Chris Taylor
Contributor
I think so long as there's no neckbeard/trenchcoat/smug sense of superiority you're probably fine
The OkCupid Experience
- Thread starter Jason Waddell
- Start date
I think so long as there's no neckbeard/trenchcoat/smug sense of superiority you're probably fine
CML, don't you think those are separate issues? Like, I can feel that society should take car of its own while still feeling that individuals should take more ownership over their fate and their perils. I mean, we can debate over what counts as the "basic cable" of human existence, and it certainly differs between American and Europe, but whether you get HBO is another issue entirely, no?
I think I just got negged by a woman:
Chris Taylor
Contributor
His point seems to be that basic cable is the balance point we should be taking about, not the All channels free for everyone model nor the you have to pay for everything model.
Makes sense to me. I simply use the sentance "Nobody owes you shit" because it's a far easier explanation than "If you treat women like human beings they don't owe you sex and just because you have a college degree doesn't mean you deserve a job and just because you're living in a first world country doesn't mean you deserve happiness AND....."
the list goes on and on and people who I find most need that explained to them are the least willing to listen.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
I think it's a good general principle. Things can be desirable without me being owed them by someone, whether it be attention from women or money from everyone.
Also fedoras are sweet, I would wear them if hats of any sort fit my absurdly shaped head.
Also fedoras are sweet, I would wear them if hats of any sort fit my absurdly shaped head.
CML
Contributor
I think I just got negged by a woman:
kinda hot, huh? i love it when girls make fun of me.
***POLITICS***
so they're separate issues, but then you're typing out that these issues bleed into each other, with no clear distinction. i knew you actually agreed with me!
a necessarily fuzzy response is that a line has to be drawn somewhere, but bear in mind that it's been different throughout history and is different for different cultures today (tangent: i hate the word 'society') as well as different people within said cultures.
as for the role of government specifically, it exists to support the middle class, which would not exist without increasingly extreme historical intervention -- the line moves, with many a digression, towards the "more services" side of things. (i like to think of imperial rome as patrick bateman's manhattan, feudalism a little past that, and a state of nature not too far past that.)
anyway, this is a hard pill to swallow as middle-class people like myself do like to think we take ownership of our fate, but it's good to remember that we do so only within certain conditions. as for how to define those conditions, acknowledging the complexity between giving people too much and too little, free will and fate, operating within the constraints of a game and changing the rules, empowering and enablement, synergy and the poison principle, theory and practice, nature and nurture, others and self, vacuum and context, living for yourself and living for others, being independent and depending on some stuff, etc. is a good way to start.
my personal bias is that the protestant work ethic tramples on these complexities with the typical religious single-level thinking, and that America cannot progress beyond where we are now because it is religious. of course this wasn't all that true in 1776, so there is hope. and yet dashed hopes are so depressing. (i lost to pyxis of pandemonium last night and it was totally ridiculous.)
***PHILOSOPHY***
the big idea i've been kicking around with my typical activities of reading, writing, and magic cards is "dialectic." the above tensions fight with each other all the time, usually in cycles. the main cycle that interests me is one i discovered in games of psychology and incomplete information, like poker or mtg. poker is a very simple and elegant game; "you get two cards and can do one of 2-3 things" etc. in the absence of any skill difference, over a not-too-big sample size, the outcome will come down to "dude with the best cards" (at level zero). over an infinite sample size, the outcome will be a push and both players will lose infinite time (per jm keynes). so then one player will try to gain an edge by guessing what the opponent has and playing based on that (level one), but then he might have to wonder if his opponent is doing the same, so he has to think about p2's perception of his own hand (level two), and his own perception of p2's hand (level three) and so on. however, he can only go so many levels up before the analysis begins to be a poor use of time and mental energy, as can his opponent. so then the leveling war de-escalates into "how good is my hand," metaphorically. in other words, the simplicity creates complexity, and the complexity creates simplicity, and so on.
i am firmly convinced that this mechanism is nothing less than how capitalism, everyone's favorite multi-level game, ends up perpetuating itself so well. ("what do you value this at?" etc. well, "it depends ...")
some more important ideas that arise from this:
-though there are infinite levels, each one is less important by some margin that makes the ∑ converge. the time constraint is also important.
