Psychology – Page 9

Why Devknights Exist

*Alfrid Lickspittle: The Patron Saint of Devknights*

Anytime you say anything in any game community that isn’t licking status quo crack you’ll get dogpiled by the dev defense league. That’s just a reality across every gaming community on earth. People are naturally followers. We’re a species of lickspittle toadies in search of an alpha to give us orders, exploitation, and meaning. That has consequences in every context.

In gaming it means an ever-vigilant mob of change-averse way-it-is devknights.

And if you ever start to thrash them in the ensuing debate you’ll have your thread locked or be banned because it is invariably those types that are given contextual power by the devs.

No one wants to empower people that question them. We only ever empower flatterers and yes-men.

Like the lady said in the 80s… “…some of them want to be abused…”

The solution is always just to let the devknights have their bootlicking hateful last words. Trust me when I say otherwise it NEVER ever ends.

Best thing you can do to help is comment that you agree and then unsubscribe. Or start your own thread and then abandon it. Unless you just enjoy a debate with regressives every now and again.

But firstly, what is a devknight? Anyone who defends a developer’s interests above and beyond even their own is like a vassal. A knight. That is, a warrior servant tasked mainly with suppressing a large but relatively weaker population. (Weaker only by virtue of peacefulness, and disproportionate backing of an exploitative owners class.)

Devknights are slaves in many senses of the word. They are essentially owned, they work for free or very very little, and they have essentially zero chance of ever becoming a lord or king themselves. They are also wildly dogmatic. Think the real historic version of chivalry. (Sexist, hypocritical, racist, classist, etc. You know, fox news.) Not the romantic version of Arthurian legend.

Devknights rush to the defense of developers regardless of their behavior or role in the conflict. This is exactly how a knight was required to behave. A knight was essentially a walking sword. No thought, no questions. Just obedience, propaganda, and mercenary combat.

Obviously this is an exploitative role. And just like in history, the knight’s gain in this was further exploitation of a larger group. The serfs. Like a trustee in a prison. They exchange their soul and integrity for a slightly better ranking in the pecking order amongst the rabble. Like today’s right wing rank and file or middle echelons, they think by kissing lordly ass they’ll meaningfully better their own position.

Rank and file gamers are the serfs here. Typically exploited by a monopolistic owner to one degree or another.

They buy in with our small individual software fee, instead of working the land etc. Our collective small fees pay for the castles of the devs and publishers. And somehow, just like in those times, knights and lords and kings think that their role as administrators makes them producers, when in fact they are parasitic middle men and it is the cooperative principle that is the actual productive multiplier.

By virtue of an economic monopoly. (IPL and ultimately software patents.) We have established a new feudalism. There’s no class mobility in this system. (That is why it badly needs reform.)

So, why do devknights even exist? Well, that’s a simple question with a complex answer having to do, for a start, with the basic ways a child responds to threats. (Fight, flight, appease.) I conjecture that they are essentially people who when faced with a giant monolithic seemingly unbeatable foe, have internalized their enemy’s world view to stay sane.

Sort of a psychologically callow version of ‘If you can’t beat’m, join’m.’

Of course there’s more to it then that. (Always is.) Mostly extending from the fact that the vast majority of engaged gamers, especially from the English speaking western world, are monied young white men. And the speaking online portion of that crowd is disproportionately right wing.

We’re essentially dealing with the gamer version of the tea party here. They in a very literal sense worship greed and psychopathy enabled entrepreneurialism.

Somehow these people have got it into their head that being a thief makes them producers. No doubt a consequence of the totally bogus “job creators” myth of trickle down fame.

Their economic religion essentially asserts that anyone who wants an economy with anything like integrity or consumer protections is an entitled socialist weak greedy parasite whiner.

I oppose these people in virtually every ideological arena since they were essentially manufactured to be trustees in a massive economic prison.

If you don’t like being called a devknight, then stand with your fellow gamers for once.

Why does this even matter?

Because the entire gaming industry, and all debates connected to it, rest on deeper foundations and ideas about what an idea is, what an object is, what a possession is, and what a right is, etc.

Yes, I absolutely am emotional about this because I see the logical roots and leaves of which the entire gaming market and any debate it might contain, is merely a branch.

