But what about the slave ?

Thursday, 21 April, Year 8 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

alikim You can make auction house based on a dedicated player's account (run by a trustworthy authority) and ingame whisper channel. First you whisper it with your action offer then you trade it for items, same with bids, you whisper it for a bid then trade for money. This bot will keep items and money in its storage and all the info in an externalfile.
danielpbarron Can it link up with an irc bot?

alikim Theoretically yes, since the game client can connect to the internet and communicate to w/e. I've no idea how these bots work. For me it stands to reason that you communicate with the auction house from inside the game though, because the auction house doesn't have to trust your word when you are bidding or offering, you actually need to transfer goods
danielpbarron All the auctions we do are honor system anyway. You could prolly make money just running an auction house come to think of it, and if you're gonna have you character standing around for that, you'd also want a general store bot that just buys and sells automatically like the way Electron does.

alikim The irc system you have atm doesn't need auction house, I'm talking about ingame AH that can record all trades, run statistics including markup on items, all the usual stuff. That AH doesn't need irc bots. I'd say these two options should not be mixed.
danielpbarron Well I could put the stuff with the bot in-game and then a bot in this channel periodically mentions what auctions are running, reminding people to bid. Plus I can check irc from anywhere; Eulora not so easy.

alikim it will buy and sell automatically, but only pre-whispered bids and offers and after each trade put items into its storage
danielpbarron well you could have it automatically put coppers in the trade window based on what people put in there, just gotta offer a slightly better deal than electron, keeping in mind that Electron isn't gonna be there forever. i think most things in Eulora are supposed to be player run eventually. not sure how skill training will go, maybe noobs will have to train with veterans or something. that'd be something, have my character sitting in a building in town buying/selling stuff and collecting coppers to train noobs. that'd be pretty sweet

alikim a bot in this channel could whisper ingame AH for a list of aucioned items and post results here, as well as you can do it ingame
mircea_popescu Yeah makes sense auction's settled inside the game. What you say re mixing also makes sense, except for one point - it is Minigame((MPEx:S.MG))'s strategic decision to replace in-game chat with irc chat (and gossipd eventually). Which is why he's thinking the way he is, and which is why they'll get mixed anyway. He definitely has a point about checking irc from everywhere - which is definitely desired. Eulora clients will look exactly that pluriform.

alikim Well, as I said you have a client connected to the internet, so it can connect to anything, but your honor system will have to go too eventually I guess, so you won't be able to offer and bid w/o actual goods and money.
danielpbarron not necessarily
mircea_popescu Nah, it'll go the other way around, WoT can be implemented. Recall how you can't get an account without a gpg sig ? This'll open the road to the first ever automated trust system - auction bot will evaluate user based on history. Half of why you need irc in game is so you can do $trust X. Not sure if you're at all familiar with this huge chunk of metagame ? It's also rather uncommon / not seen in "the normal game".i

alikim No, all this encryption stuff, gpg, irc etc is rather an inconvenience you have to go thru to get to the game. I'm pretty sure all this only averts normal game players from trying the game, people expect to just automatically get an account download and play. But on the other hand you are not interested in normal people so... ;)
mircea_popescu Well, it seems to you an inconvenience, but this due to unfamiliarity. It's actually the cornerstone of the game being this good. Think about it - idiots playing is the worst problem of every game out there.

alikim Not in a game based on real money, idiots will normally pay.
mircea_popescu You think this also because unfamiliarity. We have a lot of experience with bitcoin, and the common man, and know better. Idiots have no expendable income and there's a very strict stupid <=> poor bijection.

alikim There are lots of smart people who are poor btw, even genius people.
mircea_popescu Genius can be stupid, that's no problem whatsoever. When you discuss stupid you discuss "what's the dumbest thing this person does", when you discuss smart you discuss "what's smartest thing this person does". These aren't opposite, much like when discussing lowest point of a map vs highest point of a map. Plenty of maps have mountains, but this doesn't mean much - they may also have valleys.

