducing the reactionaries’ cis wives as well, just for the maximum cuckpoints.

So yes, glorious reactionary upsetness expectably ensuing. Better avoid plastics and chemicals.

…you know what has a lot of plastics and chemicals in them? Computers.

And the computer industry is hospitable to somewhat autistic people, who are at 7 times the risk of being transgender. This is not a coincidence because nothing is a coincidence.

computers are a well-established factor to turn nerd boys into nerd girls. i would know, i was there. maybe it was the ionizing radiation my grandmother warned me about crts…

poly transbian checking the fuck in. where them repressed nrx wives at?

they are not allowed on tumblr because @sinesalvatorem would turn them gay

shlevy:

socialjusticemunchkin:

nuclearspaceheater:

I was reading about Ethereum.

Solidity is the JavaScript-like programming language designed for developing smart contracts that run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

My intuitions are saying that the language should be functional, simple, high-level and damn well tested. Ideally it should also be close enough to natural language that it would be partially self-documenting and difficult to hide nasty tricks in. And it should have a strict syntax so that there’s only one correct way to do anything ever, and deviating from it would produce an obvious error instead of unexpected behavior and it would be noticed at “compile-time” so that the only programs that ever get to run are Correct.

I’m not an expert yet but these features sound like inspiration should be taken from the likes of Ada, Haskell, Python etc.

…so they chose javascript instead

what has the world done to deserve this

And it should have a strict syntax so that there’s only one correct way to do anything ever, and deviating from it would produce an obvious error instead of unexpected behavior and it would be noticed at “compile-time” so that the only programs that ever get to run are Correct.

Python

Wat

That was more about the “natural language-resembling” part; to my knowledge none of those languages would satisfy all of the requirements, but Python programs are actually readable while javascript is…javascript.

shieldfoss:

veronicastraszh:

ozymandias271:

Here is a survey about queers in STEM which I feel is probably relevant to the interests of half my followers

(Note: cishets also supposed to take the survey! be a control group! for science!)

Grrrrrr

Gave up halfway. Tons of questions where my answer is n/a, but they force you to answer to proceed.

Like, I guess no one enters a STEM job without any degree. So what do I put, since I don’t exist or something?

Evidently they’ve never imagined a software engineer who doesn’t write grants or publish research, but who instead writes software. Like seriously, what rock do they live under?

Do they even try these surveys on anyone who isn’t exactly like them?

Garbage in/garbage out.

If you know who these researchers are, trust nothing they conclude. They cannot design a survey for shit.

What annoys me is these jerks will probably publish their erase-people-like-veronica non-data. Which, as an actual fan of data, this offends me.

Yeah it was pretty terrible.

I picked the bottom slider, wrote “Industry work” in the text field and slid it alllllll the way to the right. Grants? What grants? I’m a productive member of society, my clients pay me to work. I have a sales department to ask them for money.

The “Biological gender” field was also something special. “Determined on the basis of child bearing capability, genitalia, chromosomes and/or hormones.”

OK, brilliant, what if I have Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome? Then I check (no, male)/(vulva, female)/(XY, male)/(estrogen, female) on that list.

Yes. I’m trying to slog through (”high school”, “actually doing the git gud thing: 100%”, “amab female”) and it’s very bad.

But I had a few laughs at “are you aware of anyone in your STEM field sharing your gender identity”. Sure, that’s one of the more legit questions but it was nonetheless somewhat funny. The people with the exact same gender I know are all in my field, and a bit more broadly interpreted I’m vaguely aware that trans women are not actually a majority in my field (the same way people in downtown SF are vaguely aware that black people exist).

wirehead-wannabe:

cyborgbutterflies:

A lot of people go all “Youth rights is all about stupid white kids who wish they were oppressed” but I don’t think anyone could honestly deny that minors have a lot of serious limitations to their freedoms and their parents are often allowed and encouraged to treat them as property and even hit them, as long as they don’t do it too much.

But they don’t even try to deny that minors are legally and socially treated worse than adults. They just say that it’s a good thing for them to be treated that way, or at least that parents have a right to do it because they take care of the bills (imagine if someone tried that excuse for abusing their wife or something instead).

This is the same pattern I see with fatphobia. People’s objection isn’t that fat people aren’t oppressed, they just think that they deserve it or that it’s for their own good.

Actual Misandry seems to have this too. “Yes, men deserve to have violent emotionally repressed lives and be treaten as disposable.”

This is interesting, because I’m picking a pattern which suggests that “group X is treated badly” receives either “yes, so what” if people consider it okay and deserved, and “not true” if people consider it not okay (dat just world bias); for example, the “lol male tears” kind of feminists usually try to establish constructs explaining it away (”dat privilege tho” or “that’s a men-on-men problem”) instead of outright saying “yes that’s how it should be”, or how really few people are willing to go on record saying that the traditional targets of anti-discrimination efforts should be discriminated against while a lot of people are really invested in arguing that the discrimination doesn’t exist.

Extrapolating from that, if youth rights and anti-fatphobia got more popular people would start thinking they already are treated equally. There’s probably a slight connection mechanism to reality in the sense that popularizing youth rights wouldn’t work so well because of laws explicitly making the oppression obvious as it would be nigh-impossible to claim minors are equal with a straight face (although people totally would try anyway).

And this might also explain why nominal legal equality is so popular while trying to do anything about the substantial problems (non-violently; even when leaving state action out of this it still applies very strongly) gets a pushback. People who don’t want things to be improved can gather around de jure equality and claim it fixes everything while leaving de facto oppression and biases untouched. (Once again, even the male tears feminists tend to oppose conscription.)

hylleddin:

loki-zen:

Question that I haven’t really seen explored or answered (though I could just be searching the wrong thing): we’ve seen a bunch of studies arguing that a society with less guns is or isn’t safer than, for instance, contemporary US.

However, given that you are in a society where a bunch of people do have guns, is it better for you to have one too?

Seems like a good question for the rationalist(-adjacent) out there, since I feel like most normal people will own or not own pretty much in tandem with their beliefs about guns. But it seems to be at least possible to be anti-gun but still want one so long as everyone else is going to have one, or be pro-gun but choose not to have one.

?

There was quite a while when I was pro-gun but had no interest in owning one. I am now mildly against gun-legality (mostly to make overly impulsive suicide harder). But also vaguely interested in maybe getting into target shooting.

This depends a lot on the spread of gun ownership in society.

I’d probably prefer not to own a gun (in the sense of having one in my home or carrying it) everything else being equal.

But I’d want a gun to defend myself from dangerous people if I considered it necessary.

Necessary meaning in this context “how likely is any given adversary to actually be armed and assume absence of armament”

So my preferences would go:

bad guys think I have a gun, but don’t >
bad guys know I have a gun >
bad guys think I don’t have a gun, but do >
bad guys know I don’t have a gun

If I apply intuitive game theory to this set of preferences, it suggests that attacking anyone isn’t safe because if guns are considered rare, they would have one, while if guns are considered common, they might not have one but the chance is too high to risk; simultaneously it would balance the amount of guns into an equilibrium where enough people have them to outweigh the number of bad guys with guns but not everyone has so the risks of impulsive people having guns and hurting themselves aren’t as big as with universal gun ownership.

trashworks:

socialjusticemunchkin:

argumate:

@socialjusticemunchkin, I haven’t engaged with your OpenGov posts because holy hell is that a lot of text and I am a very lazy person.

but a more defensible reason is that the framing of government as software is fundamentally misguided I feel. it drags the debate in a direction that feels more comfortable to geeks (upgrade your government! open source it! hack it!) while obscuring the actual problems that need to be solved and replacing them with the vague idea that existing players are just too dumb to spot obvious wins.

like, if your proposal takes from granted axioms that aren’t even accepted by a majority of the population then it’s going to be a rocky road to acceptance, is part of what I’m saying.

What I’m saying is that the immediate actions of USG are very much defined by the people in it (Obama has been less horrible than Bush, for example), but the fundamental character of the system and the incentives shaping the big trends are influenced by the procedures and operations which in turn are an outgrowth of the constitution and history.

Thus, focusing on people can win 4-year terms of desirable policy, but focusing on systems can win decades to centuries of subtly more desirable policy by making the government be more inherently likely to output certain things over others.

And on the other hand if I try to come up with some kind of a “source code” for a government that would inherently be less harmful, focusing on specifics is like asking the drafters of the constitution about what the requirements for drivers’ licenses would be. I’m not trying to come up with specific solutions but instead with a system of delivering certain types of specific solutions. It’s not my place to describe the daycare policy of Caracas, all I’m trying to come up with is something people in Caracas could use to determine whether they want to have a daycare policy and if they do, what would it be. Traditional democracy is shitty for solving this question anywhere resembling well, and if a better solution could be implemented it would be v v good for people.

And many of the better object-level solutions could be basically described as “hands off motherfuckers”. Eg. building codes in Finland have evolved over 50 years to never actually save any energy, and just create novel problems which the next iteration will try to patch up while causing its own. The entire country would’ve been better off with a policy of “just don’t fuck with it” because at least then well-proven construction techniques that don’t end up creating health problems for people wouldn’t be outright illegal. I want government to receive legitimacy by delivering the core goods at the expense of random populist whims, not by satisfying random populist whims and sacrificing the core goods.

Existing players being too dumb to spot obvious wins is basically the entire justification for governments; if you assume they could, then I guess you might as well go full anarchist because nobody would be required to enforce the obvious wins on people. (sry for the snark; it tru tho)

And public choice theory has pretty definite explanations for certain entire classes of failures governments consistently deliver and hardening the state against them would not prevent the previous crisis as usual; instead it could render it altogether more resistant to the next crisis, and the one after that, and the one after that…

I know it’s a programmer brains thing to describe the functionings of USG as “source code” but those functionings create an incentive landscape which people will travel and the best way to push a boulder somewhere is not to exert effort on making it go uphill, it’s making that somewhere be downhill to begin with. And understanding and controlling those systems to generate less harmful outcomes is theoretically massive leverage. And what else is leverage? Software. You can campaign for a certain candidate, or you can run google or facebook and be basically in a fuck you we make the real choice position. I know which one I would work towards. So there are certain obvious analogies. And a few shock doctrine economists had a much more massive impact than millions of voters, so this isn’t without historical precedent either.

