Multiple Personalities Disorder of BTVS Characters

The thing about knowing how the human mind is put together is that you begin to spot when a character isn't "complex" but rather has a logically impossible personality. Something that can only be resolved by multiple personalities disorder, if at all.

Take Xander Harris in BTVS. He's a white knight and a genuine hero. That makes him a Gaian of reasonably high Presence. Logically, he should have the lower Presence levels of Gaian. In particular, he should be a grey man who fits in with any situation without ever standing out, like Clark Kent. And he should be a survivor willing to cut the throat of anyone, anyone at all, in order to LIVE!

Instead, he's the exact OPPOSITE of a grey man and a survivor. But that at least can be explained by him being a blatant fucking hypocrite. A person who has ideals and principles and imposes those ideals and principles on OTHERS but NEVER ON HIMSELF. Yes, that works as an explanation, the scum sucking son of a bitch!

But no such explanation is possible for Willow who in the very first episode is a hacker (psychopath!). She goes on to becoming a traitor (psychopath) and is ever amoral (psychopath) and reckless (psychopath). And she's quite the eager little cultist (psychopath). And that's WITHOUT looking at what she does hopped up on "dark magic". She's not schizoid either but a straight out psychopath.

Problem is, she's also loyal overall (not a sociopath of any kind) and she is very, very much obedient to authority figures (right-wing authoritarian or moralist) and an eager little drone (moralist) and yes man (moralist) and adjutant / teacher's assistant (right-wing authoritarian). And there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that can make those personality types fit together.

In fact, those personality types can't fit together IN THE SAME ROOM. The moment you have knives available anywhere in that room, one of them will try to stab the other. And if there aren't any knives, they'll make a shiv. The weaker (mentally) the characters, the longer it will take for their minds to turn to thoughts of killing the other. But it will happen, inevitably.

You might as well ask Batman (right-wing authoritarian) to get along with the freaking Joker (psychopath). Oh except you wouldn't because the idea is totally fucking ridiculous! Similarly, put them in the same room ... as kids with undeveloped personalities, and you'd still expect sparks to fly.

So when an author writes 'shy little Willow' as a gutless backstabbing psychopath uncaring of anyone's feelings who wants to enslave, mind control and humiliate her "best friend" Buffy Summers, they're not exactly breathing fresh air into the character. They're just writing her far more consistently than the psychopath Joss Whedon ever managed to. And picking her dominant personality to boot.

And giving that egotistical selfish heartless narcissistic little bitch Buffy Summers exactly what she deserves. Because if there were any justice in the world then psychopaths would all be killed and narcissists would all be sold as sex slaves. It's not just what the Good people of the world want ... it's what the Evil people want too!

And not just because Evil people hate other Evil people, although they do. They really, really do. But because psychopaths don't care about consequences even to themselves, so they DON'T CARE if they go to prison or end up dead for doing something. They CAN'T CARE because not caring about consequences is WHAT MAKES THEM PSYCHOPATHS. And what makes them dangerous too.

Meanwhile, narcissists actually WANT to be sex slaves. They FANTASIZE about it. Who the fuck do you think writes all those semi-exhibitionistic pro-humiliation self-abasing sex slave stories? That's right, their authors are narcissists. And they are so not because they necessarily want to be the center of the universe, but because they firmly believe that *A* person ought to be the center of the universe.

Meanwhile, right-wing authoritarians are perfectly fine with homo sapiens getting slaughtered like cattle or other homo sapiens being sold as slaves, sexual or otherwise. It's a time honoured tradition!! 99% of human societies throughout 99% of human history had slavery and genocide. Even to this day, we STILL have slavery and genocide out in black Africa. What could possibly be wrong with something so NORMAL!?

Note that right-wing authoritarians are perfectly fine with killing each other so long as it's done across ethnic or national lines. Really, killing Evil people isn't a problem for ANY Evil person. Though preferably, it's other Evil people that are going to die if they get their way. Evil people will put their lives on the line to kill other Evil people.

The only people who want Evil people to be treated like human beings (and psychopaths AREN'T human beings, they're mindless animals who've accidentally mastered the trick of human speech, and I can prove this!) is Neutrals. Because being neither Evil nor categorical mortal enemies of Evil (render Evil unto Evil!), they don't have an instinctive grasp of what Evil *IS*.

Finally, when you've shown that the world could be improved by targeted mass killings and enslavement, this constitutes powerful evidence that the world is as fucked up as it can possibly get. Something I've known to be true for a long time now.

Iron Laws of Storytelling

There are lots and lots of rules of storytelling that are good ideas. Things like 'do not do ninja slash'. But these are IRON laws that must NEVER be crossed otherwise you will instantly and totally alienate your intended audience.

In romance, the princess may never die. The prince may die and frequently does. But if you kill off the princess like Babylon 5 did to Talia Winters, then you're sending the message that love is worthless.

In action thrillers, the protagonist may never be overpowered. If they're overpowered compared to the villain then there is no risk or danger, thus there is no thrill or excitement.

