ThenElection
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User ID: 622
Another Chotiner classic, of him interviewing the President of the SFUSD school board:
Chotiner: So none of the errors that I read to you about previous entries made you worried that maybe this was done in a slightly haphazard way?
Gabriela Lopez: No, because I’ve already shared with you that the people who have contributed to this process are also part of a community that is taking it as seriously as we would want them to. And they’re contributing through diverse perspectives and experiences that are often not included, and that we need to acknowledge.
Chotiner: I’m not quite sure what that means when we are talking about things that did or didn’t happen.
Lopez: I think what you’re pointing to and what I keep hearing is you’re trying to undermine the work that has been done through this process. And I’m moving away from the idea that it was haphazard.
This is about as hostile as he ever gets. His specialty is asking a question, getting nonsense back, asking what do you mean, and leading the interviewee to a total trainwreck.
ThenElection
3d ago
Not many people who shove someone to have them hit their head and die on a hard surface actually intend to kill the person, though; it's a result of a combination of ignorance and bad judgment, as opposed to trying to stab you or drawing a gun on you. The threat profile is different, a kind of action that we're adapted to think of as a low escalation part of conflict but in our modern built environments is often deadly. And by the time you're thinking of drawing your own deadly weapon, the threat is past if it was this kind of bad judgment (though, if you're about to be curb stomped...)
The narrative here is more or less correct, though you're framing it in a pretty warped way. ACT-UP had a very hostile relationship with the NIH (and FDA). Their primary motivation was, in fact, to get drugs approved faster and to allow people to receive drugs even when enrolled in trials. From their list of demands from their first mass demonstration:
- Immediate release by the Federal Food & Drug Administration of drugs that might help save our lives.
- Immediate abolishment of cruel double-blind studies wherein some get the new drugs and some don't.
That is, they were literally demand number one and demand number two, ahead of things like public education campaigns and anti-discrimination laws.
The NIH, of which Fauci was the point person on AIDs, did initially oppose these things, partially from scientific principle, partially bureaucratic inertia. This extended from a period starting from the formation of ACT-UP through the end of the 80s.
Fauci had a surprisingly warm relationship with at least some ACT-UP leadership, and he was one of the people in the NIH eventually pushing for their goals (such as the parallel track), but publicly he was, in fact, the big bad, and the rhetoric around his role was extremely heated, including being complicit in their deaths.
Grokipedia gets this core narrative correct, while Wikipedia... Doesn't say anything at all about it.
Relatedly, during the little tiff below (not trying to repeat it here, just a relevant experience), phailyoor and I had some back and forth about what date exactly was Fauci appointed director of NIAID. The source Grokipedia cited for the exact date only gave the year, and I couldn't find any sources that actually did give the exact date, and my suspicion was a hallucination. Finally, I landed on one: Wikipedia. And, despite my many misgivings about it, I do trust that to be accurate, and I'm guessing Grok just grabbed it from there.
Digging deeper, though, even Wikipedia doesn't seem to provide a source for that date. Where's it coming from? I pull up an LLM--ChatGPT, not Grok--and it's able to pinpoint the PDF of the official press release where the date is coming from. Which, as it turns out, is linked on the Wikipedia article, but buried in a distant unrelated citation that I wouldn't have been able to find otherwise.
My takeaway is pretty close to yours, but models are rapidly improving. That's not something that could have been done a year ago.
(I'd update the Wiki page's date with the source, but the page is currently locked.)
ThenElection
5d ago
targeting Fauci personally
Wrong. They targeted many people.
https://digitaleditions.walsworth.com/publication/?i=424950&article_id=2835575&view=articleBrowser
Fuck you, Fauci
Or, an image from the protest, featuring a banner targeting Fauci over a coffin, as well as a bloody decapitated head identified as Fauci:
Fauci Resign Now, Release Compound 0
I feel like here we're quibbling about subjective things: I'll say I'd feel personally targeted by these protestors, you'd say they were just symbolic attacks against the NIH as an institution. But is Grokipedia wildly off base here? No: although there's subjectivity involved, many people would feel like these are personal attacks. YMMV.
