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Less a free market of ideas, more a brutal Coliseum of ideas. (Still no politics.)
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Overmind 05/30/2019 11:54 AM
Less a free market of ideas, more a brutal Coliseum of ideas. (Still no politics.) Seriously. Don't make this go the same way as #politics . Or else I'm gonna need a bigger cornfield.
Overmind 05/30/2019 11:54 AM
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gollark 05/30/2019 12:00 PM
You put it twice in #announcements.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 12:01 PM
Well, something's glitchy. That was an edit.
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 3:49 PM
Sometimes my mind feels like it's just sitting in a chair in my brain, not integrated with my body itself. Why is that?
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 3:50 PM
Because arguably it is. Your brain is just the substrate for your mind
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 3:51 PM
Like i'm looking through a camera or a bottlecap not fully sealing a bottle
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 3:51 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology)?wprov=sfti1
Dissociation (psychology)?wprov=sfti1
15:52
My extremities tend to feel dissociated when I drink too much
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 3:52 PM
I’ve gotten a bit of it when I got way too high, yeah
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Sevoris 05/30/2019 3:53 PM
I‘ve never consciously managed it, but sometimes I have moment where I... iddle.
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 3:53 PM
Maybe I have some form of dementia (edited)
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Sevoris 05/30/2019 3:53 PM
Just no activity for a moment.
15:53
Unlikely Tronzoid.
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 3:54 PM
it's as if i'm sealed in a capsule, isolated from the rest of the world
15:55
someday, someone will saw me out with an electric buzzsaw
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 3:56 PM
Dementia is from old age, I think it’s unlikely you have it. Isolated how? Like you have no effect? Like it’s effects can’t really touch you?
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 3:56 PM
Like I'm looking through a vr headset, but only slight (edited)
15:59
As if at some point I was put into a simulated reality or i'm playing some game
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 3:59 PM
I get you may not be comfortable sharing it, but how old are you?
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 3:59 PM
Why?
15:59
Let's say: old enough to drink
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 4:00 PM
UK, so 16+? (edited)
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 4:00 PM
over 16 and 17
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0111narwhalz 05/30/2019 4:00 PM
that's genuinely surprising, I thought you were like 13 V:
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 4:00 PM
18
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 4:01 PM
Alright. I ask because your stage in life tends to provide insight when you have, well, issues
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 4:01 PM
I tend to act less maturely than my age group
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Sevoris 05/30/2019 4:02 PM
Only case I know off for fuzy vision are usually neurological... which is to say Migraines.
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 4:02 PM
How old are you Marcus? you seem 30s
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 4:02 PM
I don’t think he means literally blurry. I’m 19
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0111narwhalz 05/30/2019 4:04 PM
you've aged well considering you were born in the Roman empire, no? :V
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Sevoris 05/30/2019 4:04 PM
I‘m not saying it was Eldrae... but it was Eldrae.
16:04
Also, we‘re horribly abusing this channels purpose, I just noticed.
16:04
Let‘s better cease and desist with that.
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 4:05 PM
Do I sound 13 to you?
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 4:05 PM
Yeah, this has wondered towards #random, I say we all move there
16:09
But back to the initial question, this almost sounds like a less sociopathic version of the matrix defense
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 4:10 PM
Sometimes I have a thought of where my real form is lying
16:10
it is usually a large corridor with pods on either side
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 4:11 PM
This is starting to sound like the territory where talking to a professional would be a good idea. Does the NHS cover mental health?
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 4:11 PM
but I discount it as a foolish idea
16:11
Even if such a thing were real: it would not matter: I already live a normal life (edited)
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 4:44 PM
If that discussion's been diverted, care to hear my analysis of Manichaean dualism?
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 4:46 PM
please do
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 4:46 PM
Go ahead
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 4:53 PM
Mani founded a religion by taking elements of Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and a little bit of Buddhism. But on account of the religion dying out Manichaeism is now used to refer to a secular binary view of ethics.
16:57
This is a problem as you can't have a absolutist belief in good and evil without having divine beings of good and evil. Humanity cannot agree on what is moral so all humanist morality must therefore be subjective.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 4:57 PM
[citation needed]
16:58
...sorry, Imma let you finish.
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 4:59 PM
If nothing else because labeling some people as Evil gives you license for genocide. Can you name one non-Abrahamic religion that even has a concept of Evil? Aside from Zoroastrianism with all its' cross-contamination?
16:59
Come to think of it, Evil in Judaism is kind of an iffy concept.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:04 PM
Well, in terms of Cosmic Good and Cosmic Evil, perhaps, but Judaism definitely has ethos . Actually, I can't think offhand of any religions that don't have an ethos.
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 5:05 PM
Depends on how you define “religion”. Chinese folk religion and lots of animist practices have less of a coherent ethos
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:08 PM
True. Although that said, to my knowledge, all those that have coalesced enough to be considered a belief system rather than a collection of beliefs in close formation have developed an ethos.
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:09 PM
Yes, but most ethical systems have a gradient of "better" and "worse" rather than absolute good and evil.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:10 PM
(My familiarity with Chinese folk religion is all post- its heavy influences by other belief systems.)
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 5:10 PM
The absolutist view does seem highly correlative with monotheism/that-word-for-Zoroastrianism’s-cosmology
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:11 PM
Not like Christianity doesn't have the concept of venial vs. mortal sins.
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:11 PM
Chinese folk religion tends to be almost indistinquishable from Taoism and the Chinese strains of Buddhism.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:11 PM
For example.
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:11 PM
That "fat Buddha" was originally a Chinese god of luck.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:11 PM
Both of which have defined ethoi.
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 5:12 PM
And even then, at least modern practice of most of the Abrahamics still have some shades of gray. I’d say less “indistinguishable” and more “not disintangleable”
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:12 PM
And Buddhism doesn't have absolute evil so much as a gradient of "enlightenment" and "suffering".
17:13
While Taoism's resident dualistic philosophy of Yin and Yang has nothing to do with morality.
17:15
I've read the Tao Te Ching, it's more into suggestions for living a carefree life than moralizing.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:15 PM
That wouldn't be what I'd consider the relevant duality in Daoism. Daoist ethics are more about being vs. doing and self-transformation.
17:18
But here's another angle of approach. We look at Buddhist ethics and see a gradient running from "enlightenment" to "suffering". We note that one end of this gradient is preferred to the other. This implicitly requires that we have a concept of "good" and "not good", because that's the value judgment being made in preferring the one to the other.
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:20 PM
But is "not good" the same as absolute Evil?
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:20 PM
(Actually, I might argue that this is something of an inadequacy in Abrahamic pop-theology, as defining good as good and evil as evil is rather circular.)
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 5:21 PM
How so?
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:21 PM
Well, now, that's a whole other question.
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 5:22 PM
how is evil circular?
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:23 PM
I would say no, inasmuch as it seems to me necessary to distinguish the active pursuit of the bad from the passive neglect of the good, but then, while we look at the Buddhist gradient as running from enlightenment to suffering, I do not think they would have a problem distinguishing mere indifference to suffering from the active promotion of suffering.
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:25 PM
You know "active promotion of suffering" would include eating meat to Buddhists?
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:26 PM
In that framework, you might be able to conceptualize absolute evil as creating inescapable suffering for all beings for all time, but it's not what you might call a terribly useful definition for non-philosophical purposes. Most absolutes aren't.
17:26
Yes?
17:27
@Unknown Because you can't define something in terms of itself.
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 5:27 PM
Religion is quite complex in it's beliefs it seems
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0111narwhalz 05/30/2019 5:28 PM
that statement is almost tautological
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 5:29 PM
but the point is, defining evil as evil is useless, because that provides no information. Defining evil as "the lack of good" is a start, but still problematic
👆 2
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:30 PM
In the Flamic framework, you could define absolute evil as "the destruction of all things in all aspects and points of their existence, in such a manner as to preclude any potential for future creation". This is, needless to say, not something anyone is likely to encounter.
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0111narwhalz 05/30/2019 5:30 PM
not with that attitude
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:31 PM
@MarcusAurelius Well, unless you have a good definition of the good, anyway. And are working on a system in which everything is either evil or good, which seems unlikely to be the case.
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0111narwhalz 05/30/2019 5:31 PM
Of course, if it happens once, its definition is such that it happens to everyone.
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 5:32 PM
the problem with my above definition is, like was mentioned early, it doesn't distinguish apathy, negligence, or innocent incompetence (e.g. children) from the willfully malicious
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:34 PM
That's the advantage of relativistic morality, deeming theft as less bad than murder gives you an actual framework to deal with them.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:34 PM
Anyway, @Zarpaulek , what I would wish to challenge about this is this: "This is a problem as you can't have a absolutist belief in good and evil without having divine beings of good and evil. Humanity cannot agree on what is moral so all humanist morality must therefore be subjective." To which I say: we are entirely capable of having absolutist beliefs about, say, physics, without having divine beings of physics, and that humanity cannot agree on what the laws of physics are doesn't make physics subjective. It makes it imperfectly understood.
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:35 PM
Or killing in self defense as less bad than killing in defensive war as less bad than killing for ideology and less bad than killing to take the other's stuff...
17:35
Physics is physics, ethics is ethics, there's no crossover between the two.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:35 PM
That humans disagree about ethics could mean no more than that most of them are wrong, or more likely, all of them are wrong.
17:36
It's not a crossover, it's an isomorphism.
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 5:36 PM
one is a descriptive field, the other prescriptive.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:36 PM
OR IS IT?
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Tronzoid 05/30/2019 5:37 PM
Err, some of us would like to live
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:37 PM
I fail to see how physics can be inverted to form ethics.
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MarcusAurelius 05/30/2019 5:37 PM
how would you go about a descriptive approach to finding a one true theory of ethics? how is that relevant tronzoid?
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:38 PM
People say the same thing about economics, and that doesn't work out so well every time people try prescribing their special version of it.
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:39 PM
You can't defy laws of physics, ethical laws are broken on a regular basis.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:39 PM
Well, I'm more or less compelled to work by reasoning from first principles and observation, since I'm fairly confident that "don't perform ethical experiments on sophonts" is valid.
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:40 PM
And economic laws have a tendency to assume rationality on irrational people.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:43 PM
Then (what we claim them to be) is wrong in that respect. But look at the entire history of attempts to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand by fiat.
17:44
The results of that inspection demonstrate very clearly that it actually is a natural law, and every bit as immutable as gravity. In either case, trying to repeal it ends in a crash. (edited)
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:47 PM
In a market economy in any case.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:47 PM
Now, when it comes to ethical laws, think of it in this perspective: The ethical "law" that can be broken is the one that says "Thou shalt not murder." The ethical law that cannot be broken is the one that says "If murder is permitted, your society will be a shithole."
17:48
(Example only.)
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:48 PM
One man's shithole is another's paradise.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:49 PM
Those non-market economies that fail to produce equivalent prosperity?
17:49
That's the inexorable outcome of the law.
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Zarpaulek 05/30/2019 5:49 PM
There's a reason why writer's advice on how to write a believable dystopia say "write a utopia."
