Ponder
17d ago
I've observed this too. I think there is a feature of human communication that can be summarized by a slogan: "You have to know that they care, before you care what they know". In other words showing that you care about other people's feelings, that you are actively listening to their concerns, is usually more important than the logical accuracy of your statements.
I've also noticed that successful influencers on social media often drift from where they started to appealing to their audiences' emotional concerns. The influencers are directly seeing what gets like and what doesn't, so they drift to what their audience like most. If they try to occasionally bring on guests with alternate perspectives their own audience makes the original influence feel bad with dislikes and mean comments.
Ponder
23d ago
In a recent post Scott Alexander says,
As for older people, I have seen public intellectual after public intellectual who I previously respected have their brains turn to puddles of partisan-flavored mush. Jordan Peterson, Ken White, Curtis Yarvin, Paul Krugman, Elon Musk, the Weinsteins...
Can anyone explain what Scott means by this in reference to Eric Weinstein? I'm curious about Eric. He says interesting, often conspiratorial things, that sound somewhat reasonable, but I don't have the background/intelligence to evaluate. Can anyone summarize which of his controversial ideas seem to have some truth to them?
Specifically, I'm curious about his claims around:
- The Department of Energy suppressing advanced physics
- UFO psyops by the government
- The idea that String Theory is a dead end and new theories aren't being explored because of institutional capture
Ponder
26d ago
Here is a good explanation of schema therapy: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i9xyZBS3qzA8nFXNQ/book-summary-unlocking-the-emotional-brain
China recently added export controls on silver in 2026.
The US added silver to the Critical Minerals list in November 2025.
Declining confidence in the US leads foreign investors to look for alternative investments to US treasuries/dollars.
Part of the move could just be short positioning being forced to cover. When the price moves quickly in a short time and there are a lot of people using leverage then margin requirements can cause some positions to be forcibly liquidated - which causes the price spike to go even higher for a short period of time.
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