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Notes -
We Won
On Sunday Morning, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on ABC's This Week and proclaimed, "Woke 1 was crazy". The immediate context was AOC defending Wisconsin DSA governor candidate Francesca Hong, and so a lot of people are clowning on her for handwaving away everything that happened in 2015-2022. To the extent that this is about who you should vote for in the Wisconsin governor's race, I agree with the criticism, but I want to take a step back and appreciate how far we've come.
Think back to remember how it felt in the dark days of 2020 and 2021. It was far from clear that the reign of terror would ever end. Every week another subreddit or Twitter poster was banned. Facebook was removing posts supporting Kyle Rittenhouse as a policy. "Abolish the Police" was treated as a serious (if aspirational) policy proposal. Above everything else, the worst part was the psychological damage, the feeling that the entire world was going insane; that it was just you and a few guys from a Harry Potter fanfiction forum spinoff who were capable of the miniscule amount of critical thinking required to know that removing Aunt Jemima's face from bottles of pancake syrup did absoutely nothing to help black people.
The fact that even the left-wing of the Democratic Party is campaigning on health care, tax policy, and Palestine instead of racial humiliation is a big deal. There is a temptation to equate "woke" (more specifically "woke 1") with generic liberal Democrat stuff, but that's not really true. Conversely, it becomes easy to overlook some of Trump's greatest accomplishments. Turning DEI and Critical Race Theory into curse words and ending affirmative action were huge. People said it couldn't be done, and then they were done so fast that everyone forgot by the midterms.
As an aside: I never understood the people calling AOC unattractive, and still don't. I find the "Zendaya is ugly" thing easier to understand (not that I consider her unattractive either).
It's the same phenomenon as calling Elon Musk "stupid," which is basically dogma in some parts of the country, including where I live. People, even educated, intelligent people who went to academic institutions purportedly meant specifically to disabuse people of that notion, really love the idea that people they disagree with also have other negative characteristics that realistically ought to have minimal - if any - correlation with conformity to one's own personal set of ethics or ideals. So damn physical reality, since I don't like AOC/Musk, then s/he is unattractive/stupid. To be fair, the latter set of people often openly admit to rejecting empiricism as a tool of oppression by White Supremacists, so they're living up to their stated principles there.
As an aside, I'm apparently in a tiny minority in considering Zendaya not only attractive, but one of the most attractive women in Hollywood right now, but also I do find the "Zendaya is ugly" thing not hard to understand. She has bodily and facial features which are not what I'd consider screaming in femininity.
Several months ago, I noted the peculiar irony that many progressives believe that there are multiple different kinds of intelligence which are orthogonal to one another, such that deficiency in mathematical or verbal reasoning doesn't necessarily imply deficiency in artistic expression or physical domains.
This demographic is probably the demographic most likely to say something to the effect that "Elon Musk has stupid political opinions, therefore he can't possibly be a talented engineer and must have earned his wealth illegitimately".
I'm not sure how "notable" these "peculiar ironies" are anymore, sadly. When one of the core, underlying principles that animate everyone in your movement is "logic, reasoning, and empiricism are inventions by cis/white/male/etc. people whose only function and purpose is to oppress minorities," then it follows that holding opinions that are logically contradictory is no vice. In fact, it's pretty easy to argue that it's a virtue, for how it "challenges" the norms of current "hegemony" of "white supremacy/patriarchy" and "queers" reasoning by lionizing "other ways of knowing" over crufty oppressive things like "logic."
Oh, come on. Nine sets of scare quotes to say this movement is unusually prone to contradiction?
Show me a coalition which has national reach and I’ll show you a contradictory mess.
That's not what I said, nor is it even adjacent to what I said. Every movement - down to a movement of one individual - has internal contradictions. Usually enough to call it a "mess." Not every movement - certainly not every individual - believes in the fundamental principle that logic, reasoning, and valuing empirical evidence are arbitrary bullshit that ought to be discarded if they're not useful for attaining what one considers "justice." What makes "wokes" distinct from many (not all - though most similarly national/international-level movements) movements is that it specifically flouts logical thinking and doesn't see logical contradictions as something to resolve or to address at all. This is, somewhat ironically enough (though not really), quite Trumpian, in the belief that what is true right now isn't contingent on being consistent with other things that one has stated as being true, a sort of lack of object permanence.
Mea culpa. Nine sets of scare quotes to say that this movement is inherently averse to consistency, with no comparisons to similar movements.
I think this is still awfully uncharitable. “Alternative ways of knowing” have next to zero impact on the vast majority of progressive politics. People can and do argue any number of progressive policies—police, borders, reparations—on the boring ol’ grounds of facts and logic. That doesn’t change when some jackass decides to mock mathematics for being too white.
I'm not sure how one could even quantify this to enough of an extent to support such a statement. Perhaps you could come up with a way of measuring things such that this is true, but you'd have to be counting the stuff they have in common with virtually every other movement - akin to how humans, chimps, and mice share like 90%+ of the same DNA or something - because whatever sets apart progressive policies pushed by the typical/powerful modern progressive from bog-standard liberal is certainly mostly a consequence of "alternative ways of knowing." I.e. personal revelation, which is never called that but rather often "lived experience," based on the idea that we can judge the veracity of someone's claims about reality based purely on their identity, which is what holds up all of the stuff about "white/male/cis/etc. privilege," which itself holds up almost all of the specific policies that the typical/powerful modern progressive pushes for.
