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I can only assume they are too young to remember the blair years at all, or they don't know what it was like up here, because anyone pining for them in the north as if that would reverse the loss is a complete idiot.
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Feb 16, 2020 23:59
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OwlFancier posted:I can only assume they are too young to remember the blair years at all, or they don't know what it was like up here, because anyone pining for them in the north as if that would reverse the loss is a complete idiot. Oh my God yes. And that's the thing I hate about the "we've got to be electable" crowd, far more than the antipathy to Corbyn. Corbyn's toxic in the seats Labour lost fair enough (mostly unjustly, but it is what it is) but the steady decline of the Blair years was a huge part of what started the trends in these seats that we're seeing turn Tory now. I've seen nothing to indicate that anyone who is going on about 'electability' has any plan about what it would actually turn those seats back and how to implement it. It's just a hollow cover for the various right/center factions arguing to do stuff they wanted to do anyway.
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Feb 17, 2020 00:04
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OwlFancier posted:I can only assume they are too young to remember the blair years at all, or they don't know what it was like up here, because anyone pining for them in the north as if that would reverse the loss is a complete idiot. Either that, or too London/ big city "ey" as it were. I wouldn't begrudge anyone not wanting to engage with Mrs Whinstanley who has not had a smile since they got rid of hanging and thinks that only owning two houses makes them working class, but it is one of the big problems we are going to have to look at. I just hope we don't end up doing that very American thing of assuming that everyone outside of their city state is just bumpkins called Cletus.
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Feb 17, 2020 00:06
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Deep space 9 is a lot better than TNG now im watching star trek for the first time
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Feb 17, 2020 00:06
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Josef bugman posted:Thanks Camrath. I have a load of books if people want me to bring them along to choose characters/ ideas from! Please do! I am open to making Marx or an analogue a deity in the setting if need be, though I suspect he might roll in his grave...
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Feb 17, 2020 00:07
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Hidingo Kojimba posted:Oh my God yes. And that's the thing I hate about the "we've got to be electable" crowd, far more than the antipathy to Corbyn. Corbyn's toxic in the seats Labour lost fair enough (mostly unjustly, but it is what it is) but the steady decline of the Blair years was a huge part of what started the trends in these seats that we're seeing turn Tory now. I've seen nothing to indicate that anyone who is going on about 'electability' has any plan about what it would actually turn those seats back and how to implement it. It's just a hollow cover for the various right/center factions arguing to do stuff they wanted to do anyway. Exactly, I know exactly why the right are pushing that because they're lying twats, but socialists should not buy into it. A moment of critical thought about why people think "they're all the same" might help, as might thinking about why 2010 was lost? Nobody ever does that, they just think "oh we should go back to the time when we won" while treating it as if there is no possible reasoning for why they stopped winning despite having control over the government for so long, as if people growing to hate the government is just an unavoidable thing. It belies an absolute contempt for the people voting for them which is echoed in everything they do, especially their conduct within the party, that people are just there to shut up and vote for them all the time without any concern for whether it actually helps them.
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Feb 17, 2020 00:09
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Josef bugman posted:It's not just one defeat though, is it? It's quite literally over a decade of loss in some ways. The feeling of powerlessness, of feeling like "well what can you do but acclimitise yourself to the world" is a strong one. It becomes less so the longer things get worse, but it is still a strong one. It's bad but giving in is worse. The left has been losing for decades, for my entire lifetime and then some. In 2015 we took control of Labour. Corbyn and his team made plenty mistakes like not forcing through proprr mandatory reselection. But if we chuck our hands in the air and give Labour back to Yvette Cooper and Ian Murray and Luke Akehurst via Starmer because of one setback we'd be giving up on fighting austerity, fighting racism and xenophobia, saving the NHS, all that poo poo. Because New Labour ain't it. We know this. I get it's been a depressing couple of months. I'm still mostly tuning the news out. But it's one thing to switch off and quite another to support the enemy. If Labour don't have a leadership willing to challenge the underlying assumptions of capitalism then we're back to moving deckchairs on the Titanic. If people want to give up on parliamentarianism then cool, make some change happen, but voting for Keir Starmer ain't it unless you're an accelerationist.