Furthermore, focusing on the meta level lets me take the focus away from my popularly objectionable object-level positions to my equally objectionable meta-level positions… okay yeah I just want to spacestead okay. Then I’ll be out of the way and not complaining when people follow democratic incentives off a cliff again and again and again.

#we need a suckless government

*heart palpitates*

do you consider the market to be naturally empirical? it’s pretty clear that if states are, it is in the span of centuries. markets are quite obviously a genetic algorithm imo.

i also consider the market to be naturally wealth-aggregating, by necessity of the inefficiency inherent in the people that compose the market. risk-aversity, leveraging small differences in power into big differences, and merging into a union/consuming and being consumed are my only immediately-available ideas as to why and how.

the intersection of those two properties gives you google, and since google is going to eat the world i think they’re pretty good guesses.

if by “naturally empirical” you mean “finds out what works, for the meaning of ‘works’ it is operating within” then obviously, because otherwise someone else would find out what works and overtake them

and actually there are reasons to believe properly freed markets would have centrifugal effects as massive profits couldn’t be sustained, piracy would be rampant and google’s code would get “stolen” because fuck why not it’s not like there’s anyone to stop it as information wants to be free, and the inherent inefficiencies in large-scale organizations would set limits (strictly speaking, corporations operate under the same information constraints as states; just because the constitution says “optimize shareholder profit” doesn’t mean they’ll actually be any good at it when burdened by office politics and shit while a startup where people actually know what the fuck they’re doing and why can have massively higher productivity) for how big they can remain

and then there’s the fact that for wealth to be meaningful, it needs to be controlled somehow and without the state to pass the costs of that control to others, massive amounts of wealth can only be held where holding them actually works; one can have an extillion cryptodollars but it’s numbers on a screen if one can’t exchange it for other forms of value, while maintaining control over vast quantities of physical property is expensive and thus will only happen if it’s “worth it”

argumate:

anotherpersonhasclaimedthisus:

@argumate :AppleGov, GoogleGov, now we’re talking

it’s not like people don’t treat reddit and tumblr as separate ethnic groups already

here’s that meme you wanted to cure nationalism btw, you’re welcome

slaughter the Android unbelievers

DUAL CITIZENSHIP MASTER RACE

So, for the “what is opengov?“ question that I mention, what I want is more use cases.  When I complained that what you were posting was advertising, it wasn’t the the optimism so much as the lack of a handle on what you were describing. I would need to know, who would use it and what exactly would they do? I don’t want vague algorithm descriptions, I want interfaces.  I don’t want flowcharts, I want the tables. (and similar stuff for the alternate government idea)

Okay so can I actually get a specific detail I could extrapolate, despite it being totally “getting locked into details way prematurely”? I’m not really understanding the exact question (although I do have more specific possible examples of details in mind, but if I just dump them all here it would take days to get done with the post) as it seems to be similar to “my drain is clogged and I can’t open it on my own so I’ll pay some currency to someone who will unclog it” “but how exactly will your drain be unclogged then?” “I will pay currency to someone who knows how to do it” “but that isn’t details, how on earth can it get unclogged with currency?”

I also see the fucking around in the economy as something that is probably necessary.  I’m not saying that every decision made is good, but I think it’s probably necessary. One of the problems I have with many of your assumptions here is that they’re made without knowledge of the counterfactual, they haven’t been tested.  They’re nice and shiny and perfect in the way only ideas that haven’t actually been tried can be.

I think this is a genuine positive difference. I see most fucking around in the economy as harmful and a big cause of the need to fuck around some more later.

At the very least, your system needs to able to support a revert to a known form of government in case your ideas fail, otherwise you’d be a fool to try this. Remember, part of the this system is about getting people to use it. You say they are incentive-related reasons nobody uses your system, I say if I have any doubt that would work then there’s no way I’m letting near my government system. Your guinea pigs will be a huge population of very vulnerable people. I need more then “there are reasons to believe“

No single component of this is, in theory, that far-fetched. Liquid democracy is simply an improved version of regular representative democracy with some serious bugs ironed out. Taxing things like land and natural resources is a better form of taxation. UBI is a better form of welfare. The point is to pile on all the “better” we can so that people have less reason to demand active intervention and would be more happy to just keep their fucking hands off the moving parts.

A mutualist-inspired open currency that is controlled by neither bankers nor the state but mostly by its users/not that much by anybody (perhaps a bit like Ripple or something, although Ripple itself is evil for calling for regulation for basically Hamiltonian reasons) is probably the most radical idea, but considering how both bank and state control of the currency have been terrible (the first gets the euro crisis, the second gets this shit which is just mistakes on top of mistakes on a foundation of mistakes and with a glazing of fuckups; if you have official prices you’re a fuckup, if you have exchange rates that are illegal you’re a fuckup, if you have a plug-n-play system of scamming the government you’re fuck-up, if you fault people for using the incentives you’ve created while doing nothing for the incentives you’re a colossal fuckup; and the point of OG is to eliminate your ability to do those things so you can’t hurt yourself and everyone in your country that badly ever again) it’s probably not able to be quite as horrible.

When you say stuff like “it would have a crystallized core of efficient purity that prevents some harmful actions“ everything in me screams that this is going to end in massive disaster. When you imply it cannot possible go wrong, I go classic Douglas Adams and say “The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.”  which seems to describe your system.

All of these strict ideas, they’re massively untested, and I would guess for good reasons.  This is a government, it will encounter emergencies, this is not the case for arbitrary limits on what can be done.  Remember, if the system does not work, people will throw it away.  You have to be better than that alternative, and if you need some grift with weird regulations to get necessary shit moving, you grift.

Okay, let’s say Venezuela somehow automagically implemented this system. The tax rates are probably not optimal but they are workable (and democracy couldn’t pick the optimal tax rate anyway). UBI takes care of a lot of problems on its own. Local governments can run services with accountability as they can’t loot distant people; the tree-shaped form of the UBI distribution and decision-making power and service-providing prevents such corruption and makes it possible to deliver the good stuff with less of the harmful.

Now what would be a thing that would end in a massive disaster that could be solved by some forbidden action, yet wouldn’t be such a dramatic thing as to justify dropping the safeguards, running things as root and taking full privileges of fucking around in the economy (even though that thing was exactly the thing which brought the previous crisis)?

So the thing about the free market delivering stuff is that the system of oil-driven welfare is sort of describing Saudi Arabia, and that’s part of the reason I’m skeptical.  You say picking winners and losers fails, I say nobody notices the losers .  I was suggesting that you try seeing if it works, but if it doesn’t, you need a way to adapt.

I already patched the oil dependency to be like Norway instead of Saudi Arabia. That’s obviously a part of the process; the OG platform would need to go through rigorous analysis and simulation and testing and people would be rewarded for breaking it, to ensure that as many failure modes as possible can be pre-empted and thus the controls that could be used to deal with them but the careless use of which also regularly fucks everything up could be locked behind “in case of emergency break glass” instead of being a routine thing people politically see-saw around all the time.

The lack of democracy isn’t your utopian society, it’s a revolution, and your democratic system has to establish that it’s better.  That means people will vote in shit you don’t like, and that means you gotta accept you don’t always get what you want.  Even without democracy, those people still exist and will enact their preferences. I could go on about how the market is a terrible system that is all about the use of violence but other have done that for me.

And I could say the same about democracy. But in a market of preferences where everyone has an actually equal say in running the show (like Feeding America’s system) there are very strong reasons for why it would be almost strictly better than regular democracy (the “almost” related to the fact that people who don’t understand how it works would be at a disadvantage but it would obviously need to be engineered to be as easy to understand as possible)

While you looking for the “the initial group of trusted people who wouldn’t be tied to local oligarchs or powerful interest groups“ then you’re going to need apretty solid barrel you’re going to spend your whole damn life looking for those people. If you could easily find people like that, you wouldn’t have a problem.

I don’t think I would have that much trouble finding such people, the actual problem is getting power to the competent ones instead of the connected ones. Sure, finding perfect people is impossible, but finding better people than the likes of Maduro wouldn’t be too hard.

The constitutional court is a similar problem, we had one here in the United States and over the years it has delivered many opinions we now consider barbaric.  You basically need a solid set of people to populate it, and a solid core of people making sure that it’s dictates are enforced.

Yes. How do states normally solve that problem? Because we’re going to default to that if we can’t figure out anything better. Not that complicated.

Inflation is tricky, and I don’t claim to be able to describe it, but it’s not purely a feature of the amount of money that exists at any given time.  

Yes, inflation is complex, but I can’t see how “we redistribute the money we get” would lead to hyperinflation if “the money we get” is defined reasonably.

The monitoring will be needed to ensure that what is occurring in the system bears any relation to events that actually occur in the world, otherwise you’ll re-enact soviet factory supervisors sending reports back to Moscow.

Yes. That’s what markets are good at; information processing. And that’s what local decision-making is less bad at. Not solving problems too far away, and not trying to solve everything, does wonders for things bearing relation to actual events.

So, I know I kinda harp on this, but the big problem is that you seem to totally eschew any necessity for emergency measures in favor of hard-coding your ideals into the system, which is absolutely unacceptable in a system where emergency handling is a main goal.  I get driven nuts in my day job by programmers who make me jump through hoops to conform to their data model for biological data, and actually trying to run a government like that would make me beg for the sweet release of nuclear annihilation.

Emergency measures are one thing, but there needs to be something after the emergency measures that isn’t just more “emergency measures” until the next actual emergency arrives. Transitioning to OG would be defined by the local circumstances in which it happens, and what would be the correct procedure for Venezuela wouldn’t be the correct procedure for Greece wouldn’t be correct for North Korea, but the model of “what comes after” could be standardized into a general template for effective governance that aims to prevent crises from reoccurring and to make them less severe when they nonetheless do.

There’s a few differences in the reasonings I’m using than those I think you are using, and to start with I want to establish those.  While win-win may be your superpower, I’m more “You can’t please anyone.” You are talking about institutional efficiency, I’m more the first goal must be resiliency, efficiency is secondary.  And finally, I generally take maximin as my guide, the goal is to maximize the well being of the worst off(“Converting Hysterical Misery into Ordinary Unhappiness” as the saying goes).

