Well, we did make them remake much of their governmental system and forcibly introduced some things that are probably a precursor to modern wokeness in certain ways. We established a military base that is still disproportionately responsible for rapes in Okinawa. But at the same time, once we get that far afield we're playing some big what-ifs. What if we hadn't made them make certain concessions, and then they rearmed, or allied to the USSR? What if we hadn't made them make certain concessions and then their economic recovery goes differently and they're actually worse off than they are today? What if reduced US presence makes the Korean War go worse? Or Vietnam? (Yes, that one already went pretty bad, but is there a different reality where Communism spreads to Thailand or Japan or elsewhere in the region)? So on and so forth.
Is there an ideal world where everything goes better than it did here? Yeah, almost certainly, but we don't really know what that world looks like or how it could have been reached, or how close to ideal we got. In general, I agree with you that the Japanese didn't get fucked over too badly or anything all things considered.
Yes, but I think that's a continuous condition.
What? How about "Thou shalt not murder"?
The NAP was only formulated in the 20th century. It derives from previously-existing moral standards, not the other way around. Almost every society in history has included rules about killing, theft, rape, property, etc. Even if you want to restrict it to social offenses—which I did not, because social offenses are absolutely not the only offense one could falsify in order to get someone in trouble—pretty much every society has had hierarchies as well. The serf isn't allowed to make a pass at the princess, and so on.
I'm not trying to denigrate you for leaving; I don't think it's irrational, I don't think it's a bad choice, I agree that maybe the UK is already lost, I'm not even sure that I think accelerationism is correct. Those are all a bunch of separate debates. What I'm taking issue with is the fact that you're planning to leave and also lumping yourself in with a guy who says he's going to stay and fight. To continue your analogy of historical terms, it's like you exiled yourself but then you show up after a regime change and talk about how harsh you had it in the gulag. It's fine to leave, but you have to recognize that you are leaving, and other people are staying, and that if, as you put it, you get a chance to "return when things have calmed down," there's a very good chance that's because of the people who stayed and went through a much harsher time than you did.
Oh, I agree that you live in a shittier place than I do. My point is that the other guy—and the accelerationist philosophy in general—is saying "collapse is inevitable, but if it happens soon, [my group] has a chance to survive the worst and rebuild with people that aren't retards, because all the retards will have died or been driven out in the extreme civil unrest that follows collapse." When someone says "I'm an accelerationist because the sooner we hit rock bottom, the sooner we can rebuild," the implication is that he expects to be literally fighting and killing and starving in order to get that chance to rebuild.
Then you come along and say "yeah, I'm gonna sit out all those horrors in a nation that isn't collapsing. I totally support pulling it all down on my way out the door, though. We're exactly the same."
It's insulting.
the number of American deaths prevented by the two bombs would almost certainly not have exceeded 20,000 and would probably have been much lower, perhaps even zero,”
I like and respect Japan today. In some ways, I even respect it more than the US, at least when comparing the modern state of both nations. I think it's too bad that many Japanese civilians died, both in the atomic bombs and in the more conventional bombing campaigns. But, that is a war. One that Japan started. In a war, a leader's first duty is not to the civilians of the enemy nation, nor are those lives even equal to the lives of his own people. If the bombs saved even 20,000 American lives then, as the American president with a duty to protect Americans, Truman was right to drop them. As for the statement that it may have saved zero American lives, I assume that's predicated on the idea that Japan could have been brought to the negotiating table to end the war at essentially any moment if we hasn't demanded surrender terms that were quite so steep. That's an idea I've heard before, and I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's certainly not well developed in this article. In fact, it's a claim so drastic and also so unsupported that it makes me suspect the quality of the entire rest of the reasoning presented.
You're an "accelerationist" who talks about how he's going to escape to Argentina. That's not rebuilding. You don't get to say "one of us" when someone expresses a desire to actually stick around to fix things.
Okay, but that's not necessarily unique to Libertarianism, which was my point. We can imagine a absolute might makes right system, but we can also imagine—and are much closer to living in—a highly authoritarian system where the worst crimes are things like "antisemitism" and "racism" and "sexism." I don't believe that the NAP is the foundation of victimhood culture, because the NAP is not the only moral system in which committing certain offenses against someone is seen as wrong.
and nearly indiscriminate bombing of foreigners
I actually don’t care much about that one. In fact, I care much, much more about the fact that they seem to care for foreigners over Americans, and insist on bringing them here.
Not that I don’t enjoy dunking on libertarianism, but I’m not sure how that philosophy is uniquely vulnerable to this, or at least, would be uniquely vulnerable for the reason you described. Claiming anything that was recognized as an actionable injury would still have a similar—perhaps even more potent—effect in a harshly authoritarian setting.
Ah, okay. I was wondering if there was something about the nature of this specific fuckup that made you say “Indian.”
What makes you say Indian in particular?
I guess I’ve just never had anyone give me shit about eating any of those, but I have run into annoying examples of the taco innuendo derailing things. You aren’t wrong, though.
