Wu Wei « Isegoria

Wu Wei

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Although there is no formula or science of government, libertarian policies tend to be good ones, Mencius Moldbug notes:

Nor did we need Hayek to tell us this. It was known to my namesake, over two millennia ago.

Wu wei — for this is its true name — is a public policy for a virtuous prince, not a gigantic committee. The virtuous prince should practice wu wei, and will; that is his nature. Men will flock to his kingdom and prosper there. The evil prince will commit atrocities; that is his nature. Men will flee his kingdom, and should do so ASAP before he gets the minefields in.

It had never occurred to me that the esoteric notion of wu wei — “effortless action” — might equate with laissez-faire.

Of course, I’m more familiar with wu wei as practiced in the “soft” martial art of baguazhang — as I’ve been on the receiving end of an effortless combat throw or two.

Posted in Martial Arts, Mencius Moldbug, Policy | No Comments »

Isegoria: Thanks, Bill! I’ve fixed it.
Bill: Your “mentioned” link above is broken.
Bob Sykes: That’s 1.8 g hydrogen per gram catalyst per hour. The economics of this process are silly.
McChuck: How long before Congress mandates corn methanol production?
T. Beholder: Jim says: No offense, but literally what the fuck are you talking about? Well, what was so special about Homo Sapiens Foo that they should become The Next Big Thing on the planet? At first, they are just another bunch of naked primates, with inherent disadvantages of big brain (needs more food, and not only glucose) in big head (leads to more fatalities by birth). So there seem to be 3 big thresholds to clear: 1. Manifest enough of advantages over the next bunch of monkeys to consistently...
T. Beholder: And back to UAV… The other side of screwdriver shacks is easy technical deniability, that falls short of plausible if anyone not happy with it is paying attention. See “The myth of ‘Ukrainian’ drones: What’s really behind the production chain” on RT https://www.rt.com/news/ 638518-myth-of-ukrainian -drones/ (via Simplicius https://simplicius76.sub stack.com/p/serious-esca lation-russian-mod-impli es )
Jim: T. Beholder: “Once it hit tool building stage, evolutionary pressures simply had very little effect.” No offense, but literally what the fuck are you talking about?
T. Beholder: Wanweilin says: …and yet we remain human after millions of years. Biological advantage of sentience can be expressed simply as “upgrade from adaptation only via slow hardware evolution to much faster software evolution”. Evolution of memeplexes via mutation and branching off (ethnogenesis) is a replacement for evolution of subspecies via mutation and branching off. Once it hit tool building stage, evolutionary pressures simply had very little effect. Which is why humans remain mostly good...
Jim: That is a technical way of saying it works just as well as the most expensive, high-tech catalysts. That is a specific expression of a general phenomenon.
T. Beholder: Jim says: LLMs now provide (a) and (c) It also provides (b) to some of the Pointy Haired Bosses, if as a mixed blessing. In that the big downside is having much fewer subordinates involved in BS production, but the upside is perfect excuse for a purge and then having much fewer potential backstabbers.
Jim: LOL.
Isegoria: Well, we certainly haven’t ascended to become beings of pure energy.
Wanweilin: …and yet we remain human after millions of years.
Jim: For the avoidance of doubt, that is a jab at “people” vibing the progress of their codebases by lines accreted.
Jim: T. Beholder: “For one, let’s remember that more powerful computers did not help to write and optimize a better code, but rather allowed greater inefficiency. Thus lowering standards for software to the levels that would be considered absurd but a few years earlier. The Daily WTF found IIRC embedded Java machines whose only purpose was to perform simple arithmetic operations with string constants.” The objective functions of that code were and are: (a) something that looks like it works...
VXXC: Strangely enough, when one returns to our common roots of armed raiding combined with presently energy production dominance, and we covered the insurance angle via DFC Chubb, how odd the success when one has a country not a global market… and doesn’t want the blasted ground. I refer to the present matter of the Pirates of Persia and their Boomer resistance allies.
T. Beholder: He is almost certainly wrong on LLM keeping the verbal lawns shapely. For one, let’s remember that more powerful computers did not help to write and optimize a better code, but rather allowed greater inefficiency. Thus lowering standards for software to the levels that would be considered absurd but a few years earlier. The Daily WTF found IIRC embedded Java machines whose only purpose was to perform simple arithmetic operations with string constants. So instead it’s one more way so-called...
Jim: The legitimacy of the American regime is drawn from the Constitution accepted by the Founding Fathers in 1789. Did the Founding Fathers intend to arm Blacks, Mexicans, traffic cops, women, enforcers of divorce “court” orders, SWAT, Israelis, or the institutional progeny of slave patrol against normal white Americans? The Founding Fathers dueled. Do the American Bar Association, National Judicial College et al. have any right to prohibit normal white Americans from privately settling...
Gaikokumaniakku: “Vannevar Bush once said that the unity of decision under a totalitarian regime was a recipe for making colossal technological mistakes, whereas the prevalent confusion of decision-making in a democracy was more efficient. He could not have anticipated the tortuous system of procrastination that characterizes modern American defense procurement.” I used to quote William S. Lind, who used to compare American defense procurement to Soviet defense procurement. Any sufficiently corrupt...
Gaikokumaniakku: Note that obviously non-white wrongdoers are often documented as white in order to throw off official statistics.

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