If the best don't breed then they have no future because they ended their story. Their genetics stop with them, their culture stops with them, the future is handed to someone else who survived and reproduced.
That's just reality. If the chain of life ends, it never restarts once it's smith is dead.
That's just reality. If the chain of life ends, it never restarts once it's smith is dead.
Part of the downfall of the west is the short term view of success. People can claim the best people aren't breeding, but evolutionarily if they aren't breeding they aren't the best.
Exposure to asbestos might not have direct effects for 30 years. The guy who sold the asbestos blankets to you might be dead before you know there's a problem.
[admin mode] down for a bit due to DNS. It's solved now. I'll have to come up with an automatic solution at some point.
I don't think it's a problem with capitalism or socialism as much as a problem with the world: both prosocial and antisocial survival strategies are legitimate in the sense of both allow individuals to survive and reproduce, and there are times that one or the other will be more advantageous than the other. Ghengis Kahn (neither a capitalist nor a socialist) caused unimaginable harm to many people when he made his horrible invasion of Eurasia, but his genetics are now part of almost a billion people today. On the other hand, organized religion for whatever flaws you might assign it has become a powerful prosocial force helping entire populations survive and thrive under a common set of assumptions and rules about how to live "right".
The world is really complex and has a lot of paradoxes that you can't really easily resolve. Given the fact that industrialization can have a negative externality on the environment that everyone shares, you would think that we need to just make sure that we don't do that at all costs, but there's a cost to that decision as well. Much of the world was extremely conservative and didn't want to take any risks because things have been basically fine for a very long time, and then the tiny island of Britain started to take scientific risks, and there were definitely negative and externalities in terms of deforestation and air pollution but that tiny island nation ended up having the largest empire in the history of the world. Meanwhile, those extremely conservative places like China which wanted to just keep doing the things that they had already done ended up facing colonialization and in the case of china they faced the century of humiliation, in the case of India they were totally colonized, in the case of the Americas they eventually became effective extensions of the European continent.
About all you can do in a situation like that is try to find the best balance for the situation of the time. I think that one thing that the West is going to discover and perhaps is discovering right now is that if we don't burn oil then our global competitors will and if they outcompete us hard enough it won't matter what we want to do because we'll be speaking Chinese and Russian. On the other hand, what's the point of continuing to be a superpower if everyone has to live in Mordor because the entire world was burned to ashes to manufacture more junk? On the third hand, the fact is that industrialization and like our good for individuals in the aggregate to a degree. I mean, we are all on the fediverse which is pretty much definitionally a fruit of industrialization. We have access to computers which are truly magical devices, and we have access to home electricity and home internet which is amazing, and we are all literate which is unheard of throughout global history. Most people don't want to go back to sustenance farming.
I read a story about a waste dump that was built by just some guy in the mountains, and he would just take on whatever. And companies would pay him to take their waste. Eventually, the guy died and there was suddenly this massive environmental disaster that nobody was alive to care about. This story shows that just being local doesn't mean you are totally immune to ignoring externalities, but I do think that being more local does help. If you have to live in the same community that you are destroying, first you're going to have to deal with living in a worse place, and second you're going to have to deal with the people in the local community really not liking you very much because you're messing up their local environment. So it isn't a complete answer, but I do think that one of the things that needs to happen is we make it harder for businesses to get much much bigger. My first proposal for how to do this is to eliminate limited liability, so everyone who owns a company could be fully on the hook for the actions of that company.
Second, there would have to be rules everyone has to follow because otherwise the free rider problem doesn't go away. The guy who dumps a bunch of toxic waste on his land and then guys without any heirs, there's literally nothing you can do about that because there's no one after the fact to punish. Therefore, they would have to be some way that the government (it doesn't have to be the feds, it can be municipal or regional) can step in before someone starts causing all that harm.
The world is really complex and has a lot of paradoxes that you can't really easily resolve. Given the fact that industrialization can have a negative externality on the environment that everyone shares, you would think that we need to just make sure that we don't do that at all costs, but there's a cost to that decision as well. Much of the world was extremely conservative and didn't want to take any risks because things have been basically fine for a very long time, and then the tiny island of Britain started to take scientific risks, and there were definitely negative and externalities in terms of deforestation and air pollution but that tiny island nation ended up having the largest empire in the history of the world. Meanwhile, those extremely conservative places like China which wanted to just keep doing the things that they had already done ended up facing colonialization and in the case of china they faced the century of humiliation, in the case of India they were totally colonized, in the case of the Americas they eventually became effective extensions of the European continent.
