Stuart Anderson

Karma: 343

Stuart Anderson 20 Jan 2021 15:03 UTC
3 points
on: Praying to God
There are no atheists in foxholes
Well, Tillman’s comrades probably shot him, so there’s that.
Also, isn’t this a really good argument for putting atheists in charge if you don’t like war?

Stuart Anderson 18 Jan 2021 6:51 UTC
4 points
on: How do you measure conformity?
This is easy: if you are saying or doing something transgressive you’ll be shunned or attacked in some manner for it. The more transgressive, the greater the pushback will be.
Unless you’re specifically stealthing or greymanning, and doing so well, people will socially clock you way before any cognitive element kicks in. If you stand next to someone weird then the odds of you being ostracised go up. They generally won’t even know what’s happening within themselves, just that you are outside acceptable parameters for the group.

Stuart Anderson 18 Jan 2021 5:14 UTC
2 points
on: How do I improve at being strategic?
I realized I am not very strategic, and I want to improve.
Games.
The have structure, sufficient complexity, and clear win conditions. They also have opponents.
That obviously won’t answer all your questions but it will point you in a helpful direction and build skills.

Stuart Anderson 18 Jan 2021 5:07 UTC
1 point
in reply to: mad’s comment on: How can I find trustworthy dietary advice?
There are a number of places, assuming you don’t just build one, where people are locked up and eat what they’re given. No, that’s not a perfect experiment, but it’s better than no experiment at all.
I’d also imagine that coma patients are really cooperative experimental participants.

Stuart Anderson 18 Jan 2021 4:58 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Dave Orr’s comment on: What is going on in the world?
Those leaders are mostly worse for the globalists and those on their coattails, not everyone. There are always winners and losers in everything, and that very rarely maps neatly to partisan lines.
As for the elites, that depends on who you mean. If you mean the 1% then they know. We know they know because of the coordinated deplatforming of essential services on ideological grounds. I think we’ll have to wait until Biden has warmed his chair for five minutes before we see any real violent retaliation from them for the insolence of the peons.
As long as people don’t understand a situation then any attempt to change it will only succeed through blind luck. It’s not difficult to find people holding up Trump as a bogeyman and completely refusing to address the wave he rode in on. He has support and that support will move if he is incapacitated or killed, it won’t just evaporate.

Stuart Anderson 18 Jan 2021 0:15 UTC
0 points
in reply to: kithpendragon’s comment on: Will we witness the compassion of a nation?
You, who have read so much history, believe that words cannot cause harm? That’s an interesting conclusion.
Lots of things cause tangible harm but speech isn’t one of them. Even if speech could cause tangible harm then its utility in preventing the same would far outweigh any cost incurred by that. The public forum must be open to so-called harmful speech because the solution to that is more speech. You kill bad ideas with good ideas, not with censorship.
Now, if you are talking about speech as a (mistaken) synonym of persuasion and indoctrination that’s a different story. It’s not the tool that is the problem here. The words don’t matter nearly as much as you’d think. What matters is psychology married with malignant intent. This is something I have had done to me. I know how to do to others, and won’t, even to the smallest degree and even though it would benefit me greatly. I do not invite evil into my own house.
It’s very important to acknowledge all the conditions when participating in any conversation, if at all possible.
Irreconcilable differences and permanent animus are the conditions here. This is about how to negotiate with others when tolerating their evil within your tribe is never going to be on the table.
I don’t know what the most hostile negotiation you’ve ever been involved in consisted of, but mine wasn’t at a table and it lasted less than a couple of minutes. When you credibly tell someone “Go ahead and I’ll fucking kill you” and that ends without homicide then that’s a successful negotiation between parties with fundamentally irreconcilable differences. They wanted to hurt me, I told them I’d hurt them far more, neither party ended up hurting either. All fangs get bared more than used for a very good reason.
Rather, we should work to avoid creating new animosity, partly for the sake of communication and partly to avoid being even partly responsible for the harms that come to others as a result of our words.
In this context, it’s too late.
When you know your opponents want to harm you (as demonstrated by concrete actions like silencing your speech, denying your access to basic market services like banking, constant fighting words from their talking heads, etc.) then when someone comes along on that side and says “I don’t think animosity helps” then my response to that is “Roll back your harms immediately and I’ll respect your claim of good intent”.
You show good faith with action, not empty lip service. It would be trivial for team blue to create peace on the spot:
1. Mandate certain public facing companies (social media, financial services, etc.) over a certain size to be subject to offering compelled service.
  
