domain:papyrusrampant.substack.com
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
50m ago
I'm not saying it's meaningless, I am just saying that internet commentators are not a representative sample.
In my experience as a Canadian living in Toronto, the Toronto/Ontario/Canada subreddits are all wildly out of touch with the median citizen who lives in any of those three areas. This is most evident in the sentiment towards elected officials versus their electoral results.
By some quick math I did a few years ago, /r/Toronto actually has one of the highest "# of subreddit subscribers"/"city population" ratios in the Western world, and yet literally any comment section in /r/Toronto is laughably out of touch with the views held by the median human who lives in Toronto.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
54m ago
I would never vote for him after these comments. They are gross and inappropriate, but in my opinion do not meet the standard of "inciting genocide (what a pogrom is)" or "wanting all republicans dead".
If he did in fact say those children should die, he should be punished by either legal ethics standards boards, the Democratic party, the law, or all of the above.
I am suspicious about what exactly he said regarding children, given that if he said something spicy, you'd think it would have been leaked like these other texts? I am assuming whoever leaked this selected only the snippets that made him look the worst. So I am weary of conjecture here.
I don’t think it’s cynicism as a belief as much as a genetic type we’re talking about. Subclinical sociopathy is the most important thing our culture selects for after intelligence. The cynics in question are acting out their genes and not a philosophical belief they cultivated, because our schools and culture do not really teach cynicism, but teach that fairness and equality and goodness and philanthropy and so forth are objective values.
For every choice in youth which influences the chance of mainstream successful, the sociopath has the edge over the healthy-minded individual. Has a reading in English class triggered an intrinsic interest in the author and a desire to read more? You’ve clogged your mind and schedule with a distraction, while the sociopath continues to gun the next reading assignment. Did your grandma die and it had a big impact on you because you were close to her? Again you have worse odds. Are you, as a normal person, unwilling to a create brazenly false life event? The sociopath beats you on every college essay. Do you make a friendship with someone less fortunate, and in accordance with every moral belief system allocate energy and attention to their wellbeing? This might spell the difference between a B+ or an A. When you had to play Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no 2 for a music performance, does it take you on an emotional adventure that leaves you stunned the rest of the night? No Stendhal are you, you have a calculus test tomorrow. Do you have religious inclinations which require talking to the Divine or reading virtue-inducing works that don’t leave a measurable result? You’re screwed. Do you feel guilt at the state of the world and does it compel you to learn about it? Your sociopathic competitor has no such compunction.
The sociopath wants power and control and dominance and is insensitive to any emotional distraction or guilt or empathetic concern. A healthy youth ought to be distracted by things outside of school as a natural byproduct of their curiosity, inclinations, and sense of social purpose. There are people like Fields Medalist June Huh who are simply deselected out of the upper echelons of society despite being exactly what we want in our all of our key positions:
Huh applied to about a dozen doctoral programs in the U.S. But because of his undistinguished undergraduate experience, he was rejected by all of them save one. In 2009, he began his studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, before transferring to the University of Michigan in 2011 to complete his doctorate.
To hear him tell it, he doesn’t usually have much control over what he decides to focus on in those three hours. For a few months in the spring of 2019, all he did was read. He felt an urge to revisit books he’d first encountered when he was younger — including Meditations by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and several novels by the German author Hermann Hesse — so that’s what he did. “Which means I didn’t do any work,” Huh said. “So that’s kind of a problem.”
When he was 16 years old and in the middle of his first year in high school (which lasts for three years in South Korea), he decided to drop out to write poetry. He was something of a romantic. “I could literally physically cry after listening to good music,” he said. He wrote about nature and about his own experiences. He planned to complete his masterpiece in the two years before he’d have to attend university. “So that didn’t happen,” he laughed.