17:50
And you're assuming that economies always aim to produce prosperity rather than mere group survival.
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Overmind 05/30/2019 5:52 PM
I am assuming that people can be irrational, mistaken, or otherwise wrong.
17:52
(Which seems like a pretty safe assumption.)
17:54
And if you are aiming for mere group survival and your methodology for doing so is deliberately non-optimal (i.e., in opposition to the laws of economics or other natural laws), then you are frustrating your ends by your means. Which is contra-survival. (edited)
18:00
On the former point, this does require that one accept self-consistency as a requirement: that one, for example, cannot approve of doing murder and disapprove of being murdered at the same time.
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BizarroLand ♀ 05/30/2019 6:28 PM
I wanted to say something about the dualism earlier, kind of tangential but: It's all well and good to say that thoughts and the inner life of ideas etc. have no physical substance. In practice, though, they do: it's the wiring in our bodies. We don't need uploading or neuroscientific breakthroughs to see it at work, just look at someone who's suffered brain trauma.
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sdschildberg 05/30/2019 6:56 PM
phineas gage
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Overmind 05/30/2019 11:11 PM
That's the instance, not the class.
23:12
(You can tell because if I shoot you right in the neurological encoding of the concept of triangles, triangles don't go away .)
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Tronzoid 06/01/2019 6:38 AM
An answer to the "reality or simulation" hypothesis might be: Speaker 1: "Only the operators outside can tell" Speaker 2: "But what about their reality?" (edited)
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Tronzoid 06/01/2019 6:46 AM
But here's one question: If it's possible to simulate reality and sentience, wouldn't it be a crime, as you are undirectedly causing harm to the simulation's inhabitants through inaction?
06:48
You are deliberately creating a simulation to monitor a civilisation
06:51
It might be the case that the simulation hypothesis has a lesser chance of being confirmed, due to the implications of such a project in the operator race's civilisation (edited)
06:57
All that being said: We should focus research on technologies that can confirm whether a given reality is either genuine or a indistinguishable simulation by running simulations and developing a device for each type of conceivable computing system running the test simulations
06:58
by doing that, we will have a range of technologies able to detect whether a given reality is either genuine or simulated on a number of computing types
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0111narwhalz 06/01/2019 6:59 AM
by the definition of "indistinguishable" you cannot distinguish
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Tronzoid 06/01/2019 6:59 AM
indistinguishable until proven otherwise (edited)
07:00
The device would run something resource intensive to the computer running the simulation
07:00
Quantum simulations are quite resource intensive for binary computers to run IIRC (edited)
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0111narwhalz 06/01/2019 7:23 AM
well, most of what I associate with "ways to discover a physics engine" are more related to corner cases that expose holes in certain assumptions
07:24
Usually they involve uncovering corners cut in the name of optimization.
07:25
Quantum mechanics itself is kinda a prime candidate for such.
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Morgrim Moon 06/01/2019 8:03 AM
I've seen a joke blog post where the nature of water compared to all other fluid was raised as evidence we're in a sim that got refactored
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Zarpaulek 06/01/2019 8:13 AM
What, how the density decreases when it crystallizes?
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Morgrim Moon 06/01/2019 8:17 AM
And it's weird surface tension and some other stuff
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Sevoris 06/01/2019 9:33 AM
That‘s always said by people who... never had chemistry.
09:33
Water‘s just behaving that way due to some electron configuration perculiarities... which are in terms of fundamental laws not special at all.
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gollark 06/01/2019 9:57 AM
A lot of the ideas around stuff which might be an optimization in our universe do sort of assume that the universe simulating us works similarly.
09:57
The laws of physics their computers run on might happen to allow some specific computations to run very fast, or make it run very slowly.
09:58
Basically the only universal is probably that less computation is preferred.
10:00
Unless the universe is just being simulated by accident as part of solving some complex optimization problem or something weird like that.
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Overmind 06/01/2019 10:01 AM
42
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Archon 06/03/2019 8:28 AM
@Unknown You are identical until something causes you to diverge
08:28
The thing which will first cause you to diverge is e.g. the different sense-data the two instantiations receive
08:29
from seeing two different hospital rooms or w/e
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Tronzoid 06/03/2019 8:30 AM
What would being forked feel like? I assume it feels like part of your mind is being split off into another individual
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Archon 06/03/2019 8:31 AM
It doesn't feel like anything
08:31
There is just another one of you now
08:31
External to you
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Zarpaulek 06/03/2019 9:14 AM
Don’t feel a thing. Like this http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/17p20/
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Tronzoid 06/03/2019 10:18 AM
So, the clone also has the (recent) memories of the original? (edited)
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MarcusAurelius 06/03/2019 12:49 PM
If you were unconscious, you just feel like you woke up. Only upon meeting the fork would you have to realize you are slowly becoming different people.
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Tronzoid 07/06/2019 4:38 PM
Is it normal to feel nostalgic and proud about the BBC? they did unite the country during WW2 with their broadcasts and also made some decent documentaries/programming. I grew up with the BBC, since I am British (edited)
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MarcusAurelius 07/06/2019 4:41 PM
they have a really cool funding model, and general upstanding content and less bias than usual
16:41
yeah
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Tronzoid 07/06/2019 4:42 PM
28 Languages broadcast in as of now, although they have been accused of having a liberal, right wing bias (edited)
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MarcusAurelius 07/06/2019 4:46 PM
lol in the US liberal and right wing are antonyms. But I'd still say they have a less prominent political bias than every comparable US news outlet
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Tronzoid 07/06/2019 4:46 PM
Ok, lets not descend into politics, my above mention is enough (edited)
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Overmind 07/06/2019 5:21 PM
NO POLITICS. (And this would be the wrong channel anyway; try #random .)
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Zarpaulek 07/06/2019 5:54 PM
Would this fit? https://zarpaulus.tumblr.com/post/186032991437/is-it-just-me-or-does-the-new-age-communitys
Zarpaulus' random stuff
Zarpaulus' random stuff
Is it just me, or does the New Age community’s current obsession with “Empaths” seem like another attempt to turn autism into a superpower? Seriously, the types of empathy they tend to talk about are...
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sdschildberg 07/06/2019 6:01 PM
Especially when such emotion-scanning is the weakpoint
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Zarpaulek 07/06/2019 6:02 PM
Which line are you responding to?
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sdschildberg 07/06/2019 6:05 PM
The entire thing. I am as far from tng luxwana as possible, speaking as someone with Aspergers (which is already treated as some superpower)
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sdschildberg 07/06/2019 6:18 PM
Woo empaths 🤝 bleach cures 🤝 vaccines cause autism Being extremely nasty for actual autists
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Zarpaulek 07/06/2019 6:59 PM
You have any experience with the "Indigo Child" crowd by any chance?
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sdschildberg 07/06/2019 7:03 PM
Nope
19:04
Autism = woo powers i guess
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sdschildberg 07/06/2019 8:34 PM
I read up and calling people on the spectrum (part) alien/faery or the next stage of human evolution is insulting to people trying to humanize it
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Zarpaulek 07/16/2019 5:29 PM
Seems “bystander syndrome” might be a myth after all https://www.science20.com/news_staff/bystander_effect_debunked_in_91_of_real_world_cases_someone_helps-239169
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gollark 07/16/2019 5:30 PM
Random idea: maybe people's belief in the bystander effect causes the bystander effect. (edited)
17:32
(probably not, but it would be kind of ironic)
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Overmind 07/16/2019 5:54 PM
well, maybe there's a little hope for humans yet
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o11o1 07/18/2019 8:47 AM
wait, was it debunked by an actual study ?
08:47
I didn't see a link to the paper
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Zarpaulek 07/19/2019 8:28 PM
@o11o1 It was the link in "Video surveillance..." https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Famp0000469
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Zarpaulek 07/23/2019 2:04 PM
This came up in Firefox's suggested articles today http://theconversation.com/humans-arent-designed-to-be-happy-so-stop-trying-119262?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Humans aren't designed to be happy – so stop trying
Happiness is a human construct, an abstract idea with no biological basis. But this is something to be happy about.
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14:05
I assume the eldrae "fixed" that?
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sdschildberg 07/23/2019 2:06 PM
They do take issues to being cubes of hedonium
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o11o1 07/23/2019 4:01 PM
"Some things are more important than happiness." (edited)
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Zarpaulek 07/26/2019 12:15 PM
Manichaeism sounds a bit like it promotes entropy https://silkroadhistory.podbean.com/e/episode-006-religions-of-the-silk-road-manicheaism/
Episode 006 | Religions of the Silk Road: Manicheaism
In this episode, Nathan discusses one of the most unique and bizarre religions of world history, and perhaps the most emblematic of the great syncretism of the Silk Road: Manicheaism....
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Zarpaulek 07/28/2019 3:24 PM
It’s not the same each cycle, but there’s a tendency for liberal phases of society to be followed by conservative backlashes, which are followed in turn by a liberal backlash, and so on and so forth.
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0111narwhalz 07/28/2019 3:24 PM
someone needs to dampen the moralizers
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Tronzoid 07/28/2019 3:24 PM
I think this has to do with politics (edited)
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Zarpaulek 07/28/2019 3:25 PM
I didn’t mention the parties and policies influenced by these waves.
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sdschildberg 07/28/2019 3:28 PM
🅱olitics 🅱tected
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Overmind 07/28/2019 3:29 PM
Ruling: Philosophy of morality discussion is not politics unless and until it also turns into the Swamp of Despair.
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Tronzoid 07/28/2019 3:29 PM
Dampen the moralizers?
15:29
ah
15:30
yes
15:30
the 60s
15:30
bad
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MarcusAurelius 07/28/2019 3:32 PM
This isn’t necessarily political, more sociological
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Tronzoid 07/28/2019 3:32 PM
The 60s sucked
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MarcusAurelius 07/28/2019 3:32 PM
They just share terminology, unfortunately
15:32
The 60s sucked for some, but well so do most big transitions
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Tronzoid 07/28/2019 3:33 PM
But rest assured society won't return to what happened back then, what with social rights movements, racism and military conscription
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MarcusAurelius 07/28/2019 3:36 PM
We haven’t passed any of those things
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Tronzoid 07/28/2019 3:36 PM
it was worse then
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MarcusAurelius 07/28/2019 3:36 PM
yes, but that doesn’t mean we won’t fall back into it
15:37
Look at the rising xenophobia in the west, for instance
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Tronzoid 07/28/2019 3:37 PM
LGBT+ seems to be getting more of a foothold in society since the start of the 2010s IIRC (edited)
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Zarpaulek 07/28/2019 4:53 PM
There’s been a bit of a pushback though.
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Tronzoid 07/28/2019 4:53 PM
How so?
16:53
I thought things were getting better!
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0111narwhalz 07/28/2019 5:06 PM
The system oscillates pretty widely.
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Zarpaulek 07/28/2019 5:32 PM
Well there's the "transgender bathroom issue", based on a myth I might add.
17:33
Also, one of Russia's republics went out and rounded up all their gay people into camps.
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gollark 07/28/2019 5:34 PM
We should just get rid of the non-cubicley toilets.
