Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

I don’t believe the orthodox leftist answer, at least not anywhere near completely.  It excuses culture, for instance.  People aren’t reducible solely to economics, and it doesn’t matter whether it is AnCaps or Communists that are doing the reducing.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[quoms]

it’s implicit in mainstream conceptions of nationalism/national liberation that a nation can attain the fullest expression of its freedom as a nation without ‘interference’ from anyone else, i.e. in an ethnically, linguistically, and culturally homogeneous state. like that’s the ideal venue for free expression, cultural flowering, etc.

[mitigatedchaos]

Not everyone has the same experience as you, and not every Nationalist is a cultural-isolation-maximizer.

The Japanese have managed to remain Japanese while changing, flowing, adapting concepts from around the world, and they have an entire subset of their syllabulary used to represent foreign loanwords.

And yet… the lack of crime, the lack of Islamic terrorist attacks, being able to trust children to ride the train to school, carefully queuing up to receive supplies in the wake of a massive natural disaster… in other, more multicultural places this either isn’t the case, is only the case for the wealthy, or is enforced by the iron hand of a soft authoritarian state.

Culture is a wave, not a water, but that doesn’t mean we have to blur all of them together.  Diversity isn’t a terminal value.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[collapsedsquid]

Since it sort of blew up more than I was expecting, I’ll share a few thoughts I had on matters relating to that “antipolitics“ post.

First of all, there’s the desire for rules that can’t be games by socially savvy people, but what you’re instead getting is rules that are games by people who are skilled in certain types of abstract reasoning.  Legal realism means more than just “property is coercive,“ it means that you can think of law as less of rules that are followed and more and predictions on what legal judgements will be passed.  When laws are vague or contradictory, as they often are, then it’s those abstract reasoning abilities that matter when arguing. 

I’ve said before that it’s interesting how many libertarian bloggers are lawyers, and to me this pretty much lays out the connection.   Same thing I was thinking about when I remarked on how Veblen said that lawyers tended to be most opposed to socialism or when I was mildly smug that people with a law degree are significantly worse predictors than those without.   It’s all about this certain way of thinking. Hell, you can think of the legal realism school as the exception that proves the rule.

So this is a method of thinking that’s shared by libertarians, rationalists, neoreactionaries and exemplified by lawyers.  I’ve got problems with this school, I think it tends against empiricism.  It’s not explicit, and empirical observations can be slotted in, but they often appear to be an afterthought.

The upshot of this though is that rather than oppose this because it’s unworkable, you can view this type of legalism as just an attempt to shift power from people who do social networking to people who do this style of abstract reasoning. You may view it as not a power shift but a principled objection, but I’m sure the social networkers feel that their method is the natural and just way to organize society.

(Not saying this is explicitly self-serving, it’s just about how the patterns of thinking people have inform their worldview in way that ends up favoring themselves.)

[mitigatedchaos]

Quite frankly, a lot of the social network dominance types (in politics) are either self-serving “protagonist-centered morality” types, or manipulators, or against some kind of empiricism.  The concerns over the Tyranny of Structurelessness are very valid.

Not to mention that countries with this Rules focus are outperforming ones that have high amoral familism, etc.

That doesn’t mean Libertarianism is going to fly (as you’ve no doubt read me pointing out), though.  What it means is that since we can’t entirely chase out politics, we have to plan for it.  You can think of it as the values portion of the policy vector < values, efficacy >.

[collapsedsquid]

I could argue that the Rules focus is an illusion, and what causes outperformance is that the networks in advanced countries are more connected and less cliquish.  There’s this difference between rules used to organize society and having rules, maybe rules are just used as a method for avoiding responsibility.

[mitigatedchaos]

Ah, but how did they get that way?  If you posit it isn’t the rules or the focus on rules, then you might start heading towards HBD and other more reactionary type thoughts…

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[collapsedsquid]

Since it sort of blew up more than I was expecting, I’ll share a few thoughts I had on matters relating to that “antipolitics“ post.

First of all, there’s the desire for rules that can’t be games by socially savvy people, but what you’re instead getting is rules that are games by people who are skilled in certain types of abstract reasoning.  Legal realism means more than just “property is coercive,“ it means that you can think of law as less of rules that are followed and more and predictions on what legal judgements will be passed.  When laws are vague or contradictory, as they often are, then it’s those abstract reasoning abilities that matter when arguing. 

I’ve said before that it’s interesting how many libertarian bloggers are lawyers, and to me this pretty much lays out the connection.   Same thing I was thinking about when I remarked on how Veblen said that lawyers tended to be most opposed to socialism or when I was mildly smug that people with a law degree are significantly worse predictors than those without.   It’s all about this certain way of thinking. Hell, you can think of the legal realism school as the exception that proves the rule.

