mttheww asked: I hope this isn't a weird thing to say since I don't know you that well but you kind of remind me of myself, except I'm pretty sure you're way smarter than I am
I –
wow, I don’t know what to say, except “cool!” and “thank you”
mttheww asked: I don't really get the dollars joke? maybe I don't know enough about math to get it
There’s a famous “fact” in math that
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + … = -1/12
Obviously this is false given the usual definition of an infinite series, because the left-hand side keeps getting bigger and bigger without bound — it doesn’t converge to anything, much less to anything negative. Using the usual definition, the left-hand side does not have a well-defined sum.
However, there are alternative definitions of “the sum of an infinite series,” and according to several of them, that equation is true.
This is useful in certain calculations in physics (in that if you use that equation, the result “works”), though we don’t really understand why. Of course it doesn’t always work in every context, as the dollars joke makes clear.
John Baez has a fun lecture about this and related stuff here.
I am terrible at math under any degree of inebriation
It can help if I’ve been obsessively thinking about the same thing for a long time, both by simply jarring my brain out of a rut, and also by letting me plod along and find simple “dumb” solutions that my obsessive sober mind would reject as being somehow “too easy” without giving them a fair chance
I’m sure it decreases the speed and accuracy of my thoughts, but a lot of the time those aren’t the limiting reagent in solving a problem
(Of course we’re talking about pretty low levels of inebriation here, it’s not like I can do math when I’m drunk or anything)
mttheww asked: what pronouns should I use to refer to you, if that's not too personal a question?
He/him, I’m a cis male
aprilwitching replied to your post: This is what neo-reactionaries actuall…
i didn’t know there were irl people whose ideologies could without exaggeration be described as “lawful evil, on purpose”
Welcome to neo-reaction! It is a wild ride.
todbrowning replied to your post: This is what neo-reactionaries actuall…
I think I get what you’re saying but I’ve always seen that kind of argument as basically saying “this would clearly be rejected if it were a proposal for a written policy bc it’s absurd/unjust/etc., so therefore we shouldn’t be doing it in practice”
anononthewater replied to your post: This is what neo-reactionaries actuall…
this sounds like a pro-drug-legalization tweet tho? or you know it is and I am misunderstanding, oops.
I think what she is arguing is “drugs should be legal for rich (and/or white?) people, and illegal for other people, because that would codify in the law what effectively happens anyway.”
I know that’s a counter-intuitive reading of the tweet because it sounds like something no one could ever say seriously, but Tunney is a fan of Mencius Moldbug, and Moldbug really believes in stuff like this. He also uses the term “formalism” for it, so when Tunney says “formalize it” I think that clarifies what she’s going for.