And, at core, I'm not sure we actually disagree that much on how much to trust Grokipedia. I was very careful in my first comment to say that I would always verify whatever Grokipedia says. My core point was that Grokipedia attempts, semi successfully, to represent what Fauci did during the 1980s. Wikipedia, by comparison, does not. We're not carefully parsing over exactly how Wikipedia characterizes Fauci's relationship with ACT-UP and cites its sources about that, because Wikipedia doesn't even mention ACT-UP. So, at least for this particular section of this particular topic, Grokipedia offers value over Wikipedia, though an actual history book would be superior to both.
ThenElection
5d ago
He was appointed director of NIAID on November 2, 1984
Wrong.
Are you objecting to the date here, or some phrasing? The source cited gives 1984, and at least Wikipedia also gives November 2, 1984.
overseeing an expanding portfolio
Wrong
I don't really see how this is objectionable, though it would be nice for Grokipedia to list exactly what the expanded portfolio was. Or do you think NIAID kept a strictly static portfolio of projects during the HIV crisis?
with over 15,000 reported AIDS cases and more than 8,000 deaths in the U.S. by mid-1985
Wrong. Source says by September
Damnable.
ACT UP, who protested NIH policies for bureaucratic delays in drug testing and exclusion of patients from trials.
Wrong.
What exactly is your objection here?
In December 1988, activists stormed NIH buildings, targeting Fauci personally and chanting slogans accusing him of complicity in deaths due to slow approvals.
Wrong. Like seriously lala land wrong.
Grok got the date wrong --it was May 21, 1990--but I'm not sure why exactly you think that's lala land wrong. From https://www.actuporalhistory.org/actions/storm-the-nih :
On May 21, 1990, over 1,000 protestors stormed the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD to demand that the NIH accelerate the pace of AIDS research, include AIDS activists and community members in the committees that oversaw AIDS research, to broaden its investigations beyond repetitive research on AZT and to include research on the diseases that affected Women and People of Color with AIDS.
Or are you making some tenuous claim that they just stormed the campus, not the buildings?
All that said, still far ahead of Wikipedia.
I was annoyed at Wikipedia yesterday for how it covers Fauci's role in the 1980s HIV epidemic. Basically, it just jumps straight to he is the bestest smartest scientist ever, and even everyone who hated him then loves him now, without ever really covering anything he actually did during the 1980s HIV epidemic. His role then was hardly some obscure thing only a specialist historian would know, and Wikipedia doesn't even mention "parallel track" or ACT-UP or AZT or Congressional funding bills. Or, really, a single substantive thing. (All the 2020s commentary on how great he is is diligently cited from approved sources, of course.) Note that I think he did a good job during it and a lot of substantive things, and his performance then is a credit to him and NIAID.
Looking at that section of his page on Grokipedia (terrible name), it's much better; nothing jumps out to me as wildly inaccurate, though before believing anything in it I'd always verify, at least for now. Less biased, yes, but fundamentally it's just far more informative. I can deal with bias, but at least give me the facts. And Grokipedia gives me at least a facsimile of the facts, while the Wikipedia article's section is something you'd get from someone who knew nothing about the topic but really really wanted to make sure the chuds were getting owned.
(I'd also note that I went through this exercise with ChatGPT 5 Thinking yesterday, and it does better than both.)
ThenElection
6d ago
Trump is making the government increasingly "authoritarian" (here, meaning increasing the scope of the executive and disposing of useful norms--cultural, institutional, and legal). But it's wrong to view this as something unique to Trump. With increasing polarization, Democrats and Republicans have both been pursuing a tit for that strategy. Neither sees a reliable negotiating partner on the other side of the aisle--and they're both rational not to--so ever since at least Clinton politicians have pursued partisan and increasingly narrow strategies that undermine norms to achieve their short term goals. Trump has taken us furthest down this road, but he's just driving down the same road everyone else has and is.
