promethea.incorporated

nostalgebraist:

dagny-hashtaggart:

Got sucked down the Red Pill rabbit hole because of that post Rob and Esther were hatereading. It’s crystallized an idea that I hadn’t quite been able to articulate until now:

PUA culture cares more about embodying a certain ideal of masculinity than it does about winning. Even if we accept their idea that social relations are fundamentally adversarial, their recommendations for getting ahead in an adversarial system are pretty dubious. I can’t help but notice that “weak and effeminate men,” a category this Illimitable Men article mocks relentlessly, includes the majority of the most powerful people in the world. If your model for acquiring power places the last half dozen US presidents among those who are too emotive, concerned with being liked, and willing to engage in vapid pleasantries to get anywhere in life, maybe devote some time to thinking on the phrase “Procrustean Bed.”

The point that really made it click was this one: “Psychologically and symbolically, folding means you have ‘lost control and given up’ in the way that a player folds when they surrender in a game of poker.”

Okay, I get it, poker is the metaphor of choice for people who want to signal a certain sort of hard-nosed, pragmatic intelligence. But to do that, it helps to have a basic understanding of poker. You know what the best poker players do all the time? If you guessed “fold,” then congratulations, you know more about poker than Illimitable Men does. Stone-cold bluffs aren’t actually all that common outside of the movies. They’re often good drama, rarely good poker: your opponents are not idiots, and while it may make you feel very manly to raise big on every shit hand you draw, it will also make you predictable, not to mention committing you to throwing away substantial amounts when your opponent clearly has a hand that will trounce yours.

It’s not hard to see how this applies to the life philosophy of this crowd. Not only is cutting your losses clearly the right choice in many situations, surrendering can have strategic value even in cases where one isn’t clearly going to lose. Unpredictability is an asset. Commitment of resources to the areas in which they’ll provide the most benefit is important. The Red Pill philosophy is fixated on winning every battle, and that leads to a lot of lost wars.

Oh my god, that poker analogy is an exquisite self-own

(Good post in general too)

1 month ago · tagged #nothing to add but tags #pua cw · 142 notes · source: dagny-hashtaggart · .permalink

A Warning

2centjubilee:

For the record – do not give me the One Ring.  Do not give me the Death Note.  Do not give me the Left Hand of God.

Because I will be as beautiful and terrible as the Morning and Night, 私は新世界の 神 となる, and the hand of Providence shall deliver the weak from their suffering.

I won’t stoop as low to say that you should give them to me, but admit it, you guys would totally give them to me just to see what I’d do

1 month ago · tagged #support your local supervillain · 25 notes · source: 2centjubilee · .permalink

thetransintransgenic:

ilzolende:

argumate:

nicdevera:

argumate:

Proposal: require Everest climbers to have already made the summit of at least three mountains over 4000m in height, so they have some idea of what they are getting themselves into.

Alternate Proposal: rename Everest to Death Mountain to get the point across.

You think giving it a badass name like \m/ DEATH MOUNTAIN \m/ will keep people away?

Don'tgonearthe Castle, we call it. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of it?’ ‘It’s a strange name.’ ‘Oh, he used to laugh about it. The local coachmen used to warn visitors, you see. “Don’t go near the castle,” they’d say. “Even if it means spending a night up a tree, never go up there to the castle,” they’d tell people. “Whatever you do, don’t set foot in that castle.” He said it was marvellous publicity. Sometimes he had every bedroom full by 9 p.m. and people would be hammering on the door to get in. Travellers would go miles out of their way to see what all the fuss was about.

fine, call it Tax Mountain

i feel like that might still be too interesting

@sinesalvatorem, for one, seems likely to be interested in Tax Mountain

ALISON IS AN OUTLIDER ADN SHOULD ONLY BE COUNTED AFTER YOU HAVE TAKEN THE PROPER RITUAL PRECAUTIONS

Hello I heard there was an Economics Geographical Location…

(via thetransintransgenic)

1 month ago · tagged #shitposting #when does an army of outlier clones stop being outliers? · 83 notes · source: argumate · .permalink

princess-stargirl:

worldoptimization:

prophecyformula:

shkreli-for-president:

jenlog:

voximperatoris:

fatpinocchio:

voximperatoris:

@eccentric-opinion / @amakthel / others:

Anyone know any good, fun personality, political, ethical, and/or other self-reporting tests?