alikim Well you might be born in fascist Germany and sent to a camp, which among other thing makes you poor, "what the dumbest thing you did" is an open question.
mircea_popescu How come you're on the internet is also an open question in that setting.

alikim I can easily come up with a different setting when you have access to the internet, the valleys you are talking about can be circumtances.
mircea_popescu Never. Nature is nature is nature, if you end up in the shit it's because you fucked up.

alikim Like born black in USA a few decades ago? Or wait, lucky you, there was no internet there so doesn't count.
mircea_popescu The setting of my experiment does not map to luck, being as deliberate as it gets. Moreover "you fucked up" also doesn't map to "you could have done something better". Ogre getting destroyed by archers IS OGRE FUCKING UP, even if the whole game is set up with the premise of archers being good vs ogres. "Oh what's the ogre supposed to do" is not a cogent consideration.

alikim What is ogre is ugly? He fucked up?
mircea_popescu If he spends his time going to college town bars trying to pick up, yeah. ("Oh but he has to, because he's a college aged ogre" "Nobody has to anything" etc.)

alikim What if you are born a slave and you are poor because of that? Automatically makes you dumb?
mircea_popescu You were born a slave ; but you did the poor part yourself. Heck, there's plenty of slaves that ended up very rich throughout history, from Rome to Haiti.

alikim You probably like new thought movement
mircea_popescu Which is that ? Anyway, this entire debate hinges on confusion between should, which is an ought, and could, which is an is. There's absolutely no space in ethics/morals for is-en. Just because you should doesn't mean you could, nor makes it any difference, and vice-versa. Entirely unrelated considerations.

alikim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Thought.
lobbesbot` Title: New Thought - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (at en.wikipedia.org)
mircea_popescu I dunno, not particularly preoccupied with various us neoprotestantisms / whatevers.

alikim You sound exactly like positive thinking + law of attraction.
mircea_popescu Ahaha mno.

alikim You sound like one nevertheless, "if you are born a slave and you are poor that's because you fucked up, because you can do anything you desire in any situation and you can end up rich".
mircea_popescu Well it's fine that I may sound like one, to you, but the notion amuses me, what.

alikim Your logic is exactly the same.
mircea_popescu I just said above that no, there's no "because you can do anything you desire in any situation and you can end up rich", so it can't be all that EXACTLY the same.

hanbot Ahaha this is a riot, mircea_popescu believes people can do anything!!1
mircea_popescu Gave me a chucke also! :D

alikim So a poor slave is poor because ...?
mircea_popescu He sucks ?

alikim Well that's exaclty what I wrote before
mircea_popescu notreally.

alikim You believe any slave can be rich
mircea_popescu I do not.

alikim If he wants to be.
mircea_popescu I believe that any slave that fails to be rich deserves being poor. In short, your proposed "he is a slave" is not a CATEGORICAL ban to achievement. You need it to be a categorical ban for your argument.

hanbot alikim he said some slaves ended up rich, very different things.
alikim I believe that any slave that fails to be rich deserves being poor << that includes the belief that any slave can be rich if he wants
hanbot What is this "wants"?
mircea_popescu It includes no such thing, no. You think it does because you expect "all people are equal", which is not something I regard.

alikim The premise is a slave can not be rich by the fact he's a slave, when you say "slave that fails to be rich" it includes the possibility for any slave to get rich.
mircea_popescu No, it includes the possibility for SOME to be rich. Specifically - the not dumb ones. There is no solution "for all the people", nor should there be one. Most people have no business here.

alikim Which defies the premise that slaves can not be rich yes. Any of them.
mircea_popescu I dun see it.

alikim That's another problem ;)
mircea_popescu Hehehe I suppose. Anyway, make it a formal syllogism ?

alikim If you were to write a program where slave and rich are mutually exclusive, for all and any slaves, then you couldn't make a conclusion that a slave "fails to be rich". Because failure is somthing you do, and being a slave is an environment setting you can not change and can not be responsible for. But!!! I have other things to do so let's leave it where it is ;)
mircea_popescu It's not clear that failure is something you do. From what I've seen failure is generally something you don't do. It is also commonly the lot of stupid poor people to think "they are poor through no fault of their own" on this basis - they failed at nothing specifically. The problem is they failed at the unknown unknowns, which conveniently leave no mark.

alikim Like not be born a slave?
mircea_popescu More like not falling on their knees for the right master at the right time.
* alikim (1b20321a@gateway/web/freenode/ip.27.x.x.x) has left #eulora

mircea_popescu Well, hopefully he didn't get butthurt, I enjoyed the conversation.

