internaut

While you're here Doctor, watch out today. Some weird things are going down now.

This looks more like a purge of right wing accounts.

https://youtu.be/qiADHzBOqZ0

This is obviously a huge mistake.

Jack Vance is a good choice. This 'dying earth sub-genre', its fantastical or science fiction attributes are a thin veneer on something real.

One major change to my thinking by Wolfe was that I used to assume history and progress were linear. I don't believe that anymore. There are too many glaring inconsistencies. More important than a chronological clock is the tick of the 'cultural clock'.

There are works that give me a, let's call it a dying earth vibe, but they are works of non-fiction such as Joseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies, 1177 by Eric Cline (both are interesting but the first of which I strongly recommend to you), or texts originally written in dead languages like Aramaic or Latin of which I have a few in English. It is a very strange feeling to read a text thousands of years old and realize the author is more, not less comprehensible than a similar text from several centuries ago written in your mother tongue. It is stranger still when you find more examples of this happening. It is as if the newer authors had their thoughts clouded or confused, the way they form their thoughts on the page is less joined up. I have come to believe that society undergoes change in such as way that it is perfectly possible for one to have much more in common with the thoughts of an ancient group of people than a much newer one.

To my eyes, it is clearly the case that different periods in history are recorded at different rates of lucidity or joined-up thinking. That is a hamfisted description but it'll have to do. My suspicion is that when we become altogether non-lucid the writing disappears also. At other times it appears to me that the thinking of some authors is more sophisticated than our own. I cannot account for this, only to suggest that culture controls people's range of reasoning powers and that there are deep cycles we are utterly oblivious to.

On a related note I feel strongly that many books and film media created before the 1980s were more sophisticated than today's interpretations. I wrote something about this recently.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12941619

Peter Thiel thinks about this in a technological sense but it may also be true culturally with music, art etc.

People will state this is subjective, but I don't think it is. Just because you can point to works of excellence in any age doesn't mean there is no moving average. Perhaps we're hamstrung by access to easy answers that slot into place in our heads in place of difficult, but more original thinking that is our own.

I use hnreplies.

www.hnreplies.com

"It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line."

Somewhere, Moldbug is wearing a shiteating grin.

I'd be shocked, just shocked, if 'The Narrative' was functionally identical to 'The Cathedral' in every way.

Forget vote rigging, millions of people have their reality rigged on a continuous basis.

You know the Japanese get a lot of criticism from Westerners for being a collectivist society, but I now believe we've reached the point we've outstripped them and they have become more individualistic than we are.

I've been saying this for a while now.

In fact I said this five days ago:

"It is not actually about what they report. It is all about what they don't report. Left wing and right wing propaganda are not the same. Right wing propaganda tells you what you must believe. Left wing propaganda simply leaves out the truth. Either way you have distortion but the methods are very different. NPR is not better than Fox News. Once you realize this, thou shalt be enlightened."

> I'd love to actually see tags on facebook posts. "Extremely conservative", "Mostly Neutral", "Mostly liked by liberals" etc etc.

This is the smartest suggestion I've seen so far.

I think the only thing you can realistically do is encourage metacognition.

Telling idealogues from either side 'Your Wrong' will almost certainly have the opposite effect to the one you intended.

That isn't what he was saying.

He is saying that the 'fact checking sites' are biased.

This is true. It's the old problem of "who guards the guards".

Snopes.com is supposed to be a fact checking site.

Snopes.com recently rated as 'mostly false' a notorious video of a Trump supporter being beaten up and suggested it was primarily about a traffic incident.

The guy who got beaten up actually offered his own testimony of what happened on camera later on. This is not mentioned in the 'fact check'. There is also the fact that his attackers are screaming at him that he is a Trump supporter and shouldn't be. They repeatedly shout "Don't vote Trump".

Then, just today, I see they have updated their rating to 'mixture' and added more text suggesting that the spread of the video is about racism. It's a pity I didn't take a screenshot from earlier.

This is the url: http://www.snopes.com/black-mob-beats-white-man-for-voting-t...

So no. I don't take the 'fact checking' websites seriously.

Imagine for instance a white nationalist walked into a store with a Mexican shopkeeper, got into an altercation because the Mexican "didn't give the right change" when purchasing an item there, and then followed that up by bringing his friends to trash the store.

On the store's CCTV there is audio recording showing racial slurs are used. Furthermore the shopkeeper says to reporter they attacked his store because he was Mexican and denies that he gave back the incorrect amount of change. He claims they were looking for a fight.