As I understand it, there’s a decent chance that the ancient Egyptians—or at least the pharaohs and ruling class—were significantly lighter than the modern day Egyptians. Somehow, I doubt that’s the objection the woke were raising though, right?
Honestly, the taco slang annoys me. It’s not that I don’t get it, but tacos are—first and foremost—a pretty good food item, except that that slang opens the door for anyone to turn any otherwise normal conversation about that specific food dirty. “Huh, huh, eating tacos you say? Uhuh uhuh uhuh.”
Yes. Eating tacos. Because they’re food. I don’t mind innuendo, but you should have to work for it more than that.
Maybe I’m just being a touchy little bitch about a joke, though.
I think this guy has been targeted for both milk and meat sales. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are other cases too, his is just the most famous.
The Amish are not unaffected. Take the case of Amos Miller, who is being repeatedly targeted by the FDA for private, direct sales of meat. The simple fact is that the Amish managed to set up a semi-parallel system back when it was much easier to do so, and because of that they are less affected by some of the issues that exist in our system. But they are not immune. They are still being unjustly targeted. If they are any less likely to be targeted than the average person—a supposition I am not convinced is true—it is only because they are somewhat beneath notice. If the elites ever finish consolidating power to the degree that the Amish are the biggest holdout, they will find themselves (more) targeted.
You speak about the "Amish elite," but you gloss over a very important part: where are those elite? Jews get singled out because you can point at their overrepresentation, visibly, among the elite. Bankers, politicians, cabinet members, judiciary, billionaires, political activists, lobbyists, media moguls... it's possible to create a giant list of influential Jewish figures in any of these fields that are associated with wielding power and influence. Now, one doesn't have to say that means Jews are bad or anything, but at least the basis for identifying a "Jewish elite" undeniably exists, even if one wishes to argue over things like how unified that elite is, whether it exerts influence towards any common goal, whether that influence is bad, etc.
Where exactly is your Amish elite? Is there a surfeit of Amish people among the various halls of power that I'm entirely unaware of?
Is this some roundabout allegory for theories about Jews, or are you serious?
And again, I’m asking you to explain why it is a problem that the code is “average” if it works the way it needs to.
Sorry, I know you’re trying to be nice, but his example with CS2 was the worst part. He didn’t say anything about whether it worked well. You’re extrapolating that because you assume it wasn’t a retarded example. His actual complaint was that it wasn’t complicated or fancy. I even asked him to clarify if there was anything bad about it, because the complaint didn’t appear to make sense, and his response was:
I never claimed it was a poor implementation, I simply pointed out it was nothing special
In other words, it worked fine, it did what the game needed, but because it wasn’t done in a fancy new way that Valve invented themselves, it’s bad.
but I'm sure any programmer worth their salt will back me up in that even Valve can't produce anything that would remotely wow people anymore.
That’s an absurd statement. You have no idea what the game plays like. It could be crap, but it could also be great. If you were saying “X company used to be great, but their recent products have been bad, so I don’t have faith in this,” that would be one thing, but you say “even Valve,” so it sounds like you think Valve is still great, but making something that wows people is just fundamentally impossible.
There is no need to be so secretive, the only reason they do any of this crap is as a marketing ploy and honestly just from the screenshots the game looks thoroughly unremarkable.
Maybe they want to get feedback on an early design without being committed to that design by hype? Maybe they’re concerned about someone making a shovelware clone and beating them to market?
If I see a studio announce a game that's going to be release within a year and refuse to show anything beyond a teaser trailer, I'm assuming it's shit and they're hiding behind marketing hype.
No idea where you’re getting this from. It has no official release date. It’s an early build. Hence that NDA. If you’re just “chatting generally” about hypotheticals, it shouldn’t have any bearing on this particular case.
The most Valve managed to do with their programming tech with CS:2 was the interactive smoke and in reality they were just a bunch of destructible textured cubes floating in the air to make the simulation a bit more believable. I saw a programmer in Godot quickly replicate it no problem so it's not as if they were that amazing.
I don’t know why you’re conflating “code complexity” with “fun mechanics.” Many people enjoy and play CS2. Is there some reason that the smoke was a particularly poor implementation of what they were trying to do? Perhaps you should explain that instead.
I'm not that lacking in self-awareness
You got sick of people pointing out your lack of self-awareness and annoying habits, so you started saying “I’m self-aware” without changing any of the stuff that made people say you weren’t self-aware. Hilarious.
It was opening the link to this post with the post collapsed for me, so it looked blank. Not sure why.
Is there supposed to be a link here?
To be fair, that also sounds retarded and awful in its own way. Not everything needs to be time travel and multiverse stuff. Most stories are better off without it. Hell, even the medium famous for it (superhero comics) would probably be better off if it was used a lot more sparingly and more consequentially (although the "internal consistency" and "consequences" issues with superhero comics are basically a hole with no bottom at this point. Overuse of the multiverse and time travel is hardly their only issue). Star Wars of all things is not a property that time travel and parallel universes belong in.
Also, Ahsoka is a fun character but she does not need to be in literally every Star Wars plotline.
It's still a step up from the sequels, but that's hardly a high bar.