[...]

alikim The problem with your thinking (and you may not see it as such) is that you can not accept a system that has a genaral absolute rule w/o exceptions. I'm telling you no slave can be rich and you change the premise by adding a backdoor and saying, well if you kneel at the rigt place at the right time you can. So if you can not find that back door and stay poor it's you who fucked it up and that's your fault, so you are too "dumb" to get rich. And you are absolutly right. But the premise is, slaves do not get rich, no exeptions. You do not believe that there is a situation where all people of certain class/kind are prohibited from achieveing something (from birth), you believe there is always a back door for some, "the smart" ones. Which is essentially very like new thought premise: no matter where you are now and what the situation is, you can get anywhere you want from there if you know how (to find a backdoor).

mircea_popescu The canonical term for what you describe is the no true scotsman fallacy, but obviously I don't agree it's in play. More generally, yes I reject the premise of embodied absolutes. This has no more to do with "new thought" than with plain catolicism. Moreover, the notion of imanent transcedence is ridiculous on its face, and readily taken apart.

alikim Ok I'm just curious about what you thinking is based on.

mircea_popescu What do you mean ? Anyway, we'll continue this later, I'm off to bed.
alikim Things like that "I reject the premise of embodied absolutes".

mircea_popescu Well, this is a fairly obvious point, but I don't really know enough about your background to pick a good or even decent statement for it. Suppose you came up with a way to make a perpetuum mobile ; or with a notation that'll allow you to write ALL numbers in a finite space, or such wonders. I'd laugh at you, for the same reason I laugh at you when you think there can be such a thing as an absolute caste system, or for that matter an absolute conspiracy, or what have you.

alikim I mean I saw this rejection behind you rlogic and you confirmed it, so it explains what you are saying to me.
mircea_popescu Aha. Anyway, even the absolute caste system does nothing much to support your argument. Yes it's possible that on some island somewhere there live some inexplicable retards who believe they are coconuts, and nothing that may occur can change their notions. Notwithstanding that their perpetuation is improbable - so what ? You're not one of them, nor am I, nor do we have any reason to care about this improbable, remote and certainly irrelevant construct.

alikim Well, we were talking about slaves, the point was to accept the premise that if you are born slave you can not be rich by the fact of your birth. Absolute rule.
alikim &item homunculus
euporium I know nothing of homunculus.
danielpbarron alikim, you're the one who came up with this "absolute rule".
mircea_popescu The twist here being, of course, that I actually keep slaves. But obviously, of a different kind.

alikim Yes, the whole argument happened because I came up with that rule to explain how being poor might not be your fault and mircea doesn't not believe in absolute rules.
mircea_popescu In any case : there doesn't exist a society in recorded history that kept slaves and their offspring didn't end up rulers at some point or another. One of the better illustrations is perhaps the Ottoman empire, the rulers of which never entertained intimatelly anything BUT slaves. Well... until Roxana, at any rate. More generally speaking, all men are born slaves, no matter what they'd like to pretend. If there isn't a way to get out of it, then civilisation simply ends, as there isn't a way to populate the next tier.

alikim Again it's all been put into a system in new thought, namely everything that happens to you in your life is your doing, choices you made or rather didn't made anyway you put it, as I said before that validates your logic and makes you right, there is nothing to argue about here for me.
mircea_popescu Not your doing ; your responsibility. Rather different concepts. "Your doing" is this mildly offensive mystic thing, a la power of seduction or what's it called.

