FoolOfWorms

Heavy topic warning if that wasn't clear. So I don't think its entirely controversial to say openly that pacifism is extremely ideal. Its preferable to all options morally and in terms of effort needed to go through with it. Most people are unwilling to kill and are right to do so. Most of the time. Pacifism is so Ideal in fact, that you could even say its idealistic. The world it requires for a fully pacifistic individual to be entirely morally correct and just would necessitate a world in which there exists no groups of individuals who would be better off dead due to the drastic amount of suffering they cause others and fervent unwillingness to change or reduce that whatsoever. It requires the world that these individuals who ought not exist, to have no philosophical or moral excuse to cause harm, which would make it extremely difficult to convince these people of their moral shortcomings before they commit grievous acts of cruelty. It requires a world in which when these grievous acts of harm are committed, it ends there, instead of motivating other individuals to either retaliate or perpetuate the same kinds of horror unto others, creating a cycle. It requires a world in which passive forms of violence in which no direct contact with an individual can still lead to said individual being grievously harmed in the form of starvation or homelessness or social ostrizisation and abandonment does not exist. It requires a world in which these individuals who cause this form of passive violence to feel guilty about said situation and act in ways the avoid it as much as possible instead of ignoring them as though they aren't directly responsible for their death or harm. It requires a world in which incarcerations, if it is to ever be required, to work most of the time, with repeat offenders being very few and far in between. It requires a world in which the vast majority of these incarcerations are inflicted upon those who deserve it rather than petty offenders, and to exists primarily for the purpose of rehabilitation and reintegration rather than punishment or containment (or financial incentive). It requires a world in which humans do not have a primal, visceral satisfaction in killing and eating the flesh of other living things. And sadly I do not believe we live in that world, or will ever live in that world. which leads me ultimately to the question. Is death necessary? Is it sometimes required to kill certain agents in order to be moral? I feel I am already at the edge of the line of acceptable discussion with this particular topic, so I wont point fingers as to who needs to go for my own, and this forums safety, but it seems to me that there is purpose and need for direct action in the world in order to remove certain agents who themselves are the cause of even further grievous harm, and to be pacifist would be to allow said agents to continue to work unopposed in a way where even in your most ideal of situations in which they are removed from a position or desire to causes grievous harm, the harm they have already done at that point would be unjustifiably large in scale, something that would have been expedited through the act of removing said agent with immediate violence for their transgression. Am I right to think this? Am I missing something? Legal repercussions aren't to factor into this discussion considering morality itself is independent from the law regardless of what the government wants you to think. You should be willing to die and go to jail to do the right thing after all.

I have a big playlist I like to listen to to get motivated! Its mostly Game OST's and youtube is awful for sorting purposes so I dont bother really, but screw you I like all the music here. take a look!

Ok so here is the thing with independent contractors. it is impossible to really determine in this situation whether or not an independent contractor is really "independent", which means an independent contractor could theoretically be a bunch of "shell employees" designed to weight the voting rights of the cooperation in full favor of a foreign corporation that does not have the greater interest of the cooperation in mind and will use it an another branch of the greater conglomerate, if not simply attempt to absorb them into it anyways. In order to fight against this you would either need to not let independent contractors vote, which leads to the issue you stated OR, hire private investigators whos job it is to research and background check the employment history of the independent contractor to determine whether or not they can be trusted as a true independent as part of their contract, which im not sure in of itself is legal or moral frankly, but might be necessary? I really dont know, we're getting into real big hypothetical.

