domain:eigenrobot.substack.com
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
6m ago
· Edited 1m ago
How do you figure you are not just hearing a Shepard tone of things escalating all the time? It seems to me that your argument is essentially that things have to get worse because the set of grievances can only monotonically grow, but culture war material also has a certain half-life. People are still alive in the US nowadays that experienced far worse political violence than Charlie Kirk getting shot, but events from the '70s and '80s hardly count for anything because their political valence becomes more and more inscrutable as the past grows foreign. Did the Unabomber attack Red consumerism on behalf of Blue degrowth, or Blue academia on behalf of Red RETVRNerism? Was Waco Red police brutality or Blue oppression of religious conservatives? Some fringe groups of course still have categorical answers to these, but even two fringe groups that everyone agrees belong on the same side of the spectrum now will not necessarily agree on the answers.
(Coming up soon: were anti-Vietnam college students Blue commie sympathisers, or the forerunners to Red Putinbots sabotaging our heroic defense of Ukraine?)
(This is also a sort-of response to @Amadan below.)
I've known of it for a long time (and actually learned how to sing it in Italian, a language I don't speak) in my tankie/left-anarchist college days. It's significance would be very well known, way before the show, by leftie academic types I would think. But outside of them, I've also heard it sung in friends and family gathering, in random music shows, for decades, and I'm not italian. It's a very well known song in general. Maybe younger people have had more chances of being exposed to it through Casa de Papel, but it's been floating around in general culture for a long time.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
9m ago
No disagreement. Allow me to clarify my statement.
- lying is very common.
- It is common because it is, at least in the short-term, effective.
- Both sides do it, and so the rage felt at an enemy's lies should be tempered by the embarrassment felt for those of your allies. Lying is not a good plan for the long-term, but a lot of people, especially in the trenches, are not really thinking long-term.
TournamentFishing
12m ago
"Debate" is a sport. It's historically connected to honest truth-seeking discourse, but often strays far from it. Twitch illustrates one degenerate mode. Competitive policy debate illustrates another.
Tretiak
13m ago
Out in the world, life continues. The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming. The majority of people are not paying attention to this stuff.
Out in the world, most people are on their phone when I’m walking on the sideway or driving in traffic.
eee
14m ago
He has literally done events at college campuses with a Change My Mind table in the style of Stephen Crowder at least twice. I wouldn't say it makes up most of his content though.
I find your accusations of bad fatih puzzling. He likes debating things. He agrees to debate people and then debates them. How exactly is he acting in bad faith? Does he edit his videos dishonestly to misrepresent his debates? The whole purpose of a debate is to convince people that you are correct. You seem to be saying that because he does debate for the purpose of convincing people that he is correct is an example of him acting in bad faith. That does not make any sense. If you want to say he is acting in bad faith you need to show something like him representing that he has some goal or purpose, and then acting in ways in contradiction of that. Not that he acts in some way other than you personally approve of.
UwU
14m ago
As someone who is moderately left-leaning, this assassination also fills me with sadness. I spent quite a bit of time on Reddit in the immediate aftermath getting my share of downvotes telling people he was not a Nazi or a fascist or far-right, and the thinly veiled, and unveiled, elation was disgusting and vile until I had to mentally check out from social media. In the real world, though, people at least seemed to be much more reasonable. I live in a very blue area and work with all blue-tribe people, and when this topic was brought up, the mood was generally of concern and there was not an ounce of celebration. (Though it could just be people I work with know how to conduct themselves properly in a work environment.) Still, I don't know how this country can recover from this death spiral.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
16m ago
Lying is effective only because it is the supply meeting the civilisational demand created by rejection of what our cringe ideological grandpa called the Litany of Tarski. The Sequences may not have crossed the boundary from looking quaint in a daft way to looking quaint as in ancient wisdom yet, but there are things in there that we would stand to benefit from rereading occasionally.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
16m ago
I recall the exact opposite, actually. I remember leftists trying to tell her "step aside you old hag" in polite but forceful terms, and when she didn't there was pretty widespread worry that she had screwed them all (which she definitely did lol).
I remember some of that as the reality of the situation set in, but I remember a whole lot more of this.
And then, hilariously enough, they did the whole thing again with Biden.
Tretiak
18m ago
Not only was Kirk not far-right but the far-right hated him more than the far-left does.
Tretiak
20m ago
None of what happened afterwards was what I expected at all. Immediately, celebrations, dark ironic pitiless humor, and hideous one-liners with no thought put into them started everywhere. It was official, the Hermann Cain Award logic about when it's acceptable to dance on the graves of your enemies extends about as far as certain leftists want it to.
I’m not sure how closely you followed his development when his name first began to crop up, but the reaction I saw from a lot of people were very predictable.
And to be frank, I roll my eyes and really get tired of the straight-laced, “you’re better than that,” “act like an adult,” high minded moralizing of unfortunate events. Expressing glee over very unpleasant opinions you have about others means you’re human. Going out of your way to take a shovel and knock someone’s gravestone off sets you apart from everyone else.
… there are even more people out there who will run cover even for this awful behavior…
Pretty much. But I continue to be amazed how anyone gets surprised over this. Do people have that much sheltered of a childhood?
Here's a small collection of everything I've witnessed: They're all bots. There aren't that many of them. They're only online.
This is where I believe you’re wrong. You don’t see this largely in interpersonal interactions because it’s potentially costly and damaging to people’s reputations and “painful truths,” were replaced long ago by politically correct sugarcoating and misdirection.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
23m ago
leftists tried to reassure one another that she was totally fine, fit as a fiddle, healthy as a horse
I recall the exact opposite, actually. I remember leftists trying to tell her "step aside you old hag" in polite but forceful terms, and when she didn't there was pretty widespread worry that she had screwed them all (which she definitely did lol).
