Posts by Lanny

2015-07-26 at 8:55 PM UTC in The retarded thread: Fuck, §m£ÂgØL made one first edition

Lanny Bird of Courage

Lanny, if your goal was to steal the best no budget gaming PC, how would you do it/where would you look? Do you have any enemies IRL you hate, any trust fund/rich kids with daddy money who can afford whatever they want and don't deserve it or arrogant techies/entrepreneurs, who you'd love to see get their prized possession stolen?

Hmm, hard to say. House robbery is trickier in an urban environment. I don't have anyone I'd want robbed but everyone in SF who'd be worth robbing lives in a secured building usually with surveillance. For that reason it'd probably be easier to hit a business but the top of the line parts you really want would be spread across a number of specialty shops (or in reality are best ordered online). Would make more sense to rob some place a bit smaller than Fry's (because Fry's actually has decent security). You'd get some good pre-built systems out of it and if you really wanted a dream build you could sell the stuff on craigslist and use the money to buy the best parts.

2015-07-26 at 8:37 PM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

And since I can't seem to let a post go by without bringing it up I'd be interested to get a response to this:

If I could provide a few more examples of countries with strict gun control and low incidence of gun crime would you admit you're wrong?

Only if you admit that the issue of weapons ownership isn't as simple as 'Guns are Bad!'

To repeat my questions, now that I've admitted that the issue is not as simple as "gun are bad!" (although "private gun ownership is bad" is my conclusion, I don't think the argument for it is that simple) would you admit you're wrong about gun ownership if I could present more cases of countries with strict gun control laws and low rates of gun violence?

And additionally, why does your decision to consider that evidence valid or not depend on whether or not I admit to holding any particular view?

2015-07-26 at 8:32 PM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

Almost everyone I know owns firearms, at least one, even my own mom used to carry concealed when she lived in this state. Almost everyone around here in public is walking around armed. So, why isn't my town a literal shooting gallery?

Obviously no one has ever claimed that high rates of gun ownership will turn towns into "literal shooting galleries" but it is true that my position predicts generally lower rates of gun violence in places with lower rates of gun ownership. It is fortunate, then, that this is exactly what we observe. I can't speak to your town specifically but I think that a national study is generally more compelling evidence than a single data point.

2015-07-26 at 7:26 PM UTC in How do you maintain your privacy/safety on the internet? AKA The NETSEC thread.

Lanny Bird of Courage

Pretty much just tor or tor+VPN in VM (the likelihood of the VM helping is so miniscule but ever since the magneto thing I guess it doesn't hurt), but day to day I don't do much on that front. The browser security model is pretty solid, javascript really doesn't represent a very meaningful security risk anymore. I have HTTPS everywhere but with the non-aggressive approach (where it will still put a HTTP request through if SSL isn't available).

2015-07-26 at 7:08 PM UTC in Shitty Technical Jokes

Lanny Bird of Courage

You may want to consult this informative video for a brief overview of LISP's most salient features:

2015-07-26 at 7:04 PM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

Like criminals are going to stop being criminals because a piece of paper says so, silly lefties.

Nowhere have I even come close to saying that. The right's response to any argument: YOU'RE SO NAIEVE AND IDEALISTIC BECAUSE <MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE ARGUMENT> JUST DOESN'T WORK.

If I knew how to post a .gif, I would post a picture of 'how a firearm works'. I admire machinery all the time, and animals, and all kinds of stuff. Maybe I used the wrong word here. The gif I wanted to post is pretty cool, I can sit and watch the round being chambered for hours, Then again, I am one of those types of people who enjoy working in a factory.,

Alright, fair enough. I know a little about how guns work, it does seems like there's some interesting craftsmanship involved, but again I don't see why that has a bearing on private ownership of guns. Like weapons grade uranium also has some interesting properties but I don't think that makes a case for free distribution and ownership of it.

And again, you still haven't told me why my views on the subject are going have an effect on your acceptance of a given piece of evidence.

This is why I posted what I did, right below my post. I knew you were going to say this, but individualism does not guarantee selfishness. What we choose to do with that individualism is up to us. Most of us will choose to do the right thing and take care of our loved ones. Most people are good and decent, and I believe in people. They don't need some elite know-it-all to 'coerce' them into 'doing the right thing', Most people do the right thing every day, not out of fear of getting in trouble, but because that is what people do.

Even if that were true (and I have obviously have my doubts) you still have to either retract your statement about not caring about maximizing social utility or admit that the proposed benefits of "individualism" are unable to justify it as social policy. In other words your argument seems to be "individualism leads to more positive outcomes than socialism, thus that should be our social system" (which is a highly contentious claim but we'll put that aside for now), but that implies that positive outcomes justify social policy (something I agree with) and thus your comment that:

I don't give a fuck about 'a net win for us', I care about having the ability and option to arm myself if I see fit.

seems disingenuous.