-they also bleed into each other i.e. an analysis of a poker hand will include your hole cards, their action, etc. but then if you change how you look at their hand you have to reconsider your other assumptions. "everything affects everything" in other words.
-levels are discrete. i don't know what level i, level e, or level -.5 look like. there are other discrete things in the universe (physicists say everything is!) but this is the "level of levels." the "somewhat pregnant" joke is pretty good, but the hard distinction between life and death is my favorite. so then there's another dialectic, between shades of grey and black and white.
-people who do not see the world in these terms, explicitly or implicitly, end up destroying their own complexity; black and white are different only in a trivial way. thus "love nothing or the whole world" from buddha; objectivists fail to realize that if something is objective, either it doesn't exist or nothing else does; the villain in my book wants "all or nothing" from her conquests.
-in poker a good rule of thumb is "be one level ahead of them," but i think this is a joke of the variety of "easy game" or "going back to the grind" that poker players so charmingly throw around. for example, one person's L0 is the other person's L1. this leads to the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth, which is just a huge fucking relief with all the shit about the NSA being thrown about.
anyway, the "problem" of poker is non-trivial at every level, which is what makes it a good game. ditto Brood War, whose beauty was a miracle; anyone who's played SC2 knows Blizzard's massive and noble attempt to reverse-engineer Brood War was a profound failure. MTG is great too, though the sheer inelegance of the level-zero baggage (13,000 cards, a baroque set of rules, being turn-based, a corporate culture that encourages this baggage to be used as an L1-excuse for bad coverage, and shuns the above multi-level thinking in most every way) is a major stumbling block for its popularity. it's not insurmountable, though -- millions watch baseball, after all.
(aside: another connection between OKC and other hobbies is that the objective is often, in one way or another, to "get laid" -- the mtg people who pretend they don't care about such things are creepy; they are using the subjectivity of the game, its invitation to create your own meaning from it, to excuse their own unhappiness. for that i try to shun them. some degree of compartmentalization is necessary -- . similarly one of the things about poker was that it was "too good"; its being such a fascinating game from which one can make money and friends and memories "paradoxically" can make its practicioners not want to do anything else, which is terrible. the notion of addiction -- it took me over a year to really quit smoking cigarettes -- also illustrates the tension between free will and fate.)
if you've ever wondered why mtg nerds are often so intolerable, it's because they spend too much time talking about "L0 stuff" like "cool cards" or "how much i love shipbreaker kraken" or "my cool Daxos EDH deck," when good conversation leaps over levels helter-skelter. the deficiencies of the game are the deficiencies of its culture. another funny "clash of level zeroes" joke is the guy who has a $5,000 legacy elves deck, but not the money to move from home; he is trying to get that money to do so, but then 8th place at an SCG is only $300. i think such a book about magic cards (but really about life) could be very good and very salable.
i used to be one of these level-zero people, reveling, at age five, in my memorization of trivia; magic was in my childhood a hobby that encouraged that; education too often encourages that, too, but, then, my outrageous good fortune in going to HS with the best people of my age in Seattle, for free, helped me become less of a solipsist. then i went off to college, thought i could finally stop being cynical, got into a relationship, thought i could finally stop being cynical, and then it all blew up and i started to wonder "why" -- the only question -- and so i typed this out. i am glad things happened that way, as the idea that i could have pretended to be happy (and thus been, in a way, happy) being a new york nine-to-fiver is something that TERRIFIES me. i might never bang my ex again, which is a bummer. but i might not have known these things, either -- in most universes, i am dead! so i feel pretty fortunate and wonder the extent to which that is confirmation bias and how productive that is and so on, down the rabbit hole and up into riptidelab.
here's the general outline of what i've discovered lately:
-collapsing levels together into an action is called "judgment."
-literature is the pleasure of judgment, and the study of bias.
-"vanity of vanities" in ecclesiastes displays multi-layer thinking that is otherwise sparse in the bible.