These game companies are in the same family as Pfizer and Monsanto. The premises and logic that justifies dev behavior in this context, literally kills and tortures people in other contexts. Once seen, it can’t be unseen.

Honestly, given what’s at play in that context, I’m a Vulcan by comparison to 99% of people in those debates. They simply don’t have the training or education to see what I’m seeing, but if they did they would be on fire with rage, and I think rightly so.

When I calmly to any degree converse with the typical devknight I literally feel like I’m talking to a psychopathic sadist, the kind of which is one urge-set away from having a body collection, because that’s the logical end of the road of their self gratifying social Darwinist caveat-emptor right wing madness.

That they are unaware of this is the only thing that makes me able to speak to them, that they cannot be made aware of this is the greatest frustration about debate in this context and a big part of why debate is pointless.

To understand how I arrived here you have to start in a seemingly totally unrelated place.

http://underlore.com/the-apex/

Honestly, if you start from the axiomatic baseline I just linked, essentially stated as pleasure and life are of linked and paramount importance, then I can logically chart you to my opinions on the IPL market as a whole being ethically toxic, including gaming companies, despite the seeming triviality of their product.

It won’t be fast or easy but every step is as far as I know for lack of a better word absolutely correct, to the best of my knowledge. And I am always open to having a step tested.

Further up the tree from that root are ideas about what the point of culture is, what it means to be conscious, the role of compassion, the responsibility of power and opportunity, and so forth.

This entire market is extortion. What happens when humans start depending on hardware to live and software companies start pulling EULA/TOS garbage when the consequence of not paying the fee means your legs stop working or your robotic kidney shuts down?

We have got to nip this crap in the bud. Yeah, it’s “just a game” now, but it won’t always be, and by the time we realize it, it might just be too late.

Again, what happens when all text becomes code? When a computer can turn any cogent description into a program?

If we carried the publisher side of the IPL debate’s ideas backwards to apply to all public domain and the entire material world, life would be basically impossible. Literally everything you do would have a constellation of license fees and it would all be crippled or abandoned because no one could work together on anything. Every memory would be an infringement unless you were paying a fee, and they would have to have access to them and power over them for DRM reasons.

After all you can’t enforce file sharing without knowing what’s in the files. That’s why the DOJ/NSA/etc hates us having encryption. And that all that really matter is that as we move forward, the line between material and software will get ever more blurry.

Devknight logic is completely toxic. And I hate it like I would hate any other predator or parasite.

And I want to jam a spear in its brain. I’m human. /shrugs

Policy Triage

Basically we need a species threat/opportunity triage system that includes prioritized lists of possible actions/mitigations and their cost benefit ratios.

This is how I arrive at my policy positions. I essentially put myself in the position of global emperor and think about how to do the most good for the most people with the least cost in the shortest amount of time while averting or preparing for situations of threat with a similar but inverted criteria.

Climate change for example is actually an easy problem.

Just roll out mid-scale nuclear power as fast as we can till the carbon curves break.

Another easy solution is a UBI and a wealth cap. By bookending the global economy with those elements you can achieve the best of both worlds of planned and free market economies. Again, that problem’s solution would solve a whole series of other problems.

Those root issues are the best things to focus on, the right things to worry about.

It’s a simple matter really to determine them if we are rational. Of course as baseline humans we never will be. We don’t actually change over time, only our environment and technology does. However, we can make ourselves aware of our emotional limitations, and of the fact that those emotions are stopping us from behaving in this rational way.

At the species level we seem to have a kind of pandemic phobia of facing problems rationally. This 0.2% sanity score tells us something about our own nature that should be factored in to policy choices.

It’s perfectly possible for us to decide to give power to rational goals in the abstract without falling into emotional traps. But we first have to decide that’s a good idea. Mostly people seem to reject that. They obey their emotions consciously, almost on principal. Never realizing that makes them puppets of whoever can best manipulate them.

Who owns your limbic system?

My Position on the 911 Debate

It’s a lost cause.

Not even this essay matters.

By the time average Americans are willing to critically consider the official claims surrounding the most politically important event of the 21st century, the current generation will be either AI hybrid transhuman cyborgs, or littered about the landscape in the form of boxed skeletons and jars of ash.