Correct. I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment, though. Some progressives still exist who are still committed to facts and logic. Sadly, they have about a homeopathic level of impact and influence in modern progressive politics. I fantasize that many of us exist, and that we're just cowards who try not to be noticed lest we be cut down, but that's probably just typical mind fallacy + wishful thinking.
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Elon Musk is clearly very smart and he's also such a retard. Both can be true at once lol.
My friends frequently describe me as the "stupidest smart person they know" , so I relate to this
I'm not humble bragging or comparing myself to Elon, I doubt I have his level of engineering IQ or grind, I just observe he says stupid shit that makes it harder for him to achieve his goals a lot
Ha! Back when I was in middle school or so, I said something to my friend (wish I remembered what) that prompted him to crack up and say “you know, I can never tell if you’re the smartest dumb person or the dumbest smart person I know.”
I suspect this website attracts a type.
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What has Musks actually done that is stupid? Twitter posting? A lot of us credit his Twitter posting and fixing Twitter for saving Western Society for atleast a few years.
I think this shows your bias much more than evidence of Musks stupid actions.
Calling the guy he picked a fight with (Vernon Unsworth) one of "the guys who saved those kids" is a bit of a stretch; he was the first diver at the cave when the kids were reported missing, and he was smart enough to advise calling the British Cave Rescue Council (4/18 of the divers who brought the kids out, 2/2 of the divers who found the kids) rather than making a stupid immediate attempt at solo heroism himself, but after that his reported contributions to the rescue were sticking around as one of 80-odd available-but-unused divers on site and belittling Musk's team's submarine work.
If someone punches you first, you can punch back, and Unsworth punched first. If someone punches you along with your employees who are working overtime to try to help save children, you definitely should punch back. Musk's submarine idea might not have helped, but trying to make more options available was a good thing; that's why Unsworth and the other 80-ish divers who didn't end up going on rescue missions were still there too.
This incident still counts as one of Musk's stupid actions, of course. Calling someone a pedophile just for being a frequent tourist in Thailand is viciously stupid in general, is immorally stupid when you're in the middle of trying to cooperate with other Thai visitors and citizens toward an important goal, and is inexcusably stupid when your primary interaction with your insult's target is entirely based around the real reason why they're a frequent tourist in Thailand. But Unsworth definitely had some insults coming; Musk just sucked badly at picking one.
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3 and 6 are defensible.
The story with 3 is that they tested it too much just to be sure. They’d done it something like 10 times in the back and damaged it.
As for 6, I’ve seen this situation before and I don’t know about Tesla, but a company at founding can be just a nominal address, or at least a few guys making pamphlets and phone calls. If someone joins at a very early stage when they really have nothing and takes the company to success, it seems fair to call them a founder even if they didn’t own stock on the first day the company existed.
3 is defensible but stupid in a different way, test obsessively, but on a spare item not the demonstration one.
I wouldnt consider Patrick Henry to be a founder of the US either. Important contributor sure or leader of the revolutuon and very worthy of respect, but not a founder.
Similarly, I wouldn't call Andy Grove a founder of Intel. Even though he joined on day one seved as COO from its inauguration, and probably contributed as much as anyone to its most successful state.
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I’ll give you (1) is dumb. Some of these are just having fun. (6) I believe it’s fair for him to call himself the founder of Tesla. He came in before they built anything and were just an idea.
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The PoE stuff linked below.
Everything about Doge?
Constantly lying about Tesla stuff.
Idk man, if you genuinely think that every single thing Elon has done is actually a 4d chess move then we're just gonna yell at each other.
Like I can go google/AI "dumb stuff Elon has done or said that didn't help his stayed goals and preferences" and cobble together a list and then you can pick them all apart. But that seems silly.
I don't even dislike Elon, I think making electric cars cool and making rockets cheap are fantastic achievements that earned him his place in history. But my god he's retarded sometimes.
Why did he do the sperg salute?
Ok so like I said you are just showing your bias.
Doge was a policy win. We gutted US AID, likely reduced low IQ population growth, and defunded a lot of the funding for the left. It achieved less than he hoped but it was 100% a policy win.
“Lying about Tesla stuff”
I really regret not putting
In my original post, have a nice day sir, we don't need to bicker over Mr Musk
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Smart people can and do do very stupid things, sometimes quite often, to such an extent that they have a reputation for it. One could accurately say, e.g. Musk behaves very stupidly when it comes to certain things such as politics or ideology, and that he has a pattern of doing so. But to claim that he's stupid means something else, and it's to ignore all the other pieces of evidence around him. And, ironically, accurately noting his intelligence is a greater moral condemnation from anyone who confidently disagrees with his politics or ideals, because, unlike a stupid person, a smart person has no excuse for not reaching the correct conclusions.
Thank you for clarifying my frustration with Musk: it's annoyance at someone who I have colloquially called a "moron," but unlike a true idiot has plentiful cognitive capacity to know better - unless, of course, he likes the internet drama his braggart-persona creates and his apparent emotional investment in e.g. probably faked video game achievements is just another amusement for him; doesn't seem plausible to me, but I could be typical-minding as a wallflower.
Musk is not stupid, but he often acts foolishly. Even a very skilled driver may drive recklessly.
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