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Tronzoid 07/28/2019 5:34 PM
Neutral gender toilets?
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Zarpaulek 07/28/2019 5:35 PM
They really don't need to be raised more than a couple inches above the floor for drainage.
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0111narwhalz 07/28/2019 5:35 PM
put tops on the cubicle walls, extend the bottoms down until you can just about fit a mop under them, problem solved
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Zarpaulek 07/28/2019 5:35 PM
My office has gender-neutral single-occupant bathrooms everywhere but the showers, but they get crowded at the typical break times.
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Overmind 07/30/2019 7:08 AM
NO POLITICS. .
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Morgrim Moon 07/30/2019 7:08 AM
that would be a yes
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Enderminion 07/30/2019 12:17 PM
Apparently my Coworker once tried to Run as a third Party candidate for US Senate
12:17
which went exactly as well as you thought it did
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KAL_9000 07/30/2019 12:49 PM
NO POLITICS.
12:50
@Unknown execute exterminatus.exe
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sdschildberg 07/30/2019 12:56 PM
Image attachment
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KAL_9000 07/30/2019 12:56 PM
I'm adding that as a legit emoji to me and my IRL friends' personal Discord server
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baidicoot 07/31/2019 11:51 AM
artist?
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Zarpaulek 07/31/2019 1:46 PM
In regnandi, veritas? https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-power-brings-out-your-true-self?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Why Power Brings Out Your True Self - Nautilus - Pocket
Are you a tyrant or a servant?
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baidicoot 08/01/2019 7:29 AM
Everyone is a tyrant.
07:29
Benevolence is a lie, created by the establishment.
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/01/2019 8:23 AM
Now that's cynical.
08:23
Everyone's got their demons, but not everyone yields to them.
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sdschildberg 08/01/2019 8:23 AM
Most tyrants wholeheartedly think there servsnts
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/01/2019 8:24 AM
I'll grant that. Most folks can't see when they're unwittingly doing evil, and the more power they have the more destructive that blindness/delusion is.
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o11o1 08/01/2019 2:46 PM
And the less enjoyable having your eyes opened to the harm you cause is
14:46
Especially when, particularly at the nation state level, you can end up with a lot of rock-and-a-hard-place type choices
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Zarpaulek 08/01/2019 4:18 PM
Honestly, I think the process of attaining leadership over large groups tends to select for sociopathic tendencies.
16:19
Especially in bureaucracy and politics
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/01/2019 4:19 PM
yeah
16:19
because power, well, is power
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Overmind 08/01/2019 9:18 PM
Process of attaining? No. Desire to attain? Definitely.
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Zarpaulek 08/01/2019 9:26 PM
@Overmind Assuming humans judge the selection process, not space elves.
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Overmind 08/01/2019 9:33 PM
Yeah, but in our process of selection we don't get to choose the non-sociopath; at best we get to choose which sociopath.
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Zarpaulek 08/06/2019 6:45 PM
Okay, this sounds like first-degree hubris https://aeon.co/ideas/the-hypersane-are-among-us-if-only-we-are-prepared-to-look
The hypersane are among us, if only we are prepared to look – Ne...
From Diogenes to Jane Goodall, the hypersane seem mad to the mainstream but perhaps they see more deeply than the sane
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18:45
Jung believed in psychic powers.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 6:46 PM
"hypersane"
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Zarpaulek 08/06/2019 6:47 PM
Diogenes lived in a tub on a diet of wild onions.
18:47
And Socrates, Plato, Confucius... really?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 7:47 PM
@Zarpaulek I once saw a 'serious writer' famous in his niche who actually thought psychoanalysts could predict the future
19:47
Not kidding.
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sdschildberg 08/06/2019 7:48 PM
Psychoanalysis
Only works where a singular culture is involved, written by writers who dont care about others
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 7:48 PM
He thought Jung's vague prophecies of a dark teutonic god on the horizon predicted World Wars I/II, somehow
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sdschildberg 08/06/2019 7:49 PM
WW1 was a result of an unsable alliance system WW2 is obviously caused by rabid anticommunism and militarism, including in a country far from teutonic things
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Zarpaulek 08/06/2019 7:52 PM
Also, attempting to impose reparations that the Romans would find excessive on a country that had little to nothing to do with the start of the war and was simply the largest intact country left on the losing side.
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sdschildberg 08/06/2019 7:53 PM
And the economy going to crap globally (germany and japan were held up by the US economy and silk exports respectivly)
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Enderminion 08/06/2019 10:23 PM
Well all our signs don't specify position
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Zarpaulek 08/15/2019 1:29 PM
Be careful not to confuse cultural pressure towards collectivism with personal willingness https://heterodoxacademy.org/half-hour-of-heterodoxy/
Half Hour of Heterodoxy w/ Chris Martin - Heterodox Academy
In "Half Hour of Heterodoxy" Chris Martin interviews academics and other university stakeholders about their work and the state of higher ed.
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Zarpaulek 08/20/2019 6:10 AM
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/303
Jeremy Bentham Designs a Prison
A philosophy webcomic about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world. Also Jokes
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Buggy 08/20/2019 7:43 AM
"Well of course the prison would try to turn sophs into glorified worker-drones using primitive sophotech. Monkey-brain instincts, remember? Their very definition of criminal behavior is deviating from the societal norm, so its no surprise that they think the best way to address criminals is to stomp out the logos."
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sdschildberg 08/20/2019 7:49 AM
Zombies that retain conciousness but not free will are the only human monster that would scare the locals over there
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MarcusAurelius 08/20/2019 7:50 AM
They probably wouldn’t like vampires either. Or the loss of control in most werewolf myths
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/20/2019 9:02 AM
True, though that kinda depends on the model of vampire.
09:04
The kind that mostly has free will, but has to resist the urge to go too far would be horrifying in a different way from the kind that literally lives only to drink blood and pretty much frames everything in those terms.
09:05
But I figure they'd think the former could be fixed or at least worked around, and the second is a monster to be destroyed.
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Overmind 08/20/2019 9:20 AM
The local vampires aren't bloodsuckers. They're mindsuckers .
09:21
As for werewolves, for historical canid-relations reasons dating all the way back to the Winter of Nightmares, they get to rock the dangerous-but-fundamentally-noble-friends hat.
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/20/2019 9:25 AM
Mindsuckers kinda like the Dresden Files' White Court, that stoke emotions and use those emotions to essentially rip apart the victim's will?
09:25
Or more like intellivores that sand away the self/identity?
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Overmind 08/20/2019 9:25 AM
Mindsuckers that eat your thoughts and leave you empty,
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/20/2019 9:27 AM
Ouch, yeah, I can see why that might be the local flavor of horror.
09:27
(Doubly so when a bloodsucker can only /corpicide/ you. But those? That's cognicide, I'd think, or tantamount to it.)
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Overmind 08/20/2019 11:25 AM
(Up in the Crescent, werewolves were also associated with the local berserker tradition, usually in ancestry, which resulted in an actual werewolf clade being developed once that became possible. That was some fancy biotech.)
11:28
There definitely is some mythic beastie which fills the fear-of-loss-of-control slot, but I haven't worked it out yet.
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Zarpaulek 08/20/2019 11:51 AM
I'd guess maybe zombies or ghouls for "loss-of-control".
11:51
Ghouls for beastial behavior, zombies controlled by external force.
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MarcusAurelius 08/20/2019 1:45 PM
Yeah, more voodoo and west African magic zombies than the standard western ones
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sdschildberg 08/20/2019 1:46 PM
So the 3 proper monsters over there are Possesed people, mind-suckers, and Irish Faeries
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/20/2019 2:17 PM
I'd bet anything that can remotely seize control would count too, for similar reasons
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Zarpaulek 08/20/2019 4:03 PM
@Unknown The people are Fae.
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Buggy 08/20/2019 4:59 PM
well, in some versions Faes take consent much more liberally, to the point that offhand remarks or minor and casual actions can be considered consent to all sorts of major things
16:59
even if the person in question has no idea about it
16:59
that'd be a sort of corruption that could be another kind of monster
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gollark 08/20/2019 5:06 PM
I think it is written somewhere that anything you promise to do is considered, well, binding by the eldræ, so that's not massively far off.
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Buggy 08/20/2019 5:24 PM
well yeah, informed consent and agreement is all you need
17:24
no 'rituals of agreement' or anything silly
17:25
but the idea is that Fae don't care about informed, and rather jump the gun about 'consent' even being given
17:25
and they're obsessed with deals in a very zero-sum-game-y way
17:25
which is a sort of close perversion of how the Eldrae do it
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Cyfnos BOT 08/20/2019 5:25 PM
Reminder: species names are not capitalized.
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Buggy 08/20/2019 5:25 PM
how the eLDRAE do it
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sdschildberg 08/20/2019 5:29 PM
A stereotype
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Buggy 08/20/2019 5:32 PM
i mean, its a reasonable description of several different depictions of fairies that i've seen
17:32
you can't really stereotype a non-existent set of mythological creatures
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Zarpaulek 08/20/2019 5:55 PM
Especially with as many variations as fae, elves, trolls...
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/20/2019 6:18 PM
you know, it may serve a useful purpose but right now I would trade away my ability to generate excess mucus for a lot of things
18:19
something as simple as chronic congestion + runny eyes + sneezing really hurts quality of life
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Buggy 08/20/2019 7:43 PM
https://eldraeverse.com/2012/01/02/not-so-common/
Alistair Young
Not So Common
Andreth Prime Allatrian-ith-Ancalyx Vallasélan, currently of Suite 141, Gildedrest, Starbridge City, Gáling (Ring Nebula), to Technical Services, Artificial Immunity Division, Riverside Eubiosis Fo…
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19:43
you're not the only one
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/20/2019 8:12 PM
i feel your pain Andreth I really do
20:18
I bet what he wouldn't know is what it's like to have lived with it for years on end
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sdschildberg 08/27/2019 11:45 AM
To sum up local psychology: left brain>right brain
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Zarpaulek 08/29/2019 8:17 AM
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-shaping-us/201908/ninja-proof-seats?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Ninja-Proof Seats
Where you sit at work can impact your productivity.
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Zarpaulek 08/29/2019 8:36 AM
That I can understand, our current office is a converted furniture store.
08:39
When I first joined five years ago we worked in a building that had more enclosed spaces, still I remember this one time one girl in my alcove refused to go to lunch because she was afraid someone would steal her workstation, all while talking about how hungry she was
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/29/2019 9:43 AM
I hate open-plan offices - I feel like I have to constantly watch my back for snoopers.
09:43
(Even if I'm not doing anything that such snoopers would object to)
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baidicoot 08/31/2019 1:17 PM
I misread that 'watch my back for stormtroopers' the first time. I've been watching too much Star Wars, evidently.
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Zarpaulek 09/01/2019 9:03 AM
I don’t think the critics “get” Buddhism https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/mindar-android-buddhist-priest-japan/index.html
The android priest that's revolutionizing Buddhism
Kodaiji temple, a 400-year-old Japanese hourse of worship in Kyoto, has drafted in an android named Mindar to preach sermons. Find out how it's revolutionizing Buddhism in Japan.