People were wailing and gnashing teeth about how she should have resigned during a D president while her body was alive and conducting day-to-day activities, because her hubris and that of Blue Tribe's elite structure brought ruin to their tribal works.
Yes, I don't disagree with this.
anon_
25m ago
So it appears that JP Morgan may have allowed Jeffrey Epstein to continue using their financial services, so of course the Times leads with the most bombastic possible version of this claim. One could imagine an alternative headline like How JPMorgan Conducted its Usual and Customary Business. Probably there are intermediate versions of this headline that are closer to neutral.
Headlines aside, right wing media is picking it up because all the Epstein stuff draws lots of clicks but I'm wondering (and hopefully I'm not alone) whether this is fundamentally about getting upset when banks don't drop unpopular clients even when their relationship has nothing to do with the clients' bad behavior.
That is to say, contra the Times, JPMorgan didn't enable Epstein's crimes in anything but the most useless sense of the world. Sure, he used money from the banks to pay people -- but I'm sure lots of criminals withdraw money from a Chase ATM in the commission of a crime, which hasn't (till recently) been laid on the bank.
The other claim is that his friends in the bank intervened when some transactions were flagged (for what, no one really explains) but this only deepens the original question: even if he was guilty of sex crimes, that doesn't imply that his financial dealings weren't in order. It's not money laundering or fraud to pay for underage hookers -- it's child prostitution which is illegal in its own right.
Ultimately where this seems to end is back to a place where banks rightly fear that they are gonna be next on the Times' hitlist because they didn't drop a client fast enough.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
27m ago
It looks like the motte mostly doesn't even know what to say to this guy.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
27m ago
Notably, RGB was not murdered by a right-wing extremist, and her death had been preceded by a long and appalling spectacle where leftists tried to reassure one another that she was totally fine, fit as a fiddle, healthy as a horse. This was after she declined to step down during the tail-end of Obama's tenure because, according to her own side's reporting, she wanted her replacement to be appointed by the first female president.
People were wailing and gnashing teeth about how she should have resigned during a D president while her body was alive and conducting day-to-day activities, because her hubris and that of Blue Tribe's elite structure brought ruin to their tribal works.
UwU
28m ago
It certainly is tone deaf, but it's also par for the course for political discourse in this country. The left hears it all the time after school shootings.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
29m ago
It would be equally easy to say that e.g. the Groypers on Nick Fuentes' comment section are the "most concentrated and distilled Republican space on the internet", and that it's those people who are determining the flavor of the party.
People claiming it's fair to paint small, hyper-sectarian factions as "the REAL outgroup" would be wrong in both instances.
TournamentFishing
31m ago
It would be one thing if professors/scientists said: "I don't care what the science says about xyz policy, I believe abc for ideological reasons".
I actually had a professor who said something like this. He was talking about some differences between countries. Somebody asked whether genetic differences might be a factor, and the professor said "they probably are, but I'm ignoring that because it's against my religion".
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
34m ago
... and people also started talking about RBG the moment she died, both positively and negatively. Plenty of people opined how she should have resigned during a D president before her body was even cold.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
37m ago
I assume you were doing your debate-club stuff in a small room filled with only debate people who accepted that one person was going to have to take the opposing side of the argument.
Mostly correct. Sometimes I could be in rooms with dozens or even low-hundreds if I made it to finals, but there was always the understanding that my arguments would take a certain shape just based on the rules of debate. It wouldn't be much of a debate if both sides agreed with each other!
In contrast the debates Kirk was doing were real debates
I do not see his dunk-farming as "real debates" in any meaningful sense. The danger he faced was similar to what any other public figure faces when they go out into the open, that there might be a low probability, high magnitude event where a crazy person tries to attack them, like what happened to John Lennon, Tupac, Dave Chappelle, or Steve Buscemi. Cancel culture was a threat too, but being on the conservative side makes you less likely to have serious ramifications, not more likely.
sodiummuffin
39m ago
Lord of the Mysteries may or may not qualify as cultivation depending on what you're looking for, but it would be my favorite cultivation-adjacent thing I've read. It has a cultivation-inspired sort of progression framework but not the typical cultivation setting or powers or advancement methods, instead it's more occultism in a Victorian-inspired setting. This site seems to have a decent epub version if you don't want to put up with the official site.
It being my favorite isn't a terribly strong statement, since a lot of them (like Coiling Dragon) I've quit after trying and getting bored, but I guess I'd say it's of similar quality to the average published western fantasy novel? Which is high praise by webnovel standards. Note that it has a slow start. (Conversely the currently-airing donghua adaption went too far in the other direction in rushing through and skipping things for the first few episodes, to the point that some non-novel-readers were complaining of it being difficult to understand. Nice animation though.)
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
49m ago
Being any sort of public figure has been a dangerous activity as a baseline. I don't judge political discourse as being significantly more dangerous than a celebrity. I might buy that it could be somewhat more dangerous, but not orders of magnitude relative to how well the person is known. Again, perhaps that's changing now, but political assassinations had been surprisingly rare in previous decades.
Feel free to present evidence to the contrary.
MayorofOysterville
52m ago
Most of the American far left are willing to condemn Azov in the abstract and I'm sure Azov is willing to condemn them. Both Azov and the American far left are invested in the survival of Ukraine but neither are the most critical part.
Though even in America the "hard left" are against Ukraine, tankies and Communists hate Ukraine and love Russia. Even the DSA was less than supportive early in the war.
I once saw a flat earther talking to students on a college campus. I thought it was interesting how many people walked up to him to argue that the earth is round, and then strung together incoherent or factually incorrect arguments.
I'm not sure what the lesson is there, but it stuck with me.
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