In heroic adventures, the protagonist may never be hypocritical in their driving values. The protagonist may be a lying conniving psychopath, but they MAY NOT be a hypocrite. And if a supporting heroic protagonist is hypocritical then the protagonist MUST call them on it. Because tolerating hypocrisy sends the message that principles are worthless and that values are worthless. Imposing one's values on the world is what adventures are about.

In Mysteries ...

In Horror ...

I'm sure these are collected somewhere, and I wouldn't mind knowing about it. I was told two of them without any explanation why they're iron laws. In fact, the cretin who pointed out that "protagonists may never be overpowered" never qualified it as applying only to action-thrillers, so it never seemed like an iron law to me since I hate action thrillers. So I only just figured out that iron laws exist and *why* they exist.

Ronald Weasley Is A Lickspittle

Regarding this chapter, the author described very well what an EVIL shit Ronald is, and why I despise him. He is a narcissistic shithead. Lazy, violent, thoughtless, self-centered, HEARTLESS. He doesn't even rise up to being egotistical. He is a swine, a hedonist. Going through life in a purely passive pursuit of mindless pleasure. Especially attention and self-aggrandizement, as all narcissists do.

But beyond that, did you know there are only 27 different possible stable ways to relate to another human being? And so once you know every single one of them then you can perform tricks like figuring out which is Ron's. And come to rather astonishing conclusions.

First, NONE of the 27 ways *seem* to fit Ron. So it appears we have a problem, right?

But if you actually look at the 1-1 interrelationship slot in the same row as 'hedonist'. In fact, the slot that's right besides hedonist ... you have 'lickspittle / toady'.

But wait! Ron couldn't possibly be a lickspittle and toady, right? I mean, he's a fucking asshole who's one step away from beating up an already victimized stupid kid in a murderous rage.

And that's where things get interesting. What you and JKR the psychopath and everyone else dismiss as "jealousy" and "insecurity" is rather curious when you think about it. I mean, what kind of fucking asshole, what kind of fucker HANGS AROUND someone they're jealous of? Someone they're angry at? Someone to whom a more honest and proper emotion would be HATRED?

If Ronald weren't a gormless twit, he would hate Harry Potter. And indeed, in his MORE HONEST moments, this is EXACTLY WHAT HE DOES.

The question naturally arises, if Ronald hates HP, why does he hang around with him?

Because he's a lickspittle and a toady. His problem is that as with all things Ronald, he's incompetent and inept even at being a lickspittle and toady. He's too hedonistic, too lazy, too stupid. Which doesn't stop him from trying. And doesn't stop me from despising him for it, even before I knew what I despised him for.

Why are there so many fics with Ronald the Death Eater? Because it's only a miniscule hop away from Ronald the Lickspittle. It's not even a slide sideways, it's actually IN CHARACTER. The only difference is that instead of being a lickspittle and hedonist, Draco is a brownnoser and politician. Meaning, if Draco grew up (became more Evil), he would be Ronald Weasley. Read that last sentence again if you have to, I know it's surprising.

In canon, when Ronald grows older, he becomes a thief. And yes, that is growing up since he has become more fully Evil. More fully himself. If he grew up any more he'd become a jerkass & bully going in one direction. Or a bandit (actively shaking down people) in the other direction.

JKR seems to have an instinctive understanding of Narcissism. As well as approval of same. But that makes sense for a psychopath who dreams of becoming a torturer. After all, her books are just fantasies for wishful child torturers.

Anyways. Yeah, JKR? Hate, HATE the bitch. Ronald Weasley? Hate, HATE the son of a bitch! Would roast marshmellows over his burning body.

Lies of Genesis

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Bible: the FIRST thing JHVH1 created was the Earth, so the Earth is just as old as the universe!

Truth: the Earth is 4.54 billion years old. The universe is 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years old.

Bible: before there was anything else on Earth, there was water.

Truth: there was no water on the Earth because it was all MOLTEN. It needed to cool down over a hundred million years before liquid water could even exist.

Bible: the "deep" was dark.

Truth: Magma glows red and yellow! Molten magma sure as fuck isn't "dark"!

Result: 3 lies in 2 verses for 150% lies.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Bible: Daylight was created AFTER the formation of the Earth.

Truth: Daylight == Sunlight and the SUN formed 4.57 billion years ago. Which makes it OLDER than the Earth!

Bible: Light is some kind of essence separate from darkness.

Truth: Light is IN darkness. What would you call space other than pure darkness? And if you don't call space darkness then darkness is merely the ABSENCE of light. Or the PERCEPTION of low light. Sun spots are very, VERY bright ... they're just less bright than what's around them so they appear black. Since humans and living beings didn't exist then, and even the bible doesn't claim they did, saying that JHVH1 separated the perception of darkness from the perception of light is a LIE!

Bible: there was only one revolution of the Earth either on its axis or around the Sun (one day or one year) during the ENTIRE formation of the Earth.