I’ve done the ones at OKCupid years ago (an example of pretty low-quality tests).

Of course I’ve done the Myers-Briggs test and the Big 5 test.

The ones at YourMorals are really interesting. But I finished all the best ones a while ago.

The coolest ones I’ve run across recently are the ones at Philosophy Experiments. They’re fun because they try to test you on the internal consistency of your positions, e.g. on religion and philosophy of mind. I highly recommend them.

Any other recommendations?

iSideWith, World’s Smallest Political Quiz, 5-Dimensional Compass, Ideology Selector

iSideWith is pretty good, the second and last one are kind of…bad.

The 5-Dimensional Compass was a little bit interesting. My score:

You are a: Conservative Anarchist Interventionist Cosmopolitan Libertine

Collectivism score: -67%
Authoritarianism score: -100%
Internationalism score: 33%
Tribalism score: -33%
Liberalism score: 100% 

Kind of bizarre they they apparently use “conservative” to mean “individualist”. And I’m not actually that much of a “libertine”.

Objectivist Anarchist Total-Isolationist Cosmopolitan Progressive

Collectivism score: -83%
Authoritarianism score: -100%
Internationalism score: -100%
Tribalism score: -33%
Liberalism score: 67%

There were some weird ones like “Our nation should eliminate all foreign aid and spend that money on other things.” Ideally they wouldn’t pay the foreign aid and also not spend it on something else.

You are a: Left-Leaning Anti-Government Non-Interventionist Nativist Fundamentalist

Collectivism score: 33%
Authoritarianism score: -33%
Internationalism score: -17%
Tribalism score: 67%
Liberalism score: -83%

ＣＯＭＢＡＴ　ＬＩＢＥＲＡＬＩＳＭ

You are a: Right-Leaning Non-Interventionist Traditionalist

Collectivism score: -33%
Authoritarianism score: 0%
Internationalism score: -17%
Tribalism score: 0%
Liberalism score: -33%

pat buchanan 4 god-emperor

You are a: Socialist Pro-Government Cosmopolitan Liberal

Collectivism score: 50%
Authoritarianism score: 17%
Internationalism score: 0%
Tribalism score: -33%
Liberalism score: 17%

You are a: Centrist Anarchist Non-Interventionist Nationalist Liberal 

Collectivism score: 0%
Authoritarianism score: -83%
Internationalism score: -33%
Tribalism score: 17%
Liberalism score: 33%

iSideWith:

candidates: Bernie Sanders and a bunch of libertarians around 90%

parties: green, libertarian, socialist and democrat all basically tied within the margin of error

parties by issues: basically all either libertarian or socialist

ideology: left-wing libertarian

themes: Privacy, Populism, Tender, Decentralization, Globalization, Multiculturalism, Small Government, Isolationism, Progressive, Pacifism, Laissez-Faire, Collectivism, Deregulation (from strongest to weakest)

feelings: I think I broke the test and made it give a spiteful “lol screw you weirdo, good luck trying to differentiate the results” (seriously, they are all utterly bunched up around the same scores)

5-Dimensional Compass:

You are a: Left-Leaning Anarchist Interventionist Bleeding-Heart Libertine

Collectivism score: 17%

Authoritarianism score: -83%

Internationalism score: 17%

Tribalism score: -83%

Liberalism score: 100%

feelings: utterly unsurprised

1 month ago · tagged #politics cw #i am worst capitalist #the best heuristic for oppressed people since sharp stick time · 49 notes · source: voximperatoris · .permalink

Open Borders

osberend:

socialjusticemunchkin:

argumate:

(@voximperatoris, @neoliberalism-nightly, @socialjusticemunchkin)

Most people agree that open borders is a desirable end state for humanity, as being able to maintain it is strong evidence of an absence of war and famine and reduced global inequality.

