Welkin Tales: Eightfold Pantheon and Snakes of Orn

 Due to the nature of consciousness and due to resonance with Dao, each heaven is ruled by two gods, and there's supposed to be eight lesser gods. The correlation with the periodic table is not a coincidence; the cosmos runs on binary. 

 Let me summarize a dream.

 Kernel farmers were supposed to make their fields snake-free, and Orn would bless their, uh, breakfast cereal. In particular there were yellow snakes representing the goddess of wild animals, and this decree symbolized their opposition. 

 The snakes would generally get all pied piper'd, being lead away from the fields by flying representatives of Orn, to a environmental sink. Using charm was easier than using traps or poison, but regardless the dogma was a snake-free field.

 Later, the gods all quietly started shagging each other in the back. Turns out sex with your cosmic opposite is very exciting, and it's not like proper immortals have to worry about accidentally reproducing wrong. The true doctrines changed, but the gods didn't tell anyone at first. For a while, perception of Ornite doctrine differed greatly from what Orn internally intended. 

  "The poor man thinks he's a pious Ornite," they said, seeing a dimwitted hoemaster gently and reverently stroking the yellow snake in his field. Whoops. 

 Eventually the decree went out, realigning Orn's intentions with the religion's precepts. Metaphorically Orn discovered a recipe for his breakfast cereal that wasn't incompatible with animals. Perhaps it used to get disgustingly soggy in a herder's milk but he came up with a variant that held up. The gods gave up on discipline and became libertine. Held pantheon orgies.

 This doesn't seem to have worked out for them, as Satan ate them all. All eight seats are currently unfilled. 

 Certainly their opposition was excessive. Ornites would shun Artemis et al, even kill Artemites found in their territory. Ornites would judge each other not by how well they farmed, but how little they honoured the herder and hunter. Not on the glory of the harvest, but primarily on how well the field was cleared of snakes. Not on purity of joy, but on purity of fear, defining themselves by what of the Cosmos they rejected, rather than that which they revered. Almost all Ornites in fact worshipped Satan's consort, Phobos, as opposed to worshipping Orn.

 But, uh, Satan tried to eat Phobos too. From what I can see, it worked, but she gave him indigestion. He couldn't fully subsume the essence. Symbolically he tried to purify the Dao, because duh Satanism is about rebelling against Existence. He tried to be a front with no back. 

 Not only did Ornites desperately worship Fear instead of Orn, they couldn't even manage to worship Fear correctly. 

 Ultimately this didn't even work out for Satan. There is now a new lord of this world. However, things are still wrong. Nine seats are unfilled. There is no consort. In a sense, Satan's prayer for a celibate Lord was granted.

An Example of Resolving a Social-Status Paradox

 America: all kings are tyrants.
 America: egalitarianism means everyone is a king.
 Americans: "Ah, so we should all be tyrants, tyrannizing each other."

 Thus, de Tocqueville's observations. 

 The political formula of a black government is a lie, which produces an inconsistent social doctrine. It directly conflicts with some obvious evidence. This evidence must be neutralized with another lie, which will fit poorly with the first lie. (And chain into other evidence conflicts, thus producing lie-chain artifacts like the bible.) The inconsistencies have to be resolved in some way or another, such as using the above gymnastics. The gymnastics will produce social pathology, because lies are bad mmmkay. 

 Canadians in particular have gone all-in on pretending to be kings, by adopting enormous and capricious egos which must be sated by grovelling. And becoming genocide-level violent when thwarted. "I see one more plain timbit than requested! Off with her head!" As per the reputation. (At least, getting as close to this ideal as they dare. Luckily like all moderns they're enormous cowards. A self-buffering system.)

Welkin of Humanity

 By my count there are fifty heavens. The term god is a good as term of any english word for the major inhabitants of each heaven. Earth is the lowest heaven, meaning despite everything humans are gods. It's why humans have ecological dominance. Physical reality can't diverge too far from spiritual reality. While it's indeed degenerate for a god to try worshipping itself, humans are divine authorities relative to animals. If your dog worships you, it's because your dog should worship you. However, lots has gone wrong.

 Rather than expressing their divinity by projecting it against the world, humans turned to Satan to try to appear to have more divinity than other humans. "I want to treated as if I have more divinity than I have." They became embroiled in the relative rat-race. Even if a human wins against his rival, his rival can simply also turn to Satan, returning the apparent hierarchy to exactly the same ordering as the underlying true hierarchy. In an attempt to subvert this, humans have now turned to competing to be as profane as possible. Revolution: attempt to turn the hierarchy completely upside-down. Naturally it turns out the most divine humans have the most to desecrate, so, insofar as you're stupid enough to play this game, the hierarchy is exactly the same as a Satan-free hierarchy. 

 Great sound and fury, signifying nothing (that wasn't already signified). 

 Farmers generally outnumber hunters 100:1. However, who is the 99%? Of necessity, it's all men who wouldn't otherwise have survived.

 It is not hard to make the case the 99 are all men who shouldn't have survived. After all, look at the state of post-farmer society. Farmers are mutants and criminals; genetic rejects.
 The wag @lolicongress once described Japanese history as a war between the nobles and peasants. What he failed to notice was the result: decisive victory for the peasants. Japanese society is based on pandering to peasant superstitions and atropia. Even their writing symbols are optimized for minimal cognition, and secondly for pointless zero-sum internecine conflicts. "I memorized more kanji than you, neener neener." "But if the words appear the same, how am I supposed to know they have different substances? From context? I can't read context, lol."
 I wonder if the Japanese ever make up kanji and pretend they're obscure, the way Westerners make up words and pretend they're real?
 Even Japanese myths are about how it's fine, good, or at least unavoidable to surrender to your obsolete emotional impulses. The Japanese underworld goddess, Izanami, is a bitch because she can't get over dying in childbirth. Their son the fire god, Kagu-tsuchi, died because Izanagi blamed him for Izanami dying in childbirth. You dumb cunt, who do you think impregnated her? The Japanese apparently can't even imagine anyone noble enough to blame themselves for their own mistakes. In Japan, blame is desperately to be avoided, as accepting blame is considered feminine or even childish. "You were so weak you couldn't force it onto a scapegoat? Loser, lol." "He's down! Get him!" It's amazing they manage to accomplish anything at all. Functional Japanese companies have to come up with elaborate (expensive) rituals so that leaders can change plans without accepting any blame. Have to find some newborn to behead instead.
 The meiji restoration guy must have had some absolutely brilliant blame-hacking. I wonder why it wasn't nihonjin's fault that nihon needed to modernize?
 Note that in this context [modernize] means to adopt Capitalism. Capitalism is about not being Communist; about being responsible instead of irresponsible. Had earlier Japan embraced responsibility without being forced by intolerable humiliation, perhaps it would have been English mercantilists who had their policies forced open by a Japanese merchant marine. 

 Metaphorically, Japan couldn't come up with steamships or cars because they killed off their own fire god. Deprecated their own energy. Atropia.

 Of course, Japan is hardly alone in having issues with accepting responsibility. 

 Europeans have gods who suffer hardship when they try to weasel out of the consequences of their own actions. Cronus also tried to kill his male heir but, uh, it didn't work out for him.
 This is due to the fact pastoralists had better military technology than farmers. Pasture can't support nearly the population densities of farming. This means pastoralist anti-mutant selection is much stronger, like the other protein-enthusiasts, hunters. Europe wasn't nearly as badly flooded by peasants as the Orient was. Not until Rome and Christianity.

Black Government is War

 Black governments cannot declare peace. They are always at war with the host society. Also sometimes at war with foreign societies, assuming they can get their head out of their ass long enough to notice a foreigner exists.

 Politicians are adept at getting in front of trends that are already happening and claiming credit. States are credited with writing and stuff, which is nonsense. Black governments erode sophistication and complexity. They attack everything delicate, then turn their attacks on the hardening structures which resist its trespasses. NASA retarded space flight and likewise, even if we can't nail down the details, black governments have been a lodestone weighing down cultural development. You can't elucidate the principles of perspective drawing when there's cannon shells whizzing over your head. Art requires peace, which requires ejecting the black government. Society happens despite the drag, not because of it.

 If society doesn't win the war against its own government, it dies. Then the government, being a parasite which just lost its host, also dies. Hence the market cycle. Hence the fall of empire.

Wealth Cap and Free Will

 It is not exactly like your choices don't matter. Rather, the fact that your choices are yours, are determined by you, means the choices, and therefore their consequences, are pre-determined. 

 You are who you are. Hence, your choices will be what they are. There's a wealth cap because, to rise above your wealth cap, you would have to not be yourself, in direct logical contradiction.

 "But what if I'm the kind of person who raises their cap."

 That's already factored in. Sometimes, cap-raising folk have already chosen to raise their cap as far as they can. If it's possible to raise it continuously, then at any moment you're the kind of person who has a cap of that magnitude. It's just math. 

 Making choices isn't about determining the future, but discovering it. You are who you are, but even you don't know who you are; nobody else has any chance of knowing who you are until you act and show yourself. And it goes all weird from there.

Amish vs. Decay

 If the Amish didn't exist, you could argue that resisting the temptations of Communism/modernity is a superhuman task. Nobody could possibly be expected to succeed. "Mortals are simply too weak."

 But the Amish do exist. 

 If you live in an aristocracy, and you don't want to decay into a timocracy, all you have to do is say no. Identify decay as a temptation, and decline. That's it. That's all. 

 Mortal societies decay because mortals demand decay. More worse more better.

I can't get over the delusion that there must be someone else who doesn't want treachery out of life

 Really struggling with that one. 

 Surely there must be some way for me to meet such a person, right? Surely? 

 Well, empirically, no. 

 "But...surely...."

 [Surely] is not an argument. Things that don't happen, don't happen. Not understanding why doesn't make them less unlikely. 

 ...I'll stop believing it now, right? Surely?

 "[Surely] is not an argument..."