About all you can do in a situation like that is try to find the best balance for the situation of the time. I think that one thing that the West is going to discover and perhaps is discovering right now is that if we don't burn oil then our global competitors will and if they outcompete us hard enough it won't matter what we want to do because we'll be speaking Chinese and Russian. On the other hand, what's the point of continuing to be a superpower if everyone has to live in Mordor because the entire world was burned to ashes to manufacture more junk? On the third hand, the fact is that industrialization and like our good for individuals in the aggregate to a degree. I mean, we are all on the fediverse which is pretty much definitionally a fruit of industrialization. We have access to computers which are truly magical devices, and we have access to home electricity and home internet which is amazing, and we are all literate which is unheard of throughout global history. Most people don't want to go back to sustenance farming.
I read a story about a waste dump that was built by just some guy in the mountains, and he would just take on whatever. And companies would pay him to take their waste. Eventually, the guy died and there was suddenly this massive environmental disaster that nobody was alive to care about. This story shows that just being local doesn't mean you are totally immune to ignoring externalities, but I do think that being more local does help. If you have to live in the same community that you are destroying, first you're going to have to deal with living in a worse place, and second you're going to have to deal with the people in the local community really not liking you very much because you're messing up their local environment. So it isn't a complete answer, but I do think that one of the things that needs to happen is we make it harder for businesses to get much much bigger. My first proposal for how to do this is to eliminate limited liability, so everyone who owns a company could be fully on the hook for the actions of that company.
Second, there would have to be rules everyone has to follow because otherwise the free rider problem doesn't go away. The guy who dumps a bunch of toxic waste on his land and then guys without any heirs, there's literally nothing you can do about that because there's no one after the fact to punish. Therefore, they would have to be some way that the government (it doesn't have to be the feds, it can be municipal or regional) can step in before someone starts causing all that harm.
Choose 20 games that have had a big impact on you. One game per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no ratings, no particular order. #GameChallenge (7/20)
Star Raiders (Atari 2600)
Star Raiders (Atari 2600)
I was watching an amazing video about a very complicated soviet spy operation where they asked politely and paid the fee and were able to get public research documents.
They built a replica of the space shuttle. It's actually a really funny story about spies stealing stuff they can just get by asking politely.
They built a replica of the space shuttle. It's actually a really funny story about spies stealing stuff they can just get by asking politely.
I think in general what I see out there in the world is a serious talent deficit. I'm certain that there are extremely competent people out there, but having worked for Fortune 500 companies and seeing what their best of the best looked like, if nothing else the market isn't connecting those talented people to the right jobs. Part of that could be the fact that the few megacaps sucked up generations worth of talent for so long that most Fields just don't have that much. I mean if you're talented guy, do you want to go work a real job for a real wage, or do you want to go work for prestigious Google and make 300K a year arguing on discord or whatever they do?
I live in the middle of nowhere, so that would make even more sense. "Dump em in the hinterlands"
So is English. Written English in particular is something everyone learned in elementary school, whereas only a few people will know asl.
It's what's implied by seeing open cases everywhere trying to sell in bulk. Literally one of just a couple things at the bulk store checkout (not just there but it's one example) just boxes and boxes of the things. You'd need everyone who comes in to buy tons to justify having so many boxes.
I think I saw a giant basket at the corner store too. They don't have anything like that, but there's a giant bin of these things. Just doesn't make sense unless they're praying they can unload them and don't want to put much effort into selling them.
I think I saw a giant basket at the corner store too. They don't have anything like that, but there's a giant bin of these things. Just doesn't make sense unless they're praying they can unload them and don't want to put much effort into selling them.
Anyone else seen box after box of the Mr beast chocolate bars out there?
I have to imagine they made like a trillion and are fighting to unload them now that it turns out they're not selling.
I have to imagine they made like a trillion and are fighting to unload them now that it turns out they're not selling.
Yes, it seems like that discussion of free will boils down to: "is a man a piano key who will play the same note when pressed every time?"
If a man is a gear, a cog who will always do as expected, then there is no free will. If instead A man might surprise you and choose to do something you didn't expect, then they do have free will.
I think many progressive ideologies deny free will and say that if a man chooses wrong it's because they were played like a piano key and they had no choice, whereas most ideologies through history claim you do have a choice and thus it is your duty to choose well.
I'm one of 6 kids. We had the same family, grew up in the same house, often shared bedrooms growing up, went to the same schools with often the same teachers, but everyone's path is vastly different. I can't experience that and believe we are piano keys.
They made their own choices which led to those external factors. If you choose to walk down a certain path, the road ahead has certain paths and forks. For me, I can see many people and how my life could have turned out more like theirs if I'd chosen differently, and those decisions were choices someone personally makes. In some cases you can see how similar our paths were until a critical decision that changes the paths we walk, and it's often not a circumstance but an actual decision we personally make. Whether those decisions are rational or irrational doesn't really matter in that respect from my point of view. Both are part of us and our minds and our will.
If a man is a gear, a cog who will always do as expected, then there is no free will. If instead A man might surprise you and choose to do something you didn't expect, then they do have free will.