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Feb 17, 2020 00:10
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feedmegin posted:Please do! I am open to making Marx or an analogue a deity in the setting if need be, though I suspect he might roll in his grave... I mean you could always make him a bodhisattva. forkboy84 posted:It's bad but giving in is worse. The left has been losing for decades, for my entire lifetime and then some. In 2015 we took control of Labour. Corbyn and his team made plenty mistakes like not forcing through proprr mandatory reselection. But if we chuck our hands in the air and give Labour back to Yvette Cooper and Ian Murray and Luke Akehurst via Starmer because of one setback we'd be giving up on fighting austerity, fighting racism and xenophobia, saving the NHS, all that poo poo. Because New Labour ain't it. We know this. To a lot of people, people we'd probably call friend and comrade, it isn't giving up. This is the big problem, if our approach didn't work we do need to argue that it can if we do something differently. We can't just say "These people are the enemy to all of us" if not too long ago we were saying "they can be reasoned with". Our biggest problem now is trying to convince people who are like us but feel that they don't fundamentally disagree with anything Stamer has said. It's the biggest problem because he probably would give it back to Luke Akehurst, but we have to make a platform that isn't just "gently caress you".
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Feb 17, 2020 00:18
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Brexit hosed it, there wasn't a single solution that would have worked cos labour's base is split on the issue, the press and people like starmer and nandy and their mates are exactly the reason we had to work so hard during election seasons to build labour up and we absolutely would have won if not for their, personal, outright sabotage of the party, if the party goes left again they will keep up their bullshit and your choice is between whether you're going to give in to those who would threaten and lie and cheat you out of your own hard work to see the government you want, or whether you're going to keep fighting until you loving well win. That's the choice, starmer and nandy were personally responsible for the stunt in 2016 that cost us so much ground, they have provably shown they are not trustworthy and their idea of "unity" amounts only to them being in charge, and that makes them the enemy. That puts them in exactly the same position as the filth at the BBC and the tories and everyone else who think only of themselves and their own, personal, power. You don't believe johnson when he promises to spend all the money to fix everything, why would you believe someone whose proven actions helped put him in power? If you don't believe that was the intent, the alternative is that they are so utterly inept as politicians that they didn't even realise that would be the outcome, in which case what the gently caress is the basis for calling them electable? That's the truth of it, that's easily provable. If people don't want to even consider that, I do not have the ability to change their mind.
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Feb 17, 2020 00:27
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Was Starmer actually involved in that? I always assumed he was more just roped in as he was working with Corbyn for large amounts of time.
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Feb 17, 2020 00:30
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Josef bugman posted:Was Starmer actually involved in that? I always assumed he was more just roped in as he was working with Corbyn for large amounts of time. OwlFancier posted:Just in case anyone would like a refresher for what starmer thinks of party unity when he isn't running for leader: For reference, the referendum was on the 23rd of june, four days prior, this is what big brain electability man keir starmer thinks was going to win labour the election. The whole thing is literally "I deplore the conflict in the party that I am directly causing right now as I stab you in the back" OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Feb 17, 2020 |
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Feb 17, 2020 00:31
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Idiot (Starmer, not yourself Owl!). The problem is that, as a wise cartoon cat says "You are not immune to propaganda" I think it has taken affect on some folk.
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Feb 17, 2020 00:37
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Jose posted:This American show on Netflix had the correct pronunciation of scone no stronger sign from the universe that you're saying it wrong
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Feb 17, 2020 00:57
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Jose posted:Anyway anyone who plays or has played dnd and enjoyed it should read the manga dungeon meshi which is very much based on it. The theme is that nobody can beat the dungeon because they run out of supplies so the main cast just eat the monsters they kill on the way down UR a meshi Also in the game I'm in (but which we haven't played in months lol) I'm a wizard with 16 in Int and 18 in Cha because she's primarily a con artist and blackmailer and the magic is more of a self-defense tool for when that goes wrong, and a means to help her gain information, than anything else. Favorite thing she's done: Use her spider familiar to sneak into a guy's house to spy on him and prep for breaking in and stealing anything incriminating, then seducing said gnome while other party members actually did the break-in, and then they brought the incriminating letter they found to me so I could just show it to him and tell him what he was going to do. (She's Neutral Evil, which is the true matrician's alignment.)
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Feb 17, 2020 01:07
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It's becoming increasingly obvious that trans-rights are the latest thang the right are using to drive a wedge into the left. I've been hearing more and more TERF talk from the mother of my daughter. I get into the state of despair when I hear that from an actual communist (rather that someone who wants to water leftism down, for Decorum, into socialism). I guess I just want to say, from this position of seeing a sadness, that I'll never give up on the idea that trans folks are our folks. I can see the slippery slope towards "centrism" on this, another capitulation towards the right but there's no capitulation on basic loving human decency. I'm angry I've heard this nonsense from people who should know better and I'm ranting, I know, but the left mustn't ever give up on this.
