Cerebralicious

Moving and Closing

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:38:15 -0600

So, um, I’m closing down this Tumblr, and indeed my personal blogging in general, and moving on.

It’s not that I haven’t had a jolly old time here, because I have, or that I have any kind of beef with most of you guys. (Which actually is the problem: y’all’re, if anything, too damn interesting; and I’m going to miss a few of y’all quite a lot in my daily argument-stream. You know who you are.) It’s just that between making a living at my day job(s) and spending all this time arguing matters political and matters ethical and generally setting the world to rights, I’m both spending a great deal of time, and consuming most of that ineffable quantizable willpower I need in order to get stuff done, and that’s impinging badly on the thing I really want to do, which is my writing.

And since I can’t stop earning a living, alas, and a chap’s got to pursue his dreams, the blogging’s got to go.

For those of you who have enjoyed my writing/worldbuilding/conlang posts and would like to keep following them, they’re moving to a new blog here (RSS feed here), with a Google+ page here. Please do feel free to follow me there; your comments will continue to be welcomed, as ever.

I’m also over there personally here, where I’ll no doubt continue to post some random stuff of vague interest to some, although I don’t plan on returning to habits argumentative; must focus on the writing, dammit.

So, with that, farewell, and to all the chaps and chapesses with whom I’ve had heated arguments - or heated agreements - over the last year, keep it up! You guys are awesome.

"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them..."

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:11:05 -0600

“The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.”

- John Locke, A Treatise Concerning Civil Government

"Pretty much any large organisation will generate enough coincidences and communication..."

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 10:08:06 -0600

“Pretty much any large organisation will generate enough coincidences and communication inefficiencies to produce a feeling of underhandedness and suspicious coincidence, and thus any large organisation will have its very own trailing cloud of conspiracy theorists.”

- Alistair’s 43rd Law

thesavagesalad: violetsunrise: Love this. I love this...

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 05:26:05 -0600

thesavagesalad:

violetsunrise:

Love this.

I love this because it is true.

Trope-a-Day: Landfill Beyond The Stars

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:51:06 -0600

Landfill Beyond The Stars: No, just no. It’s hard to imagine the economics that would make it possible to haul junk across space for dumping. And that would make it worthwhile to waste an entire planet to store the stuff. But…

…there are a couple of locations that specialize in recycling of exotic materials in, ah, ways that you wouldn’t want to live next door to, or even on the same planet as, or disposal of really awkward components that can’t just be dumped - like, say, singularities - and which occasionally store piles of things waiting to be recycled. So, “junkyard beyond the stars”, that we can do you.

wolfkazumaru...

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:02:43 -0600

wolfkazumaru replied to your post: wolfkazumaru reblogged your post: wolfkazumaru…

Fair enough, glad I’m interesting. I’ll respond to the rest when I get home, most likely. Gotta go to work.

Just to save time by clarifying one point: insofar as democracies in the modern West have those safeguards, I should mention that I consider them confirming instances of this point. They work better by being, in those areas, actually antidemocratic.

eclaircissement replied to your post: wolfkazumaru reblogged your post: wolfkazumaru…

You may not know it’s Brussels that makes the most laws in the UK and human rights cases are sent to European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. As is becoming increasing clear national parliaments and courts aren’t sovereign in the EU.

Yeah, I’m familiar with it (ex-Brit, here), although possibly not with the latest updates. But last I heard, the UK government was still trying to split the difference and argue that it was (a) in the EU and (b) maintaining parliamentary sovereignty at the same time.

It’d be interesting to see what would happen if they came into serious conflict, particularly since the EU is looking increasingly unable to exert its will on anything, these days, what with the imminent euro collapse.

ianbrooks: Massive Art Nouveau Mural by a’shop Made with 50...

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:51:05 -0600

ianbrooks:

Massive Art Nouveau Mural by a’shop

Made with 50 different colors and over 500 cans of graffiti, these artists recently produced this stunning Goddess on the side of a 5-story high apartment building. Your graffiti is inferior.

(via: My Modern Met)

Since I am on the record as being generally opposed to graffiti in the past, I must redefine this is not-graffiti for the purpose of my personal prejudices. Because damn, that’s awesome.

Bombing other countries is totally a-okay

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:42:36 -0600

logicallypositive:

but if a presidential candidate doesn’t personally believe in evolution then *gasp* I can’t bring myself to vote for them. That’s un-scientific

…I submit that there’s a strong positive correlation between our bomb-happiest - and most otherwise grossly flawed, be it social engineering hubris, economic voodoo, or whatever else - governments and the number of people in them willing to ignore the coquetries of objective reality.

