Title: If in Some Smothering Dreams You Too Could Pace
Date: 2021-01-01
Category: other
-Tags: cathartic
+Tags: cathartic, epistemic horror
Status: draft
> [...] [and this is a war, and we are soldiers](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i8q4vXestDkGTFwsc/human-evil-and-muddled-thinking).
I mean, it's an explanation, but that's different from an excuse: being a jerk [has consequences](https://xkcd.com/1357/), and you need to take the consequences like a man.
-This, then, is the mindset of a soldier (though our [beautiful cutting weapons](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/) be words instead of swords): to inflict pain, to incur guilt—and yet to have [only tactical](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2020/02/relationship-outcomes-are-not-particularly-sensitive-to-small-variations-in-verbal-ability/) regrets. Given the chance to do it all over again, you would—but solely to be more skillful in projecting rhetorical force to secure the objective, to say more clearly what _needed to be said_. Not to inflict less pain or incur less guilt.
+This, then, is the mindset of a soldier (though our [beautiful cutting weapons](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/) be words instead of swords): to inflict pain, to incur guilt—and yet to have [only tactical](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2020/02/relationship-outcomes-are-not-particularly-sensitive-to-small-variations-in-verbal-ability/) regrets. Given the chance to do it all over again, you would—but solely to be more skillful in projecting rhetorical force to secure the objective—to say more clearly what _needed to be said_. Not to inflict less pain or incur less guilt.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff