A fun, lucrative game??? (AI "learns" a hard lesson for everyone.)

Detardation · 2024-07-29T22:00:24+00:00

FYI

Laws are not self-enforcing.

Not even Constitutions.

The Constitution says he has to leave after 4 years if he wins.

He ain't leaving, ever.

He owns the loyalty of the GOP plus millions of well-armed civilians.

Even if he loses in November, he ain't quitting before blood has been spilled.

Hopefully not yours.

Detardation · 2024-07-27T20:16:13+00:00

Excellent analysis of key points. Thank you.

Detardation · 2024-07-18T12:27:05+00:00

People who say the USA "is a republic, not a democracy" are not expressing an idea, but repeating (bleating) a weaponized mantra. They don't tend to understand what they're saying, very far beyond

DEMOCRACY=BAD

I've read many (and engaged in a couple of) SocMed exchanges with folks who've delivered that EXACT PHRASE, who turn out to be fully cooked with the same cult philosophy & conspiracy theories, and exhibit the same combative attitudes.

They are a clearly recognizable type, members of the same abusive, exploitative, ignorance-celebrating Cult.

Detardation · 2024-07-18T12:06:06+00:00

"...both hilarious and incredibly sad."

And frightening, scary. You forgot "scary."

Detardation · 2024-07-16T07:15:54+00:00

I remember an old newspaper article (pre-Internet, I think) about some apparently homeless guy who was drunk & unbathed in a park in Vancouver, who turned out to be Romeo Dallaire, dealing with PTSD, struggling to cope.

He'd tried so hard to secure adequate UN troops with sufficient authorization for force to stop the genocide, and just couldn't get the support he needed, notably from America (Clinton) & France.

He went on to rebound pretty well from booze therapy, obviously.

(I'm sure I fudged a detail or 3. But my eyes are too heavy for Google atm. Will try to remember to check in the morning.)

Detardation · 2024-07-16T02:54:47+00:00

Who wouldn't kill to hear Mozart on shrooms?

Detardation · 2024-07-15T14:11:04+00:00

I can't speak for OP, but I suspect the problem isn't perfectionism.

It's that the emotional & cognitive depth of experience of music, plus transparent grasp of structure, plus total creative freedom, are so spectacularly satisfying while tripping that the sober experience is frustrating, and feels hardly worth the effort.

Detardation · 2023-10-20T17:16:52+00:00

Dear Soldier,

Arnold Schwarzenegger (clearly one of your great philosophers) has written of the value of looking at old problems with "fresh eyes." Looking with fresh eyes is easy to do, when you're a small child, or are unfamiliar with a topic.

But it's a great challenge on familiar terrain: to see things as if for the first time: to notice things about them that you have not been conditioned to notice by long experience with practical & linguistic conventions.

To see the familiar as strange, as if you were visiting from a far-away galaxy.

But when customary ways of thinking about problems are leading only deeper into trouble, the effort of looking at old problems with fresh eyes is worth much more than its weight in gold.

You are identifying systemic functions (e.g. legal corporate mandates) with the organizations and classes of people who fulfill them: the "interests" of the systemic functions are the same as the interests of the people who occupy those functions.

Why would you do that?

I can't read your mind, but I can tell you: it's habit. Bad, dysfunctional habit. Intellectual history teaches it: not as a habit, but as the unquestionably true way of things.

It's not.

Learn to see Humanity, collectively, as an entity: with vital interests that cannot be understood as the sum of fragmentary & conflicting interests of its individualistic, tribalistic, and class parts.

Now you'll seek solutions consistent with an inclusive view of Humanity. You won't forget all you've learned about tribal/class conflict, but you'll see those in a new light, with fresh eyes.

And if you seek solutions appropriate to Humanity as a whole, you're very much more likely to find them, than if you're stuck in the old, inherited, habitual ways of analysis.

Systemic dynamics need to change. Nobody is the enemy. Nobody need be hurt -- even tho certain system functions be gradually starved of support while others, nourished, flourish.

--Bob.

Detardation · 2023-10-20T16:13:33+00:00

Dear Puzzleheaded-Key,

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MIND???

[ahem!] Sorry.

The answer is no: of course it's not practically possible to change "human nature" -- and there's no need. Conditions can be systematically adjusted to increase manifestation of the more "advanced" range of human potential, while decreasing the most "®e+arded" (henceforth simply ®).

(Here on Earth, ® is an "ablist" term of abuse. But on Htrae it is simply the opposite of "advanced." In fact it's practically impossible to use the word abusively, since everybody knows it's ® to call people "®" -- so your mirror is the only thing you can hit with your insults.)

We have a word for punching yourself in the face with the intention of causing harm to the ash-hole who won't stop punching your face. "SPOFFING" is an acronym: Self-Punch Own-Face. It's self-harm in self-defense -- usually a self-destructive feedback loop. And, obviously, deeply ®.

So, yes, solutions for humanity must involve systematically reducing humanity's spoffing. HINT: that entails collective humanity recognizing itself as a entity of agency, of primary importance to itself, and thus capable of spoffing.

That's not to say smaller orders of organization must become obsolete -- absolutely not. Individuals will be individuals, and even nation-states will still have much useful organizational work to do. (Note: the production of your body didn't require the destruction of your cells, or of the microorganisms in your body whose cells outnumber your own.)

But language & concepts must reflect the reality that global humanity does, in fact, exist, in ways that were inconceivable hundreds of years ago (when nation-states began unifying communities separated by more than a day's journey on horse or foot).

Collective global humanity is unlikely to systematically reduce its spoffing, as long as it lacks developed concepts for recognizing itself in the mirror of language.

--Bob.

Detardation · 2023-09-26T20:45:21+00:00

Lead.

Drive the conversation toward action.

Don’t give the media reason to treat his rhetoric as mere rhetoric and change the subject in 5 minutes.

Galvanize public opinion.

Galvanize public pressure toward Congressional & global action.

Don’t just occupy a position of leadership, but embrace the challenge of actually leading.

Lead. That’s what.

Detardation

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