brave and steely-eyed and morally pure and a bit terrifying… /testimonials /evil /leet .ask? .ask_long?
"I hate people who are so eager to embrace the harshness of reality they don’t take five seconds to check whether it can be changed."
@ozymandias271 (via wirehead-wannabe)
And I love people who are so eager to reject the harshness of reality that they don’t take five seconds to check whether other people think it can’t be changed.
(via metagorgon)
1 month ago · tagged #fuck the natural order · 532 notes · source: wirehead-wannabe · .permalink
(via sigmaleph)
1 month ago · 139 notes · source: chroniclesofrettek · .permalink
Chain of notes attached to a ticket:
New programmer on the completion notes: “Reduced 600 lines of mostly redundant case statements to 15 tightly constructed lines.”
Her manager, in the management notes on the same ticket: “15 lines of code in 3 hours is not enough.”
I want to rage quit and I don’t even have this job
I read that and I’m just gasping out loud in fury and disbelief repeatedly.
dude I know nuts about programming and I still want to rage quit
I want to disrupt that manager so completely and thoroughly and hire that programmer.
(via metagorgon)
1 month ago · 8,146 notes · .permalink
Wait a goddamn second political alignment charts are literally the same exact thing as D&D alignment grids. What the shit
- Lawful Good: True State Socialism
- Lawful Neutral: Left-leaning liberals
- Lawful Evil: “moderate” liberals, neocons
- Neutral Good: [Impossible due to the nature of politics?]
- True Neutral: South Park libertarians, Legal Weed Capitalists
- Neutral Evil: people obsessed with “states’ rights”
- Chaotic Good: Anarcho-communists, the Yippies
- Chaotic Neutral: Vermin Supreme
- Chaotic Evil: militia groups and anarcho-capitalists
tag yourself I’m true neutral
I’m seeing that Neutral Good is unoccupied territory and seizing it to be the refuge of all “I don’t really know the specifics but we should have post-scarcity and freedom and niceness and 3d-printers for all and nobody voting on anyone’s body” people
I thought given it’s between between state socialism and Anarcho-communists, “Social Democracy“ was the obvious idea to slot there.
No, socdems are LN in this one; NG is a continuation from “states’ rights” to “weed capitalists” to X so it’s some kind of egalitarian minarchism which is close enough for these purposes.
But that doesn’t include the idea that we are obligated to help each other, which joins state socialism and anarcho-communism.
Curses, maybe OP was right.
“We are obligated to help each other, so the state should get out of the way and stop hindering it by trying to micromanage human interaction, but it should ensure a sufficient basic income because that’s very important and can’t be left to chance”
The axes are perfectly coherent: Lawful = big government, Neutral = small government, Chaotic = no government; Good = equality, Neutral = (as Vermin Supreme puts it) “letting shit fall where it may”, Evil = hierarchy.
Thus the Neutral Evil/Neutral/Good becomes:
small government for purposes of hierarchy (“states’ rights” is often basically a very transparent euphemism for “the federal government shouldn’t be able to stop us from reinstating slavery”)
small government for purposes of letting shit fall where it may (soft libertarianism)
small government for purposes of equality (which some kind of welfare minarchism would be pretty much exactly; (arguably a post-scarcity society might be closer to “letting shit fall where it may” and I personally might be actually closer to Chaotic Neutral in this chart (except quite pragmatic about it and thus approaching True Neutral most of the time or something) but I wanted to impose my desire of not allowing impossibilities on this one and the politics of niceness and helping each other were a good fit with neutral good (as I said I don’t really know the specifics and we just should have a good society with no poverty or voting on people’s bodies and I’m not lawful enough to let the letter of the chart override the spirit of neutral good)))
In comparison: Lawfuls are:
big government for hierarchy (imperialism, authoritarianism)