I think many progressive ideologies deny free will and say that if a man chooses wrong it's because they were played like a piano key and they had no choice, whereas most ideologies through history claim you do have a choice and thus it is your duty to choose well.
I'm one of 6 kids. We had the same family, grew up in the same house, often shared bedrooms growing up, went to the same schools with often the same teachers, but everyone's path is vastly different. I can't experience that and believe we are piano keys.
They made their own choices which led to those external factors. If you choose to walk down a certain path, the road ahead has certain paths and forks. For me, I can see many people and how my life could have turned out more like theirs if I'd chosen differently, and those decisions were choices someone personally makes. In some cases you can see how similar our paths were until a critical decision that changes the paths we walk, and it's often not a circumstance but an actual decision we personally make. Whether those decisions are rational or irrational doesn't really matter in that respect from my point of view. Both are part of us and our minds and our will.
I bought an old Soviet passport and kept my papers in there. I fly for work a lot so I had to present my papers a lot, so I got a lot of mileage out of my "ryeal syovyiet vyaxxine pyasspyort"
What are the problem I think is default liberals thinking that they must be woke because they share ideas with the woke.
I mean, look at Linus Torvalds. I'm reasonably certain that that guy isn't remotely woke. The fact that he holds some center left ideas (or even further left ideas) isn't really material, if you started really grilling him on woke ideology, he'd probably be obviously anti-woke by the end of the conversation. You just need to look at how he runs his project. For one thing, it's his project and he has a central role, and the other people working on the project are typically old greybeards who are excellent at kernel development because that's who builds good OS kernels. He doesn't come right up and say, but there's gatekeeping. He's doing what he feels is right for the project and not what's right for the current political climate. Of course he would, the Linux kernel is his claim to fame, his legacy, his place in the world. If he started lowering the bar just to let people of certain racial or gender castes in, his kernel would become garbage and he'd become irrelevant.
In the same way, I think that a lot of people who don't have any problem with gay people think that that's the same as being woke, when in reality they are quite different things. People who actually care about gay people might actually oppose woke ideology because it's going to get the whole group unfairly lynched.
Because people think that they support this thing because they support a part of it, they end up accidentally backing psychopaths who aren't acting in the best interests of anyone but themselves.
In the case of Linux, I think that there's a parallel to be made. I'm sure that over the last 36 years or whatever it's been there have been people who talk a good game about doing the right thing for the Linux kernel when in reality they just want to get their way and by appealing to the kernel itself they're hoping to do so. I've seen it in a bunch of different ways. Somebody wants free meals, and they work at a place with a strong union, then they will frame their argument in terms of why the union wants them to get free meals. I worked at a place with a strong safety culture, and that same person would frame their argument in terms of why safety wants them to get free meals. I worked at a place with a real ball busting asshole of a boss, and anytime that someone wanted someone guess what? They bad mouth that guy behind their back everyday but when they wanted something they would frame their argument as in that asshole of a boss wants it done so get it done.
I mean, look at Linus Torvalds. I'm reasonably certain that that guy isn't remotely woke. The fact that he holds some center left ideas (or even further left ideas) isn't really material, if you started really grilling him on woke ideology, he'd probably be obviously anti-woke by the end of the conversation. You just need to look at how he runs his project. For one thing, it's his project and he has a central role, and the other people working on the project are typically old greybeards who are excellent at kernel development because that's who builds good OS kernels. He doesn't come right up and say, but there's gatekeeping. He's doing what he feels is right for the project and not what's right for the current political climate. Of course he would, the Linux kernel is his claim to fame, his legacy, his place in the world. If he started lowering the bar just to let people of certain racial or gender castes in, his kernel would become garbage and he'd become irrelevant.
In the same way, I think that a lot of people who don't have any problem with gay people think that that's the same as being woke, when in reality they are quite different things. People who actually care about gay people might actually oppose woke ideology because it's going to get the whole group unfairly lynched.
Because people think that they support this thing because they support a part of it, they end up accidentally backing psychopaths who aren't acting in the best interests of anyone but themselves.
In the case of Linux, I think that there's a parallel to be made. I'm sure that over the last 36 years or whatever it's been there have been people who talk a good game about doing the right thing for the Linux kernel when in reality they just want to get their way and by appealing to the kernel itself they're hoping to do so. I've seen it in a bunch of different ways. Somebody wants free meals, and they work at a place with a strong union, then they will frame their argument in terms of why the union wants them to get free meals. I worked at a place with a strong safety culture, and that same person would frame their argument in terms of why safety wants them to get free meals. I worked at a place with a real ball busting asshole of a boss, and anytime that someone wanted someone guess what? They bad mouth that guy behind their back everyday but when they wanted something they would frame their argument as in that asshole of a boss wants it done so get it done.