Truth: it took a billion years for the Earth to cool. That's hundreds of billions of days.

Result: 3 lies in 3 verses for 100% lies.

6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

Bible: the sky is water. H2O. It's separated from the land by a magical forcefield or a glass bubble or something.

Truth: the sky is NOT separated from the land by anything, magical or otherwise, forcefield or otherwise. The sky is not even "out there" it's fucking IN HERE. The sky is in fact the outer edge of the atmosphere. In reality, there's no such thing as "the sky" except as an illusion, there is only THE ATMOSPHERE.

Truth: the atmosphere sure as fuck isn't H2O.

Truth: the volcanic outgassing that formed the atmosphere sure as fuck didn't form in a day!

Truth: there is a conspicuous absence of mention of the fact the first atmosphere didn't have any oxygen and that the formation of oxygen is known as the Oxygen Catastrophe since it was POISON TO EARLY LIFE!

Truth: the condensing of the oceans out of steam happened over a billion years!

Result: 6 lies and 1 omission in 3 verses for 233% lies!

9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

Bible: land was uncovered from water receding.

Truth: the only time this happened was during Snowball Earth events, when all life on Earth was destroyed! How the fuck is this "good"?

Truth: the land was created from the super-continents RISING due to PLATE TECTONICS!

Bible: there were multiple seas at the beginning.

Truth: There was ONE ocean and ONE super-continent.

Truth: Conspicuously missing is any mention of cometary bombardment, and of the early ocean being 200 degrees Celsius! In other words, BOILING. Not exactly "good".

Result: 3 lies and 1 omission in 2 verses for 200% lies!

11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

Bible: seed-bearing plants were the FIRST of all vegetation to be created.

Truth: seed-bearing plants were the LAST to evolve! They evolved about 300 million years ago, whereas plants crept onto the land about 420 million years ago. That's about a hundred million years that's just breezed by without a single word!

Bible: every seed is "according to its kind" - there are no MIXED kinds. There are no plant hybrids!

Truth: not only are there plant hybrids but there are FERTILE plant hybrids. In fact, probably MOST plant species are hybrids of some kind or another! Hell, EVERY LAST SPECIES OF SEED-BEARING PLANT IS A HYBRID!

Result: 3 lies in 3 verses for 100% lies.

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

Bible: Daylight is not Sunlight. Daylight is not CREATED or GENERATED or RADIATED by the sun, but merely "controlled" by the Sun's magical powers!

Truth: Daylight == Sunlight!!!

Bible: the moon generates light!

Truth: the moon REFLECTS light!

Bible: the moon was created separately from the Earth.

Truth: The moon was created FROM the Earth, and another planetoid.

Bible: the Sun was created AFTER vegetation.

Truth: (blinks) do I need to say this?

Bible: the Sun is responsible for years!

Truth: The EARTH is responsible for years!

Bible: the Sun is NOT A STAR! It was created BEFORE the stars!

Truth: the Sun IS a star! And as stars go it's fairly young!

Bible: the stars are in the "sky" that is at the edge of the atmosphere.

Truth: the stars are thousands of light years away and it would take THOUSANDS OF YEARS for their first light to reach the Earth!

Bible: the planets are stars!

Truth: the gas giant planets were responsible for the Late Heavy Bombardment which remelted the Earth and cleared out all the asteroids. Hardly insignificant "lights" in the "sky".

Result: 9 lies in 5 verses for 180% lies.

20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

Bible: birds were created as-is.

Truth: birds evolved from DINOSAURS. And the first flying dinosaurs didn't have feathers so they weren't birds

Bible: fish were created much, MUCH later than seed-bearing plants!

Truth: Seed-bearing plants evolved at the END of the Devonian period. The whole entire Devonian period is also known as The Age Of Fish!

Bible: EVERY living animal species was created simultaneously..

Truth: species evolve and go extinct. The mass extinctions, of which there have been MANY, are conspicuously missing in this Children's Storytime episode. You'd think that 95% or more of ALL LIFE ON EARTH DISAPPEARING would be worth a mention in Genesis, but nooooo!

Bible: There are no transitory species. There are no hybrid animals.

Truth: there have ALWAYS been hybrid animals. Coyote-dogs, fox-wolves, many, many more. And as for transitory species ...

4 lies and 1 omission in 4 verses for 125% lies.

24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Bible: Reptiles were created AFTER seed-bearing plants. Amphibians were created AFTER seed-bearing plants.

Truth: Reptiles are 310-320 million years old. Seed-bearing plants are younger than 319 million years old. So roughly the same time, or older. Amphibians are 370 million years old, so much older than seed-bearing plants.

Truth: there is a conspicuous omission of the insects!

Bible: Amphibians and reptiles were created AFTER whales!

Truth: Give me a fucking break, whales are MAMMALS! So they're younger than 65 million years old!

Bible: there are no transitory species, there are no half-reptiles, or half-amphibians or whatever.