big government for letting shit fall where it may (social democracy is not exactly known for its anti-statist ideals; the people making “governmentisgood.com” websites about how the mortgage deduction is supposedly not an indirect way of robbing the poor to subsidize the homeowning middle class which is more well-off to begin with than those who don’t own homes, but instead “a good thing your tax moneys pay for” (oh sure, it’s my tax moneys all right, paying for someone else’s McMansion because I’m the kind of a person who doesn’t want to get tied down to property and thus the state shall scorn me financially to punish my degenerate lifestyle (I’m not a fan of landlords but they do create some value by enabling me to not own my own housing so I can move somewhere else really easily in pursuit of opportunities and/or cute people)) and defending things like “the state should regulate the opening hours of grocery stores” and doing all the big government apologia tend to disproportionately be socdems who don’t see all the harms they are causing with reckless applications of the State and PoliceMob; and it notably rejects the more aggressive leveling of Actual Socialism in favor of simply regulating the excesses of statist crony capitalism (or less charitably, sweeping them under the rug by its tendency to be unwilling to address the root causes like dysfunctional markets which, combined with the absence of meaningful alternative ways of acquiring sustenance, together permit the existence of such abominations as “shitty jobs for poor people” in the first place) thus it belongs here; of course it could be that “social democracy” means different things in different places, but I definitely live in one, am desperately trying to get away from there, and can tell that around here “social democracy” means Jantelaw, mind-bogglingly unnecessary regulation (San Francisco is certainly trying though, but it’s a neophyte in comparison) voting on people’s bodies, and “omfg you (mostly) americans aren’t going to believe how much of the value we create is seized by the state” (in Finland 24% VAT on most things, up to ~35% progressive national income tax, ~16-23% municipal income tax depending on location (with a flat deduction for the first few thousand euros a year) ~25% payroll tax for pensions, 20% corporate tax, ~30% capital gains tax, and extra taxes on specific things; and Sweden once taxed a childrens’ book author 102%[sic])))
big government for equality (statist socialism)
And Chaotics:
no government for purposes of hierarchy (basically “we have guns, you don’t, so we tell you what to do; should’ve gotten guns of your own if you didn’t want this to happen”)
no government for purposes of letting shit fall where it may
no government for purposes of equality
1 month ago · tagged #bitching about the country of birth #this is a social democracy hateblog #psa: do not tumblrpost in lisp please #be smart don't be like promethea who tumblrposts in lisp · 144 notes · source: maxiesatanofficial · .permalink
@socialjusticemunchkin I have now sung this post. (You are in the metadata as the composer and lyricist, hopefully.)
nniihilsupernum said: are you sure you mean ‘ASA’
No. But the line “Hip hip hurray for the AS of A!” was in there, so I thought it might work.
Yes, the Anarchist State of America; would probably be better spelled out properly.
(via ilzolende)
1 month ago · 8 notes · source: ilzolende · .permalink
Anonymous asked: What is your opinion on International Tell Your Crush Day?
I am, if you will recall, a fan of the no-obligation crush. Which is to say that in the unlikely scenario that I have a crush upon your totes adorbs self, you are in no way obliged to return it.
My crush is my own. It’s nice if we share a mutual attraction, but even if you show no interest in my pudding-like physical form, I will still hang out with you. This isn’t a contract where I will only do nice things for you unless you promise to smooch the hell out of me; no, we are friends, and while my friendship may be laced with a bit of intoxication over the idea of smooching you, I value your actual presence over my daydreams.
Tl;dr: I’d rather have you in my life as a buddy than reject you for the crime of not crushing back.
And I often do reveal crushes, just to get that out of the way. “Hey, I crush on you, this is a factor to be considered in our relationship, like the weather or traffic jams.” I do it not because I intend to arm-wrestle love out of them, but because they should probably know that if they choose to, say, complain to me extensively that there aren’t any good men out there who like them, I may get a bit huffy for reasons that might seem mysterious in the absence of this crush-visibility zone.
Basically this, I highly endorse this kind of approach.
1 month ago · 4 notes · .permalink
collapsedsquid asked: I've seen you talking about sortition a few times, and I'm curious, how seriously do you take it? How worried are you about issues of legitimacy?
oligopsony-deactivated20160508:
Serious! I think forms of government can be arbitrarily weird and yet considered legitimate as long as there’s appropriate ritual around them and they people’s lives are about as good as they expect them to be, and I don’t think sortition is that weird - it’s fair, it’s representative, it’s been done before.