Elections are Made Up and the Votes Don't Matter

 Reminder: your vote doesn't count. There is no evidence whatsoever that your vote matters. Innumerable proofs. Quick one: there is no black market for votes. You can't sell your vote because it has a value of 0. There has never been a black market for citizen votes.

 This means they defrauded the 2020 elections basically as a hobby. It's all kabuki theatre - it doesn't matter who gets in. They did all that ballot harvesting and dead man cloning and blatant vote-printing solely because they had nothing better to do. "What happens if I try this? Well. Huh. That's cool I guess." 

 ...are you entertained? Hopefully at least one of you was, because...

 

Being Explicit: Wealth Cap Means Don't Worry

 If you trade stress for more wealth, it will always be exactly worth it. If you stop stressing you will lose wealth of exactly the value of the peace of mind you gain. 

 When an action doesn't seem like it's worth it, it's because it's not. If you're preparing against eventualities you genuinely care about, it's not stressful. You don't get anxiety about going to the store to buy food, even though you'll agonizingly starve to death if you don't. You get anxiety about trying to make your boss not fire you, because there's nothing you can do about that, if and only if there is nothing you can do about it. You get anxiety because you've already spent your wealth cap, but hallucinate that you can spend more. 

 You can go ahead and stop hallucinating that.

 Put another way, if you don't have money for food and looking at starvation, you still don't get anxiety. While $food > $bank is unpleasant, there's nothing ambiguous about it. You don't attempt to go to the store anyway. "Why doesn't this fiver buy $10 of food? How do I make it buy $10?" <= that's what anxiety is. It feels like you're going crazy because you have gone crazy. Cue midwit meme. Solution: drop the delusion. 

 It is logically impossible to "miss out" on anything. If you do miss something, it will merely open up space in your wealth cap and you'll be able to allocate it to something else. 

 There's a few things you can do to avoid great divergences of spiritual and physical reality, especially the ones that can kill you. However, you have almost certainly done all these things already. Accept that they are done, and stop trying to buy things you don't have the money for.

  

 Crime really doesn't pay, unless doing crime is your end goal. If treachery is what you want out of life, then of course it's foolish to trade treachery away for anything. Otherwise, it always counts more than double. Crime doesn't just make the neighbourhood poor, it makes the criminal poor. Even if they're the king. 

 You never have to be concerned about the criminal getting ahead of you. Mindlessly secure your shit and don't worry about it. Even if he gets temporarily ahead, turns out karma is real and it will drag him twice as far back. 

 You don't have to worry about life-changing opportunities. They're surprisingly common. Daily for some folk. Revenge is Sour: if you "miss" one, it won't be long before you can make your own. The condition of seeing a life-changing opportunity is having already changed your life. 

 If you get "life-changing" amounts of money, you will squander it. Whether it's from the lottery or from fighting like crazy for a promotion. Don't worry about trying to grasp for every dollar. If your physical wealth exceeds your spiritual wealth, all that will happen is a correction event.  

 The upside is that if your physical wealth is greatly lower than your spiritual wealth, you will start finding $20s lying on the sidewalk. Usually metaphorical, occasionally literal. Karma is real and debts will be paid in both directions.

 Don't worry. I mean, unless you like worrying. In your case worrying more will count against your wealth cap. You will have to spend time and money and ignorance on worrying more, but you certainly allocate all your disposable wealth to worrying if that's your jam. 

 You can, however, allocate your wealth wrong. Trying to get rich for wisdom won't work. Trying to get wise so that you can be rich won't work. Especially the latter - wastefully spending your money is easy, but returning to ignorance is distinctly less so.
 Especially look out for things with proper market prices that you don't crave. If you live in a large house but don't value lots of living space, it's the market value of the house that will be charged against your wealth cap, not the value of the space to you personally. If you buy a flag specifically to burn it or a bottle of libation specifically to pour it out, the fact it has no value to you won't stop it from costing you part of your total lifetime savings, because it's an exclusive good that has value to someone else.

Americans Are Drunk

 I saw a guy. He was really dumb. Then I saw him get very drunk. He acted the same, if, amazingly, even dumber. You couldn't tell he was drunk if he hadn't told you. No novel slurring. Mannerisms identical. Then I realized I had it backwards: you couldn't tell if he's sober. Then I realized he was normal. Americans act drunk even when they're stone sober. Including acting stupid.
 This guy drinks constantly and is probably an alcoholic, but the endpoint merely highlights the trend.

 I never really saw the problem with drinking on the job, because I've never met anyone who acts sober when they're sober. What's the big deal? 

 I never really saw how drunks are supposed to be annoying for sober folk. I mean, they're annoying anyway? What's the big deal? 

 Americans aren't sophisticated enough to approve of both sobriety and drunkenness. Context sensitivity is too far for these simpletons. Prohibition failed, so they approve of drunkenness. Everyone should be at least tipsy at all times. If you can't actually booze up, you should fake it. Hence, they do. It's so common they forgot what it's about, and acting brain dead is just how they do things around there.

 Americans have cultivated a culture that's all but intolerable when you're sober, thus the strong push to get everyone to the bar, so they can bring their norms and their biology into harmony. Everyone is drunk and annoying anyway; might as well be actually drunk. Less annoying that way. Pratchett's Sam Vimes was knurd, he had to get at least a little drunk to reach normal. That is, he was actually sober as compared to an American's sobriety standard; incapable of acting drunk unless he was genuinely intoxicated.

 E.g. Americans aren't gregarious. It's just mimicking the drunk's lack of filter. "I love you man, no homo." "We literally just met." "You're the best." "You're not even listening are you." E.g. Americans aren't easy to scam, they're just too drunk to distrust. E.g. Americans like cars because you're allowed to act sober as long as nobody's looking.

 The only question. Which is it:
 1) "Nobody could possibly be stupid enough to believe I'm sober."
 2) "Nobody could possibly be stupid enough to believe I'm drunk."
 Bit of a toss-up.

Social Status vs. the Wealth Cap

 Social status is special. It's valueless wealth.

 You can have great social status, or a great wife, but as 'great wife' is defined as a % of your wealth cap, you can't have both. Unlike money, you can't buy anything with social status. Unlike health, it doesn't feel good. You won't be wise, so the world won't make sense. 

 You can have a marriage, a relationship and cooperation, or you can have a trophy, someone for showing off, but you can't have both. Nobody is that rich; guaranteed, as this is a relative thing. Your competitors are others with similar wealth caps, who can afford exactly as much wife as you can. If you try to underspend on wifing but get a trophy/cooperator combo in that category, she will be less attractive than your rivals' choices.

 Even if you do have money, you won't be able to spend it; it won't be real money. If you have a great house you won't be able to spend time at it. If you have an amazing car collection you'll be too afraid to drive them on the actual road. (And anyway you can't legally drive tanks on the road.) If you can spend it at all, it will have to be spent on maintaining your social status. Rat race treadmill.

 Even if your prestige attracts numerous wonderful scholars, you won't be able to understand what they say. You won't be able to sift the wheat from the chaff. It will be impossible to secure yourself against charlatans without also securing yourself against the folk you were trying to attract. This extends to dieticians and personal trainers. The prestige (or money) on offer will select for scammers who spend time on marketing, not on lorekeepers who spend time on gathering lore.  

 I suppose the wealth cap explains the problem with polygyny. It is impossible to afford two wives of the quality of a singular wife you could afford. If you get a bunch of wives to show off, they will all be individually terrible. Among other things they won't be able to get along. Total wife wealth remains constant. 

 Unlike great friends, you can't spend time with your social status.
 If you get in trouble, your friends will help you.
 If you get in trouble, your social status will attract rivals who will try to kick you while you're down.

 Social status is just there. It is still an allocation of wealth cap, because the holder values it.

 Relative or zero-sum competitions are never worth engaging in unless they have some non-zero-sum side-effect. All you manage is trading useful wealth for useless wealth. Accumulating social status makes you poorer in every way that matters. 

 Perhaps that's a good thing. You should seek huge social status precisely because it's a huge handicap. Take on the challenge, win anyway. Fail and fail and fail to have wealth against social status, so that you can finally succeed in losing all you social status.

 I can't help but say this is still the worst option. 

 

 Other handicaps are useful to others. If I break my back hoeing a row in a farm, others can at least eat the grown food. If I break my back trying a backflip, there is no useful wealth as a side-effect.
 I've said it before: seeking social status is inherently traitorous. It is a crime. As such, social status double-dips. A crime committed is wealth and counts against the cap, separate from any wealth you gain from it. This is why you can't spend the money that accrues to social status. Your social status cap is at most half your total cap, as the other half is taken up by the crimes necessary to build the status. 

 I think I could say that more clearly. If you steal $10, you have $10, which counts against your cap, and someone else is out $10, which also counts against your cap.
 If you sell something worth $10, you have $10 against your cap.
 Not really that complicated, yeah?
 Not only is someone else out $10, their suffering counts against your cap. The stolen $10 is worth less than $5 of legitimately-gained wealth, see? This is why criminals want you to be happy about crime. Relieves the pressure on their cap.

Speedray Works

 I'm somewhat suspicious of selection effects with uThermal, but they do perform as expected. Void ray strike force lets you deny infinity bases.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znop1PJSt3U

 

 If Thermal played enough to understand the speedray upgrade, he could have saved several voids. Incidentally he makes the classic error of making something that's going to die anyway try to run, instead of letting it shoot. Also carriers are dramatically better with the air armour he wasn't getting.

 Selection effect: the opponent did the Mechabellum error where he was countering the old tech while Thermal did new tech, thus constantly one step behind. When opponents don't make these horrible errors, Thermal won't post the game, because he basically just loses. As it happened he tried the void stuff against someone having an off day. 

