Sofie Channel

Sofie Channel

Physicalism and Questions of Identity
Suppose your consciousness was transferred into someone else's body, the rationalist asked me. I asked what does that even mean? I am an entirely physical being. What exactly is being swapped over? I'm not going to evaluate a "but what if you were haitian"...

29 replies 3h ago ✔️ ✔️ 84% ✖️ ✖️

Seems to me like gravity to you is not form but something else ? Or did you just want to give a credible answer to explain gravity ? For me, a credible explanation does not imply that something is not form. Otherwise, form could just be explained away. ...

Physicalism and Ques (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 84% ✖️ ✖️

Digitalist Papers: The Potential of Digitally Mediated Civic Participation
“The dual nature of anonymity and shared identity can allow a new reserved civic participation that can make us more comfortable interacting with fellow community members who can otherwise seem very different or foreign to us, which can perhaps also incr...

Reply. Posted 2d ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Digitalist Papers: T (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Radical political technology
JABowery is a pioneer of computer & space technology, but the last couple of years he's been thinking about how technology can allow humans to set up new forms of governance, operating from the level of an individual and scaling up (libertarian-conservativ...

Reply. Posted 3d ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Radical political te (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

How would we educate a young prince?
In another thread we considered whether a more intelligent population would have fewer social problems. Some comments brought out the intriguing idea that for matters of the functionality of society, structure and regime and therefore education may matter ...

2 replies 3d ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

So many problems of social policies are a result of social "sciences" being completely out of touch with natural reality. That's why Richard Dawkins' ...

How would we educate (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

How a more intelligent/educated population would change the system
I have been thinking a lot about how a more educated population could both become just economically richer or understand/realize the flaws of the system and so create a better one based on less exploitation (as the current one) of less intelligent /fortuna...

8 replies 4d ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

I think you are mistaken in thinking that the welfare state, taxes, and whatnot are about actual needs, rather than the ability of a bureaucracy to insert itself into every aspect of life. We already don't need those things and would probably do better ove...

How a more intellige (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Against 'State of Nature'
Something BAP mentioned recently and that I see a lot of these days is a tendency to puzzle over what man was like in a 'state of nature'. It is weak thinking and should be discarded. Two prominent examples of this I see invoked are evopsych's "on the ance...

2 replies 7d ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

"State of nature" is a speculative construct introduced by Hobbes and adopted by many subsequent Enlightenment thinkers to justify their favored political arrangements. It was used as recently as 1974 by Robert Nozick as the foundation of his work. It is m...

Against 'State of Na (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Shallow Feedback Hollows You Out (nothinghuman.substack.com)
4 replies 7d ago ✔️ ✔️ 83% ✖️ ✖️

I wonder how we could make sofiechan better for deep engagement. Ive already noticed the algorithm punishing people for getting into obscure one-on-one but actually valuable discourses. I dont like that and will probably be changing it. ...

Shallow Feedback Hol (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 83% ✖️ ✖️

New Mag Cooperation - Rumors of Discontent
Palladium’s publication frequency has recently been inconsistent, with the most current article in the most recent issue dating back to 2022. Its purpose should be to provide a reliable platform for uniting thinkers and policy innovators from key hubs li...

13 replies 7d ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

I understand of course that prestige is ultimately a lagging or sometimes even bearish indicator of real intellectual vitality and liveliness so to speak, but I wouldn't be so quick to say that Palladium Mag has lost momentum. Just anecdotally, if you talk...

New Mag Cooperation (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Wokism Is Just Beginning
Nathan Cofnas argues that the institutional take-over from Boomers is going to further strengthen the woke power.

4 replies 1w ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

I don't think Russia's recent strength or weakness has much to do with the woke movement in the U.S. ...

Wokism Is Just Begin (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

The H1B Question, “high skill” immigration, and the purpose of the modern state
We’ve got a growing rift on the pre-inauguration maga right. Elon and the silicon valley techlords want massively increased “high skill” immigration. The maga base and intellectual vanguard are done with immigration and want mass deportation of forei...