It is absolutely a difficult thing to manage and is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome in the short term. We absolutely cannot assume moral agents here since it will be inevitable they will have to leave as some point, and preferable sooner than later ironically, if this is to be in its most ideal form. One way to deal with in off the top of my head is a contractual obligation not to fire someone before their preliminary term comes up, which could lead to legal action against the cooperation if they fail to own up to it. This however has obvious flaws. Say the people currently working the cooperation, in a bid to secure their position, change the word of the contract allowing for the above to take place anyways under a loophole they can abuse, hiding this reality from the workers through short term benefits that allowed them to take power to make this change in the first place. Granted if this did occur, then the workers could very openly oppose the current regime and try to get them to leave sooner through a vote of no confidence, essentially impeaching the the offending party. Though, again this could be solved through the very same method you proposed as well, simply firing the dissenters and going back to good ol' America union busting if they try to strike against you. another way to do it is to have a workers value, at least initially, be determined by fellow employees, rather than by a management position who is mostly concerned with resource distribution rather than camaraderie among the employees. This also has a very big flaw though in the form of bias and discrimination. It will be a lot easier to ostracize outsiders and minorities from the cooperation when there is no single individual to lay blame upon from discrimination sadly. Group think and mob mentality could run rampant and could be very easy to manipulate. A form of weighted compromise between the two might work? when the management or human resource position could have final say over the opinions voiced by fellow employees? This could lead to a lot of bureaucratic issues and doesn't really get rid of the group think problem since a sufficiently bias work force might have enough pressure against the manager and human resource manager to enforce a bias anyways, but you could argue that at least in that situation there would be an individual culpable of blame and legal responsibility. This would also still have the prior stated obfuscation problem, which is becoming its own issue I realize, which you could possibly, ideally, be able to deal with by having the workers capable of calling a vote en masse to have a sort of citizen trial determining the value of those in highest management and their laws, but this, in of it self could be abused, though I dont see that becoming a problem unless the system has become so complex and byzantine that is wouldn't be inaccurate to call it an independent nation to itself, which would require more changes and considerations than just this comparatively little caveat used as a last resort. Sorry for the walls of text, this is something I am legitimately thinking about. Independent contractors though

I guess another thing I wanna add is that if you are interested in speculative biology, look up All Tomorrows by C. M. Kosemen, and maybe After Man by Dougal Dixon. I dont like Dougal's Man After Man book as much as All Tomorrows because of some odd interpretations regarding human nature, but his After Man book is better since paleontology is his primary field, not sociology, even if the science in After Man is apparently a tad outdated, which is fair.

I personally dont think humans are able to die out since they have the survivability of roaches, but I do think intense mass extinction will cause divergent evolution due to an inability to maintain a society much larger than those of old tribes because of the collapse in the ecosystem preventing most kinds of farming. Like how ross described strife where technology will exist in small pockets around the world but we will mainly return to a stone or bronze age level of technology on the big scale. So what I think will happen is that the majority of humanity will return to scavenging while a very small number will be able to just barely get by with farming dying soil in very small pockets that will likely get raided over and over by people who dont know what they're doing to make food and will eventually become a lost art for all but the most isolated of places until the ecosystem regains its stability. The people of the very few surviving cities will have no reason to leave since the outside world is basically an inhospitable deathtrap full of raiders and no resources to tap into anymore without getting shot with arrows and having to send already thinly supplied rations far out into the wilderness to support overheating miners. This lack of resources and inability to expand will firmly keep them on earth until they either collapse anyways or until the earth heals, making them into basically the brotherhood of steel, a band of isolationists with future tech. In these theoretical pockets of civilization humans will probably look the same, maybe lose their wisdom teeth or have freaky genetic difference like polydactaly for each city due to inbreeding and genetic isolation, while on the mainland people will begin to adapt fully to their environment, so people in Russia might start looking like the yeti from seasons greasons to survive the cold, since there are no more large animals to skin for hide, and maybe people in the vast deserts will grow smaller, thinner bodies, big ol' elf ears like a Fennec Fox, and darker skin to deal with the intense heat from the sun. The plus side is even with the human speciation they'll all carry the same amount of human intelligence from before the extinction event since it will literally be the sole reason why humans would be able to survive the apocalypse, so we wont have to worry about getting any dumber from the experience, in fact it will probably be a tragic moment of learning for the entire genus at this point. In the meantime crows might develop human level intelligence as well since they are also very survivable generalist and very smart themselves already, which is both a fun idea and terrifying since they will absolutely be unstoppable in war if we lose our tech advantage. Humanity at large will be subservient to our crow overlords. Planet of the crows.