That poetic detour has since proved crucial to his mathematical breakthroughs. His artistry, according to his colleagues, is evident in the way he uncovers those just-right objects at the center of his work, and in the way he seeks a deeper significance in everything he does. “Mathematicians are a lot like artists in that really we’re looking for beauty,” said Federico Ardila-Mantilla, a mathematician at San Francisco State University and one of Huh’s collaborators. “But I think in his case, it’s really pronounced. And I just really like his taste. He makes beautiful things.”
Mathematicians were also impressed by his demeanor. His talks at conferences were always accessible and concrete; in speaking with him, it was clear that he was thinking both deeply and broadly about the concepts he was working with. “He was ridiculously mature for a graduate student,” said Matthew Baker, a mathematician at the Georgia Institute of Technology. After Baker met him for the first time, “I was just like, who is this guy?”
According to Mircea Mustaţă, Huh’s adviser at the University of Michigan, he required almost no supervision or guidance. Unlike most graduate students, he already had a program in mind, and ideas about how to pursue it. “He was more like a colleague,” Mustaţă said. “He already had his own way of looking at things.” Many of his collaborators note that he’s incredibly humble and down-to-earth. When he learned he’d won the Fields Medal, “it didn’t really feel that good,” Huh said. “Of course you are happy, but deep down, you’re a little bit worried that they might eventually figure out that you’re not actually that good. I am a reasonably good mathematician, but am I Fields Medal-worthy?”
Obviously there’s a spectrum between a June Huh and a Sam Bankman-Fried, and June Huh is like the comical ideal. But there are probably June Huns of other social/cultural roles that we just have no way of finding and selecting. I mean, in math and programming, you can trivially prove that you have the skills, but this is harder for anything involving political leadership and the humanities.
edit remembered that a good example of this is PirateSoftware. YouTube has endless analyses for anyone unfamiliar. But for those familiar: his lying and scheming made him the top streamer in the world for a while. He used his supreme reputation to attack the pro-consumer initiative Stop Killing Games. He benefitting personally from attacking this initiative because it ingratiated him with big business, and he has no empathetic tie to the common man / consumer. Our political class is awfully like PirateSoftware.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
57m ago
Responded to you in a different comment but fair enough. In my first read I was just looking for direct calls to violence in his texts, so gross quips about "pissing on their graves" didn't really meet the bar for "inciting violence" in my opinion.
I am concerned about his references to their children though. That is too far. Although weird that it's not included in the leak if he did say thing about them, because that would be way better leak than this is currently.
Quantumfreakonomics
57m ago
We don’t have the context. We don’t know why Jay Jones thinks Todd and Jennifer Gilbert are “evil” and “breeding little fascists”. Going on priors, it’s probably not a very good reason, but we don’t actually know that.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
59m ago
Sorry I was looking for / focusing on calls for violence specifically, I got rather anchored on the "Yes, Democrats Really Do Want You Dead" and "This is how Pogroms work."
I think the rest of his comments are in extremely poor taste, but I don't think saying gross things is comparable to inciting basically genocide. I wouldn't vote for someone who says these things, but saying "I'd piss on someone's grave" =/= "we should organize mob attacks on Republican communities".
The fact he mentioned their kids is heinous though, it's weird that if he was wishing harm/death on those children it wasn't included in the screenshots as that would be a much more salacious leak. If he was threatening children I hope he is sued, potentially disbarred(??) etc.
Totalitarianit
1hr ago
The public square dominated by Democratic figures and Never Trumpers invoking some fraudulent both sidesism has, like it or not, dulled some of the public backlash.
Whether we like it or not, the both sidesism deployed by the left is an effective rhetorical tactic that needs to be contended with. It'd be best to accept that popular people on the right have in fact made veiled calls for violence, or at least has given passive endorsements.