Most people also agree that throwing open the borders overnight would have catastrophic consequences, following which the borders would immediately be closed again.

(The best example of open borders we have in the world today is the EU, and even moderate refugee flows have been sufficient to destabilise this project).

However there are plenty of obvious compromises that could be made, such as increasing immigration quotas by 50% each year, greatly increasing migration while giving plenty of time for societies to adjust and absorb the flow. Or going for easy wins, like opening the border between the US and Canada.

That said, I still can’t help feeling that proponents of open borders are downplaying the changes involved, and the possible consequences.

I mean, @voximperatoris is referencing the Jim Crow south in what appears to be a positive example of a society with a racial underclass employed as servants with lynchings “on a very small scale in the grand scheme of things”. Like, I’m not trying to be snarky but that sounds like something someone might write if they were attempting to satirise the open borders position.

And @socialjusticemunchkin talking approvingly of the improved aesthetics of local inequality compared with global inequality; again, not everyone is going to share that particular aesthetic.

There are also questions of whether increased inequality within a particular society ends up causing more problems (for that society) than increased inequality globally; eg. North Sentinelese appear happier living their current lives than as servants in Silicon Valley, despite the latter being “less unequal”.

Many proponents of open borders have suggested introducing a dual track concept of citizenship, where immigrants would not gain access to the full range of social services available to current citizens. I think this also needs to be taken into account when considering what open borders would do to inequality.

So, to take a slightly different position: if seeking to move towards the abolition (as much as possible) of borders as soon as possible (leaving the obviously superior option of the Archipelago untouched as an even less realistic option: I have a marvellous plan for such an utopia this margin is too narrow to contain) is not desirable, why stop at national borders?

After all, the national borders are highly suspiciously sized. If a peaceful person with no ill intent may not migrate from Morocco to Spain, why should one be allowed to migrate from West Virginia to San Francisco?

The United States is larger than most combinations of two to numerous neighboring countries, and the differences inside the nation are staggering. The borderer regions in the Appalachia are practically third world compared to the city-state opulence of the Bay Area; and the values of the populations could hardly be more different. If poor people with backwards values being theoretically able to immigrate to the places where rich people with modern values live, shouldn’t we be more worried about the fact that any West Virginian who can purchase a plane ticket and find themselves housing and work is allowed to come to San Francisco and even vote in elections, with no border controls and centralized planning and immigration quotas to prevent the undesirable masses from flowing in without restraint? Surely Californian values and the riches and job markets of California are the fruits of the Californians’ labor, not something an Appalachian borderer may come to feast on whenever they feel like?

But furthermore, even within California we see stark differences! One does not need to venture too far inland to find different cultures and economies. Even if we build a wall around California, the problem persists; the Six Californias plan would have created both the richest and the poorest state of the Union, right next to each other! And indeed we are seeing the phenomenon of Central Californians flocking in to the Bay Area in search of work, the inevitable shantytowns kept away only by regulations that make it illegal for outsiders to ever have affordable housing. Surely it would be better to constrain this perversion and inequality machine, and establish a national border between the regions so that Silicon Valley may use 0.7% of is GDP in foreign aid to its impoverished neighbor and the shantytowns stay in Central California where they belong!

Yet even this is not enough! The neighborhood of Bayview-Hunters Point is notorious for being a honest-to-azathoth shantytown, with a racial distinction as sharp as it can ever be, right next to San Francisco itself. And indeed the denizens ever seek opportunities in the city proper, bringing their shantytownness and cheap labor downtown, driving down the wages of the hard-working residents of SoMa who, without this artificial mobility benefiting only the tech elite, could otherwise be making $50k a year even from burger-flipping! Not to mention all the services that fall under the general category of “servants to software developers” which would not be worth the genuine fair living wage of $30 an hour; the existence of this underpaid underclass allows the software developers to avoid doing their own shopping and driving and cooking and such things and instead use their time for the thing that is their comparative advantage, further driving up inequality when the equalizing effect of inefficient non-division of labor is reduced!