9 replies 2w ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

The big question is the Indians and all their political power in the West. There was a thread about it, but it was deleted.

The H1B Question, “h (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

San Francisco Reform Party Thread
With the election of some new more moderate folks into SF government and a more tractable national ideological climate, a bunch of us seem to be thinking the same thing: lets develop a new politics for san francisco. SF is uniquely upstream so this is also...

2 replies 2w ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Yes we have radical aspirations. Our worldview is completely alien to american liberalism and our vision for the nation is revolutionary. That said, in san francisco i believe the correct tactical orientation is muscular moderate. ...

San Francisco Reform (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Will All Our Drugs Come From China?
This is a fascinating article. In new molecular entities count (i.e. drugs entering clinical research pipeline) China has already surpassed EU and is rapidly catching up to US. All the major western pharma companies are licensing drugs from china and expan...

1 reply 2w ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Interesting. I'm skeptical of the existence of beneficial drugs. I always thought it was a dumb cope when Americans are like "yeah China might control the means of production but our pharma industry is bigger. It's like having a bigger entertainment indust...

Will All Our Drugs C (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions by Eliezer Yudkowsky (www.lesswrong.com)
17 replies 2w ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

I agree whole heartedly with this anon. "Gnon created consciousness" because the kind of animals we are and needed to be to fill the open niches in the world needed to be conscious in an entirely natural and straightforward way. Consciousness is necessary ...

Mysterious Answers t (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Merry Christmas sofie channers
Thanks every one for posting with us this year. We wish you a very merry Christmas as we celebrate the re-entrance of the divine light into the world.

1 reply 2w ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Merry Christmas to all!

Merry Christmas sofi (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

The Jocks and the Nerds, allied against the Theater-kids.
"Warriors" and "Merchants" need to ally against the "Priests" - that would be the read from the perspective of Gaetano Mosca to our current situation. ...

7 replies 3w ago ✔️ ✔️ 80% ✖️ ✖️

OK, so that clarifies what you were thinking. ...

The Jocks and the Ne (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 80% ✖️ ✖️

How I came to believe in the goodness of God
I was raised on what my mother called "natural history". The story of creation was one of billions of years in layers of bedrock. The story of life was the struggle of genes for resources and reproduction. When I met christians, they were the unsophisticat...

21 replies 3w ago ✔️ ✔️ 94% ✖️ ✖️

Thank you. Sounds like Lasker goes on the infinitely expanding list of books i ought to read. Any new angles on Gnon theology are highly valuable at this point in our program.

How I came to believ (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 94% ✖️ ✖️

Sofie Calls, "spaces" on Sofiechan - feature request
Could be interesting to have some form of "twitter space" / broadcast audio feed for these conversations. ...

3 replies 3w ago ✔️ ✔️ 79% ✖️ ✖️

I have also come to prefer voice over video. But likewise i prefer text for many things. Careful thought in dialogue is best done in public mid-length text exchanges ime. Thats why places like this are good. But maybe there is new kinds of fun and profit t...

Sofie Calls, "spaces (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 79% ✖️ ✖️

Physicalism vs "Existence"
Many people seem to think there's something to the idea of the "existence" of the world, but I have come to question this. To be clear this is connected to classic questions like "why is there something rather than nothing", simulation argument, Boltzmann ...

3 replies 1mo ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Simulation hypothesis and multiverse theories do not assert that the universe doesn't exist, but rather that it has a particular structure, even if one different from more typical intuitions. They do not bear on the question of "whether the world exists."

Physicalism vs "Exis (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

This Thing Is Not Us. The imperative of cognitive separatism from the global american empire
I'm told "we" have a vital interest in defending Taiwan from China. Perhaps we do. Japan certainly seems to. I do like Japan. But then again, "we" also seem to have a vital interest in not quite letting Japan off the leash. I hear they are months from deve...

9 replies 1mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 96% ✖️ ✖️

The Grimm Brothers saw language as the repository of a people's culture. And so linguistic spheres of influence have effectively become cultural spheres of influence. I don't think the issue here is necessarily the size of the speech community, but rather ...

This Thing Is Not Us (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 96% ✖️ ✖️

"Trump's America"
I would assume some of you might be celebrating, others don't have high expectations of the upcoming administration. ...

10 replies 1mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 84% ✖️ ✖️

Busting leftist patronage networks could go very far. Suppose they busted *all* leftist patronage networks to the same extent the right has been repressed.

"Trump's America" (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 84% ✖️ ✖️

Actually Existing Postliberalism by Nathan Pinkoski (www.firstthings.com)
1 reply 1mo ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Another anon and i were having a good discussion this afternoon about the actual political economy differences between China, Russia, and the US and how political economy is implicated in various revolutions and wars. As we discussed what kind of political...

Actually Existing Po (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Ian's death and antifa at CCC: why hackers must become nationalists. Classic weev (weev.livejournal.com)
Reply. Posted 1mo ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Ian's death and anti (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

The Virtue of Cruelty by Avetis Muradyan (im1776.com)
2 replies 1mo ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Disagree that the essence of masculine virtue is hatred. The Homeric Greeks said it was ἀνδρεία, usually translated courage. Aristotle said ἀνδρεία was developed and demonstrated especially in combat. ...

The Virtue of Cruelt (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Will to Think on Xenosystems (web.archive.org)
4 replies 1mo ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Who is that? Sounds like something from the Thucydides.

Will to Think on Xen (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Milsim West: Shali Front After Action Report
This post breached the character count limit on Sofie Channel, so I'm including a link to it. ...

2 replies 2mo ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

To this group, probably the sub-sections with the following headers: ...

Milsim West: Shali F (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Lessons from Palantir Alums About Building a Tech Company (www.partly.work)
3 replies 2mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 88% ✖️ ✖️

That makes sense. The forward deployed engineers are the engineers the customer should have but don't.

Lessons from Palanti (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 88% ✖️ ✖️

Some Sofiechan Design Questions
Hey folks. I have some design questions to resolve for the future of sofiechan. I want to solicit feedback from those of you who have been using it and helping me. ...

2 replies 2mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 79% ✖️ ✖️

I think I've decided how to handle it. See the new design with harmonized presentation between OP and replies (except that OP must have a title). All posts are created equal, but some are the OP of a thread. We may in future offer facilities for splitting ...

Some Sofiechan Desig (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 79% ✖️ ✖️

A Sketch of Near Future Political Prognosis
I want to speculate for a minute about what kind of revolutionary or reform potential exists in our political-economic system as the current era of boomer senility and liberalism reaches its breaking point. I'm going to skip over a lot of reasoning here fo...

4 replies 2mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️

This is a good point. Mere selectivity and a particular culture isn't enough to work in the way I'm speculating will become more normal. The key is going to be ability to actually reproduce human capital, not ability to attract and shape. I'll believe Spac...

A Sketch of Near Fut (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️

Should You Hide Your Power Level?
It's common in radical chan-derived internet circles to speak of "hiding your power level", meaning not letting the normies know just how much anime you watch, or just how nuanced your opinions of Hitler are. Its a sort of necessity to keep the tradition a...

19 replies 2mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 95% ✖️ ✖️

I don't believe there is any such claim. I suppose if I had some exotic superhuman being threatening me to change one little belief I might consider it, but then I would suspect it was just messing with me or trying to disable me cheaply. But it's a moot p...

Should You Hide Your (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 95% ✖️ ✖️

Whence Cometh Knowledge of Induction?
If we hold our beliefs to the discipline of probability and evidence, some puzzles remain. For example, most thinkers are familiar with the problem of induction. How do you know the sun will rise tomorrow? Well, because it always has and we have precise th...