It’s a different kind of reality-faking, sure, but I’m willing to make an inductive stretch and generalize the principle.

About that piece on Ron Paul and evolution. I don't know what his full opinion even is, but i thought, while reading your post, that it may possibly be so trivial a matter (or so uncontested a matter in his mind) that no effort was put into validating his opinion's factuality. Knowing 'bout what else he believes, I don't see how his entire reasoning faculty, even with his theistic beliefs, can be deemed corrupt. What say you?

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:36:00 -0600

It’s not so much the fact of it per se, but rather its implications. Evolution’s both a very well established theory (in the scientific, not the common, sense), and one that forms part of what I, at least, would consider “common knowledge” to be expected of any educated person - and one, moreover, that touches at the edges on politically significant issues. (While they’re ones he would, Constitutionally appropriately, leave to the state level, nonetheless they are political issues.)

And looking at your proffered suggestions - well, with the first (trivial), it’s suggesting that he’s in the habit of having definite opinions on things that are too trivial to be worth thinking about enough to validate said opinions; and with the second (uncontested), that he’s in the habit of having definite opinions on things that are so eo ipso definite to him that they don’t need to be checked against objective reality. Neither of these, to me, are the hallmarks of the kind of careful, logical, rational thinking that I want from anyone I’m going to endorse handing political, which is to say, coercive power to.

Now, in fairness and to expand on the parenthetical with which I ended that post, in the context of the rest of the candidates of both parties and, indeed, politicians generally, he’s well ahead of the average in terms of intellectual integrity, and I’d probably be pretty happy if he won the election on those terms alone.

But to actually endorse someone, my standards are kind of strict.

(Edited: It’s not the theism, just to say. I have no particular issue with theists, per se, because it’s not like I can disprove their deity - for the most part - any more than they can prove It. It’s only those strands of it that go directly against my ethics or observable objective reality that I have trouble with.)

wolfkazumaru reblogged your post: wolfkazumaru reblogged your...

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:00:00 -0600

wolfkazumaru reblogged your post: wolfkazumaru reblogged your photo: Democracy. …

Whoa hey, you unfollowed me. Interesting. I question your method of extrapolation, since all modern democratic nations have mechanisms in place to prevent exactly the kind of scenario you propose.

Some months ago, actually. I still read you on occasion directly, as spare time permits; it’s just that I’m trying with irregular success to waste less time arguing unproductively on-line. Things to do, and all.

Anyway. I question your questioning, since at least many modern democratic nations have methods in practice to bypass those mechanisms if the demos really want to.

(And, incidentally, not all. The UK, for example, under the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, can always override past law with present law, so any mechanisms it may have instituted mean nothing as soon as it passes something that contradicts them. The British Human Rights Act was effectively a dead letter as soon as it was passed, in this respect; the only thing that stops the UK government from passing the Kill Those Bastards Whose Faces We Do Not Like Act is its estimate of the likelihood of losing the next election.)

wolfkazumaru reblogged your photo: Democracy. ...

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:32:43 -0600

wolfkazumaru reblogged your photo: Democracy.

Yeah, you show all those nations run by direct democracy. All zero of them.

To avoid multiplying panels pointlessly, the burden of extrapolation is on the reader.

As is the responsibility of extrapolation.

Watching sci-fi shows gives me linguistic ideas.

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:18:54 -0600

sarvanattar:

I was in the middle of a Stargate SG-1 marathon when I decided I needed a particle for Síntári that makes an imperative more urgent.

It would work in the same way that English, Latin, and Greek all use go!, ite!, or ἴθι! plus another command.

The particle is kri. This is perhaps unsurprising if you’re familiar with the show XD.

So while lainttiskuas means “(You [sg]) write it!,” lainttiskuas kri! would be more along the lines of “Go write it (now)!”

I’m also thinking of deriving it from a verb krije, but I still have to figure out what that verb means. Probably something like “to pay attention to.”

You too, huh? :)

Back in the older versions of Eldraeic, a terminal krí (long-vowel marker on the I to make that sound right) in a sentence was how you converted a requestive into an imperative. Of course, ever since I caught ~~delusions~~ ambitions of publication, that’s had to be kicked out of canon for fairly obvious reasons, but it used to be there…

Democracy.

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:47:26 -0600

Democracy.

"The word which is commonly translated as “Imperials”, referring to any of the..."

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:26:54 -0600

“

The word which is commonly translated as “Imperials”, referring to any of the Empire’s citizen-shareholders, is valmiríän in the original Eldraeic; curiously, it is not cognate at all to that nation’s formal name. From its roots, it could have the meaning either of “ordered self” or of “self that sets in order”.