Indeed I say; let us restore all the borders! Back before this “enlightenment” and “emancipation” and such things, people knew their place and they would die on the same plot of land they were born onto. Let each family be bound to their own turf, never even imposing on their neighbor! Let us be truly honest in what we seek and end this charade; bring back serfdom! For only with the complete immobility of the populace, can a truly stable and equal and peaceful society be established. In our village, everyone is equal, looks the same and shares the same customs; and while we know that not every village is as prosperous as ours, we dutifully kind of pay our 0.7% of indulgences I mean aid to the Catholic Church which surely distributes it fairly to the poorest of the world instead of building a golden toilet for the pope; we have not verified this for only the Baron may ever leave this territory, but surely the virtous Church has the interests of all of us in mind!

Obviously, the tail end of this is extreme (and simply dumb in various particular details), but as far as the start of this goes, one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens: I think that modern states are overwhelmingly too big, and not just as a result of there being too many humans on Earth in total. Ideally we should return to the basic unit of society being communities whose size is on the same order of magnitude as Dunbar’s number, perhaps loosely associated into small city-states (composed of Dunbar-sized neighborhoods) and their respective hinterlands (composed of Dunbar-sized villages).

As for cities the size of San Francisco, they shouldn’t be their own nations; they should not exist at all.

That’s quite an extreme opinion. Obviously, people who wish to live in dunbar-communities should be able to live in dunbar-communities (as long as they accept the limitations that come from dunbar-communitarianism), but dunbar-communitarians should not attempt to pry metropolises away from metropolitanians’ hands.

The problem is that the current westphalian system of nation-states allows neither when we should be having both

1 month ago · 73 notes · source: argumate · .permalink

Computer Science/Engineering Masterpost

algorhythmn:

Online lectures:

Discrete Mathematics (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Data Structures (x) (x) (x) (x) (and Object Oriented Programming (x) )

Software Engineering (x)

Database (x)

Operating Systems (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (x)

Computer Architecture (x)

Programming (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Linear Algebra (x) (x) (x)

Artificial Intelligence (x) (x)

Algorithms (x)

Calculus (x) (x) (x)

Tutorials (programming) and other online resources:

Programming languages online tutorials and Computer Science/Engineering online courses

Java tutorial

Java, C, C++ tutorials

Memory Management in C

Pointers in C/C++

Algorithms

Genetic Algorithms

Websites for learning and tools:

Stack Overflow

Khan Academy

Mathway

Recommended books:

Computer organization and design: the hardware/software interface. David A.Patterson & John L. Hennessy.

Artificial intelligence: a modern approac. Stuart J. Russel & Peter Norvig.

Database systems: the complete book. Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey D. Ullman, Jennifer Widom.

Algorithms: a functional programming approach. Fethi Rabbi & Guy Lapalme.

Data Structures & Algorithms in Java: Michael T. Goodrich & Roberto Tamassia.

The C programming language: Kernighan, D. & Ritchie.

Operating System Concepts: Avi Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, Greg Gagne.

Study Tips:

How to Study

Exam Tips for Computer Science

Top 10 Tips For Computer Science Students

Study Skills: Ace Your Computing Science Courses

How to study for Computer Science exams

How to be a successful Computer Science student

Writing in Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering:

Writing a Technical Report

Writing in the Sciences (Stanford online course)

Writing in Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Courses 

(via wirehead-wannabe)

1 month ago · tagged #note to self #baby leet · 7,383 notes · source: algorhythmn · .permalink

ilzolende:

ozymandias271:

fierceawakening:

earlgraytay:

hasure:

earlgraytay:

bizarrolord:

hasure:

“I have borderline personality disorder, I have several anime characters living in my head!!”

lmao ok

When It’s Completely Obvious You’re Faking A Mental Illness for Notes and/or Sympathy

Usually this is a comorbidity thing. Or a coping mechanism thing. Or both. 

