Later, Shitfest Will Continue

  Looks like it's hiatus time. There are a few posts - hopefully of better quality except the first - for january. Following this there will be a pause. Hibernation, perhaps. As previously, posts will resume on an 8th of a month and follow the pattern of this december.

Tariffs Cause Inflation

 You don't think crown corporations pay tariffs do you? If general motors wants a part from china and there's a tariff on it, then they do some financial wizardry, pretend they didn't print the money, and put a tax on dollars per se on behalf of china. Then, presumably, china sees a similar tariff, does a similar journalism, and voila their central bank is taxing yuan on behalf of america.

 Sector-specific tariffs are meaningless. Every tariff increases general inflation.

 I should mention the bubble du jour AI is Officially exempt from tariffs. Not even a fig leaf. Tariffs for thee but not for me. Protected from protectionism, apex kek. Print money for them directly, see, minimal wizardry. Where do you think all their [[[investment]]] is coming from? It decidedly isn't the banker's money.

 Of course, as before, in the long term domestic production is deprecated because it doesn't drive as much tax revenue. The foreign interests all get expensive lobbies. Colonial britain banned all tobacco except the heavily-taxed american tobacco. Within reason, the higher the tariffs, the closer the government gets to banning domestic industry. This dynamic is only interrupted when the tariffs make imports completely impossible, leaving domestic as the only option...but then domestic goes communist, or mobs up to say the same thing twice. (Ref: canadian dairy, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the spy industrial complex.)

 A sales tax is merely a domestic tariff. Why would the government go all the way to china for tariffs when they can tax you for selling your tomatoes down the road? Tariffs + totalitarianism = VAT. "There's a border where I damn well say there's a border, lol." "Yes master let me cringe harder master." 

 

 Reminder: taxes are redistribution. A [good] tax doesn't destroy any wealth directly, it merely arrogates it to the government. What matters is the tangible stuff the country has, and how much of it the non-government has to share. When you buy untariffed imports, you're driving foreign taxation thus redistributing goods to a foreign government. Internal taxes always drive purchasing offshore if possible, trying to enrich foreign hostile parasites instead of domestic parasites. External taxes do the same thing, moreso, and also enrich the internal parasites who use the sucked blood to abuse you.

Dietary Assays, of Energy, Insulin, Chlorination

 How would I feel if I hadn't eaten breakfast this morning? I would feel the same, because I didn't. I would also feel the same if I had.

 Folk regularly say they need to eat for [energy], and I have to assume it's some sort of bizarre superstition or severe health problem.
 Yeah if you insulin crash overnight I suppose you'll need breakfast to get moving in the morning. I suppose that's why you're not supposed to eat before bed too - so you don't wake yourself up with your insulin crash.

 Instead exploit the crash to try to put yourself down for the night, I guess? Works the opposite way around for me. Can't sleep until I eat. Often fall asleep right after eating.

 I don't have this insulin crash issue. Eat meat: it's therapeutic. I don't feel any problems until at least 24 hours after my last meal. This is, also, a health issue.

 Imagine: you're on the savannah, you go hunting. Hunting isn't reliable, so you come back with nothing. The next day, you're too tired to go hunting because you went a whole day without eating, so you starve to death. Whoops.
 There's no way that's natural. I'm merely on the second level of insulin crashes. Possibly a different hormone.
 And indeed this going away is part of how I'm [aging in reverse], as the kids say.
 
 Of course, I live in a G8 country, in a major city. This means the water isn't safe to drink. Has to be boiled.

 My first guess for the 24-hour limit is toxic fat deposits. Since I'm boiling the chlorine out of my water, my liver is no longer swamped and it's able to clear out poisons instead of sequestering them.
 Fat does sequester the poison but nothing in the body is airtight. The poisons leak, and the liver has to deal with them, but it's still swamped, so it sequesters them in more fat. Which leaks, and then...

 Without the toxic fat deposits, I'm sleeping better, and closing on 48 hours of peak operation after my last meal. Presumably if I had true health it would be a week or two, but I'm not optimistic about ever reaching that level. Five days would be more than enough.

  Action: boil water. Result: absurd profit.

 P.S. If cooking vegetables, boil twice. If organics are in the water the chlorine becomes chloroamines rather than being driven off. If you want more chlorine in your system, try salt.

Newcomb's Narcissism

 Why is the predictor handing out arbitrary boxes of money?
 What does he get out of it?
 Sounds like a self-contradiction to me. A reliable predictor would reliably predict he should keep the money. The 'paradox' vanishes if we introduce rationality to the players. Otherwise: insanity is not reliable. Whoops.

 Is he giving out money because it's worthless to him? Prediction isn't worthless, it has some cost. There's no way he would bother to make the effort to achieve reliability if the money was meaningless. "In one box, there is visibly pocket lint. In the other...there might be a rusty penny." Yeah the predictor is totally going to bother to play this game straight. 

 More importantly, what does newcomb want? What does he get out of it?

 "I'm an atheist because I can't imagine my personal god as a person. It is inconceivable that he has his own desires or motivations." Good 'ol clockwork personal god.

 This is what that whole [frame] discourse is about. Whether you one-box or two-box, you're accepting that clockwork personal gods, who exist only to hand out cold hard cash for fluffy bunny unicorn reasons, are a reasonable part of practical ontology. The frame is the payload. The 'paradox' is merely bait. 