Most cops are idiots. I have cops in my extended family. The one guy has like 50 guns, stashed all over his house, he has a .40 on top of his refrigerator in a breadbox.

Cops with 50 guns stashed around their house is clearly not what I'm proposing here. Obviously these are privately owned guns, not state issued ones, the fact that he's an idiot and has a bunch of guns just supports my point.

He is a moron, and it would be easy to steal lots of guns off this guy if one so desired. My ex is married to him, and she is a cop too, She is barely 5' tall and I could easily overpower her and penetrate her….wait I mean disarm her….

But again how is this situation better for private gun ownership. As it stands dumb people and 5' tall women who are even less well equipped to retain their weapons have them now. If stealing guns from the police is an issue now it's not going to get any worse when private gun ownership is banned but it will remedy a far larger class of gun theft (theft from civilians).

Gun crime in the us and suicides by gun are still less than all deaths related to motor vehicle accidents.

There is literally no reason to ban guns other than to become oppressed especially when the stats are miniscule compared to the real dangers of society.

I've already addressed this issue in this thread, read post #12.

2015-07-26 at 8:48 AM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

Right there, you just did it. Ok, you didn't say 'guns are bad' in those exact words, but if you don't trust the general public with guns, then I am willing to bet that you do not admire or approve of firearms

It's true I don't "admire" firearms, I think you'd have to be a little off kilter to admire any inanimate object. As I've said, I don't approve of private gun ownership but that's because they do more harm than good, I don't have an opposition to any intrinsic property of firearms. You still haven't told me why my "admission" of that or anything else weighs on whether or not you accept a given piece of evidence.

Ahhh, collectivism. I don't give a fuck about 'a net win for us', I care about having the ability and option to arm myself if I see fit.

Alright, you can do that I guess but if you're ideal political system is exclusively aimed as satisfying your personal desires then I don't see why you would expect anyone else to take it seriously. Like I could say "I don't care about collective good, I care about being tremendously wealthy without having to do anything for it" and form my politics around that but I wouldn't expect it to be particularly popular with anyone nor is it easy to conceive of a justification for that system over anyone else's "purely self-interested state".

A trained police officer isn't some superhero, it is just a guy, usually quite low on the intellectual scale. Criminals steal cops guns all the time, and even kill the cops with their own guns. It's such a problem, that police holsters are specially made to be resistant to being pulled from the holster by someone other than the officer. Criminals still get the guns even with the special holsters.

I never said police officers were superheros, but they are better equipped to retain their guns than the public at large. And this doesn't change the fact stealing guns from police officers is possible today as well, so I have no idea how this line of thinking is supposed to end at "therefore private gun ownership should be a thing". In a world without private gun ownership gun-thieves have far fewer potential targets, and their targets are typically better equipped to prevent the theft from happening.

2015-07-26 at 8:29 AM UTC in Psychomanthis should move to the united states

Lanny Bird of Courage

Are you saying we don't have massive cronyism? No, you wouldn't be that foolish. You seem to have this quasi-autistic thinking style that tends to be too narrow and inflexible. Of course our current system isn't 100% cronyism, clearly countries/states vary in their levels of corruption.

My point still stands though, if you want to deny the US as being representative of the outcomes of capitalism then you need to demonstrate that it's not a capitalism to a sufficient degree to excuse capitalism-as-concept. You think the US is non-representative of capitalistic systems so what would be a falsification condition for that? Put differently what evidence would you need to see in order to be convinced that systems like the US are representative of austrian school economics?

2015-07-26 at 6:42 AM UTC in Shitty Technical Jokes

Lanny Bird of Courage

lol, I like that. I once heard a similar joke, I don't really remember how it went so I can't deliver the punch line in a funny way but the gist was that Tom Knight (a famous lisp programmer) would write all his programs start to finishing without refactoring or changing them and at the end he would just lean on the right paren key for a few minutes.

2015-07-26 at 6:35 AM UTC in Who's more autistic. Malice or myself?

Lanny Bird of Courage

Remember when blunderstar was pretending to be a robot because he was upset about something? Good job bringing robotic back malice

2015-07-26 at 6:32 AM UTC in Psychomanthis should move to the united states

Lanny Bird of Courage

So when we see government favors happening it's evidence of cronyism and when we don't see government favors happening it's... still evidence for cronyism because it's just a measured effort to appease the populace? Sounds like an unfalsifiable hypothesis to me. What exactly would you consider evidence against the crony capitalism hypothesis?

2015-07-26 at 6:25 AM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

Only if you admit that the issue of weapons ownership isn't as simple as 'Guns are Bad!'