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Feb 17, 2020 01:09
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baka kaba posted:no stronger sign from the universe that you're saying it wrong gently caress off southerner you're what's wrong with this country
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Feb 17, 2020 01:14
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Jose posted:gently caress off southerner you're what's wrong with this country you cant possibly know that
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Feb 17, 2020 01:16
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Jose posted:Deep space 9 is a lot better than TNG now im watching star trek for the first time This is correct but TNG is still good and worth watching to world build ds9 DS9's Q episode is a wonderful "we're not TNG" handover.
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Feb 17, 2020 01:20
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WhatEvil posted:https://twitter.com/HasBezosDecided/status/1229154821904662528?s=20 I mean at least say what happened to the bloke, even if you made him up. Will it still count as an impression when Rory Bremner impersonates him even though their voices naturally sound pretty much the same?
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Feb 17, 2020 01:25
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Jose posted:gently caress off southerner you're what's wrong with this country ;D that eugenics guy's got some other hot takes I see quote:In an interview he did in 2016 Sabisky said he was interested in narcolepsy drug modafinil, which also cuts the need for sleep in healthy people by two-thirds and potentially helps brain function. can see this guy going the full jorp before he's 30
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Feb 17, 2020 01:38
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thespaceinvader posted:Also, read Rat Queens, it's rad. Alternately, don't, because among other controversies the original artist and co-creator is a wifebeater.
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Feb 17, 2020 02:00
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baka kaba posted:;D Junk like that is precisely why anyone advocating "intelligence boosters" of any kind should be discredited. Long-term studies of modafinil indicate that not only is it ineffective at maintaining mental awareness and performance (you just don't feel fatigued), but that it actively impairs creative thinking and causes anxiety. That's not a recipe for social stability at all. Intelligence is way too complicated for silver bullet solutions. For example, it's fairly well-known that a lot of the really brilliant folks tend to also suffer from depression, bipolar disorder, etc. And prodigies don't tend to have prodigious children, no doubt in part because their families often struggle with the pressure of notoriety as well as the lack of family focus by these genius parents. It's hard to raise a prodigy when you're busy working on your magnum opus.
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Feb 17, 2020 02:35
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Also the entire concept that we need to be stretching the limits of human performance is dumb and bad, people need to do less work, not more, both for their own welfare and for the long term sustainability of our civilization.
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Feb 17, 2020 02:40
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OwlFancier posted:Also the entire concept that we need to be stretching the limits of human performance is dumb and bad, people need to do less work, not more, both for their own welfare and for the long term sustainability of our civilization. Oh yeah absolutely. What is humanity supposed to do with 10 billion Einstein's? It makes no sense. Also to conclude my little diatribe about intelligence eugenics, the comparison to breeding dogs and such raises a fairly fundamental difference: fecundity and maturation time. A breeding dog might have seven puppies in a litter, and up to three litters per year. Those dogs grow up to developed maturity within two years, at which point you can identify desired traits and repeat the process - selecting from the dozens of potential candidates. Obviously, humans are not like that at all. This sort of thing just isn't feasible in humans, much less when you're talking about such a nebulous trait as intelligence. The whole thing has been a fool's errand ever since it became popularized at the dawn of the 20th century.
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Feb 17, 2020 02:49
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Kaal posted:Oh yeah absolutely. What is humanity supposed to do with 10 billion Einstein's? It makes no sense. Exactly. In my team at work, I had some 'star' analysts who would sometimes turn in a month's work in a couple of days if they came up with some new system - but if 'the muse' hadn't come upon them could have tantrums, be flakey, and unreliable. And get bored easily. I used to let them have a week a month to explore (work-related) projects of their own devising once the basic work had been done and they sometimes came up with some really good stuff. In my team I also had my 'rocks' - would come in at 830, leave at 430, follow instructions to the letter, answer the phones, basically very solid and very reliable. A dream to manage and great 'soothers' in the team (and were always the ones who remember the 'social glue' - bringing in cakes (ooooo donna's cakes) on birthdays, buying a birthday card and running around with an envelope on the necessary occasions, all that kind of stuff. Accounts payables, payroll departments need the solid, reliable types to come in and do their jobs, muse or no muse. Projects need a mixture of innovators and reliables. Of course, some people are both. I'm probably going to get sent to the wall for writing a corporate post but never mind. Hopefully the rifle wielders will be having a tantrum because the rifle-shooting muse hasn't come upon them that day!