Do I like it? Not at all. One might hope that, by driving us closer to the abyss, Trump will at least accelerate the reaching of some redemption at the end. That seems wildly optimistic to me. And it's not fascism or neo-Hitler we'll reach, but a level of stagnation and dysfunction that will make the past ten years seem Singaporean in comparison.
ThenElection
6d ago
What actually is the opinion of Republican voters toward Reagan nowadays? Do they even care? AFAICT among Democrats his name is still mud--HIV, the homeless, the decline of unions, and rise of inequality are all his fault--to the extent that even Bush Jr. seems to have a better reputation nowadays. But I don't see Republicans on the Internet referencing him much, for good or ill.
ThenElection
7d ago
Amouranth is an apex predator
Was curious as to why, Googled it, saw her images, and closed out the tab as my question was answered.
I'd bet a lot of the time it's just a matter of individuals following their incentives. Get into some scandal or high profile beef with someone, create a large sink of free attention, and then that sink of attention gets divvied out to the participants, using whatever eldritch rules determine such things.
How consciously faked it is is almost besides the point--it's 100% fake parasocial engagement through and through, and probably the best adapted parasites are the ones that're able to convince even themselves that it's real.
ThenElection
10d ago
If Tea stayed around, it would eventually monetize by allowing men to pay to take down negative reviews, just like Yelp.
ThenElection
10d ago
If the EU passes a law regulating all their leading models, but there isn't a leading model there to hear it, did they pass a law?
ThenElection
10d ago
They do have a better option, though: dating through people known to friends, family members, and organizations they're a part of. Still far more options than at the shtetl.
The issue with that is that dating apps give access to "higher quality" men, and women prefer all the other negatives than not having that access.
ThenElection
10d ago
I would push against your point here, though I agree French is off base (for different reasons). Men and women have different roles in society (by nature or nurture, doesn't matter), and inflicting violence has been and is squarely men's domain. Women simply do not inflict violence of the sort that actually physically harms someone, compared to men. They will and do participate in violent structures but always at arms length.
Where French is wrong is that it's silly to blame the bad cop when two cops are playing a good cop/bad cop routine.
A core question I don't know the answer to, that seems at the heart of the issue. Are young men of 2025 better or worse off than young men of 1985?
In a world where things are generally and genuinely trending up, French seems more compelling. In that frame, whatever annoying cultural things have developed, good or bad, it's pretty petty to worry about the feminization of society or whatever. If the pie is growing, why fight over the who gets more of the growth of the pie, when that fighting could put everything in jeopardy?
In a world where the pie is stagnant or even shrinking, raging against the system that shrinks the pie is much more appealing. French is then someone who rode a lucky wave of growth under Reagan/Bush/Clinton and now is preoccupied with defending a system (and his own place in it) that, even if it once worked, is now failing.
And what's the truth of it? We're far richer now, and comparing me (who got screwed graduating college in the late 2000s) and my father (who got screwed graduating in the early 80s), I did a lot better and really don't envy his experience. But that seems a bit myopic: most young men I meet (mostly through work, white collar) seem miserable, and all that economic growth doesn't seem to have improved their lives any (with the possible exception of access to video games and porn).
In the end, I end up against French. Whatever his concerns about the propriety of questioning the order of society, they wouldn't be an issue if the society he (probably among the top 1000 most influential people in the USA for the past couple decades) created actually made people want to sustain that order.
ThenElection
15d ago
I guess she would say, well, women are outcompeting men, so they should get the jobs. If it turns out that women would naturally comprise 90% of oil riggers, so be it. I don't know that she has secret beliefs that would override her publicly professed beliefs.
Very well then, but what is the "right" or "correct" proportion of men to women in the workplace? What ratio of men to women in a profession or field? Forget meritocracy, because now we're talking about quotas, and those are every bit the fruit of wokeness that she decries. 50/50? Two-thirds male to one-third female? Three-quarters to one-quarter?
I do not understand where you get this. The author does not call for quotas, but the removal of rules and policies that drive artificially higher representation of women in certain roles.
