When we argue with the intention of making our ideological opponents appear evil rather than with the intention of proving that their ideology is wrong, the result is that both sides are alienated while neither is educated.
The Socioeconomics of “Untitled Goose Game”
The Goose has no understanding of the motivations or desires of the Villagers. The Goose simply wants the Bell and takes whatever steps it finds necessary to obtain the Bell. From its perspective, the Village is a machine that produces Bells.
The Villagers desire an orderly Village. They care nothing about the needs or desires of the Goose. But because they tolerate the intrusions of the Goose, they spend all of their time protecting and rebuilding the Village, and none of their time enjoying it.
And so the Goose is the de facto owner of the Village. Even though the Villagers consider the Goose to be just a pest, their daily activities are actually oriented around serving its desires, not their own, while the Goose serves itself exclusively.
The Goose owns a Bell machine. The Villagers comprise the machinery that produces Bells for the Goose. The Villagers do not want to be a Bell machine, and this results in the machine being inefficient–the Goose must press shake and bang the machine to get it to produce–but the relationship of the Goose to the Villagers in nonetheless one of owner to possessions.
What could the villagers do to free themselves of this indignity and oppression? How can they be free?
Either stop making Bells, or kill the Goose.
My Review of Tenet at Lorehaven
“That sort of thing is to be expected in a movie about time travel. But, in addition to being about time travel, Tenet is also about a charismatic secret agent saving the world and a beautiful woman from a Russian-accented megalomaniac with a superweapon, with all of the fights, chases, and dramatic confrontations endemic to the spy thriller genre.”
Lorehaven | Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ Collides with Itself
“Why you can’t win arguments against intersectionality,” by Joel Kurtinitis
Two statements, same assertion:
1) “The sky is blue.”
2) “Sunlight reaches Earth’s atmosphere and is scattered in all directions by all the gases and particles in the air. Blue light is scattered more than the other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky most of the time.”
Both statements include the same claim.
The first is a statement with readily observable properties and immediately available provability/disprovability. It allows for very specific discussion and debate, and a consensus on this point will allow further research into the factors behind it.
The second can still be discussed, but there’s so much context and reference that to argue it one must systematically accept or reject many assertions, and risk looking ignorant at each one.
The argument, in this case, is not strengthened by logic, but by volume.
My Review of “The Chiveis Trilogy” at Lorehaven
The gracious folks at Lorehaven have decided to run my review of The Chiveis Trilogy by Bryan Litfin. You can read the review here. (I did not like it.)
Slowly at first, then with plummeting acceleration, Chiveis devolves from a mediocre adventure story into something that I can only describe as comprehensively bad. It is predictable to the point of self-parody, ridiculous to the point of surreality, and its presentation of Christianity is so poor and muddled that I suspect it would do more harm than good to non-Christian readers.
Sea of Solitude vs. Muppet Christmas Carol
This past week I played Sea of Solitude (2019) and watched The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). Sea of Solitude is a surrealistic game about loneliness and sadness. The Muppet Christmas Carol is… A Christmas Carol… with Muppets. On the surface, these two artworks would seem to have little to do with each other, but I found a significant thematic dissonance between them.
Everything in Sea of Solitude is an unsubtle metaphor for chronically sad people, their emotional states, or the triggers for those states. It uses environment and character designs that embody feelings of sorrow and emptiness to tell the story of Kay, a young woman with a troubled family life. While there are unique aspects to Sea, what struck me about it was this similarity it shares many other contemporary artworks: it does a good job describing sorrow, but it does not suggest any real remedy for it.
Continue reading Sea of Solitude vs. Muppet Christmas CarolMimics, Bullies
The movie The Thing features a monster that can flawlessly mimic human beings. It can replace anyone, and there is no way to tell the monstrous mimic from the real person… until the mimic suddenly attacks you and tears you to pieces.
Killing a mimic is obviously justified self-defense… but there is no way to be sure who is a mimic. Is it justified to kill a person who might be a mimic? In a world infested with such creatures, would it be justifiable to kill a stranger, just in case? Even if not, it is certainly justifiable to treat any stranger with intense suspicion. If there is no way to tell for sure who is a mimic, then trusting anyone you don’t know is human is obvious folly.
Continue reading Mimics, BulliesProxy Personas
Because we are not psychic or omniscient, we cannot know each other directly. We build models of each other in our minds. When we say “I know Bob,” what we mean is that we have a model of Bob in our mind.
Sometimes the model is inaccurate. This can be a result of our biases, of deliberate deception, or of simple ignorance. But sometimes we do something that’s pretty weird. Sometimes we mentally associate a person with someone else’s model.
Continue reading Proxy Personas
Re: Race Realism
Corresponding with the rise of the “alt-right” in recent years has been the rise in popularity of what its proponents call “race realism.”
Race realism is the idea that since differences between races are scientifically quantifiable, it is only rational that these differences should be taken into account when creating policies. If [race] people are known to have [qualities] (the argument goes), then it would be foolish to craft policies that did account for this. Policies should match the people they govern, surely? That’s just being efficient and practical!
This argument isn’t functionally any different from the “scientific racism” of the 20th century eugenicists, or of the Europeans in Darwin’s era who judged that other races were “less evolved.” Like their forebears, race realists believe that it is possible to make deep and accurate judgements about a person from a quick glance at select body parts, and that it is only sensible that society should act upon these judgements.
Continue reading Re: Race RealismAnnouncing the ‘Constructive Interference’ Podcast
This week Joel Kurtnitis and I published our fourth episode of our new podcast, Constructive Interference.
Our goal with CI is to have a podcast that is “anti-topical,” mixing commentary on a variety of topics that are relevant to everyday people rather than hammering on any one subject every week.
In Episode 4, we talk about Reformation Day, the tension between wanting to reform groups and needing to leave them, and discuss how our electoral system might be changed to allow for easier reformation of political parties.