Truth: Bull and shit. You'd have to be pretty fucking retarded to not have heard of all the transitory species. So much for all that "after its own kind" cock and bull story!

Bible: God created livestock at the same time he created reptiles.

Truth: HUMANS created livestock through DOMESTICATION several hundreds of millions of years later. That fucking credit-stealing asshole!

Result: 5 lies and 1 omission in 2 verses for 300% lies.

27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Bible: Humans were badly designed to resemble a retarded mongoloid evil god psychopath who couldn't even tell a good story to his legions of mindless peons.

Truth: well, the badly-designed, retarded and mongoloid are all true. However, humans weren't created OR designed. They evolved. FROM MONKEYS. Which is why the first humans were all incestuous, homicidal, genocidal, and infanticidal. Also MINDLESS, incapable of language and lacking in consciousness!

Bible: the first humans being created "in the image of God" were capable of thoughts such as "this is good".

Truth: without language and without consciousness, this is totally impossible. The first homo sapiens sapiens WERE ANIMALS. They made retarded mongoloids look like super-geniuses! And they were so for ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS, until 9,000 years ago!

Result: 2 lies in 1 verse. 200% lies! And that's being generous.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Bible: humans were created in order to rule other species, even fish and birds.

Truth: for 100,000 years, homo sapiens sapiens WERE ANIMALS. Completely mindless, incapable of speech, incapable of thought!

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Bible: humans are "blessed" in their biology.

Truth: humans have just about inferior everything. Human eyes are vastly inferior to birds. Humans are susceptible to viruses for no good reason. Humans are ... fuck I don't want to go on, the list of flaws is so long it would fill entire books. There's a reason medical doctors are rarely if ever religious. Second only to psychologists who have to deal with the supposed "wonder" that is the schizophrenic mind, made in "God's image". If taken literally then God must be a psychotic madman with delusions of grandeur and no grasp of reality. Hmmm okay, that is totally believable.

2 lies in 2 verses for 100% lies.

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

Bible: green plants exist to be food for animals.

Truth: it appears the plants disagree, given the copious array of POISONS which plants have evolved. They don't like to be eaten. Or maybe JHVH1 is just a total fucking asshole "giving" everyone poison!

Truth: Ever heard of the word "inedible"? It doesn't apply just to rocks!

2 schizophrenic lies from a total fucking asshole in 2 verses for 100% totally psycho EVIL GOD!

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Bible: the Earth right after God created it was "good".

Truth: NO, NO IT WASN'T. IT WAS VERY, VERY BAD! Wheat hadn't evolved. Strawberries were inedible tiny lumps. Just about all the food plants were missing. Aurochs were deadly - there were no cows. Boars were deadly - there were no pigs! There were no dogs, only wolves! HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU CALL THIS GOOD YOU FUCKING RETARDS!?

And that's without counting in the fact the planet is set to blow up on a regular basis, from asteroids, from super-volcanoes, from ... bah.

1 huge honking lie by a totally psycho EVIL GOD in 1 verse for TOTALLY PSYCHO EVIL GOD!

HUMANS CREATED EDEN YOU FUCKING RETARDED MORONS!

Not only that, but it was HUMANS that created humans! Homo sapiens was an ANIMAL species, mindless and incapable of thought. It wasn't until Humans MADE humans that humans were capable of thought!

WE ARE A SELF-CREATED SPECIES THAT CREATED EVERYTHING THAT IS GOOD!

HUMANITY IS GOD!

And if you want to worship it, go right ahead. Only stop looking in the fucking sky when you do. And if you want to talk to god, stop fucking praying and pick up a telephone.