  You cannot cast out people for having beliefs you don’t agree with and then be surprised when they form their own groups and go on to represent a credible threat to you.
2. No proceedings against their enemies and immediate pardons for everyone they’ve gone after already.
  
  Taking a one time hit on ‘justice’ is preferable to creating martyrs and eroding faith in your leadership and your office.
Everything else can be squabbled over afterwards, you just need to give people enough of a crumb that they can at least see the possibility of working this out without violence.
I find that the exchange of ideas meets less friction when I try to not antagonize others. That’s the goal of conversation, is it not?
Not here. It’s too late for civility when you’re already in the middle of a war.
This is about organising the breakup of America. You can do that amicably or violently, but it’s a divorce either way.
Peace isn’t a product of liking others, or agreement, peace is a product of having alternatives to killing people you hate. Peace doesn’t require concord, only armistice.

Stuart Anderson 17 Jan 2021 22:22 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Kenny’s comment on: Are UFOs just drones?
Is the equipment functioning properly?
I would run with a default yes on the grounds that avionics are a big deal in planes in general, and anything big enough to be supplying this data also gets constantly checked, stripped down, and reassembled.
Furthermore, a lot of the avionics data comes from military craft. All the standard maintenance above applies plus additional measures. When you’re firing missiles having your sights off by even a fraction is unacceptable.
Ground based radar (etc.) data has similar operational conditions as military craft do. You tell a plane to go in the wrong direction and then it isn’t a plane anymore, it’s a missile.
As an aside: if ufo are craft then their maintenance schedule would be a million times worse than even the most sophisticated planes we have. Planes break themselves as a routine part of flying, mainly because of the forces involved and the materials they’re made from. We take planes apart and replace anything that has been in use too long or that looks suspect in any way. Every plane you’ve ever been on is a Ship of Theseus.
Are there other plausible interpretations of the data gathered by that equipment?
That’s the crux of the problem: physics applies, so what’s going on here? We don’t have answers for what we’re seeing here. Excluding some sort of illusion (which is possible) then we can only be looking at massive amounts (presumably, given the presentations) of energy that we can’t account for.
Some of the best UFO sightings seem pretty similar to ‘ball lightning’ which also isn’t either well-explained or particularly well observed. (I think there’s one plausibly somewhat-detailed observation of it to-date.)
There’s a ton of weird electromagnetic atmospheric phenomena that we understand poorly. It is far more likely that the majority of ufos are actually this.
Ball lighting is a perfect example of a seemingly physics defying presentation. St. Elmo’s Fire is another good example, auroras are too. Charged particles, plasmas, etc. are all things that emit light, seem to move contrary to conventional forces, and only exist in the presence of massive energy discharges.
As I keep yammering on about: physics must apply. It might be peculiar high energy physics, but physics nonetheless.

Stuart Anderson 15 Jan 2021 16:07 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Kenny’s comment on: Are UFOs just drones?
Physics still applies to energy. Light has to come from somewhere.
Footage is optical/IR. Radar is radio waves. If we can observe a thing, then as long as the equipment is functioning properly then something has to be there. What that thing is is a different question.
You’d expect to see light, but radar and other sensors won’t work on light (neither will bullets). If you have the gun cam footage from some fighter plane then you also have all the other sensor data pointing the same direction. I don’t know enough ufology to know what the deal is there.

Stuart Anderson 15 Jan 2021 15:54 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Duff’s comment on: What skills or habits have lasting value through time?
Any time I’ve dictated something it has been far less coherent than if I typed it. That being said, I type a hell of a lot more than a I speak, so it’s reasonable to assume that unfamiliarity is a factor.
If you are repeating something on a computer often enough to notice it you need macros.

Stuart Anderson 15 Jan 2021 15:48 UTC
1 point
in reply to: kithpendragon’s comment on: Will we witness the compassion of a nation?
Because doing so aligns with a principle of avoiding unnecessary harm, for a start.
Words are not magic spells. You don’t just say something and magically change a person’s psyche. Magic isn’t real (but tricks can be).
There is literally nothing I could ever say to you that will cause you tangible harm. Furthermore, I can’t cause you offence because that’s a voluntary choice (or at least one that can be made so with mindfulness).
Also because it facilitates better communication when you are making an effort to avoid creating more animosity.
Ignoring that animosity is a fundamental aspect of this particular conversation regarding how to deal with negotiation in the presence of that very thing, what makes you think I can deceive you that well?
My mantra on LW seems to be we are not friends, nor will we ever be. I don’t think I can successfully lie about that, furthermore I don’t think I should have to lie about that, both for my own benefit as a matter of honesty, and for you because I don’t think lying to people is a good way to have good faith conversations.
You and I are very different. Probably neurobiologically, now that I think about it. You seem like you have a fully functioning limbic system, I probably don’t (as a result of mental illness and medication for the same). I say I don’t care, but an interesting question is whether I even can care in the way you do.
The fastest way to end animosity is to resolve the causes rather than focus on the animosity itself. I have been in many situations where people want to tell me how they feel and their life story when it is a situation that can be fixed without reference to that and they can be sent on their way. I can appreciate why not everyone would favour that, but it has worked many times for me. That being said, I’m mentally ill and I’m very used to my emotions having nothing to do with reality. As such, I place very little value in them.