Honestly bobobo and space dandy would be a good pair

I worked as a telecom tower climber and technician for a year before quitting because everyone at the company was kind of a douchebag and I had no reason to believe it would be different elsewhere. Though this was partially because I also hated the work itself since its a bit stressful being dangled by (granted, very strong) strings while working on birdshit covered telecommunication equipment in bone piercing wind. This is less of an issue than my other problems with it however because I kind of expected that. I came home exhausted every day which sucked but I knew that there would probably be times where this happened. The overtime work sucked ass though, especially since I had to do it often, away from home in stanky ass hotels. Like I said, the worst part was my coworkers. I honestly fear the idea that it may have just been me, but I swear I was stuck with some real pieces of work. I was often paired up with people that speak soley in passive aggression, or people with really outspoken and asinine beliefs and habits. One time a dude said that itd be better for me to break my hand than let a piece of equipment get scratched while trying to support it. Nearly everyone at the company was a bullheaded son of a bitch which caused real problems internally from what I could tell. I nearly threw rocks at my boss on some occasions because he pissed me off so bad. I think I came the closest to killing someone out of pure rage in that job than anywhere else in my entire life. Now I'm living with my parents trying to go into a programing degree. Its going ok, just got through my pre requisites. Not trying to one up retail workers btw, since I worked there as well, am well aware of how soul sucking it is, and at least my job payed pretty well. Shame it really didnt matter since I didnt have the energy to really spend it on anything. Spoiler is a picture of me on a tower

I pray one of y'all mentioned the dandiest of dandy's and its beautiful artwork cause i'll be sad if not.

So let me first preface with this fact. We should not debase ourselves willingly to our capitalist overlords by eating insects because their system of governance is slowing tearing the world apart making it harder to sustain a stable meat industry for the common man and making it a commodity for only the riches to obtain while the rest will only be able to sustain our protein requirements through eating roaches. Even though out meat industry is very immoral in how it treats animals, that, in of itself is a result of capitalism and its attempts of overproduction and propaganda convincing us we need to eat meat that comes from tortured, immobile animals with every meal every day instead of having a genuinely good steak on the weekend from an animal that actually got to move around once and a while. But at the same time. Why is there a stigma against eating bugs? I'll bring up the obvious think about how literally the majority of people are just fine eating crabs and shrimp and lobster when they literally are giant bugs from the sea no matter what you say about phylogeny. I will promise you right now you are not able to "taste" the genetic difference between a Locust and a Shrimp no matter how hard you try and cope with that fact. There is no excuse why one is more acceptable based on looks over the other. If you think crabs are gross, then at least you are consistent compared to people who eat crabs and think bugs are gross. Additionally its hyper efficient. Going back to my original point I don't mean in terms of protein production, even though it is true that a pound or 2 of feed can make more or less a pound of bug while you need more than a pound of feed to make a pound of beef. This matters far less than the fact most of the edible bugs that exist are in fact crop pests. Locusts, Aphids, Mealworms, all of these and many more eat our crops to an extent and as a result a multi million dollar pesticide industry has cropped up to combat them when we as animals have been using a very easy solution to deal with them for thousands of years, which is just eat them. In the old days it was still a problem no matter how many you eat because bugs dont last as long as stored grain, but now in the modern world this matters much less due to refrigeration and such, and we know now that if we are concerned with any leftovers we didnt catch we can just release their natural predator like ladybugs to do final clean up of whatever left. This could theoretically get rid of the need for any sort of pesticide and thus remove the environmental damages they are known to cause and contribute to, such as the decrease in pollinator population, or just straight up poisoning of water supplies with carcinogenic pesticides through run off. Again, I dont think everyone has to switch to eating bugs, or give up meat. At most I think meat should be something you eat on the weekend or holiday rather than a meal staple, but I do think its silly that people think bugs are gross when we've been eating them for thousands of years to the point they are kosher and halal in every Abrahamic religion.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59696442 Merry Christmas Everyone!

Honestly yeah that sounds about right, maybe without the whole mayoral election business to cut down on how byzantine it seems, even if a figurehead would do well for advertisement.

Yeah, a workers cooperative seems pretty close to what I'm imagining on the ground level honestly, and funnily enough it references the Paris commune which is one of the inspirations for the idea, even if I should do more research on it. In terms of wide scale implementation however it just scratches the surface of what can be done. What I'm thinking, In a broad scale, is for there to be basically sub-governing bodies that are comprised of multiple smaller Cooperatives that elect representatives to do more large scale decision making in a form of congress. Like lets say we have a couple of farmers Cooperatives in California or whatever, these organizations would jointly elect a representative for their corner of California, in a sort of big union meeting, who would meet up in LA or wherever to discuss matters such as political representation, expansion, and pool funds to aid worse off areas of the overall collective so that none of them are able to fall to a bigger capitalist organization or general bankruptcy. Then this process can go a step further to encompass all of the united states, maybe even the world, and guarantee world wide workers rights by collectively lobbying across borders. Something like that.