Applying Logic to Harry Potter

one learns that

• Hermione Granger is autistic - it's why she's incapable of Judgement, like that mind-wiping her parents is EVIL
• HG married Ron (the Peter Pettigrew of the trio) because her love for authority + a Nazi regime that wants to kill her led to crushingly low self-esteem - a desperation move for a girl who thinks she has nothing to look forward to in life
• Lockhart wasn't really a narcissist, he was a psychopath
• Ronald is a narcissist, a Lickspittle and Hedonist to be specific
• Mrs Figg is a turncoat who sold out to the Dursleys for money and/or to backstab Dumbles. The alternatives are that Dumbledore is Evil, or that what the Dursleys did isn't considered abuse in the Whizzy world.
• transfiguration and conjuration are fake - just holograms and forcefields
• and Whizzes are too stupid to understand that! - JKR just wrote random crap and it's totally by accident that it's self-consistent so it's not like she could explain her magic system.
• Hogwarts Houses are cults with charismatic leaders - it's no coincidence that between the two Gryffs on staff, only one is charismatic and the other is his minion - see how far into AU you have to go to make Hogwarts a premiere institution of learning (also portrays a living breathing Wizarding World)
• the Whizzes' intention-based system of magic robs them of the capacity for common sense and logic, reducing them to wishful thinking - save us, save us, someone save us! - magic is BAD!
• the Whizzy world's talking creatures and magical potions (to say nothing of Hags, Werewolves and Vampires) strongly encourages psychopathy - stewing magical creatures "as soon as they reach sexual maturity"? Uhuh.
• the Pissers stay in the Whizzy world either due to copious use of Compulsions or Shared Insanity - their brains can no longer manage the rudimentary logic even the mentally deficient non-magicals can do - what else can explain the lack of illegal smuggling of artifacts for money? Or the pathetic threadbare pastiche of a society and culture that is the Whizzy World? Like anyone liking Quidditch!
• the Wand warped Dumbles' brain making him batshit crazy to the point where he was fostering Dark Lords just so they'd kill him, or he them. HP and the Prophecy were always an obstacle to Dumbles' insane plans for glory.
• Dumbles was probably an artificial narcissist
• Dumbles completely brainwashed HP and may have put his own horcrux into HP to resurrect himself in HP's body - Albus Severus Potter? WTF?
• if not that then HP has fully assimilated the 'child abuse is a good thing!' philosophy of JKR and tortures his first born
• the Stone creates Sirens that lure the Stone's user to his or her death - HP's "parents" were fake
• the Cloak curses its user into insignificance, possibly a desire for insignificance, and apathy towards meeting Death
• the most important character in the series is Death: since He manages to wipe out both HP and Dumble. Yay!

messages that JKR sends

• child abuse is normal - the only okay parents (Hermione's and Draco's) are mythological and/or really Evil
• racism is great! - "muggle" even sounds like "ugly"
• concentration camps and genocide are swell - just good old boys acting out, forgive and forget she says!
• you'll go far on luck and self-sacrifice - in fact, that's the ONLY way to advance.
• anger is the only possible form of emotional depth and as such the only possible proof you aren't a psychopath, everyone who isn't angry is Evil. Only exception: Cedric, whom we don't see much of at all.
• the best government is no government, yay for patriarchal feudalism!
• the Clan Leader (Grandfather Dumbles) is owed Fealty unto death
• it's really okay to abandon your kids (the Potters, Black, Dumbles with Harry, Dumbles with every student, Lupin) - I'm sure JKR wished it every day
• child services are horrors, oops "aurors".
• children should be gone and good riddance - most of the students could have been day students and it would made no difference except to make the lack of extracurriculars more realistic!
• you CAN throw random crap together and write a book ... so long as you don't give a shit what message it sends!

Want to hear of the Nazi lessons in The Never Ending Story? Because that book WAS written by one of the parents-of-Nazis who raised the Nazi generation to be what they are. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? And then you stop wondering and become disgusted when you hear of the rampant child sacrifice and child abuse (imagination is a bad thing! bad!!) in Fantasia.

Credits: Publicola and Diresquirrel on FFN. Mr Ragtop on FFN (the asshole got in a snit and erased his account). Some are mine.

See also Bravery Is Evil, .

Gamers Are Lame

I recently discovered that gamers who aren't game designers are exceedingly lame. And I realized that the reason I'm not a gamer is simply because I'm not that lame, and because all the games ever made, all the games anyone could make, will always be lame.

There are damned few games where you get to alter the game world. The only ones I know are Minecraft, Second Life and the old MOOs (I consider Second Life a 3D MOO). And of course, the Reality MMORPG (that one's manual is really inadequate by the way).

In World of Warcraft, you don't get to change the outcome of anything at all. Things move around randomly, events happen, and you don't have any say in them. Only an unreachable deity (the Content Programmer) has any say in it at all.

In Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights and other computer role-playing games, you get a choice of a tiny number (usually 3 or less) "endings" which are barely distinguishable. You win and become evil, you win and become good, you lose and die, so on. There isn't any possible way to get off these plot rails you're stuck on.

And aren't you happy with 3 or 4 destinations? Like I said, I'm not that lame. And although in Minecraft and possibly Dungeon Keeper, you get to craft worlds, you only get to do so on a very superficial level. Like a freaking engineer! I look down on engineers, I don't want to emulate them!

So anyways, how did I learn all this? Well, I read a couple of self-insert fics about computer games. It took me a while to figure out their authors were uncreative hacks who were novelizing the games. Cause yeah, I don't play computer games, I just read about them. And then I started wondering what the fuck was wrong with these people.

And I realized! They're cattle and insects. They don't think of anything beyond their own self-aggrandizement. The "sandbox" in Elder Scrolls where you get to acquire power, prestige (social status), and fortune (wealth) is all they could ever want.

None of them ever want to REMAKE the world, putting down railways and signal towers to keep the Tamriel Empire together. None of them want to build aqueducts, public baths and radically improve coal mining to heat the baths in Athkatla.

I suppose Civilization and Railroad Tycoon let you do that to a small degree. But they were crap, because you got bogged down in repetitive micro-management pretty damned quick. And they were over-simplistic. What you could build was exceedingly limited. The plot rails may have been conceptual but they were still there.

