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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

Anonymous asked:

which side is that?

In reference to this post: I would oppose a Communist revolution, through various means.  That ideology has earned my “the red hammer” tag for a reason.  The question was asked in the context of a right-winger attempting to determine whether I qualify as right-wing.

Although part of this consideration is that any Communism which is revolutionary is bound to end up more like previous disastrous failures than like the Israeli Kibbutzes, which while still not actually a good idea (required some subsidization, bad for children’s psychological development) didn’t involve going on internal starvation / murder sprees, and are very small (Dunbar’s Number territory - not a coincidence).

An actual Socialism that could work, that would spread throughout the world, would be based on an actual working model that exceeds Capitalist production, which could be replicated without force of arms because even 85th-percentile productive people would volunteer for it.

There is also the matter of how those movements themselves would treat me, how identity politics movements would treat me, and so on.  They would all treat me as an undesirable outsider, effectively putting me with the opposition by default.  Some of them would do far worse.

Some sides I’m on haven’t fully materialized yet, but they will.  My blog description contains more than one metaphorical truth about which sides I’m on, that should be easy enough to guess at.

collapsedsquid
raginrayguns

i was as pissed as anybody about banning iranians but idk why ppl get so upset about the wall? Like there was this sign on the university like “NO BAN NO WALLS” well no ban sure but illegal immigration from mexico is already banned idk the big deal about a wall, i aske dsomeone and they were like “it’s a waste of money” and that’s TOTALLY not what people are complaining about when they say “NO BAN NO WALLS”, or they’d be elsewhere writing “NO BAN NO EXPENSIVE DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS”

collapsedsquid

It’s banned as a matter of law, but if you read between the lines it’s something the US basically allows for multiple reasons.

Let’s say you had a piece of property that was yours, but for years you generally ignored it and let people wander through it or do whatever.  After years this, people built their lives around being able to do this.  Then one day, you show up and get everyone there arrested for trespassing and build a wall around it.  That’s a fairly good analogy.

(I should point that this is a problem that is specifically addressed in legal systems through the concept of “Adverse Possession”)

mitigatedchaos

If the Democrats weren’t either deliberately planning “Demographic Destiny” or just celebrating it, I’d be far less sympathetic to the pro-Wall position.  Trump voters have judged that the only way to get a handle on immigration in this country is to build a physical barrier that is politically inconvenient to remove - and based on the level of quiet support for Open Borders among prominent Democrats and the like, I don’t see that they’re wrong about that.

Open Borders WILL create a World Government unless it is fought.  If a giant dumb wall buys us another ten or twenty years without a World Government, then so be it.

Source: raginrayguns
silver-and-ivory
silver-and-ivory

I don’t get what “executive functioning” is.

As far as I can tell, people with poor executive functioning generally:

  • find it hard to get up and get water even if they’re really thirsty
  • get metaphorically tired after doing stuff and have to rest, even if it wasn’t really Objectively Tiring
  • have to put lots of effort into continuing to do stuff after they have begun
  • have to invest some initial effort into beginning tasks, even if the task itself isn’t that hard and/or they really want to do the task
  • find it somewhat metaphorically-wearying to do too many Different things without a break
  • and as their energy is used up, it takes more energy to do comparatively easy things, such that things that would’ve taken 10 effort at the beginning now take 100 effort
  • but also they can sometimes get really invested in doing a thing after they have begun, at which point it stops taking away energy and takes almost no willpower at all
  • the more things they have to do, the more difficult it is to begin, even if all of those things are fairly easy. it is not clear whether it takes more energy to begin, or if it’s just harder to make the Decision

Some of these are things like “bad at transitions” and “getting focused on one thing”. But other things are really weird and I don’t get why they happen.

What is this metaphorical Effort that gets depleted whenever I have to clean the kitchen or do chores, so that I don’t have Effort left to do homework, or, more precisely, so that I have to spend more Effort to do homework? And that somehow trades off against ability to get water? This sounds fake even though I know it’s not?