2 replies 3mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 81% ✖️ ✖️

It's not a particularly profound leap of faith to believe that the order we see in the universe is stable, that is true. But I think it's necessary to acknowledge that it is a revelatory leap of faith, so that we have a very solid and simple example as we ...

Whence Cometh Knowle (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 81% ✖️ ✖️

Can Rationality Support Healthy Morality?
I went to church yesterday with another sofiechanner. It was nice to see a healthy community full of normal young people who live with gratitude and hope. The sermon incisively applied their worldview to support the moral discipline necessary for healthy l...

12 replies 3mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️

Yes i mean a morality that basicaly takes account of the modern scientific cosmology and biology, and then starts reasoning about ends. But in a nietzschean way (examining them first of all as natural phenomena to be explained and analyzed) before taking t...

Can Rationality Supp (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️

rationalists vs. libertarians
rats more elite but libertarians more vigorous

1 reply 3mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 92% ✖️ ✖️

The vibecamp description is depressing. I havent been but my experience with cringe rationalists very much vibes with it. ...

rationalists vs. lib (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 92% ✖️ ✖️

Hedging Against Economic Depression
As you all are aware, the U.S. has been experiencing tremendous levels of inflation recently. Much of this is a post-COVID stimulus reaction. ...

15 replies 3mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

I have a finance friend who owns a lot of equity in farmland as part of his prepper-oriented portfolio.

Hedging Against Econ (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

The Sofiechan Email Apocalypse may be over
Hey everyone, you may have experienced some difficulty logging in as the login emails were increasingly going to spam boxes. This was mostly because we didn't have all the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC stuff set up for email authentication. Now we do. It "Works On ...

7 replies 3mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 81% ✖️ ✖️

There was a serious bug. It should now be possible to post new threads. Also, the email apocalypse isnt over. Mail is at least getting delivered, but its still going to spam. More research is needed.

The Sofiechan Email (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 81% ✖️ ✖️

A Hidden Gem
One of the reasons I am posting here is to discover some hidden gems that cannot be found easily elsewhere on the web. ...

7 replies 3mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 94% ✖️ ✖️

https://ploum.net/the-computer-built-to-last-50-years/index.html

A Hidden Gem (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 94% ✖️ ✖️

Was "going steady" a positive or negative
When I read biographies about people who came of age in the first half of the 19th century, I notice something very different about their courtship. ...

11 replies 4mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 90% ✖️ ✖️

I increasingly find notions of rational evaluation of compatibility leading to consent amusing, since there are underlying physiological mechanisms like prolonged eye contact that can spur the kind of mirror neuron self-other dissolution which operationali...

Was "going steady" a (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 90% ✖️ ✖️

"Bull fighting" from the future: Drone Slaying
For a few months I've been thinking about the history of warfare and sports. My grandfather grew up bullfighting - Most of my memories of him are watching the "corridas" every Saturday. ...

11 replies 4mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 92% ✖️ ✖️

America retains distinct advantages in premier industrial domains, such as computer chip design (note, separate from manufacture), rockets, turbine jet engines, and various advanced materials science. As a strictly military example, no one makes night visi...

"Bull fighting" from (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 92% ✖️ ✖️

Pedagogy
One characteristic I've observed with non-parents in our circles is that they have strong opinions about pedagogy and child-rearing (despite having zero firsthand knowledge of anything other than their own childhoods and a lot of extremist literature). ...

6 replies 4mo ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Sample lesson kernel which can encompass many winding detours: The Collatz Conjecture. ...

Pedagogy (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Road Trip Week 2: Escape to San Francisco
Driving the 101 down the coast, Oregon is the longest and hardest part. Endless repetition of idyllic towns, beautiful coastline, and lush forest. Over and over and over. It would be quite a nice place to retire to, but didn't seem to have much else going ...

