

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Further Thoughts on Pimps & Trolls

All human systems, like biological systems, are complex ecosystems, intricate webs of cooperation and competition - of predation, symbiosis, parasitism, and the like. In both cases, novelty - whether due to the admixture of individuals from separately evolving, isolated populations, or due to the mutative creation of new types - can have devastating effects on a stable ecosystem, though it also can have hugely beneficial effects for the innovator.
Liberals and conservatives differ in that the hubris of conservatives (in failing to value environmental protection over economic development) is in imagining we can safely manipulate the biological kind of ecosystem, while the hubris of liberals is in imagining we can safely manipulate the human kind of ecosystem.
Posted by Sister Y at 3:05 PM


  1. Interesting observation. People in general have a bias in favor of central planning, and often greatly overestimate the ability of humans to control complex systems such as the environment and the economy.
  2. Hubris and delusion, the fuels that keep the rackety bus on the road.

    +1 internets for Stacy. I think this illusion of control is especially unfortunate when it's used to rationalize coercion as an instrument to achieve an outcome that is not actually achievable by humans.
  4. I think you vastly overestimate the differences between liberals and conservatives.

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  1. @here4thenews1 but after a cursory search I can't find anything interesting on the topic

  2. @here4thenews1 I don't think so - I like the statement that "the only thing suffering develops is the ability to withstand suffering"

  3. @St_Rev yeah it's less repugnant when it's the person experiencing it making the judgment

  4. The idea that things don't matter if they end. The idea that awful things are okay if they can be expected to end.

  5.  "The Misery of Many" - Very thoughtful Amazon review of Every Cradle is a Grave. @sarahdoingthing @TheViewFromHell

    Retweeted by Sister Y
  6. @preinfarction but among the sciences psychology has attained a special level of broken and malignantly useless.

  7. @preinfarction there have been many papers published in all those fields. meanwhile life has gotten uglier and worse.

  8. @preinfarction science is fundamentally broken since around the 50s. real science is basically impossible now, and very rare.

  9. I also don't think modern psychology has actually advanced beyond William James, or even up to his level.

  10. @drethelin yup, although the few studies that I've seen show way better results than that. pure cruelty to prescribe prozac for melancholy.

  11. That is all, have a nice weekend guys <3

  12. Probably there would be fewer suicides if causeless, recurrent anguish were treated with opiates. Definitely there would be less suffering.

  13. But the drug war, and the idea that addiction is worse than abject suffering, take this and other tools for relieving this pain away.

  14. This Other Thing is just...pain. It used to be treated with opiates. They work for it. 

  15. That other thing is causeless anguish, utter misery, which makes a minute of time an enemy, from which migraine is a slight relief.

  16. "Depression" is kind of a useless term. William James and David Foster Wallace distinguish two phenomena - anhedonia and that Other Thing.

  17. Let me preface this by saying I am fine and rather happy but I'm going to talk about sad depression stuff for a bit.

  18. @drethelin I wish I could believe he was trolling but he uses phrases like "doomed to nonexistence" in the comments

  19. @drethelin that's creepy shit though for real

  20. @drethelin I have been wanting p-zombie therapy since like 2008

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