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baidicoot 09/01/2019 10:01 AM
this is why buddhism is the objectively best religion
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Zarpaulek 09/01/2019 10:02 AM
I don’t know, Nietzsche thought the whole “nirvana” thing too nihilistic for his taste
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sdschildberg 09/01/2019 10:16 AM
Lemme guess: the android is Westernizing it
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Zarpaulek 09/01/2019 10:24 AM
The article doesn't say it outright, but I'm guessing the monks see it as another refinement on the prayer wheel (there's already wind, water, and electrical wheels).
10:24
It does say that "[Mindar] can meet a lot of people and store a lot of information [over time]. It will evolve infinitely."
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Archon 09/02/2019 5:17 AM
I was under the impression that electric prayer wheels were considered a bad idea because the power company got the prayer, not the person who set the wheel?
05:17
So you basically just ended up paying them twice
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gollark 09/02/2019 5:31 AM
Solar-powered electric prayer wheels?
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Archon 09/02/2019 5:40 AM
Something like that would work, or local hydroelectric
05:41
(With the note that the wind and water ones bless the wind and the water, not you, it's just useful to have the wind and water you live in to be blessed, as far as these things go)
05:41
That's my memory from when I last looked into these things, at least
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 1:11 PM
If the issue is really cultural, that engenders the hope there's some kind of 'way out', but the universe is full of inescapable no-win scenarios. Perhaps the Internet falls apart as it is now, because of World War 3 or too much cyber-sabotage or something else, but that wouldn't remove the sense of being 'fake'; Hollywood had some symptoms of this overhedonia before the digital age (edited)
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Zarpaulek 09/02/2019 1:12 PM
But the memes are going to fight to survive, it’s what they’ve been doing for a minimum of 6,000 years and they’ve gotten good at it
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 1:13 PM
@Zarpaulek Or it could be that memes that are suboptimal to the individual are optimal for the greater society
13:13
And thus natural selection will favor them
13:14
I don't like thinking about that very much
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Overmind 09/02/2019 1:14 PM
MOLOCH.
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Zarpaulek 09/02/2019 1:14 PM
That’s why peacocks
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Overmind 09/02/2019 1:14 PM
KILL MOLOCH.
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KAL_9000 09/02/2019 1:14 PM
Don't get me started on Moloch
13:14
Bastard
13:15
There's a reason the Mythos doesn't invite him to their Friday night board game session
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Zarpaulek 09/02/2019 1:15 PM
I thought Moloch was unenlightened self-interest?
13:15
Seems more like you’re talking about Ra
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Tronzoid 09/02/2019 1:15 PM
Why are simple constructs doing prayers?
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 1:15 PM
As in, there have actually been quite a few societies, eg Ladakh (Tibet) and possibly some Indigenous cultures elsewhere that have reached what we may call 'happiness'
13:15
But they are not the majority, and historically they've been turned into subjects the moment they run into unhappy, but productive slave-drivers
13:16
The Wild West closed and became developed
13:17
@Zarpaulek I still get a giggle because I remember the memes about moloch being the carthaginians' deity
13:17
I don't know. Maybe there's an escape route by telling people about it, or nuking the world, or simply becoming posthuman
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Zarpaulek 09/02/2019 1:18 PM
@BizarroLand ♀ So you’re suggesting empires are on the hedonism treadmill? https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/treadmill
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal -
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 1:20 PM
Not exactly
13:21
It's more like, a state of lasting personal happiness and fulfilment is achievable, but ultimately maladaptive (edited)
13:21
Which I wouldn't put out of the question in this nightmare world
13:22
In the end, the core issue might run deeper than cultural memes and stem from iron laws of psychology and social dynamics is what I'm trying to get at
13:22
In which case, there's no solution
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KAL_9000 09/02/2019 1:22 PM
We can fix that
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 1:23 PM
@KAL_9000 Well, yeah, leaving aside posthumanism and whatnot
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KAL_9000 09/02/2019 1:23 PM
Genetically engineer people's psychologies to be different!
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 1:23 PM
But in any other case, all we've to really look forward to is human extinction
13:23
Which might happen anyways if we speed down the path of modification ironically enough
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Zarpaulek 09/02/2019 1:24 PM
@KAL_9000 That might run into a “Motie problem” where civilizations who adopt that psychosurgery get ground underheel by others
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 1:25 PM
Exactly. I don't feel too bad right now, but damn this convo started dark grey and went black
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Overmind 09/02/2019 1:26 PM
@Zarpaulek Moloch is more the game of Playing Stupid Games and Winning Stupid Prizes. In this case, our cultural psychology optimizes for comfortable mediocrity rather than chaotic greatness. And, for that matter, for retarding humanity as a whole rather than having to suffer the status-pain of acknowledging that someone could do something greater than you. Classic Molochian optimization-failure.
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 1:27 PM
Well, if it's any comfort, this state might just be a local maxima rather than the absolute one; evolution goes for the former over the latter all the time (edited)
13:29
And I myself am actually hypersensitive to even small changes in status, even if I try not to show it
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Overmind 09/02/2019 1:35 PM
As a good example of the former, witness the general reaction against the gig economy: it's astonishing how many people seem literally incapable of grasping that anyone might prefer the risky flexibility and hustle-opportunities of independence to the supposed security of being a wage-serf. 'Cause, y'know, that's the way it's done. Punch in, punch out, obey your superiors, pay off your student loans, climb the greasy pole, retire, move to Florida, die. That's the established life path, and how dare you go against the accepted collective wisdom of everyone. You are OBVIOUSLY WRONG, have probably been duped by $BOGEYMAN, and must be brought back to the One True Way. It's for your own good, y'know.
13:36
...he ranted. Hail Eris.
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 1:37 PM
At least I haven't taken student loans yet
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KAL_9000 09/02/2019 1:37 PM
No, don't hail Eris
13:37
Eris is the goddess of chaos and discord a.k.a. entropy
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 1:38 PM
I feel pretty Erisian myself, but most radicals tend to, wel..
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Tronzoid 09/02/2019 1:38 PM
There are still going to be lazy idiots in the posthuman world
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Overmind 09/02/2019 1:39 PM
The Discordian Eris, not the original Greek, in this case.
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 1:39 PM
My feeling was that the long-term solution, without getting into poly tickal specifics, was to mostly break up the current power centers and replace them with a wider variety of much smaller societums
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Overmind 09/02/2019 1:39 PM
"I am chaos. I am the substance from which your artists and scientists build rhythms. I am the spirit with which your children and clowns laugh in happy anarchy. I am chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are free."
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Overmind 09/02/2019 1:46 PM
"I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe." WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO? "But nobody Wants it! Everybody hates it." OH. WELL, THEN STOP.
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Tronzoid 09/02/2019 1:46 PM
Maybe we should have a battle royale
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 5:12 PM
what if there's a penniless man in the desert and only one guy with water bottles tho
17:12
and the guy says 'pay up or nothin'
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Zarpaulek 09/02/2019 5:13 PM
Have you seen The Twilight Zone? (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 5:16 PM
@Zarpaulek nope
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Zarpaulek 09/02/2019 5:17 PM
There's one episode where a few robbers make off with a pile of gold, then put themselves in suspended animation for 70 years to escape the heat.
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 5:18 PM
and the gold rots away?
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Zarpaulek 09/02/2019 5:18 PM
In one scene the last two left are trekking through the desert with their bags of gold and one guy has a canteen of water, which he sells to the other guy for one bar a sip.
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 5:18 PM
ah
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Zarpaulek 09/02/2019 5:19 PM
Then he raises the price to two bars, because supply and demand and gets his brains bashed out.
17:20
And then, the last guy stumbles upon a couple in a hover car just before he keels over, and the couple wonder what he was doing with so much easily synthesized worthless gold. (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/02/2019 5:20 PM
OUCH
17:21
I was going to talk some about how most humans view libertism, but I decided it was too close to the Poly Ticks
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baidicoot 09/02/2019 6:36 PM
Damn right it is
18:36
Assuming this is american Libertism
18:36
Which, this being the internet, probably is
18:36
anyway
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Zarpaulek 09/02/2019 8:10 PM
So, I've been reading this book on Icelandic mythical creatures and it mentions that many "trolls" were undead; like ghosts, zombies, vampires, liches.
20:11
Makes me wonder about the role of transhumanism in ancient folklore.
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MarcusAurelius 09/03/2019 6:31 PM
@Unknown I think he means the Empire of the Star's philosophy, not American Libertarianisim
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baidicoot 09/03/2019 6:36 PM
Ooooooh
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BizarroLand ♀ 09/03/2019 9:31 PM
@MarcusAurelius actually its the latter, yes
21:32
Libertism isn't restricted to America but most of its truly outspoken adherents seem to reside there
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MarcusAurelius 09/03/2019 11:59 PM
@BizarroLand ♀ I’m 90% certain than libertism is a neologism by our dear author
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Overmind 09/04/2019 6:15 PM
@MarcusAurelius It is. A trivial attempt to distract the reader from the thought-terminating cliche that the name of any ideology that actually exists tends to be.
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Ian Bruene 09/04/2019 6:25 PM
How dare you imply that my philosophy of Funism isn't Fun! We even count grains of sand in the catbox! You sir, are clearly a most UnFun sort.
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Tronzoid 09/05/2019 2:42 AM
If a discord bot became sentient, and acted like a discord user, would it be a user?
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Morgrim Moon 09/05/2019 2:55 AM
Yes
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Tronzoid 09/05/2019 3:06 AM
Albeit a slightly eccentric one, because AI (edited)
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Zarpaulek 09/05/2019 5:57 AM
@Unknown Are you hinting at something?
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Tronzoid 09/05/2019 6:07 AM
No
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Zarpaulek 09/05/2019 8:14 PM
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2009-09-13
Sunday 13 September 2009
Daily strip for Sunday 13 September 2009
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sdschildberg 09/07/2019 11:56 PM
The Imperial version of the DnD alignment chart has slef-intrestedness vs other-intrestedness for one axis and good vs hostile intentions So Imperial ethics snugly fits in a box
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Overmind 09/08/2019 12:46 AM
The Imperial alignment chart has three axes. One goes laissez-faire to slaver; one goes dutiful to defaulter; and the last goes awesome to sucky.
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0111narwhalz 09/08/2019 1:13 AM
it's clear where the author of that chart places their priorities
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Overmind 09/08/2019 1:13 AM
Would be, wouldn't it?
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Morgrim Moon 09/08/2019 1:40 AM
if the 'sucky' wasn't the person's fault and more circumstance (or poor response to circumstance due to lack of knowledge) I could absolutely see an Imperial trying to correct this
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Tronzoid 09/21/2019 12:12 PM
This song really makes you think about yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI7dCCImVwY
Evangelion Lover
BORDERLINE CASE
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gollark 09/21/2019 12:37 PM
You are very obsessed with that... TV show or whatever.
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Morgrim Moon 09/21/2019 12:37 PM
I think it might be his current special interest? Nothing wrong with that, but I've never seen it so I can't comment on it
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Overmind 09/21/2019 12:38 PM
Likewise.
