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

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

@mailadreapta liked your post

Don’t get too excited, bro.

A lot of my thinking on what counts as actually-degenerate now, vs what could count as that in the future, depends significantly on available medical and legal technology.

  • Keeping birthrates steady is key in a society where lifespan has not been radically extended.
  • The lack of artificial wombs makes it far more difficult for the state to, if necessary, raise children to make up for population shortfalls.
  • STDs still exist, some of them are becoming antibiotic-resistant, some of them are permanent.
  • Most radical body modifications just aren’t feasible right now without dramatically risking the health of the subject.
  • Difficult-to-impossible for most people to exit their sexuality means that most people are locked in as heteros so gender ratios matter a lot.
  • Difficult-to-impossible for most people to remain young in appearance, and healthy beyond current healthspans.  Long-term irreparable deterioration inevitable.
  • Cannot adequately repair DNA damage accrued through having children while of too great a genetic similarity.
  • Heritable diseases largely incurable, cannot be simply edited out.
  • Can’t repair brain damage beyond some minimum natural level at current tech level, including psychologically-induced trauma.
  • Can’t repair limbs effectively, replacement prosthetics are of substandard performance.

I’m not against a future of immortal cyborg mermaids polyamorously dating cyborg vampires while engaging in extreme Martian exosports per se, but I am against picking the policies that make sense for that future long before they make sense for our present moment.

politics my politics mitigated future
thathopeyetlives
immanentizingeschatons

My stretch goal is basically to reconcile LessWrongian high rationalism, hyper-individualistic social liberalism, socialism (or at least something that might be called that), degeneracy, and being really, really autistic into a stable totalizing* ideology, and then use it to overthrow the old world order, reeducate the normies, and hold off the dark forces of GNON until we can ascend to heaven.

Everyone needs a little hubris in their life.

*totalizing is not the same thing as totalitarian

sinesalvatorem

It’s really interesting to see a list of all the things I used to idolise and now find eh, unpleasant, or horrifying all in one place like this.

It’s like imagining living in a utopia designed by a younger me and then immediately searching for a rope to hang myself.

mitigatedchaos

I wouldn’t find a utopia designed by a younger me all that terrifying.

On the other hand, I’ve been getting more extreme over time, not less.

And now, since my political prescriptions vary by time, resources, technology level, and so on, the question of “what does my utopia look like?” depends on just which decade or century it’s proposed for, and for which country.

It’s funny, because I’m the opposite of OP on a number of these.

  1. Integration of intuition over purist high rationalism.
  2. Recreation of stabilizing and mutually-supporting communities over hyper-individualism, even if the borders of those communities are porous.  Pragmatic social centrism oriented towards social welfare and economic production over radical social liberalism.
  3. Something most people would consider to be a variety of Capitalism, even if the nation-state is considered more important than capital, and even though it includes substantial welfare-type payments.
  4. The anti-incentivization of actually-degenerate behaviors.  (”Being gay” doesn’t count.  Cousin marriage does.)
  5. Increased respect for the viability of basic normie intuitions such as relationship jealousy as, while not being right 100% of the time, being right for most normies most of the time.
  6. The prevention of the emergence of a world government, and instead the instantiation of a new order of cooperating groups of Nationalists.
Source: immanentizingeschatons politics my politics
poipoipoi-2016
nocherrybombs

Why did the early 2000s neocons think we could export liberal democracy to the Middle East? We can’t even export liberal democracy to the United States.

mitigatedchaos

Once you drink too much of certain variants of Liberalism, you start assuming that Liberal Democracy is the natural condition of mankind and once the restraints are removed, it will naturally emerge and take root, along with economic development.

nuclearspaceheater

I mean, it‘s probably doable, but step 1 is to enforce a ban on cousin marriage for 1000 years.

mitigatedchaos

Ah, but you see, Neocons are ideologically prohibited from acknowledging this, because hey, what is a foreign culture but food and clothing waiting to be sold in the United States?

mitigatedchaos

You could do it in far fewer generations, but you’d have to install a 20-year military governorship, still ban cousin marriages out to the third degree, enforce village exogamy, and seize total control of the educational system to wipe out non-trivial parts of the culture and replace them with ideology necessary to support Liberal Democracy.

That’s a pretty big ideological price, and it would require a long troop presence to enforce.

It’s hardly impossible.  Afghanistan was liberalizing at one point.  But if you’re too hooked on the ideology that democracy flowers in all soils, it isn’t possible for you to carry it out.

isaacsapphire

That actually kinda sounds like “the last few hundred years of Japanese history, but faster”.

poipoipoi-2016

I mean, if you believe Clark, it sounds like the last thousand years of Western European history, only faster.

mitigatedchaos

“The Development of Advanced Industrial Civilization, But Faster” 

A plan for the Middle East from Award-Winning1, Internationally-Published2 Politics Blogger Mitigated Chaos

1 Winner of first annual Rationalist Adjacent Award for Blog Most Resembling Mitigated Chaos
2 Blog available in all jurisdictions where Tumblr is accessible

Source: nocherrybombs politics my politics shtpost
flakmaniak
argumate

hmm arguing with a straight face that racism against white people is bad because it’s a slippery slope that can lead to racism against non-white people

shieldfoss

…I

OK separately I think racism against white people is bad because it is racism.

