The froth of our days
Part I. In the channel :
thestringpuller ThickAsThieves maybe he just wants to tell me random insane shit I said x time ago finally made sense to him. << pretty much, I don't want to spam the channel. MP is good people for this very reason.
ThickAsThieves The channel lives through much worse daily, but I can respect you wanting privacy. S'all good.
mircea_popescu The channel lives through much worse daily << it's kind of funny to me, this. More than a year ago I left bitcoin-otc over a dispute about moderation. That channel has gone pretty much to shit, in spite of a lot of rules, a lot of dicking about and a lot of nonsense.ThickAsThieves I popped in there like once. Not for me.
mircea_popescu This channel is pretty much the best venue in all of Bitcoin, in spite of there being no mods and nobody giving a shit. The free market proves its superiority again and again and again yet people NEVER are willing to just do the right thing for fucks sake.ThickAsThieves We must learn for ourselves sometimes.
That made me feel like digging through old logs. So :
Apr 02 01:51:28 {mircea_popescu} vragnaroda the entire nsfw argument is facetious. people aren't looking for a place to specifically discuss random things some subset has decided "is undecorous"
Apr 02 01:51:38 {mircea_popescu} people enjoy the freedom to discuss whatever they feel like discussing.
Apr 02 01:52:19 {copumpkin} mircea_popescu: then I guess they can do it elsewhere, since the founder of the channel would prefer to take it in a different direction
Apr 02 01:52:34 {copumpkin} and IRC is neither democracy nor anarchy, it seems
Apr 02 01:52:36 {mircea_popescu} the founder is a sort of superservant,
Apr 02 01:52:40 {mircea_popescu} not a sort of superowner.
Apr 02 01:53:05 {terry} gmaxwell: Also, I would rather my coworker join -foyer. That's trading! If you mention maxi pads without the intent of selling or buying one, you're out. This is OTC, we socialize, talk, and build and lose trust in eachother, sometimes we trade. It would be awfully stiff if I couldn't expect the same level of comfort in here as I would when talking with some of my friends. I'm sorry you didn't appreciate my joke about maxi pads, but that's all it was: a joke.
Apr 02 01:53:32 {copumpkin} terry: what's the big deal? http://notrichyet.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/whats-the-big-deal/
Apr 02 01:53:47 {copumpkin} (a good read if you haven't already)
Apr 02 01:53:47 {mircea_popescu} actually... i thought foyer was for socializing.
Apr 02 01:53:58 {terry} crap, I meant -pit
Apr 02 01:54:00 {terry} sorry
Apr 02 01:54:02 {draco49} That, and scams.
Apr 02 01:54:30 {ataranlen} LOL @ #bitcoin-otc-nsfw is a danieldaniel free zone.
Apr 02 01:54:43 {mircea_popescu} copumpkin : i read that. it fails to register as a valid argument.
Apr 02 01:54:58 {copumpkin} mircea_popescu: he addresses that reaction in the article
Apr 02 01:55:13 {gmaxwell} There is this great concept in social sciences called evaporative cooling, where people drive out everyone who isn't likeminded making a more and more homogeneous group. A number of people weren't happy with the direction this channel was cooling in.
Apr 02 01:55:13 {mircea_popescu} copumpkin in thesame braindamaged way as the entire rest of the article, yes he "addresses" it.
Apr 02 01:55:29 {PaulZag} problem is that the chat creates trust. -pit is trade only an nobody moitors it closely enough to be useful.
Apr 02 01:55:30 {mircea_popescu} "a number" sounds rather fascist in this context
Apr 02 01:55:38 {mircea_popescu} and i mean that literally.
Apr 02 01:55:50 {copumpkin} mircea_popescu: if you don't like it, you can do it elsewhere, I guess, since arguing is clearly going to get you nowhere
Apr 02 01:55:56 {gmaxwell} Turns out you can force evaporation with a little boiling too. And if that means we need to remove a few people who think that fart jokes are the pinnicle of public humor, so be it.
Apr 02 01:56:06 {mircea_popescu} copumpkin seems that is quite reciprocable as an "argument".
Apr 02 01:56:14 {copumpkin} that wasn't an argument on my part
Apr 02 01:56:25 {copumpkin} I'm saying that arguing against what gmaxwell is doing is obviously pointless
Apr 02 01:56:34 {mircea_popescu} gmaxwell you seem to think (mistakenly) that public discourse can be "shaped". others have tried. all have failed.
Apr 02 01:56:41 {terry} ^
Apr 02 01:56:43 {gmaxwell} ::shrugs::**** ENDING LOGGING AT Mon Apr 2 01:56:47 2012
To summarize this in neckbeard language,
#include <mp_knows_more_than_you.h>
int people_have_tried; int people_have_failed;
people_have_tried++;
people_have_failed++;
Part II. Meanwhile in private,
mircea_popescu Fiat is not just about money. Fiat is a state of mind, the idea that some magical bureaucrat somewhere can give you new teeth, cure your warts and produce you a wife to order by just saying "fiat".
This may sound outlandish in that plain form, but consider the following illustration :
It comes from an older Romanian piece and it translates to English roughly as
=I am not trying to steal from anybody=
Nor their fortune nor their income
I wish a [weirdo neoprotestant] sister but with
A house in Timisoara but also with
Truth as a neoprotestant weirdo and as a
christian phone 0768616764
SrBHTM from Transylvania 58 Yearses of old.
=Iportan Notice = to
=Jesus=
This particular sixty year old is just about old enough to have been born right after the the war. His wish for the magical bureaucrat in the sky is for there to be a woman made for him. With a house, out of thin air, without diluting anyone else. Can such a thing be done ? Does that change whether it can be wished ?
Anything can be wished for, even if nonsensical. And here's where our two parts come together in an unbreakable dilemma : a society predicated on trying to get people what they wish for will necessarily end up as an exercise in the absurd, much like our current free world, much like the previous free world, much like all the other free worlds to datei. On the other hand a society predicated on telling people what to wish for will necessarily end in a bloodbath.
So, pick your poison. The absurd or the massacre ? Alcohol or tomato juice ? Dionysos or Ares ? I personally like a little of both in my Mary, which strangely makes me a sort of rara avis these days. People are becoming increasingly puristical, which historically is a great signal of trend reversal.
Bottoms up!
———- There have been, contrary to common belief, very very many of these - good has failed exactly as many times as evil in this world, for any stated noncontradictory definition of "good", "evil" and "failed". [↩]