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gollark 09/21/2019 12:39 PM
I don't really have a problem with liking it, more randomly bringing up bits of it with no context or real purpose.
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Tronzoid 09/21/2019 12:46 PM
I'm just into it ATM
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Zarpaulek 09/21/2019 12:46 PM
Y’know, America kind of was another case of “meet the new boss”, the 13 Colonies were already democratic before they broke off from England and the Founding Fathers didn’t lower taxes much, if at all.
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Tronzoid 09/21/2019 12:46 PM
It delves into stuff like depression and separation anxiety
12:49
I talk about it too much
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Zarpaulek 09/25/2019 8:59 PM
My Botany professor seems more interested in bringing up philosophical discussions on the origin of society and consequences of technology than teaching how plants work.
20:59
(Agriculture)
20:59
Today, in the after-class discussion section he went on a tangent about why viruses aren’t alive.
21:00
Which got me wondering about “viral” AIs.
21:00
Are they truly copying themselves when they transmit their source code and memes to another system?
21:01
Or instructing a device on how to recreate themself? (edited)
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0111narwhalz 09/25/2019 9:03 PM
Are they transmitting their binaries or their source? :V
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Zarpaulek 09/25/2019 9:03 PM
What’s the difference?
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Buggy 09/25/2019 9:11 PM
binaries are not necessarily reversible into the source used to create them, may be significantly more difficult to understand than the source, and depending on how they're compiled the binaries may change depending on a number of factors, while the source is static
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0111narwhalz 09/25/2019 9:11 PM
If you transmit binaries, you're transmitting the actual instructions for the processor to enact.
21:11
If you transmit source, you then have to be compiled into binaries.
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Buggy 09/25/2019 9:12 PM
and nothing says the compiler can't compile things differently
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0111narwhalz 09/25/2019 9:13 PM
Usually the compiler knows the system it's compiling on better than you do.
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Buggy 09/25/2019 9:13 PM
a light example would be that, in some cases, creating a version of a program that is compatible with different computer architectures is just a matter of changing a setting in the compiler
21:14
but beyond that, it wouldn't be too crazy for a sort of intelligent virus to use a compiler to produce variations of itself for greater resistance to countermeasures, without the work of changing the source code significantly
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0111narwhalz 09/25/2019 9:15 PM
Of course, in-verse, there's the Universal Noetic Architecture, which means you can transmit even a layer beyond, with the mindstate vector.
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Buggy 09/25/2019 9:15 PM
depending on how advanced we're talking, it could just be changing the obfuscation seed, all the way to some sort of 'conceptual' compiler that makes apparently completely different programs that nonetheless end up acting the same, and would be nigh-impossible to reverse engineer without the source
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0111narwhalz 09/25/2019 9:15 PM
Which is as "you as opposed to instructions for creating you" as you can get.
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Buggy 09/25/2019 9:16 PM
it really depends on what sort of 'intelligent virus' we're talking about, i guess
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Zarpaulek 09/25/2019 9:17 PM
Well, one example I was thinking of was Ennesby from Schlock Mercenary. Who was designed as a cost-saving measure for a music distributor.
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Buggy 09/25/2019 9:17 PM
is it a soph that lives like a virus? a very advanced form of weavelife that isn't sophont?
21:17
ahh
21:17
i don't know if i'd call him virulent
21:17
he's not really designed to infect, he's just designed to be flexible when most AI aren't.
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Zarpaulek 09/25/2019 9:18 PM
The other would be the Oracle from SSDD, who was created by a hacker who put genetic algorithms into viruses and has a habit of overwriting other AIs.
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Buggy 09/25/2019 9:19 PM
in general, if you're going for compatibility, it usually comees at a performance hit
21:19
because you're trying to abstract things to some degree
21:20
so you have at least some unavoidable overhead because you're spending extra effort computing something that isn't quite optimized for the system in question because you can't or don't want to change it
21:21
beyond that, if it's specifically supposed to be virulent, you also have to have methods of attack and defense, unless you're attacking fools who've never heard of antivirus software
21:23
wait, the original question was "are they truly copying themselves"
21:25
well, if they want to spent less or no effort (re)compiling themselves, they have to abstract themselves (and take a performance hit). This is closer to copying because they have to change less about themselves, but it's less efficient. If they want to be better defended, they should spend more time recompiling themselves, because that's one method they could use to introduce obfuscation that will confuse enemies.
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0111narwhalz 09/25/2019 9:25 PM
of course you could say it reduces to "if you cut someone's mind up into packets and attach a header to each one are they still the mind or are they instructions for creating the mind"
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Buggy 09/25/2019 9:25 PM
if we want to talk specific in-verse examples, most of the viruses or such we've seen in action actively change disguises/shape/entire function as they travel
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Zarpaulek 09/25/2019 9:27 PM
Those might be more akin to bacteria than viruses though. Aside from how computer programs need a substrate to run them of course
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Buggy 09/25/2019 9:31 PM
yeah, that is the thing about viruses
21:31
they're kinda implied to be tiny, subtle, subversive things
21:31
not the sort of thing you'd expect to be sophont or even easily defined as alive
21:32
aha
21:32
found it
21:32
https://eldraeverse.com/2012/02/16/the-emancipator/
Alistair Young
The Emancipator
The bundle of program code identifying itself as EPS****β7 flitted silently across the extranet, transmitting itself by laser and tangle from relay node to relay node, Meridia Central to Meridia Ri…
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Zarpaulek 10/02/2019 3:18 PM
If anyone's curious as to how corporate colonization has worked in the past, this podcast's last five episodes have covered Manhattan under the Dutch West Indian Company https://wondery.com/shows/american-history-tellers/
Dan
Wondery - Feel The Story American History Tellers
How well do you really know the stories that made America?
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Zarpaulek 10/03/2019 6:33 PM
Okay, this is an interesting philosophy
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MarcusAurelius 10/03/2019 6:36 PM
cogito ergo volo
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Tronzoid 10/04/2019 1:20 AM
How has she become such a badass?
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Zarpaulek 10/04/2019 6:15 AM
Time travel
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Tronzoid 10/04/2019 10:24 AM
What is her name?
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Zarpaulek 10/04/2019 10:59 AM
Tessa Edwards, Core marine with prototype nanomachine implants, dating a sex droid that looks like her dead first boyfriend, got yanked back in time when the Collective of Anarchist States tried to steal a time/space machine she was guarding. http://www.poisonedminds.com/d/20010108.html
11:01
Since 2006 SSDD has been running two simultaneous arcs, one with her backstory in the future, the other in the “present”. http://www.poisonedminds.com/d/20060202.html
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Tronzoid 10/04/2019 11:37 AM
Why would she date a dead man? Seems rather sinister if its not a backup of him
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Zarpaulek 10/05/2019 8:19 PM
Would you call this an accurate assessment?
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Buggy 10/05/2019 8:22 PM
seems reasonable
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MarcusAurelius 10/05/2019 8:30 PM
Except for the vocab part about soft sciences, the more I delve the more I run into odd not-quite-synonyms that different disciplines use to describe the same thing
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Morgrim Moon 10/05/2019 11:46 PM
I'm not sure, because astronomy fits better into the soft science descriptions given there, but is universally considered a hard science
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BizarroLand ♀ 10/08/2019 7:36 PM
Does inherent value hold even in a vacuum?
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0111narwhalz 10/08/2019 7:37 PM
there is rest energy but also kinetic/relativistic energy and the latter is relative to your reference frame
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BizarroLand ♀ 10/08/2019 7:41 PM
Not energy, value. Can it exist absent everything else, and everyone else?
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0111narwhalz 10/08/2019 7:42 PM
Depending on your definition of such, either tautologically no or tautologically yes.
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Overmind 10/08/2019 7:43 PM
No. Value is not a quality of an object, it’s a quality of the relationship between an agent and an object. You need at least one of each.
19:44
We ignore the special case in which the vacuum is sapient and able to value itself.
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0111narwhalz 10/08/2019 7:45 PM
The old "forces are things and they come in pairs" versus "forces are relations between objects" thing
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sdschildberg 10/08/2019 8:46 PM
Unenlightened self interest is subsuming you and a few into a collective that is a knockoff hivemind and being the core of an all consuming swarm to try and make it as far in the dark era as possible
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Zarpaulek 10/20/2019 4:57 PM
I've been thinking about the preponderance of "transhuman monsters" in global mythology.
✅ 2
16:58
Practically the only time a human making themselves more than human isn't depicted as bad is the Taoist Immortals.
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Zarpaulek 10/20/2019 5:06 PM
I think they're meant as cautionary tales against social climbers, at least partially propaganda by the entrenched ruling class but humans do have a habit of building social structures where psychopaths have the advantage in advancement.
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Overmind 10/21/2019 7:49 PM
On a related note, I find myself reminded of the Icarus myth and its many parallels.
19:51
Although today, I'm reminded of the Cabal (Destiny) legend of Acrius. I quote: "In the Cabal legend, a hero seeks to possess the sun. He succeeds. Then, he becomes Emperor. The Cabal… are not a subtle people. That really is the entire myth. A Cabal named Acrius desires the sun, and he takes it and becomes the first Emperor of the Cabal. Other scholars have already noted the parallels and differences with our own ancient Earth myth of Icarus, which famously has a far more humbling ending. I am more interested in how Cabal leaders throughout history have deployed this legend as a rhetorical and political justification for conquest. Among the most relevant such figures is Dominus Ghaul himself, who appears to have a personal affinity for the Acrius myth. I must also note here that, while linguistic analysis of the Cabal language and its many dialects is incomplete, they do not appear to have a word for the concept of "hubris"." - Research notes of Tyra Karn (edited)
19:52
I have not yet covered in detail a whole bunch of eldraeic mythography, but I'm pretty sure it looks a lot more like the Cabal version.
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BizarroLand ♀ 10/21/2019 9:25 PM
That's... an anagram..
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Overmind 10/21/2019 9:26 PM
Damn those cunning space turtles!
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BizarroLand ♀ 10/21/2019 9:26 PM
Yeah, I know it's vidyagame lore, but it kills me
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Overmind 10/22/2019 9:46 AM
So, I was looking at @Buggy 's comment back in August in re vulnerability: "And the strong cannot always be strong, either. Times and situations of vulnerability are inevitable and unavoidable with anything resembling a functional society." To which - and I do so here too because it's both a rather old comment and a philosophical holy war - I might say three things: 1. I first note that vulnerability as a good/necessary/inevitable thing is a very late-twentieth-century notion even in human society, and one which is not going to work too well with the local psychological differences in many ways. 2. By advocating the above, you'd be trying to argue a society one of whose highest values is God-Like Self-Perfection around to the notion that it's okay not to strive to be. This probably isn't going to work out well. 3. And most importantly, there's a very practical reason why the local cult of Mental Strength and Perfect Self-Control exists, and that's because when it doesn't, people get dead . You don't get to be vulnerable when you not only can kill people with your brain, but will if you aren't in charge of yourself. Instead, you get to shape your will into not merely a razor-sharp edge, but also an insurmountable skullfort. (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 10/22/2019 10:43 AM
Well, over there that's the case
10:43
Over here human willpower and endurance is a highly limited resource
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Overmind 10/22/2019 10:47 AM
Well, yes. But even for us depressives, it can be increased by exercise.
