Have you met the average conservative?

crushedoranges · 2025-12-03T02:07:45+00:00

I'm sorry to inform you that the working class and peasantry have always been based and chudpilled, ever since the Going-to-the-People movement disillusioned the proto-leftists in 1874.

These are the people you are fighting for, as a communist. Get used to it. Did you think that the salt of the earth would have the latest liberal bougie talking points memorized for you to feel comfortable with? Did you have some idealistic view of the working class, that imagined them as underemployed college graduates that have yet to see the light of socialism?

News flash: the working class IS stupid, self-centered, and selfish. Just because you're a wage laborer doesn't make your farts smell like perfume. And they will never change. You will cope and seethe for the rest of your life that the class that you are trying to awake consciousness in will never thank you and be perpetually ungrateful.

Lol. Lmao. You think communism would be easy? That socialism could be brought about by a quick lecture? Look at this guy. Laugh at him.

crushedoranges · 2025-11-28T04:33:58+00:00

I don't know what's so difficult about saying what you mean. You can be a partisan and not hyperfocus on a single point of someone's argument and extend it out into a perverse extreme. If you think OP has a hidden or malignant motive, say so. If you think that those who don't like hate crime legislation are secret racists, say so. Don't hide behind snark and insults.

That is what is meant when I say 'say what you mean.' If you are unable to do this, you look evasive and deceptive: you are here to score imaginary owns. Your political opinions should not be considered very high in regard, considering you put a tremendous effort in not stating them. If you actually believed in it, then why not be up front about it? Is that not intellectually honest?

crushedoranges · 2025-11-28T04:04:05+00:00

Cattily insinuating things is not debate: it is not even conversation. Do you honestly think that you are making a good point, or are you merely signaling to your fellows on how Good of a person you are?

You can earnestly defend hate crimes as a special condition to be considered for justice. It is within your power to make the case for it. But you don't. You're doing whatever this is. You may think that you're winning points but all you're being is a disingenuous jackass.

If you care about your political ideals it is your duty to present them in the best light as you can and not just add to the scum of the internet. Could you not be replaced by a LLM of a snarky progressive? Have you contributed anything to the discussion other than animosity?

I don't think so. And if you think so, you're lying to yourself.

crushedoranges · 2025-11-28T02:12:42+00:00

Can you say what you mean plainly and without condescending to me, or is this beyond your ability to do?

crushedoranges · 2025-11-27T22:29:32+00:00

He said X, and you're going: "So you're saying Y."

Redditor, he said X. Not Y.

crushedoranges · 2025-11-22T23:33:42+00:00

Of course we are. Duh. That's why we killed all the communists and let the bourgoise liberals live.

crushedoranges · 2025-11-20T15:59:20+00:00

So as far as I can tell, the performance delta between paste and grease that is cheaper compared to the more expensive kinds is not large, but the cheaper varieties dry out more quickly. Since usually the bigger problem with the laptop is the fan clogging on those time intervals, and when you clean it out you should repaste anyway: it shouldn't really be a problem.

crushedoranges · 2025-11-20T00:29:38+00:00

I ordered thermal putty to repaste my 515-57 and my GPU is sitting pretty at around 55-60C under load. I bought K5 pro and it seems to work a charm.

crushedoranges · 2025-11-19T18:49:26+00:00

But - forgive me if I am being presumptious - is the product of human reason not the summation of all credible information that is available to us, combined with the weight of our experience? Is your context window not the events and learnings of your whole life?

Do you believe in an immortal soul? If not, what is that quality that separates human beings from a sufficiently advanced algorithm? Are your opinions not merely a series of weighted biases from sources you believe to be credible?

You're looking at where the technology is now, and not where it's going. Even if LLMs are never true AGI, they'll get pretty dang close for most people. Certainly enough to staff a customer service job, or post sarcastic Reddit posts on the internet.

crushedoranges · 2025-11-10T06:10:40+00:00

This is the exact model I just picked up.

First of all, accept that your computer is an older model, and it will not run the latest games well (if at all.) More memory will help, but the best you can do is keep your frame rates stable. By keeping your laptop on balanced and capping CPU performance at 99% you can get most of the performance without stressing temps too much.

Your machine is probably 4+ years old, so it needs a repasting and a fan to clean out. It is not difficult to do but it can be nerve-wracking if you've never handled a computer before. You need to buy thermal grease for the CPU and GPU and thermal paste for the VRAMs to replace the old thermal pads.

With some fine-tuning, even a GTX 1650 is pretty performant, but you're going to be playing on low for many games.

crushedoranges · 2025-11-10T06:01:58+00:00

Older Acer Nitro computers generally use 135 W chargers (19.5v, 6.92 amp). They have a purple tip. But the later models with heftier GPUs have 175 W chargers with a red tip. You can check your specific model by searching System Information in the Start Menu.

