Downplaying your Intelligence

In the hierarchy of conceit, intelligence reigns.

Thread

If you want to soften people’s guard, the evident faculty to downplay is intelligence, but the other two facets to downplay are judgement and experience as both draw up close to intellect on the hierarchy of conceit.

Make them feel superior to you in these faculties, and you will have them at the tip of your fingers.

It is the ideal camouflage to seem less clever than you are and at times, somewhat of an idiot to confound people.

The sense of intellectual superiority you can induce in people by means of cognitive reassurance through indirect modes will lay down their doubt and suppositions and will be coerced easier to your side.

Do not communicate this implication through direct means, though, utilise concealed and roundabout methods as these are more subtle and potent.

A gesture of admiration at their intellectual ability, for instance, can go a long way.

#ClariOnHEMA getting theoretical again, this time on armour.

—Is leather armour historical?—

CW // none apply //

Short answer: Yes, but not the way you might think.

1/16

There have absolutely been armour in which leather was used as material, but the RPG leather armour is mostly fictitious.

Leather armour is not flexible and supple. That's just leather clothing and protects about as well as an overcoat.

2/16

Leather that has been treated (boiled or baked, we don't really know the exact process) is hard and resembles ceramic plates or hard plastic more than the flexible leather we use in clothing.

But hard plate sounds good for an armour, right?

Well, yes and no.

3/16

Hardness is definitely a merit, but leather as a material poses some serious limitations.

1) You can't really repair leather armour

Cloth can be sown, metal can be welded and reforged, but apart from some very dubious glueing, there isn't much you can do for leather.

4/16

You'd have to replace entire sections of the armour in their entirety, so field repairs are out of the question. Not a great feature for any professional soldier at least.

This doesn't preclude ceremonial use, but that takes it out of the realm of real armour altogether.

5/16

USNat’s men’s FS thread

Woo. Indemand have delivered again.

Do I wait two weeks to open it for my birthday, or just open it now? Decisions, decisions...

I do have other robots coming...

I kind of needed a pick me up, as yesterday was a pretty bad brain day. Plus I've got the Dominus set arriving on the 9th

Ratchet's gun was a pain to get out.
Let's look at Optimus.
He is so delightfully devilish. His purple and dark blue work exceptionally well. I kind of prefer it over the original botcon toy, partially because I don't own that due it's price, partially due to the use of the

Earthrise mold to deliver a more G1SG Optimus. It very much feels like a counterpart to G1 Optimus, as opposed to the general opposite-ness we got with 2008 Shattered Glass. I enjoy that.

He comes with a matrix that looks like it glows, but it's due to only being painted on the

#tomwolf #pennsylvania Administration Urges Pa'ers to “Resolve to be Ready” for Emergencies. ***Hmmm what does he have PLANNED 🤔🤔🤔
Look at the presser
Next

I’ll also go on another Orwell tangent: Conservatives love calling any new “woke” word that enters common usage as “Orwellian”, because they don’t want to be “forced” by social pressure to learn new terminology important to people whose humanity they refuse to acknowledge anyway

But Newspeak is a version of English where descriptive words have been removed, not added. 1984 is written with a deeply limited vocabulary set.......so in fact, conservatives share an ideology with *the villains* of 1984.

Newspeak is not called that because the words are new. It’s called that because that’s *exactly* what authoritarian fascists would call a restrictive language set, it’s propaganda. The state in the book came up with the name, and that context is important

It’s “Newspeak” for the same reason they’re “National Socialists”, an intentional misnomer intended to obscure reality, to wear down your defences. Fascists don’t call a spade a spade, they point at a cloudy sky and say “it is sunny”, until you’re tired of arguing with them.

Fascists may claim to value free speech, but they jump at the chance to censor specific words, and it’s not the words they themselves would use. That’s why they hate obscenities and any kind of terminology related to social justice, but not slurs.

I JUST CAME ACROSS THE MOST ADORABLE PEER-REVIEWED RESEARCH I HAVE EVER SEEN AND HAD TO MAKE A THREAD ABOUT IT HAVE AN AMAZING WEEKEND!!!!

