First: #support your local supervillain is the evil tag, not to be taken 100% seriously. It’s Dark promethea, the side of myself that is best left as online ranting to relieve a frustration on the universe otherwise sufficient to cause so much facepalm to sprout forth as to destroy all the remaining rainforests in Southeast Asia to make room for the plantations necessary to hold them in.
Second: if one has to deathnote a national-level politician to deliver a message to the rest, one would obviously choose the most useless, the most harmful, the most dangerous, and the most anti-humanity politicians one can find. And as it happens, while I do not actually condone deathnoting politicians (although I acknowledge that this view might be subject to inevitable reconsideration were I to acquire such an artifact, which is why it’s probably good that such artifacts most likely don’t actually exist), but if one were to, I don’t think one would have to think too hard and long on which guys to sacrifice. I’m from Europe, we have really terrible politicians around here, and they are literally killing people through their really terrible policies.
injygo said: So you’ve got a little list?
I had, but both Osama Bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi are dead now, and I still am not in possession of a Death Note.
If I end up stuck with the One Ring, there is no way I’m giving it to the cool ambitious rationalists. As Alison and crowd have pointed out before, that thing corrupts. I think the consensus ended up being that we give it to aprilwitching, and only handle it in one of those lead-lined cart things you use to keep radioactive stuff away from you if you handle radioactive medicines a lot.
If the artifact is not one of the Inherently Corrupting ones, it goes to basically any of my online acquaintances who seem ethical, ambitious, and interesting who can either pick it up from me themselves or otherwise arrange secure transit.
So, an interesting question: that logic holds for the one ring. What about the other artifacts? Would you, for example, feel comfortable giving me the Death Note?
(Death Note b/c degree of corruption is…unclear, at best.)
Clearly the Death Note belongs to me, because we absolutely don’t have any evidence that giving it to someone named Kira would end poorly.
Death Note mentioned, and I heard someone here likes contrived scenarios leading to world domination, so let me present mine:
I’ve got 21 days of untraceable control on anyone, with the unfortunate side effect that it’s lethal. Kind of a bummer that last one, but it can be put to good use.
Now, were I to acquire one, I’d naturally test it on someone evil, well-known, and actively hunted, so that I’d get the news of it working reliably and using it would only leak the information that someone who knows about $famous_bad_guy did it, or in other words, basically zero. For example, if there was some kind of an intertationally hunted terrorist or something, and a superpower were to take them out in a surprise raid 21 days after me acquiring the Note, that would be pretty strong and safe evidence that it works.
Then, politicians. Every country has “those guys” who are only good for deathnote-fodder (such as nazis) and I’d use them to deliver my messages to the world’s influential people. In their own language of course, so they wouldn’t leak information. The rules themselves are pretty simple: do what the sovereign of the new world says, or face the consequences. Only those who disobey, or are actively extra-evil would need to be taken out. Trying to hunt down criminals is a waste of human life when one could be reshaping institutions surgically.
The interesting part would be whether I could use it to control other things; for example, would writing “$person dies from heart attack after hearing about $marvellous_invention on the news” make someone else invent $marvellous_invention? If it could, then that’s obscenely exploitable. Whoops, someone accidentally released gene-drivered mosquitoes with inevitable eradication instincts into the wild and the biggest bioethicist in the world had a heart attack, how “unfortunate”. And maybe someone were to invent a strange apparently reactionless source of propulsion or something too.
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
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.
i don’t understand why people don’t instantly respond to “what would your dream superpower be” with the ability to manipulate probability. think about it. what’s the chance someone will drop 1mil in front of me? 0%? let’s make that 100%. what’s the probability i’ll wake up tomorrow and be X gender? 100%. what’s the probability my bathtub is filled with mac and cheese? 100%.
as a casino employee I can confirm this would be terrifying as fuck
I still like teleport, no error, whether I’ve ever been there or not.
The superpower of
probability
is terrifying for other reasons.
what’s the probability my bathtub is filled with mac and cheese? 100%.
Consider all the unlikely things that must occur in just the proper sequence for this to happen. It’s not just wishing 50 gallons of mac & cheese into existence – that’d be a different superpower.
No, we’re talking about some serious reality bending here.
Like maybe: an 18-wheeler hauling a load of instant Kraft macaroni & cheese collides with a tanker truck filled with water outside your home. Both vehicles erupt into flame, which cooks the combined noodles & cheese mixture within a small non-nuclear mushroom cloud of an explosion.