Is there any kind of neurological explanation for this mysterious quality that causes me to suck at doing stuff?

mitigatedchaos

Your body has to expend resources to accomplish tasks, but in the ancestral environment focusing on tasks that weren’t sufficiently rewarding was dangerous as it could mean not eating. So, there is an instinct/mechanism to cut off unrewarding tasks. What happens when that instinct/mechanism is too powerful?

silver-and-ivory

Huh, I would assume that too many tasks get cut off?

Do you have any sources for this?

mitigatedchaos

Sorry, I should have been more clear but I was answering quickly. As someone with poor executive functioning, this is my speculation / reasoning based on observation for why it would be this way.

If we imagine the hypothetical person with pure focus, able to override all distractions and do their boring work, we have a person that might literally keep working and working on accounting spreadsheets or boring through a tree looking for honey, while they starve to death. The cues to stop come up from within our subconscious. (We can also note people injuring themselves while under the influence of various drugs.)

So as with many things in biology, there may be a range of behaviors and the farther towards the outer edge of that range, above or below, the more dangerous. Poor executive functioning thus being below the optimal level of filtering distractions / internal rewards / stick-to-it-iveness.

silver-and-ivory
silver-and-ivory

I don’t get what “executive functioning” is.

As far as I can tell, people with poor executive functioning generally:

  • find it hard to get up and get water even if they’re really thirsty
  • get metaphorically tired after doing stuff and have to rest, even if it wasn’t really Objectively Tiring
  • have to put lots of effort into continuing to do stuff after they have begun
  • have to invest some initial effort into beginning tasks, even if the task itself isn’t that hard and/or they really want to do the task
  • find it somewhat metaphorically-wearying to do too many Different things without a break
  • and as their energy is used up, it takes more energy to do comparatively easy things, such that things that would’ve taken 10 effort at the beginning now take 100 effort
  • but also they can sometimes get really invested in doing a thing after they have begun, at which point it stops taking away energy and takes almost no willpower at all
  • the more things they have to do, the more difficult it is to begin, even if all of those things are fairly easy. it is not clear whether it takes more energy to begin, or if it’s just harder to make the Decision

Some of these are things like “bad at transitions” and “getting focused on one thing”. But other things are really weird and I don’t get why they happen.

What is this metaphorical Effort that gets depleted whenever I have to clean the kitchen or do chores, so that I don’t have Effort left to do homework, or, more precisely, so that I have to spend more Effort to do homework? And that somehow trades off against ability to get water? This sounds fake even though I know it’s not?

Is there any kind of neurological explanation for this mysterious quality that causes me to suck at doing stuff?

mitigatedchaos

Your body has to expend resources to accomplish tasks, but in the ancestral environment focusing on tasks that weren’t sufficiently rewarding was dangerous as it could mean not eating. So, there is an instinct/mechanism to cut off unrewarding tasks. What happens when that instinct/mechanism is too powerful?

collapsedsquid
collapsedsquid

So, I don’t wholly object to legalism.  If you take the story about the roving bandit and the stationary bandit where the stationary bandit became the state, and to me that was a great advantage because it formalized the rules.  You could still be exploited, but if you knew how and when you would be exploited, you could plan, you could build, you could do all sorts of things.  Legalism in this case can be thought of as a technology that helped us.

But there’s a difference between that and thinking that if only we could get the right set of rules, we can be saved.  In my mind, if we could make a legal system so universally good it couldn’t be abused, than we wouldn’t need a legal system because we’re already just so good.  So I don’t think that rules are the answer to this problem.

mitigatedchaos

I think a softer version of that same premise does work.  The system creates the incentives people are responding to, they do actually respond to them, and there is a LOT of room for improvement.

The design of the system is absolutely crucial.  It might require morality to enforce, but it is the system that creates the context/environment within which morality is learned - or unlearned, in the case of damage to corruption-resistance in Communist countries that lasts to this day, after they are no longer Communist.

It also creates the expectations about what is normal, which is part of what LGBTs are trying to make sure gay marriage is recognized legally (rather than opting for weaker “civil unions”).

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