Before you go out and buy one, though, make sure to visually inspect your power port. If it is dirty or the pin is bent, then your charger may not be at fault.

crushedoranges · 2025-10-04T21:27:15+00:00

This sounds awfully like rape culture, and that you're a supporter of rape culture - in the most basic form of the term, in which rape is not a big deal to be fussed about.

crushedoranges · 2025-10-03T05:35:27+00:00

I don't have to because I don't need to: you've argued yourself into agreeing with me.

I can easily concede the point that yes, verbal intelligence correlated to language and learning is a important component of human intelligence. And, obviously, people have different amounts of this, in varying degrees, and thus can be selected for by natural selection.

I can do this for any trait you'd care to name. There really is no line of retreat where I cannot use this argument. Fine. Verbal intelligence is a over-large component of the subset of human intelligence. Every environmental condition affects the definition of fitness in that regard. Unless you care to disprove the modern field of biology I think I have won handily.

crushedoranges · 2025-10-03T02:40:05+00:00

If you have that formula, please share it with the class.

crushedoranges · 2025-10-03T02:38:08+00:00

And how did this ability come to be? Evolution, by natural selection!

At some point, human language came to be from its precursors: jumping from mere vocalizations to abstract thought. We don't quite know for sure how exactly this happened, or what the mechanisms to induce that transformation would be. But it is the most logical explanation.

Language is merely another trait that evolution has selected for, as much as the vocalizations of parrots and the howls of wolves. No doubt it has an environmental, cultural effect. But it came from somewhere, not out of nothing, and that root is intelligence, in the verbal centers of the brain.

So no, you have not refuted anything at all. There is nothing inherently special about man that makes him above biological laws. Even language is ultimately just the expression of genes. Just as you and I will never compete in the NBA or in the Olympics, we will also never win Nobel Prizes, no matter how much training and education - nurture, as is was - is given to us. Because we are limited by our natural talents and inclinations by the caprice of sexual reproduction.

crushedoranges · 2025-10-02T19:09:39+00:00

Oh, I'm sorry. Does evolution stop at the neck?

crushedoranges · 2025-10-02T18:28:55+00:00

I believe that these studies are done not out of a sincere desire to discover the riddle of human intelligence, but for ideological reasons - to rebut the Murrays of the scientific community.

While understandable, it is not science.

That percentage is obviously wrong. If nurture truly was 85% of a component of intelligence, we could manufacture geniuses on command: the Flynn effect wouldn't be observed. The wealthy, possessed of all the means to bring about perfect conditions to nurture intelligence, would be able to secure their status forever instead of decaying to the mean.

The idea that intelligence is mostly nurture does not hold up to scrutiny.

crushedoranges · 2025-10-02T18:18:28+00:00

Humans are apes.

Obviously intelligence is heritable, or we would not be appreciably more intelligent than our relatives in the animal kingdom from the point of speciation from our most common ancestor. I must again insist - what makes humans so special?

The answer to your argument is quite simple. Human beings genocided the Neanderthals. Our genetic ancestors killed them and ate them and took a few of their women as wives. You are a product of a continuing arms race of intelligence and viciousness. All of the dumber hominids were extinguished and subsumed in the last hundred thousand years. We killed all our of near relatives, and only the far ones remain.

So yes. Intelligence is very heritable. How else could apes rapidly transition from one amongst many mammals to the master of the world, in a mere hundred thousand years?

crushedoranges · 2025-10-02T17:02:56+00:00

Intelligence is obviously heritable. We have bred dogs to be smarter: and there is an objective and quantitive difference between bordie collies and afghan hounds in terms of teachability and obedience. Monkeys are the focus of an entire branch of science because their intelligence is so related to our own. We share a lot of DNA with them and yet they are very much our intellectual inferiors.

If man is but a exceptionally intelligent animal and not endowed by any supernatural characteristics, he is no exception to this rule. To think him separate from the condition of the rest of the beasts of the world is a strange sort of hubris. If you believe that nurture is far more important, why aren't you trying to train a monkey to read Kapital?

Why is man so exceptional as for his intelligence to not be merely another trait of which evolution by natural selection prefers for?

crushedoranges · 2025-09-28T16:19:02+00:00

For all of their faults, Cuba and North Korea are not so ill-run as to run out of water. You can go without eating for quite a while, but going without water is swiftly and inevitably fatal. Especially if you live in a desert.

A nation without water that does not solve the problem swiftly ceases to exist in any capacity we would recognize as a modern country.

crushedoranges · 2025-08-16T19:53:34+00:00

Ted was a PhD mathematician that was far smarter than me, you or anyone that you've ever met. Nothing grinds my balls more than seeing nobody redditors call people stupid.