Stuart Anderson 13 Jan 2021 21:58 UTC
2 points
on: What skills or habits have lasting value through time?
Improving typing speed
I berate my GP about this on a regular basis.
The real question of course is whether someone that types already should alter layout or go full stenography? A shitty stenographer can easily type 150 wpm. Good stenographers can do over 200 or more. Live transcribers can hit upwards of 300 wpm.
You can easily boost that to 80 wpm by learning to touch type. That’s a 4x productivity boost for life.
1. Maybe you can get to and stay at 80, but my coordination is way lower than that.
2. Fast and productive are not synonyms. Being able to type faster means you can type faster, not think faster, compose faster, edit faster, etc. That being said, I cannot see a circumstance where being able to type faster is a detriment.
Learning speed reading may have similar productivity benefits, even if you just double or triple your reading rate, given how much text we read now.
As someone with a high reading speed (the last time I was locked up with a library I read 24 books in about two weeks, including some I read twice) I can tell you that comprehension is often more valuable than raw speed in daily life. Reading some article swiftly certainly has utility, but simply shoving more words into your head hits limits as the complexity of the content increases.
Sometimes going slower is better. When I write comments on the internet then unless it’s some one liner I’m easily going to re-read it at least a dozen times during drafting and editing. The bigger the post gets the more re-reading that goes on. Being succinct is not my forte.
“If hear alarm, then get out of bed.”
Change your alarm to birdsong so that you don’t want to stick a gun in your mouth as your first act of consciousness.
This is similar to my choice.
I’m struggling to come up with many more things though.
Figure out what the rules are, then break them.

Stuart Anderson 13 Jan 2021 21:07 UTC
9 points
in reply to: Kenny’s comment on: Are UFOs just drones?
anomalous relative to aircraft
It’s more a case of anomalous compared to matter.
Forces always have to go somewhere. It doesn’t have to be the same kind of force but it has to come out somewhere. So, where?
Un-piloted craft are capable of (relatively) “hard stops, turns, and accelerations” that pilots can’t physically withstand.
This isn’t about mushing up a body, it’s about tearing an airframe to bits.
Think about meteors and asteroids. You’ve seen footage of them entering the atmosphere. That’s what mass travelling really fast meeting opposing force looks like. When they heat up and explode that’s what high speed mass decelerating beyond the stable point of its material composition looks like.
But I’m not sure how much weight to put on the ‘ludcrity’ of observations generally.
We’ve seen footage and data released by military and other official channels, so barring unbelievably coordinated disinfo whatever this phenomena is it appears to vastly exceed what we understand to be possible with solid objects.
There is clearly something there, the problem is that we don’t know what that might be.

Stuart Anderson 13 Jan 2021 14:34 UTC
0 points
in reply to: kithpendragon’s comment on: Will we witness the compassion of a nation?
All political views are biases by definition.
All I’m saying here is that I can explain my politics clearly if necessary, in and this example how that might broadly relate to Trump supporters as a group.
Don’t read any more into it than that.

Stuart Anderson 13 Jan 2021 14:25 UTC
0 points
in reply to: kithpendragon’s comment on: Will we witness the compassion of a nation?
Well, that’s not an ambiguous statement at all. /s

Stuart Anderson 13 Jan 2021 13:50 UTC
2 points
in reply to: kithpendragon’s comment on: Will we witness the compassion of a nation?
I could make a similar claim, but this is a public forum last I checked.
This is a public forum, but it is also threaded. I don’t think it is reasonable to ignore that context simply when convenient. Did I suggest that you regened on the social contract? No I didn’t. I said she did. I don’t think you have.
If you can tell me why regening on social contract isn’t anti-social then I’m listening. If you want to tell me why you disagree with my position on that in regards to Impassionata’s writings then I’m listening too. If you want me to clarify anything I’ve written, I can do that. All of those are entirely valid options here.
I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself regarding my other interlocutors.
I don’t know her and I never will. I’m talking about her position, not her. Anti-social isn’t an insult in this context. If I wanted to insult her then believe me when I say anti-social isn’t what I’d run with.
Do opposing parties have to like each other to reach solutions that avert or reduce violence (which is what happens when people won’t talk)? No, they don’t. In fact, the most important thing is reaching agreement in spite of animus.
In light of that, explain to me why I should care about anyone’s feelings and esteem in preference to having a discussion, let alone a discussion about how to get people that hate each other not to kill each other?

