"The universe has an oppressive totalitarian government; it tells you
what you can't do, it kills us if not enough of us don't work the way it
says to, you can't leave it, and you can't vote to change it."
@Hanson
Okay except voting is totalitarian, so you're saying it's too totalitarian to allow totalitarianism...
(You can see the comments on this tweet are nice and Satanist, too.)
First problem: Hanson assumes you're entitled to omnipotence except that crummy universe thing gets in the way. Secular humanism. In reality you're entitled to nothing and everything you can do is being enabled by the universe.
Second problem: it doesn't feel oppressive. Go look at a sunset. "Help help the violence inherent to the system!" Err...no. Real totalitarian governments forbid everything except doing exactly as they tell you. The universe doesn't even absolutely forbid oppressive totalitarian governments.
What's the name of the fallacy where you stretch a meaning so far beyond itself it can be used to describe literally anything?
On the other hand, Hanson can be correct. If you're fatally mutated, with a doomed germline, the universe in fact does feel oppressive. If you want independence but can't afford independence because you suck too much, you're just kind of boned. If you want to physically dominate a room but you're a woman, well, good luck with that.
Rather, humans primarily want evil things but other humans will fight back, thus not allowing the evil things to occur. Oppression. How awful. Notice this would be a problem even if you were entitled to omnipotence, because everyone else would also be entitled to omnipotence.
Third problem: the issue with oppressive government is that they're rebelling against the universe. At best, they force you to rebel against the universe. They don't let you fulfill your own needs. "Communism creates enormous destruction while failing to advance at all toward its stated goals. That’s kind of why communism sucks so much." The oppressive government sucks precisely because it cannot win its rebellion against the universe. Dealing with one "oppressive" government is manageable. Two competing oppressive governments, not so much.
P.S. Time doesn't kill you. Absent time you would be unable to do anything, i.e. would be already dead. You would not be entitled to immortality if that crummy time thing didn't take it away from you. The alternative to time isn't eternity, the alternative to time is nonexistence.
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New failcomment system also fails to publish my comments, it's not limited to yours. Keep trying, it will usually work, eventually.
Blogger deliberately trying to kill itself, I expect.
Captchas should be off. If it gives you one anyway, it's against my explicit instructions.