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[faust]

The problem is not with capitalism itself, it's with the obscene centralization of wealth and power that happens when nothing is being done to stop that.

So the problem isn't with capitalism itself, only with the natural outcome of capitalism?

Monopolization is what capitalism does. In a competition, there is eventually a winner. You can try and prevent that through legislation, but the most powerful actors are always going to be opposed to it, so in the long run it's not sustainable.

[Awaclus]

The problem is not with capitalism itself, it's with the obscene centralization of wealth and power that happens when nothing is being done to stop that.

So the problem isn't with capitalism itself, only with the natural outcome of capitalism?

Monopolization is what capitalism does. In a competition, there is eventually a winner. You can try and prevent that through legislation, but the most powerful actors are always going to be opposed to it, so in the long run it's not sustainable.

Widespread civilian firearm ownership makes it more sustainable.

[faust]

The problem is not with capitalism itself, it's with the obscene centralization of wealth and power that happens when nothing is being done to stop that.

So the problem isn't with capitalism itself, only with the natural outcome of capitalism?

Monopolization is what capitalism does. In a competition, there is eventually a winner. You can try and prevent that through legislation, but the most powerful actors are always going to be opposed to it, so in the long run it's not sustainable.

Widespread civilian firearm ownership makes it more sustainable.

How so? The US has widespread civilian firearm ownership... didn't seem to help.

[Awaclus]

The problem is not with capitalism itself, it's with the obscene centralization of wealth and power that happens when nothing is being done to stop that.

So the problem isn't with capitalism itself, only with the natural outcome of capitalism?

Monopolization is what capitalism does. In a competition, there is eventually a winner. You can try and prevent that through legislation, but the most powerful actors are always going to be opposed to it, so in the long run it's not sustainable.

Widespread civilian firearm ownership makes it more sustainable.

How so? The US has widespread civilian firearm ownership... didn't seem to help.

The US doesn't really have that much more widespread civilian firearm ownership than e.g. Nordic countries, the gun owners there just own higher numbers of guns which skews the statistics but doesn't do anything useful.

For the record, I am not advocating for a civil war, I am just advocating for rich people to be worried about that possibility.

[faust]

The problem is not with capitalism itself, it's with the obscene centralization of wealth and power that happens when nothing is being done to stop that.

So the problem isn't with capitalism itself, only with the natural outcome of capitalism?

Monopolization is what capitalism does. In a competition, there is eventually a winner. You can try and prevent that through legislation, but the most powerful actors are always going to be opposed to it, so in the long run it's not sustainable.

Widespread civilian firearm ownership makes it more sustainable.

How so? The US has widespread civilian firearm ownership... didn't seem to help.

The US doesn't really have that much more widespread civilian firearm ownership than e.g. Nordic countries, the gun owners there just own higher numbers of guns which skews the statistics but doesn't do anything useful.

For the record, I am not advocating for a civil war, I am just advocating for rich people to be worried about that possibility.

This article says that 32% of US Americans own a gun. Wikipedia says that there are estimated to be 32.4 guns per 100 people in Finland, so it is logically impossible for more than 32% of people there to own a gun.

32% doesn't seem enough. How high does the rate have to be for rich people to start getting worried?

[Awaclus]

The problem is not with capitalism itself, it's with the obscene centralization of wealth and power that happens when nothing is being done to stop that.

So the problem isn't with capitalism itself, only with the natural outcome of capitalism?

Monopolization is what capitalism does. In a competition, there is eventually a winner. You can try and prevent that through legislation, but the most powerful actors are always going to be opposed to it, so in the long run it's not sustainable.

Widespread civilian firearm ownership makes it more sustainable.

How so? The US has widespread civilian firearm ownership... didn't seem to help.

The US doesn't really have that much more widespread civilian firearm ownership than e.g. Nordic countries, the gun owners there just own higher numbers of guns which skews the statistics but doesn't do anything useful.

