Time to Take a Stand – Sam Altman (2017)

Does it ever worry you or make you feel powerless? What can I do, I'm a middle age man with health problems that make things very difficult. I have kids and a family and friends with their own problems. I'm strapped for time and resources. What can I do? I worry for my kids future and the future of the world.

that line (generalized) has been the most useful piece of advice i've ever read

got me out of a gaslighting relationship, and allowed me to stay at a company during a rough patch (knowing i had a line i'd bail at)

I think the fourth is quite a few people spotted what appeared to be happening in big tech, where if you have the right activists in only a few companies you could cover and (to some extent) control a lot of digit communication. The moment whatever issue du jour came up that they did not align with the big tech decision on, they noticed and started to distrust what they were seeing. It's possible that being a benevolent gatekeeper only works if you are extremely nonpartisan.

His sister agrees with that notion:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69520118/1/altman-v-alt...

In my experience you have it backwards. Democrats demonize Trump supporters (“basket of deplorables”, “garbage”).

When you're merely against them you find you're not for anything, and you collapse. The failure of the American progressive movement is that it abandoned the values it claimed it was for, in order to adopt new values that seemed to garner it more power. The American progressive movement became for perpetual power (oligarchy and plutocracy), and against them, where its moral authority derived solely from being opposed to those it had to demonize.

The trouble with all of this was that it required a sustained lie. Anyone who said "Wait a minute, that might be a tad too far," or "Wait, that policy will actually harm more people than it helps" became an enemy to crush and step atop. It is this hollow power-seeking that people revolted against. The stated ideals of personal freedom, of protecting the interests of the underdog, turned into curbing freedoms and attempting to create new underdogs.

One further critique; the constant identification of traditional conservative values, and center-right values, as far right extremism made any policy that began with this assumption suspect from the beginning. Start with such a lie, and the whole foundation is unsound, and this becomes obvious to the public over time.

An example: Declaring that opposition to open borders is racism (open borders was a thing first proposed by neocons, IIRC), when the argument is on the grounds of security and rule of law, is foolish at best and often, when deliberate, a malicious take. Finding a way to help the people looking for a better life is a noble goal. Staking the ground that the way to do this is to throw open the nation for the taking is a radical position. Declaring that people opposed to this policy are evil and racist as a way to jam the policy home, is evil.

So this is as much about the method as it is the policies themselves, not the least of which, you end up eliminating other possibilities along the way. Solving corruption and poverty in Central and South America is extremely difficult. The solution is not to bring the people and their problems here. Satisfying the wildest redistributionist fantasies still won't solve this problem. But the environment of discourse created by the radical left made it so that we can't even discuss these problems.

If the Left could stop trying to force belief (which is how the worst faces of religion have acted) and persuade with reason and articulation, which requires debate, they'd have something. The Left doesn't debate anymore. Calls to violence, calls to silence "enemies," calls to harass and demonize, are all hallmarks of extremism. Where does the Left draw the line? "This is too much. This we will not do." Because the conservative right and the center-right have those lines. The mainstream right knows and does not except actual far right extremism.

> and push our society together in a meaningful way.

This seems like magical thinking.