When did I ever say "it's as simple as guns are bad"? I don't support the idea of private gun ownership, I've never suggested the issue is simple. Further why on earth would your decision to accept or reject evidence about gun ownership policy rest on what I do or don't "admit"?

Are you honestly saying that all guns should be banned from private ownership:?

Yes. Privately owned guns represent more societal harm than good, after weighing the value of guns as entertainment and the probable amount and severity of crime stopped by them against the rate of wrongful death and injury by firearm private ownership just doesn't seem to be a net win for us. Note the weight of good against harm here because it addresses most of the common objections by advocates of gun ownership, namely the "why don't you ban cars" argument (because they have a large social benefit) and the "but you can still kill people with lead pipes" (true, but it doesn't change the fact that the world without gun ownership seems to be more peaceful than the one with, even if murder still happens)

And of course, you want the cops and military to be armed….like, what is wrong with you? God, I will never understand leftism.

Many countries don't give firearms to their regular police, gun violence is dealt with by a highly trained swat-like team that's only called in when criminals are believed to have guns. I think that's a sane policy. It's ultimately necessary for law enforcement to have superior martial force in order to... enforce the law so yes, police should still have access to guns when they're strictly necessary, but I do think we'd benefit from less police shootings in the US.

An armed cop with an unarmed populace is an engraved invitation to steal the cops 'real' gun. All it takes is a simple ambush.

Wut? I mean sure I guess but you can steal a cops gun today if you really want to try. I think it's probably easier to steal guns from the general population than from a trained police officer.

lanny i have nothing to add to the discussion but can you plz stop typing like a redditor

Eww, how am I typing like a redditor?

2015-07-26 at 6:02 AM UTC in Fuck religion.

Lanny Bird of Courage

I'll write more arguments later but let me just adress your last one here. Force a moral necessity? Are you hearing yourself here?

Yes, why exactly is force be categorically impermissible other than that it's a central dogma of libertarianism? You shouldn't act as though this is some shocking fringe position, I'd be willing to venture that the vast majority of americans think that material force is morally necessary in at least some situations. Consider policy for things like intervention in foreign genocide (think about public response to the arab spring protests), these are policies that can gain broad support. If you don't believe it that's fine, but don't pretend like NAP is a self-evident unassailable truth, there for anyone to see.

While morality may be hard to define in an objecive manner ethics are not and it is certainly not ethical to do what you suggest. I suggest you read Universally Preferable Behavior: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics by Molyneux.

Can you summarize Molyneux's argument? I heard renditions from people claiming to defend it but I'd be interested in your reading of the book.

So,if people are going to do stupid and harmful things no matter what, then there is no point in maintaining an unwieldy, expensive, and oppressive 'big government'.

How did you get that out of what I posted? I said that people, when left to their own devices, will almost all make suboptimal decisions. It's my position that a strong state can reduce the rate at which people make stupid and harmful decisions and that is why an effective strong state is justified.

If people don't need a cop looking over their shoulder every minute of the day, then ultimately they don't need cops at all.

How on earth does the latter follow from the former? "If people don't need to drink 30 gallons of water a day then they don't need water at all" if obviously not true, why is it suddenly a different story when we get to cops?

Coercing people to 'make the best possible decisions'…..how's that working out for us? Not well….

When it's the right decision, quite well. Compulsory education has been tremendously beneficial to society, playing a large part in our ability to organize ourselves in as large social structures as we do. Compare places without coercive law enforcement to those with. Certainly the criminal system in the US is not ideal but it's doing far better than places where vigilante "justice" is the law keeping force. Roads, public utilities, mandatory vaccination, dietary supplementation are among many examples of the populace being forced into making the right choice.

2015-07-26 at 1:46 AM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

there is no 'for example', japan is a singular case.

What, exactly do you think an example is? If I could provide a few more examples of countries with strict gun control and low incidence of gun crime would you admit you're wrong?

I think that the whole 'reduction in crime rates' thing when firearms are restricted, is singularly due to niggers not being smart enough to make ad-hoc firearms, and if they can't readily get ahold of a real one, they just go back to chucking spears or whatever. Niggers are the group that is responsible for 99% of 'gun crime', all over the world.

Even it that was 100% true (and it's obviously not) we would still have a compelling case for banning private ownership of firearms.

2015-07-26 at 12:15 AM UTC in Fuck religion.

Lanny Bird of Courage

If what you said about the right's charity was true why do the republicans STATISTICALLY donate more to charity than the left?

Are you basing that on Brooks? His methodology was questionable and better studies since then don't substantiate his findings.

Also LMAO! Charity at the cost of economic suicide, oh god Lanny.