It's Important So I'm Saying It Again

 Modern countries don't have men and women. Modern countries have women and prostitutes. The prostitutes are allowed to whore themselves to the women if they want, or even, lately, to each other. The women have to (stochastically) pay through the nose for this, however.
 Voter = woman. No exceptions. These days, prostitutes are also allowed to vote, because elections are made up and the ballots don't matter.
 Having a wife is dramatically cheaper than a prostitute, but of course what use would a woman have for a wife? It's not like she can take care of one. Thus marriage is de-facto banned.

Long-Term Consequences of Spiritual-Physical Delta

 Imagine your physical economy is 20% richer than your spiritual economy. Eventually the physical economy will converge on the spiritual economy. The wider the delta, the stronger the pressure to converge.

 What about the meantime? In fact, the physical economy won't converge on losing the extra 20%. The delta incurs a karmic cost. The spiritual reality will continually decay as long as physical reality is not in alignment with it. The economy will have to converge on 95%, 90%, 80%. Only after paying the karmic toll will the spiritual economy rebound and allow the physical economy to reach 100%.

 Czarist Russia incurred a toll. They were richer than they had a right to be. Hence, Russia suffered the USSR years. 

 Net worth is genetic. You can only rearrange the worth. More money or more health. More wisdom or more money. More beauty or more strength. You get richer as you get older because youth is wealth and older folk have spare wealth cap to allocate to money.

 You can also trade future wealth for present wealth. The rates are never worthwhile, but you can. 

 If your physical economy spends ten years 20% above its spiritual equilibrium, it will have to spend forty years 10% below. Or something in that ballpark. 

 The more someone desperately strives for money, the poorer they end up, ultimately. They manage to push themselves above the spiritual mean, and it costs them and costs them and costs them.

If You Can't Sell Yourself Into Slavery, You are Already a Slave

 Q: Why can't you sell yourself? A: You're not allowed to sell off your master's property, obviously.
 There are many good arguments for being unable to sell someone else into slavery. There are none against selling yourself. See also: needing special permission from master to be allowed to die. Killing yourself is vandalism against the State.

 Moderns are the most grovelling, servile bugmen ever to wiggle across the planet. 

 You can't marry a woman. The women are all married to the government, who lets you rent one for awhile, and charges through the nose for the privilege. Megapimp.
 As the women are all claimed by the government, naturally all the women's children are owned by the government, who asserts the right to take the child away and do whatever they want with it, for any duration and for any reason. The biological parents are forced to take care of the government's children according to government standards.
 No matter how much you barter, wheedle, scheme, or plot, you can't own land. The government charges you tax, you're renting. The government asserts the right to tell you what you can and cannot build on its land, as it obviously would. Through "eminent domain" the government asserts the right to kick you off its land at any time.
 You can't have your own job. The government charges your employer a (large!) percentage for renting its mortal resources.
 Etc.
 Etc.

 You know, it must be immensely frustrating for the boot. It's trying to stamp on a mortal face forever, and the mortal is licking and caressing the boot. No matter how hard it stamps, the damn pervert gets off on it. "I love a Strong Central Government! Slave me harder, daddy!"

 Admittedly this boot is pretty soft. Very lickable. I should say no matter how hard it tries to stamp; as the limp-wristed population is owned by a limp-wristed leader who just can't stamp all that hard. "Eh! Eh! Uh! Ih!" Allegedly in the interests of maintaining the ridiculous charade of the slaves not being slaves, massa is downright libertine. "You think for yourselves!" """Yes! We think for ourselves!""" "Very good!" """Thanks daddy!""" The women prostitutes are largely free to whore themselves to whoever they want, provided they're 18 when they do it. Certainly the parents have no say, as is meet for slaves. The government could do all sorts of horrible things to its children, but only does one of them. The government's minimum standards on caring for children are quite minimal. As long as you're not a heretic they won't even bother to check. The slaves can slave themselves out to whichever renter they want, and can even choose not to work and get paid for the privilege. As long as the government isn't currently asserting its right to make you fight and die for it, that is. The slaves are paid a pittance with which to buy any kind of disposable trinket they like. The government will approve of the sale of all sorts of useless tat. The slaves can transfer themselves to a different master...provided the new master will accept the hassle.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse, your yearning to be free...so we can ensure they are wholly divested of freedom." As always, slavery is not particularly profitable. Slave owners keep slaves due to  non-monetary motives.
 I would say it's outrageous, but the slaves are clearly having the time of their lives. You guys have your disgusting fun with that, I guess.

On Failure and Manicheanism

 Like everyone else, I was raised on Good vs. Evil. 

 As I am something the softlings would call a philosopher, I tried to find the correct descriptions of good and evil. What were the correct poles? What is "bad" exactly when it's at home?

 Problem: through Death, Life. Through failure, growth. Through Destruction, Wealth. Through hatred, enemies, through enemies, power. Through power, love. Through injury, virtue. Through despair, glory. 

 I believe the Gods, the true "creative" force of the universe, deliberately create new things through demonic energy. They create a hell, that must be invaded. They create a devil, who must be vanquished. Even ex nihilo must be earned. Creation is accomplished by destroying its opposite. 

 I would do that solely because it's fun. The greater the deterrence of the hell, the more devastating the devil, the more fun it is.

 It's not an accident that evil exists. It's not a punishment. It's a gift. Every evil is an opportunity, both for plunder and for honour. Even dying by taking on a power too infernal is better than refusing the fight.

 If you can't break your oaths, then keeping your promises is meaningless. The harder they are to keep, the more honourable. Friendship is meaningless without treachery.

 Gods, then, are incredibly destructive. A God who doesn't destroy is one that will converge on their spiritual nonexistence.

 Success, through quitting? Yes, probably. I don't grok that one yet, but there's no reason to think I never will. 

 Useful vs. useless? Efficiency is a sin, lol. 

 Permission, through forbidding?

 Through treachery, comrades.

 

 In conclusion, the Dao. 

 Nevertheless, there is something one ought to avoid. There must be something which is...anti-Dao. 

Destruction is holy.
Death is holy.
Failure is holy.
Hatred is holy.
Despair is holy.
Profanity is a gift.

Big wtf.
Where is unholy?

 

 Truth, through falsehood? A devil is an inherently false soul, and creation happens through them, as they have to be killed. Thank the devil for giving you the opportunity to fight it; thank the devil, for putting up a terrible fight, as the most terrible devils are in front of the most glorious divine truths.  

 I believe there is an idea, a fairly simple and even mortal idea, which encapsulates the anti-Dao. However, mortal language is explicitly designed to conceal it as much as possible. 

 You want to lose, but not die. You want to die, but not suffer death. You want to hurt, in service of avoiding suffering. You want to sin, specifically so that you can repent. Forgiveness is merely for keeping repentence score; once you score enough, sin again. Failure is success.

 Well, you want to learn what you want. You want to eschew all mortal propaganda, eschew all social constructs, shed all pressure, and achieve gnosis of your core desire. Thus, you can see how the only way to achieve that desire is to inflict the total destruction and failure of that desire upon yourself. 

 Nirvana is samsara. The more samsara it is, the better. Letting go of suffering makes you suffer more, which is how you know it's working. Unattach, so you can gain more and more and more attachment. Impermanence is grace.

 Revelation, through concealment: perhaps the way to learn of this core desire is to have everyone and everything gaslight you, trying to make you think it's literally anything but what it is. 

 

 To Exist, touch non-Existence. Do the impossible, embrace it, that you might be more and more possible. 

 

 I suppose the Dao that can be worded is not the Dao.
 Likewise, the anti-Dao that can be talked about is not the anti-Dao.
 Somewhat plausible. I will ask the Dao about it.

A Pattern of Mistaken Virtue

 From 585-1085, Europeans embraced a religion they thought was Christian but was radically anti-bible. Thought it was Satanism.

 Due to embracing the bible in 1085, circa 1585 Europeans embraced Science, which they thought was bad because it was anti-biblical. Thought it was profane.

 It occurs to me that Moldbug thought he was writing in a leftist mode. "progressives are generally decent, intelligent and well-meaning people" Clearly, such folk wouldn't be intentionally rejecting the truth, right? They must be accidentally misplacing their faith, not forcefully projectile vomiting at the slightest contact, right?

 Moldbug was no doubt horrified when he attracted a rightist less-leftist following. Hence the pivot to Yarvin. Pseudonymity is less-leftist, Yarvin realized; Voltaire fucked it up. For example. Especially in Communist-ascendant jurisdictions, anyone "good and sweet and true" writes under their real name, see? 

 Autistic nerd, lol. 

 Conservatards are clearly rejecting the truth because they can't handle it, thus if conservatards are accepting your message, it must be wrong. Get it?

 Hypothesis: some folk think Moldbug is a bad writer because they read the open letter and dawkins series, which are overall terrible. Tested this hypothesis by re-reading the first few entries to see if it was accurate. Of course, it was accurate. Yes, these things are a waste of time even for Moldbug fans. Dawkins 1 promises a great post, then stops, and the promise is never delivered. For example.

 In the course of testing this hypothesis, I noticed a) the actual problems with Moldbug's writing, which aren't new to Yarvin, and b) it makes way more sense if we assume it was never supposed to be less-leftist.

On Failure II

 As the softlings say, if you never miss a plane, you're spending too much time in airports. To accomplish anything of true value requires open unmistakable failure. 

 Through Death, Life. The Romans were right: Pluto sat upon unimaginable wealth. Divine treasures beyond beauty and beyond counting. It is only in the underworld that any and every thing can be found.

If you already knew how to do it, you wouldn't prove anything by managing to do it. Plan to fail. The more you can plan to fail without quitting, the greater the scope of the final success. 

 The ideal man plans to fail eternally at the task with an infinitesimal chance of success; succeeding despite everything would have unlimited value. Yet, this can be burdensome, we must also choose the merely improbable, to sustain us along the way. 

 If your society quits in the face of failure, it cannot succeed. It can't even play the game.

