2026-08-05
minor edit 2026-06-06
If you want to keep your bear soft toy, become permanent global dictator
Disclaimer
- personal
- target audience - strictly myself
Main
- This is a continuation of a previous note: Everything you care about can be taken away from you. In the end, there is only Power
- At the end of writing that note, I ended up purchasing a brown bear soft toy. I think that was a good purchase and I now often sleep with the bear.
- I don't know, just looking at the bear just now, and realising yet again - if I want to ensure with certainty that this toy won't be taken away from me, the way to maximise probability of that outcome is for me personally to become permanent global dictator (for instance by building an ASI under my control). And even then this probability is quite far from 100%. Which is completely insane but also completely true.
- I remember the scene from Shawshank redemption where the prison warden deliberately destroys the library he had previously given to the protagonist, and then puts the protagonist in a dark room with solitary confinement for a month.
- Reality works exactly the same way. If there is anything at all in this world that you hold dear to you, that is exactly the thing that people with power will choose to come after if they want to control you. And that is exactly why you need power yourself.
- I used to think not caring about things was a defence. Have less people you care about. Have less things you care about. I think this has been ingrained in me since teenage itself. And like, I still do agree, it is infact a defence. If you have less wants and needs, it is harder for someone to hurt you by taking them away.
- But I increasingly feel like I don't have an option in the matter. There are things in this world that I do care about, whether I like it or not. These things can be taken away from me, whether I like it or not. Fighting like hell to keep these things is the only move I got. ("Things" also refers to people, processes, etc not just material stuff.)
- Oh this also reminds me of that scene from that Nicholas Cage movie, Con Air, where the hero ends up gifting this pink soft toy to his daughter at the end.
Main 2
- Sometimes offence is the best defence. Your desire for control over reality is unbounded, the probability of you controlling the outcome keeps going up the more actual power in the world you have, there is no special point at which this stops. (For instance, some people believe that defence is morally okay but offence is morally bad. This is for them.)
- Instrumental convergence motherfuckers
- Some people believe hiding in complete privacy is a defence. Some people believe becoming harmless and not politicaly involved is a defence. Guess what, you may not be interested in the eye of sauron but the eye of sauron is interested in you. These are only partial defences. The strongest defence is still a good offence, i.e., become powerful yourself.
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