This is a bit of a delicate subject. There’s no way to say this without outing myself, so: hi! I have tulpas. Of the “unintentionally formed, probably caused by mental illness” variety. So I’ve got some personal experience with this. 

Now, here’s the thing. A lot of the time, BPD is comorbid with other stuff. It presents a lot of the same symptoms as things like bipolar disorder, and a lot of people with BPD also tend to have autism (autistic people are way more likely to have other psych disorders than the general population) and/or some kind of trauma disorder. Trauma disorders can give someone multiplicity, and autistic people frequently have “imaginary friends” long after the age they’re “supposed” to grow out of it. So, yeah, someone with BPD could have alters or headmates because they’ve got something else going on. 

Someone with BPD could also develop headmates as a coping mechanism thing. BPD can be scary. You’ve got a lot of emotions all going really fast, all at once, and you don’t feel like you’ve got a coherent personality. Sometimes having someone else around to ground you can help. And if you don’t have someone in your life who’s there to help you- which is a pretty frequent thing, no one can do the job of helping you stay safe and on an even keel 24/7- sometimes your brain spits someone out to do the job.
This can be healthy or unhealthy, depending on the people involved and their relationship dynamic. Sometimes the person your brain makes is just a manifestation of your badbrains, (And in that case, you do really need to get help, because having your badbrains nag at you in quasi-human form? Bad idea.) Sometimes it really is like having a supportive friend around most of the time. 

Alternately- and this is a bit controversial, ask two systems and you’ll get sixteen different ideas about this- some people are naturally multiples. Some people just have other people in their head and have for as long as they can remember. For them, it’s normal. Most of them tend to be real quiet about it, because you get flak from all sides for that. But someone with BPD might just be naturally multiple, too. 

“But- why anime characters? That’s stupid. Those characters might not even have existed until two weeks ago.”

Whether you take the natural tack or a more metaphysical one- headmates tend to take the path of least resistance. Mine are old OCs of mine who took on a life of their own-  in a very real sense.They take forms that match what you need. I needed a protector; I got the swaggering vampire nerd who treats me like a kid brother and raises his hackles when he sees someone who wants to hurt me. I kind of trusted him even before he showed up, because he was my character.  I knew who he was. I knew he’d keep me safe. 

Someone else who needs a big brother might pull Kamina or Dean Winchester out of the aether. Someone who needs a warm, comforting motherly presence might grab at Toriel or Square Mom. Someone who needs a protector might get some kind of huge hulking knight. You get what you need.

TL;DR: Someone who has one mental illness and expresses symptoms of another mental illness is not necessarily faking; multiplicity is not necessarily a mental illness thing and is not necessarily fake; people’s headmates taking the form of cartoon characters does not make them fake. Thank you for your time.

….. ok anyway stop faking bpd cus u think u have ur shitty ocs/anime characters living in ur head :)

Your reading comprehension is bad, and you should feel bad.

…wow.

I’ve said before I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on this whole phenomenon, but even with that…

I’m really starting to hate this Tumblr trend of responding to someone who writes a careful, well-thought-out, and detailed post about something they experience with “I am Sarcastic, and you are Wrong.”

Dissociative identity disorder and BPD are linked to the point that some researchers have suggested they’re the same thing but yeah, okay, sure, I’m going to take my medical advice from randos on the Internet who like making fun of special snowflakes

I agree with @fierceawakening, and also would like to note that dreams demonstrate that many human brains can run simulations of multiple personalities.

Also, it’s highly suspiciously coherent that some descriptions of “demonic possession” would match malignant non-intentionally formed tulpas (or whatever one wishes to call them) so well. And it doesn’t really seem like it would take that much of things going off the reference blueprints for a brain to start consistently using its ability to simulate other personalities to, well, simulate other personalities consistently.

Furthermore, the heuristic of “people are probably bad at describing their stuff so you’d understand it” seems rather embarrassingly obvious compared to “lol, people are [slur redacted]”, so naturally people often prefer the latter one when someone is being weird. The Dogma of Mandatory Comprehensibility at action.