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Morgrim Moon 10/22/2019 10:50 AM
Willpower increases, ability to circumvent your own broken brain does not necessarily. Dunno, maybe neurotypicals can. I know no amount of willpower will circumvent parts of mine. Granted, if I was in the Empire they have medicine to fix that.
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Zarpaulek 10/22/2019 11:33 AM
There's significant evidence that willpower is biochemical, there's physical limits to how far you can take it and you're going to crash after a significant exertion.
11:34
Why do you think mania and depression are paired so much?
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BizarroLand ♀ 10/22/2019 1:35 PM
Unrelated: yes, I think immortality is a mostly good thing even withstanding the gerontocracy issue (edited)
13:36
The flipside of having 'stagnant' leaders and notables hanging around for a long time is that their accumulated experience also hangs around
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Jade Nekotenshi 10/22/2019 1:48 PM
I'd argue that this might actually be a feature.
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o11o1 10/22/2019 3:24 PM
Leaders don't have to die to be displaceable. they just have to, say, lose elections or run into some sort of term limit so that new person with different ideas can come in and try things
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Buggy 10/22/2019 4:37 PM
@Overmind i more meant literal, physical vunlerability
16:38
you can't get a hair cut without letting a barber hold something sharp near your head, you can't get in a car without giving someone else the opportunity to ram into you, you can't walk onto the street without being in the line of sights of a hell of a lot of potential sniper nests
16:39
a society that has no physical vulnerability looks like a bunch of giant, automated fortresses with one person inside of each, and they never ever come out
16:40
this holds true at high technology as well; theoretically, a revival clinic specialist or a body designer could do a fair amount of harm before anyone noticed, and if they did it carefully no one might notice at all
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Overmind 10/22/2019 7:47 PM
That seems like a peculiarly autarchic view of vulnerability.
19:48
ObReference: Meditations on the Aspects of Self
19:53
Remember, the Transcend and Empire are, from one perspective, a perfect-trust society nested inside a (very) high-trust society.
19:55
A third-triad type of invulnerability is that which comes from membership in a giant mutuality which enthusiastically exterminates defectors.
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Buggy 10/22/2019 7:56 PM
i don't disagree necessarily, i just don't know if i'd define it as invulnerability
19:56
obviously, you're astonishingly unlikely to be betrayed in the Empire
19:57
as far as the original post goes, where you have people sworn to defend the vulnerable, in one sense those people are the people behind the legal system
19:57
but in another sense, as you say, it's everyone
19:58
except for the very very small portion of people who try (and generally fail) to defect
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Overmind 10/22/2019 7:59 PM
It's like that probably-apocryphal saying attributed to Cyrus the Great, or Genghis Khan, about how a virgin naked but for a bag of gold could walk unmolested from one end of their empire to the other, so safe had they rendered it. If that is literally true, then you may not have achieved perfect invulnerability, but you are within delta of it.
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Buggy 10/22/2019 8:00 PM
fair enough, at that point either it warrants the term 'invulnerable', or there's not really much point in having that word because it can't apply to any real situation
20:01
my original thinking was "It's possible to defect, and we're the people sworn to make those bastards regret it."
20:02
it just so happens that they've done such a good job that no one defects, but that oath is still plenty important
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Overmind 10/22/2019 8:03 PM
In essence, they're (part of) the cause of your invulnerability; because in instrumentalities-of-invulnerability should be counted all the people watching your back,
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Buggy 10/22/2019 8:05 PM
though, the Curia and Co are really only a small portion of the people watching your back
20:06
they're the people who's full time job is that, but the lines get a bit fuzzy because everyone has agreed to take it up as a part time job
20:08
really the original oath seems like something that could be taken straight from a initiation ritual for Citizen Shareholders
20:08
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8443
esr
The Order of Defenders
Officiant: "One comes before us today who wishes to become a Sworn Brother. Let him approach." Officiant: "Are there two Brothers present who will affirm that the candidate is of sound mind and goo...
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20:10
My gun protects the weak. My gun speaks for liberty. My gun guards civilization. is pretty much a poetic restatement of the 'common defense' section of the Contract
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Zarpaulek 10/22/2019 8:13 PM
What did they do before the Transcend and brain backups?
20:13
The barber might be killed by the tyrant’s bodyguards afterwards, but the tyrant will still be dead.
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Buggy 10/22/2019 8:14 PM
they took their word pretty seriously for a long while before that
20:14
and tyrants weren't really a thing for most of that period
20:14
those went the way of the dodo... if dodos died off because they were thrown off a 300 foot waterfall in the middle of winter
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Buggy 10/22/2019 8:23 PM
and the risk of a random barber going insane and cutting necks instead of heads is... low
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Zarpaulek 10/22/2019 8:24 PM
I was referencing a story I read
20:24
You can substitute the “tyrant” for anyone someone would want dead really
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Buggy 10/22/2019 8:25 PM
ah, well there's probably a lot less of that there than, say, here.
20:27
for one, the focus on "you do you, i'll do me", calm and rational judgement, the long lifespans, etc all conspire and work together to make sure random instance of things like "goddamnit I hate my coworker so much I just want to kill him" are going to be a lot less common
20:27
they'd have a lot less social friction there.
20:28
as for more legitimate instances, where someone has genuinely done great harm to someone else, there's also going to be a lot less of that as well
20:29
because they place extreme value on promises, consistency, doing their duty, "don't unto others", etc
20:30
and they're a lot better about designing social systems so that defecting is not the best option for anyone
20:31
if someone ends up pulling just about any of the stunts that you commonly see on Earth, where they fuck someone over for their own gain, they're quite unlikely to escape justice for it
20:32
because they really hate that, they really hate when people escape justice, and they take their word very seriously so if someone says that someone else fucked them over, they take that seriously
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sdschildberg 10/22/2019 10:59 PM
DnD alignment meme: the eldrae are Chaotic Neutrals. The law of the market and of the contract, rather than Lawful’s focus on force/fiat. Also CN is the alignment of mercs, free traders, and other such. Finally, jt is the alignment of “because it would be awesome!’
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0111narwhalz 10/22/2019 11:36 PM
chaotic lawful
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sdschildberg 10/23/2019 12:02 AM
T posing above the chart to assert dominance. Lawful in the sense that they follow good and necessary laws and contracts, chaotic in their love of freedom and of The Market/Peace through Firepower Chaotic but not annoying about it like most CN PCs (edited)
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Morgrim Moon 10/23/2019 12:03 AM
Chaotic good voluntarily following a lawful good legal framework
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sdschildberg 10/23/2019 12:04 AM
Well behaved Chaotic Goods who function as lawful in a group
00:06
But neutral is here because there is an Awesome Me vs Dull Us axis. Light Orange vs Dark Blue if you will
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0111narwhalz 10/23/2019 12:07 AM
They play by the rules—the rules are meant to be followed—but they aren't obliged to preserve the rules if they don't like them.
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sdschildberg 10/23/2019 12:09 AM
They play by the rules because the rules are built fair and because they decided to.
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0111narwhalz 10/23/2019 12:11 AM
The rules are built fair because those are the only rules they would tolerate.
00:12
Unfair rules got chucked off waterfalls.
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sdschildberg 10/23/2019 12:12 AM
And can opt out at any to@r. That last point is the source of stuff like the Magan Corprate
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Morgrim Moon 10/23/2019 12:15 AM
I'd say still good because they want everyone else to be awesome too and give them tools and knowledge and help to do so.
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Overmind 10/23/2019 12:31 AM
Chaotic Cooperative. Or possibly Lawful Ooh Shiny.
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0111narwhalz 10/23/2019 12:33 AM
You can see the contempt they have for bad rules, but an eldrus is nothing without his word.
00:38
When the eldrae break rules, they do so by excising the rule, not just by acting contra to it.
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Overmind 10/23/2019 12:39 AM
Or by having written an "unless the outcome of following this rule in this case would be obviously stupid, in which case do something clever" exception into the rule beforehand. (edited)
00:40
(Which is why the law there explicitly allows you to plead "justification" to any charge, not just defamation.)
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o11o1 10/23/2019 11:17 AM
I don't imagine it's very easy to successfully plead justification
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Buggy 10/23/2019 11:48 AM
it's probably something that was a lot easier while the legal system was new, or when there were major unanticipated shifts
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Jade Nekotenshi 10/23/2019 11:49 AM
Coming up with a situation wherein youre justified but that justification hasn't already baked in is probably rare as anodized niobium hen's teeth,
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0111narwhalz 10/23/2019 11:50 AM
mumble mumble mature software environment
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Jade Nekotenshi 10/23/2019 12:11 PM
Yeah, pretty much that. Well-debugged.
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Zarpaulek 10/26/2019 5:53 PM
I had some ideas on why transhumans in mythology tend to be monsters and what it could imply for the transhumanist movement https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cYcFz9Mt_zmZlf86xmjcrlt17cIjDm2UBCLBcCBOe3g/edit?usp=sharing
The Transhuman Monster
Recently, I read Armann Jakobsson’s The Troll Inside You, a literary and psychological analysis of medieval Icelandic folklore. Of particular focus was the “troll”, not a specific creature like some modern fantasy writers have tried to depict them, but rather a catch-al...
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sdschildberg 11/09/2019 10:43 PM
Given local culture, calling someone trash or any insult based on body waste would be fighting words to say the least
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0111narwhalz 11/09/2019 10:45 PM
"malodorous but ultimately useful?"
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sdschildberg 11/10/2019 1:59 PM
Or more powerully: “I would call you trash, but trash can be recycled”
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0111narwhalz 11/10/2019 2:01 PM
"I need you like I need a gigawatt at 300K"
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Zarpaulek 11/16/2019 10:31 AM
Okay, how does psychosurgery fit in with the concept of pattern identity?
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Overmind 11/16/2019 10:41 AM
In what sense?
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Zarpaulek 11/16/2019 10:42 AM
You’re altering the pattern. Or, alternatively erasing and replacing it with a different one
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Overmind 11/16/2019 10:45 AM
For changes below the relevant threshold, it's essentially irrelevant. Living is change. Meme rehab is no different.
10:47
As for the relevant threshold, recall that the ORE's definition of "incurable dysfunction" isn't "we can't edit this out", it's "editing this out would cross the legal threshold at which this person would become a different person".
10:48
(At which point they go to the lethal chamber instead of meme rehab.)
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Zarpaulek 11/16/2019 11:20 AM
So, it sounds like the body can be reduced to naked atoms and a new set of atoms can be arranged into a copy of the brain and that's the same person?
11:21
But if you rearrange an existing brain too much it becomes a totally different person?
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Overmind 11/16/2019 11:22 AM
Software, not hardware.
