Death Is Bad

One of the advantages of realizing that you’re riding atop an unwieldy mass of urges is that you can stop blaming yourself for lapses of willpower and start actually fixing the situation. If you know that the elephant you’re riding gets dizzy near ditches and sometimes fall into them, it’s stupid to berate yourself for not being a strong enough driver to keep the elephant on course as you’re skirting the edge of a ditch. The reasonable thing to do is keep the elephant on the other side of the road, away from the damn ditch! There’s absolutely no reason to go riding right up to the edge if you can avoid it.

What does this mean in practice? I love pastries. Sometimes I’ll see them as I’m grocery shopping, and I’ll want to buy some. But I realize that if I buy those donuts… I will eat them. There is no reason for me to go digging that ditch and placing it right in the middle of my kitchen where I can fall into it every time I walk past it. So I keep going and soon they are forgotten.

It is remarkable how much easier and more productive life becomes when you purge your surroundings of all the things that trip you up. In the world of the internet, you no longer need cable to watch a series you like. This means you can get rid of TV entirely and not lose anything you care about – all you’re doing is removing the stream of passive content that distracts you and grabs your elephant’s tail. In fact, most “stuff” people own falls into this category. Generally, you don’t need it. Every belonging has a weight, it has a cost associated with being kept around. It’s taking up square-footage in your house, it makes it harder to find the things you actually need, and it’s using up psychological resources by vying for your attention. Every single item you own should be paying rent to you in utility to justify its costs. If it is not paying rent it needs to be evicted, promptly. Throw it away.

From a recent profile:

“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”

Things can be kept for aesthetic value – a nice decoration is providing you utility in joy or status. Don’t let it go crazy, and remember that anything in storage rather than on display is NOT doing this.

When I was single I would move every year. This quickly gets you in the habit of paring down your possessions to what you actually want and need, and it’s less than you probably think. Yes, there’s a tiny chance that item may come in useful some day. Throw it out (or sell it) anyway, and when you need it you can simply GO OUT AND BUY IT AGAIN (or simply rent it!). As long as it’s not insanely expensive you probably saved more in space & psychological costs by not having to store it in those intervening years! If you have a hard time deciding if an item is useful or not, ask yourself when you last used it was. If you can’t remember, it’s likely not worth keeping.

When you have less to trip over you can move more efficiently, and your Elephant will thank you.

Currently the 2nd Amendment is interpreted by the Supreme Court as guaranteeing a right to self-defense. This is precisely why concealed-carry is protected by the 2nd Amendment, but RPGs are not. There is no need for concealed-carry if you’re arming the populace to stop a tyranny, and there IS a need for RPGs. The protection is exactly backwards.

From the recent overturning of Illinois’ concealed-carry ban:

“We are disinclined to engage in another round of historical analysis to determine whether eighteenth-century America understood the Second Amendment to include a right to bear guns outside the home,” wrote Posner. “The Supreme Court has decided that the amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside.”
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court made Chicago’s 28-year-old handgun ban unenforceable, ruling that Americans have the right to have guns in their homes for protection.

While there are some people who argue that military-grade weapons should be available to private citizens, and I respect them for their consistency, there aren’t enough of them to bother having that argument at this time.

So let’s grant for a moment that the 2^nd amendment is about personal self-defense. This seems like a good right to have. What sort of self-defense requires a fully-automatic rifle with a 30+ round clip? A pistol is more portable for when you’re out in public, and a shotgun or pistol or rifle is more than adequate for any imaginable home-defense scenario. Turns out I had a very limited imagination, because I thought in terms of individual criminals, and not in terms of all of society turning against me.

I was enlighten when a friend shared this video. At the 4:13 mark we are told what defensive use assault rifles have – the 1992 Rodney King Riots in LA. Supposedly a man held back a mob of looters with an assault rifle. These weapons are indeed handy if society has collapsed and a mob has turned on you. The obvious question to ask is – does the protection afforded by these weapons in such scenarios outweigh the harm of having these weapons widely available? Since such scenarios are already incredibly rare I doubt they’re worth the cost in criminal carnage. A few dozen shops being looted every decade is a reasonable price to pay for reducing the incidents of mass-murders.

But there’s a second question that comes up. A much less charitable one – what sort of person imagines they’d get use from this sort of weapon? Who views themselves as surrounded by violent criminals that are held at bay only by his own firepower? Not just opportunistic criminals – those are easily discouraged by a regular rifle or shotgun. This sort of weapon is for holding off a large mob that is determined to kill you. Is this not the hallmark of the racist? One who fears that as soon as the Law is no longer there to protect him all the minorities around him will rise up and consume him? An AK isn’t of much use against a tyrannical government, but it sure can mow down the dark-skinned savages that are rushing your suburban survivalist compound…

EDIT – seems this is not news. Apparently the 2^nd amendment was intended to keep the black people in control since the day it was penned. I like our new interpretation better. And in that spirit, I hold it shouldn’t protect assault weapons.

I don’t want to get too involved in the gun-control debate, because I don’t actually know which side I support. Obviously fully-automatic weapons should be banned, as should high-capacity magazines, as the only thing they’re good for is indiscriminate mass carnage. Aside from that, I don’t have a strong degree of confidence in either side’s claims.

I am intensely annoyed by one thing though – the occasional refrain by the pro-gun side that the 2nd Amendment is there to protect the American populace from a government-imposed tyranny. This is complete crap, everyone knows it, and yet it’s still brought up sometimes.

Maybe in the day of muskets and cavalry charges this was true (maybe). But it’s obviously absurd to claim that now. Small-caliber handguns cannot compete with a modern military force in any way. A military force can field tanks, long-range artillery, attack helicopters, and unmanned drones. And (aside from the drones) that’s all ancient technology. To actually resist a military incursion the 2nd Amendment would have to allow private citizens to own heavy ordnance and high-explosives at the minimum. Every successful modern resistance has been supplied and/or supported by a foreign nation.

No one believes that the 2nd Amendment SHOULD allow those things. So it’s not about stopping a domestic tyranny. Stop pretending it is.