Yes, are you saying that in an austrian capitalistic system businesses which incur unnecessary costs won't eventually be overcome by their competition? Because that seems like a pretty big thing in your camp. If businesses can make suboptimal decisions and remain in business perpetually then I wonder why exactly you think that

First of all without government interference the economy would be over 9000 times stronger and could take 'a hit' like massive private charity.

(lol)

Also you seem to believe that most people in the world are absolutely incapabale of being their own economic agents in the sense that they can't take care of themselves. It is implied, since you said the charity would need to be so great it would be economic suicide. See lanny, the anarcho-capitalist system actually believes in people, and that they are able to make their own living in a free market environment.

yeah well... anarcho capitalists are wrong there. Left entirely to their own devices most people could probably survive, sure, but mere survival of its citizens is like the "not-a-genocidal-regime" criteria, hardly desirable. Look at all the dumb shit you see people do every day in the news or even just functional adults who do fairly minor yet obviously harmful things to themselves. You can't entrust everyone's well being to themselves because making good decisions requires intelligence and exactly half the population is of below average intelligence. Under the rule of a powerful state it's possible to have everyone make the best possible decision on every subject where the truth of the matter is known.

You see what i have a problem with is that the government, FORCES me to pay for people that are poor whether they be deserving or not. The notion of deserving comes from the fact if they make an effort to get their shit together or not if they do and they fail because of their own limitation i am happy to provide what economic aid i can to help a person out. But when the government gets involved and basically puts a gun to my head and is telling me YOU ARE PAYING FOR THE WELFARE STATE BECAUSE WE FUCKING SAY SO i take issue with that.

Yup, it's true you're forced to participate in, well, every sort of government. But participating in society is in your own interest, wether you think it is or not, so it's actually a moral necessity that you be forced to participate.

2015-07-25 at 11:43 PM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

The constitution? Ain't nobody got time for that in America, especially politicians.

You're right, most people don't have time to treat a 200 year old document drafted by some ignorant motherfuckers like some kind of unquestionable source of divine truth, nor should they.

I posit that firearm ownership is more than just a fundamental right, because I can go out in my garage and make a zip gun anytime I want. If I had a lathe and some machine shop tools, I could make rifled barrels. You can't stop that. Ever.

Ban or restrict all guns,and I can go arm myself in a few hours. Then I will be a wolf among sheep.

Except this, empirically, is not the case. However easy you feel it is to manufacture firearms, it's clearly hard enough that banning private ownership will cause a significant drop in rates of gun crime. Look, for example, at Japan.

2015-07-25 at 8:55 PM UTC in Psychomanthis should move to the united states

Lanny Bird of Courage

Bank bail-outs. Point demonstrated.

Point not demonstrated. We can imagine reasons (such as reasons actually given) for the bank bailouts without resorting to cronyism yet your model of the US as a crony capitalism has a hard time explaining why telecom, despite it's tremendous resources, has failed to evade legislation that harms its interests.

China not so much these days but it was in the USSR, remember how Stalin thought it would be a great idea to impose collectivization, now that was awesome wasn't it. Millions of people died of famine or had to stand in lines for hours upon hours to get a stale loaf of bread.

What exactly are you basing that claim on?

I do readily agree that animals cognition and emotions are quite like ours.

so, why is it ok for a pack of wolves to take down and eat a caribou, but it is somehow reprehensible if I eat the flesh of a dead chicken, tenderized and coated in flour, egg, and bread crumbs and fried for four minutes on each side?

Because there's a difference between being a moral agent (having moral responsibilities) and being morally considerable (having some rights, being the subject of moral agents' duties). Adult humans are both agents and morally considerable but animals are only considerable. By analogy, if an infant acts or fails to act in a way that causes someone harm it wouldn't make sense to blame it, it couldn't have done otherwise and didn't understand the meaning of its actions, yet we still would consider it immoral to harm infants, despite them not having the same responsibilities as us. Wolves don't seem to have the mental capacity to understand right from wrong, it would make no sense to hold them to a moral standard, but that doesn't mean we don't have some obligation not to harm then unduly.

2015-07-25 at 4:47 PM UTC in Extorting Lanny

Lanny Bird of Courage

bleh, I'll see what I can do. Not hot on the idea of dropping the whole DB though.

2015-07-25 at 7:12 AM UTC in The retarded thread: Fuck, §m£ÂgØL made one first edition

Lanny Bird of Courage

anti-psychotics sounds scary

I don't do scary sounding drugs

2015-07-25 at 7:08 AM UTC in Sitting in an sensory deprivation tank during benzo withdrawal

Lanny Bird of Courage

sounds like a shit combo, I would think you could at least get something for the benzo withdrawal. Not sure what the medical protocol for amp withdrawals is but damn, seems like they should at least give your _something_ to ease you off that shit.

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