Every intro to cognitive psychology course has at least one chapter where we ask how people know that dogs are dogs - after all, they look so different from each other.

This research one-ups our question and asks: HOW DO DOGS KNOW THAT OTHER DOGS ARE DOGS??

First, let's meet our subjects in Figure 1 of this article. LOOK AT HOW CUTE THEY ALL ARE! THEY ARE ALL SUCH GOOD BOYS AND GIRLS AND CUSCO IS ABSOLUTELY SERVING!!

Next, let's see how they were trained to identify other dogs. They would sit and see pictures of one dog and one not-dog. If they poked the dog picture, they got a treat. LOOK AT BAHIA CHOOSING CORRECTLY BECAUSE BAHIA IS VERY GOOD AND VERY SMART!!!

AND BY THE WAY, IT SEEMS THAT THE PICTURES OF THE DOGS AND NON-DOGS WERE SPECIALLY SELECTED FOR HIGH LEVELS OF CUTENESS AND HUGGABILITY!!!

(except for the cat.)

A serious reasoning error that is particularly common among educated people is to argue that if a study hasn't been done on a particular question we have 'no data', and therefore no basis on which to form beliefs or act.

This is incorrect and dangerous. 1/

There is almost always a reference class we can use to make a sensible prediction, and often we can reason about the causal mechanism directly.

To see how this is clearly wrong, consider these two extreme cases: 2/

a. Before a vaccine trial is conducted we have 'no data' on how likely it is to work.

But we can estimate the likelihood just fine! To start with we can just check the base rate of all vaccine trials.

What fraction of all vaccine trials in history have had +ve results? 3/

That gives a much better estimate than pure agnosticism.

b. Imagine now that the vaccine trial results have come back positive. But by chance all the vaccines were given in a blue room.

So, will the vaccine still work if given in a red room? I guess we have 'no data'.

4/

So can we say nothing about about whether vaccines work in red rooms?

That is plainly ridiculous — we understand the causal mechanism and it doesn't involve room colour, so in fact we can give a near definitive answer to that question. 5/

1/16 A thread:

The enemy isn’t clever, only brazen
Tenacious and fighting for every inch
Every inch requires your submission
Your submission requires your consent

2/16

Your consent comes when you are unmoored from Truth
When your foundation is ruptured
When you are in fear because you no longer are connected to Truth
When you are lost in darkness and there is no Light to guide you
The Enemy knows this

3/16

It explains everything you are seeing in plain view
Forgive them for they know not what they do
It is the Serpent of Evil acting through them
They are conquered slaves who think they are kings

4/16

Why do you see the unraveling of everything before you?
Why are they intent on the Great Reset?
How do they formally execute the greatest power grab in the history of the world?

5/16

They must create chaos
Remove pillars of cohesive society
Erase everything you think you know
So they may tell you what you know

the new tabletop simulator update.... oh no

hey @BerserkGames, please hire freelance translators instead of doing whatever the fuck you're doing

oh god

mais je gueule

press V to pâte

(Angst tw, idk if happy ending??)
Hizashi has always wanted to be a catastrophe.
Because maybe if he's spiraling out of control, someone will at least go through the motions of caring about him.
But it never works that way.

Present Mic is loud and fun and flashy, and you'd think he would have drawn at least a couple of people in like moths to a strobe light. And, sure, he's got fans. Lots of them.
But the second he shows any of them *Hizashi*, they lose interest.

He starts wondering if he can even connect to people as himself, or if only his fake face, the mask he puts on, is human enough.
Eventually, he stops trying to ever take that mask off, even with people he considers friends.

And he's loud on the outside, but that's a celebration. The disaster is quiet.
It's just him, taking care of himself like putting coins in a jukebox to make it keep playing.

When he doesn't, when the marionette falls down, he's too ashamed to let anyone see. Nobody ever comes knocking on his door to see where he's gone.
If Shouta or Nemuri calls, he says he's sick and leaves it at that.
And they leave him alone.