6 replies 4mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 90% ✖️ ✖️

I think that's right, but the original context was finding safe locations when freely planning travel in the U.S. In that context, prevention by location-management is the first-order bit.

Road Trip Week 2: Es (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 90% ✖️ ✖️

We need to make mental-firmware for normies
I was talking to my normie parents (Harvard educated, Clinton supporters) about the presidential debate. My parents think I support Trump, but when politics is brought up, I say "both are bad" and divert the conversation. ...

5 replies 4mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 92% ✖️ ✖️

As an example of an institution that is attempting to generate a semblance of autocthonic legitimacy from relatively non-elitist material, see https://www.mcucoop.com/

We need to make ment (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 92% ✖️ ✖️

Thanks to our Admin/Host
I wanted to thank our Admin/Host for coming to stay with us. Having him and his wonderful family spend a long weekend with us was a breath of fresh air. I introduced them to some local families who in turn greatly appreciated the invite. We compared notes ...

1 reply 4mo ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Thank you it was wonderful to visit with you and we look forward to meeting other sofiechanners all over the states as we continue!

Thanks to our Admin/ (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Road Trip: Missing Weeks Through Utah, Wyoming, and South Dakota.
As you may or may not have noticed, I have not been posting weekly road trip reports, and sofiechan has been rather neglected overall. These are related: driving and camping with a family is actually fairly time intensive. I wanted to give some kind of upd...

1 reply 4mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 82% ✖️ ✖️

Banger. ...

Road Trip: Missing W (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 82% ✖️ ✖️

Soft Ware for Hard Power
I learned Photoshop as an autistic youth who wanted to make logos and background graphics for friends' gaming YouTube channels. Thousands of hours of skill development there transferred to every graphic design software I've come across since (Illustrator, ...

15 replies 4mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

One of my old friends from Berkeley wanted to design a new power supply for an amp. He designed it from scratch, used open source PCB design software and had it printed for him by a company specializing in such things. ...

Soft Ware for Hard P (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

Paul Christiano proposes advisory voting/crowdsourced cyber-monarchy back in 2016 (sideways-view.com)
1 reply 5mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 82% ✖️ ✖️

This is very cool. I didn't know this existed, but a friend sent it to me. It's shockingly close to what I envisioned and am doing for sofiechannel. I'll admit I've been inspired at points by Paul's other work. There are commonalities like his friendly AI ...

Paul Christiano prop (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 82% ✖️ ✖️

Classical Education with Confucian Characteristics
I started writing a response to >>1967 but it reached the point where it deserves a new thread, possibly for discussion on further reading groups, ordering, importance, etc. ...

14 replies 5mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 87% ✖️ ✖️

Well, I guess perhaps it's what peking the northern capital represents more than anything. I don't mean to hate the bureaucrats, or even necessarily the bureaucracy itself, but I would like more people to imagine futures that will get the far east out of "...

Classical Education (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 87% ✖️ ✖️

Road trip week 5, 6: The wedding, public land, overpopulation, underpopulation, unsociety.
The road trip at the end of week 5 took us across the bay to celebrate the wedding of an old friend and teacher. I didn't know what to expect, but it was delightfully well done. Congratulations to the couple. ...

1 reply 6mo ago ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Nevada is the open road radicalized and extended into a whole state. This actually makes it quite pleasant. Almost everything is public land, and underpopulated enough that you can do whatever you want. You can just drive off into the bush and camp, and ev...

Road trip week 5, 6: (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

How did Effective Altruism get so big?
I disagree with many of the views behind EA, but I've been fascinated by how they managed to make institutions, build a scene, start companies, NGOs, get funding, etc. ...

14 replies 6mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 96% ✖️ ✖️

Right, you can't serious probe and weigh these questions without getting into questions of ends that are ultimately not utilitarianism. ...

How did Effective Al (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 96% ✖️ ✖️

Road Trip Week 4: The Soul of a New Taste Machine in San Francisco
We're still becalmed in San Francisco, hanging out with friends, working a bit more on Sofiechan, and this week experiencing life in "the tenderknob". ...

