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Vinay Profile picture
@leashless
Aug 5, 2021 • 15 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
I find myself wondering this morning how many people actually get my work - here we are, 20 years in to me continually writing, teaching, communicating, building - and I can't tell if a lot of people get it and are mostly quiet or if very few people actually got it.

Which is it?
It probably helps if I define it: here is my best short summary.

1) The human race is currently running the world like a death camp for poor humans, and particularly for the other species we farm or drive into extinction.

2) Fixing this situation is possible, but requires will.
That's the core thesis. Then,

3) It is possible, by mass collaboration using any available mechanism (open source, markets, new religious movements etc.) to live without this continuous catastrophic violence.

4) Most of the violence is well hidden from us by the machinery of the supply chain: capitalism is a direct continuation of colonialism.

is my book specifically on embedded violence in supply chains. See also a broader critiquethefutureofstuff.store
5) Systematic mapping of our dependency graphs leads to a clear and precise understanding of not only who we are harming, but how we are vulnerable to harm because of our long logistical tails.

provides logistical mapping tools (in "Dealing in Security")resiliencemaps.org
6) Existing political structures perform extremely poorly because they can't handle technically complex long duration multi-actor conflicts - government as we know it was designed for winning land wars in Europe pre-WW2 and can't handle nukes and climate vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/bigdeal/t…
7) It is possible to dramatically increase our psychological resilience through meditation with a specific emphasis on handling difficult emotions like fear and helplessness. Trained people turn away from the difficult situations less, and cope more.

files.howtolivewiki.com/.meditation_20…
There are also some specific technologies which I've developed and prototyped which can support us in this general mission.

8) and particularly the Quad Dome (by @gelada, a mathematician buddy of mine) as autonomous buildings.hexayurt.com
gallery.burningman.org/asset/661030d0…
@Gelada 9) can also be used to map our critical infrastructure, so that our homes are nearly entirely self-sufficient for energy and for water purification, and potentially we could do a lot of our small manufacturing hyperlocally too.

resiliencemaps.org
shareable.net/the-unplugged/
@Gelada 10) My company, @Mattereum is a system for handling accurate information about physical goods: we pay the bills through anticounterfieting work, but have also deployed systems for bundling CO2 offsets with gold bar NFTs to cover their production costs.

passport.mattereum.com/ntfa.20210319.…
@Gelada @mattereum 11) Finally, on a broader philosophical note, I am convinced that we need new human rights far beyond the rights we currently have. I believe the best place to define and implement those rights is by dramatically expanding the human rights of children.

medium.com/@vinay_12336/a…
@Gelada And here's an interior shot of the Quad Dome gallery.burningman.org/asset/8b995a36…




These two podcasts together do a fairly good job of tearing the mask off the western lifestyle - capitalist, socialist, or other - and showing people the real cost of living this way.

Serious business. Listen at your own risk.anchor.fm/emerge/episode…
anchor.fm/emerge/episode…
12) Extremely deep embedded psychological defense mechanisms prevent us seeing the simple truth that industrial overproduction (and shortage of time) are poisoning our planet and our lives.

People say "polycrisis" to describe this systemic breakdown.

Some more practical suggestions based on affordable risk mitigation in this thread here.

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More from @leashless

Vinay Profile picture
Feb 24
A lot of people are very afraid of Donald Trump's administration. A lot of people are very afraid of Elon Musk.

I want to explain The Structure Of The Deal in a way which will leave you wiser, but possibly much more deeply disturbed.

Let's talk about human extinction. (thread)
Humans can go extinct. A lot of things have to be "just right" for our species to exist.

We've nearly gone out at least once in ancient history.

More recently we faced nuclear war and were kept safe by one stubborn Russian refusing launch orders.

We came entirely too close. Image
Elon Musk believes, rightly, that earth is in _grave_ danger. Let's make a list:

* Global warming
* Hunger wars caused by global warming
* Biotechnology risk including bioweapons and bioterrorism
* Nuclear war
* Black Death plagues like bird flu
* AI risk

What did I miss?
Read 11 tweets
Vinay Profile picture
Jan 5
Pathological risk blindness will be the end of us.

* covid is mass-crippling people
* H5N1 has irrevocably contaminated the US food system
* climate change is "entering a new phase" as Nature stops absorbing our carbon output, accelerating warming
* is AI waking up?

now what?
At some point either we have a series of miraculous escapes or we get *completely* walloped.

Let me give you an example: AIDS in America.

In 1985 we understood HIV caused AIDS, and had an HIV blood test.

In 1985 10k Americans are infected.

700,000 more go on to die.

Why 70x? Image
Image
Answer's pretty simple: the government doesn't mandate HIV testing.

Culture doesn't shift to do enough HIV testing.

700,000 more people go on to die. 1.2 million Americans are currently infected. Any Pharma disruption and they'll die at 1980s rates.

*Nothing* was done. Horror.
Read 9 tweets
Vinay Profile picture
Nov 28, 2024
1) D&D's "murderhobo" problem has always been there: it's baked into the game's DNA and indeed much of the source material.

2) But _everybody on earth_ is human by D&D standards. Nobody has _ever_ said "Germans are dark elves" or whatever. It's never been a vehicle for racism.
If there are cultural problems in old school D&D culture they are these:



And severe forms of theseplausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-soci…
The real problem here is trying to fix the "murderehobo" set up with "woke."

The D&D set up is that these critters are absolutely inhuman monsters who will wipe out the human race: it's a zero-sum them-or-us situation. Real humans have only been that way in genocides & frontiers Image
Image
Image
Read 36 tweets
Vinay Profile picture
Nov 22, 2024
Here's the thing. Real politics is about money and war.

By 2008 we were losing the wars, and America had gone bankrupt and was living on credit cards.

The "progressives" retreated into a sort of fantasy world: can't talk economy, can't talk war.

So they made up imaginary wars.
But if enough people believe in an imaginary war, it becomes a real war.

Suddenly the entire weight of the progressive movement focusses on a single issue above all others: trans rights.

The rest of society is like "what the fuck do you mean 'female penis'?" and a war starts.
The trans-friendly community say this stuff is "anti trans" but it's not.

It's "trans doesn't exist" and to them it's like saying that the Loch Ness Monster does not exist.

"there is no female penis" == "there is no Loch Ness Monster"

To them: obvious.

pbs.org/newshour/show/…
Read 12 tweets
Vinay Profile picture
Nov 12, 2024
This is kinda the usual IQ bullshit.

Go to some MENSA meetings. You’ll have IQ130 brick layers and IQ150 romance novel editors.

A *tiny fraction* of high IQ people do anything interesting. IQ is one of perhaps five capabilities required to do interesting work.

Mostly bullshit.
Here are some of the things IQ doesn’t really capture:

* an instinct and curiosity for the right kind of problem

* not getting side tracked by the history of nutmeg

* maintaining relationships to get access to network intelligence

* endurance on the task until it’s done
Again, a model. But just a model.

Read 19 tweets
Vinay Profile picture
Sep 13, 2024
My father, an Indian medical researcher, studied this extensively as part of trying to improve patient care.

He made doctors role-play an IQ85 patient describing an angina attack while carrying a heavy box upstairs.

It takes *practice* to get the clinical data from low vocab.
His conclusion is that without specialised training, and a lot of it, communication is impossible over a 30 point IQ gap.

Average: 100
Nurse: 115
GP: 130
Consultant: 145
Professor: 160

And this is in a setting where the job is about getting clinical data, mind you. Tight focus.
A substantial fraction of the population basically rely on other people to do all of their thinking for them.

You say "these people are inferior."

I say "these people are efficient."

Throughout history there have been a lot of simple, repetitive tasks.

Read 30 tweets

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