http://principiadiscordia.com/cramulus/index.php?title=Hodgeonauts
Her'es a piece I've written for the Prophetica Discordia. Feedback requested.
Her'es a piece I've written for the Prophetica Discordia. Feedback requested.
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Show posts MenuQuote from: Not Necessarily Who I Claim To Be
Now what we need to do is get the Discordian Works article back where it should be. It listed a dozen Discordian works, until two editors who disapprove of anything post-Principia hacked it to pieces. It was a battle, but unfortunately one of the Mal-Contents was a SYSOP/ADMINISTRATOR.
Quote from: DrJonHis Scrambledness the Dev.RoktorJon - @Not Necessarily Who I Claim To Be: ...
And one of the two warring parties you mention wasn't a Fundamentalist Discordian at all, but was actually strongly associated with a rather loud and self-opinionated NeoDiscordianesque cabal, which has been embarking on a sockpuppet wikiturfing selfpromotional campaign for the last few years.
And the reason all of this happened was because the Fundamentalist Discordian was a sysop and got pissed off with the spaghead sockpuppets going on about stuff he didn't recognise as Discordian: for example, advocating Child Sex.
The stuff you talk about that gets "cut fast" has been almost purely the product of and promotion for that one NeoDiscordianesque cabal. It's been totally unrepresentative of and misrepresentative of Discordianism as a whole. And given how vastly weird and wonderful Discordianism is, that's saying something.
Myself, I've come to the opinion that the types of folks seeking Validation for their brand of NeoDiscordianesquism through recognition on Wikipedia are a good example of what I'd technically call "spagging wanksplats".
Which is not to say they shouldn't be applauded for their efforts to promote themselves, and not to say they're not a valid expression of NeoDiscordianesquism.
But it most certainly is to say that as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather not be used as cannon fodder in a wikiturf war, let alone have the only information about my work -- the writings of 40 years of Discordians -- be as a stepladder for someone else to go on about how spagging wonderful they are... let alone be insulted and abused by anonymous sockpuppets.
It most certainly is to say that as far as I'm concerned, such folks can go fuck themselves.
"black iron prison" -valis
QuoteWriters:
Payne - will write a General column
Cainad - writes "Who Killed the Lulz"
RWHN - will do "some writing"
Hoopla - Advice Column / Glorious Antics
Manta Obscura - some column
Requiem - Horrormirth (current events)
Nigel - Pranking
Iason - take some of the questions from Billy Graham's daily column and answer them from a Discordian perspective
Jenne - Speaking as a Mother
Artists:
Telarus - will provide doodles or layout on demand
Nurbldoff - Illustrations (suggestions must be provided)
Harlequin - Artwork
Misc.
Khara - Miscellaneous assistance ("I'm in to do whatever is needed.")
Vexati0n - Something
LMNO - something
Faust - hosting & distribution
Payne - pool boy, fetch me another mint julep
Quote from: Doktor Loki on November 14, 2008, 03:53:59 PMQuote from: Cramulus on November 14, 2008, 02:49:50 PMQuote from: Doktor Loki on November 14, 2008, 07:05:25 AM
Cram, a Demi-Lich would fucking DOLLYWHOMP the Tarrasque. That is, as long as we're talking 3rd ed. or 3.5. I never played 2nd, other than Baldurs Gate, which I understand is a bit different.
no fucking way
A) 3.5 Tarrasque is immune to most evocation
B) Spell Resistance
C) The tarrasque would just make a chart describing everything the demilich is about to do.
So the Demi-Lich kills him with Necromancy? They can eat souls like 8 times per round, they've got all manner of spell like abilities that they could probably kill it with, without even resorting to casting spells, let alone epic-magic.
QuoteStartlingly, this great sceptic, this non-guru who believes in nothing, is still a practising Christian. He regards with some contempt the militant atheism movement led by Richard Dawkins.
“Scientists don’t know what they are talking about when they talk about religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I don’t believe it has any negative impact on people’s lives outside of intolerance. Why do I go to church? It’s like asking, why did you marry that woman? You make up reasons, but it’s probably just smell. I love the smell of candles. It’s an aesthetic thing.”
Take away religion, he says, and people start believing in nationalism, which has killed far more people. Religion is also a good way of handling uncertainty. It lowers blood pressure. He’s convinced that religious people take fewer financial risks.
QuoteFor the non-mathematician, probability is an indecipherably complex field. But Taleb makes it easy by proving all the mathematics wrong. Let me introduce you to Brooklyn-born Fat Tony and academically inclined Dr John, two of Taleb’s creations. You toss a coin 40 times and it comes up heads every time. What is the chance of it coming up heads the 41st time? Dr John gives the answer drummed into the heads of every statistic student: 50/50. Fat Tony shakes his head and says the chances are no more than 1%. “You are either full of crap,” he says, “or a pure sucker to buy that 50% business. The coin gotta be loaded.”
The chances of a coin coming up heads 41 times are so small as to be effectively impossible in this universe. It is far, far more likely that somebody is cheating. Fat Tony wins. Dr John is the sucker. And the one thing that drives Taleb more than anything else is the determination not to be a sucker. Dr John is the economist or banker who thinks he can manage risk through mathematics. Fat Tony relies only on what happens in the real world.
QuoteThe central point is that we have created a world we don’t understand. There’s a place he calls Mediocristan. This was where early humans lived. Most events happened within a narrow range of probabilities – within the bell-curve distribution still taught to statistics students. But we don’t live there any more. We live in Extremistan, where black swans proliferate, winners tend to take all and the rest get nothing – there’s Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and a lot of software writers living in a garage, there’s Domingo and a thousand opera singers working in Starbucks. Our systems are complex but over-efficient. They have no redundancy, so a black swan strikes everybody at once. The banking system is the worst of all.
“Complex systems don’t allow for slack and everybody protects that system. The banking system doesn’t have that slack. In a normal ecology, banks go bankrupt every day. But in a complex system there is a tendency to cluster around powerful units. Every bank becomes the same bank so they can all go bust together.”
QuoteAnd you and me? Well, the good investment strategy is to put 90% of your money in the safest possible government securities and the remaining 10% in a large number of high-risk ventures. This insulates you from bad black swans and exposes you to the possibility of good ones. Your smallest investment could go “convex” – explode – and make you rich. High-tech companies are the best. The downside risk is low if you get in at the start and the upside very high. Banks are the worst – all the risk is downside. Don’t be tempted to play the stock market – “If people knew the risks they’d never invest.”
Quote“Let’s be human the way we are human. Homo sum – I am a man. Don’t accept any Olympian view of man and you will do better in society.”
QuoteTaleb's top life tips
1 Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
2 Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
3 It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
4 Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.
5 Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.
6 Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.
7 Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).
8 Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.
9 Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.
10 Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.