FruitfulLemonyLemons
No bio...
User ID: 370
FruitfulLemonyLemons
10mo ago
Suppose communism is bad (if you think it's good this isn't addressed to you but sure feel free to chime in). How do you teach normies this?
I mean the kind of normie who lives in a world where powers far beyond them do incomprehensible things like set the prices of stuff in the store, so that some of the stuff they really want is too expensive for them, but look, the store is full of that stuff, so somebody has all this stuff but they're not letting them have it except for way too high a price, those greedy assholes.
And then you try to explain to them how markets work and how prices come to be and it all just comes across to them as some weird bootlicking apologism because they're simply not on that level.
Is there a more "down to earth" approach that is needed? Normies who have deeply internalized rules of decency and ideas of "thou shalt not steal" (often normies with religious backgrounds) seem to naturally be anti-communist.
Now I'm sure some of y'all here (you know who you are) will say these people basically just need to be oppressed because if they have their way civilization is destroyed and everything is shitty for everybody, but if you oppress them then they complain but otherwise you have a civilization that hums along. But I hate this, I feel like there has to be a way to make society work that doesn't require telling a huge segment of the population "stfu and get in line or we're putting you in a cage". And I mean obviously violent (as needed) enforcement of civilized norms is necessary, but I notice there are a lot more people who are sympathetic to communist ideas than are actual active criminals. My point is more about these people, not the active criminals (who I support putting in cages)
Is there really no way to get through to people other than to just tell them shut up and take it because we're trying to run a civilization here
Being in charge of a health insurance company is like being a world leader: you are going to be making decisions that result in some people living and other people dying. There's no way around it. Your whole job is allocating scarce healthcare resources.
The scarcity is the real problem. But we'd rather murder a scapegoat, in cold blood, than face reality.
And scarcity is not going away. Not when it's possible to pour a near-infinite amount of money into eking out another year or two at end of life. Stop and think about what that means. I honestly question whether health is "insurable" even in principle.
Healthcare in America has problems but we cannot even begin as a society to discuss those problems with anything resembling sanity until we as a society learn to memento mori.
So if you're gonna murder a guy you might wanna have a better reason than some people get their claims denied.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
10mo ago
If it's any consolation, I'm sure right-leaning students handle this the way we always have: go through the motions, then make fun of it all behind their backs when we're hanging out on our own time.
But it is worrying. What separated us from the Soviets during the Cold War was you didn't have to be an activist to do things like medicine.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1mo ago
Devon Eriksen effortpost on Twitter
He argues that Trump and Elon are sort of polar opposite personality types in terms of "guile". Elon being an autistic engineer has and expects a "guileless" communication style devoted to simply conveying the truth as you see it. Trump being a Machiavellian type sees communication as a tool of power (see also Scott Adams' talks on "persuasion" and Trump) and wants loyalty with no expectation that he'll give it to you straight.
Notably, despite calling Trump "Machiavellian" he sees both people as earnestly trying to avert disaster for America, with Elon seeing the debt as the most important existential threat and Trump seeing immigration and entrenched bureaucracy as the most important existential threats.
Fascinating take overall and worth the read, here's the full text:
These guys don't understand each other.
Elon Musk is too guileless. He says exactly what he thinks is true with little regard for how others will react. He alienates allies by airing disputes in public instead of settling them behind closed doors.
Because he is a sperg engineer who leads companies of sperg engineers, and to do this, you must be 100% truthful and transparent.
Donald Trump is too guileful. He says exactly what will advance his plans with little regard for telling people what he actually thinks. He alienates allies by expecting their unconditional support without sharing any aspect of his strategic plans with them.
Because he is a New York real estate developer, who thrives on winning negotiations and gaining advantage from unshared knowledge, and to do this, you must be 100% calculating and opaque.
Here's what happened.
Musk worked super hard, and took great personal risks, to get a head start on balancing the federal budget. He correctly believes that federal spending is an existential risk to the nation.
Trump regards those savings as a political asset.
And, since he lacks leverage in congress, he took them and traded them for other things he wanted, apparently dealing with border control, the courts, etc... problems which he correctly believes are an existential threat to the nation.
He may have concrete plans for balancing the federal budget in the future, but, frustratingly, he won't tell his own team what they are.
Trump could have squared this in advance with Musk, in private, but he appears to either have assumed his loyalty (treating an ally like a subordinate), or been unable to persuade him.
Likewise, Musk could have raised his complaints in private, but either he was too upset to try, or was not able to reach an agreement when he did.
Trump doesn't understand how to deal with spergs. You have to tell them the truth, not expect them to read subtext. They refuse to read subtext. They want to be spoken to honestly.
Musk doesn't understand how to deal with Machiavellians. They think of language as a power tool, and think of those who insist on truth as naive.
Both men are used to being in charge, and are used to dealing with subordinates, who must cater to their preferred style of communicating.
They are both therefore uniquely unsuited to having both the patience and the capability to speak the other's language.
The truth is that both the federal budget and the federal bureaucracy are existential threats to America. Maximum priority.
Trump's concerns about the "art of the possible" are probably valid, but Musk's sense of urgency should not be dismissed lightly.
It is churlish to leverage the superior strengths and talents of people on the autism spectrum while making zero allowances for their unique needs.
That said, spergs can be frustratingly dogmatic, even when they aren't the richest and most successful man in the world.
A few other things to notice:
The democrats have said nothing. That's because there are no democrats. They have no independent intellectuals, only paid schills.
A response will not be forthcoming until the wholly organic grassroots PR committees have met, and the wholly grassroots talking heads have been cut a wholly organic grassroots check.
There's also a strong case to be made for Team Nothing Ever Happens. Remember that Musk will sometimes shut up when he calms down, and Trump has no problem calling someone the Antichrist one day and working with him the next.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
11mo ago
LoTT has been going absolutely scorched earth, and in the heat of the moment it pleased me in the spirit of "the left is getting a taste of their cancel culture medicine". Then had a moment of shame that I've been cheering collective punishment: I have zero evidence that any given person who locker-room-talks "too bad he missed" has had any involvement whatsoever in destroying people's lives over the past 8 years.
So it's back to being liberal about speech. Back to Voltaire/Hall for me.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
Like 10 years ago I used to frequently spend hours in a Starbucks, reading books or writing and getting wildly overcaffeinated.
I stopped in part because they seemed to be deliberately enshittifying the experience by replacing comfortable furniture with bare wood, and kinda making the overall vibe less inviting. Just felt like they were discouraging spending time there.
Reading this, I'm beginning to suspect why. My theory is instead of making a ballsy policy like they're doing here, they decided to just sort of passive-aggressively make the place less inviting in hopes the riffraff would stay out, of their own accord. Of course, that did not happen, but the good people stopped coming, so now it's all riffraff and no good people and the whole vibe of Starbucks is way off from what it used to be.
Somebody tell Brian Niccol to bring back the comfy chairs, maybe we can turn things back around.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
2yr ago
Weird question. When I was in 4th grade, in the early 90s, we did a multi-day segment on AIDS, where they just went and scared the shit out of us.
So in my 20s any time I did something remotely risky, I'd freak out and go to the doctor. And they'd always ask if I was gay. And when I said no they seemed like they stopped taking seriously the possibility that I contracted it.
And looking back on it it finally just hit me. Was the whole program I went through in 4th grade a massive psyop aimed to stop gays from being stigmatized?
If so I feel honestly betrayed. It feels extremely wrong to use children in that way, even if the end seems like a good one.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
11mo ago
I wonder if DEI is sometimes a scapegoat for a general slackening of standards and lessening of giving a F.
But then you have to ask what caused that slackening.
You could bring DEI back into the conversation and say that the need to deny that there is anything wrong with preferring "DEI hires" requires everyone to lower their standards so as not to make it too obvious what's going on.
This feels like there might be something to it but I could caution against taking up such a narrative too quickly. There are other options, such as mass affluence leading to a general slackening.
It's worth asking oneself, "How have I been part of the problem?" Did I prefer professors who "curved" my grades? Etc.
DEI is pernicious but it need not be the explanation for all observed incompetence.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
8mo ago
The incoming administration has promised to punt the issue of abortion to the States and I hope they go one step further and enshrine this punt with a Constitutional amendment that would keep the federal government out of the business altogether, including encouraging or discouraging States or individuals via funding, services, etc. And probably also prohibiting States from punishing abortion tourists in any way.
There are so many important issues of geopolitics and energy and trade and I'm so fucking tired of this issue being at the top of mind every single national election (for literally my entire life and I'm over 40!!!), and half the electorate being one-issue voters about it so you can't even have a real conversation with them about anything else.
It might also help heal relations between the sexes but I won't bet on that, let's not get too greedy now.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
11mo ago
And part was fueled by this having taken place after Smollett and Whitmer and Covington and Fine People and whatever other media hoaxes I'm forgetting. The right had been in too exhausted a wolf-has-been-cried-way-too-many-times state for "this is actually real and bad" to even be in their top 5 possibilities of what's going on
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
I was in college and, at least there anyway, the "we deserved it" talk was immediate, I almost want to say same day. It certainly was not the universal or even the majority opinion but it was sizable and loud.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
8mo ago
I don't know, this one seems more subdued than 2016. IIRC people were on the streets pretty much the day after 2016, and there doesn't seem to be too much of that this time around. People seem... exhausted? Defeated? I wonder if the popular vote result has something to do with it. Or how sure everybody seemed on both sides of the aisle that Hillary had it in the bag—complete with prepared victory theatrics about breaking a glass ceiling etc—making 2016 an almost traumatic shock, which we don't have this time around.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
2yr ago
I wouldn't be so sure, IIRC there was another case where drugs seemed obvious but a court found it was murder
FruitfulLemonyLemons
6mo ago
In terms of raw, personal, I'm-not-going-to-get-this-because-it's-just-my-own-idiosyncrasy preference, I want standard time with an 8-4 work schedule. Like let's let noon be noon, but let the workday be from 8 to 4, let the schoolday be similarly DST equivalent, etc.
Never liked that we pretend to have the power to mess with Time Itself rather than admit what's actually happening is we're changing our schedules.
Second best option, let's switch to perma-DST but call 1:00 noon and midnight, and rotate any newly made analog clocks.
Third best option, ugh I guess we can just do perma DST and explain to our grandkids the history of why the twelves have a special name while the sun is at its highest/lowest point at 1.
(I like the DST schedule but I don't like the time nonsense.)
FruitfulLemonyLemons
10mo ago
The answer is apparently as simple as the fact that she's 60 and lucid rather than 80 and comatose
and she's not Trump. Don't forget who this election's really about. This is the elation of "oh shit we can win" that followed the desperation after Biden's debate performance. I honestly think this is explained by fairly standard human emotional dynamics.
Of course the emotions get narrativized, but that's just what humans do unless (and often still when) they have uncommonly large amounts of self-honesty
FruitfulLemonyLemons
11mo ago
Not to sound like a silly fence sitter but to me this is obviously one of those "it takes both types" things.
Obviously language evolves or we'd all be speaking Proto-Indo-European or whatever came before that.
Obviously people need to be taught the right and wrong way to use the present language or it would be impossible to communicate.
Some people are inclined to push the boundaries of meaning and those people will never give a fuck when you tell them they used a word wrong.
Other people are inclined to feel indignant about every improper usage and those people will be teachers creating smart, sharp, well-spoken citizens.
The language will drift regardless.
- Excitatory and inhibitory neurons
- Liberals and conservatives
- The thrust from the bowstring and the drag from the fletching
- Descriptivists and prescriptivists
idk it all seems necessary
FruitfulLemonyLemons
8mo ago
As much as the whole doge thing warms my millennial heart, DOGE just seems like a clone of Inspector General offices, no? And the main reason those have no balls is they're staffed by people who go to the same house parties as everybody else, right? (I am just assuming, here, this seems like a likely Schelling point over time)
So the most effective DOGE will be the Musk one since he's a true outsider, then they will be less effective over time until DOGE exists just to get paid to rubber stamp things.
More and more I think this stuff is really about the people and not the positions. You can create a "Department of Screw the ATF" whose whole job is to obstruct the ATF but if you populate it with people who are drinking buddies with the ATF people they'll coordinate on one or two "hard hitting" investigations (maybe to get rid of somebody the ATF wanted to fire anyway) to make the public happy and otherwise will be in lockstep.
Checks and balances are a cool idea but it's rare to get people who are true enemies. When that happened in the beginning it was such a crisis that we got the 12th Amendment. Not to mention a literal gunfight. Later we got Brooks/Sumner. It's ugly.
