MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
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User ID: 1678
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
It's starting to look like his attitude towards free speech isn't that different from his predecessors'.
Obviously this is speculative, but I actually do think in his heart, there is a difference. Elon's problem is that he is politically naïve. He didn't understand that Twitter is basically a platform controlled by the Five Eyes deep state(s). A free and open platform probably isn't politically possible anymore in the West, the way it was up until ~2015. The only reason why this site has escaped scrutiny is because we're so small.
Once Elon basically understood that he'd just be a janny for people who are much poorer than him (but politically much more powerful), it was no longer fun. He threw in the towel. He doesn't want to be CEO anymore and is looking for sellers. He's going for the exit. And as he does, he sees no reason to stick his neck out for zero profit. Profit in this context shouldn't mean monetary but rather social/cultural.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
When people talk about how 'useless degrees' don't pay well or jokes about basket weaving, maybe people have preferences that are not aligned with the accumulation of just money, but rather things like 'social influence', which is surprisingly hard to buy.
Bingo. You nailed what I tried to get at.
Compare the candidacies of Bloomberg, who spent $500 million and got nowhere, compared to Obama. How are these pitiful basket weavers beating you then in government or DEI if their degrees are so worthless, huh?
Regulatory favors are often crucial for business to operate, and a price for that is to get on the side of the bureaucrats' preferred politics.Savvy businessmen like Jeff Bezos understand that and is compliant. Musk is more of a maverick, but will learn with beatings the hard way.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
The most influential/powerful people in society tend to have a humanities background. But that doesn't imply that the average humanities careers have more money/power/influence that the average stem practitioner.
I think I adressed this point in OP, namely that for most people a STEM career would be more lucrative. I was making a broader political point, which should be seen in a collective group ID sense.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
If STEM grads decided to spend all their time advocating for policy instead of getting real things done I'd hazard that STEM grads per capita would be significantly more effective at advocating for policies
I wholeheartedly agree, but sadly STEM grads seem very uninterested in engaging in the broader culture aside from business regulations. Musk is an outlier in this regard, which is why he enrages the established powers.
What Conservative STEM lovers need are more people willing to do activism for no or little pay, not a better appreciation for mid 1600s era poetry.
People who are into 1600s era poetry already display a low preference for monetary rewards, which is why they are good at slogging through thankless tasks like low-pay activism. I suspect these two are correlated.
The lesson, if any, conservatives should take from campus SJWs is to be as active as possible and be absolutely unwilling to allow any nuance. I hope they don't take that lesson to heart.
I don't think lack of nuance is the secret behind the success of the wordcels so much as them caring. Dogged determination always beats a shrug of the shoulder. It's a hard problem to solve because for most people, disengaging with culture cars and just focusing on doing your thing is the more rational life decision. It's certainly the advice I would give most people. Yet cumulatively, it also allows the loud and shrill minority to dominate the cultural space. People over time get influenced by the zeitgeist and thus the Overton window has shifted. Not an easy puzzle to solve.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
series of bizarre (drug fueled?) blunders
Musk is a very impulse guy. Wired did a big exposé of his leadership during the crucial rollout of Model 3. Have a read:
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-gigafactory/
So his behaviour is pretty consistent. It's just being in the open instead of behind closed doors.
says little to nothing of the actual power someone in his position holds.
I disagree. Musk being the owner of Twitter means little since the EU can regulate away any changes and the US Deep State can pressure advertisers to institute an economic boycott unless he behaves. The message is crystal clear: do what we want, or your platform dies. Musk got the message and is now looking for an exit.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
So Musk polled his followers. Asking whether he should as CEO of Twitter. They said no and he said he'd abide by their vote.
My sense is that Elon didn't really want to buy Twitter after thinking it through, this was likely his real reason behind the "Twitter are hiding the amount of fake accounts/bots" argument. When that didn't come through, he ended up with the platform anyway. But being the CEO of Twitter is little more than a highly paid janitor function. You don't have any real power and your primary function is to act as a piñata for vested and powerful interests. It's no fun.
The main challenge for him now is to not lose any money, but it appears to be a long-shot from where I stand. What are the lessons? Tech CEOs don't have much political power despite having loads of money. Even tech owners are surprisingly weak. It may be fun belittling government bureaucrats as do-nothing wordcels but the Twitter saga has conclusively proven they hold the whip hand when the chips are down.
While it may make more sense for most people to go for a STEM career over a humanities, this episode should serve as a warning sign to conservatives who have spent decades dismissing humanities are irrelevant (long before the "woke" era). The SJW campus liberals may be annoying, and perhaps even ridiculous, but ultimately they have more power than you in society. And that power can be leveraged even in STEM areas.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
I think Elon's lashing out of spite. Linking to any website should be allowed (save extreme cases like CP), if he's really serious about freedom of speech. The issue is that he was very loud about framing his takeover as a way to maximise freedom and it's hard to defend this.
I don't even mind the action itself. It's the inconsistency that bugs me.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
As an exercise in calibration--who would you pick as the villain of previous decades? World Wars are cheating, so let's say...the 1900s, 1970s, and 1990s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Belfort
Certainly a more interesting character. As our society becomes duller, so does our villains.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
Perhaps a silly metaobservation, but I am somewhat disappointed with a schlubby nerd like SBF being the villain of our time. Fraudsters in the past used to be a lot more charismatic and often partied with the jetset. Even Madoff was known as having a huge stash of cocaine, going to parties with supermodels etc. SBF bagged Caroline Ellison and did a bunch of weird nootropical experiments while playing video games like LoL.
I can't help but feel that our culture has regressed into becoming more boring - perhaps suitable for the hyperdigital age. I know it may sound weird, but I think who the bad guys are in any society says a lot about that culture. And I'm afraid SBF being our villain says a lot of bad things about ours.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
I think the reasoning is that blacks are already discriminated against so the only way to even the balance is to go out of your way to favor them. Of course, this implies that all differences between races is purely a function of discrimination, which isn't my view and probably not of many others here. But in the wider cultural discourse, questioning this assumption would be a fringe if not suspect act. What goes unsaid ultimately goes unthought.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
I understand where you're coming from. Pragmatically speaking, you're correct that this will have zero impact. But I think people get angry over the principle. Just because something cannot harm me directly or indirectly, doesn't mean that it's right.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
Remember the "AI ethicist" Timnit Gebru? Her being a woman and black working in tech, where that combination is very rare, I was shocked, distraught and frankly terrified over Google's firing of her when she started calling them racist and irresponsible.
It almost appears as if Google prefers these PR stunts for optics but when it actually matters, their policies are diametrically opposite. (For the record, I have zero issues with Google firing her, my sarcasm aside. She should've never been hired in the first place. All I'm asking is for Google's messaging to be consistent with their actual behaviour).
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
I've read that he also apparently blamed anti-Semitism in one of his written statements. Which is hilarious, but also topical and politically savvy of him.
As for his veganism, I´ve seen photos showing eggs in his fridge. And he has been cagey about this in the past.
SBF honestly seems like a guy who is incredibly willing to say or do anything to gain even a minor advantage for himself.
Will everyone who said he would walk away Scot Free because he's in bed with NYT or Dems or whoever please adjust your priors or whatever?
Why? Hopes of him getting arrested fell after the MSM were running what could only be described as kids' gloves stories (if not outright puff pieces), giving ample cover for the "it was just a mistake" scam he was doing. The media is owned by powerful interests in any society, and so how they treat a person is often indicative of that person's social standing (which isn't the same as their financial muscle).
Even leading CEOs in the industry, like the guy running Coinbase, was publicly admonishing the media for going supersoft on him. The fact that many people are surprised over this development is a testament to the extreme deference he was shown.
Moreover, it wasn't just the media. It took the authorities a long time to get to this. They now claim it's a slam-and-shut case of fraud. Newsflash: it always was. So there was likely deliberation, otherwise he'd have gotten arrested weeks ago as his scam wasn't particularly sophisticated, as the SEC now acknowledges.
What made the scales to tip over, we'll never know. But I am not willing to bet that he will be persona non grata forever. He may be stupid in finance, but he's politically savvy. Look at someone like Michael Milken. He went to prison for securities fraud and has now re-invented himself as a benign political benefactor. SBF may still have a few cards to play, even if he gets indicted.
I find it bizarre that so little is being talked about the US border crisis right now. The numbers are shooting up like crazy.
Most of these "encounters" are essentially catch-and-release. The illegal immigrants are then given a court date to show up and naturally the vast majority never do.
Are Americans just tired of this subject? Trump running on this issue during the 2016 campaign and then essentially doing nothing to prevent it perhaps jaded people. I mean, would-be illegal migrants respond to signals. If more and more folks are allowed to flood in without a meaningful response then each new "caravan" will only get bigger. Perhaps Biden is trying to emulate Trudeau's hyperliberal immigration policies through purposeful inaction rather than Trudeau's open immigration targets.
US can't defend Taiwan's integrity anymore and has begun exploring "scorched earth" strategies instead. That's the conclusion of various US reports that David Goldman has read and now written about.
Trump's former NSA Robert O'Brien at a recent conference basically conceded the same argument, saying the US won't let China take Taiwan's semiconductor factories intact. So the focus has shifted from winning a war to making China's victory a phyrric one.
All this makes sense given that aircraft carriers are now more or less sitting ducks in the SCS given China's massive and rapidly growing missile inventory, many who can hit moving targets and that's even excluding hitting stationary ones such as airbases on islands, where China's hypersonic missiles can't really be defended against.