Then along comes snopes.com and they make an article claiming this was really about a shoplifting incident. Police sources say the white gang stole some items when they left.

That is what this is like. The fact checker is obviously biased.

Doesn't work for my particular application but I'm sure others will find it useful, assuming they don't run into the technological conspiracy to hide reality enigmango discovered ;-)

That sounds like useful information, thank you.

> I don't really see the spread of capitalism as a virus, and indeed none of the founding Marxists did either. While capital's inherent drive to expand is the core of most imperialist theories (and therefore "bad"), the accompanying spread of bourgeois ideology to the entire globe--and with it the social integration of the whole of humanity on scale which was previously unimaginable--is unquestionably a good thing.

Interesting. I wasn't expecting that. I'm sure you're familiar with self described communists who identify with Agent Smith's description of humankind in the Matrix, so you know where I got that impression from.

> On Silicon Valley, the anti-political technocratic ideology it seems to be producing is a minor phenomenon. There may be something to the notion of bits vs. atoms as the "stuff" of production, but what gets obscured is that capital and the law of value rules here nonetheless.

We may mean different things by anti-political. I didn't see Thiel's exploration of unusual fringe ideas as being the complete rejection of all politics, but an attempt at making a new kind of politics through technology. So here anti-political meant 'outside of the mainstream' for me. Out of the world of Washington, not out of the broader world of political philosophy.

Along the same lines I think SV ultimately is competing with Washington. An old form of politics vs a new form, similar to the competition of monarchy and democracy.

I think it is in a nascent stage yet, I just think we're being fed the idea their interests are parallel merely because they have converging interests, and I believe that to be a very big mistake because of Girard's ideas about mimesis, namely conflict is more likely, not less likely, because of similarity.

I agree with you though, the same economical laws are ruling still despite this talk of a new economical world order from Wired. It is remarkable as Thiel has been pointing out, just how few new forms of wealth have been created ex-computation in the past few decades. There is a terrific amount of talking but little impact and often the Ted-Talk-People portion of the middle class becomes intensely uncomfortable when this is pointed out to them.

> On Girard, Theil's affinity with those ideas seems to me to be bound up with his struggle to reconcile his libertarianism with Christianity. My guess is that if he dropped the Christianity, the Girardian thought would fall away.

I believe Thiel has noted of himself before, that he likes to have (and looks for in others) paradoxical or perhaps contradictory ideas. I think he believes there is some kind of gap between oppositional ideas that either spits off new thoughts or at least keeps you on your toes.

> My main point is that Theil is a particularly good "personification of capital" and that if you drop the stupid anti-capitalist politics and see capital as neither good nor bad but simply the ruling principle of the world, then it can explain a lot.

Agreed.

This is my hypothesis.

> (even though i shouldnt)

It seems weirdly taboo.

Using qtips for this purpose is supposed to be off label I've heard. Yet the trade goes on.

Race is one of those overloaded words. I think the right word here is heritage.

Motoko's heritage as a Japanese is an important part of the story that gives it richer context. This is because many of her dialogues are about ideas that are unique to her Asian culture. The concept of a marriage between the natural and the artificial (instead of man vs machine). The concept all things have sentience. There is even mention of deliberately selecting a member of Section 9 with a similar rationale to the Toyota way. These are not ideas strongly present in European cultures. Kusangi's holistic thinking is one of the most interesting things about the Major.

Can you picture Sarah Connor from Terminator having these dialogues that Motoko has? Evolution theory, philosophic musings?

I cannot. It is not because I think a westerner would have nothing to say. It is that I think they would say something different because they think differently.

I cannot agree. That Motoko is a Japanese woman is not irrelevant. What makes GITS interesting to many Westerners is precisely that it is a Japanese take on humans and technology. Instead of Hollywood's man vs machine it is a complex, deep marriage between the natural and the artificial.

Kusangi has the ghost of a Japanese woman even if the shell she has is a mass manufactured generic. I'd prefer Motoko to be a Japanese woman because that is just more interesting.

Very clever!

Aside from illusions there are many interesting proposals using mirrors.

I think most people don't think you can use mirrors with fibre optics to bounce daylight directly into people's houses for indoor lighting. There is also this cool trick you can do by using something called a 'cold mirror', where the visible spectrum is tapped into for lighting but at the same time the IR portion of the spectrum passes through the cold mirror and onto a solar thermal tank for making hot water.