Speaking personally (and as somebody who has had libertarian leanings since the age of 16) I wish Musk the best and I think there is a unique window of opportunity here but I kinda hope DOGE just dissolves itself after he's done, there is no real need for a redundant Inspector General, in fact it would be the sort of redundant bloat that DOGE exists to remove.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
11mo ago
Yeah this becoming a Big Issue in the summer of election year is right on time. Very hard to even want to talk about it. Are we gonna actually fix this at the national level or not? What's the specific policy proposal? Why hasn't it been implemented or at least proposed in Congress in 4 years of Democrat rule? Etc etc.
My contempt toward the use of this event as a political strategy threatens to overshadow my raw spontaneous personal feelings about the event itself, which is a shame.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
If there is anything even resembling a good point in Osama's essay, it will have to be re-litigated in the minds of the young. There is no way around this. You've [speaking to what I presume to be the modal reader here, not necessarily you specifically] done this yourself, you've gone through phases of reading, with the excitement of the forbidden and of "waking up", extremely contrarian takes on established history.
Dangerous times, obviously, if the kids decide to throw all their chips in with Team Osama. But my guess is this is a phase, like reading Mein Kampf or Communist Manifesto and thinking at first "hmm, ok, I'm following the reasoning." The kids' enthusiasm will probably be tempered by their own meta-contrarians in due time. The circle of life.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
It's darkly funny that we are going to get to see an empirical test of the power over narrative-shaping that the Jews have been accused of having by the far right.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
6mo ago
If Indian workers are so bad, why do tech companies keep hiring them?
I've heard it alleged that they are paid substantially less than American born workers, even guys on the same team in adjacent cubicles. Does anyone know if this is true?
FruitfulLemonyLemons
11mo ago
I first noticed this in the 2018 midterms when Google autocomplete suppressed the JobsNotMobs hashtag. If there's something nefarious going on it's been flying under the radar for a long, long time. Took Elon et al to start complaining before it got generally noticed.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
Appreciate the sanity check everyone, my apologies for polluting this space
FruitfulLemonyLemons
6mo ago
Yeah, to a baby learning language, "mama" refers to the whole suite of feelings and sensations and needs and wants and other qualia associated to its mother. To an LLM, "mama" is a string with a bunch of statistical relationships to other strings.
Absolute apples and oranges IMO.
We don't learn language from the dictionary, not until we are already old enough to be proficient with it and need to look up a new word. Even then there's usually an imaginative process involved when you read the definition.
LLMs are teaching us a lot about how our memory and learning work, but they are not us.
The alt-right, with its emphasis on race and replacement, is fringe and represents a small fraction of Republicans.
The anti-Trump "moderate" Republicans poll poorly in primaries, and Trump's approval rating remains sky high among Republicans.
What do the above two assertions say?
They say two things.
Trump is not alt-right, never was.
There is a massive swath of Trump-loving voters who are off the radar of the media by being neither fashy-racist nor anti-Trump "moderates".
[Jerry Seinfeld voice] Who are these people?
I'll tell you who they are. They are the Rush Limbaugh crowd. Or wherever they are now. I grew up with them, they are my people. I listened to Rush in his final year, and listened to his callers, and the vibe of his following (which was massive) was the same as I remember it. On median: They are hardcore Trump supporters. Yet they find the emphasis on race of both the left and the fringe right distasteful. In fact they itch for national unity and an end to civil strife and they saw in Trump the best hope for unity. The whole idea of Trump being divisive they saw as media propaganda, e.g. to them Trump's stance against illegal immigration is in fact about illegal immigration and not secretly about "brown people". In their eyes Trump had the back of anybody with a Social Security card. They think Hitler was, in fact, evil af and love to relate their parents' or grandparents' stories about kicking his ass.
They have an essentially Reaganite attitude toward American politics. They see taxation as fundamentally a seizure of the productive elements of society and while they see it necessary they think it should always be done with great solemnity and respect for the taxed, whose sweat fuels all government projects. They saw Trump as the obvious candidate for anybody into Reaganite politics and are beyond infuriated that the left's propaganda painted them as Hitlerian for wanting the obvious best candidate for policy positions that had nothing to do with race.
Etc etc.
I don't know where this crowd is at now. But if anybody deserves to be called "silent majority" (if only among Republicans) it's them. Not that they were silent on Rush's show, "ignored" may be a better term for them, ignored by media and its focus on the battle between crazy fascist racists and the nice wholesome Cheney family.
I really think there's a massive, massive amount of these people and yet I don't hear these particular opinions being expressed basically anywhere.
More options
Context Copy link