Merry winter solstice,

My tone will not be pleasant, and children should not read this.

Decadence is a recognizable pattern throughout history. As Russell Allen and
Michael Pinnella write in Symphony X's mythic allegory about the fall of
Atlantis, "A Fool's Paradise":

    ♩ Empire of the Seas: Lords of technology bring death unto the Earth
    ♩ Shall it be as it was before: a tragedy on every shore?
    ♩ Is this the end of all we know? Innocence lost so long ago,
    ♩ Woven in dreams, the darkest of schemes now takes hold of our destiny
    ♩ Decades of greed, plague, famine, and war; we can't go on like this anymore!
    ♩ Living like fools, chaos will rule this eternal paradise

These lyrics, written around the turn of the millennium, were not meant to
describe us; they were intended to evoke the tumult of the Late Bronze Age
Collapse. But they are certainly recognizable now, two decades later.

Some of you have confided in me your political opinions, and some of those
opinions have been extremely distant from median discourse, to say nothing of
distance from empirical reality. I am disturbed when I hear family tell me
that they are actively avoiding staying informed. To that end, I suggest that
you consider reading some curations based not on political theme, but on
virality and popularity; regain your connection with society. In particular,
consider visiting and learning about:

* Current political discourse: https://currentstatus.io/
* The most popular image and video macros: https://imgur.com/

Unfortunately, there will be advertisements. I recommend not just using an
advertisement blocker, but also disabling scripts entirely and only enabling
selected essential functionality. Additionally, I recommend not consuming
Twitter or Facebook content at all; they don't care who their advertisers are,
and Facebook is literally complicit in genocide thanks to this neglect.

Failing that, I strongly encourage you to directly listen to some resources on
compiled knowledge about the world. History is what sculpts today. Even if you
think yourself well-read, I expect that you could learn new things about:

* Essential scientific insights of the past century: https://www.youtube.com/c/StatedClearly/videos
* How wrong popular culture is about ancient culture: https://acoup.blog/resources-for-world-builders/
* Why there is so much street fighting in Portland: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-uprising-a-guide-from-por-73255667/

I have paid attention to the timbre of discourse among my peers, too, and have
tried hard to not let them maintain their delusions. Some of you have
expressed genuine surprise at my opinions, and as a potential remedy, I
invite you to read me in forum:

* On rationalism as a component of fascism: https://lobste.rs/s/jf3in4/ai_ethics_impossibility_theorems#c_9hp8br
* On patterns of corporate exploitation: https://lobste.rs/s/cv56ew/total_advertising_denial#c_1hi3cq
* On morality of Discord: https://lobste.rs/s/iniodd/discord_is_not_acceptable_choice_for_free#c_zai6m4
* On USA history, to a cryptofascist: https://lobste.rs/s/5zxfms/case_against_microsoft_github#c_6t5pvd
* On deconstructing nationalism: https://lobste.rs/s/pqozfs/riot_games_maker_league_legends_installs#c_5utcmp
* On the morality of deliberately inefficient code: https://lobste.rs/s/flhrmr/is_it_morally_wrong_write_inefficient#c_sljsuj
* On giving free labor to corporations: https://lobste.rs/s/0pjkmn/modest_proposal_new_age_dmca_takedown#c_qkmkys
* On whether "ethics in tech" is meaningful: https://lobste.rs/s/lr8mgr/ethical_programming_is_it_worth_it#c_tpzbsy
* On explainable artificial intelligence: https://lobste.rs/s/dvannd/machine_learning_could_be_fundamentally#c_hcwjtc
* On the legality of DMCA notices: https://lobste.rs/s/15kt2z/youtube_class_action_same_ip_address_used#c_c5pfsn

I owe you all some deeper explanations on topics which are too difficult to
summarize. In particular, some of you have wondered why I disbelieve certain
ideologies so strongly. I hope to spend time in the following year explaining
in detail, and with evidence and careful reasoning, that:

* Bigotry comes in degrees; there is a difference between discrimination based
  on protected classes, and discrimination based on prior bigotry. We may thus
  define a tower of bigotries, culminating in infinite bigotry. Through case
  analysis, we can replace Popper's paradox of intolerance with a
  straightforward argument which exposes bigotry as a mere contradiction.
* Fair and efficient cake-cutting is not a perfectly distributive system of
  justice. However, a single modification makes it so: For cake-cutters Alice
  and Bob, if we include the invisible judge Judy who provides ambient justice
  in the cake-cutting, then Alice and Bob and Judy together will experience
  distributive justice. This suggests that we should consider retributive
  schemes which, rather than merely reallocating wealth, reallocate power
  between the government and the people.
* If P!=NP, then markets are not efficient. NP is probably bigger than P. This
  would doom capitalist and libertarian conceptions of markets as ideal tools
  for determining prices and solving the Economic Problem. The result
  factors through Impagliazzo's Five Worlds; in the most likely worlds,
  markets are not just inefficient, but can be manipulated by bad-faith actors.
* Pedigree collapse implies that there is only one human race. This gives a
  sharp and comprehensive definition of racism as any belief which contradicts
  the mathematics of gene pools.
* Conway's Free Will Theorem implies that, if free will exists, then humans
  are not the only creatures which experience free will. Indeed, even photons
  and bacteria have degrees of freedom. This implies a new generalization of
  Chalmer's arguments against the existence of souls, while reopening a
  bizarre Spinozan panpsychic vision. At a minimum, it certainly raises
  questions regarding the ethics of how our society treats animals.

I also owe you all a sincere apology. I have not been happy this year, and it
has come through clearly in my tone. I don't like how my words reflect upon
me. But, at the same time, I am a mirror; I have difficulty being anything but
a reflection of my surroundings. Our society will have to improve before I
will be enjoyable company again.

Happy new year,
~ C.