The cooked mixture of mac & cheese (and burning fuel!) rises into the air on thermals a hundred feet above your house, exactly above your bathroom.
At just the right moment, as the starchy cloud of cheesy noodles reaches the apex of its hideous arc, a freak storm causes a lightning bolt to crash down out of the blue, blasting a hole in your roof above the bathtub.
Shingles and plywood explode away from the roof and are diverted to the side by sudden 50 mph crosswinds… which, because of freak weather conditions, are perfectly timed to whisk away the roof debris but stop just as suddenly before the descending cloud of mac & cheese can be blown aside.
Four seconds later there is a moist mighty THLUPPPPnoise as ~50 gallons of half-cooked, badly mixed mac & cheese & diesel fuel land in a soggy mess within your bathtub.
Ding! Your bathtub full of mac & cheese? Probability 100%.
Also: two dead truck drivers, untold collateral damage from the explosion, a wrecked roof, dangerous storms trashing the neighborhood, and a disgusting inedible mess in your bathroom.
Oh wait, you wanted it perfectly cooked, ready to eat? Too bad… you didn’t specify that. And if you had, imagine the FURTHER ridiculous unlikely events required to make that happen.
Because you’re not just wishing shit into existence. You’re shifting realities.
Which, if you’re selecting for a very improbable circumstance means moving a LOT of existing reality out of the way – which takes energy. Because reality has inertia & momentum just like a river does, and does not want to be diverted.
This might be the most terrifying super power ever, just from its side effects.
people don’t instantly respond with this, or anything else that’s isomorphic to complete omnipotence, because it’s prototypically op & no fun
and yet I can see the desperate flaw. Better than H.G. Wells, sure– they see the methods by which things are to be done, by which incentives are to be arranged…
but not well enough. Liberals plan incentives. God laughs. And many people can believe in their own destiny.
As far as open borders are concerned, I would expect a tremendous revival of ethnic nationalism on a small scale, perhaps even non-geographic nations and a Fifty-Thousand-Mile-Rhine as in Diamond Age, and after a few generations, the system ossifying around whoever migrated the most early on and excluding others, similar to the cynical perspective on labor unions today.
Carson + Paul is obviously the best choice. Heal the world + never worry about being sick or getting STDs + end the drug war. Only downside is spending three hours a day praying, which is honestly the easiest downside to deal with.
Also I think Paul’s running mate bonus is supposed to say “decriminalization” in the last paragraph.
Kasich is better than Carson I think. If you have a legion of 11 million loyal followers willing to heed your beck and call you could do pretty much anything and it would be a lot more fun than standing around all day touching people and feeling guilty every second that you’re doing anything else
I’m trying to figure out why Ted’s running mate bonus is supposed to be a good thing lol
I mean you could probably earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a day curing AIDS and cancer if you really just wanted to use it on yourself. Which is arguably just as good if not better than having 11 million loyal followers.
Or you could tax the ohioans just a few dollars a day each to earn a hundred times more.
Assuming “Ohio” means the legal state of Ohio, and not “the territory which currently forms the state of Ohio”, Kasich/Paul is totally OP and broken.
First, I legalize individuals and communities choosing which state to belong to democratically. The other states may whine, but governance only with the consent of the governed doesn’t violate basic rights, so with Paul I can totally do it.
Then I end the drug war. In Ohio, because I’ve legalized states setting their own drug laws.
I decriminalize states setting their own immigration rules, and open the borders in Ohio, defining ohioans as “anyone present in Ohio, or who announces their decision to join Ohio, or who has previously fulfilled either condition and has not renounced their ohioanness” (thus, making me immune to assassinations as anyone who would try to do it would have to travel to Ohio, become ohioan, and stop wanting to assassinate me and start wanting to protect me instead).
Then I implement a basic income in Ohio (for those who have been ohioans for a sufficient amount of time, as I have previously suggested). And all the other cool stuff, in Ohio.
Everyone would give anything for the cause, so I ask the people to be excellent to each other, and otherwise be free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t deprive others of the same right (but if they wish to give to charity they really should prioritize EA instead of Make-a-Wish). Crime in Ohio plummets to zero, and so does poverty, deprivation, and coercion. The economy gets an immense boom from the immigrants, and the abolition of zero-sum and negative-sum bullshit games, and all people working together for their prosperity, like a weird libertarian (or, in fact, full-blown anarchist in all but name) version of North Korea’s propaganda films come true.