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Feb 17, 2020 03:03
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I suppose the counter-argument would be that more intelligent people would lead to that state of being able to reduce how much work we need to do more quickly. That counter-argument would be wrong, because we know exactly what we need to do, which is to end capitalism. That said, we should absolutely always be working towards the elimination of human limitations. I will become a perfect, immortal machine.
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Feb 17, 2020 03:05
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Also me, professional thing on shelf putter, would not be improved by innovating the process so that I end up building abstract art out of the beans or something. It's these loving nerds who think all human progress stems from the minds of big brain boys who come in and fix everyone's problems, rather than the majority of it coming from piles of people iterating on a process by doing it a bazillion times until they get real good at it.
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Feb 17, 2020 03:06
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Ms Adequate posted:That said, we should absolutely always be working towards the elimination of human limitations. I will become a perfect, immortal machine. Oh I mean there's certainly a merit to that principle, for sure, and it's pretty clear that stuff like genetic engineering will become more and more common - whether or not we consider it eugenics. Being born resistant to a wide variety of congenital abnormalities is certainly an ideal worth working towards. Though of course there's folks who remain resistant to it (the dwarf and autistic populations, for example, are concerned that they're just going to fade away if expecting parents can "opt out"). But at the end of the day, even for a technocrat like myself, stuff like this remains largely in the province of science fiction. If you want a population to grow up to be tall and strong, then ensure they're well-fed and exercise regularly. If you want people to be healthy and long-lived, then ensure they have regular access to preventative health care. If you want a population to be creative and intelligent, then provide them with a culturally-rich education. We really haven't come anywhere near to fulfilling our existing genetic potential on a societal scale.
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Feb 17, 2020 03:21
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Jedit posted:Alternately, don't, because among other controversies the original artist and co-creator is a wifebeater. unrelated:  healthy markets, everywhere you look 
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Feb 17, 2020 06:24
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Kaal posted:Oh I mean there's certainly a merit to that principle, for sure, and it's pretty clear that stuff like genetic engineering will become more and more common - whether or not we consider it eugenics. Being born resistant to a wide variety of congenital abnormalities is certainly an ideal worth working towards. Though of course there's folks who remain resistant to it (the dwarf and autistic populations, for example, are concerned that they're just going to fade away if expecting parents can "opt out"). I agree fully, though I have Weird Opinions on abortion per se which kind of ties into this and I have no idea how to reconcile those with the possibilites arising from emerging and future technologies. Essentially that if fetus is person then abortion can never be acceptable even for rape and incest (Unless lives are actually threatened in which case existing medical ethics come into play), or it's not person then abortion can never be done for a bad or wrong reason (Except forcing it on the mother). Doing something that would make life worse for the future person wouldn't be okay because that's harming someone who will exist, but aborting someone by definition eliminates the future person who would be harmed, so I... can't see a non-contradictary way out of this?