alikim Well, you can not be responsible for things you can not do anything about
danielpbarron Sure you can.
alikim Like what?
mircea_popescu Like anything you're responsible for lol.

danielpbarron For example, you are held responsible for not believing in God even though it is the same God who caused you to not believe
mircea_popescu The notion that "can" is a bar to responsibility is entirely unsuportable. "Oh I shouldn't be responsible for shitting in the street, I couldn't keep myself" hurr.

alikim No it's not what I meant.
mircea_popescu Anyway : every living thing is responsible to feed and breathe. Failure to do so is rewarded by death. Whether it can or it can't is entirely immaterial. The notion of responsibility you apparently employ is a degenerate substitute, of a conventional rather than ontological nature. It comes from taxation, as the common sense observation that the wise ruler doesn't load the camels or the people above what they may carry. The camels so loaded refuse to raise, and the people so loaded whine about how "they shouldn't be responsible about things they can't do anything about" (whatevers, ruler also has the ability to provide them the simple choice of lift the load or be cut down where you stand). 'Tis a camel's notion of responsibility.

alikim Can you be responsible for the fact that your eye are blue?
mircea_popescu If it ever comes to it, you will be, yes.

alikim I see
mircea_popescu Who's to provide you immunity ? If I tomorrow announce all with non-blue eyes get a widget, who's going to give you a widget ? Obviously, socialism proposes "sharing", mostly as an attempt to subvert the obvious power of anyone giving widgets. It works for as long as it does. "We're going to make a law against such discrimination!!! it's unfair!" "And who's going to enforce it ?" "We are!!1" "You might discover you have better things to do."

alikim I understand how your logic works, I do not share it, but I understand it
mircea_popescu Aite! Care to share how your logic works, so I can not share it myself ?

alikim Haha
mircea_popescu Lol

alikim I believe in the mix of things you can change and be held responsible for and things that are cast upon you by the environment that you can not change and can not be responsible for. So "all poor people are too dumb to get rich" doesn't stand for me.
mircea_popescu And how do you draw the line ? As feels convenient that day ?

alikim If I don't see how someone could change something I consider it unchangable, so yeah, the line is drawn at my level of intellect.
mircea_popescu And doesn't it worry you, to be one in possession of such ego, as to think yourself the grand arbiter of everything ? Especially on the shaky basis of being captive this side of the combinatorial explosion cone.ii Da fuck do you know who did what to whom causing which etc.

alikim How else you personally ever judge things?
mircea_popescu Well, I don't judge things. I always blame the victim and that's good enough for me. It is, you see, impersonal. Once you make it personal you take a pretty serious bite.

alikim To blame the victim you need to judge it first and find guilty.
mircea_popescu Nope. You need just observe it's the victim, and apply the simple rule "victim's always at fault".

alikim And to be the victim. "Victim" is already judgement.
mircea_popescu Used here for shorthand. Object, if you prefer, in the agent-object relation. (Incidentally this neatly ties into the feminine-masculine debate. It'd be a world made by mediocre women that'd attempt to move things around - blame the agent instead. Guess why, and the first guess doesn't cunt and the second guess is "because they're objects themselves, and know it" by default and so you win. By default.)

alikim Well, you need to decide which object to blame
mircea_popescu Every verb takes an agent and an object. For each verb, you blame the object. [who] did [to whom].

alikim You don't know who did to whom and what, from your level of understanding you make this personal assumption that someone did something to someone else. Keyword being "personal".
mircea_popescu Well, if the whom complains, then I have basis. And otherwise if all's silent I am unlikely to care.

alikim Nothing you personally do is impersonal
mircea_popescu That happens to neatly translate to EXACTLY my view of responsibility :) Ie, there is no such thing as "being poor", an impersonal. Poverty is a very personal deed by the poor in question. Takes as much maintenance as anything else.

alikim Well, we started with me explaining my point of view and ended up with you explaining yours again.
mircea_popescu Did we. Hm.

———
  1. Guy obviously knows a lot about games, but very little about tmsr. []
  2. Yes, this is another name for the causes-and-purposes problem. Consider the matter well. []
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