 

 Most religions are not alive. They have Popes, yes, but the Popes are shadow Popes. They don't have a goal. They know not what they plan to do. Without a plan, a man is literally nothing. A fleshy breeze, nothing more than a cell of a weather system. 

 Ironically, America, of all places, once had a plan. A purpose. They were going to go to the moon. If they had actually gone there, it really would have been glorious and cool.
 I suspect they could not tolerate failure. They could not withstand finding themselves in a blind alley. They discovered some reason it was impossible...instead of being excited to challenge the impossible, they gave up. They faked it.

 Personnel is policy: Americans are quitters and failures, they couldn't possibly have a real goal. They discovered some reason it was impossible because, deep down, that was what they were truly journeying for the entire time. Physical reality had to converge on purposeless spiritual reality. "We went to the moon, we won, game over, everyone go home now. Nothing else to do here." The destination reached reveals the destination demanded; reveals the character of the journeyman. 

 

 To have a true society, you must exile the quitters. If they ridicule the losers, then they are garbage. Cowards go outside, in the dump. Honour the glorious prey, honour the glorious chase. Thank them for making it hard for you. Nothing that inhibits accepting impossible "failed" contests can be allowed.
 You can't allow the cowards to refuse to fight. Mercy is a sin. Fight them all the way out. Scream, with rage, with fear, with joy, scream and shatter their cowardly souls. Feels them until they ain't real. Let them experience apocalypse and revelation.

 A living society must have a goal. They must have a goalkeeper, who unlike the "sports"man doesn't prevent you from reaching the goal, but in fact spurs you toward it, but more importantly, when the goal is reached, they pick a new one. When the society stops failing at their goal, they need to look at what new failures have opened up to them, and pick one to go fail at. Perhaps call this keeper of goals the Pope. 

 The more worthy the goal, the more likely Reality will brutally inflict visions of impossibility. And praise be. Let black pills rain from the sky, let them grow from the ground, let them drown the ocean. Let the backlash be savage, the pushback ferocious. Show me despair! Show me armageddon itself! The society cannot fold. 

 Remember what 'agony' really means: an agon is a contest. Agony is simply Greek for contesting. Agonizing means to fight. Without fighting, you cannot win. If you cannot win, you cannot journey. If you cannot journey, you don't exist.

 For example, there is a correct goal for families in the present world. It is this: "Parenting reseach project." How do you raise the healthiest, the most powerful children, without spending so much the children have to pay for it? The purpose of each generation is not to parent as their parents did, but to parent better. The purpose of uncles and aunts is to A/B test.
 Contrast the degenerate goal of 'generational' wealth. Wealth to buy what? What is it for? Certainly generational wealth is not a bad means to pick, it certainly isn't a trivial ask, but...this is clearly a fake goal. Satanic. They want social status, not wealth. A petty relative goal, not an absolute physical or divine goal.
 Children of the parenting research project will eventually reach some best practices equilibrium. Imagine a school of expert parents, nice. Now we can ask: what kind of goal would the children of these families set? The purpose of this journey, of this destination, is to buy the right to set off on a better journey. One I myself cannot even imagine.

Remember Both Red and Blue Hate it When Republicans Win

 "Shape up! Keep it together!" That's the red reaction when a red party wins an election. Republicants are trying to lose, and Demobrats are trying to win but make it look like a fight. When red wins, it's like blue picked a fight with a scarecrow and lost. Utterly pathetic. "You can do better!"

 One way to see the Biden thing; "See? We can win against the scarecrow whenever we want!" Nobody genuinely minds the steal since for both sides the goal is that blue wins. However, they lost at the other part of the game: making it seem like a fight. You can rig the election all you want, but you're not supposed to allow it to appear as if it's not a real election. If you can't keep up appearances, what's even the point? Just openly have a despotic dictatorship and have done with it. 

 Republicants are training dummies. They're supposed to keep Demobrats in shape. At least, they're supposed to be whipping boys so that Demobrats can get exercise with some vigorous whipping. Unfortunately, Republicants love getting whipped so much the Demobrats recoil, don't want to have anything to do with them, and lose elections. 

 That and they're exactly as senescent as they appear. The decay is advanced. They can't get it up for even the most depraved of advanced professional prostitutes. The sluttiest display does nothing for them. The girls were so happy with Hugh Hefner because he had ED and their real job was to lie about it.

On Failure I

 Any idiot looks good when they're winning. Handling success is easy. In real life, you gain XP when you lose a fight. 

 Succeeding teaches you to become set in your ways. It instructs you that you have nothing more to see. Success is kin to stagnation. With success, you risk decay and ultimately death. Going from strength to strength, from success to success, is a bad sign.

 Why, it sounds almost like cowardice. The coward successfully avoids the contest, and in so doing, cores out his own existence.

 Failure is the true instructor. If you're a terrible softling, you might say it's about the journey, not the destination. The destination is chosen by which journey it implies. The point of the goal is to be a lodestar, not to reach it. 

 It is through failure that you learn and grow. Though growth, life. 

 Is Mars, in fact, the god of life? The very god of living itself? 

 Is this always true? Here I see Nietzsche as correct. Assuming you have chosen, sought out, and humbly accepted the contest, any failure that doesn't kill you is not only good, not only great, not only glorious, but a divine transcendence.

 To perfect is to profane. To err, divine.

 It is through true absolute failure you truly prove yourself. Any idiot looks good when they're winning. If you're seriously deft you can look good while losing.
 Can you handle looking bad?
 Anyone can handle committing when the possible rewards, risk-adjusted, outweigh the cost.
 Can you handle committing in the face of certain failure?
 If you fail in the most important things in the most important ways and survive, if you respond to utter derision and deprivation and despair by standing right the fuck back up, then you can truly say you have stood, for the first time. 

 The best journey begins by losing everything, proving the challenge you accepted is the greatest you can possibly bear. 
 To truly live? Die. Die and go on living anyway. Death isn't something to fear, Death is your best friend. No Life, except through Death.

 Existence is pointless? Everything is exquisitely doomed? AWESOME. Bring it! Give me the most pointless, useless, ridiculous existence you possibly can! The more failure is preordained, the higher the heights I display by challenging it anyway. 

 Surprisingly, failure is wealth. Loss is an incomprehensibly generous gift. True strength looks like a true wreck and everyone hates it. Despicable and despised. 

 Existence cannot possibly be pointless. Upon a pointless existence, I can impose my will. I can overwrite its natural state with my own, and through that, prove anything. Prove everything. An allegedly pointless existence is merely the best possible challenge, the grandest possible present, an invitation to the highest possible party. 

 Admittedly, one does need to actually win, in some sense, in the end. Looking a wreck must be temporary. Although the destination is chosen due to the characteristics of the journey it implies, if I don't reach the destination, I can falsify the journey. I can pretend I'm on a journey I'm not. I can detour, confusing one journey for another, by confusing the destinations. Lies are bad, mmmkay. Verify and replicate the journey using the destination. Through destination, I impose discipline. Victory is a means, not an end; it is the price through which I purchase greater journeys, higher victories which can only be reached through more glorious failure.

Unexpectedly Fast Results on Starcraft

 MaxPax takes a bunch of my advice. Somewhat disturbingly, as there's no way anyone he knows reads my blog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwIdZL4jtG0

 Anyway, result: 3-1s Clem. Could definitely have won the first game by taking the rest. Mistakes: built colossus. (Got viking'd, the way they always do.) Built disruptors. (They all died and killed nothing. Often before even getting to shoot.) 0-armoured the carriers. Had plenty of time to at least get 1, probably 2, but no. Did get prism and obs speed, but only after forgetting those two units exist. 

 Game 2 built colossus but later, as a surprise. Smelled weakness and used them as a killing blow instead of a staple. Turns out that's a fine use for them. Used templar with (dun dun dun!) a warp prism to guard against EMP. 

 Game 3 all about chrono boosting those upgrades. Turns out prism+templar is really, really good. Boost out storm so it arrives before terran is ready. If Clem hadn't quit Max would have been at 2/0 before Clem started 2/0. 

 Game 4. I forgot to mention using shades for scouting. Use them like a skirmisher line. Max didn't forget, though. Didn't forget to keep his upgrades ahead of terran either.
 Should pre-emptively rebuild his scouting observer. Once you plant an obs in Clem's base it should be treated as dead. Also, like, use sentry hallucinations for that.
 Used storm, at first instead of colossus, then to zone out for the colossus. You can use the unit, but it has to be very delicately timed. A quad-colossus push has to wipe out at least one base, if not win the game outright. If you're not sure, then don't build them. 

 

 I don't get why micromanaging the prism/templar is feasible but babysitting the disruptors is, apparently, impossible. Regardless, that seems to be the way of it, so don't build disruptors unless it's for some very specific purpose.
 The game 1 tempests would probably have been fine as an assassin strike team. Dart in, blow up one viking, retreat to the field base, which is disruptors. If Clem moves in with marines, fire a purification nova. Keep the fight tempest vs. viking. Have an obs for spotting, with shades or maybe hallucination as backup. Spent disruptors should get evac'ed one way or another, either through a prism or just right-clicking the main. Nova has a long cooldown but it's not longer than building a new disruptor.
 Exception: if you have ten disruptors, you can have a nova on the field at all times. Fork strategy: they either have to walk into the nova river, or let the tempests/carriers fire with impunity.

 This result brought to you by epistemic training. Lift heavy intellectual things. I can also coach hockey. You can only get good at a domain, but the hack is there's a domain-of-domains. The meta-domain. 

 P.S. Scouting. Instead of planting an obs inside a pro's base, who always scans and kills it, plant a probe outside the base to watch for the move-out, then siege an obs in the middle of the map to see which assault path they take. Protoss should be even more difficult to ambush than zerg. Use the obs like building your own watchtower. If you want to see inside their base, use the garrison sentry for hallucination. Treat your base sentry like a building which trains hallucinations. Maybe even intentionally seal it in so you can't accidentally f2 it. 