The primary difference between left and right calls for violence right now seem to be state sanctioned capital punishment versus revolutionary type assassinations or terrorist acts. At scale, this becomes relevant because the left still largely controls the moral landscape of this country, and it is more likely to give the common man the moral license to kill than the right wing is. It's optically a "grassroots" thing and it appeals to young empathetic people or indoctrinated college grads. They're seen as acts of justified destabilization, and they give the impression that it's just the common man fighting against an immoral oppressor. It's why the left can riot for months at a time (2020 and now), or kill a CEO or conservative commentator and left-leaning mainstream outlets and Democrats can make generalized statements about toning down the violence without ever really having to take any accountability.
I'd like to put together a bigger effort post on this but I have to work.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
In an effort to be a good mottizen, I gave it a re-read because I had skimmed just his side of the conversation when I first looked.
It does seem like he agrees with the other person saying "you were talking about hoping Jennifer Gilbert's children would die" but I would imagine if he said that in text, it would have been part of the leak? That would be so much more damning and would totally fuck him (because fuck him for saying that), but it's absence from these screenshots is weird if he did in fact say that.
I don't know who this guy is but I really don't like him. And given I hold elected officials to high standards, I would never vote for him, but I also can't take the "3 people 2 bullets" joke all that seriously given its historical precedent as a common joke.
If he was actually wishing harm on his political enemy's kids though, that's extremely concerning.
oats_son
1hr ago
I'm still not sure if you're actually being genuine here or not. Did you just click the first thing you saw and said "well, that's all there was to the exchange"? I asked you if you read them, and you said yes just now, and you wrote the least offensive thing in a collection of texts. I guess I have to post plaintext of what he said to verify that you are comprehending what I am trying to convey.
I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they're breeding little fascists? Yes
In response to "You were talking about hopping that jennifer Gilbert's children would die":
Yes, I've told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy
If those guys die before me
I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves
Send them out awash in something
And yes, then The Office joke, which has a bit of a different context if you've just established you actually want to do it.
Three people, two bullets
Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot
Gilbert gets two bullets to the head
Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time
That last quote especially tells you that he hates Gilbert.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1hr ago
Yes, he said "Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head"
You really are committed to just ignoring all the rest that he said, huh? Just constantly repeating for the people who won't read for themselves this lie by omission that all he said was a joke.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
elected officials telling each other they’d commit murder if they had more balls
"Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head" this is literally a common joke used to humorously compare people to Hitler et al. It was incredibly inappropriate for someone running for public office to say, but otherwise is profoundly meaningless as far as calls for violence go.
I suppose this is a reason I feel so… uneasy with gun control.
I go back and forth on this a lot myself. I strongly believe gun control is needed to keep governments/institutions scared of the masses, but at the same time the masses end up rather dangerous to one another in the interim.
themig
1hr ago
What on earth could possibly convince you that there is a problem? An attorney general nominee (merely implicitly, I suppose) says we should kill children, to which thousands of real people shrug and say well what about the letter next to his name. That's pretty crazy. We should not frame it as if internet commenters are not real people. They may not be the most well-balanced individuals but they contribute to a prevailing narrative. Your insistence that this is not something to worry about only makes me more skeptical.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
normie coded like reddit
People who comment on Reddit are not a representative sample of normies. The vast majority of internet users lurk.
just like with Charlie Kirk, I already see a couple people in this thread downplaying it right in front of me and telling me I'm worrying over nothing. Why? What do you get out of it?
I'm pretty upset he was murdered. I really don't want political violence in the USA to escalatee. I like pax Americana just the way it was, thank you.
Did you click on WhiningCoil's Twitter link and read what Jay Jones actually said?
Yes, he said "Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head"
I don't think he should have said this as someone who wants public office, and I also don't find it very concerning given it's a common joke template. I have made that joke many times and I have no wish for anyone to actually die. Those texts would make me not want to vote for him, and also don't remind me of Jewish pogroms lol.
oats_son
1hr ago
You know very well that reddit is not some vacuum where the opinions are totally meaningless. It's within the top 10 visited sites in the world. The lurkers upvote things. The lurkers don't care enough to comment, but they silently agree or disagree with things. If they really disagreed, they might post a comment themselves, like what I'm doing right now.