-"it's all in the game" from the wire and "there's games beyond the fucking game" were written with gödel in mind. for stringer's line, it's no accident McNulty finds The Wealth of Nations when going through his apartment, post-mortem; it's also no accident he asks himself, "who in fuck was i chasing?" so yeah, detective fiction is pretty sweet. my favorite entry in the genre is the original Star Trek.
-kafka's priest yelling "can't you see two steps in front of you" is an explicit reference to Josef K.'s lack of self-awareness; he had no idea that his hole-cards were transparent to everyone. (fish in poker and OKCupid are also usually fish due to a failure of level-two thinking.)
-a related idea is that humans transcend animals by being able to think about ourselves (level zero), and computers by being able to think about others (level one).
-human progress might be approximated with some kind of (log x + sin x) function, except maybe it's more linear, as the breakneck speed of technological growth (far and away the most important determinant of wealth) is hampered by the inevitable diminishing returns this growth gives.
-interdisciplinary studies are coming back in a big way because of the rise of interdisciplinary stuff like the Internet. art imitates life imitates art imitates ... etc.
-the connection between "the game" (Neil Strauss) and "game theory" (John Nash) is made pretty explicit here:
i am not sure anyone else has ever come up with these ideas and, along with my book, my cube, my community of adult mtg friends, and my very stupid modern deck, they are my proudest achievements. if I wrote a book about them, mostly autobiographical, do you think anyone would want to read it?
I am going to be completely honest and say that, although I have read EVERY word you have posted on this site, sometimes I don't know what to make of your arguments. The primary reason likely being that your rants tend to cover too much ground and focus on things like unifying theories, and you present things as given without taking the time to make the reader feel that they are given. Maybe in the medium of a book you could have the space to flesh these out, but if I were you I would first focus on essays to describe a given concept (i.e. The Poison Principle) and then you can build from there.
Your success or failure as a writer would depend on how well you were able to bring the reader on board with your line of thoughts, and since so many of your ideas are so far removed from the way the "everyman" thinks, you would really have to skillfully, concretely and laboriously present your supporting arguments.
I would also ask of you what I would ask of a beginning cube designer. "What are you trying to achieve." I don't always see the connection between what you write and something tangible for the reader. Maybe it doesn't have to e tangible in your eyes, but at a shallow level I would think along the lines of "how can these ideas improve my life". One of the best economics books I read tied economic theory into bite sized lessons that might be applicable to you. He took an anecdote about a woman getting stabbed 20 times in front of dozens of apartment-dwelling onlookers to help you develop tactics to get aid in personal emergencies.
Do you have something like that? I don't know. Sell me on the CML way of life. Is there something I can take and integrate into the JLW way of life, or will it just leave me with some profound unhappiness with WOTC and a desire to castigate libertarians?
Dom Harvey
Contributor
The biggest question about all of this is what the L stands for.
Looks like we have our first forum contest. Actually that would be the worst.
Louis
CML
Contributor
sweet word, i think the korean announcers screaming GOSU TAIMINGU when YellOw gets em with a perfect muta build captures that concept.
L -- get on my level brah
textbrick: this pleases me immensely and i am grateful for the feedback. i have an unfortunate tendency to not meet people halfway.
CML
Contributor
i must dissent from your conclusion!!! in poker we always said "volume volume volume"
or to put it another way: as i build up my tutoring business, i will eventually get to a point where i am satiated with clients and must turn some away, while pruning what i have and selectively adding on ones that pay better or are more fun to work with. BUT I AM NOT AT THAT POINT YET and few men ever are. it is like a Fantasy Football team after a mediocre autodraft that picks up emergent stars on waivers and, in spite of myriad injuries and hardship and competition, improves by degrees throughout the season until it's ready to run the table in the playoffs.
that being said, seeking validation in women is a poor substitute for a healthy sense of narcissism, and i am blowing off dates to throw a Cube tonight because, you know, bros before prose before hos.
or to put it another way: as i build up my tutoring business, i will eventually get to a point where i am satiated with clients and must turn some away, while pruning what i have and selectively adding on ones that pay better or are more fun to work with. BUT I AM NOT AT THAT POINT YET and few men ever are. it is like a Fantasy Football team after a mediocre autodraft that picks up emergent stars on waivers and, in spite of myriad injuries and hardship and competition, improves by degrees throughout the season until it's ready to run the table in the playoffs.
that being said, seeking validation in women is a poor substitute for a healthy sense of narcissism, and i am blowing off dates to throw a Cube tonight because, you know, bros before prose before hos.