The terrorists already won. Either set, or both. George Bush could have a press conference with a U-haul truck full of irrefutable physical evidence contradicting the official accounts and it wouldn’t matter to any of these programmable people until the TV tells them it matters.

They will believe literally anything the authorities tell them. Anything. Pandemic fact immunity is the United States education system’s greatest achievement.

My position is that the damage is done and by the time the official story is altered to reflect reality. (Even to admit there is debate.) It will be as late and irrelevant as changes to the plaque on the Hindenburg display. (Which by the way we are still debating.)

Even when we admit we were wrong we never change policy about it. For example, the only person to go to jail for the torture scandal is the guy that reported it to us. Just as possession is nine tenths of the law, what’s done is done.

The very fact that the drones consider the matter closed and therefore no longer worthy of study, to the point of feeling justified in overtly mocking anyone who doesn’t open their discussions with assertions of status quo belief, shows how dogmatic and emotional their position is, as opposed to one based on rational skepticism.

Put this in perspective. We still call relativity a theory. We aren’t even sure about gravity yet. And yet these people consider this matter well and truly settled. That’s not remotely scientific or rational. That’s pure ideology.

They are in blatant contradiction because every other historical event is, even to them, open to and worthy of, constant study on academic grounds alone because the science and tool set is always evolving and we as a species are always literally generating fresh sets of eyes.

Without exception even the most clown suit crazy 9/11 conspiracy theory is more scientific than considering the matter completely decided.

Everything to a real scientist is provisional.

Obviously some things are closer to decided than others. For example we’re pretty sure of Lincoln’s birthday. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to openly mock anyone who presents an alternative.

What this boils down to is the fact that these people were patriotically indoctrinated to accept a very specific and convenient narrative, and to on those same grounds ideologically and vehemently reject any contradiction.

So long as these people make it unsafe to even study this event, this will be an item of nationalist dogma, not actual history. Every bit as arbitrary and sacrosanct as the official North Korean state mythology surrounding the Great Leader’s uncanny golf skills.

SJW and Proud

Update:

I need to point out that there is a cultist, intersectionalist, identity politics, problem in this country. The kind that nods or stay silent when some black supremacists says that all whites should be gassed or some lunatic feminist says all males should be raped etc.

Those people get called SJW too, and I agree they need a pejorative label.

SJW kind of fits because their delusion does indeed take the flavor and form of social justice but the whole argument with them is that they aren’t being just at all. As I said in a comment, even the RWNJ thinks they are fighting for social justice, merely their own brand of it.

In that sense “SJW” is meaningless and absurd and it is in that sense which I attack the use of the label below.

I literally know of no competing term. It’s hard to distill the “actual” cultist SJW thing into a single term. I hesitate to even call them intersectionalists because of course that too can be used for good.

It is undeniably a useful way to parse social realities, but only if used with logical rigor and solid ethical axioms. Sadly it often, perhaps primarily, is not, and I don’t know what to call those people as a group other than SJWs in such a way that my meaning is clear.

Basically SJWs of that stripe are like neoliberals in that they are actually are oppressive forces in the guise of ethical reformers.

The search for a superior term continues. Now it may be intellectually lazy to refuse to consider specific grievances (Such as leftist sexism or racism case by case) but at the same time it is indeed practical to seek a set term for a set phenomena. Below, I call them psychotic politically correct zealots, but that also is more arrow than label. It points in their general direction, but doesn’t actually define them. After all, many aren’t politically correct, many aren’t psychotic, many aren’t zealots, etc, but you still presumably know the group I’m talking about. I can share many words that apply to many of the them, like hypocrite for example, but that doesn’t define them either.

However, my disdain for the term and critique of it below stands because regardless of the problems mentioned above, the core reason the 1% cultivates the term among it’s rube right wing minions is to undermine any dissent which threatens them. The term absolutely exists to enslave. Even if the targets of the term often are worthy of contempt ironically for serving those very same divide and conquer enslavement interests.

Original post:

It’s funny when the Internet tough kids call me or someone else an “SJW” like it’s a bad thing.

Yeah, because fighting for justice in society is something to be mocked, right?

No wonder they own us so thoroughly, and the planet hates Americans so fervently. You morons actually overtly attack the very concept of dissent in the name of justice to the point that it’s now a net-wide meme.

