moatdd

7re: this topic and forum -- I came looking for copper and I found gold. I just wanna take an honest and sincere moment to say I am thoroughly enjoying this thought experiment and the effort that my fellow participants are contributing. Getting banned from Twitter may have been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I haven't had a fun debate where we weren't at each other's throats in a very long time. Great job, Ethan, keep it up! I taught drawing at a couple of colleges, both on-campus and online, and was disheartened by a vast majority of people who were willing to absorb information passively but unable to actually put time and effort into the drills and practice that they actually needed in order to become technically competent with the skills they were being given. Furthermore, I had received a warning from the faculty for stressing the urgency and need for competence in the fundamentals because all the future lessons required it, and in a situation where grades had to be given, I was in a situation where I had to pass people that if it were up to me, I would flunk 95% of the people in the class. As a silver lining to all of this, I took to teaching people who sought me out independently. Teaching them is a lot more enjoyable than teaching people who take the college route to experience knowledge like one of those spinny flappy roller things in a car wash. They actually do learn and practice their drills, and it's really nice to see their progress. I spent time in the Toronto indie video game community and left it soon after I found it had been thoroughly infested with social justice warriors. It doesn't help that the Apple and Google app stores are owned by SJW companies and that all the main ways(Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, various game journalists) to publicize a game are run by the left. I've been feeling like I've had this steadily tightening vise around my neck for about 5 years now. My proposed VR solution is actually aimed at people who have an average IQ of ~70 and have reached adulthood and are currently illiterate even in their own language. They don't actually have a vast pool of options, and I think that the pool of options available to us all (when it comes to careers) is rapidly shrinking with the advance of technology that is outstripping the rate at which the human race can increase its baseline IQ through hereditary means. Worse yet, that baseline IQ appears to be in decline. We're heading towards a world where there are going to be a lot of people who will be mentally incapable of finding a place (finding fulfilling careers that haven't been automated) within society. Instead, the Left offers these people a place waving placards and signs, marching through the streets, and then hitting people and storefront windows with those very same placards and signs, and maybe the occasional bike lock. They form no-go zones, which, as Lauren Southern accurately dubbed as 'conquered land' within which gang violence and crime rates soar. And finally, they take to skewing voting for governments and systems that they can take from without putting anything into. The globalist media and governments glorify these people, making them seem noble and purposeful. Surely the free market can turn some of this advancing technology which is supplanting careers of low intelligence requirements to achieve a dual purpose through VR: It gives these people the illusion of being purposeful in a world where their contributions will amount to little more than sticking your arms out a jet airliner window and flapping to help it along. It gives these people the false utopia that the Left has been dangling in front of their nose to motivate them, thereby defusing these people in a nonviolent manner. The reality-allergic already exist. They're increasing in number, and at some point, it will not be humanly possible to get them to calmly sit down and watch a video when they are clapping their hands over their ears and screaming at the sky, and running at us wearing fashionable jackets of compounds manufactured by DuPont. Again, VR utopias seem to be a pretty good solution for bipedal amygdalas to be able to live the rest of their natural lives in the perfect utopia they so desire, where they can stay out of the gene pool. Until of course, Google makes an implanted coprocessor that can grant you additional neofrontal cortex functionality and a fistful of IQ points, but you can bet that it will include backdoors for FBI and CIA access, leftist indoctrination, and scrolling banner ads that play whenever you shut your eyelids.

re: this topic and forum -- I came looking for copper and I found gold. I just wanna take an honest and sincere moment to say I am thoroughly enjoying this thought experiment and the effort that my fellow participants are contributing. Getting banned from Twitter may have been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I haven't had a fun debate where we weren't at each other's throats in a very long time. Great job, Ethan, keep it up! I taught drawing at a couple of colleges, both on-campus and online, and was disheartened by a vast majority of people who were willing to absorb information passively but unable to actually put time and effort into the drills and practice that they actually needed in order to become technically competent with the skills they were being given. Furthermore, I had received a warning from the faculty for stressing the urgency and need for competence in the fundamentals because all the future lessons required it, and in a situation where grades had to be given, I was in a situation where I had to pass people that if it were up to me, I would flunk 95% of the people in the class. As a silver lining to all of this, I took to teaching people who sought me out independently. Teaching them is a lot more enjoyable than teaching people who take the college route to experience knowledge like one of those spinny flappy roller things in a car wash. They actually do learn and practice their drills, and it's really nice to see their progress. I spent time in the Toronto indie video game community and left it soon after I found it had been thoroughly infested with social justice warriors. It doesn't help that the Apple and Google app stores are owned by SJW companies and that all the main ways(Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, various game journalists) to publicize a game are run by the left. I've been feeling like I've had this steadily tightening vise around my neck for about 5 years now. My proposed VR solution is actually aimed at people who have an average IQ of ~70 and have reached adulthood and are currently illiterate even in their own language. They don't actually have a vast pool of options, and I think that the pool of options available to us all (when it comes to careers) is rapidly shrinking with the advance of technology that is outstripping the rate at which the human race can increase its baseline IQ through hereditary means. Worse yet, that baseline IQ appears to be in decline. We're heading towards a world where there are going to be a lot of people who will be mentally incapable of finding a place (finding fulfilling careers that haven't been automated) within society. Instead, the Left offers these people a place waving placards and signs, marching through the streets, and then hitting people and storefront windows with those very same placards and signs, and maybe the occasional bike lock. They form no-go zones, which, as Lauren Southern accurately dubbed as 'conquered land' within which gang violence and crime rates soar. And finally, they take to skewing voting for governments and systems that they can take from without putting anything into. The globalist media and governments glorify these people, making them seem noble and purposeful. Surely the free market can turn some of this advancing technology which is supplanting careers of low intelligence requirements to achieve a dual purpose through VR: It gives these people the illusion of being purposeful in a world where their contributions will amount to little more than sticking your arms out a jet airliner window and flapping to help it along. It gives these people the false utopia that the Left has been dangling in front of their nose to motivate them, thereby defusing these people in a nonviolent manner. The reality-allergic already exist. They're increasing in number, and at some point, it will not be humanly possible to get them to calmly sit down and watch a video when they are clapping their hands over their ears and screaming at the sky, and running at us wearing fashionable jackets of compounds manufactured by DuPont. Again, VR utopias seem to be a pretty good solution for bipedal amygdalas to be able to live the rest of their natural lives in the perfect utopia they so desire, where they can stay out of the gene pool. Until of course, Google makes an implanted coprocessor that can grant you additional neofrontal cortex functionality and a fistful of IQ points, but you can bet that it will include backdoors for FBI and CIA access, leftist indoctrination, and scrolling banner ads that play whenever you shut your eyelids.

