The Testing Chat III: The Time of Great Chatting

[Darksi4190]

So i'm working on my final paper for my English class, and it turns out that our peer review is only 2 days before the last day of class when the essay is due. I was really hoping to have someone's input a little before that so that if there were any huge problems I'd be able to affect changes before handing in the final copy.

I really hate to ask this, but none of my RL friends are of the scholarly persuasion. Would one of the more accomplished individuals here be willing to take a look at my paper when i've got the rough draft done (probably sometime next week) and give me a few pointers? Like I said, I hate to ask, but I really need to nail this assignment.

[magic princess]

After monday of next week I only have a paper to work on myself without any tests, so, then is fine.

[magic princess]

Well, I DO believe SOME things that other people find unsettling, but I'm sure that's true of everyone here. But I also don't believe that large-scale intentional change based on ideology to a pre-existing society is something that's ever acceptable, so that most of my "ideas" are nothing more than a thought exercise to investigate the extremes of human behaviour and force people to examine the meaning behind their own beliefs. It never works, but rather than get upset about it now, I get bemused.

For example I have no desire to turn the US into a monarchy. But I do genuinely like advocating for monarchy, not to bring about a monarchy, but to force people to examine their advocacy for democracy; to question why democracy has become the accepted wisdom of the modern world; and to force people to assess why exactly it is important to them. I'm a "monarchist" strictly in the sense that I think that modern society has "dark ages" whitewashed history into an endless march of progress, with one more evil era being replaced by a less evil and more better one each and every time in a ladder like march to the top.

And I DO really object to that. The Church basically wink-wink nudge-nudge allowed gay marriage until the 800s/900s, definitely allowed priests to marry, and the monarchy certainly distributed free grain to the poor in the surviving cities of Europe, straight to the 1700s. When I remind this to people I'm trying to get them to think of why they hold their notion of progress to be so important when it brought us the Iron Law, the elimination of the grain ration for the poor as an inefficiency, the decline of health in the Industrial revolution, laws banning pornography (only date from the 1850s! -- a Liberal Progressive effort to "protect women, children, and the feeble-minded"), etc.

So, why was democracy worth 200 years of electoral puritanism and the rollback and ending of social services for 100 years before they were re-implemented? And doesn't that prospectively change your view of history even a little bit? The King of France in the 18th century, not exactly the best of monarchs, probably genuinely cared about his subjects more than some 19th century industrial politicians. And I want people to remember that for the sake of the accuracy of history.

But I'm not getting on a horse and trying to reversion history at gunpoint. That kind of change is profoundly against my beliefs in and of itself. I may regret that things happened the way they did, but unlike people on TEO I don't actually believe, and will never believe, that mandated top-down organised change to society is a good thing.

I just want them to imagine something beyond individualist democracy/social human technocracy, and see what the options were, see what's been lost as a result of the selection process of history toward these, and reevaluate them in a more realistic light as flawed systems rather than some idealized end-point of history, so that doctrinaire adherence to principles of these societies can be replaced with a more realistic appraisal of them as deeply flawed systems, ones that progress in the same direction isn't going to see all of humanity's problems solved with.

And maybe, just maybe, for them to seriously look at why people in the third-world Kingdom of Bhutan where the King still has substantial power and the Parliament was only formed 3 years, are happier than Americans.

Does that mean we need a monarchy? Fuck no.

But it does mean you should ask yourself why that fact is the case, and why our incredible progressive future, etc, etc, hasn't actually bought us even as much human happiness as people in a medieval monarchy have.

[Questor]

Has a serial murderer done more harm than those responsible for the economic collapse?

Of course not. But I don't think that the objective amount of the harm is the key here. This is still the western "reduce everything to numbers" mindset.

Look at the type of the harm, the type of the crime, and the type of criminal. We're talking about something different from your average murder here. Particularly in the idea that reform is so close to impossible as to make no difference.

[Losonti Tokash]

That's not true, though.

[Questor]

Ok, allow me to rephrase: Guaging reform is almost impossible, due to the rarity and individualistic nature of the crime. I want to reiterate, this is a class of crime that I believe has been committed once in the past 20 years - quite possibly worldwide.

If it is not your belief that anyone is beyond rehabilitation, that's a different argument (and actually my own personal view) and one that's not at all relevant to the exploration of this concept that there can be damage done to the тела людей that is seperate from the damage done to the individuals within it.