Nothing like the miracle of teen pregnancy to turn out a whole generation of enthusiastic sadistic slaves. These chumps think they are the subversive ones, but they literally couldn’t be more wrong.

Fighting the ultra rich and powerful and their pawns, which real SJWs do every day, takes way more spine than harassing some random marginalized deviant minority from the safety of your TOR/VPN.

They want you oblivious and blind and mean and programmable.

So yeah, I’m an SJW. And if you think that makes me weak? Which one of us writes hate mail to congress and puts our subversive opinion on the internet with our real face and name?

You spineless little wretches wouldn’t last 30 seconds as a real SJW. The instant you saw cops lining up in riot gear in front of you, you’d brown your trousers and scream “I surrender” till your throat bled.

You people should also note that the people most in love with hating “SJWs” on the Internet are the overtly racist, sexist, sadistic, pampered, right wing, white trash, yuppie larvae, 1% lick-spittle sycophants, on 4chan’s /b/.

Being proud of being one of them is literally worse than putting your kid in a KKK uniform because it no doubt occasionally includes putting your kid in a KKK uniform.

If you have a problem with a particular line of argument, be specific. Don’t be so intellectually lazy as to lump all psychotic “Politically Correct” zealots in with social reformers of every stripe.

Pretty damn sure the EFF, the Innocence Project, Mayday Pac, Doctors Without Borders, the ACLU and on and on are literally social justice warriors.

These are the same assholes that like to use the word “butthurt” in defense of corporations or the government.

The PR industry invented you pricks:

Who owns your limbic system?

Update: 2016-02-22 0221 PM

From here.

I’m talking here about all these defective hateful /b/tard neocons trying to act like they’re tough for being social cowards and how no one’s buying it except they themselves.

The entire world recognizes how callow and weak they all are. That’s the whole reason they say “SJW” as if it’s an insult. Because they’re too frail and impotent and dim to attack hard targets like the established elites. They have to go for the marginalized, because they don’t have a chance vs anyone else.

They’re rats attacking the wounded. It takes a thousand of them to equal a single real opponent. That’s also why virtually no one talks back to them.

Firstly, everyone knows it’s pointless. Attempting to enlighten them would be about as successful as trying to teach physics to a roach.

Secondly, being the weakest of the weak, they’re individually not worth anyone’s effort.

The only reason I talk to them is because I recycle the content for essays aimed at the entire species. That’s the only way these GIFT examples are even worth my time.

It’s the same reason 4chans /b/tard crowd has degenerated from the once great Anonymous, into racist psychopaths, that are so lazy they’ve even abbreviated refusing to help people down into an acronym. “NYPA.”

These defectives always hammer out an instant NYPA for the same reason they don’t vote, because jaded cowardice, impotence, and insecurity. It’s always racist trolling and NYPA claims as a smoke screen instead.

They whine about content and SJWs, because they are too inexperienced to remember that fighting for social justice was 90% of anon’s point and that fighting the good fight was the source of all the best threads.

The content now sucks because they’re all spineless cowardly racist neocon degenerates. As in they have literally degenerated. Of course the content is awful.

All the real Anons jumped ship for the dark net or specific activist groups. (Like EFF.) So of course the only thing left is trolls too scared to even consider anything more aggressive to authority than a thank you letter. They keep licking boot and pretending anyone fails to see them as anything other than the spineless wretches that they are.

They literally don’t even know who the real enemy is.

Is it any wonder that Trump is their god?

I see the types that defend (or trivialize) abuse and generally take an Internet tough guy attitude, as a collective organism. Like slime mold or a staph infection.

If you dismiss the suffering of others to any degree, you’re who I’m talking to.

We made it out of the primordial ooze all the way through the ice age by working together more often than being psychopathic parasites to any degree.

The first step to being human is caring about the suffering of others. Ignoring the suffering of others because solving the problem is difficult or complicated is weakness.

That’s the whole reason we honor soldiers and strength in the first place. SELF sacrifice. Not the sacrifice of others. Murder is disturbingly easy.

That’s the irony here. These people trying to sound tough by making excuses for abuse and disregard, are actually shockingly frail in the most qualitative sense.

They are all like Alfrid Lickspittle. Tough talking and dismissive but ultimately extremely dim, totally owned (either by people or pathology), and made out of jello.