"Bros before prose" is the best thing you've ever written on this site.
At some point the analogy I came up with was that going on OKC first dates is like doing Diablo end-game runs. Most runs will yield nothing, and you just have to keep grinding away by volume. But once you stop enjoying the grind, it ceases to be a fun hobby and starts to feel like a job. I'll be back when I don't feel like grinding is work.
The funniest part was when the girl was like "no, I can't I'm busy, but also I have a boyfriend". It was like a two-step let down, packed into two sentences.
"I can't go out with you this Friday.
Or ever."
"I can't go out with you this Friday.
Or ever."
But definitely not Friday
The thing I spent the most time thinking about these is how much information to present. Not from a privacy perspective, but more from like, reading about other people's dates can be super boring especially if the writer bogs you down in details. I err on the side of keeping things short and hopefully well paced, which means omitting superfluous details that don't really affect the story. Like, the American had been very excitedly starting Google Chat sessions several times a day and then abruptly stopped, so I figured something was up before I even asked her on that last date. Truth be told there were hints with the English woman too. We had griped about not connecting with Belgians, and she had mentioned a couple Dutch guys she found more relatable. Then that weekend she couldn't hang out Saturday night because she was in the Netherlands with a "friend". Who knows, maybe I'm reading into that. I even considered putting in a section about the anticlimactic second date with the lawyer, but none of these things really helped with the narrative, so I kept things more streamlined and focused.
In this particular one the conclusion was most difficult to write. When I started writing it I was feeling really (probably overly) emotional about the situation. Then I let some hours pass and felt more resigned. The final product came out somewhere between those two emotional states.
I don't know if I can answer your question more specifically. The best I have is something Rosewaterian. When I re-read these they sound like me.
Yeah they usually have a good balance of pith and punch and just enough extraneous detail / BS / aside to keep me from getting critical or bored. I really like the articles on the site and the opener posts for some of these threads. It makes me want to clean up my writing again.
You also do the thing where you suddenly get super candid every once in a while and it makes me feel less bad about doing that. Like the bit about going to the furcon just demolished me.
You also do the thing where you suddenly get super candid every once in a while and it makes me feel less bad about doing that. Like the bit about going to the furcon just demolished me.
Re: you not connecting with Belgians.
I had the same problem in Switzerland. the only group of Swiss friends I have there are from the magic shop, but otherwise everyone I know is international. After living there for long enough I got the feeling we outsiders were just not welcome. It's pretty lame. That's one thing I love about living in London: pretty much everyone here is international, and the Brits are from pretty different places too. I'm British, but not really from anywhere, and I fit right in. It's much nicer. Zurich's beautiful, but being foreign wears you down there.
I had the same problem in Switzerland. the only group of Swiss friends I have there are from the magic shop, but otherwise everyone I know is international. After living there for long enough I got the feeling we outsiders were just not welcome. It's pretty lame. That's one thing I love about living in London: pretty much everyone here is international, and the Brits are from pretty different places too. I'm British, but not really from anywhere, and I fit right in. It's much nicer. Zurich's beautiful, but being foreign wears you down there.
Yeah, I have a bunch of gaming acquaintances here, but mostly they're activity partners and not people I connect with on a deep level like my friends from back home.
I'm pretty sure fedoras are now pretty entrenched in anyone with a reddit or tumblr account's mind as part of the problem.
It turns out that the hat that I wear I thought was called a trilby rather than a fedora, but it turns out that what the internet collectively believes to be a fedora is actually a trilby, and I wear a fedora.
Today it was cold so I wore an ushanka (or уша́нка) instead. I also own a panama hat and a straw hat for varying degrees of summer, such as it is in Old Blighty.
Hat Facts!
Today it was cold so I wore an ushanka (or уша́нка) instead. I also own a panama hat and a straw hat for varying degrees of summer, such as it is in Old Blighty.
Hat Facts!
Dude I would totally subscribe to hat facts