For the record, I am not advocating for a civil war, I am just advocating for rich people to be worried about that possibility.

This article says that 32% of US Americans own a gun. Wikipedia says that there are estimated to be 32.4 guns per 100 people in Finland, so it is logically impossible for more than 32% of people there to own a gun.

32% doesn't seem enough. How high does the rate have to be for rich people to start getting worried?

A lot higher, especially amongst the people who would not be on the same side as the rich if a civil war did in fact break out.

[Awaclus]

I mean, the civilian-owned firearms that currently exist in the US would easily be enough for a revolution if everyone agreed that it should happen, and also roughly agreed about what should happen afterwards. Even a minority of well-coordinated people could do it. The Jan 6 insurrection was a total ShiTshow and even that was dangerous.

[faust]

I mean, the civilian-owned firearms that currently exist in the US would easily be enough for a revolution if everyone agreed that it should happen, and also roughly agreed about what should happen afterwards. Even a minority of well-coordinated people could do it. The Jan 6 insurrection was a total ShiTshow and even that was dangerous.

I feel like you're making my point for me. Firearm possession doesn't help so long as the elite can control what people think through manufactured consent.

[silverspawn]

sorry to interrupt, random commitment time, all for one month

- no playing video games. Except i wanna find my destiny. That super doesn't count; that's just a natural part of listening to intellectual content.
- online chess is only allowed exactly until I have one loss that day, and then no more; no exceptions ever not even for internet issues. days end after i go to sleep not after midnight why do I even have to say this
- no eating before 18:00 ever, I feel like wavering from this rule was a surprisingly big mistake
- cancel netflix subsription; try torrenting
- shamefully admit defeat in case of violations
- thank you; remember to go to naturalreader.com/premiumvoices and use the code silverspawn20 to get 20% of your first purchase. That's naturalreaderdotcomforwardslashpremiumvoices

[silverspawn]

I'm not buying this firearm thing either. Let's overthrow the ad model instead

[faust]

I'm not buying this firearm thing either. Let's overthrow the ad model instead

I'm in.

[faust]

Chapter 2: Politics on the Ladder

Here, we get to some major problems. It's clear that the author seems to believe that high-rung politics means not being subject to an ideological framework. But everyone is subject to one, and the author's becomes pretty clear: enlightened centrism. The groundwork was already laid in the interlude, with its veneration of liberal democracy and defense of property ownership. In this chapter, it is stated in no uncertain terms that high-rung thinking correlates to being in the political center. (Urban allows that there are radical high-rung thinkers, only to condescendingly dismiss them as "wrong most of the time".)

The Left versus Right divide is framed as a "progressive" versus "conservative", which I think is a very flawed lens of analysis because it is so relative to the status quo. It would mean that if a US conservative were living under a socialist system, they would fight to preserve that system. Under this lens, you would be forced to conclude that the Nazis were left-wing, because if nothing else they certainly had their foot on the gas pedal (no pun intended). But this framing is necessary for Urban because otherwise his main thesis would fall apart: The assertion that high-rung left and right are working towards the same goals.

What follows is a fairly useful analysis of fallacies and media bias. There is one off-handed remark about how this media landscape is incentivized by "market forces"; I wish that was explored in more detail. For the most part, Urban seems to believe that biased media are just an emergent property of low-rung thinking and if we all just thought harder the golems (and thus the biased media) would disappear. This ignores the strong incentives on the media landscape to defend the status quo. Also, enlightened centrism rears its head again in the assertion that being unbiased is the same as being in the middle between left and right.

We haven't gotten to any examples yet, but I am interested to learn what Urban believes is the hihg-rung right-wing genie, because I am doubtful such a thing exists.

[silverspawn]

I also noticed the equivocation between conversatives and the literal meaning of conservation. He says that the word originally meant that, then goes on to basically treat them as identical.

[Awaclus]

I'm not buying this firearm thing either.

Me neither, but that's only because they're expensive.