I see win-win as a way to please as many as necessary to achieve good outcomes (ideally there would be no need to please any specific interest groups as the good outcomes could justify themselves but reality is reality). I see efficiency as a source of long-term resiliency (rich and well-functioning countries don’t have coups). While I don’t necessarily consider maximizing the well-being of the worst off the absolute terminal value, I consider it a nice heuristic for many purposes.

So, I’m still not sure what opengov is actually supposed to be, but I’m guessing it’s basically a property record and currency system.  While you say “OpenGov would be a technology which makes UBI possible and easy, while making other forms of government services difficult.” I think that’ll lead to just people not using opengov, similarly to the way overly strict security arrangements lead to people doing stupid security stuff to bypass them.  Opengov won’t solve the problem like that, you need flexibility.

It’s supposed to be basically the MVP of governance. A plug-and-play state for those too incompetent to compile and configure one themselves. A looting-minimization system. In full fantasy-land, it would be The Standard Template for governance so that when someone suggests a state that’s running a different kernel people’s reaction would be “they probably want to just loot”.

I corrected the part; UBI should be easy, and converting UBI to the good kind of services should be easy, but instituting massive wealth transfers to politically favored interests should be hard. Because I think most state intervention that isn’t pure redistribution ends up being both worse than pure redistribution in helping people, and actively harmful to the economy as it works as a tool to enrichen cronies while looting value-creators.

OpenGov’s security would be built-in in the UBI and its conversion system. Instead of enabling arbitrary fucking-around in the economy, it would have a crystallized core of efficient purity that prevents some harmful actions. It’s to government budgets what functional programming is to code. When everyone gets the same amount of money, and can vote on whether they want it in pure money or services, it’s the principle of “no taxation without representation” taken further than elsewhere. It is intended to deliver the goods of sufficient redistribution without enabling bullshit, or ‘himmeli’ systems as the Finnish language calls them. (’himmeli’ meaning a complicated sculpture of straw and string that totally falls apart if you put weight on it and it’s just hanging off somewhere weighing it down and being in the way but also pleasing people’s sensibilities)

Regional subsidies? Sorry, can’t do it, nada, impossible. Agricultural subsidies? Convince the local community to support you if you want more than your fair share. Corporate welfare? Do we look like a DC? Means-tested bureaucratic systems of welfare? Lol nope. Complex schemes of delivering cushy government jobs to cronies? At least it’ll be less easy than in regular states. Price controls and subsidies for goods, housing etc.? Banned.

When you talk about using the oil money to pay for the UBI, that’s not the priority.  The priority is to avoid dutch disease and having your economy be tied to a single commodity.  If a UBI system causes people to start real and profitable industries, then funneling it all to a UBI will work.  If a UBI doesn’t do that, then you would do something else.  If you can’t diversify, you’re screwed in the long run.  If it means you have to subsidize industry and the government is picking winners and losers, I’m absolutely OK with that if it solved that problem.

The hypothesis is that a free market, with some degree of purchasing power guaranteed with the UBI, would provide the opportunity for business and industry to flourish. I see government picking winners and losers as a thing that 1) tends to be harmful 2) tends to be really hard to implement in practice because of ~international neoliberal capitalist conspiracy~ and thus relying on it to deliver good outcomes isn’t going to work. Obviously on second thoughts, the oil proceedings need to be actually put into an index fund the interest revenue from which will be paid to citizens, to avoid price shocks and provide preparedness for a post-labor future.

Land value taxes are a nice idea, but for that you need prices to be generated, and that’s not easy.  I’d need to dig into the literature to see how proponents manage that.  Income at least is clear, it’s denominated in currency. I’m also in favor of measures like wealth taxes that prevent consolidation of economic power, but you’ve probably seen that shit before.

The idea is to have a functioning market in land (the tax mustn’t be so high as to destroy it) the prices from which can then be used as a basis for taxes. Theoretically one could just rent each parcel to the highest bidder, but that would destroy long-term investment in stuff that can’t be moved away easily.

Any kind of market-measurable wealth the state protects could obviously be taxed as well, although there are economic efficiency concerns in taxing productive capital and taxing luxuries like yachts and mansions might direct capitalists to just invest more and keep accumulating as a tax-avoidance scheme, thus deepening the economic inequality it was intended to alleviate. A well-functioning market that gets close to a theoretically optimal free market wouldn’t have easy rentseeking opportunities anyway and competition between capitalists should keep their profits down while disruptions can take them out any time so inequality would be lesser than in a system where the state can support its favorite capitalists at the expense of everyone else.

Income taxes are obviously a possibility too, but they require the state to know how much money people are making, and there is the problem of it making inherently more difficult for people to “just do” things for each other in exchange for currency, something I consider very important and the harming of which one of the greatest tragedies of social democracies. Getting a job or running a small business needs to be as easy as possible, and not having taxes in the way is a good way to minimize paperwork. It’s possible that taxes might only be applied to big players in the industry (eg. corporations are taxed in exchange for receiving recognition as limited liability organizations) thus distorting the market in favor of smaller businesses.

I think “make sure the local governments don’t fuck shit up or disrespect human rights.” is a hard and sometimes impossible problem.  The nice thing about the federal government is that it’s far away, it’s oppression is therefore muted.  The local assholes can easily be a worse threat. This is one of the cases for a stronger federal authority. (To give the classic example, in the US it was the feds who forced desegregation, local governments would have none of it.)  I don’t have a solid proposal about this, but it’s always something I’m worried about.

Yes, and it needs attention, and the local oppression is precisely what the constitutional court’s ass-kicking powers are for. Feds enforcing desegregation etc. is completely different from feds taxing people to wage wars and enrichen cronies.

The competing law/governments system thing never makes any sense to me, I can’t see that leading to anything but a clusterfuck as people game the system.  The nice thing about the law should be it’s unambigousness.

I see competition as providing alternatives. Eg. under Jim Crow southern blacks could’ve simply started their own local governments that don’t oppress them (feds stepping in to protect that right) and enjoying the delicious white whine. A lot of societal problems between groups seems to originate from one group using the state as a tool to oppress and loot another (or being perceived as doing so), and small-scale exit rights would make that a lot harder.

Local government like that can also lead to divide-and-conquer strategies.  Voting and violence are not the only way political power can be wielded, there’s also pure economic power.  If you can strangle the electrical power of a community, you’ve got that community by the throat, and you need to prevent that from happening. “Voting” is merely legitimizing ritual if people know that only certain votes will get them essentials.  Given that self-sufficiency is for each community is hard and terribly inefficient, you need some way of guaranteeing those essentials are met.  That can include forcible nationalization if necessary.

Such monopoly abuse situations are failures of the system that would need some way of addressing without compromising the reliability of the overall system. Markets hurt monopolies, but I’ll acknowledge that even the absence of active state sponsorship may not always be enough to prevent abuse. But the cure needs to be less bad than the disease.

Locking in the tax rates/UBI is a terrible idea, and that’s because the failure case of those systems is going to be runaway inflation.  Inflation destroys countries in that area of the world, and so I’m willing to tolerate a lot of otherwise suboptimal shit to prevent that from happening.  That might even be a justification for measures like food stamps instead of money, I think those are less likely to cause inflation.  Could also be a reason to use a job guarantee instead of a UBI. Whatever works is what you need there.

If the amount paid in UBI is (total_tax_revenue + total_circulating_currency / 50) it would produce an equilibrium with a 2% natural inflation plus whatever fluctuations happen. The exact purchasing power of that UBI would be determined by the amount of taxable economic activity. I can’t see how it would produce runaway inflation (locking in specific sums would); the actual failure modes would be “too low to prevent misery” and “too high to not strangle the economy”.

Locking in tax rates is very important as it prevents state bloat which quietly destroys economies in the North (ideally the model should be workable anywhere, from Greece to North Korea to Venezuela to the Moon) and provides a guarantee of predictable economic policy (reducing risks of investment and thus lessening the perceived need (most importantly, justification) for extra-democratic structures like investor protection courts). When taxes are locked in, people know what they are and what they will be and consistency has an excellency of its own because even if it’s not optimal, it’s constant.

Taking away the “fuck around with the parameters of the economy every couple of years” thing hasn’t really been tried anywhere, but there are reasons to believe it could produce improved outcomes and not doing it might be a failure of incentives in public policy. OpenGov would be an excellent opportunity to provide a progressive alternative to reacto experimental governance, by shedding the shitty parts of progressivism and keeping the things that actually matter.

There’s a certain attractive combination of theoretic elegance and plausible explanation for “why it wouldn’t have been tried if it’s supposed to be so great” in the idea of crystallized “functional” governance which doesn’t have the standard option of adding himmelis every time it encounters a problem (Canada’s “each new regulation must remove one old regulation” would obviously be a feature too; the EU rules regulating the sale of cabbages are tens of thousands of words and while “the entire law fits in less space than that” is not a realistic option, there must be solid barriers that block himmelis). OpenGov wouldn’t go out with a whimper of bending under ever increasing bloat, it would stay in shape or shatter and thus there would be a reasonably good chance it could stay in shape although some kind of controlled shattering procedure should also be provided so it doesn’t fail, instead just reboots painfully or something (eg. if the locked-in tax rates prove to be terrible enough, the system could be overhauled with new initial parameters; it would be difficult enough that no normal government could do it (so they can’t hack it to provide the “fuck with settings constantly” feature) but a crisis that would risk failing the state could let people recompile it instead).

I can see what you are getting at with your voting system, but honestly I’m in favor of mandatory voting.  (mandatory doesn’t mean at gunpoint, it means you pay a penalty if you don’t)  It depends on what you see voting as doing, to me it’s a feedback measure rather than a privilege. I’m against the general level of complexity you are proposing in general with mandate points, because I’m of the opinion that this just leads to more stupid games being played that people may not put up with.

I see regular democracy as a stupid game being played that I’m really not willing to put up with and am only resigned to it because of threat of violence. The mandate points would lessen the games as eg. gerrymandering and fucking around with voting systems to favor those in power would be eliminated. And the influence market would ensure no majority group can consistently override minorities to screw them over. I haven’t run the math but my intuition suggests that it, along with erring on the side of subsidiarity, might go a long way in solving questions of tensions between groups and reducing risks of civil war, uprising, terrorism, oppression, and other unpleasant things which happen when people think the power is out of balance. Democracy is duct tape and a terrible kludge, not some pure system of great justice.