 If you have a DT shrine, put a DT on hold position at their next expansion. Either go for the cancel, or let them land it and hit the workers when they transfer - don't block the building. Putting a burrowed zergling in the way is cheeky rather than good. E.g. dart in with the flux'd void rays to hit the cancel. This is when you siege an obs inside enemy lines: when it's ensuring the voids can flee in time. As zerg, wait for the transfer then hit it with your mutalisk wolf pack, zergling runby, or baneling bombing run. If the burrowed zergling is offset, then they don't suspect and you can repeat the process.

English Colonies vs. English Empire, and American Rebellion

 The colonies were responsible thus Capitalist. Everyone made a bunch of money, and the locals liked what they were doing with the place so they didn't make a fuss. That's how ~50 Englishmen could rule all of India: they were fundamentally doing what the Indians would have done for themselves if they knew how. Less conquest and more sale of services. The locals who got genocided didn't enjoy it of course, but genocide is also responsible. They weren't upset for very long. It's real genocide if there is nobody left to mourn the dead; that's how you know it was done properly.

 The Empire was an irresponsible Communist Empire, which lost a bunch of money. Everyone hated it, even the Emperor didn't like what the Empire was doing with the place, and ultimately the Emperor lost all the colonies. (Demand => supply.) This is unsurprising as the Emperor achieved ownership of the colonies by arrogating the ownership to himself. It was all stolen goods. 

 Of course it wasn't a clean transition. Theft occurs via stealth and the Emperor couldn't steal parts that were being watched. Even some colonial colonels continued to act like colonels after being confiscated by the Empire, producing responsible leadership despite having no incentive to do so. Pre-1776 America was both colonial and imperial. 

 The War of American Rebellion was a war of English colony vs. English Empire. 

 The French used the English against the English, so the Empire won. The colony was lost, as per imperial norms. The rout of colonial forces was particularly thorough, so it converged quickly onto the imperial equilibrium. The Americans did not win, they were tools, or perhaps the stage. They did inherit the Imperial spirit. Thus they lost a bunch of money. E.g. America has never had a long-term budget surplus. Everyone hated what they were doing with the place, including America's own emperor.
 What does 'going to the frontier' mean? It means everyone moving to America had one goal: get out of America as quickly as possible. Living in handmade artisanal mud huts several days' travel away from the nearest aid and succor was considered superior to trying to live anywhere other Americans could find you. Understandably so. Once they ran out of frontier, some States immediately tried to leave, to get as far away from America as possible. 

 And of course Americans stole the English Empire from the Emperor, as per imperial norms. They even stole back the colonies the English Emperor had misplaced. Now everyone wants out, and America will likely be unable or even unwilling to stop them, as per imperial norms. In the meantime, it all loses a tremendous amount of money. It's a bit weird there's even a middle stage, where the imperial provinces pretend they aren't satrapies of the Emperor, but definitely are.

 It's important to remember that America's myth, about plucky misfit rebels winning against the established powers, is pure fiction. If the rebels are organized enough to pose a real threat, they aren't misfits, they're just another country, probably exactly as tyrannical as the original country they 'rebel' against. Civil war is just regular war except both countries pretend to own territory they don't own, as owning the things they don't own is the justification for the war.

Principle of Cactus

 Security is always affordable, and I've decided to call this fact the cactus principle. 

 A cactus is an inefficient plant. All those spikes and poisons and calluses are expensive. 

 The fact water in the desert is so expensive makes it difficult to secure, but at the same time, the fact water is so valuable means the cactus is rich and can afford to defend it. The math works out.  

 

 There's a slight caveat regarding Malthusian limits, but anyone smart enough to understand and use verbal principles is far too smart to have to worry about Malthusian limits. Putting a find point on it, someone stupid will starve to death instead. It will turn out they could have secured themselves, but were too dumb to know that and deserve to die.

 E.g. jobs. Assuming you want a job for some curious reason, you can always secure your job, regardless of what the local head parasite is doing. The primary obstacle is not feeling entitled, but instead thinking about how to fence off and protect the revenue stream. E.g. always have two revenue streams, so that if one stutters, you don't instantly fall into poverty.

Technically Institutions Matter, but Biological Capital Determines What Institutions Promulgate

 Consequently only biological capital matters. Eugenics and dysgenics. 

 Biological capital and spiritual karma, but the latter is also a biology thing.

 You can see that the Russians haven't exactly suffered amazing evolution between 1900 and 2000, but their institutions mattered a lot. See also: Bantu-American criminality. However, the reason the Russian institutions went all Communist was due to past sins. They profaned themselves, and that's biology; personnel is policy. Profaned because a profane people. The profanity caused the Communism, which in turn caused a purge of the most profane families. Now they profane somewhat less. It appears a lot better than it is because they're kinda poor; net worth is a genetic trait, but they're not wasting it all on maximizing their bank accounts.

 Of course eugenics/dysgenics is also a biology thing. Personnel is policy. Revenge is Sour: the condition of being able to found a eusocial institution is having eusocial institutions, and the condition of being able to have eusocial institutions is to have eusocial genetics. 

 Plato was right: the philosopher king refuses to rule. Plato was wrong: that's because ruling is unwise. Plato was  merely a) resentful that he himself wasn't a p-king and b) selfishly petulant that no p-king deigned to self-sacrificially rule him. Basically Plato wanted the Form of the Good ("God") to force him to be virtuous, instead of, you know, having to do it himself. He wasn't even willing to pray for this force to be applied to him, by the way.
 Ruling is unwise because the condition of having a philosopher king is not needing to receive wisdom from on high. If you need a p-king to rule, your society will not allow a p-king to rule. Attempting a restoration is pointless. 

 The only thing you can do is filter and live in a bubble. Extract those unworthy of the unjust society (depriving the society of little, ultimately, as the society has no demand for their services) and collect them in one place. That is: there is no reason Hogwarts is impossible in real life, if by [wizard] you mean [virtuous child]. No reason except that Genesis is correct: you can't find 10 virtuous men in Sodom or Gonorrhea (e.g. Lot isn't virtuous). A real Hogwarts would, it seems, have empty halls.

on frontiers

 "A mere few hundred years ago, the frontiers of human knowledge were a lot closer to everyday experience, and it was feasible for an ordinary man to push them, often as a hobby. "
https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-in-xanadu-by-william-dalrymple

 In many ways, my blog exists as a long-form proof that this is still true. 

 This:

 "The trouble is that these days we know so much, in most fields you can’t even begin to do original work without first spending years in dedicated study. Even then, all of the low-hanging fruit has already been plucked"

 Is nothing but cope. An excuse softlings use to get away with being soft. 

 I do want to write "The Brain: A User's Manual." It would be a tremendously useful book, with the caveat that nobody would read it, so the usefulness would be purely theoretical. 

 The Brain: a general user's manual.
 The Brain: features of particular use to scholars.
 The Brain: features of particular use to warriors (incomplete).
 The Brain: features of particular use to merchants (probably).

 lol

 This nature, of being extremely useful but experiencing zero* demand, is shared with hundreds of other unwritten books, none of which require much in the way of funding. Or even a team.

  *(Or negative, as with Brain. It would make it harder both to lie and to be lied to, and nobody wants that, now do they?)

 The number of books I could write with a team of help: boy howdy.

 Shit man, just build a house underwater. Write a book on what living underwater is like. The number of folk rich enough to do so easily outnumbers the population of Athens 2400 years ago. And yet...

I Should Have Run Away From Home

 However, I was six at the time and there was no way I could have known that. I might even have done it anyway except I got bamboozled by the [permanent record] scam. Again, I don't fault myself for this, as I was eight. Hopefully nobody expects an eight year old to be able to overpower an entire empire on their lonesome. Of course, Revenge is Sour: the condition of being able to know to run away from home is to have parents that you don't need to run away from. 

 When I was sent to school, I could have simply refused to do the work. If they tried to yell at me, I could have simply got up and left the classroom. If they tried to detain me I could have simply refused to attend. Mindlessly got on the bus and left on it. When they suspended me, if my parents whined about it, I could have run away from home.

 Running away from home would have absolutely been better than attending school. Having no diploma would absolutely have been superior to attending school.

 The thing is, everything about Despotism is like this. They prevent themselves from enforcing their own tyranny. The teachers are forbidden from using corporal punishment, including physically laying a hand on the child, meaning the child can decline to be schooled at any time. Just say no and leave.
 Short of jailing the child, literally chaining them down, the child's consent is indisputably necessary. 

 "But but foster blah blah." Yeah, and they try to send me to school, then I run away from home again. Maybe I discuss it beforehand: "Hey, I'm going to get myself suspended. How will you react?" "Okay then, I guess I'll save everyone the trouble and run now. Bye."
 Revenge is Sour again: the condition of the State being able to force school attendance is that they don't want to force school attendance. Only weak States need or even desire Prussian school.

 American voters are not six years old. 

 Edge cases aside, you can plain decline to be tyrannized. Moreover, if everyone declines to be tyrannized, they stop being able to even attempt it. What happens if every student refuses to do the homework? Will they suspend the whole class, or will they blame the teacher? What if every student refuses to attend school? Recess all day every day? The institution can't maintain funding. What if every worker refuses to take the vaccine? Are they going to fire everyone, lol? 

 It really does depend on the consent of the governed. 

 Socrates was right: evil is merely ignorance. What he failed to notice is that this means ignorance is evil. Stupidity is a crime. America is a criminal country because it's full of idiots. This makes everything non-profane harder and more expensive than it needs to be. I shouldn't have to run away from home to get away from school.

 However, security is cheap. At the end of the day, I can indeed run away from home. I can eat at the soup kitchen. If your whole society is stupid, although this does raise your security expenses, you can afford it. Secure yourself against stupidity. Secure yourself against despotic tyranny.You can just not.