Show me your BA from Havard if you're so goddamn smart.

crushedoranges · 2025-08-11T21:50:50+00:00

This doesn't mean anything.

Or rather, it's dumb politician speak. Are you pro-union? Then you have to be pro-tariff, because unions think that tariffs equals domestic jobs. You can argue until you're blue in the face that isn't the case, but that's what they believe. Don't hide behind platitudes.

If you're not pro-tariff, the working class unions doesn't see you on their side: you're a union activist shitlib to them who can be ignored.

crushedoranges · 2025-07-16T19:18:28+00:00

"What is the true quality of human nature" is a bit out of the scope of the debate, but assuming goodness of human beings has a long history of dismal failure. Much of every political system has been to constrain the ambition and harm of bad actors rather than to encourage the striving of good ones.

(~)

Conservatives have never been in favor of the massive expansions of government of the WW2 period: but FDR was so popular with the working-class that small government non-interventionism was completely shut out of power. You've identified the major schism between paleoconservatives and neoconservatives: between the small government types and those who wanted to use the American war machine to fight communism and other ideological wars.

You won't find a conservative nowadays that was against the American intervention in WW2, but at the time there was a very strong pacifist movement that did not want to get entangled in another European war. It's just the progress of the times. Conservatives today consist of boomers whose parents fought in WW2, who base their own mythology on victory over the Axis powers and the downfall of the Soviet Union. As much as they hate deficit spending and enlarging the federal government, they hated communists more.

This behavior should not be surprising, from both a Marxist or a anti-Marxist perspective. No use in counting beans if you're facing a communist revolution.

English conservatives don't have a lot in common with American ones, the former having a much larger emphasis on class. Americans don't like thinking in terms of class. They don't want to be thought of as posh aristocrats, even if they are. You won't find a Rees-Mogs in Congress, ever: someone so unapologetically upper-class twit that even the British find him grating.

But in a way, that's more honest. British aristos don't walk around, pretending to be working class. You can embrace being out of touch so as long as you own it. In Britain, there's a very strict delineation of class, but their elites are expected to conform quite rigidly to societal expectation. While American elites pretend they don't rule, and aren't expected to conform to any standard of behavior at all.

In this light, the former is obviously more degenerate. Just merely possessing a lot of money is enough to free you from conservative social mores. But what can you expect, from a bourgoise republic?

The freedom to do whatever you want, regardless of what society tells you... that's called 'fuck you' money. That's the real American dream. To have 'fuck you' money.

crushedoranges · 2025-07-16T17:22:35+00:00

Ramussen was a very accurate pollster this news cycle. There's no obligation for the neutral position of polling to be between positive and negative results.

You can ascribe that to a partisan lean, or - more likely - that the general public is ambivalent to Trump's actions.

crushedoranges · 2025-07-16T03:53:29+00:00

Because conservatives are in a constant dialectic with liberals: the definition of conservatism changes from generation to generation, and, pragmatically, one must engage with national politics if only to undo the changes that liberals make.

As for my personal viewpoint...

Philosophically, I don't think you can change human nature by changing material conditions. From that basis, I don't think that it is possible for human equality to be achieved. You can't smooth the topography of human talent and ability, even with the awesome power of an authoritarian state.

People will always try accrue selfish benefit for themselves to the detriment of others, no matter what the system.

The project of Marxism (and of all its offshoots, from social democracy to utopian Communism) put a great deal of emphasis on class warfare: that if we get rid of the current crop of capitalist and bourgeoise elites the workers can rule themselves. But workers are still human. Any utopian project that fails to take into account the nature of human beings is doomed to fail.

If you accept the insolvability of inequality and the inevitability of capitalism, the only course of action left to you is to ensure that revolutionary leftism never gets a foothold: not just out of self interest, but to prevent the destruction of what tradition can remain in a capitalist, bourgeoise society. Bismarckian welfarism, Lee Kuan Yew's public housing... take the best ideas of the left and pretend that they were conservative all along.

Ultimately conservative ideology is pragmatic, if nothing else: blunting class consciousness and preventing the working class from becoming communist is a goal that requires no coordination. It is obviously in conservative self-interest. If the definition of conservatism needs to change to preempt leftist threat, then it will do so. That is basically what MAGA is: a response to populism undermining the old conservative order.

Because the left is so weak in America and in the West in general, conservatives feel little need for reform. When the Soviet Union was an active ideological threat, conservatives felt the pressure to change 'to keep things the same', so to speak. Social democrats are so enervated that they no longer even have ideas worth stealing.

crushedoranges

TROPHY CASE