11 replies 6mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 86% ✖️ ✖️

It would be interesting to know how the use of these high-class markers played out during the COVID pandemic. Did they downgrade critical examination of vaccine efficacy and safety? Did they upgrade content on the benefits of lockdowns?

Road Trip Week 4: Th (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 86% ✖️ ✖️

Throne, Altar, Freehold. Jim.com's classic defense of monarchist libertarianism (blog.reaction.la)
1 reply 7mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 85% ✖️ ✖️

Good

Throne, Altar, Freeh (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 85% ✖️ ✖️

The Drone Question. Is America screwed by lack of industrial capacity?
The war in Ukraine is teaching us that explosive hunter-seeker drones, FPV piloted or autonomous, are shockingly overpowered. Flying panzerfausts are wrecking armor for fractional cents on the dollar, and flying grenades are blowing the legs off of boys wh...

34 replies 7mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 95% ✖️ ✖️

consumer demand is a complete red herring here. Consumers should not be buying drone swarms or even thinking about it. The question is whether hackers are building novel stuff and then getting into manufacturing, and then whether the manufacturing ecosyste...

The Drone Question. (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 95% ✖️ ✖️

Towards an Illegible Computational Medium of Exchange
You cannot be sovereign if you do not control your medium of exchange, if your enemies can insert themselves into every transaction and tax it or block it at will. ...

9 replies 7mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 94% ✖️ ✖️

There had been a thread on high software profit margins, which has since disappeared off sofiechan. The OP on hackernews might still be relevant (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35904339): ...

Towards an Illegible (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 94% ✖️ ✖️

Welcome to Sofie Channel. Curated anonymous discussion about life and philosophy.
I've been working on a little something in the background for the past year, and more earnestly for the past few months. It's a new social media platform designed to curate a high quality discourse community about whatever topics are important to us. ...

20 replies 7mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 92% ✖️ ✖️

Nope. The only difference between "Anonymous" vs "Numbered" is whether your posts are visibly associated with each other in the thread. It's just to make discussion easier between anons, while also allowing you to dodge association with your own posts if y...

Welcome to Sofie Cha (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 92% ✖️ ✖️

Clear guidance for women
Although I expect that most here will be men, I want to ask: What should we encourage young women to do? ...

25 replies 7mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

I like to use this framing if you're a woman: ...

Clear guidance for w (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

How should we do startups to retain teleological independence and win real power?
If one has ambition, talent, friends, and a good idea, one can build a successful company in Silicon Valley. But why? Money is nice; you ascend the bourgeois class tournament and get finer luxuries, more respect, better mates, better schools, better friend...

17 replies 7mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 90% ✖️ ✖️

Greed: discourage attention seeking baitposts. Lust: automated porn detection and deletion, especially anything illegal. Pride: guard against group narcissism, including among ourselves. Sloth: a built-in reputation time-decay? Envy: encourage individual s...

How should we do sta (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 90% ✖️ ✖️

Road Trip Week 1: Country Island Dreaming from Saanich to Tillamook
Time for some good old fashioned travel journalism in the style of James Anthony Froude: a road trip survey of America's human and natural geography from a Volkswagen camper van. With my family of 6 (4 kids including a newborn), we're driving around the mi...

3 replies 7mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 91% ✖️ ✖️

For interpretation of fashionble moralistic livery, gleichschaltung is certainly part of it, but it's not that forceful in most social circles. Summer 2020 felt like that, but where's BLM now? Rolling in cash, sure, but with little social currency. I think...

Road Trip Week 1: Co (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 91% ✖️ ✖️

Going to bat for "hard materialism"
The saying goes that any discussion eventually becomes about Hitler, but over in the blood and soil thread, it's become about metaphysics. Specifically the valuation of a quantitative worldview, or even "hard materialism", relative to a more holistic quali...