Those who see voting as expressing the “consent of the governed”, maintain that voting is able to confer legitimacy in the selection. According to this view, elected officials can act with greater authority than when randomly selected.[55] With no popular mandate to draw on, politicians lose a moral basis on which to base their authority. As such, politicians would be open to charges of illegitimacy, as they were selected purely by chance.
I don’t see the downside.
The issue is when lack of agreed-upon and enforceable methods for resolving disputes leads to terrible outcomes when disagreements do occur, such as mob violence or all-out war.
I think “avoiding mob violence or all-out war” or “let’s pay everyone the same reasonable amount of universal basic income for their basic needs, funded with a universal flat tax without loopholes or deductions or favoritism to special interests, and a land value tax based on the market value of the land in question” or “let’s ensure that people can’t pass the harms of their actions onto non-consenting third parties” requires way less legitimacy than “let’s ban e-cigs, unprescribed estrogen, transgenic food, sex workers, and black people” or “let’s arbitrarily intrude into the private lives of people so we can know how much exactly to rob them for the purpose of subsidizing cronies while simultaneously treating the poor with degrading paternalism” or “let’s decide (primarily based on whose special interests are the best in lobbying and arranging favors) the ~exact specifics~ of the future of energy, transportation, jobs, and other big parts of the economy and rob the public to pad the pockets of our buddies” and thus reducing the government’s legitimacy on the margin would primarily impact the latter before adversely impacting the former.
Welfare minarchism is a far more stable and less-legitimacy-requiring equilibrium than statist micromanagement, and people are far more likely to start asking questions about the latter while the former can defend itself with substance so it doesn’t need to resort to style by pleading to the vox populi.
The trust I need to let someone engage in a legal and low-value commercial transaction with me is far lower than the trust I need to let someone run my life for me, and attempting to run my life for me and failing at it reduces my trust for commercial transaction purposes as well, so at least I would consider a government that was only allowed to eg. set the tax rate, use 25% of the collected taxes to run a justice system, science, public-goods-kind-of research, and all the Institutes of Specific Study and Standardization that make basically a rounding error of the government budget and are actually useful or at worst just a harmless hobby for some nerds, and divide 75% equally to everyone, far more legitimate than a government that is allowed to define poker, vote on my body, require permits for fortune-tellers, socially engineer the entire nation into car dependency as an anti-communist conspiracy, socially engineer the entire nation into chemical moralism as an anti-hippie-and-black-people conspiracy, take some money from me to subsidize some asshole’s weapons manufacturing business to ~create jobs~ (something I could do perfectly well on my own thank you very much, by paying people who create value to me in proportion to the value they have created and thus incentivizing people to do positive-sum things to each other; who does the government think pays the wages of workers, the boss? okay actually please don’t answer that question oh god), kidnap poor people for trivial and victimless things (or socially engineer a situation which makes some poor people do more victimful things than they’d have otherwise done) so it can ~create jobs~ by paying other poor people (and their rich cronyist bosses and investors) to watch over and abuse the first set of poor people, etc.
1 month ago · tagged #the best heuristic for oppressed people since sharp stick time #seriously tho if the government was simply banned from doing any #~job creation~ #it would already be a massive improvement #because it would have to give money to people if it wanted to be keynesian #and thus people could use the money on the things they actually need #not things assholes think other people need to have imposed upon them #and the same thing goes for food stamps etc. #if you want paternalism you can buy paternalism on the market #yes this is what a promethea actually believes #basic income would enable life management businesses #that take people's money and pay their bills for them #so they can't drink or gamble themselves into trouble even if they have low conscientiousness #and the users of the service would be the payers of the service so the business would be incentivized to serve them #instead of the moralism of the voters · 23 notes · .permalink
Me: This is the type of quality Ilzo we have come to recognise the world-over.
Me: *ie: In the US and the Caribbean.
@ilzolende: Ehh, the US is the entire world, and adding the Caribbean adds a third world, so that’s enough world for me.
Me: Technically, the Caribbean includes the second and third worlds, because Cuba is still Socialist.
@ilzolende: Ooh!
@ilzolende: We have all 3 worlds!
@ilzolende: That is Most World.
Me: See, my people have twice as many worlds as yours! Take that!
Ilzo Kiefer: Only because you’re dirty commies.