One reasonable response to that is that it's reasonable to question whether those policies and laws do drive higher representation of women, though it does seems a bit chud-coded to me to claim that progressive policies have been entirely ineffectual.
ThenElection
18d ago
I think nobody suggested that the they should be investigated for conspiracy to commit murder wrt the gas chamber chat. Everyone understands that they were not seriously suggesting that.
Calling for gas chambers. Expressing love for Hitler. Endorsing rape. Using racist slurs. This is not a ‘joke.’
Totally fair politics, for what it's worth, but Newsom is at least pretending to think they were being earnest.
ThenElection
18d ago
The world is simple: we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. The existence of bad guys isn't fundamentally bad; indeed, it's what justifies the program of the good guys.
But to joke about the dichotomy undermines it, and that's very dangerous indeed.
I mostly don't care; it's layers and layers of irony, and there's not enough information to determine what they believe in their hearts of hearts. Most likely, their error is not in being Nazis, but simply in treating a professional(?) forum like a personal 4chan. Organizations don't have to go total longhouse to have some standards of conduct, and heads should roll (NOTE: I am not calling for a Robespierre-style solution to this problem; it's a turn of phrase indicating someone should be fired).
I do think this lack of ability (real or affected) to detect irony is part of the puzzle of why Democrats are losing young men. Conversations like this happen all the time, among both Democrats and Republicans, and treating obvious jokes as literally as possible gives a strong out-of-the-loop school principal or humorless HR lady vibe.
ThenElection
19d ago
Freud was a much bigger influence. But, a quote from him, to highlight the issues with the genealogical approach:
The Communists believe they have found a way of delivering us from this evil. Man is wholeheartedly good and friendly to his neighbour, they say, but the system of private property has corrupted his nature... psychologically [communism] is rounded on an untenable illusion. By abolishing private property one deprives the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, a strong one undoubtedly, but assuredly not the strongest. It in no way alters the individual differences in power and influence which are turned by aggressiveness to its own use, nor does it change the nature of the instinct in any way. This instinct did not arise as the result of property; it reigned almost supreme in primitive times when possessions were still extremely scanty; it shows itself already in the nursery when possessions have hardly grown out of their original anal shape; it is at the bottom of all the relations of affection and love between human beings.
Freud was a classical liberal in his politics. But we can draw a very clear line from his thought to the Frankfurt School. Can we then conclude that the Frankfurt School was anti-socialist? No; the existence of a genealogical relationship is interesting and often a useful lens to view things through, but to stop there without looking into the content of the theories can lead to very wrong conclusions.
Fascism is the political movement that Mussolini built to win control of Italy. If I'm being generous, you can lump in the Nazis and maybe Franco (though the Spanish Falange is really a cadet branch at best).
Even your definition is too broad. Was the 19th century US fascist? Australia? Imperial Britain or France? There needs to be some kind of mass mobilization of society to apply. And, probably, intentional mass murder of political opponents and demographics labeled the Enemy, since that's what people most strongly object to and mean to apply when labelling a contemporary a fascist.
ThenElection
19d ago
I'll take a stab at it, because I like the spectacular boldness of the claim:
The human brain can host an extraordinary variety of mental structures. Only a minority of them give rise to consciousness. Those that do, however, are better at navigating complex environments than others (maybe some concept of the self and self narratives are the simplest way to get agency, conferring advantage, and those happen to be the ones that host qualia). But environmental drift toward increasing bureaucratized environments make agency less useful: navigating them is difficult for most people, and so the concept and resultant consciousness are abandoned. It's not so much that consciousness gives an advantage in itself, but that the simplest structures that enable taking advantage are conscious. You could have brains that are equivalently capable without being conscious, but they take too much compute to be realized.
I don't have a clue where consciousness and qualia come from, though, so I don't have a sense of whether Homo erectus or Homo bureaucratus would lack them.
I have one friend from the DR, and he always strenuously objects to being called black (or anything on the treadmill). He's Dominican.
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