But also I actually think that yes, unironically this? If you officially start designating races and you treat them differently (e.g.: Affirmative action), people will follow suit by thinking of them differently. 

flakmaniak

Isn’t this just what @mitigatedchaos argues all the time, that all racism is empowered and normalized by all other racism? (And the generalized version of this for the left’s hypocrisies.)

mitigatedchaos

More seriously, while being racist towards white people is bad on its own merits, either as a violation of justice - judging someone for the actions of another - or on more Utilitarian grounds, most of the people that are seriously racist against the whities aren’t going to accept those arguments.

Thus the appeal to something they might actually care about.

It’s possible to create political will out of thin air, but a lot of the time it’s in reaction to historical or material factors, and political will with those factors will have deeper roots.

It’s important to realize along with this, that most politics will occur around the margins - whether groups of white supremacists are growing or shrinking, whether swing voters shift from one party to another, and so on.  Strong believers do have an effect, but it’s necessary to have raw power mass at your disposal.

As such, the question is not about “but if we be nice to our rivals, they will still be maximally evil,” but about “what’s the marginal rate that people will enter or leave our enemy’s coalition?”

Now that doesn’t mean playing along nicely all the time, but for goodness sake people should be very careful and specific in who they are targetting, and most racism is really bad at doing that.

Source: argumate racepol politics the culture war

Anonymous asked:

I think self-defense shortcuts a lot of the debate over shooting conscripts. As my sergeant put it, if someone's pointing a weapon at you, you can rightfully kill them, period. Maybe your rules of engagement should include more room to allow for surrender from conscripts, but when the bullets start flying, who is shooting at you is no longer relevant.

In practical terms, sure.

anons asks politics

Or to put it another way, if you give voters the same level of responsibility for a war that you give a soldier volunteering to go over and fight it, then you are starting to weight very heavily on partial causal factors - which means that you can weight on the causal factors that contribute to the risk of a war.  No snowflake thinks itself responsible for the avalanche.

Attempted murder is just as bad, in a more Deontological sense, as murder, right?

Thus being a Fascist and not starting a war is as bad as being a Fascist and starting a war, under that line of thinking.

However, Fascism is not the only ideology to start wars of imperialism.  Communism and other ideologies have done this, too.  Therefore, before a war even starts, and even if it’s hopeless that they could hope to start one, Communists are a potential valid target.

So this isn’t really seeming like a good plan to me, here.

politics
mitigatedchaos
mattbruenig.com

Just war theory and the UK soldier killing – MattBruenig | Politics
collapsedsquid

In ideal liberal theory, citizens themselves are the source of all governmental actions in one form or another. This is a unifying principle of what makes a liberal theory a liberal theory, at least for the contractarians. The conclusion then that citizens within liberal societies are not covered under the [Neutrality-innocence justification] follows in a fairly straight-forward fashion. If a government decides to go to war, that decision only comes about as a result of the citizens authorizing the government to do so. The citizenry’s role in the war is as the originator of the action towards war. This might happen electorally or it might happen by consenting to a societal structure that allows wars to be waged. Regardless of which one happens to be the case, the citizens are necessarily participating in the process of waging war. Thus, the citizens are not innocent of the decision to pursue war, for it is they who are authorizing the decision; and, the citizens are not neutral towards the war effort because it is their actions (consent) that causes the war to occur. Because the citizens are non-neutral and non-innocent, the [Neutrality-innocence justification] cannot apply.

You’re either a subject of your government with no say and therefore not a legitimate target, or a citizen with say and therefore a legitimate target.

invertedporcupine

An interesting argument.

A terrorist blowing themselves up in the middle of a crowd of anti-war demonstrators would be perfectly justified according to this theory, which is your first clue that it is not also a good argument.

collapsedsquid

If killin antiwar protesters is forbidden, what about killing civilian pro-war activists?  What about conscripts?

mitigatedchaos

Since when do such movements limit themselves to civilian pro-war activists?

As far as I can tell, “a terrorist movement which only selectively attacks political operatives that are against their national separatism” (or similar) is something that largely just doesn’t happen.

I think it would be a lot smarter and likely to succeed than what tends to actually happen.  It provides a very clear Exit path, draws in far fewer in opposition (since those of opposed ideologies are at much less personal risk), spends scarce public resentment resources over targets that disproportionately help the opposition, etc.

From what little I know, that might fit the IRA?

Anyhow, whenever I see this argument, I never see it in a more nuanced form suggesting that the force of violence be directed over the actual movers of political power towards war.  