Alison @sinesalvatorem: Truuue
Ilzo Kiefer: Okay, okay, commies who often shower multiple times per day.
Ilzo Kiefer: But still commies.
Alison @sinesalvatorem: Hey! I was about to make that same joke!
Ilzo Kiefer: What are you going to do? Have your communist buddies expropriate it?
Alison @sinesalvatorem: You do realise that
stealingexpropriating my jokes is COMMUNISM, right?Alison @sinesalvatorem: Dammit!
We nordics are all a bunch of pirates and don’t believe that information may be owned so I’m not stealing || expropriating anything, I’m simply copying it and spreading it. In fact, I’m actually doing you favor because your reps are so going to get bumped by exposing these posts to as wide an audience as possible, so if anything I’m creating value to you totally for free (which is COMMUNISM, you COMMUNISTS who use my value, which I’ve created, for free like the COMMUNISTS you are!), but I’m not seeking any compensation, just a bump to my own rep corresponding to the value I’ve created to everyone.
Information wants to be free as in “speech”, and inspecting the supply/demand graphs suggests that information wants to be free as in “beer” too because it has an inverse price/quantity relationship. We can have one Tesla model S if we pay $100k, but to buy a million model S’s asap we’d need to pay way more than $100k for each because we’d need to reallocate a lot of stuff on the margin; but if I was willing to supply one piece of information to one person for $100k, I’d supply it for a million for $0.1 per purchaser because copying costs are less than the price of keeping track of them. This suggests that societal value will be maximized by eliminating monopolies in information (expect information that produces negative externalities like leaked nudes) and rewarding the producers of information in some other way than having users of information pay for it.
(via ilzolende)
1 month ago · tagged #turning trashposts into overthinking since 2016 · 27 notes · source: sinesalvatorem · .permalink
(via multiheaded1793)
1 month ago · tagged #brilliant #nothing to add but tags · 28 notes · source: facebook.com · .permalink
queerqueerspawn asked: Why would you sometimes prefer to call that group "extropians"? I'm just asking because I'm unfamiliar with that...
cause it’s the earliest group that was a recognizable version of the clique, it was this transhumanist discussion group in the 90′s [link] which was where yudkowsky and robin hanson met, before they would go on to start the blog “overcoming bias,” and then yudkowsky started lesswrong as a spinoff of overcoming bias, and the rest is history. also the extropians were overtly libertarian/objectivist, so bringing up that the lesswrongers/”rationalists” have their roots in the extropian movement supports my argument that the politics of the lesswrong ideology is ultimately right-libertarian in nature.
but ideological “natures” just aren’t phyletic in this sense - otherwise right-libertarianism itself (for instance) could never have come to be
Ultimately we are all @-listers though, united in our opposition to the PC regadless of what differences there might be amongst us, if not better for it as we totally can show that the outer edges of the solar system have room enough for everyone by the brilliant method of “not hanging out on the same celestial object as the people you disagree with too much”. Autonomist Alliance solidarity forever!
1 month ago · tagged #shitposting #i'm talking about #eclipse phase #in case you couldn't tell #i guess i'd be extropian mutualist or something #at least if a genie told me i was going to be automagically transported to that universe #and could choose which people to hang out with #from behind a rawlsian veil of ignorance #and wasn't allowed to think too long about it #then those are probably the ones i'd go with #emigrating from titan because the oligarhyi need to get off my lawn #like move to the pc if you love it so much #i'd totally be a grumpy gerontarch #i was around in the 1000's and the original oligarhyi were really bad people #you kids don't know what you are larping #this is why we needed to get off the planet don't bring that bullshit here #fuck this and your democracy i'm moving to extropia at least they don't vote over there #except with their rep and wallets #which means that i can just disassociate with them if i disagree with the vote #good luck trying to do that on titan #but honestly tho i'd totally take titan over any actually existing country #it would be like would the transhuman utopia give everyone #free 3d-printers and free markets #or just free 3d-printers and somewhat free markets #i'm not going to be picky if i can have either one #i'm so not picky i'm willing to accept several variations on techno-utopianism #that is the non-pickiest thing ever · 9 notes · source: leviathan-supersystem · .permalink