A lot of these things I’m saying are about monitoring and managing, and that’s ultimately what you need and opengov can’t give you.  You need trustworthy, competent people to tell you what’s going on, otherwise, you’re going to be screwed regardless.

A big part of the OpenGov tech side would be to reduce the need for that monitoring and managing or to establish a meta-level system for ensuring that incentives would be aligned towards good governance. The OpenGovOrg could act as the initial group of trusted people who wouldn’t be tied to local oligarchs or powerful interest groups (the exact ones who fucked up the previous system to begin with) and who could thus be relied upon to bootstrap the better, more accountable, government. Or alternatively, for a bit more radical option, OpenGov could have a “stateless” bootstrap system that would turn good governance into a true private good which could be implemented by people on the ground even against the central government’s will but that’s an engineering feat I consider quite unlikely.

Keep reading

dimitriarkady:

slatestarscratchpad:

anosognosicredux:

Haven’t they even considered [list of things that have already been addressed]?

Don’t they realize that the real problem here is [the literal specific thing that the idea has been brought up to solve and that has been the central focus of discussion]?

And [idea that has just now been proposed for discussion] is so vague, it could very well do [exact opposite thing it’s meant to do]!

Anyway, it’s totally reactionary [according to the a series of uncharitable assumptions I’m making].

Just the other day on Twitter I saw someone talk about how so-called ‘rationalists’ must hate the poor because they never talk about universal basic income.

That’s pretty lulzy considering this chart:

But srsly tho, rationalists totally must hate bodily autonomy because I never see anyone loudly signaling pro-choice memes! The only views I ever actually observe being expressed are against abortion, or at least questioning it! Because that’s totally how it works right?!

rageofthedogstar:

socialjusticemunchkin:

@collapsedsquid said: That reads like an advertising brochure rather than a description of an organization

Actually, I should compare this to marketing material on the IMF

Obviously. If I knew how to actually implement OpenGov, I’d be doing it instead of speculating on the internet, but since I don’t actually know how to come up with such a system in a couple of hours (my superpower isn’t that good, and any actual implementation would require information I don’t have (YGM if I were to ever start actually doing it)), all I can do is either describe my intuitions for how OpenGov could vaguely operate in a way which sounds like an advertising brochure, or be quiet while people shoot down an idea of “wouldn’t it be cool if someone found a way to do this” with “nobody has found a way to do it yet, gtfo”.

A lot of solutions to hard problems started with someone being “there is a problem; I wonder if it could be solved in this novel way” and I want people to be able to do that thing without everyone piling up on them for not including the exact implementation of the solution in their description of it. Because sometimes someone needs to air a vague idea and someone else might get interested in it and start figuring out the engineering problems. (Def including social engineering.)

And sometimes peopse need to think aloud so their ideas will be better.

And being positioned in the intersection of “technolibertarian” and “intersectional leftist” I believe it might be possible to address the objections in a way which makes the original idea actually implementable, because the two interests (a free market with a reliable basic system, and poor people not getting looted) are not directly opposed to each other and thus win-win combinations could be done as long as the costs of implementing don’t outweigh the benefits.

The “standard silicon valley model” of these kinds of things, used by eg. what3words, seems to be to provide a non-profit version for humanitarian purposes which is subsidized as a side effect of the for-profit version for private companies (like everyone getting access to the addressing system, while the costs of running it are paid by companies using w3w’s tech to utilize it in their own operation). This is also the standard way of delivering many public goods without government; as long as some subset of private interests benefits more than the costs of providing the public good and coordinating to provide it, the public good will exist (modulo market failures etc.). A harbor builds a lighthouse to attract more paying customers, but even people who aren’t paying customers benefit from it, and so on.

So that model might be useful for the actual implementation of OpenGov. A purely philanthropy-based approach is basically just the Pirate Party or whatever, and it mostly seems to work in Iceland, but the bigger the philanthropy the less costly it is to implement OpenGov.

Now let’s look at Venezuela. Venezuela because it’s an actual shithole, I have a bit of a clue what’s going on, and it has no friends in global geopolitics so even if I talk shit about the government of Venezuela and end up outputting an actually working way to overthrow them the Mossad or CIA won’t assassinate me.

I’ll divide the society of Venezuela into roughly 3 categories: oil companies, state, and regular people. Oil companies have money and they want oil and they are evil and OpenGov mustn’t associate openly with them. The state has oil, and it wants to loot everybody to enrichen itself. The people have power, which they have been renting out to the state in exchange for bribes, and they want to live a good life. In theory the equation shoudn’t be so hard: the state sells oil to oil companies, gives money to the people, everything is basically okay. But because the state doesn’t need to fear competition (someone undercutting their rates by offering cheaper oil to oil companies and more money to the people), they have a monopoly they have been exploiting to loot the people. In theory a solution would also be elegant: bribe away the state by offering them better than what they can loot right now, sell oil to oil companies, stop looting the people, and reap the rewards of economic growth and peace and prosperity which generate enough money to pay the costs of bribing away the state. Of course, in ~*~theory~*~; this plan benefits everyone and as rational economic actors they will all support it, in other words never going to happen.

So the actual issues are “how to get from here to there”. Popular resistance is good as far as it prevents the state from just looting everyone, but popular mandate for looting “Everyone Else But Me” is bad and should be avoided. Now, I’ll totally expropriate on idea from Mencius Moldbug because why the fuck no I’m way deep in intolerable-weirdo-land already; “make your technology so that it’s inherently supportive of the kind of governance you want”. Thus, ideally OpenGov would be a technology which makes UBI possible and easy, while making other forms of government services to special interests difficult. An electronic currency for distributing UBI, and in which land value taxes and oil payments must be paid.

I’d base the state on those two: land and natural resources, as they are easy to tax and can be considered a relatively legitimate form of public ownership, definitely moreso than stealing the fruits of people’s labor (and less distortionate to the economy too). In effect a smallholder having the average amount of land (in terms of value, not area) would not pay anything, anyone having less land would be subsidized and anyone using more land needs to compensate everyone else for hoarding stuff to themselves. In exchange, the state respects land ownership. Elegant, provides redistribution and a degree of justice built-in to compensate for the historical grab of land to favored interests, and should offer a degree of legitimacy.

So that’s how we will get money. Landowners and oil companies will pay the state to protect their (least-illegitimate or most legitimate, depending on how one views the question) interests, and in exchange the state will give money to people (to bribe them to not cause trouble, or to compensate for having their rightful common property seized by private interests, however one wishes to look at the question).

We’ll build an electronic system for tracking land ownership, its value, tax status etc. and a built-in redistribution of the taxes to the citizenry. To reduce moral hazards, the land value+natural resource tax rate will be almost set in stone, requiring a significant supermajority to change. I don’t know the correct rate, but it should be enough that it generates income while not being so much that it eradicates long-term investment in land. If it can’t be done, one needs to look at alternative sources of tax revenue and establish a very set-in-stone amount of flat deduction-free tax on something that’s not easy to do tax avoidance in. We want adjusting tax rates to be as difficult as possible so the state can’t loot its citizens, and we want the taxes to be as unlikely to disastrously backfire on us after being all but set in stone as possible so we won’t end up with an unfixable pile of bullshit.

So the money flow is: Taxpayers -> People -> Government. This way because people will see their personal share of the public income as something which belongs to them, and the government budget will be shown as a fraction of one’s basic income to disincentivize waste and bullshit. But in effect the government share will be deducted from the UBI as the money is received in taxes, it will just be displayed prominently so people might be less likely to overspend. And everyone gets the same share because equality, and it also aids in transparency. There will be no regional money transfers to areas needing special attention because that way lies looting, but the taxes will be collected nationally and distributed back to people nationally so the richer areas inherently support people in poorer areas. Local governments can appropriate some of the UBI money to provide services instead if they get the democratic mandate to do so. This way we can get public goods and important services but avoid excess looting.

Next, law and order. This is important. The costs of paying for central government and national defense will be taken from the taxes, but as much should be decentralized as possible, and the central government should only mostly make sure the local governments don’t fuck shit up or disrespect human rights. Local governments should provide the actual police etc. on as low a level as possible while having only accountability enforced from up above. There will be a constitution guaranteeing the basic form of governance and human rights and a constitutional court to kick the ass of anyone violating it. The exact structure of the constitutional court is outside the scope of this document but it seems that most countries, as long as the rulers can’t intervene too directly, are capable of having a sufficiently non-shitty method of finding out people who can nerd out on the specifics of laws.

Local government. Liquid democracy could be used so people can vote on other people they trust to decide things for them, and perhaps some kind of a market system in preferences so that the majority can’t consistently override any specific minority but instead treating votes as currency would guarantee that everyone’s preferences are equally satisfied statistically. I could spend most of my vote-monies on “don’t vote on promethea’s body” and override the cissexist mob, while letting the mob vote on the colour of the bike shed and staying away from it personally. Markets are cool, markets are good when engineered properly for the situation, just ask Feeding America.

Public services. Local low-level government has the mandate to provide them, the budget taken out from the basic income of the citizens under that government. (Weird idea: let people choose which set of low-level government they want to live under by having each physical location have several competing providers overlapping geographically and thus make the system of voting with one’s feet more flexible. Imagine every US county having not only the local county, but also an option to belong to any of the neighboring counties as well. And the “counties” would be way smaller for most purposes; the size of a small city. Probably not a workable idea, but an interesting one anyway.) The services provided are decided using ~liquid democracy~ as long as they aren’t unconstitutional. Higher levels of government coordinate bigger services, still using ~liquid democracy~ all the way to the top.

Voting. Local elections every year for local candidates, who then gain mandate equivalent to their number of votes, which they can transfer upwards transparently. A voting system can have at most two of: confidentiality so others can’t see who people have voted for, flexibility so people can change their vote whenever they want, simplicity so one doesn’t need to have an IQ of 130 to exercise their democratic rights.

I’m choosing confidentiality and simplicity, with yearly feedback helping keep representatives accountable and the absence of any other elections than the local ones reduces political deadweight loss from campaigning etc.; this also has the advantage of being doable as a paper ballot system, which is easier to understand and trust and deliver even in the shit-poor backwoods areas, than a scheme that requires an electronic system. When the votes are counted so that the people counting hate each other’s guts and would just love to catch each other for election fraud, the votes are counted honestly, and even single-party states have local conflicts so the process can’t be cartellized. When it comes to ideas I’m whipping up in a couple of hours, this should be at least a bit resistant to most of the immediate failure modes of shitholistans.