Stuart Anderson 12 Jan 2021 2:40 UTC
3 points
in reply to: kithpendragon’s comment on: Will we witness the compassion of a nation?
I don’t have to worry about bias here when it comes to my own ideological framework. I can tell you what I believe and why, and how that aligns more closely with what Trump captures than with establishment politics. From your perspective I am a Trump supporter, although that is something of a misnomer because I support the ideas rather than the individual. Someone better than Trump comes along with similar politics then I’m happy to get behind them instead.
So, Trump supporters are not scared, they’re angry. They’re sick of being spat on, transparently lied to, economically hollowed out, and expected to go along quietly with all of that. They are sick of being told their values are garbage, their country is worthless, and that they are deplorable.

Why do you think Make America Great Again resonated with so many? There’s a vast swath of people that reject the negative messaging of the left. They don’t share those values, they think those values are what fucked the country up.
They still deserve as much dignity and respect as you and I.
From where I’m sitting there’s a steady diet of denigration from politicians and the media that has been going on for four years now, and will not stop. Nazi, white supremacist, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, a basket of deplorables … where have I heard that before?
Actions speak louder than words. So, what has the heir apparent and his court done to bring conciliation? What could he even do if he were so inclined?
If we don’t even try to de-escalate, then we’ve already failed.
It’s already happened. It happened at least four years ago, probably more. That was the impact, this is the shockwave.
As for de-escalation, tell me what you’re willing to give up and we’ll start with that. Otherwise what do you have to offer to bring people to the table?
Furthermore, if you can’t tell me what’s wrong for these people then good luck trying to offer them anything to remedy that. Assuming I’m correct in my claims about this being about anger, what do you think is the genesis of that anger and how would you go about resolving it?

Stuart Anderson 11 Jan 2021 22:20 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: Impassionata’s comment on: Will we witness the compassion of a nation?
I wrote a nice long reply and then I remembered Plato’s Cave exists.
If you believe that there’s only one way of seeing things, that corresponds to actual reality perfectly, and that you understand that in a way that is infallible then I think you need to be at least twenty years older than you are.

Stuart Anderson 11 Jan 2021 21:54 UTC
0 points
in reply to: kithpendragon’s comment on: Will we witness the compassion of a nation?
I missed a bit.
They won’t if we don’t have the will or the courage to do anything about it. Reach across that divide!
Again, fundamental ideological differences will prevent that.
The most fundamental difference of all is the most critical: Do you believe that your principles and views should be voluntary for others, and that they should only apply to the extent to which they consent?
Clearly some law and custom must be universal, but what should that be? Simply teasing out that question between you and I would likely reveal an ideological gulf that is hard to conceive of bridging. I don’t have any problem with that discussion but I’m also not going to have realistic expectations about outcomes.
Neither of us are dumb, and neither of us have ill intent. Both of us likely have far more exposure to the ideological underpinnings of what we’d be talking about. So if we cannot reach a concord then what hope do ordinary people with so much less to work with have?
This is really hard. Quite possibly too hard. Again, it’s the word or the sword, but neither of us gets to decide that for everyone (or even ourselves).