If your response is to attempt to refute a different part of my statement, perhaps a more nuanced response than "But that's not true, though" would be appropriate.

[Losonti Tokash]

No, you got it. I was responding to the apparently common theme that some people can't be helped and it's best to just kill them. I don't understand the Russian you guys are using but when you guys are using serial killers as examples i think of David Berkowitz and how he's turned himself into a counselor for other inmates trying to turn them away from criminal behaviors.

[RyanThunder]

I'm against the death penalty on religious grounds.

I'm also in favour of replacing it with mandatory circumcision, without anaesthetic, using one of those office paper cutters.

Protip: only one of these is true

EDIT: you know, the ones with the giant 1/8" thick blade.

[RyanThunder]

[...] I don't actually believe, and will never believe, that mandated top-down organised change to society is a good thing.

If you'll indulge me, (or forgive me if you already explained) why's that?

[Shroom Man 777]

then again enforcing seatbelt laws, no texting while driving

[Questor]

Yeah, serial killers fall into this middle ground for me. Some (very few) might fall into the catagory above, but those that do will have non-traditional reasons for being a serial killer. The "classic case" serial killer wouldn't fit for me.

Like I said, intent is so important in categorizing this, and that's become such a rare thing in modern law, that's why Marina and I are tossing around Latin and Russian terms (well, that and the fact that both of us have a certain intellectual elitism and pedantry).

As for the specific term we're using, think of it as meaning "the people as a collective group of people, but not as an organization or a collection of people." Mathematically, it's the difference between the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts and the sum of its parts.

[evilsoup]

seatbelt laws and getting rid of smoking aren't really the same thing as redistributing society's wealth or whatever, which is the kind of thing I think of when I read the phrase 'mandated top-down organised change to society'
I'm sure people whined when they were introduced, but I doubt anyone ever turned into a killer rebel because they are forced to use obvious safety measures

anyway, WRT death penalty: I wouldn't want to be friends with someone who would willingly kill in cold blood (executioners), no matter how much the person being executed deserves it, and I certainly wouldn't be willing to perform the act myself. Since I wouldn't ever be willing to perform the act myself, I can't ask others to do it on my behalf.
Similarly, I wouldn't like to be part of a society that would put people to death in cold blood, not even mass-bombing president-killing serial child rapists. Everyone is human, everyone has a path in life that leads them where they have ended up, and everyone has a responsibility to everyone else. Society can be best judged by how it treats its most hated criminals.

With 'Bhutan being the happiest country in the world' - are you including the fifth of the population living as stateless refugees because that racist shit of a king exiled them to preserve the national identity in those figures?

[Djinnkitty83]

I'm completely against the death penalty. The thing is, it might be possible that there are people who are 'irredeemable', whose minds are so broken in a social context that nothing short of a complete physical/chemical re-wiring of their basic psyche will remove the threat they pose to society and individuals. However, with as much of a developing field as psychology/psychiatry/neurochem is, who the hell are we to think we can accurately judge where that line is and who has crossed it?

With indefinite incarceration, at least we're leaving the option open so that, as the study of the human psyche advances, if we do turn out to be wrong about any specific individual being 'iredeemable', there's still a chance of helping them and making up for any mistakes in treatment we made before. With the death penalty, we're ending lives with a still-significant margin of uncertainty over whether the killing was absolutely necessary.

[evilsoup]

When you have someone imprisoned, executing them isn't necessary anyway. They've done whatever damage they've done, killing them won't change that.

[RogueIce]

Am I the only one who thinks the "RAR" thing has been done to death and should just stop?

I mean, not the hypothetical scenarios themselves, but sticking "RAR" in the title.

[RyanThunder]

Probably

[Djinnkitty83]

It wouldn't be a meme if it weren't flogged to death.

