Gay Marriage, Bestiality, & Pedophilia Pt II
I was watching Louis Rossman's stream (he runs a board repair shop somewhere on the east coast), where he was dissecting the newest Macbook "pro". The discussion touched on gay rights for a bit. We have that classical baker problem, right? Should somebody be able to deny service to a gay person if it goes against their religious beliefs? Some people believe they should purely on a freedom perspective... people should have the right to deny service to anybody for any reason, just like how the customer gets to rant about it online and try to bankrupt the business. Louis replied by saying that he thought that's just not a good idea. Would denying service to somebody because they are gay make the world a better or a worse place, he asked. When it comes to gays, my favorite thing to say is my own made up line: Sex preference is like coffee preference. Why people care about by coffee preference is beyond me.
Then the conversation touched on bestiality and pedophilia. Obviously, the chatbox wasn't the perfect place to discuss these matters deeply. To me the answer is obvious. Bestiality is sex of another animal, and there is no consent. So it's a no go. Pedophilia is not molestation and molestation is not rape. Let's not get our terms twisted here.
I've talked about this in the past. I don't believe in free will. A person was unlucky enough to be born with the environment, brain chemistry, alignment of synapses, that causes a person to like what they like. Most people are into the opposite sex. Some are into the same sex. Some are into old people. Some are into children. Raping or molesting old people is not okay, and okay, we can make the argument that doing the same type of crime on a child is worse.
But the assumption here is that anybody that is into children molests children? Because that's just a stupid thing to say. Of course there are people into children that recognize rape and molestation are not okay, and many of them struggle with the guilt their entire lives. It's a paraphilia with no upsides.
By banning pedophilia you are banning thoughts and preferences and that doesn't sit right with me for more than one reason.
By banning molestation and rape of children (as if it wasn't already) we are saying no to these things when there is no consent (and, a strong case can be made that no consent could even be given in this particular case, which is in some ways similar to bestiality).
Finally, molestation and bestiality are not the same as gay sex. The slippery slope argument here is just ridiculous. First think about the gay sex issue on its own. Then when we have the time we can think about how society should deal with bestiality and 'pedophilia'. I can do the reverse-slope argument: Anything not strictly by the book sex leads a slippery slope into gay sex, then pedophilia, then bestiality, then the entire world goes to hell because Satan wins.
What a great argument, no?
My Next Computer Build (Named Undelwalt)
I still haven't decided whether I want to do a custom loop for my next build yet. If I'm going to do a custom loop, I'm going all out. I see little reason to get the inconveniences of a custom loop without reaping its main benefit: the best performance. But that would mean maybe a $1,000 project depending on how it is done. Water cooling is its own seperate world and there are many choices and places to go wrong. Specifically for me, the choice is between a mora (external thingy with a lot of radiators mounted) or a more expensive, some ways elegant, some ways less elegant, traditional radiator setup in my case. My case wasn't designed for serious water cooling, it was designed for serious air cooling (it's even in the name of the case). I don't even know what case to get for triple 480mm radiators, and how I'm going to feed it only the coolest air. A mora would help bypass those issues, but something about it doesn't sit right with me... It's more about quantity over quality, which admittedly is not really a problem when all that really matters in the end of measurable performance.
At any rate, I don't want to name my next computer Undelwalt if it features no custom loop. There is no HBM for Pascal, and no custom loop? Comon, sure, upgrade, but it is not worthy of that name.
Temperature
So... we don't really feel temperature, right. We feel the rate in which heat is transferred from one object to the other. That's why a metal plate feels colder than a plastic plate at room temperature. The metal conducts heat away from us faster. In room temperature they would be at the same temperature, which is room temperature. If we put an ice cube on both plates, the ice cube would melt faster on the metal plate despite feeling colder to the touch because it transfers heat to the ice cube faster than the plastic one.
Then I'm thinking about my hands. They feel so cold. Surely if it's as cold as my senses are telling me it is, I would have a frostbite. Given what I know, my cold hands must be pretty warm. But they don't feel that way. My brain is screaming 'SO YOUR HANDS MUST BE A GOOD THERMAL CONDUCTOR BRUH'.
How is it, that when I game my armpits are hot but my hands are freezing cold? RIP intelligent design.
Intelligence vs Kindness
Several years ago I valued reason, logic, intelligence, education a whole lot. To me it was almost the primary judge of a person's worth as a human being. Over time some of my views have mellowed out a bit. If everybody thought and acted the way I did, then the world would be kind of a shitty place. The world needs some people willing to help others and do charity work.
Books
To finish off my collection of Skyrim books, I will purchase the third volume of The Skyrim Library (and skipping the Skyrim Special Edition Guide Collector's Edition since my older guide is the same, just with a different cover and bookmark). It's $1.40 off the $25 price required to get free shipping from Amazon for books though. I think I will buy Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence... This is the book I've heard Elon Musk read when it comes to fears about AI. Sam Harris said he got the impetus to look into it from Elon, and I've heard CGP Grey read the book too.
Just by purchasing the book and telling the world about it I get the satisfaction of reading the book without ever opening it. ;)
Intelligence and Judging of Others
Look, different people have very different opinions about my intelligence and worth as a human being. Really. A good example was with the whole religion thing. There were people who sent me some pretty angry hate mail. On the other hand, there was a guy who was beyond impressed that I wrote a book about religion... Surely he didn't believe in a god, but if he did, it felt like it would be me.
But okay, I already digressed. I don't need to be super duper genius to judge somebody to be less intelligent or reasonable than I am. Sure, it is easy to see one subject in which one is unreasonable and be tempted to judge their entire character based on that. But some people you know well enough to pass a judgement on. We judge people all the time. If it's not consciously (wow you are a saint), then unconsciously. It's just that, on occasion I have the balls and the honesty to tell somebody what I really think about them when I feel it is important. Now, I'm not going to turn my blog into a place where I rail against people I've had disagreements with, don't worry. I won't even offer details here.
I'm just saying. To illustrate my point I will just use IQ, and just pretend IQ is the perfect measure of intelligence for the sake of argument. If a guy is 80 IQ and I am 100 IQ, I can see that the other guy is dumb. Both below average and below my intelligence. But I don't need to be 140 IQ to see that 80 IQ guy is not all that bright.
Does this mean I will treat the 80 IQ guy like garbage? Of course not. I just probably won't value his opinions on some matters as much as the other people I know. Or, if I find his opinions to be so stupid as to be toxic, I will just not bring up or refuse to discuss some type of topics.
When somebody calls me arrogant for saying I think I am smarter than they are, they are really saying that they are smarter than I think they are. That's really all there is to it. I'm sure we could find people we both agree are morons, and get no pushback for saying so and so is dumb. The reason one the former makes me arrogant and the latter doesn't is because the guy being told he's not smart or as smart as he think he is is insulted and doesn't feel the same way about himself.
Do I ask for agreement? No. Feel free to disagree. And if so and so Mr. 80 IQ thinks I'm the 80 IQ guy then great, I didn't want to talk about hard topics with him in the first place (albeit for the reverse reason, but hell, it all works out).
I'm being exceptionally blunt here because I feel like it right now. And after reading this some will probably still think I'm an arrogant asshole.
Again: We all judge people. Some just have the honesty to say what they think when the time comes. And while I am blunt here I will try to be more... euphemistic... nice... etc, to try not to get the other guy to be pissed off at me. The fact that I even have to tell somebody what I think about them when it comes to this, often is a negative indicator of their awareness level.
Other Stuff
Meh. Thanksgiving was a disaster, but I managed to get home without being stranded in the middle of nowhere, so that's good. I bought some jeans for like $15 from JCP because my pants were all disintegrating. I read a bit about spin wash cycles, permanent press, and other stuff...
Skyrim SE is still coming along. It seems clear that it is the future. I'm seeing others working on a project with a somewhat similar to mine (take pictures of every texture in the game to compare texture packs). Makes my project feel... not special, lol.
FF15 comes out this week. I hope my crush on Luna won't be destroyed by oddly inhuman dialogue that is in Kingsglaive. Cliched, cheesy, bad dialogue makes me cringe, so I hope to see some compelling stories.
I hope to finish the Skyrim texture project by Feburary 2017. First I want to finish my The Last Remnant hard mode playthrough. After Skyrim SE I will play some Fallout 4 DLC, Skyrim SE (SURPRISE YOU CAN ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME INSTEAD OF JUST MODDING IT!!!)... And my next task, returning to Mugen testing, this time running many shorter matches more akin to a chess rating list. That way I can tally how much A wins over B and have that affect elo rating.
What am I going to do with school? Hell if I know. Let's not think about that right now.
If I keep typing, everything is going to go downhill from here so let's stop.
Buh bye.