My favourite genre of fiction has always been crossovers with reality. And the first question that always comes to mind is what the trade opportunities would be. I think this rant kinda shows that. Healing potions for steam engines, hmm. Steam engines are nearly always possible so long as something resembling human life lives.

Eliezer Yudkowsky the Utilitarian Idiot

Not only is Utilitarianism absurd since the notion of a global linear aggregation of non-existent "functions" each person is supposed to have (but doesn't) is impossible. Let's skip the known theorem in public choice theory that proves this and go straight to a counter-example.

You have 3 AIs, two of which prefer A over B and the third prefers B over A. Assuming A and B are totally arbitrary things of no moral significance, utilitarianism predicts A should be chosen over B. At least until the third AI rewrites its own preferences so that they are all amplified 10-fold. Now that B's value is arbitrarily and artificially amplified, the third AI gets its way.

How? Just because the third AI really, REALLY wants B over A. No other reason than that. Apparently what a tiny minority really REALLY want should hold sway over the rest of the population if they just want it badly enough. What kind of fucked up logic is that? Apparently, if someone is clinically depressed and they don't care if they live or die then suddenly it's okay to kill them to make 100$ off an insurance scam? This is utilitarian "logic".

Eliezer

Utilitarianism is completely, utterly, totally and thoroughly amoral. It is repugnant in the extreme. And ... Eliezer Yudkowsky subscribes to it. Because he is a thoroughly amoral dirt-bag.

I don't read Yudkowsky's blog but I do read his fiction. In one of the latest chapters of Methods of Rationality, HP describes an experiment where some psychologists tried to determine the value of saving 20 vs 2000 birds from an oil slick, and it all turned out to be the same.

Eliezer the Utilitarian numb-nut (since HP in that story is just a stand-in for Eliezer) calls this a "cognitive bias" as if there's something wrong with human brains because they don't reach his expected Utilitarian conclusion that saving 2 birds is worth twice as much as saving one bird.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with it! The only thing wrong here is with Eliezer's bogus notion that he is the ultimate arbiter of everything. And that EVERY time human brains don't work the way he expects they should, it's because they're defective.

Transfinites

The truth is that morality works based on transfinite numbers, not on finite numbers. Just by switching to transfinite numbers you solve most of the problems with Utilitarianism. Of course, you do that by utterly destroying the underpinnings of Utilitarianism because now you can no longer make any kind of decisions about whether A or B is the moral outcome since they're too similar to each other. (This is called Free Will and it is notable that Eliezer doesn't like it.)

But in the case of saving birds from oil slicks, it becomes easy to see why they could have constant value regardless of the number of birds. After all, people use money to feed themselves, feed their children, provide housing, provide all the other necessities of participating in a highly technological democratic society (like internet access), and then there's life's little luxuries. For bourgeois middle-classers, saving birds from oil slicks is in there somewhere among life's luxuries.

First and most importantly, money allocated to saving some dumb fucking birds will never displace one cent from feeding or clothing your family nor ANY other necessity. Secondly, whatever sum is assigned to saving birds is pretty arbitrary and not directly comparable to the sums assigned to any other luxuries. Because you're using transfinite numbers and you can't say that two items in the same class have more or less value than each other.

The only thing that determines the amount given over to saving birds is that it be enough to be representative of the class. 80$ is what middle-class people might assign to a luxury they care deeply about, and so that's how much is going to go to it. No more, no less.

How people's brains are actually wired to process morality? Makes total fucking sense.

Eliezer's Yudkowsky's bogus "insights" into pseudo-morality? Absolute fucking nonsense.

Narcissistic Smeghead

Yudkowsky claims to be intelligent. Obviously he's an idiot. He also claims to be "overcoming bias", yet his biggest bias is an ego the size of Jupiter. Maybe if he didn't have that giant fucking ego, he wouldn't have named his websites those pretentious names that put down everyone else by comparison. Maybe if he were half as smart as he claims to be he would have realized that using a put down as your domain name is a dead giveaway.

And maybe if he actually cared about other human beings, he would have figured out real morality and not this sick twisted nauseating parody that stupid rich white Californian adolescents with feelings of entitlement get hung up on. And maybe if America weren't a haven of narcissists with an allergy for morality, they wouldn't have created this pseudo-intellectual crap for witless children to get hung up on in the first place.

You know, speaking about Americans makes me wonder whether Yudkowsky is a narcissist. His building a cult in his name is certainly an indicator. I wonder because my biggest worry here is that he enjoys my hatred. I would much rather shatter him emotionally. I would quite willingly sacrifice any forthcoming chapters on Methods of Rationality in return for some assurances that he will never, ever proselytize his parody of morality ever again. I would say the same for assurances he won't enslave an AI but I think he's too stupid to manage it.

I have a remarkably low opinion of AI researchers. I have an even lower opinion of anyone who thinks there can't POSSIBLY be any flaws in his reasoning since he's the pinnacle of humanity. You know what? There is no fucking way that Eliezer Yudkowsky isn't a narcissist. That pinnacle of humanity crap is totally narcissistic.