So this is a method of thinking that’s shared by libertarians, rationalists, neoreactionaries and exemplified by lawyers.  I’ve got problems with this school, I think it tends against empiricism.  It’s not explicit, and empirical observations can be slotted in, but they often appear to be an afterthought.

The upshot of this though is that rather than oppose this because it’s unworkable, you can view this type of legalism as just an attempt to shift power from people who do social networking to people who do this style of abstract reasoning. You may view it as not a power shift but a principled objection, but I’m sure the social networkers feel that their method is the natural and just way to organize society.

(Not saying this is explicitly self-serving, it’s just about how the patterns of thinking people have inform their worldview in way that ends up favoring themselves.)

[mitigatedchaos]

Quite frankly, a lot of the social network dominance types (in politics) are either self-serving “protagonist-centered morality” types, or manipulators, or against some kind of empiricism.  The concerns over the Tyranny of Structurelessness are very valid.

Not to mention that countries with this Rules focus are outperforming ones that have high amoral familism, etc.

That doesn’t mean Libertarianism is going to fly (as you’ve no doubt read me pointing out), though.  What it means is that since we can’t entirely chase out politics, we have to plan for it.  You can think of it as the values portion of the policy vector < values, efficacy >.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[silver-and-ivory]

what other frameworks can I use to understand the world which aren’t privilege/oppression?

I think one of them is Lockeanism. I’m kind of tired of Lockeanism (though I still agree with it). Also tired of the democracy/totalitarian or capitalism/communism divide since that seems really inapplicable to my actual life

who should I read? what theory should I try on? I want new ideas to think about My Life and The World so that I’m not stuck with this one that makes me feel vaguely upset at Everything

[mitigatedchaos]

I propose a model in which power relations are between individuals, with individuals being nodes (hubs) on a graph, and the relationships being directed weighted edges (spoke arrows with numbers).

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[vintagegeekculture]

David Schleinkofer

[mitigatedchaos]

SC2K.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

I found the following among my notes: "@argumate numerology-based stock options". I have no idea what it was supposed to mean.

argumate answered:

fuck, that’s a great start up idea

[collapsedsquid]

I had an idea I was going to share for the owlcero, but it turns out you don’t need a $400 machine to stretch an owl.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[sinesalvatorem]

I’m kind of annoyed by the people who complain that trans people are too concerned with passing and not enough with fucking with the gender binary.

Like, dude, my concern with passing is that I don’t want to be noticed by the (dangerously common) people who want to physically remove “bitchniggas” from moving trains. Please fuck with the gender binary on your own time, when my punchable face isn’t on the line.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[wirehead-wannabe]

I really wish we could just somehow make neighborhoods be more like college campuses, but unfortunately that whole model is built on people all working (or schooling or whatever) in the same place and more or less committing to not moving for four years. (It could also be relying on people not having kids, but if anything I would expect the college campus model to be better at having local daycare services and safe, stimulating places for kids to play, so I don’t think that’s it.

[jadagul]

Which aspects are you thinking about that college campuses have and dense urban environments don’t?

[wirehead-wannabe]

A lot more “third spaces” that function well as such, better sense of community/higher trust, green space that actually functions well as green space. Room and board + campus maintenance + activity fees combined seem to be far more modest than the cost of living in an urban area (maybe because it avoids the problems that come with having to pay for a safe neighborhood in a positional-goods type of way by being strongly selected for IQ + consciousnessness? Idk).

[furioustimemachinebarbarian]

A lot of this is just describing, like, suburbs and small towns.  Nothing stops you from continuing to live in a college town after you finish college, and there are lots of small towns with a similar “feel.” 

[wirehead-wannabe]

This, I think, is where @jadagul’s point about colleges being selected for people like me becomes relevant. Plus small towns tend to lack the classes and guest speakers and general traits of academia that make it stimulating. But yes, “small Minnesota town filled with rationalists that has good access to infrastructure, jobs, etc” would be more or less ideal.

[mitigatedchaos]

I sympathize with you and have considered urban planning from this angle, constructing medium-density communities-within-communities.  Just put me in charge of the country as Technocratic Dictator Central Director of the North American Union and I’ll get it sorted.

I’m a good person, and there is little reason to worry about how this might be involved in plans to build an unstoppable super-nation.  Plus, I assure you the prediction markets for the National Delegation will have my back on this matter.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anti-abortion argument: You wouldn’t be here if you were aborted.

Desired conclusion: Therefore abortion is wrong.

Actual conclusion: Therefore time travel is wrong.