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Feb 17, 2020 06:40
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Killing people isn't actually wrong because the person suffers for it, it's wrong because if everyone went around killing each other (overtly, too much) society wouldn't work, and also because it causes people who are still alive to suffer for the loss. It's really more of a rule that's important because society needs it to work than one that stands up to extensive philosphical scrutiny unless you believe in an afterlife/immaterial component to life. Killing people hurts other people. The person who dies is dead, and therefore does not have an opinion on the subject. Unless you believe otherwise I guess but if you don't that's the most coherent philosophical underpinning of the rule, imo, and ample good reason to not kill people 99% of the time. On the other hand if you just magically blinked everyone out of existence that'd be necessarily morally neutral, cos nobody would be around to mind. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Feb 17, 2020 |
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Feb 17, 2020 06:56
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Ms Adequate posted:Essentially that if fetus is person then abortion can never be acceptable even for rape and incest (Unless lives are actually threatened in which case existing medical ethics come into play), or it's not person then abortion can never be done for a bad or wrong reason (Except forcing it on the mother). Doing something that would make life worse for the future person wouldn't be okay because that's harming someone who will exist, but aborting someone by definition eliminates the future person who would be harmed, so I... can't see a non-contradictary way out of this? the knife-edge ethical theory here emerges from holding that coercion across a personhood boundary is the only wrong in this ethical framework - not only is it wrong, but it is the only wrong, beyond which it is not possible to spell out moral bads... in a philo 101 sense, the usual litany of objections is: - wherein animal rights in this framework, and if so, it seems problematic to argue for a single personhood status in the universe of objects - likewise the very old, the very young (paging Peter Singer to the courtesy telephone, please) - does family play any special role in this framework, are there natural obligations to close relations (however defined) at all. Parenthood after all does not end at childbirth. Do parents have any unique obligations to their children different from, say, children in general (it would be possible, albeit quite strange, to argue that parents exercise no special duties whatsoever with regards to their own children compared to anyone else's) - bodily integrity as sacred personhood seems to play an outsized role in this framework, hence Thomson's argument from the violinist to highlight the point. This opens a can of worms, ranging from hot-button topics like vaccination, circumcision, etc. to more pedestrian questions (challenge: explain the ethics of trimming a squirming baby's fingernails without invoking a consequentialist argument...) lots of ways to explore the topic
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Feb 17, 2020 07:56
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If you want to have more fun you can argue for the theory of acquired and sustained personhood whereby people aren't people until some time after they're born and can stop being people before they die. Though given the company you'd end up in I'd generally not bother most of the time cos it's not really a pressing problem outside of arguments about euthanasia.
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Feb 17, 2020 08:01
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OwlFancier posted:Killing people isn't actually wrong because the person suffers for it, it's wrong because if everyone went around killing each other (overtly, too much) society wouldn't work, and also because it causes people who are still alive to suffer for the loss. say you are in a position to kill people peacefully in their sleep and all bystanders will regard it as a natural death (in that Harold Shipman way). Is that morally wrong in this framework?
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Feb 17, 2020 08:04
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ronya posted:say you are in a position to kill people peacefully in their sleep and all bystanders will regard it as a natural death (in that Harold Shipman way). Is that morally wrong in this framework? Well yes because you are still inflicting the death on the bystanders, some of them might not have to experience it otherwise, owing to dying first. You are also denying them access to the person for the duration you are taking off the person's life, access which, I would assume, is probably a net good thing for them. I don't believe there are very many people in the world who are a net bad influence on it that can only be alleviating by killing them, though if you can imagine a person like that that's definitely a candidate for a situation when killing people is justifiable. eg: eating the rich. But if you murder granny cos you can get away with it, grandchild is probably going to be worse off for having less time with her, and that's bad. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Feb 17, 2020 |
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Feb 17, 2020 08:09
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OwlFancier posted:Well yes because you are still inflicting the death on the bystanders, some of them might not have to experience it otherwise, owing to dying first. You are also denying them access to the person, access which, I would assume, is probably a net good thing for them. I don't believe there are very many people in the world who are a net bad influence on it that can only be alleviating by killing them, though if you can imagine a person like that that's definitely a candidate for a situation when killing people is justifiable. eg: eating the rich. ok the italic bit made me lol. Well played, sir https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs ronya fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Feb 17, 2020 |
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Feb 17, 2020 08:12
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Do not ask me to figure out the optimal number-of-remaining-family-members at which to start murdering people so as to minimise the number of deaths experienced per-capita please because I am not good at maths.
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Feb 17, 2020 08:14
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Uh I think u just demonstrated that genocide is, at worst, morally neutral Like obviously I can't prove otherwise because philosophy, but I think it's fair to say that anything that permanently erases unique aspects of the world like cultures or phenotypes is, a priori, bad
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Feb 17, 2020 08:22
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Borrovan posted:Uh I think u just demonstrated that genocide is, at worst, morally neutral Only if you manage to get everyone, via giant asteroid. Which is also kind of the answer to all other philosphical and ethical problems so, y'know, kind of cheating. You could also take the view that philosophy is just your brain running in a hamster wheel and not take it too seriously if it gives you results that feel weird. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Feb 17, 2020 |
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Feb 17, 2020 08:23
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OwlFancier posted:You could also take the view that philosophy is just your brain running in a hamster wheel and not take it too seriously if it gives you results that feel weird. In this case, I think it's that the argument hinges on it being impossible to demonstrate that killing is axiomatically bad, so makes the jump to "therefore it's always okay", which then has to be corrected to account for the obvious harm to survivors, which then accidentally permits genocide Killing is probably bad
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Feb 17, 2020 08:32
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