It's not thinking one is the pinnacle of humanity that's narcissistic. It's not even saying it. What it is is saying it in a way that invites agreement, that invites worship and adulation and followers. When I used to say that kind of crap, my tone was always full of wrath and hatred. I was always sending the message "why can't you be better than you are, why can't you better yourself and be of use to people you contemptible ball of worthless slime". When Eliezer says it, he's smiling like Gilderoy Lockhart and saying "look at me, look at me, and worship me".

Well, that's another chink of that smeghead's repulsive personality deconstructed. Or maybe I just deconstructed the reasons behind my atavistic hatred and revulsion of him. The worst part of course is that he's so stereotypically American. There's a whole country full of people just like him.

How Reading Fantasy Makes My Humanist Brain Go Haywire

I am a humanist and I can never, ever get away from that fact. Those of you who've read David Brin's essay on how maybe the Dark Lord Sauron wasn't so bad, since Lord of the Rings being written by his victorious enemies gives us reason to doubt any of it is true, might understand. The whole notion of "oh how majestic are kings" that David Brin fights against in his essays ... repulses me. It hasn't got the slightest little bit of fucking appeal to me and never has.

The most "positive" reaction to monarchy I can recall ever having in my life is absolute indifference. Mind you, that's not the same thing as totalitarian dictatorship, I do admit that the idea of ruling you all LIKE a king is appealing. And I'd be a good one too. Once I was in power I wouldn't need to kill more than maybe ten thousand Americans tops to get the USA working again. Though if I got double that quota I could also get rid of US religiosity in a 2 for 1 deal. But the notion of inheriting a position of absolute and total power leaves me cold and indifferent, at best.

But that's not the only facet of humanism. Humanism is about rejecting specialness, rejecting heroes and heroic action. It's about embracing all of humanity, all 6 billion of it, and improving it. Humanism isn't about Adventures. Fuck adventures! Humanism is about industrialization. Wonderful, wonderful industrialization that improves the lives of all it touches. And if you complain about the pollution or waste or whatnot, that's because you're a know-nothing idiot who hasn't got the slightest idea of the appalling misery of feudal conditions. Go to Pakistan some day and THEN tell me how horrible industrialization is.

So when I read fantasy fiction crossed over with the real world (or a reasonable facsimile of the real world).... my brain just goes haywire. It always has. Firstly because of all possible genres, this is the one I love best. And second, because most fantasy writers suck at it.

I give a hint of this in an earlier post about commercializing the stargate. Because if it was me, I would so fucking sack O'Neil, Hammond and their stupid gun-toting pals and use the Stargate to better the world as much as possible. And I would do it too. Within 10 years of its falling into my hands, Earth would have had a dozen colonies bringing in enormous wealth and the whole planet would be changed.

I give another broad hint in another earlier post fantasy for atheists, which lists some great fiction re-written along humanist lines.

Then today I figured out how to industrialize the harvesting of healing potions.

But you know what? I only now realize how old this is for me. I've been obsessing about the economic benefits of trade with a world that has healing magic every single time I read any kind of crossover with a stable portal between the real world and a fantasy world. That makes it what, the third time now that I've run this analysis?

I really don't get people who go "woohoo... elves!" or "woohoo... magic!" when all I can do is scream this is an incredibly valuable trade good that can be used to industrialize this backwards fucking retarded country! Seriously, I don't get it. These books sell, the stories get read, and people never want to see these fantasy worlds industrialized? Oh yeah, there's Shadowrun. But then again, Shadowrun is a megacorp dystopia. What the fuck is wrong with you people? Oh wait I know, you LIKE poverty and starvation and disease. No wonder I despise you.

Hmmm, I wonder what kind of parallels there are between the Global Warming story and the typical Fantasy story. Both are lauded by people I despise. Both are anti-human. And both are completely disjoint from reality. Both prescribe actions that will never be taken by real human beings. Because those actions are utterly stupid and despicable.

How to Industrialize the Harvesting of Healing Potions

Today my humanism was again staring me in the face when I replied to an author of a dungeon crawl story crossed over with BTVS. What would you do if you could bring game objects from a dungeon crawl out in the real world, or even a facsimile like BTVS? Most people, being lack-witted morons, would have "adventures". Or would imagine the story's characters have adventures for them, by proxy. I'm definitely not most people and the very first thought I had ... okay, the second thought I had because the first was I want to get a hold of spice mélange. BUT, as soon as the idea of healing potions came up, THEN the very first thought I had was how to industrialize their harvesting. 