All this, with mirrors!

I have a lot of sympathy for Mark right now. I'm far from being a fan of the platform but I don't feel this is his problem. If he moves his position an inch he'll be eaten alive.

I think he was right to fire back by pointing to that what they consider 'fake news' is a bipartisan affair. I've heard distorted stories from snopes for example, and that factchecker was supposed to be the adult in the room.

The famous video of the Trump supporter getting beaten up they've classified as an 'auto incident' with 'police sources say' despite clear aural evidence and his eyewitness testimony on video explaining they attacked him for being a Trump supporter. It's a straight up refusal to acknowledge reality.

The media are looking for a scapegoat. Surprise! They see one in a different competitor. I think the media feels like it has lost control, which is true. Reddit thinks they've lost objectivity.

I think somebody or something will have to be sacrificed. The question is who or what. There is a healthy chance the DNC will be destroyed if Sanders decided to begin a new third party. For the left I think that would be the best thing to do.

That is cool. Are there other ways to make a non-reversing mirror?

I was thinking of car mirrors.

I have a mirror trick of my own.

You know how there is one way mirrors, when used between two rooms they rely on one room being lighter/darker in order to work.

Well if you purchase a special mirror it is possible to make an optical illusion with three rooms in a row involved.

Each of the rooms furthest from each other can see into the interior room, but not into each other. This makes the sense of space much larger. I must talk to a magician or illusionist to see what other ways exist to achieve similar effects.

I'm starting to get the impression this outbreak of prepping threads has something to do with America and not New Zealand.

That said I'm all in favour of it. Cheapest form of health insurance you could buy really, next to a gym membership. I have some comments on MREs in the other threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12946111

Don't worry, I'd supplement my diet from my garden.

I think it is worth having a root cellar. I was always impressed as a young boy by Badger in Wind and the Willows. The illustrations in the books used to show all the sacks of potatoes and onions he had and I remember being very impressed by his hideaway. Pretty sure he had a shotgun as well.

You believe commercial MREs are better than military ones?

I do. As a European you should be aware that when we go into meltdown, it is all the way.

My people were starved to death twice in the 1800s, depopulating the island to half of its original size. It still hasn't recovered to its original size.

Then in the 1900s we had two of the largest wars in human history.

I have no reason to be confident that the 2000s won't suffer similar deprivations.

Actually I think it is some rich whites, countryside whites but not middle class city whites with the exception of Mormons and Jews for cultural and historical reasons.

The great irony is that the people in the cities surrounded by lots of competing mouths and only a few days supply of food at the shops are also the least worried about starving to death.

The last time I bought some I got them from mealkitsupply.

http://www.mealkitsupply.com/MRE/US/

1200 kcal per pack, 12 pack for $130, lasts five years (probably much longer if you store properly).

The rest I got from hotpackmeals.

http://www.hotpackmeals.co.uk/

360 kcal per pack, 24 pack for £114.00, lasts three years.

The flameless ration heaters the MRE companies supply are awesome.

If there were ever a prolonged problem I'd be worried about the shelf life of medicines.

There are two problems for preparation. We are typically restricted in the quantity we can buy and they often don't have a long shelf life.

I myself have enough MREs for about one month. I get mine from mealkitsupply.com and hotpackmeals.co.uk. These are self heating ration packs which is nice if the electric cuts out.

The mealkits last for five years, probably ten years to be honest. I've seen people eat MREs from the Korean War and they were perfectly good to eat.

The hotpacks last only three years, but are quite nice to eat and I tend to use them up as I go for lunches.

Order some boxes of MREs. I think most people in the world should have have a month's supply or more.

Glad to hear it!

A school history class doesn't give you a sense of the spirit of the times the way Clarke or Burke do. This may sound elitist but when I hear my own generation (millennial) talk about the past I feel like I'm hearing an aural caricature.

Unfortunately you'll notice all my examples of excellent documentary making are unusually old examples of television.

I suspect that between advertisers demand and a culture uncomfortable with bold or frankly even nuanced ideas you just cannot make good television for a large audience.

Adam Curtis for example still makes interesting documentaries from a centrist political perspective but he is notable precisely because he is rare. I think "Curtis and then who?".

Many geeks I assume, have gotten rid of their televisions for that reason.