When asked if one translation or the other comes closer to the intended meaning, the valmiríän, infuriatingly, always answer “Yes.”

”

- The Great Powers and Their People, University of Eö Press, 7387

Trope-a-Day: Klingons Love Shakespeare

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:19:25 -0600

Klingons Love Shakespeare: While cultures also are very different (see: Culture Clash), there’s enough commonality among near-median species that this sort of thing happens all the time, between any pair of species you might care to name. Even if it’s only about one small, weirdly idiosyncratic cultural element - given the way these things go, Earth is as likely to become famous for popsicles - spot the reference - as for, say, Confucianism or the eponymous Shakespeare.

Trigger Warning: QE3

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:09:00 -0600

shecallsmeartemis:

*proceeds to have aneurism*

Gah.

If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Bourbon and I have to go over here and have a serious discussion about my personal liquidity.

Paging San Andreas

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:42:00 -0600

wolfkazumaru:

More seriously, no. A sit-in is not a violent action. And spraying pepper spray down somebody’s throat definitely is, even if the cops were “provoked.” Same with running through a crowd of protesters with a car.

Should the OWS folks be obstructing routes for long periods of time? No. Should the cops go in with pepper spray and batons when they’re not making routes completely impassable? Hell no. Should guys in suits run down protesters and then be let go by police? Hell no.

Sure, it’s not. In a causally disconnected world.

In a world that is causally connected, however, when you set out to fuck with people’s lives by putting yourself in the position of an obstruction that has to be forcibly removed in order for people to go about their rightful business, to enjoy their property or their usage-rights of public property, etc., etc. - or else concede that you can steal chunks of their lives any time you damn well please - no matter how preciously virtuous your cause, then you know exactly how the story goes from there.

And since that’s the case, you don’t get to claim thereafter that you’re the poor ickle oppressed fluffy bunny that wouldn’t hurt a fly, since you deliberately set yourself up for it by casting yourself as the People’s Asshole.

This goes double if you’ve actually read the book of political strategy that calls for people to go out and provoke violent overreactions from law enforcement as a way to gain public sympathy by making yourself look oppressed; and since the rest of us have read that book by now too, it doesn’t work so well any more.

Goes triple, at least for me, if your claim to be a non-violent movement is based entirely on what you are willing to do personally, and yet you’re also - when you get around to issuing demands - calling for all kinds of retroactive prosecution, expropriation, revolution, and other kinds of violence-by-proxy.

Sure, it doesn’t justify the police brutality, and I’m not saying it does. I’m just pissing on the simplistic narrative that it’s the badwicked forces of the Man oppressing the poor little innocent protesters. That’s bullshit. There are no good guys in this one. It’s corpies and commies, shits versus shits, two kinds of slaving bastard having a throw-down, and the only possible good outcome here would be for the fickle earth of California to choose this moment to open up and swallow the entire rotten lot of them.

WE ARE HUMANS AND WE ARE FROM EARTH

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:21:56 -0600

WE ARE HUMANS AND WE ARE FROM EARTH:

fyeahconlangs:

Wahawafe is the name of my multilingual translation project. It was begun on 18 June 2011. The website was launched on 9 July 2011. “Wahawafe” is an acronym of “We are humans and we are from Earth.”. The aim of this project is to collect translations of this sentence in as many languages as possible. It celebrates the linguistic diversity of the Earth. Translations in all languages are welcome!

This site includes many natural languages and also accepts lots of conlang translations!

Finally got around to doing this in Eldraeic:

valdar hyúmanár; cap valdar hanatár ir-ei téra.

Notes, word by word:

valdar: “We” - or to be precise, “I and others (not you)”
hyúmanár: There isn’t actually an Eldraeic word for “human”; humans, in their universe, are an undiscovered species somewhere out beyond the Periphery. On the other hand, standard Contact rules offer a few guidelines with regard to “call them as close to what they call themselves as we can get”, hence hyúman, with Eldraeic phonology for the “man” being close enough, but requiring the long u to be explicitly marked and an extra y inserted to do what English does naturally.