This is what I would do:

1. hire a platoon of mercenaries with the gold from one mission
2. send the mercenaries into the WoW world to kill everything while I sleep in a tent for 8 hours, guarded by my friends
3. gather all the healing potions as my share of the loot for opening the portal
4. hire more platoons of mercenaries so that they can sweep the dungeon faster and go through more missions in an 8 hour shift
5. experiment with different worlds in order to maximize the number of potions harvested
6. use very large worlds when I go to sleep, and many small ones when I'm awake
7. make do with Hummers to begin with
8. acquire Hueys for deployments, UAVs for surveillance, and warthogs for firepower
9. offer the mercs million dollar bonuses for every special forces soldier they can recruit
10. gradually switch to special forces troops as older guys retire
11. let them retire filthy rich so long as they understand the special forces guys are going to hunt them down if they ruin a good thing by blabbing
12. upgrade my army to laser pistols and rifles as acquired

I would make everything as systematic and as fast as possible in order to harvest as many healing potions as fast as possible. Including an electronic system with RFID tags for automatic computerized check-in of soldiers before closing the dungeons. Including workers with lift equipment to get all of the loot out as efficiently as possible. Including prepared empty crates to put healing potions in.

Think about it. Since a soldier can run 4 miles in 36 minutes, my army could easily fan out into a circle of 12 km in diameter, kill everything in their way, loot everything in sight and come back to the portal on troop transports following behind them all within an hour.

The platoons would deploy in a star formation, one platoon going north (straight out of the portal), then another north-east (clockwise), another east, then southeast, and so on until the 8th platoon went north-west. THEN 8 more platoons would go in between the first 8 platoons to fill in the pattern. They would use gyroscopic compasses to make sure of direction. And lastly, the troop transports would follow.

It's almost 200 men with communications and fire support, assuming they go on 2 missions a day every day that's an army of 2400 men I'm employing. Plus another couple hundred for logistics, surveillance. I would acquire a lot of land for this naturally.

Assuming there's 1 healing potion drop for every square 100 meters on a side then (pi *4^2) square miles * (1 per 10000 square meters) > 13,000 potions. And 13 000 * 24 * 365 = 113 880 000. That's enough healing potions to supply the entire world.

Less than 3000 soldiers replace most of the doctors and nurses in the world.

And makes for a business with net personal profits to me of 11 billion to 110 billion USD. And after having done this for a year or two, I would petition France, Russia and China (the nuclear powers on the UN Security Council) to not only give me citizenship but also ambassadorial status so that whatever laws of the stupid country I'm in can never touch me.

Yes indeed-y, there's a lot of benefit to bettering the world.

The Fundamental Truth of Harry Potter

Every so often a fanfic writer tries to introduce realism, technology or simple practicality into Wizarding society. This inevitably fails. Something about the realism of it reinforces the entire unrealism of an organized war against a civilian population all of whom have flying machines they can shrink into their pockets.

These people need rescue? What the fuck for? Can't they hop on a broom to the edge of the anti-apparition wards the enemy have put up and then just teleport out?! And that's even with an ambush. Yes, that's right, even with an ambush, the enemy needs 5 sides x 2 people = 10 people to trap just one person.

And that's assuming the victim doesn't get their head out of their ass and burrow their way out. Or burrow enough to hide. Attacking anyone in an organized fashion when brooms and apparition exist is completely impractical. It follows then that anyone who needs rescue from a death eater raid deserves to die. They are literally too stupid to live.

The whole notion of a "wizarding war" is utterly fucking ridiculous. Honestly, it is the province of lame emo do-nothing idiots like Harry Potter. Not, you know, PRACTICAL people. The only proper kind of story that has non-magical technology is the kind where wizards get curbstomped by sniper rifles at 1000 meters. And where stupefied death eaters have their throats slit by kitchen knives.

To put a cap on this, there actually are a couple of fanfics where wizarding magic is shown to be superior to technology and where wizards are sane individuals. These stories are massively and wildly AU. In Raven's Wit, magic is superior to technology because wizards have technology - magical technology. Including Other Realities played in a world-spanning Great Magical Web. And in More Equal Than You Know, protego shields against nuclear explosions.

The fundamental truth of JKR's Harry Potter universe is that wizards are insane, stupid, cowards. Any serious attempt to show otherwise will inevitably fail.

Fantasy for Atheists

Atheism has really won a major victory when fantasy is being written for atheists. Witness,

• Serpent In Paradise - LOTR for Atheists
• The Last Ring-bearer - LOTR for Scientists
• The Salvation War - Dante's Inferno for Atheists
• Methods of Rationality- Harry Potter for Atheists
• A Thin Veneer - Babylon 5 for Atheists
• His Dark Materials - Narnia for Atheists

The psychologically defining trait of atheism isn't the disbelief in all powerful aliens, it's the refusal to accord them any special status. What else is Humanism but the capacity to judge gods' actions by human standards and their existence by human reason.

Note that Babylon 5's Lorien functioned as a higher god to whom the mortals appealed the angels' and demons' misdeeds. B5 was incredibly medieval in its philosophy - not unexpected from an American.

Honourable mention is made to Magestic where the protagonist refuses to accept or bow down to the all powerful remorseless force of Destiny.