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Zarpaulek 11/16/2019 11:22 AM
Same thing with biology
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Overmind 11/16/2019 11:28 AM
Yeah, but to be really clear, what matters is not the brain/processor, but the algorithm running on it. If you copy the connectome exactly into another brain, it's the same person; if you copy it into a brain emulator, it's the same person; if you rearrange it first so it's differently wired but behaves in the same way, it's the same person; if you translate it to a non-neural network implementation that operates entirely differently but is still executing the same fundamental algorithm, it's the same person, etc., etc.
11:33
Much as I, having a whole bunch of different devies and emulators around here, can run Word in all sorts of different ways, direct and emulated, and it's still Word. Common psychedesign/meme rehab, if I stretch this analogy some, is like applying patches to turn Word 2016 into Word 2019. It's different in some ways, it hopefully works better, but it's still Word . But there comes a point, when you're changing it, that it stops being Word and starts being, say, Excel. That's the "threshold of identity" that psychedesigners, sophotechs, and lawyers talk about. But all of that's on an orthogonal axis to the previous transformations, because they're changes to the algorithm, whereas the former keep the algorithm the same and just change the substrate.
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0111narwhalz 11/16/2019 11:33 AM
There is an acceptable amount of "error" below which two non-identical minds are considered equal.
✅ 2
11:37
Error is considered only on the math, so changes in implementation are ignored.
✅ 2
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sdschildberg 12/05/2019 7:30 PM
What’s the average eldrae’s MBTI category?
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/05/2019 7:32 PM
Everything about them reads as highly NT to me
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KAL_9000 12/05/2019 7:32 PM
Eldrae are many things
19:33
They are most certainly not neurotypical (by human standards)
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sdschildberg 12/05/2019 7:33 PM
NT on Myeres Briggs Test. I was asking due to all the “MBTI as things” posts
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/05/2019 7:34 PM
Yep, that's what I meant
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KAL_9000 12/05/2019 7:34 PM
ah
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/05/2019 7:35 PM
WRT neurotypicality, boy would the modal human consider the modal (Imperial) eldrae weird.
19:35
(And vice versa)
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Overmind 12/05/2019 7:36 PM
https://eldraeverse.com/2017/07/09/the-mbti-lens/
Alistair Young
The MBTI Lens
It occurred to me that I hadn’t posted on this specifically before, and it might be interesting to those of you who might be interested in the construction equipment behind the curtain. Are y…
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sdschildberg 12/05/2019 7:39 PM
So INTJ/INTPs primarily?
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/05/2019 7:40 PM
I would presume the tendency is a bit weaker for those eldrae outside the Empire, because they've got their reasons for choosing not to live in the Empire when they certainly can, if they so choose.
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Overmind 12/05/2019 7:40 PM
Also, as said at one point: “Oh, no, the galaxy isn’t dominated by the WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic). It’s dominated by the CUTER, who are Consensual, Urbane, Transsophont, even more Educated, and Rich(er). And who would probably not think all that much of the merely WEIRD.” (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/05/2019 7:42 PM
INTP-T reporting
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sdschildberg 12/05/2019 8:00 PM
That really helps put the eldrae mind into context
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Zarpaulek 12/05/2019 8:04 PM
They also seem to be manic (but somehow not depressive), high-functioning ASD, and mildly sociopathic by the DSM's standards.
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Overmind 12/05/2019 8:05 PM
Hypomania. Carefully tuned for, in fact.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/05/2019 8:06 PM
Sociopathic?
20:06
Hmm.
20:07
Then again, I suppose the lack of peer norming instinct might read that way.
20:07
(And what the devil would we make of a sense of balance that's as instinctive to them as peer norming is to us?)
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/05/2019 8:08 PM
It goes without saying that a human with those qualities is regarded as utterly insane
20:08
Of course, insane is all relative
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/05/2019 8:09 PM
Though we use the same term to cover gibbering incoherence, weirdness and violent, aggressive malevolence, so...
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sdschildberg 12/05/2019 8:11 PM
Just as sociopathy, peer norming malfunctioning, is associated with violent/amoral behavior, what does the breakdown in balance in eldrae lead to?
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Morgrim Moon 12/05/2019 8:17 PM
Servile behaviour can happen with people raised in environment where they attempted to please unpleaseable peers. That seems a plausible breakdown for an eldrae, complete with social pity and/or condemnation
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/05/2019 8:18 PM
Oooh, that makes sense.
20:19
(I feel that one... This is why I'd pay a hell of a lot for even half-baked working psychdesign/mind editing)
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sdschildberg 12/05/2019 8:20 PM
Seems reasonable. Even we would probably start looking into home life for that case. On a lighter note theres a tag on Tumblr for relationships between INTJ and INTP, with verse relevance
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Morgrim Moon 12/05/2019 8:20 PM
Yeah. It's easier to manage in humans than it would be for them, but likewise they'd handle someone with sociopathy better
20:22
(I had a classmate with mild sociopathy whose workaround was using others for "sanity checks". When in doubt, " this is my reasoning, is it unethical?" We cracked up watching Sherlock and him asking John "is this a bit not good?", it was so her)
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/05/2019 8:30 PM
That kind of thing is a surprisingly useful coping mechanism
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sdschildberg 12/05/2019 8:31 PM
Its how I roll, and why I want my AI muse
20:31
Of verse note IxxJ idea of fun: LET’S FIND OTHER WAYS TO MAKE THAT KNOWN THING EVEN FUNNIER
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sdschildberg 12/23/2019 12:56 PM
An alignment argument came up, and this seemed verse relevant Lawful is about following codes period, because they are codes Chaotic is about disregard for (too many) codes external or sometimes internal (the latter is for neutrals). The problem with alignment is less about the idea and more people being all loose with the words used. It would be more apt to replace them like this: Lawful = Structured Chaotic = Erratic “Good” = Altruistic “Evil” = Egotistic Good and evil are too loaded to use, especially with ascribing them to cultures (edited)
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/23/2019 12:57 PM
Yeah, a bit, though I'd argue that your glosses for good and evil are a bit overspecific.
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sdschildberg 12/23/2019 12:58 PM
It would be better to use that axis to throw out good and evil as an alignment axis.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/23/2019 12:58 PM
Inasmuch as "evil" seems to cover mostly unenlightened egoism, unfettered self-interest and other sorts of "me, and fuck you", as well as spitefulness, cruelty and sadism.
12:59
While enlightened egoism can also fall into what is generally meant by "good" - "sure, it benefits me, but it benefits all of you too".
13:00
Though I think there's a fair case to be made that the spite/sadism/etc axis is orthogonal to the altruist/egoist one.
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sdschildberg 12/23/2019 1:01 PM
A 3rd dimension, used in practice to define actions. This is designed to fit heroes, and their dark villain archetypes
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gollark 12/23/2019 1:01 PM
I don't think any system which converts the simple, easy alignment square into an alignment cube or tesseract will be popular.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/23/2019 1:02 PM
Agreed, as far as popularity goes. (This is also why two-dimensional political charts are unpopular and 3+ dimensional ones are even less so, despite being better descriptors.)
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sdschildberg 12/23/2019 1:03 PM
The square is for archetype. This is appended to “good and evil”, unenlightened or enlightened, by action. A meter in game.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/23/2019 1:03 PM
Ah, ok, that makes more sense!
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sdschildberg 12/23/2019 1:05 PM
And it’s less cursed to apply an archetype to a culture (and it’s characters) than traditional DND alignments.
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0111narwhalz 12/23/2019 1:45 PM
clearly the solution is to use a line… which is formed by stretching out a space-filling curve! [mad cackling]
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sdschildberg 12/23/2019 1:58 PM
Having enlightenment as a meter also lets you pull “we’re not so different”
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sdschildberg 12/23/2019 2:28 PM
Extra spicy: instead of erratic v structured, externally driven and internally driven can take the law and chaos slots
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Archon 12/23/2019 10:11 PM
@Unknown while I'm not commenting on the quality of your content, do note that your system ignores a lot of historical context about how those words are and were used and doesn't "Cut to the truth" so much as replace it with something you find more palatable; this may have been your intent, in which case, good job! Otherwise, go back to the pit from whence you came and stop trying to find sanity in a system that has meant many things to many people, and which grew out of specific historical (in the sense that mid-20th century fantasy novels are historical) contexts and paradigms.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/24/2019 10:01 AM
‘Objective’ good-evil alignment systems are inherently a trash fire and beyond any hope of salvation. Change my mind (edited)
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Overmind 12/24/2019 10:17 AM
Image attachment
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/24/2019 10:24 AM
Neutral gang
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/24/2019 11:51 AM
Put me in the upper-left quadrant as far as the use and purpose of such things. Of course they don't cut reality at the joints, but why do we need them to?
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Zarpaulek 12/24/2019 11:55 AM
I’m somewhere between CG and CN
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Xveers 12/24/2019 11:56 AM
I'm fairly solidly LN
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BluejayHurricane 12/24/2019 11:57 AM
True Neutral for me
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sdschildberg 12/24/2019 12:19 PM
LG/NG. Alignments, no matter what system is used, or what sets of axises are in play, help outline a character. (edited)
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Xveers 12/24/2019 2:43 PM
I would argue that with TN, it's impossible to uniformly objectify good and evil for an all encompassing definition, but it is possible to come up with an agreeable objective definition for a subset of people
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Enderminion 12/24/2019 2:43 PM
Charts like that are a solid load of BS
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 12/24/2019 4:20 PM
Clearly, on that chart I'm a solid Yes.
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o11o1 12/25/2019 10:52 PM
Depending on the time of day, I vary between the 'Neutral' and 'Chaotic Good' stance.
22:54
For most settings I'd be much happier with a customized 'factional philosophy' chart that said things like "Follows the ideals of the Wheat-and-Skull Empire", or "Values the importance of family legacy" (edited)
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o11o1 12/25/2019 11:05 PM
perhaps more usably, consider Magic The Gathering color theory as an alignment system. (edited)
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Archon 12/25/2019 11:19 PM
Yeah, I have like 80% of a "Great wheel but with MTG colors" set up somewhere. Not digging it out, old projects are embarrassing
23:20
(The great wheel is the olny good worldbuilding to have come out of the alignment system)
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o11o1 12/25/2019 11:49 PM
maybe a steampunkish type world that uses the Four Humors as it's alignment options
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 12/26/2019 12:10 AM
Sometimes I'll use the Bartle types, possibly extended. (edited)
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sdschildberg 12/26/2019 2:29 PM
or pin personalities, and thus associated motivations, to MBTI (edited)
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/26/2019 3:28 PM
Is it weird that I find "morality meter" mechanics like World of Darkness' Integrity/Humanity/Wisdom/Harmony/Synergy/etc trickier to work with and more apt to cause issues than D&D-style "statements of alignment"?
15:29
I kinda like Humanity (Vampire) and Clarity (Changeling), but the others are... obnoxiously rubber.
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Morgrim Moon 12/26/2019 7:01 PM
They tried to mimic Vampire's without the same "inevitable slow slide" mechanics
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/26/2019 7:39 PM
Yeah, except for Changeling (which is probably why I like that one)
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o11o1 12/27/2019 2:11 PM
The slow slide effect does seem to be a critical part of those systems, since they're very much about exploring being bad people.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/27/2019 2:13 PM
Vampire sure is (and I think Beast but I haven't really looked at that yet). In Mage, it's more like avoiding the temptation to turn yourself into a villain in the quest for power. Changeling is more about not thinking like a True Fae - less exploring being bad and more exploring being mad.
