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I'm committing a major faux-pas by posting a second consecutive top-level comment, but it's been 12 hours and people need to post more. (Seriously, post a top level comment. Do it now.)
What's something that you were wrong about?
I'll start. I was wrong about marijuana legalization. It was a bad idea and we never should have done it. Marijuana is, contra urban legend, actually pretty addictive. And it makes productive people into unproductive people. The benefits, such as they are, are best enjoyed in moderation. But legalization has resulted in a whole new class of junkies that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Also, weed culture is gross.
Scott, as always, says it best:
In any case, what were you wrong about?
I once believed that political solutions to problems are viable, and now I believe that they are not, and that you need cultural solutions first in order to meaningfully affect the political
I once believed literature mattered, but upon inspecting the type of people who are into literature versus who are not, I no longer believe it is valuable. “Literature” is surprisingly new to civilization anyway.
I love dogs, but dog culture should be ended, and anthropomorphism should be banned from kids entertainment. Kids should be learning to understand humans and their variegated expressions, so that they can understand themselves and adapt to the social world in front of them. They should not be bonding with animals to a significant degree.
I once thought IQ was the be-all-end-all but now I think there are other qualities which are as important but less easy to measure.
Hard agree on this. I recently learned that the President of South Korea has no children, but several dogs. And he is a conservative who actually wants to increase the birth rate. Lol.
Based on no data whatsoever, I will propose that if a woman ever gets a dog before having kids, the chance of kids goes down by a lot. I have friends who have dogs that they treat like children, and I have to admit it bothers me a lot.
Arguably literature mattered a lot from like 1800–1970 give or take. Supposedly, people would mob the docks to get the latest Charles Dickens serial. Harriet Beecher Stowe practically caused the Civil War by writing "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Even as recently as the 1960s, writers like Norman Mailer were actually well-known and widely read.
Today, of course, the entire industry should just be drowned in a bathtub. It is so ideologically captured as to be worthless. I don't care if I ever read another book of "literature" written after the year 1980.
Some books are fun. The key is ignoring people who say you have to spend all your time reading neurotic navel-gazing about the Female Experience if you want to be a good person. If something is annoying or boring... You just drop it.
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