39 replies 8mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 83% ✖️ ✖️

I agree that this notion is important for the delineation of life. I might call it "internal autopoiesis" rather than "basal," as I'm not sure the autopoesis has to be at the "bottom" of an organism. I'm not even sure that the "bottom" is well-defined. Why...

Going to bat for "ha (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 83% ✖️ ✖️

Thoughtcrime is the first discipline in the art of ideology.
Your initiation and first exercise in the martial art of ideology is to think something, and really truly believe it, that would get you arrested if you said it in public. If you can't do this, you are intellectually boxed in. You are cut off from reality ...

4 replies 8mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 92% ✖️ ✖️

>>1296 seems somewhat relevant with regard to this discussion. The timer is ticking.

Thoughtcrime is the (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 92% ✖️ ✖️

Manifesto for the New Right
I saw this video recently, and was struck that the author (Rudyard Lynch) uses many of the same ideas that I have heard in person from the admin of sofiechan. This includes the idea that God is natural law and the followers of God's truth/natural law are r...

1 reply 9mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 86% ✖️ ✖️

He does use many of the same ideas, but this video seems like a low-resolution remix of them with lots of questionable bits added (e.g., EMDR?). ...

Manifesto for the Ne (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 86% ✖️ ✖️

Reading Group Announcement: Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope
Following our discussion at >>1305, let’s read and discuss Tragedy and Hope. This book, published in 1966, is one of the masterworks of Carroll Quigley, arguably the 20th century’s best historian. It’s an ambitious macrohistory of Western Civilizatio...

6 replies 9mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 79% ✖️ ✖️

I'm going to try, but am not sure if I'll be able to keep up with the reading pace due to other commitments. I'll do my best.

Reading Group Announ (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 79% ✖️ ✖️

How to Control an Online Forum
This thread is for the linked post about disinformation and forum control. ...

5 replies 9mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 82% ✖️ ✖️

Currently, sliding is not a huge problem because the front page has everything (scroll down!). Though of course discussion seems to be concentrated in the top few threads. In the long run, we're going to deal with scale and prioritization with tags. There ...

How to Control an On (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 82% ✖️ ✖️

Talent pool for the next regime
There do not seem to be many places in America for someone to become worthy of power. I do not buy that becoming a minor merchant aristocrat by founding an enterprise SaaS company makes one fit to govern. The military seems to be culturally compromised. Su...

32 replies 9mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️

I've heard nothing good (and some bad) about vibecamp. Hereticon strikes me as too retarded of a frame to take seriously, and nothing has convinced me otherwise. The Palladium parties are great with lots of interesting people. Urbit assembly was great when...

Talent pool for the (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️

The Dolphin Question
Now that there are some more people on here I think the hour has dawned to unleash the DQ: the Dolphin Question. ...

21 replies 9mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

There will be space for many different species and subspecies of cetaceans, and therefore many kinds of dolphin culture, in our civilization. For instance, the Yangtze River dolphin and Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin occupy different ecological niches. Resp...

The Dolphin Question (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

Known good guides to gatekeeping?
Suppose you are starting a social club as a means of moving toward something bigger and better. ...

13 replies 9mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 84% ✖️ ✖️

Thanks! Posted here: >>1536.

Known good guides to (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 84% ✖️ ✖️

A musing on unitary power
A common defense of democracy is that while it does not guarantee the establishment of good government, it ensures the removal of a bad one. ...

3 replies 9mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 80% ✖️ ✖️

There are two kinds of democracy that need to be refuted: most urgently of course this lie that western regimes are or even are supposed to be democratic. Lies everywhere must be destroyed, and you are correct that we live under administrative oligarchy le...

A musing on unitary (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 80% ✖️ ✖️

Strong genomic selection is almost feasible, and no one cares?
Strong genomic selection is the ability to create people who have genomes that are strongly selected--by several standard deviations--for some trait. Strong genomic selection would be a civilizational game-changer. For the price of a car, or less, accordin...

