Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[argumate]

Now I’m wondering what if students could spend student loans on other things, like starting businesses.

[voxette-vk]

So you’ve come around to the radical libertarians calling for voluntary slavery?

[argumate]

Just highly suspicious of the American student loan system! Like most American institutions it seems to neatly combine the worst aspects of socialism and capitalism. Why not just have regular loans (allow bankruptcy etc.) or just socialise the system entirely like a sensible country??

[mitigatedchaos]

The money must be laundered through the private sector to prove that it isn’t Socialism™.

Nevermind that either doing it in a more capitalist, more socialist, or just straight-up better national centrist way would be more effective.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[collapsedsquid]

I was doing  semi deep dive into Orion’s Arm after @immanentizingeschatons reminded me of it, and it got me thinking about post-scarcity and politics.

Specifically, I was comparing it to some of the other post-scarcity settings I’ve seen, like Eclipse Phase, Mindjammer, and Nova Praxis.  One thing that all of these have in common is that the politics presented in the game seems off. 

Nova Praxis and Mindjammer to my mind don’t really have political conflict. They try to describe some of the political units, but they seem to be stereotypes masquerading as politics or and otherwise just poorly described.  Eclipse Phase and Orion’s Arm do have political units, but they’re fairly obviously based on the political viewpoints favored in the demographic and seem kind of goofy and impossible because of that.

And it strikes me that to some level this is an impossible problem.  If you think there won’t be real politics in the post-scarcity future, I’m going to very much doubt that. But if you think that you can predict the nature of political conflict in the post-scarcity future, I’m also going to very much doubt that. So, either way, you’re stuck with writing a political scene that’s weird.

[mitigatedchaos]

But really, can there truly be post-scarcity?  Maybe with magic violating conservation of matter-energy, but without it, someone is going to want to use the mass of your asteroid to build their habitat to replicate their ideology.  

[collapsedsquid]

I consider “post-scarcity” as describing when technology has advanced to the point where the common material desires like food, housing, and entertainment of any person are trivially easy to fill.

[isaacsapphire]

Then aren’t we there already in some countries?

[bambamramfan]

Indeed. “Post scarcity” more refers to “when people believe there is not a scarcity of stuff.” And as the discourse over the $500,000 New York family shows, it is unrealistic that that would ever happen no matter how many resources our society generates.

[mitigatedchaos]

The year is 3122. Transhumanity has colonized the entire solar system. The total GDP of mankind and its descendant species long ago exceeded its 2340 high of 14 quadrillion US2016 dollars. A new discourse arises.

PRIVATIZE THE SUN

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

ＰＲＩＶＡＴＩＺＥ ＴＨＥ ＳＵＮ

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[rocketverliden]

The PewDiePie discourse seems to help illuminate two schools of thought regarding the inculcation of extremism and such.

One school of thought, favored by SJ and left-wing people, is that extremism is generative: if left unchecked, it grows.

The other school of thought, favored by less-than-left people, is that extremism is reactive: it is always growing in opposition to perceived overreach/overreaction.

@theaudientvoid @brazenautomaton @thathopeyetlives @argumate Thoughts?

[argumate]

what if elegant abstract general principles are insufficient to describe the full complexity of the world we inhabit

[mitigatedchaos]

No Argumate, you stupid owl, it works in exactly the way most convenient for my ideology.

*Monitors resulting level of pro-owl extremism in order to test hypothesis.*

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

New term to describe people I don’t like: “Discourse X”

[wirehead-wannabe]

We keep having trouble coming up with good ways to describe the sorts of e.g. feminism that are harmful and abusive, so I propose that we go with “Discourse Feminism.” Discourse Feminism:

- focuses on naming and shaming individuals as a means of ideological enforcement and/or abuse

- tends to misuse academic terms, often in ways that are the exact opposite of their original meaning. Example: patriarchy, intersectionality, emotional labor

- really just wants a list of who the Bad People are so they can accuse anyone they dislike of being a Bad Person

- puts excessive focus on making sure people use the right identity labels (“if you think women are people you’re a feminist!) and PC language relative to actual substance

- treats anyone who disagrees as an Enemy To The Movement

But this is by no means limited to feminism! You can use it to describe the bad parts of any political group:

Discourse Social Justice
Discourse Anti-racism
Discourse Men’s Rights
Discourse Sex Positivity
Discourse Christianity
Discourse Communism

[mitigatedchaos]

“Sh-shut up. I’m not a D-discourse!”

“Yes you are. Cast her into the pit!”

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Regarding arguments around race and racism.

I would argue that we haven’t actually tried having social policy that doesn’t suck yet.  A combination of factors produced by our society and policies incentivize bad outcomes.

You get the outcome the incentives produce.  To change the outcome, one must change the incentives.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Some of this ongoing race issue in the United States could be fixed, but it would require stepping on about ten different ideologies, spending a lot of money, and being very pragmatic.  None of those things are realistically going to happen, except for the middle one, which when used just by itself would fail spectacularly.

(Before anyone gets too excited, I’m talking about things like school reform, wage subsidies, removal of welfare trap, etc.)

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[argumate]

what I’m trying to do is end the dominance of capital over all our lives, end the endless wars for profit, the system of white supremacy and settler colonialism that has resulted in generations of suffering, and end the actual destruction of our ecosystems. and since the only alternative to capitalism is communism,

I see this conflation all the time and I’m compelled to be bugged by it every time.

There just haven’t been that many wars for profit lately relative to historical standards, the ideology of white supremacy has little to do with adoption of capitalism across non-white nations, settler colonialism is orthogonal to all of these issues, and destruction of ecosystems is a side effect of industrialisation and ballooning population growth that needs to be addressed in similar ways regardless of economic system.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[fierceawakening]

I am confused by people who dislike rap specifically because it’s not singing when, like, since when is reciting poetry not an ancient human form of art that has pretty much existed forever?

Also there are crap tons of white musicians who growl, scream, or otherwise gargle their lyrics so since when is singing a requirement anyway?

*wanders off to listen to some people gargling words*

[crazyeddieme]

like, since when is reciting poetry not an ancient human form of art that has pretty much existed forever? 

yeah, and a lot of us aren’t crazy about that either.  Or maybe that’s just me.

[mitigatedchaos]

Moi aussi.
私も。

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

Do you believe in an Optimal population for countries and the planet? I know climate is a big factor in it, for instance countries or regions that face almost routine natural disasters (drought,flooding,heatwaves,etc) should probably not be home to millions of people simply for economic gain.

elementarynationalism answered:

>2017
>Being concerned about things fixed by us terraforming Mars

[mitigatedchaos]

Way too optimisitic m8. If we don’t have the tech to fix this planet, we don’t have the tech to terraform Mars. And we won’t have the tech to terraform this planet for decades, and the shear material cost to do it correctly will likely be enormous.