[adr]

another space war scenario has entered my brain

there's an invasion fleet from earth coming at the moon. our job: stop them

our battleships are superior in almost every way, we have stronger, longer range lasers, more advanced armor, faster engines, more fuel, better communication, more experienced commanders, and an element of surprise as they don't know we have armed spacecraft at all... there's just one problem: we're outnumbered by more than twenty to one.



so what's the strat. the main idea would be to use our superior range so we can thin out their numbers without them being able to shoot back. but where that gets tricky is we're gonna have momentum to worry about

suppose the lunar fleet launches right out at the enemy. we'll zip by them and have some good opportunity to attack. their counter move would prolly be an intercept course of some sort to return fire at some point, but it'd be like a joust, we're going opposite directions so the actual contact isn't terribly long

the meeting is kinda like a v, with the fleets doing a little burn action to close and maintain the distance.... or would they? the earth commander might see it as a waste of time and fuel, since the lunar ships can do their own maneuver and the more they try to match, the more it is going to throw off their attack on the moon itself; the final orbit will be misshapen and some effort will be expended to correct it

i think, i should run a simulation but that reminds me of work so the best i'll do is draw pictures in paint

but i think moving to attack is actually an error, but since the earth commanders aren't experienced space warriors they just might do it anyway, especially since the motion would prolly put them briefly in range, it'd be tempting to try to expand upon it


anyway that's where the fun stops. now the distance is too big, with the lunar fleet on course to swing around earth, and the earth fleet still heading toward lunar orbit

and this is why actually going out to meet them might not be a good decision for the lunar commander, despite it allowing him to attack early. by the time they swing back around for the second pass, the earth fleet could already be invading lunar soil



a better strategy might actually be to park themselves in high lunar orbit and wait for the earth fleet to arrive. this would actually look like an intercept course, high apsis, low periapsis, launched such that the first orbit puts them at maximum attack range

then they'd immediately start falling back toward the moon.... but the enemy has more forward speed, so there's a chance for return fire there before the angles take them out of range


so after contact, the earth fleet would start their burn for lunar orbit. i think the lunar fleet will now want a good prograde burn at apsis, so when they swing around again, they'll once more have favorable range. now the earth commander may be green, but she or he is definitely going to see this coming

one counter plan might be to send a detachment to swing around without going into lunar orbit to flank the lunar fleet, and keep them under pressure even while on the far side - to execute their burn, they'll want to recover their drones, etc.; their metaphorical shields will be down. what i first thought might be a period of respite for them may actually be the most dangerous part of the battle

but this is probably a win because those ships are now on a trajectory back toward earth; they won't be able to rejoin the invasion fleet (at least not for like a week since they'll have to refuel and basically start all over again). the earth commander is going to want to be careful about sending too much, though s/he has a lot of numbers to spare (unless of course the first pass is wildly successful for the lunar strike but that's unlikely)

now i don't think there's time for several passes before the earth fleet is in range..... i think it will be up to the lunar shore batteries to slow the invasion as the fleet gets back into the fight. BTW at this point we're prolly into like day two of this battle.

i think the earth fleet at this point might as well land, returning fire to the shore batteries on their descent and not worrying too much about the lunar fleet (realistically, the battle would have taken some toll on them now; the "lunar fleet" might just be a couple battered spacecraft at this point. also btw i don't like battered ships blowing up, each of these things should be able to last a long fucking time getting hammered, patched up, hammered some more and just not giving up)

leave a few ships up there though to see about cleaning up, put them on an intercept course with the last known trajectory of the lunar fleet... and possibly get it wrong if they don't have at least a spotter who can see a better angle around the moon. but you don't want the defending spacecraft to be able to focus on orbital bombardment immediately after you land


but yeah i think just a few major engagements. let's hope the lunar army is better prepared, that or the earth guys accept our surrender since i don't think even the high tech stuff is going to be enough to actually change things with that fucking asshole newton in the pilot's seat.... but this nevertheless gives some fun potential for genius to maybe just maybe make enough of a dent to bust things up

and i didn't forget but didn't think a lot about too is different orbital inclinations might be fun - now with width, height, and for a limited time only depth


i guess my point is just that orbital mechanics make space battles kinda interesting to think about. much moreso than it'd seem at first glance

[RogueIce]

another space war scenario has entered my brain

RAR!

Oh god what have I become

[RogueIce]

Ugh, I wanted to finish reading the UA Plays Warcraft 2 thread, but SB is down.

And even SDN is refusing to load.

Internets why are you failing me?

Oh well, at least the StarCraft 2 Terran music I'm listening to on YouTube is pretty chill.

[Crazedwraith]

And even SDN is refusing to load.

I was going to ask if it was down for anyone else.

[Darksi4190]

It's still down for me. Wonder if it's another server failure.

[Nietzslime]

i blame the new star trek

[Oxymoron]

http://stardestroyer.net/

Still on-line

[Crazedwraith]

i can see most of the website just not the forum.