So I've been mulling on this topic for years now, and the more I really think about it the more I realize corporations, and conglomerates especially, aren't really money making ventures as much as they are the modern day lords and ladies of whom go largely unchecked, unregulated, with borderline monarchical levels of power in their field and especially in terms of succession, where they typically give away their company to their biological heir and only see criticism by those they consider equals in their advisers in the form of the board of directors, and I'm thinking, we've already been through this song and dance before in regular government, so why wouldn't democracy work in a company too? Now necessarily a company that elects their CEO would not have shareholders that own cooperate stock since its antithetical to the idea of a mutually owned and maintained organization of workers (I'll stop beating around the bush and say directly I'm probably what most would consider a syndicalist), but beyond that, how would a corporate democracy, that is to say, a form of labor or simply a corporation that is ran by a board of elected representatives voted for by the entire company, run? There are very few examples of this from what I've seen so far and they seem to have their own variate of flaws, additionally unions, while aiding workers, do not, themselves, own any company from what I know, which is likely a flaw in my own knowledge. Now Ideally, it would not be President CEO situation, since an individual with executive power can easily abuse said power without checks and balances that are too complex for most except the biggest of companies and conglomerates to execute, so lets assume it is a board of directors kind of deal that each can cast votes for the direction the company goes in the future in terms of growth, expansion and regulation. That still leaves us with a couple of questions 1: How would votes, ideally, be tallied? I'm not concerned with voter attendance since I think most people are more directly interested in politics if it directly effects their paychecks, so how would votes be tallied? Would people who have been at the company longest, or people who are considered indispensable due to their expertise have a greater value for their vote? Should there be a new hire period where a person can't vote unless they've been with the company for a certain amount of time? How often would votes take place? is this a question that differs for each kind of job and company? Etc. 2: Is this something that should be implemented, ideally, nationwide? Are there places where important exceptions must take place? For example, is the idea too bureaucratic and slow to allow to be implemented in the military? I assume it would be a strange thing to have it apply universally, since family ran mom and pop stores don't have the population necessary to need this, so what would be the ideal tipping point in terms of company size? Etc. 3: If this works, should these democratic company be able to send representatives to government and make decisions on behalf of the people who work in those companies? I mean, corporations already lobby the shit out of congress now, so having an elected "diplomat" of sorts be a part of congress and voting for legislation on their companies behalf isn't that far off from that. Is that even a good idea? If it became its own "branch" of government that vote on how the government spends its money on corporate ventures and economic growth in certain sectors, would there be corporation types that should be exempt, like entertainment? There are more questions I'm sure, and this post is getting too long to show them here, but I mostly wanted to share to hear everyone's thoughts on this idea.

First I'd like to say that I haven't been keeping up with the forums unfortunately, and I mostly skimmed the thread to make sure I wasn't making any big new statements about this, so if I end up repeating another individual's statement regarding this topic, I'm sorry. I think Ross may be severely underestimating the abilities of a mental augment overall and how big a difference it can make for a individual, because it would actually be able to improve almost every job market, but that is largely the games fault it seems, since it too, seem to underestimate how dramatic a change to society it would be if it were possible to have a direct mental link with a computer. Lets start off basic by assuming a direct mental link to a computer allows for the very basics of what a computer can do, that is, be a calculator. If any individual augmented person had a calculator in their brain, they would become a genius overnight. Literally any and every field would be dramatically altered if it had even a small fraction of the individuals working with ability to do on the spot calculations without thinking about it. Even a mathematician, who can already do this to a degree through years of training rather than a single surgical operation, would be able to gain great benefits from this by using the calculator to do the basic calculations in the background while they focus on the greater, more complex aspects of the problem they are solving. The training needed to apply these abilities would presumably also go much faster as well since it comes next to naturally for anyone with the ability to do math like a computer. So anything from architecture, logistics, economics, and even war, would become borderline easy for these people since even the biggest meathead would be able to do on the spot trajectory calculations for ballistics if it was explained to him, and it would be more accurate than anyone else meaning more hit shots, not to mention keeping track of munitions and ration supplies for both friend and foe without having to worry about keeping count on a piece of paper or otherwise. This is on top of physical augmentations which would apparently make them a stronger and more resilient soldier. In fact, the face of the human species would likely change overnight the moment a single individual got their first calculator in their brain, which is an idea a little too heavy for Human Revolutions weight class. This isn't even mentioning the idea of installing a internet interfacing device in the human brain which would be an even more dramatic change in society and would basically turn us into a pseudo hive mind that each individually has the ability to call upon the sum total of human knowledge near instantly, which, ironically was more closely touched on in Invisible War of all games.