Humanity is Insanity

 The bible, for the most part, is the mutterings and babblings of a raving lunatic. Check: this idiot claims to be infallible. There's no deep Lovecraftian logic to it, he's just nuts. It sounds crazy because it's crazy. Cue midwit meme. 

 For the most part, Plato is the mutterings and babblings of a raving lunatic. As above, I mean that clinically. However, at least his tradition does not overtly claim infallibility.

 The proper Socratic strain indeed embraces fallibility. "I am wrong. Let's go figure out how." This is how you become less wrong. A detailed map of how and why you're wrong is, also, a detailed map of how and why you're not. Upon which you can build.

Does Tinnitus Explain Silence Haters?

 When it's quiet, they don't hear the subtle sound of the wind in the trees or anything. They hear the tinnitus from going to too many concerts or sports games. They don't hear their own breathing. They hear eeeeeeeeee from having too much close exposure to traffic.

Turns Out I Like Hunger

 Satiety is cool and all, but in fact I prefer to be hungry most of the time. Given the option, I will skip that meal. It's weird. 

 I don't really feel hunger anymore. Very easy to ignore. Do regularly go a little too hungry and go whoops, should have eaten something. Still not especially hungry, it's the lack of energy or something like a headache that gets me.

 It feels like health. Like it was supposed to be this way all along. Except the times I push it too far, of course.

Occurs to Me that African Wars are Ceremonial

 The guys hooting at each other like chimps don't seem to be genuinely trying to kill each other because they're not genuinely trying to kill each other. The guy who shoots the odd arrow does so to make the ceremony less ridiculous. He's carefully aiming at where the other guys aren't, and the bow is so weak that it's unlikely to kill anyone even if he misses the empty space.

 Humans are animals, especially tropical Africans. Animals spend lots of effort to avoid fighting. There's a bunch of posturing to try to work out who would win, and outside desperate cases they agree that one would win and the other backs down. In humans, a pack-hunting species, the posturing is a group effort. Humans can also posture purely to inflict the costs of posturing on the other side. Karen wants to lodge a complaint with management, 50,000 BC version - she's not serious enough to sue, though. 

 If a tropical Africans actually wants to kill you they fire a poisoned missile with a full draw from ambush, they don't snap off a half-cocked clean projectile while leaping around like an idiot in full view. Look, even 80 IQ isn't that dumb.

 The problem is these tropical Africans come to modern society and try to have their ceremonial war using modern non-training childhoods and modern weapons. They hold the gun sideways and don't aim because they don't want to hit anything. Unfortunately, they round 'unlikely to hit' to 'impossible to hit' then fire way too many balls to safely not hit anything. Notice how if someone is injured in these rituals, the ones with the guns are the ones who panic. "Oh shit I didn't mean to hit anyone." The side with casualties are happy because they now have an excuse for lethal "retaliation" - it's not like the dead guy was going to live much longer anyway. Short life strategy. 

 Europeans are killers, anomalously. Probably a recent adaptation to technological advantage. 

 Imagine what a British WWI officer with a brace of pistols could do to these prancing African "warriors." He could probably wipe out the tribe without even taking an injury 90% of the time. "Funny thing, snipers." *bam* "Oh dear, seems the sniper is dead." His only real issue would be killing them all before they ran too far and vanished into the brush.

 If you have armour and the other tribe doesn't, it's not time for posturing anymore. You can gain a lot by going in there and simply butchering them. Strong Darwinian pressure.

 Europeans had to evolve more sophisticated versions of ceremonial/posturing warfare, once someone had the bright idea to make weapons for killing instead of for looking scary. Consequently Europeans normally don't try to posture using live ammo. For the European, once weapons are involved it means posturing and negotiation has broken down already and it's a real fight. 

 Children have residual Africanness and that's likely why they think weapons are toys. A Bantu getting into his dad's bow and arrow is not likely to successfully do anything except whap himself in the face with the stave. Even less dangerous than a kitchen drawer, and there's no locks on those. A Euro getting into his dad's rifle cabinet, on the other hand...

Rules of Logicology

 A real, sane school would have a logical times table.

 Once you understand how multiplication works through the 1s and 2s, you don't bother to individually work it out. You just memorize a big table.

 Likewise integration. What's the integral of cosecant? Once you CAN  work it out for yourself, there's no point in doing so. Let someone else do it and look up their answer.

 Likewise, logic is very simple. It's modus ponens and modus tollens. The +1 and -1. However, you don't want to be laboriously proving a multiplication table and the quadratic formula and the integral of Euler series starting from counting each and every time. Much as there are lists of fallacies, there should be lists of common logical isomorphisms.

 E.g. there's a bunch of distinct subtypes of proof by contradiction.

 Logic is in fact geometric. Why isn't there an algebra and geometry and logic class?

 E.g. there's the free_will/determinism shape where the response called for is identical regardless of what your priors are. Convergent logic.

Rules of Debate

 In fact the coherent rules of debate are already known, but it's not written down in one place anywhere. It's worth at least a partial effort. 

 It is very easy for both sides to claim they won a debate. As such, the debate needs a Pope or one of his duly deputized representatives. A winner must be explicitly declared via Law of Man. Perhaps call him a Judge, if you will. It is he who decides what the rules are, who has scored how many points, and finally determines what the answer is in light of the evidence. 

 Although it is easy for both sides to claim they won, and the Judge must have full authority, in fact there are a set of correct rules. The Judge is either good at following these rules, and will produce correct predictions, or poor, and will produce corruption. 

 The Judge must have so much authority that they can declare someone won the debate, and then side with the other guy anyway, in the case he is in fact correct. It's important, so I'll say it again: a good debate produces true predictions. A bad debate can be detected by its falsified predictions.  

 Of course the normal average debate is one in which both sides lose. Whether neither debater is producing accurate predictions, then the Judge should discredit both of them.

 

 The lists of fallacies are broadly correct. As correct as can be reasonably expected - only someone who holds themselves to absurd standards, like me, can do better. E.g. ad hominem is indeed a fallacy; 'trust me' is not an argument. If the worst person in the world claims that 2+2=4, it doesn't make it untrue. Anyone who is indeed trustworthy can verify their trustworthiness by producing the argument that they themselves used to glean their trustworthy conclusion.

 Debate opponents must exclusively use modus ponens and modus tollens. "If X, then Y." "X, therefore Y." Midwits hate these because they're too simple - even dimwits can do this. A good Judge challenges midwits to a debate and destroys any argument that it needs to be more sophisticated than modus ponens and modus tollens. Midwits ought to be ashamed of themselves, and will be shamed until they surrender. 

 The only standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. If it cannot be determined that X, or that X implies Y, then the argument is discarded. The correct answer is not A wins nor B wins, but [I don't know].

 A good Judge lists ahead of time what moves are considered bad-faith moves, and what threshold will result in forfeit of the debate. A good Judge can fine bad-faith debaters for attempting to pervert the debate process, and will hand out a lifetime ban, revoking their speech rights. The fines will be scaled by how much the bad faith was intended to benefit the traitor. For example, a lobbyist might see their entire industry confiscated. 

 Ideally these fines would be collected, saved, and used as bounties for anyone who exceeds expectations. Just as the Judge determines and advertises what counts as bad faith, the Judge lists criteria for success. What is the standard of evidence? Shall we use p < 0.05, or something stronger? (Also a meta-Judge keeps track of which debate courts are meeting their self-imposed standards.) Just as real life can score you lower than 0, hence fines, real life can score you higher than 100, and if the Judge can't reward the overachievers with cash, they will not join the debates. The quality will be capped, which is a runaway decay process. 

 Due to having a specific Judge, anyone who fails a debate can ask exactly what they did wrong. There's no gamesplaying with modus ponens and modus tollens, so the Judge can just tell them.  

Being Explicit: Literacy is a Myth

 It is often opined that literacy is a mistake. This is, of course, the thought of an illiterate. Mass literacy doesn't exist. Doesn't occur. Their thoughts and writing are in shambles because it's all fake. They sound like parrots because they are, in fact, parrots. Only more sophisticated than birdbrains in the elaboration of the facade.

 Recall that free speech is a myth. The first kind of speech one needs to secure is the ability to speak meaningfully at all. 

 The needful is subsidized silence. In practice what's wrong with free illiteracy is the failure to distinguish literates and illiterates. There should be a browser extension that says [illiteracy off] and simply prevents html from illiterate sources from being rendered. Such ""speech"" is pollution and literates need pollution control.

Epistemology and Deep Evolutionary Time

 Knowledge would be easy if nobody lied.

 

 The species is called homo sapiens, the wise ape. This is incorrect. It should be called homo hypocritus, the deceiving ape.

 Homo sapiens have IQs much higher than what's needed for ecological dominance. Humans have huge brains due to a dynamic almost identical to the one causing moose to have huge antlers. It's like sexual selection, although not precisely that. Intraspecific competition. 

 At some point the homo genus obtained total ecological dominance. Random and therefore nonselective factors aside, the only significant cause of death was other members of homo. Generally, if your band could kill the next band over, it would have already done so. This means not only was all meaningful competition conspecific, it was members of your own band or family. Your band had a set territory and thus set food revenue, the only question was who it would be distributed to.

 With the advent of throwing, a hominoid generally couldn't relieve the pressure by killing his competitor and taking his food. Throwing means duels become nonstandard. Instead, the band would gang up and safely kill the would-be murderer. Preferentially deleting your own family members is generally not good for the spread of your genes, and consequently bands that executed murderers would flourish, while bands that broadly tolerated murder have all died out. Within the bands that flourished, some other way of defeating one's rival had to arise.

 Solution: lie. Homo hypocritus tricks his "friend" into unjustly handing over more than his share.

 Deadly throwing is known to be at least two million years old. (For perspective, fire and cooking is ~four million.) Ever since then, the primary conflict in the homo genus has been verbal. Two million years of selecting for the most deceptive liar, with only total destruction of the tribe (Communism) as a stop.

