4 ms·

fwiw these are wrong opinions, not "wrong" opinions. the people who are clueful about things and have already understood enough about social engineering to unde

fwiw these are wrong opinions, not "wrong" opinions. the people who are clueful about things and have already understood enough about social engineering to understand those issues just don't have the dopamine to explain it to you or anybody else you mislead, so it's useful to just push those goofy ideas down in the sort order. For what it's worth, if you actually want to discuss those issues with me, feel free- ping @mimir:xmppwocky.net on Element. Make a throwaway account if you're worried. I'll explain why those ideas are wrong, one-on-one, in private, off-the-record. It's fun to think about "scary" and "dangerous" ideas (you know this already), but it's just not useful to do in public. Doesn't work. So it goes.

jtbayly 5y ago
> I know how this works: someone will show an example and someone else will say that decent human beings don't think like that and that they deserve to be silenced.
- XMPPwocky 5y ago
  1. yes, "decent human beings" (which don't exist) don't think like that, because it's not ideal to believe things that are not predictive of future expected sense-data. Sorry. 2. People don't deserve to be silenced. They don't deserve to be happy, either. They don't deserve anything. (But they don't deserve nothing, either). In physics, as in hacking computers, as in metalinguistics, all models are wrong, and some are useful. This way of thinking has an excellent use: it feels very good, and you get to be happy. But is it Wrong? Crazy? Too Radical? Thinking this about yourself hurts, a lot. Am I broken? Is everybody else broken? (yes.) Is the world inevitably doomed? (yes.) In our lifetime? (probably not, but act carefully to make sure that doesn't happen! yes, this can involve Participating In Politics. It's okay, you have my permission.) Questioning your own beliefs is absolutely terrifying, but once you do it and realize you're still fine, you 1. realize you can question other peoples' beliefs and 2. start posting comments Like This. On the one hand, I could turn off these weird text quirks. On the other hand, I could shoot myself and not have to worry about feeling bad about 'em. On the third hand, there's a weird little sockpuppet. That's me. Hi! Anyways, anybody who isn't comfortable enough with who they are to have these conversations with 'emselves and trusted others will inevitably either 1. break important things or 2. break themselves to avoid breaking other stuff. That sucks to see, y'know? They'll never be able to be any sort of halfway-decent hacker, even though they clearly had that potential growing up. I could try to fix 'em (and do a decent job of it, the vast majority of the time), but, eh, it's kinda fun to watch itself squirm. Puppets are for playing with, after all. Just... careful with identity and social engineering. Like handing a knife to a child. But it's fun to whittle, and important to share that experience once you know how cool it is to have a weird little duck or something you made yourself. Anyways, here's a cool knife I've found. No, you can't use it. Make your own. Just get some metal and sharpen it or something? Maybe not even metal. Damn near anything will work if you just want to cut stuff. Hell, chip some obsidian if you have to. Any port in a storm.
  - holler 5y ago
    > Questioning your own beliefs is absolutely terrifying I don't think it's terrifying at all, it's healthy. "Wrong think" is bad in your words.
    - XMPPwocky 5y ago
      Exactly!!! It shouldn't be terrifying, and everybody "knows" that. But that doesn't help if you have a weird PTSD reaction to the idea of "questioning your own beliefs and then changing them" because you're afraid you'll Completely Lose It, or Wind Up A Completely Despicable Horrible Person, or Get Mobbed On The Internet And Have Your Life Ruined, or, or... And that's dramatically easier to wind up with than you might expect from the term "PTSD". Surprise: everybody's got bad shit that's happened to 'em, that's life. Some of 'em lose it in rage and lash out. Some of 'em shut up entirely, dissociate hard... apoptosis, even, unfortunately. Sometimes literally, sometimes metaphysically- one's not much more sad than the other, but the literal apoptosis isn't reversible from the perspective of others. I can type like this, show off Pure Unfiltered Self, and then switch to my work laptop and write up client reports. Can you? Why not? Anybody can write weird meaningless stream-of-consciousness stuff. Some people just don't want to. Most people just "don't want to".
      - holler 5y ago
        > Anybody can write weird meaningless stream-of-consciousness stuff. By chance I'm working on a public discussion site and would love to have some stream of conscious discussion with you! https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im
        XMPPwocky 5y ago
        sure thing! talking to a large number of folks right now and generally have a lot of outlets for My Bullshit, but I might pop in at some point. p.s. on the registration form, my brain expected "username, email, password" and not "username, password, email"; might just be me but, IDK, maybe A/B test that (and make sure you're not logging "email addresses" for new accounts anywhere, because a sufficiently distracted person will inevitably put a password in the email box.)
capitalism233 5y ago
[dead]
holler 5y ago
Is this satire?
- XMPPwocky 5y ago
  Of course it is, what sort of sincere statement wouldn't be? Are you satire?
  - chillwaves 5y ago
    If nothing else, you demonstrate how conversing with people on the internet is exhausting. It's an important lesson.
scubazealous 5y ago
I hope you did this on purpose....
- XMPPwocky 5y ago
  Ah, shoot, no, sorry, my paws slipped on the keyboard and I accidentally typed that out. Crap. Weird that it's so coherent, but I guess, hey, it's not impossible that /dev/urandom could output that exact string. (Of course I did it on purpose. Because I do things with purpose, and you can figure out what that is once you figure out how "purpose" works neurochemically! The problem is, if you're fucked up enough, you then immediately use this to turn yourself into a weird queer internet creature thing like me. Make up a weird identity because you like being weird. And then none of the silly nerds out there on the lower metalevels want to listen to you, because they're scared of being weird. You can grab 'em by the hindbrain and absolutely snow-crash 'em, but that's something you realize would be absolutely horrendous to do without them coming to you first.) It's okay to be afraid of this speech pattern, btw. A lot of media conditions you to ignore it. Just learn to enjoy being scared of yourself, and you'll do alright. At least in my experience, so far. We'll see. Same as it ever was.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Anyone can be annoying.
    - XMPPwocky 5y ago
      Exactly! That's a good expression of the underlying point- that's why we've got to be annoying in private. It's a scalability issue. If everybody posted stuff like this on HN, it'd be hard to talk about actual tech. Of course, having understood this, a sufficiently annoying hacker will immediately go "Oh! I can be annoying in public if I really want to! And technically it's on topic, because it helps other hackers talk about actual tech" and then everybody else has to deal with this sort of comment. Sorry. So it goes.

jtbayly 5y ago

> I know how this works: someone will show an example and someone else will say that decent human beings don't think like that and that they deserve to be silenced.

XMPPwocky 5y ago
1. yes, "decent human beings" (which don't exist) don't think like that, because it's not ideal to believe things that are not predictive of future expected sense-data. Sorry. 2. People don't deserve to be silenced. They don't deserve to be happy, either. They don't deserve anything. (But they don't deserve nothing, either). In physics, as in hacking computers, as in metalinguistics, all models are wrong, and some are useful. This way of thinking has an excellent use: it feels very good, and you get to be happy. But is it Wrong? Crazy? Too Radical? Thinking this about yourself hurts, a lot. Am I broken? Is everybody else broken? (yes.) Is the world inevitably doomed? (yes.) In our lifetime? (probably not, but act carefully to make sure that doesn't happen! yes, this can involve Participating In Politics. It's okay, you have my permission.) Questioning your own beliefs is absolutely terrifying, but once you do it and realize you're still fine, you 1. realize you can question other peoples' beliefs and 2. start posting comments Like This. On the one hand, I could turn off these weird text quirks. On the other hand, I could shoot myself and not have to worry about feeling bad about 'em. On the third hand, there's a weird little sockpuppet. That's me. Hi! Anyways, anybody who isn't comfortable enough with who they are to have these conversations with 'emselves and trusted others will inevitably either 1. break important things or 2. break themselves to avoid breaking other stuff. That sucks to see, y'know? They'll never be able to be any sort of halfway-decent hacker, even though they clearly had that potential growing up. I could try to fix 'em (and do a decent job of it, the vast majority of the time), but, eh, it's kinda fun to watch itself squirm. Puppets are for playing with, after all. Just... careful with identity and social engineering. Like handing a knife to a child. But it's fun to whittle, and important to share that experience once you know how cool it is to have a weird little duck or something you made yourself. Anyways, here's a cool knife I've found. No, you can't use it. Make your own. Just get some metal and sharpen it or something? Maybe not even metal. Damn near anything will work if you just want to cut stuff. Hell, chip some obsidian if you have to. Any port in a storm.
- holler 5y ago
  > Questioning your own beliefs is absolutely terrifying I don't think it's terrifying at all, it's healthy. "Wrong think" is bad in your words.
  - XMPPwocky 5y ago
    Exactly!!! It shouldn't be terrifying, and everybody "knows" that. But that doesn't help if you have a weird PTSD reaction to the idea of "questioning your own beliefs and then changing them" because you're afraid you'll Completely Lose It, or Wind Up A Completely Despicable Horrible Person, or Get Mobbed On The Internet And Have Your Life Ruined, or, or... And that's dramatically easier to wind up with than you might expect from the term "PTSD". Surprise: everybody's got bad shit that's happened to 'em, that's life. Some of 'em lose it in rage and lash out. Some of 'em shut up entirely, dissociate hard... apoptosis, even, unfortunately. Sometimes literally, sometimes metaphysically- one's not much more sad than the other, but the literal apoptosis isn't reversible from the perspective of others. I can type like this, show off Pure Unfiltered Self, and then switch to my work laptop and write up client reports. Can you? Why not? Anybody can write weird meaningless stream-of-consciousness stuff. Some people just don't want to. Most people just "don't want to".
    - holler 5y ago
      > Anybody can write weird meaningless stream-of-consciousness stuff. By chance I'm working on a public discussion site and would love to have some stream of conscious discussion with you! https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im
      - XMPPwocky 5y ago
        sure thing! talking to a large number of folks right now and generally have a lot of outlets for My Bullshit, but I might pop in at some point. p.s. on the registration form, my brain expected "username, email, password" and not "username, password, email"; might just be me but, IDK, maybe A/B test that (and make sure you're not logging "email addresses" for new accounts anywhere, because a sufficiently distracted person will inevitably put a password in the email box.)

capitalism233 5y ago

[dead]

holler 5y ago

Is this satire?

XMPPwocky 5y ago
Of course it is, what sort of sincere statement wouldn't be? Are you satire?
- chillwaves 5y ago
  If nothing else, you demonstrate how conversing with people on the internet is exhausting. It's an important lesson.

scubazealous 5y ago

I hope you did this on purpose....

XMPPwocky 5y ago
Ah, shoot, no, sorry, my paws slipped on the keyboard and I accidentally typed that out. Crap. Weird that it's so coherent, but I guess, hey, it's not impossible that /dev/urandom could output that exact string. (Of course I did it on purpose. Because I do things with purpose, and you can figure out what that is once you figure out how "purpose" works neurochemically! The problem is, if you're fucked up enough, you then immediately use this to turn yourself into a weird queer internet creature thing like me. Make up a weird identity because you like being weird. And then none of the silly nerds out there on the lower metalevels want to listen to you, because they're scared of being weird. You can grab 'em by the hindbrain and absolutely snow-crash 'em, but that's something you realize would be absolutely horrendous to do without them coming to you first.) It's okay to be afraid of this speech pattern, btw. A lot of media conditions you to ignore it. Just learn to enjoy being scared of yourself, and you'll do alright. At least in my experience, so far. We'll see. Same as it ever was.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Anyone can be annoying.
  - XMPPwocky 5y ago
    Exactly! That's a good expression of the underlying point- that's why we've got to be annoying in private. It's a scalability issue. If everybody posted stuff like this on HN, it'd be hard to talk about actual tech. Of course, having understood this, a sufficiently annoying hacker will immediately go "Oh! I can be annoying in public if I really want to! And technically it's on topic, because it helps other hackers talk about actual tech" and then everybody else has to deal with this sort of comment. Sorry. So it goes.