(23:19:48) noahbedford: When it's freedom vs. knowledge, more specifically, discipline with knowledge vs. freedom, it's way harder
(23:20:24) noahbedford: Hofstadter said that if you've got the right basic set of axioms, "sliding out" the rest of the proper ideas should be effortless
(23:20:30) noahbedford: I'm not entirely sure that's true
(23:20:31) noahbedford: Howevre
(23:20:33) noahbedford: *however
(23:20:52) noahbedford: I've had no success with beating myself up in an attempt to self-discipline myself to learn things
(23:21:11) noahbedford: I only learn things when the community of myself generally agrees that it's a good idea
(23:21:40) noahbedford: Luckily, every member of this community has some form of rational bias, but there're more empirical ones, there're more meta-bent ones, etc.
(23:22:11) noahbedford: Well, sometimes, the best way to learn is to illogically block out the part of you that wants to make a decision about it
(23:22:31) noahbedford: But once you've made one illogical decision, even for the support of logical ones...
(23:22:45) noahbedford: ...the thing is, is it really an illogical decision if it supports logical ones?
(23:22:56) noahbedford: What if being illogical is the logical thing to do, for the goal of knowledge?
(23:23:22) noahbedford: That's why I think the founding fathers of the Old America were wiser than most people consider; Freedom may be the loftiest goal after all, for all "good" stems from it.
(23:23:57) noahbedford: (the New America is surprisingly recent... after the DMCA, it started becoming the New America. I don't consider it the same country after that point.)
(23:24:20) noahbedford: And the worst part is, the democrats and republicans are equally terrible on this
(23:24:59) noahbedford: They both want "safety for our children", they both want "national security", they both dislike hackers and generally pass "anti-computer hacking" laws without a second look
(23:25:18) noahbedford: Safety denies freedom! Communities deny individuality!
(23:25:39) noahbedford: A nation will never be secure. The Poles have an anthem...
(23:25:53) noahbedford: And the gist of it is that the Polish nation is composed of the Polish people
(23:26:02) noahbedford: And not of the land, whether it's owned by Russia or Germany
(23:26:42) noahbedford: Remember, though, in the days of the Old America, when the founding fathers were saying that you have a right to bear arms, offence and defence were around equal
(23:26:53) noahbedford: Unfortunately, offence is much more powerful than defence
(23:27:12) noahbedford: Sometimes I wonder... if we got rid of safety, would we develop our own?
(23:28:07) noahbedford: I think, after a slight rebound, we would. And it'd be the real sort of safety, defensive individual safety, the sort that stops bullets with thin clothing, the sort where people make peace through ideas, the sort where you don't have to go through a metal detector to board an aircraft, nay, you own an aircraft and know those who board it.
(23:29:35) noahbedford: Looser gun control laws. Looser idea control laws. It may be chaos, but if everything were based on freedom, and everything were based on logic, then ideas would be much more powerful than any weapon.
(23:31:29) noahbedford: Weaponry control and idea control are futile efforts. The internet is freedom in the same way the printing press was, and you can't hide information. Secrecy, at least, relevant secrecy, is dead. Anyone can make a biological weapon, anyone can make a nuclear weapon, and that's the way it should be. Society is based on trust, because we all want to help eachother figure out what's going on, because nobody's got a ----ing clue. And that's a problem, but the sort of problem looking for a rational, deterministic solution. Making things up will disrupt the trust.