The obvious consequence is that a lot of people would want to be a part of Ohio. Just as planned. It won’t take long until Ohio has a population of approximately 200 million and covers a vast fractal shape encompassing most of the major cities.
Then I become the president of the US in the most overwhelming election since Washington, seize control of all brances of the government, and turn my Paul powers to international law instead. Rinse repeat with a bit more restraint to not provoke a nuclear war, and I’ll soon have acquired most of the Americas, the major liberal cities of Europe, and vast swathes of territory in Africa as well (I’m deliberately not touching Russia or China because that way lies armageddon), in this only-nominally-stateful community of freedom and dignity.
It’s immune to invasions because open borders mind control magic, it’s immune to terrorism because surely you wouldn’t want to hurt your fellow ohioans, it’s immune to pretty much everything except ICBMs. For ICBMs my policy will be a clear and ruthless MAD if attacked, but otherwise non-interference in the affairs of the other superpower and the little regional Shitholistan with a superiority complex propped up by its ridiculous nuclear arsenal. In fact, I can afford a comparably submissive foreign policy, letting Russia pick the arctic oil and China get whatever gas fields it wants because our anarchist regime is too rich to care about such slim pickings.
We’re going to outer space instead. All the labor and ingenuity currently wasted in pointless things will be redirected in a program of technology and space colonization (and AI research but I’m assuming no FAI because it kind of cuts everything short and turns things boring). We’re going to cure all the diseases, conquer the Moon, Mars, and everywhere. We’re going to win.
A wise man once asked: “Why does everything always end in world domination with you guys?”
The rationalist answered: “Have you ever tried giving us a scenario that did not have world domination built in?”
To the US I came seeking fortune But they’re making me work til I’m dead The congressmen have it so easy The bankers put gold on their bread The people of the world are so hungry But think what a feast there could be If we could create an anarchist state That cared for the people like me:
I am the man who arranges the blocks That descend upon me from up above. They come down and I spin them around Til they fit in the ground like hand in glove. Sometimes it seems that to move blocks is fine And the lines will be formed as they fall - Then I see that I have misjudged it! I should not have nudged it after all.
Can I have a long one please? Why must these infernal blocks tease?
I am the man who arranges the blocks That continue to fall from up above. Come Ohioan! To the every last one! An individualist regime of peace and love. I work so hard in arranging the blocks But the landlord and taxman bleed me dry But Ohio will rise! We will not compromise For we know that the old regime must die.
Long live freedom, burn the flags! We salute the orange and black!
I am the man who arranges the blocks That continue to fall from up above. The food on your plate no concern of the state An individualist regime of peace and love. I have my choice in arranging the blocks Under promethean rule, what you say goes. The rule of the game is our rights are the same And my blocks can make my own-shaped rows.
Long live Ohio! It loves you! Sing these words, you know what it’ll do…
I am the man who arranges the blocks That are made by the men from Shitholistan. They came two weeks ago and back there they won’t go Now they’re working to our world conquest plan. I am the man who arranges the nukes That will make all the Putin keep away The hopes have come back, and ‘Murica is Black! Let us point all our dollars at EA.
We shall live forever more! We can start an altruism war!
I am the man who arranges the blocks That are building a highly secret base. Hip hip hurray for the AS of A! We are sending our men to outer space.
I think John Kasich needs errata.
Okay, Kasich is nerfed down to “the physical area which currently corresponds to a state called “Ohio””.
Rubio/Paul it is then. I can convince most people to do most things, now let’s see who was the person whose superpower was “win-win” which synergizes very well with this… right, it was me. And let’s check who has been whining about the state criminalizing all kinds of things pointlessly… again, how convenient.
So I’m starting in SF this time because Ohio sucks if I can’t make it encompass non-sucky places. I can convince most people to support my bostadsrett housing reform, I can decriminalize (important! no legalize because legalize means regulation, just decriminalize) drugs, sex work, immigrants, etc. in around 5 minutes, and most importantly:
“would you kindly introduce me to the most influential person you can, tomorrow”
I’ll reach Musk in a week, two at most. Won’t even need to wouldyoukindly him to work together on things. Instead, I’ll wouldyoukindly the asshole billionaires, like Trump, to donate money to EA; the rest of the world I’ll just convince.
