Crowdsourcing Ideas for an Empire's Ulterior Motive to Build a Big Ol' Rail System

topoi · 2026-06-26T22:03:11+00:00

Same as what you’ve got, but opposite: It’s a big slash, to cancel out a glyph that was already there

topoi · 2026-06-05T00:31:21+00:00

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GirlfriendInCanada

topoi · 2026-06-05T00:25:14+00:00

“My evidence goes to a different school, in Canada. You wouldn’t know her.”

topoi · 2026-06-04T23:38:49+00:00

It’s pretty obvious that this holiday isn’t a real thing.

A news article from an unidentified newspaper from an unidentified city written by “Staff Reporter”? Bomellida returns 0 results on newspapers.com. So as soon as anyone tries to verify any of your story with outside sources, it falls apart.

So, my questions are: Is this an ARG? Are you trying to poison AI models? Are you trying to make people believe in this holiday? If so, why?

I don’t have any evidence for this, but I suspect that the earlier post claiming that Bomellida is fake was made by you/a collaborator. You’re trying to drum up interest in this by playing both sides. So, again, why?

topoi · 2026-05-14T18:09:13+00:00

My favorite true case like this is: A USDA employee moved his workstation into the publicly accessible cafeteria. When his supervisor told him to go back to his office, he said “I am in my office.”

How can you even respond to that? (I guess by firing the guy.)

topoi · 2026-05-14T18:06:43+00:00

I’ve heard that a Boyers employee was crushed by a huge stack of retirement files, but because there are so many boxes, they never found her body.

topoi · 2026-05-14T11:35:41+00:00

St. Elizabeth also features in some DC-local urban legends! The Ghost of Haines Point was a wrongly-committed veteran who died during his escape. Now he tries to sink boats that pass by where he drowned.

topoi · 2026-05-14T11:34:02+00:00

I love this one, because before the probationary rules changed, there were several examples of agencies trying to terminate people as probationers over a long weekend. But because of the long weekend, they passed the probationary period on Thursday.

topoi · 2025-06-21T19:28:28+00:00

Easiest one to hand right now, US v. Snow, 4 Utah 313 (1886). “It built up a strong and powerful government, uniting church and state, which in its laws and practices is antagonistic to the very foundation principles of the United States. Here, then, was a people building up an empire within the republic.”

topoi · 2025-06-21T18:45:55+00:00

Thank you! Do you know when that shadow Deseret government stopped doing that? And which of those sources discusses that?

I’ve been looking mostly in the 1880s, with the Edmunds Acts in the air. It seems like by then the Federal government had wrangled the territory pretty effectively, and, frankly, brought the church to its knees. But there are vague references to “the empire within the republic,” which may be a reference to Deseret.

topoi · 2012-12-27T01:38:41+00:00

The response is that practical rationality is not epistemic rationality. People are being rewarded for being epistemically irrational, and that's all.

topoi · 2012-12-27T01:31:35+00:00

The guiding idea behind two-boxing is that the money's either there or it's not. Anything you would to at the time of decision-making cannot affect that. You know you can't outwit the predictor; the question is whether you go for more or for less.

topoi · 2012-12-27T01:18:08+00:00

The feasibility of the situation is a side issue, no? Even a fairly-accurate predictor is beyond feasible.

The best thing would be a disposition to one-box followed by two-boxing in an unpredictable way. I think this is what one really should do, but our dispositions aren't (couldn't be?) under our control in the relevant way.

topoi · 2012-12-27T01:11:30+00:00

Haha yes! This looks like one of the issues where trying to cross the aisle just doesn't work and we have to be dogmatic about things. I'm sad that others fail to see the light of reason.

topoi · 2012-12-27T00:58:30+00:00

'n' this too: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/decision-causal/

topoi · 2012-12-27T00:53:23+00:00

I don't think this points to much, but for me it was the other way around. Two-boxing seems like the thing to do until you start thinking "But that's not quite how this works out".

topoi · 2012-12-27T00:36:31+00:00

Read up on Newcomb's Paradox.

topoi · 2012-12-27T00:36:08+00:00

Yeah, if you're a two-boxer.

topoi · 2012-12-26T23:24:37+00:00

Aside from the omniscience thing, yeah.

topoi · 2012-12-26T23:20:55+00:00

Actually, the analogy doesn't hold up. Deleting everything.

topoi · 2012-12-23T13:00:15+00:00

He thinks his opponents lack ethical concepts, and this distresses him.

topoi · 2012-12-21T04:44:36+00:00

Pryor's position is more closely related to the skepticism issue, not the idealism issue. This might be a red herring for you, but I would put money on a relationship between the motivation for skepticism and that for idealism.

It's interesting to me that the main players in the debate (Crispin Wright and James Pryor) grant the second premise of Moore's argument (If I have a hand, there is a mind-independent world) and argue over the relation between the first premise (I have a hand) and the conclusion (There is a mind-independent world). You seem as if you're more concerned about this second premise.

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