The upwards transfer of mandate works so that on each level of government the representatives choose who on the level above them gets their mandate points, culminating in the president or whatever. And the reps can use their mandate points when voting on issues, and the points are like currency in a transparent market (this one receives “flexibility, simplicity” as the reps mustn’t have confidentiality anyway) so even marginalized groups can get heard via single-issue parties, but perhaps influence scales to the square root of mandate spent to discourage fanaticism. Local-level government can also have direct votes on issues so that each citizen has one mandate point equivalent. (With paper ballots people can have a certain number of extra votes each year which they can spend on issues they care the most about, maintaining reasonable confidentiality as voting records only reveal how much person X cares about issue Y, not how they actually voted on it. With electronic systems one can use whatever clever schemes, as the exact implementation would be chosen by the local government.)

Now, feel free to poke at ALL THE HOLES in this system, but at least poke at it for the things I’m proposing instead of “you don’t have a complete bulletproof implementation when toying with interesting ideas”. For something that took me a couple of hours to come up with, this seems like a relatively not-unpleasant democracy to live under; guaranteeing both a lagom amount of social welfare and an extraordinarily free market with a political system that is at least somewhat seeking to alleviate the inherent problems of democracy.

But the implementation is literally the entire problem.

When states are kicked out of equilibrium, the problem isn’t that the re-established equilibria aren’t as efficient as they theoretically could be - the problem is that we don’t know how to reliably engineer a new equilibrium where everyone accepts the state, everyone knows that everyone else accepts the state, everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone accepts the state, and so on.

It’s not that designing an efficient government isn’t useful, I just don’t see how it’s related at all to the problem of un-failing a state, save for the fact that a government needs a bare minimum of effectiveness to not get overthrown. It’d be nice of the government Venezuela was re-established with a land value tax instead of an income tax, but focusing on that instead of the re-establishing itself seems like missing the point.

If OpenGov could establish effective and working government in one place, people could observe the results and be like “let’s do that thing which worked over there”. That’s why it needs to be as effective as possible and satisfy all legitimate interests as fully as it can. If people in Greece can look at OpenVenezuela and be like “damn, they sure solved a lot of terrible problems” it would go a long way in making it actually a solution people can agree on as a fallback if the government fails, thus solving the problem in cases 1 onwards, leaving case 0 as the only extremely difficult one.

(I’ll fully admit that my programmer instincts are making me try to solve the problem Properly once so it doesn’t need to be solved with a different terrible kludge every time, but that was kind of the idea to begin with so I’m just staying within the parameters.)

And having a general plan for an effective government would make it easier for it to get accepted. If it doesn’t rely on local conditions (or, in other words, has a built-in system to deal with local variables without compromising its ultimate nature) there’s less need to renegotiate what those are, and the better it is in a general way the more suitable it is for using as a template for a working society instead of possibly ending up as a scam that loots the country or an injustice that keeps President Nefarious in power.

How to solve it in the first case it’s something I don’t have that much information about, but historically foreign think tanks and other organizations have been able to push massive reforms in countries, even when the reforms have been shitty, so it obviously can be done, and should (a normative should, not a positive should; I’m fully willing to believe that most of the time humans will only ever accept policy that is zero-sum if not negative-sum because positive-sum is inconceivable to them) be even easier if the reforms are not shitty. Basically, “I dunno let’s imitate the shock doctrine except deliver results for people on the ground instead.” I can’t tell how to implement it because I’m not an expert on such policy, but if someone builds it it removes one part of the problem so then there will be a ready-made system that only needs the implementation.

And if it’s a general system of suckless-style governance, it can be adapted for many other possible situations as well (OpenGov moon colony? OpenGov as a decision-making platform for any sufficiently-sized organization? Spinning off the voting market part might help any coordination-of-people which has to use formalized democracy for its internal processes.). Programming has a long and proud tradition of someone solving a problem somewhere and people finding unexpected uses for it elsewhere, and if OpenGov were to pivot from rescuing failing states to running a moon colony it would be quite a great success nonetheless.

collapsedsquid:

The e-government shit is killing me.

Who is going to be the ones enforcing the dictates of the system? Who is making sure things are done fairly?  Who is adjudicating disputes? Who is making sure the power stays on and people are fed?

If you have a set of people who can do this, you don’t need the e-government.  If you don’t have a set of people who can do this, the e-government isn’t necessary.

That’s why it kills me when I see this rationalist thing of political philosophizing based purely around rules and policies. That’s a way of thinking that’s good for changing the existing system, but when you need a new system, it’s all about the people, the political movement. To start with, when the system is not entrenched and everything is in flux, personal and movement loyalty becomes the deciding factor, for good or ill.

In a new system it’s not the choice of policies, it’s making sure the policies are carried out. At the stage of forming a new government, that’s not about which policies to choose, it’s about having trustworthy people to do it. (policies matter in the longer term)

And that doesn’t even get into how poorly defined this “e-government“ concept seems to be, and what precisely you are expecting it do. Given what Eliezer talks about, I would worry about, say, someone using this system to implement a Junta.  The e-government will be a fancy bit of political theater for people in suits to show off while they have people executed in the street.

And, after bad experiences with institutions like the IMF, any such idea is going to be incredibly toxic. The IMF has for years been forcing governments to adopt policies in exchange for aid that they now admit do not help.  What do you think a e-government system would do?  How would it be received? Would it be a method of helping people, or a method of facilitating looting?

The OpenGov organization. A non-profit run by a diverse coalition of various interests which are only united in their opinion that the OpenGov system is better than the existing governments of failing states.

And the OpenGov system itself is not a pre-packaged solution of “here, just give all the power to these people and everything will be fine”. It is a meta-level platform for solving those exact questions. Possibly the OpenGovOrg itself operates on OpenGov, and can act as both an example implementation and a transitory solution, with clear deterministic and trusted rules for transferring local power to locals in the process of implementing OpenGov.

OpenGovOrg has clear incentives to figure out ways to get to implement their ideas, and establish sufficient transparency to avoid corruption and juntas and looting, for otherwise people would rightfully oppose OpenGov the way they have opposed bad IMF policies (and, to be honest, sometimes good IMF policies too).

OpenGov could use TMC-style methods of humane minimally-violent policing to recreate a new system of law and order, staffed by competent locals with appropriate attitude and training, and more deserving of trust and respect. It could have a trusted organization run the courts until systems are rebuilt, or it could polycentrize them altogether. The power stays on, because OpenGov delivers safety and predictability and transparency and absence of monopoly abuse, and thus someone will pay someone else to supply electricity. People will be fed because they will pay someone to give them food; OpenGov will make it possible for that to happen, instead of having a terrible combination of expensive black markets and empty white markets where the system only hinders people. The people who can’t afford food or electricity will be provided a sufficient UBI (perhaps by a combination of OpenGov taxing something really predictable and easy, such as land ownership, and partnering with aid organizations like GiveDirectly) so they can afford them, and the UBI comes in OpenGov’s own electronic currency so it isn’t rendered worthless by the central government’s policies.

The core tenet of anarchism/minarchism/libertarianism is that people are basically decent and can get their shit together on their own as long as the environment is conductive to human flourishing and violent organizations don’t enforce harmful policies, and vicious debates between different variants are about what exactly is required for such an environment (for example: is private property a harmful policy enforced by a violent organization or not, or whether a state is necessary or harmful) but the core seems to be quite consistent. The “we don’t really know how to solve your problems, but we can help you get into a situation where you can solve them on your own” doesn’t seem like such an outrageous claim.

OpenGovOrg delivers the initial seed for a new society. Perhaps it has its own armed forces, queering the mercenary/volunteer binary, to keep away violent looters (such as gangs, PoliceMob of the previous system, or even the army of the central government if OpenGov serves the people instead of the state) until local security and defense are established. It probably has its own police and courts, into which locals will be assimilated so that they will ultimately run the system as OpenGovOrg gradually withdraws. It might have its own emergency infrastructure provision although those duties should be assumed by other private-as-in-privacy organizations, or a rebuilt local government, as soon as possible to avoid distortions.

And OpenGov’s entire “business plan” relies on them being accountable, trustworthy and non-corrupt. They don’t have the trillion-dollar-and-massive-violence backing of the IMF, and thus they actually have to deliver value to their “customers”. Yes, people would be suspicious and reluctant initially, but some place somewhere would be in dire enough straits to take the deal, and if OpenGov delivers it will gain respect, reputation, and new gigs, and if it fails, it will be discredited and cease to exist.

And who would OpenGovOrg be? Activists, hackers, tech companies, philanthropes, academicians, and people with connections to, and knowledge of, the local situations. A balance of representation that is necessary for any semblance of legitimacy to begin with, instead of being perceived as a tool of outside looters or know-it-all meddlers.

Where you are seeing unanswered questions, I’m seeing an opportunity for someone to solve them. And if that solution can’t be backed up by external violence, it inevitably needs to offer people something attractive enough that they would accept it. As long as the incentives are aligned and external violent monopolies didn’t stop it, OpenGov could exist.

nonternary:

m-b-tea-me:

ISFJ: please don’t ask them out unless you’re 100% sure they like you back. They’ll feel guilty and they’ll pity date you and it’ll be awful for everyone involved and their grandmother.
ISTJ: “what are your intentions? Are you serious about this? What are your plans for the future?”
ESFJ: Picky af. If you’re down for constant “adjustments” to your character and appearance then go for it.
ESTJ: Surprisingly shy when it comes to romance. Ask them out. Ask them and watch how they get all stuttery and red in the face. So cute…and hilarious. Please take pictures for me.
ISFP: The closest thing to an idealist without the wishy-washyness. Suckers for all things love. If you’re into gushy and sickeningly sweet, this is your match.
ISTP: Dating them is like being their best friend…with benefits. What are you waiting for?
ESFP: They’re often very popular and desirable. If you’re the jealous clingy type, spare yourself and the esfp and forget the whole thing.
ESTP: Okay first of all, don’t try to compete for their love because you’ll never be able to love them as much as they love themselves. Also, if you’re looking for consistency, look elsewhere.
INFP: They’ll love you for you. 100% genuine. But their feelings are very intense. These are deep waters, you sure you can swim well?
INFJ: These ones are surprisingly ambitious. If your plans don’t fit into their “vision”, just walk your separate ways. They might wind up loving you with all of their heart, but Ni comes first. It’s nothing personal.
ENFP: This is the guy/girl that made you question your sexuality, isn’t it? Well guess what? They’ll probably also be down for helping you “figure it out”. Seize the opportunity!
ENFJ: So hot. I totally get why you’re interested in them. They’re a walking, talking paradox though. Helloo, is it confusion you’re looking for?
INTP: Lmao. Okay try to befriend them first then we’ll talk. This one could take years. Good luck, you poor thing.
INTJ: If you want someone who’ll constantly express their undying love for you then please don’t bother them.
ENTP: Go ahead. They’re pretty easy going and down for whatever. And even if they turn you down, they’ll do it so smoothly you’ll wonder if it ever even happened.
ENTJ: If you actually manage to score this one then you’ve successfully found yourself a sugar daddy. Niiice.