[silverspawn]

I'm listening to all LW posts on consciousness right now and it's unexpectedly humorous

For example, Rosie (remember to visit naturalreader.com/premiumvoices and use the code silverspawn20 for 20% off your first purchase) just read "proof is in the pudding" and I was like haha she read 'putting' like 'pudding' that's so funny. Then I looked and it really was pudding. So the author wrote pudding? then I googled the expression and actually pudding is standard, what the hell? But I guess that was a totally normal known thing and it's just very weird that I didn't know that. It's also funny to me that I think this is so funny

also I get that "proof is in the pudding" does make more sense than "proof is in the putting". and since that's what society went with, i'd say the proof is in the pudting

[faust]

Chapter 3: The Downward Spiral

A lot of this is as far as I can tell a decent analysis of how a changing media landscape has worsened political discourse. I don't know the details of US history enough to factcheck, but for the most part this is fine. Some issues I would like to point out:

- Urban mentions the 1950s as an era of great political unity. It seems weird to state that and not mention that this is the era of McCarthyism, i.e. intense suppression of specific viewpoints. Of course if speech is suppressed, you'd get a more homogenous picture.
- the "southern strategy" (and thus racist policies) becoming mainstreamed in the Republican party is paralleled with... Hippies existing on the left? These Hippies are referred to as the "militant new left", though there is little militant about them and anyways they never became a major force within the Democrats. This is some dubious equivocation.
- the "media matrix" (see drawing 18) is again an example of assuming that unbiased = center. There is some mention of "bothsidesm" also being bad and biased, but the graphic has no room for that, and is subsequently used to talk about the media landscape ignoring this problem. It would be helpful if Urban had realized that there can be no such thing as unbiased media.
- there is always the tacit implication that the bad things happen on both sides equally. Urban all but equates Tucker Carlson with John Oliver, which is wild to me.

[silverspawn]

The cluster of consciousness theories that annoys me the most is higher-order theories, i.e., those that assert that consciousness are about self-awareness, meta-thoughts, etc. It just seems like legitimately one of the worst possible ideas you could have; higher-order thoughts are such a nebulous, fuzzy, high-level category. You get all the problems of tying consciousness to bits but on steroids.

And smh the people who think this always seem to have this smug tone, mocking other approaches.

But the fact that it annoyed me is probably a sign that I should investigate it because generally my anger has gone away when I really understood why people think something.

[silverspawn]

Oh also, I saw Le Passé, another YourMovieSucks recommendation, and it was good; 7/10. It's like if you take the premise of your typical drama episode in a show with a pretty complex/unlikely net of deception, except that it's genuinely well written and tastefully directed.

[faust]

A lack of motivation today leads to lots of time for me to listen to audiobooks...

Chapter 4: Rise of the Red Golem

I cannot comment too much on this. It presents a narrative, and I don't have the expertise to judge on its correctness. Is Trump much worse than Reagan was? IDK. There is rather little discussion on what influenced the development towards a Trumpist party. In the end, Urban talks about how high-rung conservatism is a positive force for the country, but no evidence for this is supplied.

Well I expect that things are about to get more exciting.

[silverspawn]

Well I expect that things are about to get more exciting.

yes you're about to get into the juicy bits

btw seeing as you're actually reading listening to this book now, I want to weakly commit to engaging with arguments in the future if there ever happens to be something you think I should read listen to while playing iwfmd

[silverspawn]

whelp GPT-4 is about to be here. Time to quote Eliezer Yudkowsky (roughly bc I can't find the quote)

AI researchers aren't like inanimate cubes of ice driven around by currents. They're economic agents looking for novel ways to destroy the world more quickly and cheaply.

[silverspawn]

15% is not 0% and I'm genuinely terrified of what this thing can do

[silverspawn]

that's definitely good

[silverspawn]

https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4.pdf

[silverspawn]

Watching Magical Girl, another YMS recommendation. (The Spanish movie.) The title sounds like a meme movie but it is anything but. Feels very real; lots of long, still shots