 This puzzle is not created out of curiosity and it would be stranger if it weren't inherently erroneous. Newcomb's troll box. 

 "Mommy, I don't care what you want. I have the right to your milk, hurry it up."
Nothing but very very Sophisticated mommy issues. Or congenital brain damage. 

 If you can't precommit to taking box B such that omega can safely predict you won't take both boxes, the other thing he can't do is stop you from changing your mind and picking up box A too anyway.
 Take box B as if you're only taking box B. See what's in it.
 Then, what, the money in B vanishes when you change your mind? You going to build a concrete bunker to stop anyone taking box A? What if someone takes A but, generously, gifts it to you, does that count as taking both? Do you have to refuse?
 Newcomb clearly suffered from aphantasia. Or was perhaps illiterate. Didn't know what words mean. An affliction shared by the interlocutors.

 At least the trolley problem happens in real life, in very rare cases. It's not immune to experiment.

Monetary Affordance In And Of Itself

 The only things that can't be bought with money are things which can't be acquired by any means. You can't buy antigravity, and you can't get it in any other way either. 

 Can you buy love? You can buy time, and spending time you can buy wisdom about love. Yes, you can buy love.

 Can you buy trust? Absolutely. You can spend time learning about trust, then execute on that knowledge. You can buy someone else's time with money too, and spend their time on things that will make them trust you. Buy true friends in job lots if you have the cash.

 Can you buy quality? You can, and indeed must, buy the things which lead to quality. Not only is there no such thing that can't be bought, failing to spend in pursuit of quality will fail strategically. 

 Can you buy health? What kind of stupid question is this? Buy the right to sleep in every morning. Just try it. 

 Can you buy honour? You can buy training, from which you get discipline. You can buy a Stoic tutor and meditate on your faults until you don't have them anymore, buying the time to do so. Yes, you can buy honour.

 Can you buy karma? Assuming karma can be changed at all, then, yes, obviously, how else are you going to get it?

 Can you buy a god? Absolutely. The divine is for sale.

 If you had, could have, enough money, you could buy the laws of physics. 

 

 When someone says a thing can't be bought, they are a politician. They are lying to you, trying to harm your interests.

Elo Telos N

 Game theory professor man is right and wrong about musk. Check out the last 1/4 to 1/8 of the video if you don't want to watch the whole thing. Perhaps skim the transcript.

  https://www.youtube.com/embed/9MURGjjG4aA

 Musk is in fact doing the Socrates thing. He looked at other mortals, understood them sufficiently well, and reacted logically. "Get me off this rock. Whatever means necessary." Musk adds, "(a few of you can come with)"

 The secret societies think musk is doing what p.history says they think he's doing, and they're right. Musk is mistaken. What p.history calls the [secret societies] (probably the spy agency lords) permit musk to do what he does because musk is not doing what musk thinks he's doing. Which is why he's sort of rich and you're, you know, not.

 E.g. assuming !!america!! really is a jew-owned enterprise, then musk was allowed to buy twitter because it was, in the end, good for the jews. Swap out the variables as necessary to get the truth; the equation itself and the operators are accurate.

Women Can't Into Incentives

 "It is far from ideal, as Shao Zhilan sits far too close to him and smells far too good for his comfort."

devastated; realized she's uglier than shao zhilan

 

 If she was smelling good for the benefit of the man in question, it would be no problem. He could appreciate the benefit and perhaps offer some token in response. Why, they might even develop a positive relationship.

 She isn't. She's trying to manipulate him. She wants to tease, to fool him, and have him offer real things - not mere tokens - in reply.

 The problem is he can simply know this. He can appreciate her olfactory benefits and offer nothing in return. By trying to exploit him, she ensures the winning move is to exploit her, and there's nothing she can do to defend herself.

 Women are not cooperators. It's [[[polarity]]] you see. Men (can be, should be) cooperators. Therefore, women, to avoid being masculine, must be traitors.

 Defect on defectors.

 "As Emperor Xiang contemplates such deep, philosophical questions and most definitely does not stare at Lady Shao in any manner that can be deemed improper,"
 Why the fuck not? Stare like crazy. What's she going to do, stop smelling good at you? Your only thought of restraint: don't stare so much she learns to dress modestly. Stop precisely just before she figures it out. Even if you fail to finesse the line, oh well. Don't care, had ogle.
 If women were cooperators, the calculus would be different. They're not, so it isn't.

 Always Be Exploiting.

Romance Considered Retarded

 Hot chicks have indifferent husbands because every modern woman has an indifferent husband, if he cared she would trade up. It would mean he thought he was getting a great deal, implying she can buy more at the same price. 

 The lovers of hot chicks are even more indifferent because he has options. You don't devote yourself to the fifth beer in the case. 

 Disney romance is a function of market failure or a relationship built on delusion and hysteria. It's exciting when you thought you didn't deserve it. Japanese doormat + cute anime girl or dowdy denise + billionaire immortal mass murderer. Problem: you're not as stupid as disney tries to tell you, you really don't deserve it.

 Also, as always, watch out for gender inversion. Devotion in women is very attractive. Due to !!polarity!!, by necessity devotion is actively unattractive in men. Unless it's illegal for her to fuck off, don't be nice to her, it's dumb.

 You can get a devoted girl by being hotter than her, but you can't be hotter than a 10, you can only also be a 10. Women especially rank these things relatively, not by absolutes.