 Evolution has unlimited intelligence, but it is very slow. When a new problem arises, evolution reliably picks a terrible solution. Often as if it's deliberately choosing the very worst solution that can possibly be said to address the problem at all. Indeed that has happened in this case.

 Evolution solves the problem of liars using brute force computation. Sheer cognitive power. The individuals try to be smart enough to see through a lie, producing a linear hierarchy. Everyone smart can lie to everyone dumber, and nobody dumb can lie to anyone smarter. Everyone in the hierarchy is fully committed to lying. Every homo hypocritus society is less than an inch away from losing contact with physical reality entirely.

 No conscious human impulse considers physical truth. They are all focused on social truth. Everything that naturally seems plausible is only in reference to what will effectively defraud your conspecifics. Although this does focus your energy on successfully defrauding them, it also makes you vulnerable in turn. Anyone who understands what you find plausible can produce plausible rhetoric and fool you. You might even think they're helping you defraud those lower down in the cognitive hierarchy.

 Put another way, homo hypocritus is inherently uncomfortable with truth. The truth is the set of things which the homo can't use to defraud its conspecifics. Even the language itself is tuned for misdirection rather than clear and concise communication. ("Stoic." "Epicurean." "Dogmatic.")

 The truth is the set of things which reveal the lies by which homo hypocritus obtains his daily bread. He instinctively avoids the truth and instinctively attacks and shames anything which reliably leads to the truth. 

 Homo culture is about assembling a set of lies which nevertheless, by coincidence and accident, produce useful artifacts. E.g. planting seeds not because seeds grow but because the zodiac constellations need to be honoured through sacrifice of last year's grain or whatever. Truth is robust; lies are not, and yet homo consistently chooses to use lies as foundation for technology.

 Worse, homo hypocritus actively selects against those who dislike being lied to. The lies are ubiquitous and being fooled by high IQs is unavoidable. Getting stressed about it is counterproductive. Further, in addition to being able to trick you into giving them stuff, the high IQs can trick the rest of the tribe into shooting you to death if you notice the scam and complain.

 Result: You actively enjoy being lied to. Evolution's first solution actively encourages you to hunt for parasites and give them your blood. You demand lies and feel upset and deprived if you don't receive them, strongly motivating you to seek them out.

 If you want to know the truth, you must transcend humanity.
 Many religious traditions have deprecated the body, declaring it filthy and profane. This is because these religions are natural human behaviour. In other words, lies. They must declare up to be down, and black to be white. Inherently in conflict with physical reality, they instead elevate social reality.
The body is holy, and the natural mind is profane. The natural mind is the enemy.

 To learn epistemology is to wage war on the human mind and defeat it utterly.

In a World of Immigration, Patriotic Pride is Hazardous

 You'll encourage residents of lesser countries to come to your own. You don't want that. 

 Complain instead. Talk about every bad thing your country has. 

 Perhaps that's why Japan doesn't like exporting their art. They'll toot their own horn - but only to each other. Ensure immigration attempts remain at a minimum.

Personnel is Policy vs. Wages

 You can try to pay someone higher wages to incentivize better work, but this is unlikely to be effective. It's the same person, so you will get the same policy. You've simply made the policy more expensive. Insofar as grass monkeys learn from their mistakes, they have already learned everything they're going to. By the time you hire someone, they've already made every mistake they're going to make. Any mistake they're still making is a mistake they'll make forever. See also: net worth is a genetic trait.

 To get better work for higher wages, you have to get rid of the lower-wage person and hire a higher-wage person. Low offered wages select for bad workers, not bad work. Of course, these low-wage workers will hardly stop themselves from applying for high-wage positions, but you can reject them as you will also get high-wage applicants. On this side, the selection needs to be on your end. It's probably fine to blithely pick the highest-status applicant, regardless of skills & experience. 

 On the wagie side, consider that employers only need to offer a higher wage if they accidentally hired a more-competent-than-expected worker. They need to offer a higher wage because he can command a higher wage. Thus, your argument for getting a raise should always and exclusively be, "I will quit if I don't get a raise." If you don't think you can command a higher price elsewhere, then they have no reason to give you a raise. No wonder you have so much trouble asking for one.

 I think the logic here is fun. Assume they're not appreciating the work properly. Then the worker ought to quit for lack of appreciation, and find someone who offers better. (Revenge is Sour: they're not going to learn better, just quit.) Now, assume they are appreciating the work properly, but the worker still doesn't feel appreciated. Then the worker ought to quit, to save the company from dealing with a crazy worker. Due to this converging fork, the substance of appreciation is irrelevant; the worker's perception alone fully determines the correct course of action.

Slightly More Starcraft

 Protoss makes colossus. Colossus get pwned like they always get pwned, forcing the protoss to retreat. Enemy gets a bunch of corruptors or vikings...meaning the colossus not only failed to win any fights, protoss loses any opportunity to perform an air transition. 

 For pros at least, the robo bay is a trap. Prism speed is cool but not worth the bay cost. 

 Perhaps not a trap if they find a good use for disruptors. They should be either part of a raiding team, warding off the army long enough to get stuff done, or part of a fork strategy, where the opponents needs to both approach and flee at the same time. Disruptors would probably be better if pros didn't refuse to micro them. Lets them die after one shot nearly 100% of the time. If you don't have the APM, they're not worth building, and even pros don't...

  There is some evidence that carriers with upgrades are way better than carriers without...but the evidence is unclear. Dude stops building his 3/2/1 carriers, attacks infrastructure instead of the army, and loses the game. It's good enough for me, but hardly indisputable. Meanwhile other pros are trying 1/0/0 carriers and getting wrecked for some reason...

Feudalism is Already Necessary

 The central government is so untrustworthy you need a rich man to buy bespoke cultural artifacts.

 To get good food, you need to buy your own farm and reset the policies. To get good clothing you need to buy your own textile factory. To get a good education you need to hire your own tutors. To get a decent videogame you need to buy your own studio and install yourself as producer. All of this costs unreasonable amounts of money, so nearly everyone has to get someone to buy it on their behalf. 

 Traditionally this person is called a lord. Especially given the vows of loyalty and service one would need to offer in payment. It works because he already wants to buy these things on his own behalf - if he knows what's good for him. E.g. if he wants "free" speech he has to buy his own Twitter. Since he has to buy them anyway, why not take subscriptions from others who also want them? Recoup some of the cost?

 You can try buying 'organic' food at the grocery store, but it isn't organic. I mean, obviously it wouldn't be. Revenge is Sour: the condition of being able to buy wholesome food at retail is that you have no need to go specially looking for it. Any corruption of the food supply will also corrupt of the food-label supply. To get organic food, you need to discard the 'organic' label. Instead, buy a farm and enforce the policies you want, regardless of what they're called, and regardless of cost. 

 Instead, buy a textile factory und so weiter.

 It is already far, far too late to rely on the central government.

Sociology is Easy, So Results are Intentional

 Sociology is so easy that you don't need prototyping. If you don't have a brain fart, it works on the first try. When a social intervention has an effect, that effect is intended. 

 There is no such thing as an anti-racist, they're all hyper-racists. Trojan horse tactics. Bantu bastardy, 1910, 10% or so. NAACP, 24%. Civil rights, 75-80%. The point was causing profitless destruction to Bantu society. "Nobody could have predicted the results of civil rights," err no everyone who spent ten minutes thinking about it predicted the results; the destruction of minority families, minority business, minority discipline, minority jobs, and minority reputation. Some wrote it down and everything. The architects knew it too, they were just lying about it because it was the goal, not an unfortunate side-effect.

 They quietly shelved lockdowns and masking. They could have quietly shelved civil rights too - if it wasn't accomplishing exactly what it was designed to do. The point of BLM was to get more Bantu killed. Shame Ferguson's crime rate went back down. Got a good spike going, but it was unsustainable. Better Luck next tiMe!

 The narrative was that Stalin was boxed into doing gulags, and he was evil for not knocking down one of the walls of the box. On the contrary, the gulags were the point. Stalin was chafing at the bit to imprison law-abiding cooperators. In Soviet Russia, bank robber jails you! The gulags came online too slow for his liking - but he got there in the end.

 

Leftism is Simply Crime

 Free speech doesn't exist for the same reason free lunches don't exist. Speech is property, property has to be secured, and security isn't free. At best "free" speech is like a "free" lunch, through subsidy. 

 It is criminal to subsidize leftist speech. Hang all leftists. Hang all leftist sympathizers. This is non-negotiable.

 If you had a magic dial that could set the level of robbery, you would set it to zero. Robbery has no benefits. The only reason robbery is never zero is because at some point the cost of preventing it is higher than the cost of allowing it. Likewise, the correct level of leftism is zero. Kings are too far left.

 This has been tried before. Luddites == Communists. The British solves the Luddite problem by hanging their leaders. Result: enormous textile employment, British cloth dominated the world. Turns out Luddites were just evil, and hanging criminals is a good thing. (See also: El Salvador.)

 Defect on defectors. All leftists are terrorists. They deserve to be terrorized. If you do not terrorize them, they will destroy your society. 

 How do you decide what counts as leftism? Have a Pope. Whatever he says it is. Outgroup goes on the outside.

"Nobody could possibly be stupid enough to believe I want less atmospheric carbon."

 The royal society fervently advanced science. They did this because they were devout Christians who believed science is profane. They were deeply mistaken. They ultimately figured it out and now we have the NSF to ensure no science gets done. 

 Today, they believe atmospheric carbon is pollution, which is why they jet around as much as possible, why carbon emissions have increased faster than expected, and so on and so forth. They are trying to maximize the pollution. They are, once again, deeply mistaken. Fundamentally they've been scammed by "god" to work for good instead of evil. 

 They are trying to bring about all the horrible catastrophes they say they're trying to prevent. Morons.