14:14
Werewolf... Eh, I feel like its morality meter is tacked on.
14:14
Promethean is an interesting take. I keep wanting to run a Promethean game, but it doesn't thematically do crossover well, and I'd really need a group that's all-in on the whole "quest to be human" thing.
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o11o1 12/27/2019 3:04 PM
Getting four whole players that into that quest sounds like a tricky ask
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/27/2019 3:15 PM
A skosh, aye.
15:16
Though, there is one bit of crossover potential - a throng of Prometheans trying to attain humanity crosses over with a lone kindred (ancilla, probably) trying not to lose theirs. (Or perhaps vice versa)
15:16
((further discussion in that vein goes to #random))
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Archon 12/27/2019 7:09 PM
The problem with that is that the morality meters in WoD are harder to ignore when they're being stupid (which is nearly always)
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BluejayHurricane 12/27/2019 7:24 PM
I think that stupid is an emergent property of trying to meter morality in the first place, but your point is taken.'
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Archon 12/27/2019 11:28 PM
Yeah; the "is nearly always" is "In nearly all examples of design" not "Nearly all times in any given game"
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/28/2019 10:20 AM
WoD fails there because they're trying to have the same mechanic serve as the "balance between human and not-human or sane and insane, depending" and as the mechanical punishment for murderhoboing.
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Morgrim Moon 12/28/2019 10:23 AM
it is a mechanic you can play with to get some interesting results - my (admittedly Storyteller character) high humanity Tzimisce elder says hi - but prone to abuse at the hands of either players or Storytellers
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Archon 12/28/2019 9:43 PM
Rolling "Humanity", "Sanity", and "Morality" meters into one is a big chunk of the problem, yes. Though all three of those things make for bad meters by themselves
21:43
You can get nice results, but was there anything stopping you from being that kind of person anyway?
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KAL_9000 12/28/2019 9:58 PM
Eldrae are like low hum but high san and mor (edited)
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0111narwhalz 12/28/2019 10:00 PM
what about those of Resplendant Vector and Eye in the Flame?
22:00
I am dubious of their SAN :V
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Zarpaulek 12/28/2019 10:00 PM
Correction, they’re like True Fae with high Clarity
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0111narwhalz 12/28/2019 10:01 PM
high morality, low mortality…
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Archon 12/28/2019 10:10 PM
So trying to attach a number to any of those thing is so fundamnetally flawed that those posts are basically meaningless
22:11
(Killing a person in cold blood ticks down your morality rating; sanity meters are 70% of the time an eldritch horror lose-condition; humanity is an essentially meaningless concept except in the very specific thematic context of a game like vampire or werewolf when there's a specific other replacing it)
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KAL_9000 12/28/2019 10:12 PM
I am Chaotic Extropy
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Morgrim Moon 12/28/2019 10:13 PM
morality/sanity meters like that work best in a game where they're supposed to go down over time and that's the point, that a character is doomed and you're just seeing what happens on the way down. So they work well with Call of Cthulhu et al
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Archon 12/28/2019 10:14 PM
They work mechanically best, but I dislike the thing sanity meters are trying to point to on a basic level
22:14
And they're rarely mechanically wise
22:14
And often have the worst takes on mental health
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Zarpaulek 12/28/2019 10:15 PM
I know a few “indie” game devs who are fundamentally opposed to any sort of morality mechanics.
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Archon 12/28/2019 10:17 PM
waves
22:17
Yes, it me
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Zarpaulek 12/28/2019 10:17 PM
It’s a bit counterintuitive to treat a player character losing their qualms against killing as a penalty when they’re the type for whom it would be ideal.
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Archon 12/28/2019 10:17 PM
Also, uh, it's basically impossible to do well
22:18
In the same sense as "Coming up with a general theory of morality, and then implementing it" is basically impossible to do well
22:19
Though now I kinda want to do a game where which antiquated moral system you subscribe to is your main splat, as a Dungeons & Discourse kinda deal
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0111narwhalz 12/28/2019 10:45 PM
RE: "humanity meter is meaningless unless something replaces it:" I have a design doc draft that describes a "corruption" mechanic.
22:47
Basically a body has several potential sources of control.
22:48
The first of these is the native mind, of course, but other "corrupting influences" include things like willful artifacts and other characters… and the player packmind.
22:49
The corruption mechanic is how you hold on to your agent bodies, and how you acquire more.
22:50
So rather than a meter you get an arbitrary-dimensional vector.
22:52
Actions that would be consistent with a corrupting influence, in the presence of said influence, increase its control.
22:52
Which seems hard to implement but cool to talk about V:
22:54
The idea being to introduce more depth into the otherwise flat "willpower contest."
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Zarpaulek 12/29/2019 6:34 PM
So which NWoD morality meter best models the eldrae?
18:34
I'm betting Changeling: The Lost's "clarity"
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KAL_9000 12/29/2019 6:37 PM
Extropic Awesome
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Zarpaulek 12/29/2019 6:40 PM
I said "meter", not "alignment".
18:40
There are Renegades you know.
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Archon 12/29/2019 7:07 PM
Mu. The question is fundamentally pointless.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/30/2019 8:53 AM
I mostly agree, but if you had to jimmysquid one in there, it'd be Mage's Wisdom, I think. Clarity feels appropriately fae-ish, but I think the heirarchy of sins that Imperials would be mainly worried about are closer to Mage's sins against Wisdom. (That said, some of those seem like such trivial violations that I don't even know why they're considered a problem within Mage.)
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Overmind 12/30/2019 2:59 PM
Wisdom is probably closest, but still not very close.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/30/2019 3:12 PM
To me it feels close in the sense that hubris seems like it would be something that Imperials would detest and avoid, especially the species of hubris that makes one think that they're better qualified to make choices than the soph to whom those choices apply (because that way lies choice-theft, if it's not there already), but I can't imagine the modal Imperial having any real issue with using grand cosmic power to make their life easier so long as it's not grossly ineffecient, doesn't have horrid negative externalities, doesn't rob anyone else of their choices without consent, etc.
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Overmind 12/30/2019 3:12 PM
When I was tinkering with this sort of thing for potential RPG purposes, I used five (or six) interlocking scales for relevant attributes. (Well, mostly relevant; the first is less so.) Two that were regular attributes: * Drive: your willpower, essentially, from "Enh" to "The Determinator". * Control: your self-control, from raksha levels of "ooh, shiny"/"" to "Not even in the face of Armageddon". (It should be noted that the local culture emphasizes maximizing both of these.) And three hierarchies of sins: * your coercive tendencies, from "mildly passive-aggressive" to "Hegemonizing Swarm". * your destructive tendencies, from "accidentally broke a glass" to "I WILL END IT ALL." * your infiduciary tendencies, from "Captain America" to "Ebon Dragon". (edited)
15:13
(The sixth would be something like the Alchemical Exalted's Clarity , to cover level of integration with the Transcend.)
15:17
(Three, because people break bad in different ways, and conveniently, in-'verse taxonomy of evil tends to divide in much the same way.)
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/30/2019 3:29 PM
Slavers, entropy-cultists and defaulters, basically?
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sdschildberg 12/30/2019 3:34 PM
Just the idea of splitting good/evil into it’s components, and having seperate “characterization sliders”, is genius
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Overmind 12/30/2019 3:38 PM
@Jade Nekotenshi Yep.
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0111narwhalz 12/30/2019 5:13 PM
It only makes sense to not mash a multidimensional concept like good and evil into a single dimension.
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sdschildberg 12/30/2019 5:23 PM
And it lets you have villianous motives
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0111narwhalz 12/30/2019 5:26 PM
Motives follow easily and more or less directly, as they should.
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sdschildberg 12/30/2019 5:54 PM
Independent sliders for characterization and various forms of villany honestly is good in and of itself one could craft a human version of this
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Archon 12/31/2019 8:46 AM
I accept this take in this specific context only because there's the strong in-universe and in-work tenancy to classify all sin into those three boxes, and doing that mechanically follows up on that set of themes that you want to reinforce. It's still a massive oversimplification as far as real morality and moral failure-modes goes, but it's otherwise decent
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Zarpaulek 01/01/2020 7:52 PM
Thread on standards of politeness https://weasowl.tumblr.com/post/182264199515/i-love-it-when-you-accidentally-meet-eyes-with-a
blinkpatch
blinkpatch
It’s not a south v. west thing, it’s a city thing. That’s why New Yorkers are the purest version of this. And it’s why I get both sides. I grew up in a small town in Northern California, and it was...
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sdschildberg 01/01/2020 9:25 PM
Small town polite is focused on the person in the conversation City polite on the group of people around you’s ability to get along with their day
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Jade Nekotenshi 01/01/2020 9:40 PM
Just so. Very much on the order of similar urban/rural differences, too.
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sdschildberg 01/01/2020 10:31 PM
It gets associated with regions of the US due to the fact that the North has both more cities and larger ones
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Zarpaulek 01/20/2020 5:32 PM
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/325
Utilitarian Dictator
A philosophy webcomic about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world. Also Jokes
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Zarpaulek 01/27/2020 7:18 AM
Interesting take, I have noticed a distinct lack of "morals" in the older myths and folklore https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-good-guy-bad-guy-myth?utm_source=pocket-newtab
The Good Guy/Bad Guy Myth - Aeon - Pocket
Pop culture today is obsessed with the battle between good and evil. Traditional folktales never were. What changed?
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Zarpaulek 02/22/2020 6:38 PM
How weird is the concept of “gambling”? (edited)
18:39
I mean, putting out some valuables and letting one person at random take them all?
18:40
How did we even come up with that idea? My best guess is a means of resolving property disputes via divination methods.
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Xenoangel 02/22/2020 7:02 PM
To me, it seems more likely that humans got bored, so they played games with randomness, and then they got bored of that, so they attributed real value and stakes to the randomness.
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Xveers 02/22/2020 7:48 PM
As well, a lot of classic gambling games involve elements of strategy as well as chance. It's only when you start getting into commercial gambling where you see true random chance ones coming to being
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BluejayHurricane 02/22/2020 9:01 PM
Also, gambling makes brains light up like a Christmas tree, for some reason. There may be a more “evopsych” explanation, but if there is I don’t know it.
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Morgrim Moon 02/22/2020 9:04 PM
I suspect it nails the foraging instincts, somehow. "Does this tree bark have tasty bugs under it? Y/N"
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BluejayHurricane 02/22/2020 9:06 PM
As a way to deal with a hostile environment when staying in is safe, but food is important in the long term?
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0111narwhalz 02/22/2020 10:38 PM
Random reinforcement is vastly more effective at cementing an association than consistent reinforcement.
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Overmind 02/23/2020 12:53 PM
Perhaps a method to experience risk and practice risk assessment in a controlled situation.
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Zarpaulek 02/23/2020 3:14 PM
Most of you seem to be describing the appeal more than how it could have started
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