Are politicians representative samples? Very few people run for office, so they're outliers, right? Surely that means they don't represent anyone's real attitudes?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
The internet comments you see are also not a representative sample.
Anyone who comments on the internet at all is by definition an outlier, as the vast majority of people are lurkers.
Much of what you see on Twitter is algorithmically selected to cause you to engage more, and unfortunately shit you hate and makes you upset makes you engage, so that is what you'll see.
Redditors are.... Redditors. Every single geographic (city, country, whatever) subreddit is a wildly mis-representative sample of the people in whatever geography it is nominally about.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Coincidentally, this is how long it takes for your facility to produce anything worth shipping.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Some losers posting on an anonymous thread from their mother’s basement is a very different thing from elected officials telling each other they’d commit murder if they had more balls.
I suppose this is a reason I feel so… uneasy with gun control. I know for a fact that theres lots of people who shouldn’t have guns. Lots of them my cotribals. I know that, factually, I don’t really need all my guns. But golly this attitude- I mean I don’t see it up close and personal, I suppose this is the first really solid evidence I have that it isn’t just unhinged screeching online, but we all knew it was there- just makes me go, yeah, F you, I need them.
BurdensomeCount
Unable to escape TheMotte's cycle of Samsara...
1hr ago
This shit is why if you're not from the US you should completely disregard Ivy league etc. universities and just go to Oxbridge instead, at least for your undergrad degree. While now there are some "boosts" given to disadvantaged British citizens if you're not one of them the only thing you'll be measured on and against your fellow applicants will be your aptitude for your chosen subject.
To use a London member's club analogy: going to the Ivy League is like being a member of Annabel's and all the new money connotations that gives while going to Oxbridge is like being a member of The Athenaeum (even being a member of White's is more respectable than being a member of Annabel's); for those of us who know, we know...
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1hr ago
it could just be 'bants'. maybe he is just venting to a friend and there is some context that is snipped from the conversation that we see that makes it less bad.
It could be, but it's not.
A DM conversation "leaked" where in he has this conversation with a Republican colleage in the Virginia House I believe. So this wasn't even exactly an "in house" conversation. Just straight up telling the opposition, "Hey, I think you deserve to die" like it would never or could never come back to haunt him.
Believe it or not, you are not the first person grasping at this straw.
benmmurphy
1hr ago
it could just be 'bants'. maybe he is just venting to a friend and there is some context that is snipped from the conversation that we see that makes it less bad. cancelling him has parallels to cancelling people for having misogynistic/sexist/racist comments in a whatsapp group with friends. there is an expectation of a privacy and lot of it is just people venting or memeing and not being serious.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1hr ago
I genuinely don't think this is AI. I just think em-dashes are best used in moderation.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1hr ago
Keep. Reading.
You don't get to read the first thing he says, go "Sounds benign to me", and then ignore the rest of the truly horrific and sober thoughts he put down.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1hr ago
I lowkey expected you to catch the reference there, but if you haven't read the Practical Guide to Evil, go do that. Best fantasy this century, strong contender for all time. There is a significant plotline that deals with that issue.
TowardsPanna
1hr ago
I generally don't like using the word woke because it would get me instant backlash from normies who claim it's just a bogeyman etc and only the worst chuds worry about wokeim. Not that that's likely to happen on TM, but it's my general feeling.
Perhaps you should read the previous comment of mine I posted about how pogroms are not the same as genocide. Not ever, not once, not in any historical context. Pogroms have very low fatality counts compared to genocide. They are not organized. They are a roiling low level amount of violence against an ethnic group that the state alternates between turning a blind eye to, giving slaps on the wrist over, and occasionally inflaming with their rhetoric and permissiveness. The goal is to get the ethnic group to be demoralized, be too fearful to participate in public life, and at best straight up leave.
Democrats are absolutely capable of that. Arguably you see it already in many Democrat run cities.
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