The ár, on the other hand, is the predication affix that turns it into a “verb” - the way you say “we are humans” in Eldraeic is to say, in effect, “we are humaning”
cap: It’s not quite “and” as we know it; Eldraeic doesn’t have a simple connective, and arguably a native speaker would just say valdar hyúmanár; valdar hanatár ir-ei téra (“we are humans; we are from Earth”). I’ve chosen instead to use the logical connective cap, which means “logical and”, or in this context, asserts that both the connected predications are true as a set.
hanatár: “are from” is hard to say in Eldraeic, because it lacks the broad sense of the verb “to be” - technically, it only has that in the sense of “to exist” - that lets you glom it together with arbitrary prepositions. hanat is the word for “home” at its most generic, or perhaps “domicile” would be better. So, with the right case tag, “domiciled at”… which is one possible meaning of the original from, and one quite likely to be used by humans who aren’t on Earth right now.
ir-ei: Two words here to introduce the argument of hanatár; ir is the case tag for location, therefore equivalent to “at” in this context; and ei is the “name descriptor”, indicating that what follows, the argument, is a proper name, not a description or other possible word.
téra: Again, there is no name for “Earth” in Eldraeic, so I’m using the concultural Contact rules. “Terra” is commonly enough used - without being a non-proper noun in a major planetary language (which class by my imaginary interstellar standards probably means English and Mandarin among Earthly languages, sharing the 1 billion speakers plus set) - to be a plausible candidate for their pick, and phonological transliteration takes us here.

Now to think about submitting it to the actual site!

Government and Social Contract

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:19:52 -0600

Government and Social Contract:

libertydefender:

[snippage, for length]

To be pedantic, and as all know, I love to be pedantic, that doesn’t actually make laissez-faire minarchism logically untenable. Hell, it doesn’t even make intrusive maxarchism logically untenable.

All it requires is that it operate with the unanimous (or depending on your view as to one’s right and ability to contract away all your future volition, unanimous and ongoing, i.e., with guaranteed ability to withdraw your consent and depart at any time) consent of the governed. And there you have it; any government you like, now with full legitimacy.

Contract away? Then it’s not government. Sure, call that voluntary DRO or PDA ‘government’ but it has zero resemblance to how the word has been used, and continues to be used. So no.

You’re going to need to expand on whatever definition/usage you’re using, then, since my dictionary at least does not support your contention, or at least, whatever I can suppose your contention is. (Also, a definition of government that excludes those created by contract/agreement would exclude such obvious historical examples as, say, the Nordic godordh, and indeed the feudal system in theory (albeit mostly not in practice) from the definition of “government”, which definition is, I submit, profoundly unuseful.)

But in any case: if you can create by contract a government functionally identical (or functionally identical with the de minimis exception of permitting free exit) for domestic purposes to that of the US today - granted, you’d have to find a group of people who are all Heirs to the Throne of the Kingdom of Idiots to explicitly sign a contract stating “you will obey arbitrary constraints which we may unilaterally change at any time and pay arbitrary fees which we may unilaterally change at any time, or be subject to arbitrary penalties which we may unilaterally change at any time, in exchange for which we will provide (or not provide) you with arbitrary services which we may unilaterally change at any time” - then calling your creation “not a government” in the absence of anything in the definition of the term to imply its non-consensual imposition is, well, obfuscatory.

There may, of course, be insoluble practical problems in securing the unanimous / unanimous-ongoing consent of the entire population including everyone who happens to start existing there in the future, but those aren’t logical problems; any more than the practical problems of constructing a stable polycentric legal system are.

If it’s based on legitimate transfer title theory of property (Rothbard-Evers),

Ah, well, here we’re going to differ substantially. I’m not a Rothbardian, nor do I plan on becoming one (for reasons which I shall paraphrase as: while Rothbardian theory is well-developed, even elegant, within its domain, its non-recognition of the ontological status of anything other than concrete objects - which is core to the whole thing - renders it not only incomplete and non-conclusive in a world stuffed full of meaningful abstracts, but incapable of being complete and conclusive. And despite eloquently explaining why none of those abstracts actually exist and/or matter, the arguments nonetheless do not convince me). And in particular his theory of contract strictly deriving from property, I am prepared to argue at length, is improperly narrow.

I’m willing to argue almost anything, within the constraints of time, in the search for an interesting discussion - but in the interest of saving both our time and in the light of past experience, I should probably point this out up front.

then there is no practical problems, because there exists no need to “social contract” because such a thing is illegitimate, for the very reason it’s based on terrible theory.

Well, yes, “social contracts” are illegitimate because they aren’t contracts; they’re implicit impositions. You can’t be bound by something that doesn’t exist and that you never agreed to. Non est factum to the greatest possible extent and all that.

But here, I’m not talking about automagically-binding and nonexplicit social contracts, we’re talking about unanimous consent of the governed as in each and every citizen has read a constitutional contract and explicitly entered into it. To get the unanimous consent, we’re converting the “social contract” into a contract in actuality. (To properly reproduce the effects of a current government, especially with regard to realty, there’d also need to be some fancy easements in there, but that’s a mere implementation detail.)

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule."

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:16:05 -0600

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil