Occurs to Me that African Wars are Ceremonial

 The guys hooting at each other like chimps don't seem to be genuinely trying to kill each other because they're not genuinely trying to kill each other. The guy who shoots the odd arrow does so to make the ceremony less ridiculous. He's carefully aiming at where the other guys aren't, and the bow is so weak that it's unlikely to kill anyone even if he misses the empty space.

 Humans are animals, especially tropical Africans. Animals spend lots of effort to avoid fighting. There's a bunch of posturing to try to work out who would win, and outside desperate cases they agree that one would win and the other backs down. In humans, a pack-hunting species, the posturing is a group effort. Humans can also posture purely to inflict the costs of posturing on the other side. Karen wants to lodge a complaint with management, 50,000 BC version - she's not serious enough to sue, though. 

 If a tropical Africans actually wants to kill you they fire a poisoned missile with a full draw from ambush, they don't snap off a half-cocked clean projectile while leaping around like an idiot in full view. Look, even 80 IQ isn't that dumb.

 The problem is these tropical Africans come to modern society and try to have their ceremonial war using modern non-training childhoods and modern weapons. They hold the gun sideways and don't aim because they don't want to hit anything. Unfortunately, they round 'unlikely to hit' to 'impossible to hit' then fire way too many balls to safely not hit anything. Notice how if someone is injured in these rituals, the ones with the guns are the ones who panic. "Oh shit I didn't mean to hit anyone." The side with casualties are happy because they now have an excuse for lethal "retaliation" - it's not like the dead guy was going to live much longer anyway. Short life strategy. 

 Europeans are killers, anomalously. Probably a recent adaptation to technological advantage. 

 Imagine what a British WWI officer with a brace of pistols could do to these prancing African "warriors." He could probably wipe out the tribe without even taking an injury 90% of the time. "Funny thing, snipers." *bam* "Oh dear, seems the sniper is dead." His only real issue would be killing them all before they ran too far and vanished into the brush.

 If you have armour and the other tribe doesn't, it's not time for posturing anymore. You can gain a lot by going in there and simply butchering them. Strong Darwinian pressure.

 Europeans had to evolve more sophisticated versions of ceremonial/posturing warfare, once someone had the bright idea to make weapons for killing instead of for looking scary. Consequently Europeans normally don't try to posture using live ammo. For the European, once weapons are involved it means posturing and negotiation has broken down already and it's a real fight. 

 Children have residual Africanness and that's likely why they think weapons are toys. A Bantu getting into his dad's bow and arrow is not likely to successfully do anything except whap himself in the face with the stave. Even less dangerous than a kitchen drawer, and there's no locks on those. A Euro getting into his dad's rifle cabinet, on the other hand...

Rules of Logicology

 A real, sane school would have a logical times table.

 Once you understand how multiplication works through the 1s and 2s, you don't bother to individually work it out. You just memorize a big table.

 Likewise integration. What's the integral of cosecant? Once you CAN  work it out for yourself, there's no point in doing so. Let someone else do it and look up their answer.

 Likewise, logic is very simple. It's modus ponens and modus tollens. The +1 and -1. However, you don't want to be laboriously proving a multiplication table and the quadratic formula and the integral of Euler series starting from counting each and every time. Much as there are lists of fallacies, there should be lists of common logical isomorphisms.

 E.g. there's a bunch of distinct subtypes of proof by contradiction.

 Logic is in fact geometric. Why isn't there an algebra and geometry and logic class?

 E.g. there's the free_will/determinism shape where the response called for is identical regardless of what your priors are. Convergent logic.

Rules of Debate

 In fact the coherent rules of debate are already known, but it's not written down in one place anywhere. It's worth at least a partial effort. 

 It is very easy for both sides to claim they won a debate. As such, the debate needs a Pope or one of his duly deputized representatives. A winner must be explicitly declared via Law of Man. Perhaps call him a Judge, if you will. It is he who decides what the rules are, who has scored how many points, and finally determines what the answer is in light of the evidence. 

 Although it is easy for both sides to claim they won, and the Judge must have full authority, in fact there are a set of correct rules. The Judge is either good at following these rules, and will produce correct predictions, or poor, and will produce corruption. 

 The Judge must have so much authority that they can declare someone won the debate, and then side with the other guy anyway, in the case he is in fact correct. It's important, so I'll say it again: a good debate produces true predictions. A bad debate can be detected by its falsified predictions.  

 Of course the normal average debate is one in which both sides lose. Whether neither debater is producing accurate predictions, then the Judge should discredit both of them.

 

 The lists of fallacies are broadly correct. As correct as can be reasonably expected - only someone who holds themselves to absurd standards, like me, can do better. E.g. ad hominem is indeed a fallacy; 'trust me' is not an argument. If the worst person in the world claims that 2+2=4, it doesn't make it untrue. Anyone who is indeed trustworthy can verify their trustworthiness by producing the argument that they themselves used to glean their trustworthy conclusion.

 Debate opponents must exclusively use modus ponens and modus tollens. "If X, then Y." "X, therefore Y." Midwits hate these because they're too simple - even dimwits can do this. A good Judge challenges midwits to a debate and destroys any argument that it needs to be more sophisticated than modus ponens and modus tollens. Midwits ought to be ashamed of themselves, and will be shamed until they surrender. 

 The only standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. If it cannot be determined that X, or that X implies Y, then the argument is discarded. The correct answer is not A wins nor B wins, but [I don't know].

 A good Judge lists ahead of time what moves are considered bad-faith moves, and what threshold will result in forfeit of the debate. A good Judge can fine bad-faith debaters for attempting to pervert the debate process, and will hand out a lifetime ban, revoking their speech rights. The fines will be scaled by how much the bad faith was intended to benefit the traitor. For example, a lobbyist might see their entire industry confiscated. 

 Ideally these fines would be collected, saved, and used as bounties for anyone who exceeds expectations. Just as the Judge determines and advertises what counts as bad faith, the Judge lists criteria for success. What is the standard of evidence? Shall we use p < 0.05, or something stronger? (Also a meta-Judge keeps track of which debate courts are meeting their self-imposed standards.) Just as real life can score you lower than 0, hence fines, real life can score you higher than 100, and if the Judge can't reward the overachievers with cash, they will not join the debates. The quality will be capped, which is a runaway decay process. 

 Due to having a specific Judge, anyone who fails a debate can ask exactly what they did wrong. There's no gamesplaying with modus ponens and modus tollens, so the Judge can just tell them.  

Being Explicit: Literacy is a Myth

 It is often opined that literacy is a mistake. This is, of course, the thought of an illiterate. Mass literacy doesn't exist. Doesn't occur. Their thoughts and writing are in shambles because it's all fake. They sound like parrots because they are, in fact, parrots. Only more sophisticated than birdbrains in the elaboration of the facade.

 Recall that free speech is a myth. The first kind of speech one needs to secure is the ability to speak meaningfully at all. 

 The needful is subsidized silence. In practice what's wrong with free illiteracy is the failure to distinguish literates and illiterates. There should be a browser extension that says [illiteracy off] and simply prevents html from illiterate sources from being rendered. Such ""speech"" is pollution and literates need pollution control.

Epistemology and Deep Evolutionary Time

 Knowledge would be easy if nobody lied.

 

 The species is called homo sapiens, the wise ape. This is incorrect. It should be called homo hypocritus, the deceiving ape.

 Homo sapiens have IQs much higher than what's needed for ecological dominance. Humans have huge brains due to a dynamic almost identical to the one causing moose to have huge antlers. It's like sexual selection, although not precisely that. Intraspecific competition. 

 At some point the homo genus obtained total ecological dominance. Random and therefore nonselective factors aside, the only significant cause of death was other members of homo. Generally, if your band could kill the next band over, it would have already done so. This means not only was all meaningful competition conspecific, it was members of your own band or family. Your band had a set territory and thus set food revenue, the only question was who it would be distributed to.

 With the advent of throwing, a hominoid generally couldn't relieve the pressure by killing his competitor and taking his food. Throwing means duels become nonstandard. Instead, the band would gang up and safely kill the would-be murderer. Preferentially deleting your own family members is generally not good for the spread of your genes, and consequently bands that executed murderers would flourish, while bands that broadly tolerated murder have all died out. Within the bands that flourished, some other way of defeating one's rival had to arise.

 Solution: lie. Homo hypocritus tricks his "friend" into unjustly handing over more than his share.

 Deadly throwing is known to be at least two million years old. (For perspective, fire and cooking is ~four million.) Ever since then, the primary conflict in the homo genus has been verbal. Two million years of selecting for the most deceptive liar, with only total destruction of the tribe (Communism) as a stop.

 Evolution has unlimited intelligence, but it is very slow. When a new problem arises, evolution reliably picks a terrible solution. Often as if it's deliberately choosing the very worst solution that can possibly be said to address the problem at all. Indeed that has happened in this case.

 Evolution solves the problem of liars using brute force computation. Sheer cognitive power. The individuals try to be smart enough to see through a lie, producing a linear hierarchy. Everyone smart can lie to everyone dumber, and nobody dumb can lie to anyone smarter. Everyone in the hierarchy is fully committed to lying. Every homo hypocritus society is less than an inch away from losing contact with physical reality entirely.

 No conscious human impulse considers physical truth. They are all focused on social truth. Everything that naturally seems plausible is only in reference to what will effectively defraud your conspecifics. Although this does focus your energy on successfully defrauding them, it also makes you vulnerable in turn. Anyone who understands what you find plausible can produce plausible rhetoric and fool you. You might even think they're helping you defraud those lower down in the cognitive hierarchy.

 Put another way, homo hypocritus is inherently uncomfortable with truth. The truth is the set of things which the homo can't use to defraud its conspecifics. Even the language itself is tuned for misdirection rather than clear and concise communication. ("Stoic." "Epicurean." "Dogmatic.")

 The truth is the set of things which reveal the lies by which homo hypocritus obtains his daily bread. He instinctively avoids the truth and instinctively attacks and shames anything which reliably leads to the truth. 

 Homo culture is about assembling a set of lies which nevertheless, by coincidence and accident, produce useful artifacts. E.g. planting seeds not because seeds grow but because the zodiac constellations need to be honoured through sacrifice of last year's grain or whatever. Truth is robust; lies are not, and yet homo consistently chooses to use lies as foundation for technology.

 Worse, homo hypocritus actively selects against those who dislike being lied to. The lies are ubiquitous and being fooled by high IQs is unavoidable. Getting stressed about it is counterproductive. Further, in addition to being able to trick you into giving them stuff, the high IQs can trick the rest of the tribe into shooting you to death if you notice the scam and complain.

 Result: You actively enjoy being lied to. Evolution's first solution actively encourages you to hunt for parasites and give them your blood. You demand lies and feel upset and deprived if you don't receive them, strongly motivating you to seek them out.

 If you want to know the truth, you must transcend humanity.
 Many religious traditions have deprecated the body, declaring it filthy and profane. This is because these religions are natural human behaviour. In other words, lies. They must declare up to be down, and black to be white. Inherently in conflict with physical reality, they instead elevate social reality.
The body is holy, and the natural mind is profane. The natural mind is the enemy.

 To learn epistemology is to wage war on the human mind and defeat it utterly.

In a World of Immigration, Patriotic Pride is Hazardous

 You'll encourage residents of lesser countries to come to your own. You don't want that. 

 Complain instead. Talk about every bad thing your country has. 

 Perhaps that's why Japan doesn't like exporting their art. They'll toot their own horn - but only to each other. Ensure immigration attempts remain at a minimum.

Personnel is Policy vs. Wages

 You can try to pay someone higher wages to incentivize better work, but this is unlikely to be effective. It's the same person, so you will get the same policy. You've simply made the policy more expensive. Insofar as grass monkeys learn from their mistakes, they have already learned everything they're going to. By the time you hire someone, they've already made every mistake they're going to make. Any mistake they're still making is a mistake they'll make forever. See also: net worth is a genetic trait.

 To get better work for higher wages, you have to get rid of the lower-wage person and hire a higher-wage person. Low offered wages select for bad workers, not bad work. Of course, these low-wage workers will hardly stop themselves from applying for high-wage positions, but you can reject them as you will also get high-wage applicants. On this side, the selection needs to be on your end. It's probably fine to blithely pick the highest-status applicant, regardless of skills & experience. 

 On the wagie side, consider that employers only need to offer a higher wage if they accidentally hired a more-competent-than-expected worker. They need to offer a higher wage because he can command a higher wage. Thus, your argument for getting a raise should always and exclusively be, "I will quit if I don't get a raise." If you don't think you can command a higher price elsewhere, then they have no reason to give you a raise. No wonder you have so much trouble asking for one.

 I think the logic here is fun. Assume they're not appreciating the work properly. Then the worker ought to quit for lack of appreciation, and find someone who offers better. (Revenge is Sour: they're not going to learn better, just quit.) Now, assume they are appreciating the work properly, but the worker still doesn't feel appreciated. Then the worker ought to quit, to save the company from dealing with a crazy worker. Due to this converging fork, the substance of appreciation is irrelevant; the worker's perception alone fully determines the correct course of action.

Slightly More Starcraft

 Protoss makes colossus. Colossus get pwned like they always get pwned, forcing the protoss to retreat. Enemy gets a bunch of corruptors or vikings...meaning the colossus not only failed to win any fights, protoss loses any opportunity to perform an air transition. 

 For pros at least, the robo bay is a trap. Prism speed is cool but not worth the bay cost. 

 Perhaps not a trap if they find a good use for disruptors. They should be either part of a raiding team, warding off the army long enough to get stuff done, or part of a fork strategy, where the opponents needs to both approach and flee at the same time. Disruptors would probably be better if pros didn't refuse to micro them. Lets them die after one shot nearly 100% of the time. If you don't have the APM, they're not worth building, and even pros don't...

  There is some evidence that carriers with upgrades are way better than carriers without...but the evidence is unclear. Dude stops building his 3/2/1 carriers, attacks infrastructure instead of the army, and loses the game. It's good enough for me, but hardly indisputable. Meanwhile other pros are trying 1/0/0 carriers and getting wrecked for some reason...