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Kryptos
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Quote:
Stable Genius said: Mmmmm I think if we're going to spend 90 billion it's probably a good idea to buy the best technology, which nuclear powered subs are.
Only if you need to project power across oceans. Nuclear submarines are significantly inferior to diesel-electrics in littoral waters.
The only benefits of nuclear submarines are (a) no need to refuel, making voyages limited by food capacity, and (b) able to stay underwater for longer than a week at a time.
The main drawback of a nuclear submarine is that you cannot shut down a nuclear reactor, which will always generate noise. Considering that the entire point of a submarine is to be quiet, that's a pretty big drawback.
If you're operating in coastal waters, a diesel-electric sub is quieter than a nuclear sub, and refueling/surfacing routinely is not a problem.
So yes, this is a big FUCK YOU to China. Specifically, Australia is threatening the ability to project offensive submarine power, instead of focusing on defense.
EDIT: Not to mention, size. Nuclear submarines are, generally speaking, much bigger and much less agile than diesel-electrics.
Edited by Kryptos (09/16/21 04:14 PM)
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Kryptos
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What's wrong with being a career student?
There's this idea in modern times that everybody must work, and it's a goddamn stupid idea. Not everybody has to work, and if anything, most people do not have to work. And sure, there's a fairness argument, but as someone who is more capable than most, I don't mind doing a bit more. If somebody wants to spend their life fucking off and getting 60 degrees, that's fine by me. I don;t mind paying for them to get those 60 degrees either, as long as they're at least interesting, and living on what they need, not what they want.
For one thing, earning 60 degrees is actually pretty hard. As someone who is more capable than most, I still struggle with some stuff others consider basic. I've tried coding several times, and apart from some runescape bots and automated excel spreadsheets, I can't seem to get the hang of it. Like, I can't full stack an entire project, even having devoted some significant time to it. I've tried, it just doesn't work.
We live in a world where a dozen people earn millions of dollars per hour.
WARNING: US NUMBERS INCOMING, CONVERT AS NEEDED
That's what I'm fucking pissed about. I don't give a fuck about a professional student, who maybe costs 75k per year their entire life. 25k for a year schooling at a decent state school, 1.2k/month=14.5k/yr housing, 35k left over on life, but as a professional student, you're studying, not living. Assuming this pro student lives to 65, that's about 6.5 mil. For an entire lifetime. The average person ears something around 2-3 mil, and that's with a minimum wage that has fallen to roughly 1/4th the real value it had 50 years ago. Bezos makes approximately 50 of those 6.5 mil lifetimes per day. Imagine making the entire value of 50 pampered, or (2 mil assuming average lifeitme wage 50k and 40 working years) 160 regular lifetimes per day. Is anybody worth 160 lives per day?
Two things are true, to me: the numbers are nowhere near reality, and some US dollars are literally worth more than other US dollars, and so economically speaking, the money held by some poor dude is literally worth more than money that exists as Jeff Bezos' stock investment.
The second thing, is since the actual numbers behind the money are entirely fictional, is that we still have an arbitrary nobility that rules above us, and we are not them. You ever watch a TV show like game of thrones, and realize that you're one of the random faceless extras charging into battle in the background while the main characters talk. And yeah, you might be good at what you do, but then instead of the credits saying "extras provided by local acting school", you're "dead elite soldier #3", because that's what a redshirt is. You're really good at what you do, and well respected, but you're not part of their club. You're not ever Grey Worm/ Melisande. You're the elite soldier next to Grey Worm that catches a fucking spear in the face in 4k for that money shot.
Whether you're one of those people is luck.
So can society truly afford to send many people to college for their entire life? I do not think so.
On the other hand, there is value in giving some odd individual that much power to shape history. And life is chance. Sometimes it's a good bet, sometimes it is not. Time will decide. Sometimes you're the guy that sails around the world and comes back with limit-breaking knowledge. Sometimes, you die and your crew finishes the voyage, but you get credit anyway. Is it better to be the guy that dies, or is it better to be the random fucking sailor that survives but nobody knows about? Or is it better to be a king, or better yet, the guy who's name the word "king" comes from?
And that's what we do to those people. Old money. They can go to college for their entire lives. Or they can fuck off on tiktok. Lambos on instagram.
We went through an age of agriculture, and the farm owners ran the world. We went through an age of industrialization, and the industrialists ran the world. We went through an age of science, and the scientists ran the world. Now we're going through the age of socialization, and social media runs the world.
The thing is, the racists are right. Racism is, to an extent, natural. But it is also not longer necessary. It's natural selection. That part of the genome is slowly being removed. We are being force-fed tolerance and social justice, just like conservatives fear, because that is a side effect of the ability to communicate with people across the world.
The fact that we can interact is fucking insane. Just, assuming you're not in the same zipcode as me, not even considering the possibility of different continents. Not even from a travel standpoint, because travel is an ordeal. But from an "I'm bored, let's type out a quick Friday Night Vaguely Political Ramble Rant" perspective.
There is going to be some culture clash right there. You probably got annoyed that I'm talking from a US perspective, to some extent. I know I have annoyed posters in the past with my US-centric worldview, and that's why I never really engaged much with this thread earlier, because I didn't want to impose my will upon something that I, frankly, do not know much about.
But the problem is, every time you go through one of these ages, some people don't make the cut. The racists aren't gonna make the cut, and they're throwing a tantrum about it. And if the wrong decisions are made, more people don't make the cut. Humanity will survive climate change, and you certainly will not. You don;t really get a choice in the matter. Ultimately, nobody does, but you get less choice in the matter than a billionaire. That's what wealth is. The ability to shape the future.
The question though, is not about money. There's a total output of humanity, and it can be steered in different directions. The question is how many people get to choose the direction. Under the conservative republican right wing authoritarian whatever fewer people get to make those decisions, leading to sharper turns in the direction of humanity. Under the left wing liberal democrats labour labor worker's whatever, more people get to make those decisions, leading to slower changes in trajectory.
You're not one of the people that make those decisions. If you were, you would not be here. There will always be elites and commoners. Patricians and Plebeians. Kings and nobles and serfs. Super Billionaires like Bezos, and little billionaires like Jay-Z. Super millionaires with 9 figures, successful millionaires with 8, regular millionaires with 7... We've just stratified society out into 12-13 ranks, instead of the 10 we had before. Or the 7 we had before. Or whatever. Kings, nobles, knights, merchants, serfs. 5 ranks. Log base: 100,000,000,000 Rank 12 super billions. Rank 10 regular billions. Rank 9 mega millions (hey, isn't that a lottery?). Rank 8 MAN I'm Good millionaires, Rank 7 Coulda done worse millionaires. Then come the hundredaires. Rank 6 I'm alrights. Rank 5 Uff-das. Rank 4 through 1 is basically animals. Homeless, and the like.
I guess that's only like, 8-9 ranks. I'm literally too lazy to scroll up and count.
Either way, humanity is becoming properly socialized. Racism will not exist in a generation or two, because either we will learn to work together, or we will cause enough people to die to force us to work together. And then the next generation will face the next funnel event. It'll probably take 3-5 generations, honestly. This cycle is getting bigger and slowing down. Humanity will be fine, though. We might no longer be recognizably human, but our descendants will make it to the stars, even if it takes the sun eating the earth.
Just kinda sucks being alive during the squeeze, eh?
Edited by Kryptos (09/17/21 09:08 PM)
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Kryptos
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TL;DR I had a fun Friday.
And like the majority of my crapulent rants, I stand by what I said. It's a lot less inconsistent that it first appears.
It all comes down to logarithmic money. Either society can afford to send everyone to college for 60 years, or 100$+100$=/=200$. Which I kind of alluded to, in the sense that a million people that each have a dollar in their pocket collectively have more money than a single guy with a million dollars in their pocket.
Edit: Mathematically, it does not make sense, but money isn't real. Money is an abstraction, a substitute, for value. It doesn't have to follow the rules of reality.
Edited by Kryptos (09/18/21 02:29 PM)
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Kryptos
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Re: The Australian Politics Thread [Re: Kryptos]
#27473366 - 09/18/21 07:03 PM (2 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
Kryptos said: The question though, is not about money. There's a total output of humanity, and it can be steered in different directions. The question is how many people get to choose the direction. Under the conservative republican right wing authoritarian whatever fewer people get to make those decisions, leading to sharper turns in the direction of humanity. Under the left wing liberal democrats labour labor worker's whatever, more people get to make those decisions, leading to slower changes in trajectory.
Do we want more people to have smaller individual input, or do we want fewer people to be empowered to make bigger changes?
This is fundamentally the question of welfare. And power. And everything else.
Like if Plinko. You run into a bunch of little pegs, and you either come out ahead or behind. Most people end up somewhere in the middle. About average. A few people fall far behind, a few people end up way ahead.
Now on that final distribution, we can put a few lines. Everyone below a certain line loses their humanity, on a societal level. Homeless and such. There are other lines as well. Lines that allow people to make more and more decisions.
We only decide where we get to put those lines. Do we let only one guy, the guy that hit all the pegs a certain way, to do everything? Or do we take the top 10 guys? Top 100? Top 1000? The more people make decisions, the slower those decisions are made. But the less likely we make a stupid mistake.
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Kryptos
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Re: The Australian Politics Thread [Re: sudly]
#27473596 - 09/18/21 10:12 PM (2 years, 4 months ago) |
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Money, power, government, etc. are all abstractions by which we pick those that make decisions for everyone. Sure, you vote democratically, but you're only voting to pick someone else to make those decisions.
The only choice is how many such people we pick. Few, or many? The more people we pick to lead, the longer they will deliberate and the fewer people we pick to lead, the faster decisions get made.
And yes, life is decided by chance. We keep telling ourselves that we have control, that we can work for something better, but that is not true. Life is decided primarily by luck, and under capitalism, the line that defines survival moves ever higher. Because we gave control to the few rich people that decide the fate of society.
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Kryptos
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Re: The Australian Politics Thread [Re: Stable Genius] 1
#27473746 - 09/19/21 12:01 AM (2 years, 4 months ago) |
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Again, it doesn't really matter if someone is voted in, bought, whatever.
One group makes decisions, the other group does not. You are in the group that does not make decisions.
I should clarify: decisions that actually matter. Decisions that shape the course of humanity. You can decide between candidate A or candidate B, and you can decide whether you have eggs or oatmeal for breakfast. Those decisions don't matter.
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Kryptos
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Re: The Australian Politics Thread [Re: sudly]
#27474391 - 09/19/21 12:26 PM (2 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: That's the whole problem, that elected representatives represent their lobbyists, and not the public that voted them in to that position.
If anyone can defend the fact that apple does not pay taxes, they themselves are willingly or otherwise a propagandist.
That's my point. That is not the problem. That is simply a method by which humanity picks ambassadors. You seemingly disagree with the idea that the wealthiest should decide the course of humanity. The wealthy disagree with you. Since the wealthy make decisions and you do not, the wealthy continue to shape the future.
To me the problem is that we pick a small group of champions and empower them to shape the future. I think we should pick a bigger group of people to make decisions. Of course, that means decisions get made more slowly, and things are more boring.
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Kryptos
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I'm trying to figure out the proper way to phrase what I mean.
I mean, I could just say "you're thinking too narrowly, think bigger", but that's not very illuminating.
The problem, the way I saw it on Friday, is the overall number of people in charge. I think we need more of them.
How those people are picked does not really matter. Maybe they're picked by voting, maybe they're picked by having more money, maybe they're picked because a dude in a fancy hat claiming to speak for God said so. The problem is the overall number of decision makers.
The people that are in the club that makes decisions have a vested interest in shrinking that club, because then each of their decisions carries greater weight. I think the club should be bigger, explicitly to dilute the power of each individual decision, which prevents giving the wrong person too much power.
sudly (and I guess you, perhaps), seem to just be pissed that even if we vote, the decision club is secretly being picked by money. At least, that's the way I see it based on this thread. I don't see that as the core problem. Across the world, the decision club seems to be shrinking. Of course, that is a very US-centric perspective, because we keep delegating power to the president. My opinion that the decision club seems to be shrinking is heavily tilted by that perspective, so I may be wrong about the rest of the world. But I don't think I am.
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Kryptos
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Re: The Australian Politics Thread [Re: Brian Jones]
#27475469 - 09/20/21 10:21 AM (2 years, 4 months ago) |
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Yes, I understand that rich people bribing public officials is a bad thing. Congratulations on that discovery.
Rich people have always bribed people, and will always continue to bribe people. Corruption cannot be removed from the system because corruption is inherent to the function of the system. Any system, really.
The only way to stop that is by making the price of corruption too high--this means having more people in charge. At a certain point, bribes become more expensive than the payoff, and the more people that must be bribed, the more likely that is to happen.
Adding more people to the decision club also stops the problems associated with voting in corrupt people.
Stopping corruption is like stopping the sun from rising. You won't be able to accomplish it.
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Kryptos
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Re: The Australian Politics Thread [Re: Brian Jones]
#27475585 - 09/20/21 11:47 AM (2 years, 4 months ago) |
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Depends on the type of corruption. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that pro government corruption is perfectly fine, and even encouraged.
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Kryptos
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Re: The Australian Politics Thread [Re: sudly]
#27476145 - 09/20/21 07:09 PM (2 years, 4 months ago) |
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Because if not allowing legalized bribery was possible, it would have been accomplished.
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Kryptos
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Re: The Australian Politics Thread [Re: sudly] 1
#27476244 - 09/20/21 08:48 PM (2 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: It hasn't been attacked at the root by those in power because they suckle from its effect.
So, your proposition is to convince the people in power to attack their own primary method of enrichment at the root?
Good luck with that.
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Kryptos
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Re: The Australian Politics Thread [Re: sudly]
#27476813 - 09/21/21 10:28 AM (2 years, 4 months ago) |
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I'm not trying to solve corruption, because I consider corruption to be unsolvable. It's just not going to happen.
I'm trying to dilute the decision making of each individual that makes decisions. It has nothing to do with corruption.
And again, I consider money, fame, and votes to be interchangeable.
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Kryptos
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Re: The Australian Politics Thread [Re: sudly]
#27477329 - 09/21/21 06:25 PM (2 years, 4 months ago) |
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Campaign finance reform only fixes one sort of corruption, i.e. that of money. There are other forms of corruption. Favors, paid dinners, sex, guns, drugs, etc. You cannot stop all corruption. Who was that one Russian NRA chick? Marina Butira or something? That's a possible form of corruption, which is essentially untraceable: customized significant others. This is why corruption cannot be stopped. It operates by basic biological impulses. The only way to stop corruption would be for officeholders to stop being biological humans.
More people dilutes the power of each individual. Since corruption requires the corruption of individuals, this dilutes the power of corruption. Ideally, you'd have so many people making decisions that it is not profitable to corrupt enough of them to matter, but this is impossible.
Next best thing is having a massive group to make corruption less profitable.
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Kryptos
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Saying that a protest has "zero public support" seems a bit oxymoronic.
At minimum, the paid actors participating support it.
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Kryptos
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To be fair, the Australian construction industry needs to be open 25/8 if people want to ever own a house again.
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Kryptos
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Maybe they looked at the latest climate models and realized that they would like to have an Australia to do business in 20 years from now?
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Kryptos
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That's a great point.
Are there any big elections coming up, in which the right-wingers are likely to lose? Might just be some face saving for COP26, but I don;t see why that would start now.
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Kryptos
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Yeah, I do tend to skip videos. But, I watched this one. First off, do all news stations have that many different voices? Like, holy shit. Guess I haven't watched the news in way too long.
And yeah, I agree that Murdoch is giving political cover, but I don't have a clear "why?", at least, without relevant background. To wit: why does Morrison need political cover? Is there enough climate-related activism that he is in danger even backed by Newscorp? Is there some other reason? The whole investment thing from the beginning I don't buy, because if this was entirely about money then they would be in a more profitable industry. News exists to shape public opinion, not to earn money.
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Kryptos
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Quote:
Stable Genius said: So basically the position they've painted themselves into is fucking ridiculous,
Yeah, but that was true 15 years ago, I still don't see why they're suddenly switching sides. Especially since they're a juggernaut.
I shall take a dig into it, assuming I don't spend my entire night playing starsector.
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