Hey @barn I can totally agree with you that these people need these things, but as someone who has also done a lot of teaching, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Sometimes you have to pour in a whole lot of kool-aid and mountain dew into the pond, at which point it is no longer healthy, but let's face it: if someone is incapable of helping themselves or taking the necessary steps to help themselves and instead turns to burdening others, I just run out of care to dredge from the bottom of my barrel of care-a-lot. I'm dead serious: I have no love for these people. I do, however, care, about people who would choose to live in the challenging real world even when offered to live in a virtual and false world where everything can be taken for granted. I am seeking to offer some sort of final solution where the productive and the unproductive can both get their way. A utopia for the takers, and reality for the makers. Not only would I help them escape their reality, I would like to help them escape ours, as well.

Well for one thing, it would be up to people who wanted to use the system to pay for it themselves. Rather than paying for college or university tuition (when they are clearly not suited for it, as college/uni is supposed to be for people who have a shot at actually having a meaningful career) they would subscribe to the service. Considering how much college tuition goes for and how much they could save in comparison to debt enslavement, the main upkeep cost would actually be preserving their bodies in a minimal state. Perhaps we can siphon their waste products and use it as biofuels to power the machinery that provides for their virtual existence. If anything it is a digital opium den for hopeless people to throw their lives away for a lot less than the cost of opium. I wouldn't say that it would be your, or my job to provide a blissful life to people (although I do enjoy providing value to people in general as part of a trade) -- but when it comes to people who you just can't have in any workplace (because they are incompetent), well, unfortunately we are at some point going to have to deal with them. Not as a matter of duty, but because these sorts of people like to run to the gun and make trouble for the rest of us productive folk. So if we say, bread-and-circused them with a system that not only entertained them, but made them feel as if they actually mattered within their own virtual fiefdoms, they can happily stay out of our way, and we'd be happier for it. Right now, the left is sowing discord amongst these people by saying: "You can be anything! You can be an astronaut! Except you can't! Because of race and sex and hualalalagh <insert guttural noises>" Instead, I propose restoring harmony to these people by saying: "You can just put on this helmet and it will let you live your life as an astronaut" and then they put the thing on and they go off and be astronauts in a safe, padded virtual world without actually causing anyone else any trouble. And the best part is, when they first enter the simulation, we intentionally show them a janky, low-res world and (of course) their reaction will be negative and they'll demand to be let out of the simulation, at which point we turn the system up to its full, perfect settings and let them think they took off the helmet and got out of the system (while they're actually still in the simulation), and gradually alter the course of their virtual lives so that they go through college and magically pass all their tests and are offered to work at NASA, finally culminating in them in them taking on the job of an astronaut. And, let's not forget: since about 80% of one's intelligence is inherited, I would absolutely hate to see families torn apart, I'm sure the system could be offered as some sort of family package deal.

Stef, I know you've often mentioned that we're going to face significant challenges from people who are unemployable due to their lack of skills, abilities, intelligence, etc. In the future, simulated reality would become the most humane thing we can offer to these people. If you're unable to live a fulfilling life, you could choose to live in perpetual bliss where everyone loves you, you're an astronaut or a brain surgeon, and it all feels real despite the reality being that you are wasting away in a chair, plugged into machines that siphon your excretions and feed your body through tubes, and feed your mind with fantasies. I'm a game developer and I think I might just devote my life to developing an escape for the masses of reality-allergic cretins that plague us. I think that the best thing the free market can offer people who are unable to deal with reality is the total escape from it (all voluntary, of course, I don't intend on sending out teams of gestapo who test your IQ, and, if it is below 85, forcefully plug you into the matrix.) If this is a bad idea, please talk me away from the ledge on this.

Thought I'd flex my typography skills and make some Proper Gander.