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The Elephant in the Living Room, part 4

Started by The Good Reverend Roger, May 17, 2016, 06:37:03 PM

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Bruno

We are the universe's punchline trying to get itself.
Formerly something else...

The Wizard Joseph

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on May 18, 2016, 10:43:38 AM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on May 18, 2016, 05:41:41 AM
I have no idea what to do about any of it

As with any other form of entertainment - you watch and laugh and try your best to steer clear of the exploding scenery :evil:

Caught  a new report about melting icecaps today - turns out it's ridiculously worse than any one imagined. Could be this year or next will approach biblical levels of hilarity

I'm pretty sure we're going to do even bigger things than that old rag has yet described.

OUR flooding will be full of the nuclear and other arcane chemical refuse of entire continents full of stockpiled horrors NEVER intended to be moved.
OUR plagues will be unlike anything to come before as the usual toxins and pathogens all pale next to the REALLY monsters of our own devising.
OUR raw, screeching paeans and pleas to gods and devils alike will be heard, but both will rightly and simply point out that we HAD free will.

Of course all this time we've had our oh so special free will we've never really had the truth.
Of course now the tragedy of having will without truth is about to bud a second wherein we learn it far too late.

Pretty sure of why we've found so many exo-planets per capita and no confirmation signs of intelligent life. The smart ones either fuck themselves to death or learn to enjoy what little they have left and not to make waves..
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

P3nT4gR4m

I consider free will to be one of those things that is either taken at face value or not. If we have it by default, I'm of the opinion it can be removed in varying degrees. Abdicated or taken, by circumstance, force or by subterfuge or a mixture of all three.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

The Wizard Joseph

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on May 18, 2016, 09:20:11 PM
I consider free will to be one of those things that is either taken at face value or not. If we have it by default, I'm of the opinion it can be removed in varying degrees. Abdicated or taken, by circumstance, force or by subterfuge or a mixture of all three.

We abdicate it quite a lot. I've noticed I do anyway. It's usually thoughtless.
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 17, 2016, 06:37:03 PM
You will not be saved by Bernie or Bust.  You will not be saved by making America great again.  You will not be saved by Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Jill Stein or Whichever whacko they have running for the libertarian party.

The ones that might be able to save us know enough about the system that they won't bother.  The other clowns, fools, and cheap hucksters are looking at the situation and seeing what they want to see, and we know how that ends up.

You will not be saved by single-payer health care or overturning Roe v Wade.  It may take a village to raise a child, but the village is poor as dirt and the kids are all on meth.  Quantitative easing didn't work on the economy, so let's apply it to student debt.  Everyone should vote, but the delegates don't care.  You will not be saved by the free market, because the free market doesn't exist and never will.

All of these ideas will fail because they run counter to two million years of monkey programming.

You will not be saved by the impossible drive, or the "poof, you're there" drive.  You will not be saved by 800 billion "Earth-like" planets in the Milky Way.  "Earth-like" isn't "Earth", even if we CAN get there, and just one tiny factor of an alien ecology could doom any number of colonists, unless you had time to do it right, and time is the one thing we do not have and cannot buy with our wealth.  You will not be saved by Mars, because Mars is a death trap and living like a mole on another planet isn't "surviving".  In any case, you and I won't be going, anyway.

There's nowhere to run.  7.5 billion primates gotta take a shit.  Here it comes.

You will not be saved by Jesus, because that's the wrong kind of saving, and it's probably the wrong kind of Jesus, anyway.  You will not be saved by Yahweh, Illtoy, Buddha, Allah, or Vishnu.

What made you think that was even on their agenda?

In short, you will not be saved, so relax; It's only slapstick.

So while you huddle among your possessions, waiting in terror for the day the lights go out and the faucet stops running and things get just a wee bit out of hand, remember the words that I - your spiritual adviser - told you, lo these many moons ago, and just dance like hell.  Do the Lindy when Trump takes office.  Do the Twist when we break off relations with everyone.  Do the Charleston in the smoking ruins, to the beat of the car alarms and the screams of the horribly burned.  Do the Running Man as you are shot for dinner by rogue remnants of the national guard.

This is, obviously, not a good era for people who aren't serious about having a good time.

Or Kill Me.

Nailed it again.

My gross prophet margin is increasing.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

The Wizard Joseph

I don't spook easy Roger. Your accuracy is motherfucking spooky.

For my part I'm getting my dancing shoes ready.


Junkie sees it. P3nT sees it. The last great dance off of our era is just getting set up now. Tickets at the box office are for "plebs". I'm getting mine pre-ordered!

I don't want it, but that shit don't matter.
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl