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@All_bonesJones @amerika @bajax @contrapunctus @dcc @dj @sun @yomiel

> What would you suggest as an alternative?

Same thing that I always propose: that they stop and that any time a psychopath tries to "manage" the populace, he pisses his pants at the end of a rope. "I am a man and not a piano key" etc.

> The amount of people that you can mentally model as people instead of as an aggregate of "the other" that you don't care about is limited to around 150.

I'm aware of Dunbar's number.

> this is how humans have to model each other

This is how you and I have to model society. This does not mean that some psychopath gets the reins and presumes to decide for humanity. Governments have not only increased in size but also in scope. You're saying "Well, Stalin had to because he couldn't manage a personal relationship with all of the people in Russia" and I'm saying very directly that it was a mistake to try to manage which city makes boots and how many cows you get to own.

> We can have guidelines like "treat the human-cattle kindly and respect their autonomy" but we're organized into groups larger than our DNA can handle.

This is exactly the problem. You have to reduce scope as you increase scale.

@All_bonesJones @amerika @bajax @contrapunctus @dcc @dj @sun @yomiel

> That doesn't quite answer my question. I'm trying to understand exactly what it is you're trying to propose, here.

I thought it was clear; maybe not. I will try to be explicit.

As your proximity to a problem decreases (and Dunbar's number sets a cliff), your ability to make reasonable decisions about that problem decreases exponentially. So people ought not to make decisions like that.

People will try to make decisions like that, and where they can't use guns, they use PR. Those people need a blindfold and a cigarette. The IMF and WBG and the organization set up to be their PR wing (that is, the UN) ought to be burned to the ground.

I believe humans have the right to ignore orders from strangers. The ways of God may be mysterious, but God didn't airdrop 20,000 Haitians on a rural Ohio city that only had 40,000 people to begin with, God didn't send the CIA to the poppy fields, God doesn't run the IMF, God didn't Agenda 2030 anybody, God didn't promise me that New York would be underwater by 2010: we're not dealing with gods, we're dealing with men. As autocrats that don't have any superhuman capacity for perception or reasoning, they do not have license to work in mysterious ways any more than I do. But if I go about my business, it doesn't stop them: their business is to stop me from doing what I intend to do. This is inexcusable, unforgivable. This is evil.
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@p @amerika @dcc @bajax @contrapunctus @yomiel @dj @sun So... don't organize above Dunbar's number? That's what this says to me:
>As your proximity to a problem decreases (and Dunbar's number sets a cliff), your ability to make reasonable decisions about that problem decreases exponentially. So people ought not to make decisions like that.

Because that runs into the immediate issue that, in fact, nature selects for larger organization. The guy with an army bigger than Dunbar's number crushes the ones that don't organize past that, and regardless of whether or not you feel that's appropriate and just, it is the physical reality we are stuck dealing with and wishing it away doesn't work.

@All_bonesJones @amerika @bajax @contrapunctus @dcc @dj @sun @yomiel

> So... don't organize above Dunbar's number?

"Scope decreases". I had a terrible gas station cigar this morning after breakfast: because it didn't affect anyone else, I didn't have to listen to anyone's opinion on the matter. If I've blown smoke in someone's face or I have a friend or family member that thinks I shouldn't, you know, that person can have an opinion about it. If I put microplastics in their water, people can have opinions about that. I have opinions about that. There are robbery and theft. There are opinions I put onto the internets. The difference is the scope. Some schools of thought do not recognize limits to authority: they do not see a difference in prohibiting me from posting my wrongthink while smoking a terrible gas station cigar (it was a Swisher, the kind that, when you buy it, the guy says "We sell rolling papers" because nobody actually smokes these things) and prohibiting me from killing people or putting microplastics in the water. Family organization, right, most people intuitively understand that interfering with it is a government exceeding its scope, but at present, find a government that *doesn't* want to fuck with that.

Lenin wrote this tortured essay about whether or not owning a cat was a counterrevolutionary act. *Is* having a cat reactionary? The question is goddamn stupid: obviously, politics do not apply there. But if you don't recognize a limit to the scope of your political philosophy (and Marxism explicitly does not, which is how we got Lysenkoism, because plants have to be inherently communist), then you can ask that question with a straight face. You won't get a sensible answer because it's a senseless question, but you have people trying to answer it because they're too stupid to recognize that there is a line somewhere.

@p @amerika @dcc @bajax @contrapunctus @yomiel @dj @sun So you're saying that people should have less power to act when they have more power over people?

...If this is a correct summary of your stance, this is just kicking the can down the road, you've shifted the power struggle into the definition of appropriate scope, thereby made whoever defines scope the true sovereign. You've made him less accountable and provided no way to draw the boundary line, and even if you did, the act of drawing boundary lines would be the nexus of power. The act of drawing those lines would require a large-scale institution to enforce those definitions.

It's a nice-sounding philosophical conclusion devoid of practical implementation. Any sovereign who defines their own overreach as within the scope now has a perfect ideological shield and can label all resistance as an attack on order itself. This is "kings but they can hide in the shadow," which is the exact problem we have today.

@All_bonesJones @amerika @bajax @contrapunctus @dcc @dj @sun @yomiel

> So you're saying

Always really excited to see a message that starts with this.

> ...If this is a correct summary of your stance, this is just kicking the can down the road, you've shifted the power struggle into the definition of appropriate scope, thereby made whoever defines scope the true sovereign.

I begin to think this is deliberate: you're attempting to find fault in the manifestly obvious and that is why you've got so much trouble understanding.

To address that concern, I have not kicked any cans anywhere, no. It is absurd. "If you don't accept a dictator, you've just turned someone else into a shadow dictator!" Who has authority over whether or not you jerk off before bed? Who are you willing to listen to if they tell you which you have to do? It seems like a personal decision: how you feel that day, your general personal preferences, your religion, anyone that has to share a room with you, you know. Who decides your religion? Who has the authority to tell you what to believe?

> It's a nice-sounding philosophical conclusion devoid of practical implementation.

The "practical implementation" is "all of goddamn human history until we built the mass media and the surveillance state".

> Any sovereign who defines their own overreach as within the scope

In the US, historically, we have used the constitution and separation of powers for this. These have not stood up to the persistent onslaught of the psychopaths once mass media existed, and this is why they have insisted on the internet becoming a mall: they want the "misinformation" censored, they want the official story pushed. You think this is fine? You think it's okay to have wrongthink? You think there should be no limits on authority? You think the limits on authority require an authority-authority rather than a manifestly obvious line between what is others' business and what is your own? I don't know (or don't remember) where you're from but I hope they don't let serfs vote.

@p @amerika @dcc @bajax @contrapunctus @yomiel @dj @sun
>I begin to think this is deliberate: you're attempting to find fault in the manifestly obvious and that is why you've got so much trouble understanding.
I would literally never waste the time or effort to do this. Incredibly disrespectful to suggest that and a lazy way to dismiss a substantive point.

>Who has authority over whether or not you jerk off before bed? Who are you willing to listen to if they tell you which you have to do? It seems like a personal decision: how you feel that day, your general personal preferences, your religion, anyone that has to share a room with you, you know. Who decides your religion? Who has the authority to tell you what to believe?
Anyone with enough violence to coerce you. That is how literally all governance has worked in the entire history of forever with zero exceptions. Your prior cat example is exactly what I'm talking about. Communists had enough concentrated violence that the question of pet ownership could even be challenged. There is no magic, pre-political boundary between private and public.

What you are mistaking for that boundary is a cost-benefit analysis of enforcement. It has generally been too difficult and costly to police what people do alone in their rooms, which created the illusion of a sacred private sphere. It's a question of logistics, not some magic inherent truth. The line is power and power alone.

>You think this is fine? You think it's okay to have wrongthink? You think there should be no limits on authority? You think the limits on authority require an authority-authority rather than a manifestly obvious line between what is others' business and what is your own?
This is the oldest dodge in the book: "You pointed out bad news, therefore you like bad news, therefore you are a big meanie, which is worse than being wrong, because nothing is real and only opinions matter."

Like, come on dude. I am describing what IS, not what you think OUGHT. I do not advocate on behalf of reality, I attempt to describe it and make plans AROUND it.

Your ideal requires its own sovereign to define and defend its scope. That sovereign, like all sovereigns, will be defined by violence. You did not solve the problem. You renamed the king "The Defender of the Manifestly Obvious" and are now angry at me for pointing out that he wears a crown and carries a sword.

@All_bonesJones @amerika @bajax @contrapunctus @dcc @dj @sun @yomiel

> Incredibly disrespectful to suggest that and a lazy way to dismiss a substantive point.

Not only did I address the point, but I later added further disrespect by telling you about the time I fucked your wife.

> Anyone with enough violence to coerce you.

Nobody has enough violence to coerce me. They don't make enough violence. The world's supply of violence would be exhausted.

This is not a substantive point. Prima noctem'd.

> Your prior cat example is exactly what I'm talking about. Communists had enough concentrated violence that the question of pet ownership could even be challenged.

It was an illustration of a mass-murderer engaged in philosophical gymnastics. But if that's how we're doing this, I guess that's how we're doing this. So, violence is all that matters, and I decline to give a shit what you've said until you come use violence to enforce it.

@All_bonesJones @amerika @bajax @contrapunctus @dcc @dj @sun @yomiel Do you genuinely believe I didn't fuck your wife?

Hey, Rees says that you were rambling about Java and emulation instead of "Let's bring back feudalism because of that time that @p fucked my wife" and that's more interesting and I'll discuss that with you but I really can't take your politics seriously.

> the moment you lost the argument?

Upon discovering that you had spent several messages demanding that I clarify what I meant by "we shoot kings" and then started on "Unironically, I want kings" after the "So you're saying" bit. You were trying to win an internet argument, not actually discuss anything, or you would have said what you thought before saying "I DON'T KNOW WHAT 'SCOPE' IS" repeatedly. Fuck that, man: I wasted time talking about this when I could have been getting prima noctem on your wife again.

Ultimately, I have no investment in winning an internet argument. I like to talk about ideas. I'll talk about monarchy with @amerika because he's got interesting ideas. You do not: anyone whose big political idea is "But someone could shoot you" is fucking vapid. Welcome to the very first goddamn political idea anyone ever fucking had: you wanna move down the chain of reasoning with the rest of us at any point, sure, but as is, this is goddamn pointless.

I hope that answers your question. Please tell your wife I'll be by later.