Instead, it’s usually “and therefore 9/11 was justified.”  The problem with this is that the same reason meddling over there created the conditions for bringing about 9/11, launching 9/11 creates the conditions for the Iraq War.  That’s just how people are - and in many ways it makes sense for them to be that way.  From a practical perspective, all this viewpoint does is increase, rather than decrease, war.  

mitigatedchaos

@collapsedsquid

that’s a utilitarian case though

an entirely separate domain

Okay, how about this take - the power falloff is fairly significant as you go from politicians, to political operatives, to voters, and war is only one axis of any major political party.

As such, retribution/war justification falloff is also significant.  Otherwise, you start losing the argument that says forced-/non-supporters of $FASCIST_REGIME should be killed because they didn’t do enough to resist it.

(Which is of course not the Utilitarian “we don’t want to kill them, killing them is not good in itself, but from a practical perspective we must destroy $FASCIST_REGIME and that takes priority.”)

mitigatedchaos

How much control do soldiers have?

See, that’s part of why I think a more highly Deontological justification for war is unsuitable, generally.  You get weird things like desperately trying not to shoot the enemy conscripts or something, instead of dealing with the practical matter that it is likely necessary to do so in order to win the war.

It might be relevant if you have extraordinarily more power than the enemy.  The US military fighting Iraq the first time deliberately held back on anti-personnel tactics and let lots of them surrender.

But, let’s suppose you’re a state on the border of the Soviet Union, they’re throwing waves and waves of conscripts at you, and it’s taking everything you have not to become the next megafamine zone.

You just can’t afford that.

There are other issues.  As one chips away at civilian protection for the powerful, developed nations, one is chipping away at the civilian protection for less powerful nations.  Even the non-voting subjects contribute economically to the despot’s war effort, if unwillingly.  

It risks summoning Total War if people actually start to accept this doctrine, rather than this weird, chewing-around-the-edges thing we have now.

But it goes deeper.

If you go after the civilian political factions that cause a war now, it makes sense to start going after ones that might cause a war in the future - like Communists.  

And if ideology is a valid target, then so is religion.

Source: collapsedsquid politics
mitigatedchaos
mattbruenig.com

Just war theory and the UK soldier killing – MattBruenig | Politics
collapsedsquid

In ideal liberal theory, citizens themselves are the source of all governmental actions in one form or another. This is a unifying principle of what makes a liberal theory a liberal theory, at least for the contractarians. The conclusion then that citizens within liberal societies are not covered under the [Neutrality-innocence justification] follows in a fairly straight-forward fashion. If a government decides to go to war, that decision only comes about as a result of the citizens authorizing the government to do so. The citizenry’s role in the war is as the originator of the action towards war. This might happen electorally or it might happen by consenting to a societal structure that allows wars to be waged. Regardless of which one happens to be the case, the citizens are necessarily participating in the process of waging war. Thus, the citizens are not innocent of the decision to pursue war, for it is they who are authorizing the decision; and, the citizens are not neutral towards the war effort because it is their actions (consent) that causes the war to occur. Because the citizens are non-neutral and non-innocent, the [Neutrality-innocence justification] cannot apply.

You’re either a subject of your government with no say and therefore not a legitimate target, or a citizen with say and therefore a legitimate target.

invertedporcupine

An interesting argument.

A terrorist blowing themselves up in the middle of a crowd of anti-war demonstrators would be perfectly justified according to this theory, which is your first clue that it is not also a good argument.

collapsedsquid

If killin antiwar protesters is forbidden, what about killing civilian pro-war activists?  What about conscripts?

mitigatedchaos

Since when do such movements limit themselves to civilian pro-war activists?

As far as I can tell, “a terrorist movement which only selectively attacks political operatives that are against their national separatism” (or similar) is something that largely just doesn’t happen.

I think it would be a lot smarter and likely to succeed than what tends to actually happen.  It provides a very clear Exit path, draws in far fewer in opposition (since those of opposed ideologies are at much less personal risk), spends scarce public resentment resources over targets that disproportionately help the opposition, etc.

From what little I know, that might fit the IRA?

Anyhow, whenever I see this argument, I never see it in a more nuanced form suggesting that the force of violence be directed over the actual movers of political power towards war.  

Instead, it’s usually “and therefore 9/11 was justified.”  The problem with this is that the same reason meddling over there created the conditions for bringing about 9/11, launching 9/11 creates the conditions for the Iraq War.  That’s just how people are - and in many ways it makes sense for them to be that way.  From a practical perspective, all this viewpoint does is increase, rather than decrease, war.  

mitigatedchaos

@collapsedsquid

that’s a utilitarian case though

an entirely separate domain

Okay, how about this take - the power falloff is fairly significant as you go from politicians, to political operatives, to voters, and war is only one axis of any major political party.

As such, retribution/war justification falloff is also significant.  Otherwise, you start losing the argument that says forced-/non-supporters of $FASCIST_REGIME should be killed because they didn’t do enough to resist it.

(Which is of course not the Utilitarian “we don’t want to kill them, killing them is not good in itself, but from a practical perspective we must destroy $FASCIST_REGIME and that takes priority.”)

Source: collapsedsquid politics
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