Best products from r/Demotivational

David Mindell's "Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight" and Frank O'Brien's "The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation" give us a wealth of useful detail about all of the computer technology used in the Apollo program.

They include the details of the computers that ran on the orbiting and landing craft, as well as those on the ground.

There is Big C consulting and small c consulting. Big C consulting is worthless (McKinsey, Bain, BCG, etc.) They take a client's money and more often than not leave the client worse off than before they took the job: http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Company-Management-Consultants-Businesses/dp/0140276858. Small c consultants are all around us (plumbers, carpenters, electricians, programmers, etc.) Small c consultants help customers who need a specific amount of knowledge to make a decision and many if not most leave their clients in great shape after working with them.

Read this book. So fucking awesome.

The fears are self-fulfilling. If you believe that you're not worth it for any girl (for example), then you won't ask out any girl because you don't think you're worth it. Then you'll watch yourself commit a self-fulfilling prophecy and justify your failures as a confirmation bias. So if anything, it shows that anything you put your mind to can become reality.

I recently have gotten to a really bad point in my life that I called a suicide hotline and they told me about the book, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. It's really interesting and intuitive on where the logic of self-esteem comes from, and the book covers a lot of detailed accounts of what self-esteem stems from, how its perpetuated, and how you behave with certain esteems (both high, medium, and low self-esteems). I'm still reading it, but the book has spoken to me already.

>Do you argue that political organization can only be bad? If so, how exactly?

Political organization is exclusive. Meaning for a given problem they will make a law or series of laws and that's it. Outside of government action people solve problems in flexible case by case methods, what works best for one person or one group of people may harm others. When the Federal Government passes a law they subject 300 million people to this law, you can hardly expect it to be to the benefit of every single one of them. If we can not design one size fits all t-shirts then how are we supposed to create laws that help everyone? This is the difference between De Facto and De Jure, the first meaning 'my practice or use' and the latter meaning 'by law', in situations where standards and De Facto when something changes people migrate on their own, transitions are smooth. A good example would be just about every single tech standard from HTML to USB. De Jure makes things artificially static and transitions rough, for example copyright law has had a hell of time transitioning into the digital age.


>The government has no monopoly of violence


I require a more detailed definition here, your example is a situation where you can defend yourself and your rights or the rights of others. But the Government has a monopoly on a very important action, it can ignore the rights that constrain your actions. For example lets say you wanted to create publicly funded healthcare, you could go around and gather money, but what happens when you get to me? I have no interest in public health care and refuse to give you a penny, if you are a normal person this is the point where you walk on. If you are a government you would then kidnap me and throw me in jail for refusing to pay and if I resisted kidnapping I would be murdered. If you have no right to either kidnap me or kill me if I refuse to fund your health care program then who does? What if 1000 people all voted and gave you a uniform and wrote up a law, I of course voted no if I voted at all. Is it then right for you to come to my door and threaten me for that money? If not 1000 people what about 10,000 or 100,000? How many people until it changes from a violent act to just a part of democracy? I argue that it never stops being violent, and never stops being theft.


>This is not correct. First, you are allowed to establish a corporation and explore the extraterrestrial possibilities.

Its funny you bring that up, as we tried this years and years ago, see Orphans of Apollo private space companies wanted to step in the minute the space race was over. But even though we are working on it you are missing a key point, choice does not make something ok. A robber can give you a choice between your money or your life, but that does not make either the theft or the murder ok. Saying I have the choice to be restricted or participate in system D (I do) does not make me free, as I may be kidnapped or killed for refusing to comply.

Now before I go further I need to clarify a philosophical point about land ownership

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Property tends to have two justifications, the moral justification and the utilitarian one.

The moral justification holds that a person owns their body and their effort and when they mix their effort with an object be it land or a rock it becomes their property as an extension of their right to life.

The utilitarian justification holds that allowing an individual to own property and respecting that right in return for having your same right respected will result in the best outcome possible for all involved .

Governments claim land that is undeveloped and unused through the use of armies or police to enforce these claims that meet neither justification for property rights and as such are not recognized as valid ownership outside of government enforcement. As such, in a situation where government did not intervene to force it all land to be owned must be homestead or used for a purpose to be owned.

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Essentially, there is no practical reason why the Government should supposedly 'own' such large tracks of land excluding us from going there and peacefully trying things out.


>nor empirically observed inevitability.


If you can cite me one Government in history that has managed to escape tyranny indefinitely please show me. And if people create these social norms why do we need a government? What can they do but decide for them what sort of society to create? In short, either people are smart enough to form their own society and we do not need a Government or they are not and we dare not have one.


>I meant disasters on a scale that no-one really can compensate, nuclear disaster, environmential degradation, and so on.


Are you saying that non one else has the capital or the resources? In a polycentric (read without government) legal system pollution is a violation of property rights and must be compensated by those causing the damages to the damaged. Or in the case of unowned land restored to its original state. Without the limited liability corporation structure created by Governments stock holders would be on the hook. For example during the BP oil spill, not only would they have been obligated to repair all damages and pay for all losses to the victims but once the companies asses run out investors assets would be drained as well, if thats not a big enough pool of capital I do not know what is. Furthermore, could you imagine a better motivator to keep the business safe? Before limited liability investors would make sure the company would never make such a mistake before investing.

In sort, whats so special about governments that only they can solve these problems?


>I cheer for the governments that have allowed science, education, journalism, economy and so on to prosper

Governments do little to create, its people that create. The concept of Government is absolute power, there can be nothing less, once one group has the power to enforce their will on others (as spoken of early on) that's it, there is no limiting or debating with the man who holds a gun to your head.


To address your last question, I am an Anarcho_Capitalist, referring to a subset of libertarians who believe that Governments are fundamentally violent and inefficient organizations with no valid authority and their essential functions such as the enforcement of rights and contracts can be preformed by private entities competing in a free market.


This article and Parts one, two, and three in a series of basic introductions to the concept of free market legal systems should help explain the concept and basic functionality of such a system. Please watch the videos before responding, they are really excellent as a simple explanation.


The core principle of such a system is to spread power as much as possible by allowing any group to be on equal footing. Of course this is only practical if no group has the right that Governments supposedly have today to enforce their will on an individual. In short, everyone has exactly the same rights, but groups form to exercise them better. For example, right now in Detroit the police department is a complete failure, but people must keep paying them, no matter how corrupt or useless, they can not hire another police force, or form their own. Throughout history only equals can keep power in check, those who wrote the American Constitution had some good ideas, they wanted to separate power, but they did not go far enough, they need to be different equal entities that counterbalance each other.