So I updated the thread a little after the year I've been gone because I don't want to make something redundant. NOTE, everything I've said before this post is dumb and should be taken with a grain of salt

From the Deux Ex Game Dungeon Ross discussed how the augments in the game would not significantly impact anyone's ability to work in some of the biggest fields; and while I agree that the augments displayed are quite lack luster (being mostly physical) and I understand that he's probably just talking about the aug's IN GAME which would be a waste of the computer power and not anything real life could bring; people who know what they were doing would be able to make aug's MUCH more advantageous to today's world. For instance, what if your brain had a small calculator that had the ability to do everything a standard one could at the speed of light? That alone would be able to put you a step ahead of most mathematicians out there, and thats not even the least we can do. You can shove the most complicated hand calculator you've seen in the space of a microchip and you would be banned from every casino that knows better. This is not mentioning GPS, Actual photographic memory, internet connection, increased retention and memory storage AND the fact that many of the top ten jobs list Ross showed can AND will be replaced by robots in the coming years, Aug's would be a big deal. 7Pq-S557XQU So what do you think? What is one aug you would get IRL? Personally I'd be chromed up and shit, but I would get the calculator one first

"I've got the best comeback of all... A SPAS-12" Edit: Also "Call me Ishmael, BITCH"

8S7Xb1Jozug

To be very honest I though Australia already had gay marriage because Australia is one of those country that is just really pleasant until you go out into the wilderness, then I looked it up and saw it was under "civil union" which is fine, then I remember Tony Abbott. I am so, so sorry. don't worry though, I completely understand what he is like. we had George W Bush to deal with. Twice. But yeah that airline record is impressive, considering you are right next to Malaysia airlines

'merica

Not sure if it would be appropriate to post this in serious topic or civ problems (I mean, this is the opposite of a problem) But anyways... WOW, have you guy heard the news from america? Homosexual marriage, Universal healthcare, It looks as though people are getting more and more lucid recently. while one big BAD thing happened a few days before, I think that shook some people awake, proof being the confederate flags in several states being taken down of government buildings. IT KIND OF A BIG DEAL. we still have a lot of shit to get through, like in some states its still ok to fire someone if they are gay, but things are looking up. If you want this can be a good news thread to dump all the good new from YOUR country. Edit: Hi Serious Topic Discussion. wow, thats an unfortunate acronym.

I don't know man, It just seems impossible for use to kill ourselves right now unless we make a god IA and it goes horribly wrong. I'm from america, and 70 years ago, In the 40's our biggest national threat was a band of three nations who sought to take over the world like a Saturday morning cartoon, but super serious and terrifying. Today, our biggest national security risk is ourselves, and people see that, and wish to fix it. The only "nation" that has any intent on massacring the public is North Korea, a joke of a country that is starving and rotting as we speak. the only people who could end the world have no intent on doing so, and no matter how many faults are showing, It wouldn't end humanity. It just doesn't make any rational sense. I'm sure the united states will fall from grace, but someone else will pick it up. and the case is even better for peace on a world scale . Here:This video is sourced in the description NbuUW9i-mHs

Get out. Seriously, GG is just a misogynist, MRA temper tantrum, that's all it is or ever was. If you'd like you can offer a counter argument and a different perspective on the subject. Actually I would love to seen the opposite side, because I tend to feel bad if I don't see both sides of an argument. This however just makes you sound mad and immature, so please, if you don't have anything to add don't just tell others to get out with a reason why. Misogyny doesn't count either, because due to some people, it has gotten vague as to what that mean exactly, so please go into deep detail about why and add sources if possible. This ain't your hugebox Thanks.

Hey, Del3030, Thanks. That help me understand that mess a lot and the detail put in is wonderful. I would like to add the main reason why the gamergate thing was banned is that it started to clog up /v/ and video game discussion no longer was able to keep up compared to gamergate threads, which may have had 12 open threads at a time. It doubt was due to the political affiliation of the mods, more of the shitposting being done by the participants and the size of it. Things like this happened before, good examples being the creation of /mlp/, /vg/ and the banning of homestuck generals. It isn't important and I have little else to say on the matter, just kinda adding context. also don't expect 8chan to get anywhere, 4chan clones are absolutely everywhere and have all suffered from fatigue.