(via ilzolende)

1 month ago · 280 notes · source: hasure · .permalink

Anonymous asked: Would you say yes to get the power to make laws, and if anyone breaks them they get smited

davidsevera:

voximperatoris:

shlevy:

voximperatoris:

davidsevera:

Absolutely. The first law would be that anyone who tries to launch a nuclear weapon gets smited. Or even that anyone who tries to commit mass murder gets smited. (I imagine you’d have to craft the laws very carefully to keep them from being gamed. Like, you wouldn’t want someone to set it up so that their being smited is what causes other people to die.) Also, perhaps a law protecting me from assassination attempts. It’s a powerful enough ability to conquer the world I think, but I’d do my best to use it in a very limited capacity, since it’s a rather blunt instrument to change behavior. I’d try to reduce existential risks and end wars, but that’s probably it.

I’d have to think about how much I’d want to cooperate with the international community.

Dude, this is almost exactly the Death Note power, and you’d better believe that I have it all worked out how to create a “new world” way better than Light Yagami.

Let me just say, I would not be conservative with it. Things wouldn’t be too different in regard to individuals—except that suddenly all the laws against murder, robbery, etc. would become absolutely binding.

But government officials had better watch out.

More details?

Well, where to begin…

I perhaps a bit too conservative in my my earlier estimate, since this power actually far exceeds that of the Death Note.

I suppose the first thing I would do is pass a law against my using the power unjustly, to prevent myself from becoming corrupted by it. (Resulting, I guess, in immediate death if the rest of this strikes you as corrupt.)

Then, it seems with this mechanism that I would lack the Death Note’s ability to send messages, so I wouldn’t be able to communicate the principles of the new world order that way.

However, if I could pass a law against attempting or conspiring to kill me, I could simply announce myself as Supreme Justice of the World. I would arrange a suitable demonstration of my power and require the leaders of the nearest military force to take orders from me. Then I would command them to unify all the world’s governments, making it illegal to violently resist them (or for them to engage in looting or other abuses).

Crime (murder, robbery, rape, etc.) would be eliminated as a major social problem, as all serious crimes would be punishable by smiting. With a 100% detection and conviction rate, it is unlikely that many would be attempted.

With control of all the world’s governments, I would be able to command them to do anything. However, with this power, it is unclear what the purpose would be even of minimal government, so I would abolish all of them—except, of course, government by magic power of smiting.

There would be immediate open borders. Conveniently, this would obviate all concerns about crime or political takeover—since the commission of any violent crimes would be punishable by immediate and certain death, and there wouldn’t be any governments to take over.

There would also be immediate abolition of all other restraints and controls over the economy. Also very conveniently, there would be no concern about unregulated corporations knowingly selling people poisoned food or something—since this would be punished by smiting.

People would be free to do anything except initiate the use of force. I could go on, but presumably you get the drift.

But with this power, we could also do other things. For instance, we could vastly expand the reach of human knowledge at an incredible rate. We could formulate all important and unresolved scientific problems in terms of true/false questions. For instance, “P = NP, T/F?” Then, taking volunteers (perhaps from people dying of terminal diseases), I make it illegal to answer incorrectly. By process of elimination, we sort through all the mysteries of the universe, curing all diseases, ending aging, developing Friendly AI, and so on.

So yeah, I would not be conservative.

A lot of this seems wrong-headed to me, for the simple reason that you could die. I could understand using your power to set up a new, better regime, but using your power to create a new world order that’s entirely contingent upon you - no more governments at all! - is very foolhardy. Even if you had a succession plan, everything could easily fall apart in the time it took to get police/military forces going again. Making sure that humanity’s ability to rule itself doesn’t wholly atrophy would hugely limit how much you should change things.

Okay but seriously. This is way OP.

Light promethea first; only very unambigously good actions:

Banning conspiring, or planning, or trying, to kill me, or otherwise render me incapable of doing my duty, is the obvious first step.

Immediately, I proceed to ban sucking the blood of a human with one’s sucking-snout. Boom, mosquitoes are gone.

Also, dividing one’s self into multiple cells with too seriously damaged restraints is also illegal. Cancer is over.