Social Security Works Email: 2015-07-04 1226 PM

Resharing because I agree, and because the original was an email.

From: http://www.socialsecurityworks.org/

There are two kinds of people who want to cut Social Security—liars, and people who believe the lies. They’ve heard the conservative talking points. “Social Security is going broke.” “Social Security won’t be there for me when I retire.” “The only way to save Social Security is to cut benefits.”

Unfortunately, these Wall Street funded lies have gotten plenty of traction in recent years. So much so that a recent survey shows that 43 percent of young people believe that Social Security won’t be there for them when they retire—no matter how much that same survey shows that these same young people want it to.

It’s time to set the record straight. This 4th of July weekend, when you’re speaking with your Chris Christie-loving cousin at the family BBQ, you have the facts on your side:

Social Security has a $2.8 trillion surplus and can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible person for nearly two decades. After that, even if we do nothing, it will pay out approximately 80% of benefits owed for the next 75 years.
Social Security has not contributed one penny to the deficit because it is independently funded by the FICA payroll tax.
Proposed “tweaks” to Social Security would hurt seniors, disabled veterans and people with disabilities.
All we need is to ask millionaires and billionaires to start paying into Social Security at the same rate as the rest of us and we not only extend the life of the Social Security trust fund, but we can expand benefits to the majority of Americans.

With the facts on our side, we have begun to see a dramatic shift in the national conversation around Social Security. It wasn’t that long ago that we were still fighting a “chained CPI” benefit cut being proposed by President Obama, all Republicans and some Democrats in Congress. Today, 44 out of 46 Senate Democrats and 116 out of 188 House Democrats have gone on record supporting expansion. And 79% of likely voters – Democrats, Republicans and Independents – support expansion!

Open letters to morgan

Integrity deficiency syndrome.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/266510/discussions/0/530645446319098357/

Update: “morgan” is now “DanT”

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004081221

2015-06-30_080302
“And the followup there is Innomen got banned….”

Not “I banned” but “got banned.” Like it was someone else. And certainly no link to the log of the conversation in question (found here: http://underlore.com/banned-from-hand-of-fate/)

God forbid you should let the plebs form their own informed opinions right? That’s why you went all memory hole on my comments in the first place. Isn’t it?

Real easy to win an argument when you can turn off my mic and erase history. But the best part for me is that we both know you’re aware of how devoid of integrity you are. (If this fact “insults” you, grow some integrity.) Which is why you’re only now forcing the last word into your pocket. You’re looking for absolution.

Well of course you’ll get it. You just implicitly threatened everyone. “Agree with me or you’re next.” That’s what you might as well have said. Well not everyone has my level of spine.

You do see how wildly childish that whole comment is don’t you? No one asked. And you didn’t give a damn about conversation flow before when you went all Minitrue on me before the ban. Because how dare I step up to a bully that’s doing your dirty work for you right?

You want to play like you’re this open accepting guy who can handle criticism of his work but clearly that’s a festering bowl of dog snot. (Bonus points for the readers if you caught that reference.)

Well I’ll help you out, Sure the plebs will lick your boot for you, threats of force are effective like that… But if you want a true believer just ask that Vred guy if you were justified in doing whatever the hell you feel like and can get away with, because no matter what you say, he’ll agree with you.

You could skin a kitten on YouTube and blame the users because you made a new forum rule against using the letter E on pain of kitten skinning and he’d be all scolding those who opposed you for being SJWs and not reading the rules and how you owned the kitten and you own the forum and blah blah blah.

And that’s the only kind of gamer you really want, and the log shows that. Sycophantic little toadies you can bully into saying or doing whatever you want and defend all your lousy greedy choices with their wallets nice and open.

You completely expected me to fold. You honestly thought your meaningless little scrap of power in your insignificant little corner of someone else’s back yard was enough to scare me into obedience. (We’re both on Gabe’s turf after all, but at least I’m not out on the corner making money for him in drag.) Heh, if only you knew me even a little. I once talked myself into a broken wrist. I just don’t care in this context.

You little petty tyrants crack me up when you write wildly biased subjective unilateral policy that serves no one but yourselves and then hide behind that policy like it’s an order you cannot disobey, oh woe is you, poor martyr. Never mind that even if that were true it would still be a bogus argument because “just following orders” absolves you of exactly nothing.