….ouch.

?NT? here and 100% accurate, would get confirmation biased again 5/5

princess-stargirl:

argumate:

nightpool said: Wait how does money being a social construct invalidate ethereum? I don’t get the connection

It depends what you want to use it for. The typical example is buying a house: if you flip a bit in the cloud somewhere that says “I own this house” you may run into difficulties if someone else is occupying the premises and refuses to vacate. At this point you would normally call in mediators in the form of the State, which has a land titles office and legal system with experience going back a thousand years of negotiating property disputes. But then if you’re relying on a trusted middleman, what value is cryptocurrency providing in this scenario?

As with Bitcoin, management of the currency is an inherently political process where various stakeholders campaign for the changes they think are necessary and try to convince people to their point of view. The end result is distributed in the same sense that the rest of the financial system is distributed across multiple banks and government bodies, it’s just more fragile and even less efficient.

So far the killer app for Bitcoin is converting cheap Chinese electricity into US dollars while evading capital controls, which is neat I guess, although not something I get particularly excited about.

Isn’t the killer app buying drugs?

This is the only thing anyone I know has used bitcoin for (myself included!)

The killer app is also speculating and getting rich or at least a bit less poor. I turned a friend from “very poor” to “has a surprising amount of savings for a person of their class background and economic situation, even when accounting for the fact that they spent half of it on something important” just by telling them bitcoin exists. It doesn’t take that much of market savvy to transfer the average investor’s money into more deserving hands.

And then there’s anything else where money needs to change hands easily, fast, and at a low price across the world. Remittances, international trade, etc.

But yeah, buying drugs is a big part of it.

leviathan-supersystem:

socialjusticemunchkin:

veronicastraszh:

leviathan-supersystem:

leviathan-supersystem:

the-grey-tribe:

leviathan-supersystem:

the-grey-tribe:

leviathan-supersystem:

the-grey-tribe:

leviathan-supersystem:

leviathan-supersystem:

szhmidty:

barrydeutsch:

frustrateddemiurge:

So, a friend posted this on Facebook:

I just read a text exchange in which a guy tried to flirt with a stranger on Facebook by sending her a picture of his penis. The woman responded by ridiculing him, sending him lots of pictures of other men’s penises to demonstrate how horrible it is to receive dick pics, and suggesting that his dick was small and diseased. He got angry, and asked to end the conversation, which she didn’t do. Then he asked her not to share the conversation, and she posted the whole thing publicly, along with his name. Now it’s on my news feed because lots of people are reading it and finding it hilarious.

I hope I’m not the only one who thinks this is tragic.

The perception of dick pics as disgusting, low status, and worthy of ridicule is part of the larger perception of sexuality as shameful. I would much, much rather live in a culture where I sometimes received unwanted images of strangers’ genitals as part of clumsy flirting than to live in a culture where being open about sexuality is about as safe as making violent threats.

I would love to live in the nearby world where “you’re cute, wanna see my dick/vulva?” is a polite way of finding out whether an attractive stranger feels like sharing a casual online sexual interaction. The man’s actions in this exchange make me feel a lot more like I live in that world than do the woman’s.

I recognize that, given we *don’t* live in that world, *and* that the world we do live in includes a lot of people who feel women should be grateful for male attention and never allowed to protect themselves let alone retaliate, dick pics are often (usually?) more of a harmful spam tactic than a kind of benign if inept way of flirting.

I think it’s a good idea to discourage spamming people, and also to discourage treating women as if they have no right to refuse sexual advances.

But please, please, do not confuse strategic choice of social norms with the rush of a cheap status-boost. Do not play along with the game where we all punish each other for having bodies in the context of Christian purity and original sin.

So I gave my take on it:

The boy in question may not, himself, have realized he was performing an aggressive move. He may have just been emulating a move that he saw as successful, because when aggressive men make that move they often *are* successful.

It’s generally the less aggressive males, attempting to emulate aggressive strategies without even realizing that the underlying structure of the strategy is aggression, that get piled on for being aggressive.

The actual aggressive males get away with it, because no one wants to fight them.

Then I read this cracked article:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/why-internet-gun-aimed-at-everyones-face/


Now, spread this ridiculously important meme:

If you’re winning the fight against a particular person, I guarantee you they aren’t the kind of person you think you’re fighting against.

If you’re making some fedora-wearing neckbeard cry delicious man-tears, if you’re viciously shaming some size 0 fetish model for promoting unhealthy body standards, if you’re screaming at some transgirl for “invading your safe space” and “not being a real woman”, if you’re savaging some internet pundit for using “transgirl” because they haven’t kept up with the lingo-of-the-week… you’re almost certainly attacking someone who’s probably been hurt worse by the Patriarchy than you have.

Because if you’re successfully attacking, and they aren’t successfully defending, then that almost certainly means you have more structural and institutional power than they do.

Feels nice, doesn’t it?

The conclusion only makes sense if we assume that structural and institutional power are virtually the only forms of power that exist.

It’s generally the less aggressive males, attempting to emulate aggressive strategies without even realizing that the underlying structure of the strategy is aggression, that get piled on for being aggressive.

… The actual aggressive males get away with it, because no one wants to fight them.

…

If you’re winning the fight against a particular person, I guarantee you they aren’t the kind of person you think you’re fighting against.

…

Because if you’re successfully attacking, and they aren’t successfully defending, then that almost certainly means you have more structural and institutional power than they do.

Feels nice, doesn’t it?

This grosses me out more than I can properly articulate. The idea that if you ever “win” a social conflict that you’re really the bad guy is gross as all hell. The idea let’s virtually anyone off the hook. Were you successfully criticized for your behaviour? Congratulations, your detractor is a bully abusing their superior social power against poor meek little you. You fire a woman for getting pregnant, and she succesfully sued you and damaged your business’ reputation? What an abuse of power, you poor little thing. You harrass someone online and they actually stand up to you? You shouldn’t have to stand for such mistreatment. Were you cruel to a friend, and now less people want to hang out with you? You’re the real victim here.

This is the weaponization of the pretense of meekness. It’s the whine of particularly nasty members of the religious right, who complain, in naked envy of Saudi Arabia’s ability to persecute “deviants,” that their detractors would never be so critical of militant islam.

So yes, it feels fucking fantastic.

None of this is to say that anything in the name of ‘winning’ a social conflict is acceptable, or that one cannot be disprortionate, excessive, or sadistic and cruel towards others in response to mistreatment, or that what you’ve identified as mistreatment is accurately described as such. Nuance, proportionality, and compassion are excellent virtues. But it is vastly unjustified to cast ‘winners of social conflict’ as nearly equivalent to abusers of social power attacking the weak in place of the strong.

I don’t think dick-pic-sender’s name should have been released to the internet at large. Large, diffuse groups on the internet are personally removed from the situation, are frequently full of unprincipled people, and the individuals involved frequently feel like a snowflake in an avalanche. Consequently the people involved are often ignorant or apathetic of the scale of harm they as a group are causing, which can quickly become vastly improportionate to scale of the harm to which the group is responding.

I do think it’d be entirely fair game to show the messages to people within dick-pic-sender’s social group. It’s fair for the people in your life to know how you treat others, and I don’t think you necessarily deserve privacy when you treat someone poorly through unsolicited messages (IANAL, but I think the law generally agrees as well).

And for the love of fucking god I wish people would stop defending people like dick-pic-sender by trying to cast them as weak, bumbling little angels. Aside from the fact that there’s not much justification for it: you can mistreat the strong. You can be cruel to anyone. If you’re gonna argue that excessive responses, cruelty, and internet mobs are bad, do it because those things are bad in principle, not because they’re being used against a particular victim class you wanna defend.

op’s post is like the ultimate example of everything i find foul about the lesswronger worldview

even though the lesswrongers claim to be against “toxic sj,” in reality they just subscribe to a twisted backwards grotesque parody of the most misapplied sj identity politics, except in their version the primary “marginalized community” which they must fight for and protect at all costs is “dudes who are experiencing consequences for being shitty to other people.”

and notice the whining about “the actual aggressive males get away with it, because no one wants to fight them”- any sensible person would decide that the solution would be to fight to make it more difficult for aggressive men to mistreat people, but op seems to be implying that instead, we should try to make it should be easier for less aggressive men to mistreat people. it’s completely backwards and awful tbh.

also, i’m really grossed out by op comparing the backlash that the dickpic sender received to the harassment and mistreatment that trans women and eating disordered women receive.  especially appalling is the implication that the dickpic sender has been hurt by the patriarchy on a level comparable to the harm the patriarchy does to trans women and eating disordered women. this is ludicrous, standing up to a sexual harasser isn’t comparable to bullying marginalized women, fuck off.

Do two wrongs make a right? Is it possible that the response to something bad is also bad? Do you think seeing pictures of genitals is worse than being publicly shamed? Do you think that male genitals are inherently evil and shameful?

The lesswronger mindset is that you must /update/ your beliefs about an individual based on evidence. That means after you hear additional information about a straight dude, you won’t continue to use your straight-line prior. You should

(swap! (*belief* 'straight-dude-g359) bayes-update new-evidence)

Do two wrongs make a right?

already you’re assuming that it was “wrong” to publicly shame the dickpic sender. tsk tsk.

Is it possible that the response to something bad is also bad?

certainly. but the op wasn’t just trying to claim the response was excessive, but also attempted to cast the pickpic sender as a persecuted innocent. which is absurd.

