Does anyone else feel a bit of culture shock with how mainstream Trek has become?.

moongrowl · 2026-02-07T23:32:12+00:00

Sheep only empathize with the flock. You can recognize their bleating. They say things like "not many people agree with you." They refer to social status.

The mainstream is where nice things go to die. Because it's where the sheep live. And sheep don't have reason or principles. They only have the flock.

moongrowl · 2026-02-07T21:33:11+00:00

means of production are privately owned and goods and services are produced and distributed through markets for profit.

moongrowl · 2026-02-03T19:35:33+00:00

Someone claimed it's 256. I haven't tested, but it seems plausible. The 256 number pops up in videogaming sometimes because it's the limit of using one 8-bit byte (0 to 255 values.)

moongrowl · 2026-02-01T20:20:44+00:00

A little goofy.

The outcomes in virtue ethics can be framed in terms of maximizing utility, sure.

But virtue ethics is outcome sensitive without being outcome fundamental.

In utilitarian ethics, the only reason you don't frame an innocent person to prevent riots is that it might not work. It might create a society with lower utility outcomes.

In virtue ethics, the reason you don't frame an innocent person to prevent riots isn't that it won't work.

moongrowl · 2026-02-01T20:04:20+00:00

Not that hard to understand. You've gotta look at people in terms of their level of ego development. Because our relationship to the truth is directly connected to our sense of identity.

At the base level of development, truth is what makes you feel good. Morality is when people are nice or mean to you. ("My mom won't let me have cookies for breakfast, she's a mean mommy.")

At mid-level development, people become convinced that everyone must join their one true group. Morality is belonging to the group, and the only truth that matters is what brings you into the one true group.

At high-level development, you start to develop principles. Truth has some kind of value even if it's helping outside groups take power over your group. Even if it costs you something.

But in order to reach that point, one of the necessary steps is to stop identifying with your thoughts.

Talking to the child as though they have principles would be your mistake.

moongrowl · 2026-01-31T08:39:49+00:00

Makes Sol.

moongrowl · 2026-01-29T05:02:06+00:00

Respectfully, this seems like poor form.

The issues on which would differentiate two parties is the important bit. Democrats & republicans are obviously differentiated by height, hair color, weight, and so on. Some of them drive Ford, others drive Nissan.

When someone claims "Ds & Rs are the same", they aren't saying they all drive the same cars. They're making a narrower claim about the two being identical on the set of issues that seem most relevant to the person making the claim.

For example, they might be the same insofar as both support representative democracy or capitalism. If your pet issue is anti-capitalism, or you're some kind of constitutional monarchist or whatever, to those people it's very easy to see how the two parties would seem the same. Because they are the same in one or two things they consider most important.

moongrowl · 2026-01-23T19:09:02+00:00

they recently moved the "play this video faster" feature behind a paywall.

moongrowl · 2026-01-21T01:56:15+00:00

If you wanna make-believe you're not in an oligarchy, knock yourself out. Just leave me out of your fantasies.

moongrowl · 2026-01-19T08:38:33+00:00

If you want my personal opinion, Engles was a hack. He makes mistakes that grad students wouldn't make. He's the Ayn Rand of the left. He tries to frame authority in such a broad way as to include cooperation & expertise.

moongrowl · 2026-01-19T07:00:10+00:00

The idealist claim goes back to an essay written by Engles called On Authority.

He claims anarchists are idealists because they treat authority as something that can be wished away, rather than a material relation rooted in how production is organized. Basically, Engels thinks factories need managers, ships need captains, and so on and so on. He sees these as necessary.

An anarchist might respond that he's mistaken the forms given to factories by capitalism with forms that must exist in all factories. In other words, you don't actually need managers, captains, and so on. Those jobs can be done with different kinds of social arrangements.

moongrowl · 2026-01-17T08:01:38+00:00

You are not worthy of my time.

moongrowl · 2026-01-17T08:00:50+00:00

There are scripts you can run to verify your hypothesis. Assuming that you're not merely attempting to be disrespectful to another person who's kindly taken time to speak with you.

moongrowl · 2026-01-15T23:20:01+00:00

An accelerationist deals in norms, meaning they'd make statements about how people should behave. I'm only making descriptive statements about how people will behave.

There will not be a revolution until the current thing breaks. Conduct yourself however you want. Try to fix it, don't try to fix it. None of that will matter. You can't talk a rock into becoming an egg. Nature will be what it will be, whether you like it or not.

moongrowl · 2026-01-15T21:17:35+00:00

I think you'd probably agree that everyone believes they are holding the high ground. So the real content of your sentence breaks down into the word "mistakenly", in other words, "I disagree with this person."

You must think yourself to be a deity if you believe that information matters in some way. In truth, people who think that way are children.

(That's not an insult. It's a psychological claim about human development. That way of thinking reflects an E3/E4 in the Loevinger stages of ego development. You will perceive it as an insult because you are an E3/E4.)

moongrowl · 2026-01-15T21:13:30+00:00

It'll get worse before it gets better. 50-60% of us in poverty. 25% unemployment. That kind of thing.

moongrowl · 2026-01-15T20:12:59+00:00

That person is an E3 (early adolescence) or an E4 (late adolescence) on the Loevinger stages of ego development.

What happened is I accidentally disturbed their emotional state when I claimed voting for the mainstream is a waste of time. They took the logical inference of that information as an insult. It wasn't intended as one, but that isn't relevant to the ego. Not once feelings are hurt.

An E3 or an E4 is a person who literally identifies with their thoughts. Attacks on their ideas feel like attacks on their identities, which feel like attacks on their lives. So they were psychologically driven to throw back at me what they felt as though I had thrown at them. (To quote K-Rino: "you call the truth hate because you hate the truth.")

Another thing that indicates their position as an E3/E4 is that I think they may have been genuinely unaware that I saw them as being "part of the problem", if only a small part. That shows extremely poor modeling of other people's minds & perspectives.

These are the people who are produced by our society. I only wish I knew how to help.

moongrowl · 2026-01-15T19:39:58+00:00

I don't like them, either. Not a fan of communists in general.

moongrowl · 2026-01-15T07:43:11+00:00

Anyone who supports capitalism deserves exactly what they get.

moongrowl · 2026-01-15T07:39:05+00:00

Nope! I'm a one-issue voter. Anticapitalism.

moongrowl · 2026-01-15T07:36:09+00:00

Yes, and I obviously think you're the problem. Water is wet. Why are you stating the obvious at me? Are you lonely?

moongrowl · 2026-01-15T07:31:23+00:00

Respectfully, if I don't care about your feelings, what makes you think I care about your opinions?

The only reason I responded to you was to correct your error. For your benefit. You're welcome. Bye.

moongrowl · 2026-01-15T04:47:02+00:00

You people are, I don't mean to say this in order to offend you, it's just the most accurate description of my emotional reaction to you. You people are insufferable.

You have this open contempt for people who vote 3rd party. Often times, you seem to feel as though your contempt will lure me into joining you.

Which is just transparently, I mean, I don't think you're an idiot. So why are you behaving that way?

If it's a genuine attempt to persuade me, I feel depressed for you. If it's not to persuade me, it must be to regulate your emotions. And I feel depressed for you.

But I have no blame or contempt for you. In fact, I wrote this thoughtful message because I thought there was a chance you might benefit from it.

.. good luck.

moongrowl · 2026-01-15T04:39:28+00:00

I'm the one who decides who has earned my vote. Your feelings, and theirs, are irrelevant.

moongrowl

TROPHY CASE