You're saying that our intrinsic chronocentric thinking prevents us from seeing the danger of the have-nots abruptly encountering a Western lifestyle? That futureshock in large numbers could wind up causing disruption on a scale that would pull us all down?

Do tell me how you got on.

I found myself I couldn't finish it in one sitting. It was just too deep. I did it in a series of short sprints, accompanied by my weird music suggestion :)

Keep a notepad and pen handy, I found that useful to jot down various hypotheses that came to mind while I was reading it. Was useful for figuring out what certain words meant. Stay away from Google at all costs, the risk of spoilers is too great, don't even read the blurbs.

Sometimes I would think: is this thing I think I'm seeing really there, or is this the linguistic version of the Voynich manuscript? Then I'd read on and it was like being in a dark room and having a door open from a well lit hallway.

I veer in the direction of libertarianism but I can't refute the effectiveness of that tax. It works.

In place of plastic bags the supermarkets put their good used boxes at the head of the store and I can handily truck my shopping away in one of them. That then winds up at the recycling center later on, and in the worse case scenario of it being chucked outdoors by someone cardboard is biodegradable.

It is true that buying a 'bag4life' would emit more CO2 and extrude more plastic net but that wasn't the real issue since those effects are marginal. The amount of litter did reduce.

Now I would like to see us implement the German approach to bottles. They pay people money to collect them, I think it is 25c per bottle, and this has been very effective at keeping them off the streets as well as putting some money into the hands of those who could do with a bit of cash.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElYT8SMl-qI

I reckon on this being cheaper than hiring more street cleaners and cleaner machines so I view it as using a market mechanism.

Appreciate your analysis defgeneric, though we probably don't see eye to eye.

In my view what you're calling Thiel's anti-political phrases are important. I know you see them as the spread of virus-capitalism, but I think without that kind of frontier building the world would be a much more boring place. I take it you're familiar with Patri Friedman's thesis. What did you think then of Balaji Srinivasan's Exit Ycombinator talk?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

I know presently the anti-Trumpists are getting a lot of airtime with their talk of secession, but to be honest there is something much deeper beyond the current election fallout which is worth looking at. From a right perspective I have been wondering for a long time whether Silicon Valley's interests are ultimately orthogonal to Washington but appear to be similar in the present because they're competing for the same thing.

This is a strand of Rene Girard's philosophy, which Thiel is a big fan of (he knew Rene at Stanford I think), many of his ideas revolve around ideas of mimesis and scapegoating. Interestingly; he had a Girardian rationale for investing in Facebook. Never say reading philosophy doesn't pay off! I would love to have a photo of his library.

John Strange is very wrong about Thiel's activities being random. I was asked to write essay on Medium which I called "Peter and the Wolfe", which was an attempt to explain the deeper undercurrents around some of his recent decisions.

The main content of it was written before Trump got into power, so it makes it more interesting retroactively. If you recall, many people on HN were calling him mad, stupid, trying to get him kicked out of Ycombinator and Facebook's board etc. Here is the original comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884413

I like documentaries where there isn't much narration/interviewing going on. They are also short.

Primitive Technology

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA

I think this guy is most of HN's silent hero.

Two documentaries on working class skills approaching a true art form.

Ben's Mill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2KJbRHO76s

Sadly only part is available unless you pay a few thousand dollars. It is really good though. It's a guy using the raw power of water to create wooden objects for local farmers.

Glas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAYh0f1CPuc

A Dutch documentary on glass making in the '50s.

Three made for Television documentary series are:

James Burke's Connections. This is the first episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4tLYYXDg74

This series had an enormous influence on many of HN's older hackers. History, Technology, Philosophy, it's all there. One of the best television series I've seen, and I'm a millennial so it isn't just nostalgia. It is smart.

Carl Sagan's Cosmos. This is so famous I assume you've already watched it. Carl is scientist and poet. The recent adaption is a fair effort but the original is by far the best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YgBXLUSsmg

Lord Kenneth Clarke's Civilization (1969!). This is the favorite documentary of many Western conservatives and reactionaries because it doesn't constantly caveat, qualify or diminish the history of The West. It is not shy about showing wickedness as well as greatness but nor is it politically correct.

Before I watched this it was quite hard to fully grasp the motivations of the right wing. After watching it I came to the view we have narrowed our view to a chronocentric interpretation of reality. This shows the grand sweep of history, which is admirable even if you don't agree with its worldview for political reasons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDm4Sl6CdYU&list=PLFYDyLgHrF...