5 replies 9mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 91% ✖️ ✖️

There was an interesting post related to this and the prospect of a Biosingularity a few weeks back: ...

Strong genomic selec (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 91% ✖️ ✖️

Guide to Carroll Quigley’s books
Carroll Quigley was a historian who lived from 1910 to 1977. He is a major influence on a bunch of people in our little circle, myself included. Mr. Quigley’s great genius is in analyzing how political and economic systems are intertwined, a subject wher...

5 replies 9mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 91% ✖️ ✖️

I just bought, but have not yet started, Tragedy and Hope, so that one would have my vote.

Guide to Carroll Qui (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 91% ✖️ ✖️

The Biosingularity
Interesting new essay by Anatoly Karlin. Why wouldn't the principle of the singularity apply to organic life?

22 replies 10mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 94% ✖️ ✖️

I have found the instincts to be trainable by philosophy. No one can escape the value grounding problem (that values must be taken on faith), but you can reach reflective equilibrium where your values are self-consistent with everything you know and with t...

The Biosingularity (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 94% ✖️ ✖️

Book Club: Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy.
Dr Alamariu dropped his groundbreaking dissertation last year and by now you have all had a chance to read it. Let's read it again and discuss. This book really hits hard doing two related things that I think are of supreme importance: ...

37 replies 10mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 95% ✖️ ✖️

Agreed, the cover is what provides security, and provides a barrier to external threats (impeccability). For an internet community, especially considering possible threat models, this sort of barrier is far stronger than material security, say, in the form...

Book Club: Selective (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 95% ✖️ ✖️

What books are you currently reading?
I'm reading: ...

10 replies 11mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 86% ✖️ ✖️

I think there's value in that. Despite Foucault being the most frequently cited contemporary philosopher in academia, and there being readymade attacks for abuses of ideas branded Foucauldian, that he's misunderstood. That's my feeling. We can see if it's ...

What books are you c (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 86% ✖️ ✖️

Thoughts on Prospera
Some of you may be aware of the conference/pop-up city called Vitalia (https://vitalia.city/) that is currently taking place in a charter city in Honduras called Prospera. ...

5 replies 11mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

Any sources that you would recommend, or cities in particular? I see an aristocracy as being a network of families whose product is governance. There are other kinds of family networks, providing, for example, particular crafts, quality food, etc.

Thoughts on Prospera (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

Updates on sofiechan's curation system: Cybernetic Direct Democracy
I (admin) just pushed a bunch of changes. You'll see it most obviously in the percent signs next to the save and hide buttons, and as colored emojis indicating which posts are well regarded, and which are about to be deleted. Broadly, this is part of how s...

12 replies 11mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️

I notice a large number of threads converge on approximately 60% up, 1% down. This is two things: not enough people, so when the usual number of us vote and engage in a usual thread, it ends up with about the usual amount of evidence. But then they should ...

Updates on sofiechan (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️

How to Found a Great House (mythpilot.substack.com)
16 replies 11mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 94% ✖️ ✖️

There are some interesting ideas about how to implement societal scalability around similar tenets: ...

How to Found a Great (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 94% ✖️ ✖️

Seven Heresies of "Rationality"
I really wanted to like the Lesswrong rationality project. There was a philosophical core there that no one else was anywhere close to. It was ambitious, elite, curious, systematic, and utterly unashamed. That's what drew many of us in. ...

25 replies 11mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

That would have made him a Christian. Might as well imagine a world in which the lion lies down with the lamb.

Seven Heresies of "R (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

The martial art of ideology
The best idea on Lesswrong was the martial art of rationality. It didn't deliver. ...

24 replies 13mo ago ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️

Interesting. I need to be more consistent with the Romanization. It is a pet peeve of mine that the usual Romanization of the Peking dialect promulgated by the government ...

The martial art of i (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 93% ✖️ ✖️