Stuart Anderson 11 Jan 2021 21:17 UTC
2 points
in reply to: kithpendragon’s comment on: Will we witness the compassion of a nation?
I’m not sure what you think I’m getting at here, but I was talking about being friendly and opening a dialogue with the people around us with different political alignments. I’d hardly call being a friendly and compassionate neighbor “reneging on the social contract”!
Firstly, I’m replying to a comment by Impassionata, who I consider antisocial at best. Her position erodes the social fabric necessary to maintain democracy. She either hasn’t considered where it leads, or simply doesn’t care about the causalities (presumably with a side of it won’t happen to me).
My attitude is simple: discourse frequently sucks but it sucks so much less than the alternative. I think you have a moral obligation to pursue it in good faith. Compassion is irrelevant here, what matters is commitment to principle. You must sit down at the table with people you hate and always will, because the alternative is that you both draw your swords.
Secondly, I’m no more immune to a negativity bias than anyone else. Of course I’m going to pay more attention to the people in a tribe that have openly expressed a desire to kill me and mine, remove our ability to speak and work, put us in struggle sessions, send us off to the gulag, etc. The “No, no! It’s all good now” people aren’t going to counteract that whilst we are still in the middle of members of their tribe baying for blood. I’m not faulting you for your good intentions, I’m just aware that they are going to be drowned out by the ill intentions of your peers.
I’ve read plenty of history, and I’m not the kind of idiot that does that and thinks “That will never happen again”. History is cyclical and human nature is ancient. Perhaps my negativity bias is unwarranted or premature here, but the entire reason we have it has a species is that overreacting is cheap and underreacting gets you killed. If someone tells me that they hate me and want me to suffer and die (and more importantly, want to do that to people I care about) then I will not only take them at their word, I’ll be prepping to mitigate the threat first. If an idiot telegraphs their attack plan you take full advantage of that.
You don’t get to spend four years calling people traitors and Nazis and then expect that to vanish overnight just because your tribe gets the throne. The inverse is true also. Everyone knows how much the other absolutely hates them. There’s no ambiguity in what they’ve threatened. You tell me what the logical conclusions should be here?
Of course there will be support! We need to urge restraint to reduce the chances of something terrible happening to these human beings!
If you think that politicians do anything but file your concerns in the trash when it comes to what they and their patrons want, let alone when their house has been tossed and they were scared, then I really admire your sunny attitude to the world.
I am old enough to have seen the pattern repeatedly. There’s a good reason you’re still being molested twenty years later at the airport despite it being provable that it is nothing more than security theatre. Whatever is implemented here in the name of the greater good will still be around in twenty years from now. Whatever you allow today is a legacy to your children and grandchildren.
I can’t fault people for not being old, but I can fault them for not reading and considering history that is freely available to them.
I think what’s going to happen here is that the Office, and the Senate and House will be secured (not that they’d need to be given the self serving nature of the members thereof) and then some truly egregious legislation will be pushed through. I don’t know what that will be, but I know it will be horrible. I fully expect that there will be impositions on internet communications, including encryption, access to services like banking, the right to employment or to conducting business, the right to freedom of assembly and association, attempts to disarm everyone, etc. Basically a mix of the usual things they want plus measures to stomp on all the freedoms the internet accidently gave people whilst they weren’t watching. Remember how pivotal social media was in Trump’s campaign? They aren’t going to let that happen again, and by giving Silicon Valley and payment processors full rights to cut you off they’ll get what they want. It will basically be the Chinese social credit system in all but name.
Agreed. That’s why, even in the event that the State outright disappears him off the face of the planet, we still have work to do.
If you want to eliminate the other rapidly then the only way you can do that is via the sword. Otherwise this would be a multi-generational project (much like what Yuri Bezmenov so clearly laid out 40 years ago, and that had been going on for long before that).
It is trivial to raise issues that are opposed and irreconcilable in the factions here. There are multiple issues that people are prepared to die over, so getting from here to a point where even half the population is roughly ideologically aligned is going to be a herculean effort (assuming such a thing is even possible at all).
There is no simple answer here. The point where this was manageable by non-violent means is passed IMO. There’s inertia here and the elements were set on their trajectories long ago. Even if all the problems were solved tomorrow there are a bunch of people whose lives have been destroyed by government they hate and who hates them right back. People don’t just forgive that, even if it would make sense to.

Stuart Anderson 11 Jan 2021 0:49 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Impassionata’s comment on: Will we witness the compassion of a nation?
If you think there won’t be bipartisan support for whatever revenge comes after the indignity of the little people showing the politicians they’re not invulnerable then you’re kidding yourself.
I am of the understanding that sedition, treason, and terrorism all have the potential to carry the death penalty. Any one of them has the potential to have you carted off to a black site for gruesome torture too.
Trump didn’t make this dissent, how did he get elected in the first place if the will wasn’t there?
Half of the voting electorate is utterly disenfranchised right now. We know what that looks like on the left with half the pressure and no covid because we’ve had four years of non-stop histrionics from them over it. Now we get to see what that looks like on the right, only with ten times the ambient stress levels, and a lot more trigger discipline.
I see no reason to believe anything other than a continuing escalation of the trend of riots and civil discord. Nothing has been altered about the underlying issues so why would their surface presentation get any better?
As for the neighbours, if you renege on the social contract that has logical consequences. If the capital can be breached then so can wherever you live. You’d think that wouldn’t need to be spelled out to adults but this is the world we find ourselves in.

Stuart Anderson

There are no atheists in foxholes