I guess the "good" news is that sending in US troops to die on foreign soil in large quantities has now been all but eliminated in the case of Taiwan. Senior US officials are telegraphing to the Taiwanese that if SHTF, then we will take out your crown jewels whether you like it or not. It also tells a story of diminishing US innovation advantage in military matters. America is still the top dog, but the days when it could send a few carriers to the Taiwan strait without seriously worrying about a Chinese military response - as Bill Clinton did in the 1990s - are now long gone.
I suspect the big constraint for China is now economic blowback. Chinese companies are still big exporters and would essentially lose those markets in the event of a major geopolitical conflict. This differentiates China from Russia, which doesn't have much to sell other than natural resources, is why I think a hot war over Taiwan is unlikely. And even in Ukraine, it's a proxy war and not a direct one. In Taiwan, all sides agree that the US would have to get directly involved for Taiwan to even have a chance because the numbers are absurdly lopsided in China's direction otherwise. I suspect the Taiwanese just didn't used to calculate that the Americans would be contemplating destroying vital Taiwanese infrastructure in the event of an outbreak of hostilities.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
Singapore is actually a great place
Yeah, and it's also a place that is 75% Han Chinese, thereby proving my point. Demographics will always trump whatever laws is on paper, libertarian or not.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
And that was still an improvement in most QoL measures over the previous socialist government.
Interesting, have you lived in Somalia during this period?
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
But this loss didn't happen thirty or forty or whenever the immigrants started to come in big numbers years ago, rather it happened in the aftermath of the Second World War when the UK dropped its long standing traditions of Classical Liberalism, "an Englishman's home is his castle" and the Anglo developed system of limited government, preferring to go for the expansive and nannying welfare state model instead.
Well, if you want Limited Government then I hear Somalia is a great place. You can even buy arms in open air markets with minimal regulations. Perhaps you can sense my dripping sarcasm, but I have little patience for these kinds of arguments. Taxes can go up and they can go down, but what - or rather, who - made Britain were the Anglo-Saxons.
This type of argument is the right-wing version of the blank slate.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
So Ed West has a good piece up on immigration. He's British, so naturally he will focus on the British angle but I think his main takeaways have wider applicability across the West. His argument is that so-called "experts" have consistently underestimated the potential for mass migration for decades. Ed makes the case that given a confluence of factors (established migrant communities, English being the lingua franca, a whole apparatus of NGOs/judicial activists and a very pro-immigration media envionrment), we're likely to see a continued rise in immigration unless there is a drastic shift in policies.
For my part, I think any serious restriction is out the window. That ship has basically sailed for the West. Trump did what he could but was sabotaged by the courts and political insiders at every step. So instead of trying to prevent what is essentially the inevitable, better ask what our future look like.
American social scientist Garrett Jones has written an important new book which argues that new research suggests that assimilation is fact very rare and cultural patterns persist for decades, perhaps even centuries. Even if we were to restrict ourselves to white immigration, how many of the Catholic and East European immigrants who came to the US during the 1870-1924 period truly assimilated into the Anglo-Saxon ethos of limited government? Was JFK's and FDR's winning coalitions not in small part due to these new immigrants?
Jones makes the case that even attitudes like propensity to save or social trust are passed down through generations. This would suggest that the future of the West is a hyper-unequal and low-trust society. Perhaps we are already well on our way. Politically, it could paradoxically help the right since to enact a leftist agenda on economics you need a cross-racial coalition among the working class and this seems to be unlikely if you cannot have assimilation across population groups even after decades, as Jones suggests.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
There's a philosophical question whether genuine altruism even exists, e.g. there may be evolutionary advantages to being generous. Even to complete strangers. If that's the case, then there are underlying self-serving That said, I find the attacks on EA overdone. The media has been unbelievably soft on SBF, often going along with his portrayals of himself as hapless (rather than malicious) and more than happy to spread to blame to the wider EA movement instead of focusing on his personal culpability.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
Why is SBF still free or at least not in trouble?
Because it's all about who you are and who you know. How many people got jailed after the 2008 crash? I can only think of a single person. Financial crimes pay off because you can bribe, sorry, I meant "donate", to politicians.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
I know about the source of the term. I'm just ridiculing its use here (in fact, I think it is misleading in general).
The ADL has been the organising force in pushing for an advertiser boycott here, which started the revenue collapse. This is simply the latest salvo in the war that they started.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2yr ago
The Cathedral
So ADL are Christians now?
Good article. Taleb went from a wannabe-contrarian to a conformist. IQ matters and the evidence is overwhelming.
As an aside, I feel like you could have done a separate article exposing Taleb as grossly exaggerating his wealth, especially his claims to have traded his way to a fortune. Lots of charlatans out there and he always struck me as a potential one, and your article re-confirms my suspicions.
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