And every infectious disease I can think of follows next. Parasites, pests, always defined in terms of taking certain actions so evolution will learn that homo sapiens is not to be fucked with. Oh, and it’s illegal for an embryo to grow if it has certain genes that would be a rapid death sentence or “just” a source of unbearable suffering for the resulting human. And I’d seriously look into the medical science of “how many conditions could we cure just by declaring cells legally responsible individuals and smiting those who get out of line?”

Then, humans. This is a bit more involved because crafting appropriate laws with such a blunt power is hard but torture, murder, terrorism, wars, inprisoning people who don’t present a danger to others, trying to enforce certain kinds of laws that violate personal autonomy etc. are pretty easy to ban. All in all, it’s probably better to target politicians and other influential people and demand them to adjust institutions to be more respectful of people, than to impose cruel magical hammerlaw nailing down those who fall on the wrong side of the line, because if the power goes away at death (I’m not planning on ever dying but it’s kind of selfish to stake the long-term survival of humanity completely on my own) I’d rather not have athropied all the structures that could keep the world together afterwards.

Of course, replacing them with better ones is totally fair game, and I’d start constructing the Archipelago immediately. I announce my intent to do it, declare that anyone who wants to join it must make an unbreakable oath to follow the very limited rules (but which they can later recant after leaving if they wish to), basically accepting that they may be smote if they grossly and knowingly violate the agreements they have made with the Archipelago (such as by trying to illegally interfere with a different polity from one’s own, or by trying to prevent someone from exercising their right of exit, or by subjecting humanity to intolerable X-risks, and other such things). In exchange, they gain immunity to the exercise of non-archipelago power; people who reject the archipelago’s non-smitey justice that demands adequate compensation for violating the rights of archipelagians will be smote instead.

And I’d totally do that binary search tree euthanasia thing because omfg lol yeah we’d fix everything pretty fast.

Now what about the other, less cautious version?

- - - dark promethea show me the forbidden utopia - - -

Apart from the above, the dark version would be less discriminate about applying the smitings to nonconsensual violence and coercion. A small fraction of the population is responsible for a huge share of those things, and eliminating them would be a pretty big benefit.

Repeat rapists, people who delight in cruelty to people or animals they have power over, those who systematically exploit people’s good nature and assumptions of benevolence, consistently violent people, those who aggressively seek authority or desire to impose it upon others, etc.

A very dark version would just declare everyone untouchable like “yeah, people have rights now, and you will respect them; what are you going to do about it?” The resulting massive die-off of people who had previously grown used to getting away with violations would probably not be optimal as it would (oftentimes literally) decimate a lot of institutions, but I can’t say it wouldn’t have a certain poetic justice to it.

Even if I were to die later, I’d expect the effect to be similar to what happened to that one baboon group where all the most aggressive and dominant males died from poisonous meat and consequently the culture got enduringly more n e o t e n i c and kind (by baboon standards). With the people who abuse that trust gone, societies could adopt much higher-trust norms and give up a lot of defensiveness.

And dark promethea would also declare that people must pay 10% of their consumption to good-faith EA as long as there still are people whose basic material needs aren’t adequately met (and the percentage would go down over time as the necessity gets lower via voluntary action, increasing people’s access to productive capital etc. or possibly higher if automation threatens to render people redundant and unable to provide for themselves otherwise due to excessive concentration of capital; no Landian accelerationism on my planet), unless they are taxed more than that by a state or have a sufficiently low income that they’d more appropriately count as recipients instead; and trying to enforce taxation on non-consenting people who can show that they have paid their 10% to valid causes (the simplest option being a global scheme that invests what it collects in index funds and distributes profits as UBI) would also be illegal. Governments would probably get into the value-creation business pretty fast and we’d actually end poverty and all that bullshit instead of playing around with buying votes from redwashed rentiers and not-even-0.7%-that-often-goes-to-robber-barons-too.

1 month ago · tagged #support your local supervillain #death cw · 20 notes · source: davidsevera · .permalink