Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Curtis Yarvin debated Danielle Allen, a Harvard professor, last week. Did anyone here listen to the debate? What were your thoughts?
I listened to it. She didn’t address a single one of his arguments. She was completely outclassed. Not worthwhile.
I was pretty disappointed by the lack of actual debate as well. Yarvin put forth some assertions that she could have contested, but she instead seemed to be trying to avoid legitimizing his ideas by treating them as beneath her consideration. I wonder if she knows that that cat is already out of the bag. And she seemed to be either be speaking in vague meaningless generalities the whole time, or she was speaking academic/Cathedral jargon (cf. Catholic theological jargon).
Also, maybe just personal taste, but man, her voice and tone were just incredibly grating. She has some sort of West Coast uptalk accent (I kept thinking "ermahgerd") and her constant unprovoked sassy black girl put-downs really dragged the whole thing down and were kind of embarrassing to listen to. Just sounded really arrogant and scolding. Really off-putting.
Yarvin IMO only did "okay" himself. To be fair it was hard to pin down what Allen was saying, but he meandered a lot and his points were probably hard to understand for people unfamiliar with his writing. At one point he tried to make some point about identical twins being equal in moral worth as some sort of gotcha, and the even the moderator was so confused he asked for clarification. Silver lining was that his speaking ability seems to have improved. Last time I heard him on a podcast I had to turn it off because there were so many "ummms" and "uhhhs."
Overall, pretty weak showing for debate between a professor from the World's Greatest Center of Learning and the Prince of Dark Elves. I suspect they chose a black woman to trigger audience programming about race/sexism in order to taint the debate, because she clearly wasn't chosen for debate skill. I'd much rather have watched Yarvin debated some highly competent old white professor but maybe Yarvin doesn't have those anymore.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link