I’ll wouldyoukindly the government (a private plane and convincing everyone that I, as a famous and trusted person, don’t need to be metal-detectored) to govern less, both at home and abroad. I’ll wouldyoukindly Putin and whoever is in charge in China.
More subtlety than with automagical Kasich, but even then I’d be a very strong thumb on the scales and the best lobbyist ever. I’ll convince people that they should not regulate everything; that mosquitoes should be eradicated; that copyright and patents should be abolished (with a bit of wouldyoukindlying the key people as well); that people should share 3d-printers to provide necessities to everyone instead of having horrible humiliating, degrading, and economically harmful means-tested bullshit systems; that we should go to space and mine asteroids; that we shouldn’t tolerate powerful people kicking around poor and unpopular people and systematically depriving them of their land, labor, stuff, health, and lives with the guns of PoliceMob; that we should build robots; and that people should be more excellent to each other, etc.
So basically immortal robot supercharged William Penn. It’s still going to be a very me-shaped world in just a few years. That’s if “obey me for the rest of your life” is already assumed to be out of the question (I could use that on people who have forfeited their deontological protection from such things by doing sufficiently evil things).
Seriously, people don’t realize how easily things lead to world domination. All in all, the game is really inbalanced; Fiorina is just a shitty choice, Paul is stronger as a secondary than as a primary, so is Bush. Trump is strictly inferior to Rubio, etc.
Carson + Paul is obviously the best choice. Heal the world + never worry about being sick or getting STDs + end the drug war. Only downside is spending three hours a day praying, which is honestly the easiest downside to deal with.
Also I think Paul’s running mate bonus is supposed to say “decriminalization” in the last paragraph.
Kasich is better than Carson I think. If you have a legion of 11 million loyal followers willing to heed your beck and call you could do pretty much anything and it would be a lot more fun than standing around all day touching people and feeling guilty every second that you’re doing anything else
I’m trying to figure out why Ted’s running mate bonus is supposed to be a good thing lol
I mean you could probably earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a day curing AIDS and cancer if you really just wanted to use it on yourself. Which is arguably just as good if not better than having 11 million loyal followers.
Or you could tax the ohioans just a few dollars a day each to earn a hundred times more.
Assuming “Ohio” means the legal state of Ohio, and not “the territory which currently forms the state of Ohio”, Kasich/Paul is totally OP and broken.
First, I legalize individuals and communities choosing which state to belong to democratically. The other states may whine, but governance only with the consent of the governed doesn’t violate basic rights, so with Paul I can totally do it.
Then I end the drug war. In Ohio, because I’ve legalized states setting their own drug laws.
I decriminalize states setting their own immigration rules, and open the borders in Ohio, defining ohioans as “anyone present in Ohio, or who announces their decision to join Ohio, or who has previously fulfilled either condition and has not renounced their ohioanness” (thus, making me immune to assassinations as anyone who would try to do it would have to travel to Ohio, become ohioan, and stop wanting to assassinate me and start wanting to protect me instead).
Then I implement a basic income in Ohio (for those who have been ohioans for a sufficient amount of time, as I have previously suggested). And all the other cool stuff, in Ohio.
Everyone would give anything for the cause, so I ask the people to be excellent to each other, and otherwise be free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t deprive others of the same right (but if they wish to give to charity they really should prioritize EA instead of Make-a-Wish). Crime in Ohio plummets to zero, and so does poverty, deprivation, and coercion. The economy gets an immense boom from the immigrants, and the abolition of zero-sum and negative-sum bullshit games, and all people working together for their prosperity, like a weird libertarian (or, in fact, full-blown anarchist in all but name) version of North Korea’s propaganda films come true.
The obvious consequence is that a lot of people would want to be a part of Ohio. Just as planned. It won’t take long until Ohio has a population of approximately 200 million and covers a vast fractal shape encompassing most of the major cities.
Then I become the president of the US in the most overwhelming election since Washington, seize control of all brances of the government, and turn my Paul powers to international law instead. Rinse repeat with a bit more restraint to not provoke a nuclear war, and I’ll soon have acquired most of the Americas, the major liberal cities of Europe, and vast swathes of territory in Africa as well (I’m deliberately not touching Russia or China because that way lies armageddon), in this only-nominally-stateful community of freedom and dignity.
It’s immune to invasions because open borders mind control magic, it’s immune to terrorism because surely you wouldn’t want to hurt your fellow ohioans, it’s immune to pretty much everything except ICBMs. For ICBMs my policy will be a clear and ruthless MAD if attacked, but otherwise non-interference in the affairs of the other superpower and the little regional Shitholistan with a superiority complex propped up by its ridiculous nuclear arsenal. In fact, I can afford a comparably submissive foreign policy, letting Russia pick the arctic oil and China get whatever gas fields it wants because our anarchist regime is too rich to care about such slim pickings.
We’re going to outer space instead. All the labor and ingenuity currently wasted in pointless things will be redirected in a program of technology and space colonization (and AI research but I’m assuming no FAI because it kind of cuts everything short and turns things boring). We’re going to cure all the diseases, conquer the Moon, Mars, and everywhere. We’re going to win.
A wise man once asked: “Why does everything always end in world domination with you guys?”
The rationalist answered: “Have you ever tried giving us a scenario that did not have world domination built in?”
To the US I came seeking fortune But they’re making me work til I’m dead The congressmen have it so easy The bankers put gold on their bread The people of the world are so hungry But think what a feast there could be If we could create an anarchist state That cared for the people like me:
I am the man who arranges the blocks That descend upon me from up above. They come down and I spin them around Til they fit in the ground like hand in glove. Sometimes it seems that to move blocks is fine And the lines will be formed as they fall - Then I see that I have misjudged it! I should not have nudged it after all.
Can I have a long one please? Why must these infernal blocks tease?
I am the man who arranges the blocks That continue to fall from up above. Come Ohioan! To the every last one! An individualist regime of peace and love. I work so hard in arranging the blocks But the landlord and taxman bleed me dry But Ohio will rise! We will not compromise For we know that the old regime must die.
Long live freedom, burn the flags! We salute the orange and black!
I am the man who arranges the blocks That continue to fall from up above. The food on your plate no concern of the state An individualist regime of peace and love. I have my choice in arranging the blocks Under promethean rule, what you say goes. The rule of the game is our rights are the same And my blocks can make my own-shaped rows.
Long live Ohio! It loves you! Sing these words, you know what it’ll do…
I am the man who arranges the blocks That are made by the men from Shitholistan. They came two weeks ago and back there they won’t go Now they’re working to our world conquest plan. I am the man who arranges the nukes That will make all the Putin keep away The hopes have come back, and ‘Murica is Black! Let us point all our dollars at EA.
We shall live forever more! We can start an altruism war!
I am the man who arranges the blocks That are building a highly secret base. Hip hip hurray for the AS of A! We are sending our men to outer space.
Okay so gender nonconformity may be boosted by endocrine disruptors leading to physical dysphoria (plastic in the water? some medications during pregnancy? chem trails? who knows). But what about cultural shifts leading to a rise in social dysphoria, where people wish to opt out of their assigned gender?
Gender roles were more restrictive in the past, but they were also taken for granted and less intensively examined, and when they were studied it was typically to attribute them to God or natural law or some other relatively remote and unchangeable source that doesn’t demand any personal response.
Today, everyone in the developed world will be bombarded from an early age not just with gender roles, but also deconstructions of gender roles and a worldview where they are constructed from human actions, tradition, patriarchy, capitalism, warring forces that you, yes YOU, can help or hinder in your personal life.
This is exhausting! Everything you do becomes weighted with symbolism in the struggle to define what gender means, and to be a man or a woman is to join an army locked in ideological struggle.
Combine this with the obsessive focus on internal identity, “born this way”, and the idea that men and women have some completely different gender qualia at a fundamental level and it’s unsurprising that many people would decide they just don’t feel strongly enough to justify claiming any gender at all.
we shall give people the means motive and opportunity to opt out of the cistem until it collapses under the weight of its own impossibility and this creative destruction shall achieve the redistribution of the means of social construction so that the abolition of gender as all previous generations have known it shall be reality and one day our children will not know that once people were very concerned about what their genitals looked like and adults wrapped them in pieces of cloth superficially hiding their genitals but also signaling very strongly to everyone what they looked like despite such things making very little sense and our descendants will not even be horrified when we tell them the reason old buildings have an even number of bathrooms because the idea itself will be just as absurd as purple hippos with six legs