Do you think seeing pictures of genitals is worse than being publicly shamed?

sending a naked picture to someone is pretty clearly a sexual act, and performing a sexual act with someone without their permission is indeed many times worse than public shaming.

Do you think that male genitals are inherently evil and shameful?

no, i think performing a sexual act with someone without their permission is inherently evil and shameful.

The lesswronger mindset is that you must /update/ your beliefs about an individual based on evidence. That means after you hear additional information about a straight dude, you won’t continue to use your straight-line prior. You should(swap! (*belief* 'straight-dude-g359) bayes-update new-evidence)

what possible additional information would make me decide the dickpic sender was actually an okay dude.

i….. i hate this. i hate this so much.

Thank you for your explanation. The last bit was in response to your framing of the situation as a between-group conflict and the lesswrongers taking a side. The problem is that there are ways to draw the line (hyperplane?) based on meta-level or object-level criteria, but even if you draw it right through the original culprit, you will sound like you are endorsing either sexual harassment or online hate mobs.

I understand you better now. I kind of assumed that you were a utilitarian. For a virtue or deontological ethics-ist your stance makes more sense. Or even an old-fashioned randian objectivist who thinks you forfeit your rights when you break the social contract, which I assume is an unfortunate accident.

thinking that people have a right to tell other people when they’ve been mistreated by someone isn’t incompatible with a utilitarian viewpoint. especially if one believes- as i do- that the beneficial deterrent effect of the punishment outweighs the harm caused to the dickpic sender. people are less likely to mistreat others if they know that the person they mistreat might inform other people. furthermore the dickpic sender will be less likely to act that way in the future.

i don’t think the dickpic sender “forfeited their rights”- it doesn’t remove any of his rights that people think negatively of him because of how he treats people. i’m not saying he should be killed or thrown in jail or whatever- but people he’s mistreated have a right to speak about it.

This means that dick pic sender would still deserve to have his name circulated as a terrible person if dick pic receiver had replied “what a beautiful penis you have” and then posted the screenshots by accident.

Our society with its expectations of masculinity on the other hand /rewards/ boundary-pushing when it works and punishes only when it fails.

Edit: Dick pic receiver has the right to post receipts. I am more critical of third parties; public shaming when it comes to victims posting receipts is a-ok. The victim is not the person who is punching down, the hypothetical internet person who reblogs the clear name of the guy might be.

i don’t buy this at all. i don’t buy that more masculine dudes get rewarded for sending unsolicited dickpics. i buy perhaps that more masculine dudes are more likely to get away with crossing peoples boundaries, because of the implicit threat of violence they can credibly maintain, but this idea that they’re getting rewarded for it is absurd. (as is the implication that this is unfair primarily to the less masculine men who can’t get away with disrespecting peoples boundaries, rather than unfair to the people the more masculine dudes get away with mistreating)

in the incredibly unlikely event of an unsolicited dickpic which was positively received (which i seriously doubt even exists), and the screenshot being posted by accident, then yes, i people who found out about that would still have the right to evaluate that action and for it to affect how they think of the person who sent the picture.

oh hey, i just saw the exchange which this whole thing is about: [link]

so just to clarify, THIS is the dude who OP and the-grey-tribe are casting as a poor gentle victim who only experienced backlash because he wasn’t masculine enough to get away with it, and had he been more “alpha” or whatever he would have been “rewarded” for disrespecting peoples boundaries:

lmaooooooooooo okay

Holy shit!

By the way, that woman’s “edits” are a thing of sublime hilarity.

I think the original argument still holds very well. When one is winning, it means the adversary is losing, and that usually kind of inevitably means one’s own side is stronger than the adversary’s in that specific battle. Sometimes people gathering together power to beat up on those who violate important rules can be useful to enforce those rules (just like cops are supposed to arrest people who do physical violence, and we don’t tell them to stop the instant they gain the upper hand), but they should never forget the simple fact that if they’re winning, they are the stronger side.

If people consistently remembered this one weird trick, it would probably help reduce toxic forms of sj by several dozen percentage points. Shifting the mindset from “I’m lashing out at the Oppressor and thus anything is justifiable” to “I’m using my contextual power to beat up on someone with less contextual power and my actions need to take that into account or otherwise I’ll just be a bully” would force people to keep in mind that with great contextual power comes great contextual responsibility and sometimes people need to even restrain themselves.

no, i don’t buy this. there are better ways to establish a sense of proportion and restraint in sj than to adopt a self-defeating ideology that any success in a social conflict is a sign that your opponent is actually an innocent misunderstood victim.

no, someone isn’t inherently the stronger side if they win. sometimes the underdog successfully stands up for themselves, and that doesn’t automatically mean they have structural power. dickpic sender didn’t suddenly become an underdog the moment someone stood up to him.

and there’s this whole framework here- “It’s generally the less aggressive males, attempting to emulate aggressive strategies without even realizing that the underlying structure of the strategy is aggression, that get piled on for being aggressive”- which is clearly just the discredited 4chan “alpha/beta male” framework with a fresh coat of paint.

and i mean, it’s appalling to use the logic of “but the ~alpha males~ get away with it!” to defend this kind of behavior anyways, but why, why, why, of all people, is James McRippedBro here being assumed to be a “less aggressive” “beta” male when literally every indicator suggests the exact opposite.

No, you’re misunderstanding my argument and this is calling for a reductio.

Let’s say Fallon Fox is catcalled by some rich white cis guy who has very much structural power over her. She proceeds to beat him up. I think there needs to be a way to describe the type of power Fallon has in the situation where she’s beating up the guy. If we are not able to say that she has a certain type of contextual power which is very much defined by the fact that she is indeed kicking his ass (in this case it’s the fact that she’s a skilled MMA fighter and the random guy is not), we are missing something epistemically important.

Similarly, in the social realm there is something which is the equivalent of “who is able to kick whose ass” and which isn’t a 1:1 match to structural power or anything like that.

If Fallon were to beat up the guy very badly, we wouldn’t listen to protestations that “he was still white and cis and rich and thus he still had all the power in the situation” because we would be missing something very important. Sometimes beating a guy up very badly might be warranted (such as in self-defense against assault or attempted murder), but it doesn’t make it any less true that the guy got beaten up, and that factor which led to his upbeatenness is relevant for the considerations, because in some situations That Factor ends up outweighing other considerations. If you beat someone up for having $5000 more in their bank account than you, their economic structural power over you is far less relevant than the fact that you beat them up. And that’s what I’m arguing; that if people don’t recognize when they’re beating up someone they might do exactly that thing except socially.

And empirically, even though this particular instance is most likely not an example of that thing, it nonetheless happens. I know because I have personally done it precisely because I wasn’t keeping myself aware of the presence of this factor and it’s quite embarrassing and shameful in hindsight and people should not do the same mistakes.

maybe-a-lizard:

socialjusticemunchkin:

ilzolende:

Idea: Instead of trying to convince everyone that their continued existence is immoral, work on reducing the water needed for various daily activities.

Or just eliminate agricultural subsidies. Fucking alfalfa alone makes up almost all of the California water deficit and is far less economically efficient than pretty much any amount of water used for household purposes.

#how many of you even know what they grow all that alfalfa for?#whereas everyone knows the value of a shower#yet the narrative shames people for showers#instead of alfalfa farmers

What DO they grow alfalfa for?  Yeah I always thought shaming people for showers was dodgy in comparison to other water uses.

they feed it to cows

which are then fed to people

and the amount of water that is indirectly consumed through a single steak is absurdly huge (can’t be arsed to google the specifics, but it is) yet they won’t let price mechanisms balance water use naturally, but subsidize water-saving toilets instead

#government logic

veronicastraszh:

leviathan-supersystem:

leviathan-supersystem:

the-grey-tribe:

leviathan-supersystem:

the-grey-tribe:

leviathan-supersystem:

the-grey-tribe:

leviathan-supersystem:

leviathan-supersystem:

szhmidty:

barrydeutsch:

frustrateddemiurge:

So, a friend posted this on Facebook:

I just read a text exchange in which a guy tried to flirt with a stranger on Facebook by sending her a picture of his penis. The woman responded by ridiculing him, sending him lots of pictures of other men’s penises to demonstrate how horrible it is to receive dick pics, and suggesting that his dick was small and diseased. He got angry, and asked to end the conversation, which she didn’t do. Then he asked her not to share the conversation, and she posted the whole thing publicly, along with his name. Now it’s on my news feed because lots of people are reading it and finding it hilarious.

I hope I’m not the only one who thinks this is tragic.

The perception of dick pics as disgusting, low status, and worthy of ridicule is part of the larger perception of sexuality as shameful. I would much, much rather live in a culture where I sometimes received unwanted images of strangers’ genitals as part of clumsy flirting than to live in a culture where being open about sexuality is about as safe as making violent threats.

I would love to live in the nearby world where “you’re cute, wanna see my dick/vulva?” is a polite way of finding out whether an attractive stranger feels like sharing a casual online sexual interaction. The man’s actions in this exchange make me feel a lot more like I live in that world than do the woman’s.

I recognize that, given we *don’t* live in that world, *and* that the world we do live in includes a lot of people who feel women should be grateful for male attention and never allowed to protect themselves let alone retaliate, dick pics are often (usually?) more of a harmful spam tactic than a kind of benign if inept way of flirting.

I think it’s a good idea to discourage spamming people, and also to discourage treating women as if they have no right to refuse sexual advances.

But please, please, do not confuse strategic choice of social norms with the rush of a cheap status-boost. Do not play along with the game where we all punish each other for having bodies in the context of Christian purity and original sin.

So I gave my take on it:

The boy in question may not, himself, have realized he was performing an aggressive move. He may have just been emulating a move that he saw as successful, because when aggressive men make that move they often *are* successful.

It’s generally the less aggressive males, attempting to emulate aggressive strategies without even realizing that the underlying structure of the strategy is aggression, that get piled on for being aggressive.

The actual aggressive males get away with it, because no one wants to fight them.

Then I read this cracked article:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/why-internet-gun-aimed-at-everyones-face/


Now, spread this ridiculously important meme:

If you’re winning the fight against a particular person, I guarantee you they aren’t the kind of person you think you’re fighting against.