 There's a substantial fraction that correctly assess money and wealth as good. The ones still buying oceanfront property. They use the carbon nonsense to advance Fascism, for the purposes of laying waste to their own countries, out of near-pure sadism. Reduce atmospheric carbon to increase atmospheric Communism, see.
 As per usual with these losers, they won't accomplish much that wouldn't have happened anyway. Perhaps all the hysteria about rising sea levels lowered oceanfront property values a bit, so the nouveau riche could buy a little more of it.
 If the useful idiots hadn't been scammed by this they would have been scammed by something else.

One Shithead With a Blog

 Since Hanlon's Razor is in fact Hanlon's Butterknife of Cope, there is a devastating consequence. One shithead with a blog is absolutely laying waste to entire societies. 

 My competition: literally trillions of dollars, centuries of tradition, vast newspapers and universities or extensive twitter networks.

 Me: an internet connection, a keyboard, cruddy parents, and willingness to optimize for free time.

 I am winning. Advantage: me. Society is a complete an utter failure.

 

 When someone says something like, "Lock them all in jail," that means nobody told him jail is a weird and highly falsified Quaker superstition. (It's Catholic repentance writ large and made involuntary. Shockingly, this was a bad idea.) He just condemned his whole society as desperately evil. He neither knows what he's talking about, nor knows to keep his fool trap shut. Nor is he some kind of outcast or fringe character who all right-thinking ingroupers would deprecate. It's all of society that doesn't know what it's talking about.

 Should China hire me ASAP as the hero their society needs and deserves right now, or are they confessing to mens rea? Do they not want the problems fixed because having these catastrophic problems is in fact the purpose of Chinese society? 

 Anti-Hanlon's Razor: either they're doing it on purpose, or they're too dumb to live.

 

 You need to reject society. It's sinful and profane.
 If you choose not to, don't come crying to me when it turns out the consequences are Lovecraftian.

 

Lordship and Acerbity of Vengeance

 In theory a set of good rules can reduce management demand, freeing up lord-hours. 

 In practice nearly everyone who needs rules can't follow the rules. Frequently because they don't have the verbal acuity to understand what the rules are telling them to do. Sometimes because they have personality disorders leading to deviant behaviour. Sometimes because they just want you to prove you can enforce the rules. 

 Regardless, it means trying to replace supervision with rules leads to supervising the rules, rather than a genuine gain. 

 Over time, servants can learn what orders the master will give, but this takes a long time. Constituted of classical conditioning, mainly. Moreover, the system is rigid. It's suitable for a stagnant economy, not a wealthy, dynamic system of trade. The lord still has to monitor conditions to ensure that he would, indeed, continue to offer the same commands.

Definitive Anti-Hanlon's Razor Post

 Look. They're gonna do it again. Personnel is policy.

 Someone who learns from their mistakes doesn't get to the point of aggravated assault in the first place. "Whoopsie! I accidentally stabbed them 87 times! How thoughtless of me!" They don't get to the point of Burn Loot Murder in the first place. Their planes don't catch on fire in midair in the first place. It's been a long time since any of their bridges could fall down.

They aren't all sinister communists.
https://nitter.unixfox.eu/GraniRau/status/1749579715784974348

 Then why can't they shut up about Communism? Why do they literally never oppose Communism? Cue midwit meme. They look like Communists because they're Communists.

 There's also the fact that all non-philosophers ossify in the 21-22 range; whatever habits they have then will be the same habits they have when they die. Even if they used to be able to learn, they can't anymore. The skull has become rigid bone from ear to ear.

 Whether they're actually evil or just an idiot doesn't matter. Either way the correct response is the guillotine. Whatever nonsense they fucked up, they're gonna fuck it up the exact same way again. It's not fair to ask society to burden itself with this waste of air, skin, and space. 

 If leftists are well-meaning then they all need to go into the retard camp. Supporting leftism is well beyond negligence and has been for centuries. The correct response to Luddites, as with all Communists, is hanging. Not precisely because of freeze peach or its opposite, but because they just self-identified as Communist. "That one! That one is the useless burden! Everyone will benefit if we get rid of it." If the parents complain put them on national TV when you tell them not to raise a retard next time.

 If you're feeling mean you can trap all the leftists together and let them die of AIDS before they can manage to further bother anyone else.

Middle Cargo Cult Class

 The middle class is a giant cargo cult.

 The first rule of the middle class: "This isn't a cargo cult."
 The second rule of the middle class: "This IS NOT a cargo cult."

 The middle class pines to be members of the upper, lordly class. As with the lower classes, they view lords as useless layabouts. The middle class is fundamentally peasantry - their primary export is problems, and Dunning-Kruger ensures they don't see them as problems or understand the solutions as solutions.
 Consequently, the middle class desperately tries to be as useless as possible at all times. They are of course too poor to be able to afford total uselessness.

 A middle class can be almost anything, as long as it's an empty superstition. They like to mimic the form of something useful, while ensuring it is drained of all discipline. The form of inconvenience without any actual inconvenience. They like email jobs and hate the trades precisely because paper pushing is a waste of time. I low key think factories were pushed out of America because factory jobs got to be known as middle-class, but middle-classers hated having something useful to do, and needed the factories shipped off so they had an excuse not to work there. 

 Having excuses is a major middle-class industry. Doing something on your own initiative is verboten, it's all about having no (apparent) choice. You would think they would notice that lords have tremendous initiative, but that would be inconvenient, so they somehow manage not to. 

 Middle classers always strike me as ridiculously fragile. They often throw tantrums at the slightest thing out of place. They genuinely can't handle it, after all. They immediately get lost when confronted with the slightest deviation from a pre-defined spec. They call them 'negative' emotions because they crumble at the slightest hint of them.

 If you're very clever you can trick the middle class into doing something useful by scamming them into thinking it's useless. However, the delusion requires constant maintenance, lest they notice there's a beneficiary of their actions. Doesn't seem worth the bother.

 P.S. Many commoners are born to lord families, and they will grow up to be genuine parasites if nobody disowns them. This certainly doesn't help the lower-class perception of lords as useless layabouts. Indeed, there's a double whammy. The commoners pay more attention to other commoners, because they're easy to understand, and tend to disregard the genuine lords, resulting in partial invisibility. Instrument error.

The Taste Problem

 The concept of taste is easy. If you have good taste you pursue are that is good for you. If you have bad taste, you pursue art that is bad for you. 

 The problem is this is a very noisy system with long and longer feedback times. It's common for the effects of art to take decades to manifest. It's also common for it to be context dependent; the perfect art is the enemy of actual individuals, who are sufficiently often seeking art because they can't handle the truth. You can't make them handle the truth by giving them true art. There's steps in the middle.

 The worst part is that even someone with good taste will regularly have no idea why their taste is good. 

 

 Let's talk about World of Warcraft, because fuck you I guess. 

 

 Nobody has done clean tests on what makes a warrior level fast. (They did for the shaman, it's enhancement to 40, then elemental after, but at no point is any spec truly terrible.) Certainly not 600 hours worth of intensive experimentation. 

 Warriors have okay taste. Arms probably is better, but none of them will point to sweeping strikes as the major difference-maker. Nor will they point to [big numbers game], which is the other major candidate for making arms feel good. I personally find 3.5+ swing wait times to be utterly mind-numbing. Yes let me play the videogame now plz. Mob hits me. I wait two full goddamn seconds. Mob hits me again. Still waiting to swing, so I can get rage, so I can do....anything. I finally hit. It's not enough rage yet. 3.5 more seconds...
 Not as bad as paladins, at least...wow that standard...
 At least on a rogue, where I'm also waiting 2-4 seconds for energy so I can do anything, I can watch the stream of dual-wielding numbers. 

 Sweeping strikes (and tac mastery + whirlwind) make up for nearly everything, or perhaps even more. SS is seriously overpowered. Not as strong as a rogue's blade flurry, but has a 30 second cooldown instead of 2 minutes. Cleave is one of the strongest warrior buttons (before whirlwind) and SS is three times as strong. 300%. Normally white hits are 80% of your damage, but with SS and cleave your rage meaningfully contributes to the damage output. Fighting two at once will make the warrior take more damage, but deal much, much more damage. Not to mention it's harder to accidentally pull an extra mob (and die) when you're pulling an extra mob on purpose. Just pick up the one that might have pulled anyway.
 There's also the guaranteed blue two-hander ~40, which augers for arms. 

 Warriors were clearly designed with huge lag spikes in mind. It's not like you're going to overcap on rage, and even without your abilities you're doing most of your damage. If the everything pauses for 10 seconds every twenty minutes or whatever, the warrior is going to be fine almost all the time. 

 Even if you have someone with good taste, and ask them what makes their tasteful art good, they will probably give you bad advice. He has no idea why he likes the things he likes, even if he's not a perverse degenerate. You can't learn to make art in better taste by talking to someone about taste. It should be possible, but if so, then they were all called 'snobs' until they died out. Perhaps snobs still exist but they lie about why they like what they like. Or, at least, are smart enough not to post on the internet. 

 

 Is arms fast? Or does it just feel good? Fury does more single-target damage. Naturally warriors will dispute this. Sogol. They've decided to go arms, therefore arms is better, see? 

 Warcraft is supposed to be a game, though. Even if it were a race, there's no prizes. Don't work it, play it. Choose the one that's engaging to play, not the one that gets you out of levelling the fastest. 

 Unfortunately Warcraft is fundamentally a bad game, and the classic warrior is unquestionably the most miserable class to level.

 

 Someone did do 600 hours of testing for the warlock. Apparently the fastest way to level a classic warlock is really dumb. Immolate, curse, corruption, wand. With the imp. All day, every day. You're gonna kill something like 25,000 mobs...and every single one killed in exactly the same way. Maybe one guy can do the run once to prove it's fast, and then never again. Otherwise, clearly bad taste.
 (Caveat: he probably didn't test drain life after it gets better than wands, and assumes the tryhard has top-tier wands at all times.) 

 The best way to level a mage is even worse.