If you’re making some fedora-wearing neckbeard cry delicious man-tears, if you’re viciously shaming some size 0 fetish model for promoting unhealthy body standards, if you’re screaming at some transgirl for “invading your safe space” and “not being a real woman”, if you’re savaging some internet pundit for using “transgirl” because they haven’t kept up with the lingo-of-the-week… you’re almost certainly attacking someone who’s probably been hurt worse by the Patriarchy than you have.

Because if you’re successfully attacking, and they aren’t successfully defending, then that almost certainly means you have more structural and institutional power than they do.

Feels nice, doesn’t it?

The conclusion only makes sense if we assume that structural and institutional power are virtually the only forms of power that exist.

It’s generally the less aggressive males, attempting to emulate aggressive strategies without even realizing that the underlying structure of the strategy is aggression, that get piled on for being aggressive.

… The actual aggressive males get away with it, because no one wants to fight them.

…

If you’re winning the fight against a particular person, I guarantee you they aren’t the kind of person you think you’re fighting against.

…

Because if you’re successfully attacking, and they aren’t successfully defending, then that almost certainly means you have more structural and institutional power than they do.

Feels nice, doesn’t it?

This grosses me out more than I can properly articulate. The idea that if you ever “win” a social conflict that you’re really the bad guy is gross as all hell. The idea let’s virtually anyone off the hook. Were you successfully criticized for your behaviour? Congratulations, your detractor is a bully abusing their superior social power against poor meek little you. You fire a woman for getting pregnant, and she succesfully sued you and damaged your business’ reputation? What an abuse of power, you poor little thing. You harrass someone online and they actually stand up to you? You shouldn’t have to stand for such mistreatment. Were you cruel to a friend, and now less people want to hang out with you? You’re the real victim here.

This is the weaponization of the pretense of meekness. It’s the whine of particularly nasty members of the religious right, who complain, in naked envy of Saudi Arabia’s ability to persecute “deviants,” that their detractors would never be so critical of militant islam.

So yes, it feels fucking fantastic.

None of this is to say that anything in the name of ‘winning’ a social conflict is acceptable, or that one cannot be disprortionate, excessive, or sadistic and cruel towards others in response to mistreatment, or that what you’ve identified as mistreatment is accurately described as such. Nuance, proportionality, and compassion are excellent virtues. But it is vastly unjustified to cast ‘winners of social conflict’ as nearly equivalent to abusers of social power attacking the weak in place of the strong.

I don’t think dick-pic-sender’s name should have been released to the internet at large. Large, diffuse groups on the internet are personally removed from the situation, are frequently full of unprincipled people, and the individuals involved frequently feel like a snowflake in an avalanche. Consequently the people involved are often ignorant or apathetic of the scale of harm they as a group are causing, which can quickly become vastly improportionate to scale of the harm to which the group is responding.

I do think it’d be entirely fair game to show the messages to people within dick-pic-sender’s social group. It’s fair for the people in your life to know how you treat others, and I don’t think you necessarily deserve privacy when you treat someone poorly through unsolicited messages (IANAL, but I think the law generally agrees as well).

And for the love of fucking god I wish people would stop defending people like dick-pic-sender by trying to cast them as weak, bumbling little angels. Aside from the fact that there’s not much justification for it: you can mistreat the strong. You can be cruel to anyone. If you’re gonna argue that excessive responses, cruelty, and internet mobs are bad, do it because those things are bad in principle, not because they’re being used against a particular victim class you wanna defend.

op’s post is like the ultimate example of everything i find foul about the lesswronger worldview

even though the lesswrongers claim to be against “toxic sj,” in reality they just subscribe to a twisted backwards grotesque parody of the most misapplied sj identity politics, except in their version the primary “marginalized community” which they must fight for and protect at all costs is “dudes who are experiencing consequences for being shitty to other people.”

and notice the whining about “the actual aggressive males get away with it, because no one wants to fight them”- any sensible person would decide that the solution would be to fight to make it more difficult for aggressive men to mistreat people, but op seems to be implying that instead, we should try to make it should be easier for less aggressive men to mistreat people. it’s completely backwards and awful tbh.

also, i’m really grossed out by op comparing the backlash that the dickpic sender received to the harassment and mistreatment that trans women and eating disordered women receive.  especially appalling is the implication that the dickpic sender has been hurt by the patriarchy on a level comparable to the harm the patriarchy does to trans women and eating disordered women. this is ludicrous, standing up to a sexual harasser isn’t comparable to bullying marginalized women, fuck off.

Do two wrongs make a right? Is it possible that the response to something bad is also bad? Do you think seeing pictures of genitals is worse than being publicly shamed? Do you think that male genitals are inherently evil and shameful?

The lesswronger mindset is that you must /update/ your beliefs about an individual based on evidence. That means after you hear additional information about a straight dude, you won’t continue to use your straight-line prior. You should

(swap! (*belief* 'straight-dude-g359) bayes-update new-evidence)

Do two wrongs make a right?

already you’re assuming that it was “wrong” to publicly shame the dickpic sender. tsk tsk.

Is it possible that the response to something bad is also bad?

certainly. but the op wasn’t just trying to claim the response was excessive, but also attempted to cast the pickpic sender as a persecuted innocent. which is absurd.

Do you think seeing pictures of genitals is worse than being publicly shamed?

sending a naked picture to someone is pretty clearly a sexual act, and performing a sexual act with someone without their permission is indeed many times worse than public shaming.

Do you think that male genitals are inherently evil and shameful?

no, i think performing a sexual act with someone without their permission is inherently evil and shameful.

The lesswronger mindset is that you must /update/ your beliefs about an individual based on evidence. That means after you hear additional information about a straight dude, you won’t continue to use your straight-line prior. You should(swap! (*belief* 'straight-dude-g359) bayes-update new-evidence)

what possible additional information would make me decide the dickpic sender was actually an okay dude.

i….. i hate this. i hate this so much.

Thank you for your explanation. The last bit was in response to your framing of the situation as a between-group conflict and the lesswrongers taking a side. The problem is that there are ways to draw the line (hyperplane?) based on meta-level or object-level criteria, but even if you draw it right through the original culprit, you will sound like you are endorsing either sexual harassment or online hate mobs.

I understand you better now. I kind of assumed that you were a utilitarian. For a virtue or deontological ethics-ist your stance makes more sense. Or even an old-fashioned randian objectivist who thinks you forfeit your rights when you break the social contract, which I assume is an unfortunate accident.

thinking that people have a right to tell other people when they’ve been mistreated by someone isn’t incompatible with a utilitarian viewpoint. especially if one believes- as i do- that the beneficial deterrent effect of the punishment outweighs the harm caused to the dickpic sender. people are less likely to mistreat others if they know that the person they mistreat might inform other people. furthermore the dickpic sender will be less likely to act that way in the future.

i don’t think the dickpic sender “forfeited their rights”- it doesn’t remove any of his rights that people think negatively of him because of how he treats people. i’m not saying he should be killed or thrown in jail or whatever- but people he’s mistreated have a right to speak about it.

This means that dick pic sender would still deserve to have his name circulated as a terrible person if dick pic receiver had replied “what a beautiful penis you have” and then posted the screenshots by accident.

Our society with its expectations of masculinity on the other hand /rewards/ boundary-pushing when it works and punishes only when it fails.

Edit: Dick pic receiver has the right to post receipts. I am more critical of third parties; public shaming when it comes to victims posting receipts is a-ok. The victim is not the person who is punching down, the hypothetical internet person who reblogs the clear name of the guy might be.

i don’t buy this at all. i don’t buy that more masculine dudes get rewarded for sending unsolicited dickpics. i buy perhaps that more masculine dudes are more likely to get away with crossing peoples boundaries, because of the implicit threat of violence they can credibly maintain, but this idea that they’re getting rewarded for it is absurd. (as is the implication that this is unfair primarily to the less masculine men who can’t get away with disrespecting peoples boundaries, rather than unfair to the people the more masculine dudes get away with mistreating)

in the incredibly unlikely event of an unsolicited dickpic which was positively received (which i seriously doubt even exists), and the screenshot being posted by accident, then yes, i people who found out about that would still have the right to evaluate that action and for it to affect how they think of the person who sent the picture.

oh hey, i just saw the exchange which this whole thing is about: [link]

so just to clarify, THIS is the dude who OP and the-grey-tribe are casting as a poor gentle victim who only experienced backlash because he wasn’t masculine enough to get away with it, and had he been more “alpha” or whatever he would have been “rewarded” for disrespecting peoples boundaries:

lmaooooooooooo okay

Holy shit!

By the way, that woman’s “edits” are a thing of sublime hilarity.

I think the original argument still holds very well. When one is winning, it means the adversary is losing, and that usually kind of inevitably means one’s own side is stronger than the adversary’s in that specific battle. Sometimes people gathering together power to beat up on those who violate important rules can be useful to enforce those rules (just like cops are supposed to arrest people who do physical violence, and we don’t tell them to stop the instant they gain the upper hand), but they should never forget the simple fact that if they’re winning, they are the stronger side.

If people consistently remembered this one weird trick, it would probably help reduce toxic forms of sj by several dozen percentage points. Shifting the mindset from “I’m lashing out at the Oppressor and thus anything is justifiable” to “I’m using my contextual power to beat up on someone with less contextual power and my actions need to take that into account or otherwise I’ll just be a bully” would force people to keep in mind that with great contextual power comes great contextual responsibility and sometimes people need to even restrain themselves.

milkdromeduh:

jiruchan:

r-stern:

errantarrows:

cobyblue:

just–space:

From an excellent post by Jason Davis

From Washington, D.C., the rings would only fill a portion of the sky, but appear striking nonetheless. Here, we see them at sunrise.

From Guatemala, only 14 degrees above the equator, the rings would begin to stretch across the horizon. Their reflected light would make the moon much brighter.

From Earth’s equator, Saturn’s rings would be viewed edge-on, appearing as a thin, bright line bisecting the sky.

At the March and September equinoxes, the Sun would be positioned directly over the rings, casting a dramatic shadow at the equator.

At midnight at the Tropic of Capricorn, which sits at 23 degrees south latitude, the Earth casts a shadow over the middle of the rings, while the outer portions remain lit.

via x

Originally posted by crazyfangirloflots

@jiruchan

I love this so much! And slightly off-topic, but here’s a VERY good video of how it would look like if Saturn flew past us.

I’m so mad Earth has no fucking rings. >:(

That’s what I call a mere engineering problem