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Not so sure about that. I suppose the original intent was to have a healthy debate around major policy decisions. It's a check against wanton liberalism or conservatism. Congress seems eager to pass spending bills and take away our privacy. They move at light speed when doing that.

Sure. Except it’s decentralized.

> I can't take them too seriously until I see an alternative that does the work of collective discovery.

There is an alternative. It is you and I. The citizen journalist will become the arbiter of truth tomorrow. And that arbitration will be decided on rationality. There will be no more credentialism and gatekeeping. That is why the traditional media companies are scared shitless.

Whoa, cool it with the Anti-Semitism there buddy! /s

Reading your comment and the original post really made me thankful for what I have. It goes to show that you have very little control of things in life. There are countless headwinds that influence the decisions you make. Some are invisible.

VIX needs to hit 40+ before that happens.

Sort of. In many Asian countries, the rule of law is very weak or nonexistent. This means you will eventually come into contact with the police - usually for the purpose of extorting a bribe from you.

> Secondly it seems plausible that a person locked in a room with a radio to communicate with the outside world would eventually acquire intelligence without ever fully experiencing the world.

Without fully experiencing the outside world, such an agent will still have gaps in intelligence. Knowing the specific wavelength of the color red (564–580 nm), and how the optic nerve processes color is different than the experience of seeing a red flower in the world for the first time.

Randomness? Or entropy?

It is everyone’s land if it is not owned by a specific person or entity. That is what is referred to as the commons.

> Kanye West has made increasingly oppressive, malformed declarations over the past several years, and yet commands earth-stopping attention every time he opens his mouth/Twitter app. Forbes ran a massive feature just this week about the ridiculous notion of West running for president in this year’s election.

It is very subtle. Oppressive? Malformed? This is basically calling him an uppity ni---r.

In my view, the issue is not so much cancel culture. It’s that journalists can publish inaccurate information and libel people without any sort of punishment or way for the targeted party to respond.

Also, this article is extremely racist. They are supporting the decades old trope of the “uppity” black male that just won’t shut up and behave like an Uncle Tom. At least these journalists are no longer hiding what they really think about minorities.

Ironically, the Gauls who would sack Rome multiple times were more “Roman” than the inhabitants of Rome proper. The Gauls had strong chieftains and military generals, whereas Rome had weak ones.

This is a really strange ruling. It also means that all prior convictions must be overturned, as they happened on a reservation instead of the state of Oklahoma.

If my comment will make someone think and question narratives, it is worth it. Even if it is getting downvoted heavily or flagged. There is a reason why the Socratic method works.

This is a much more sensationalist piece than it ought to be. When a patient has a stroke, they will obviously develop brain damage. That is the definition of a stroke - a cerebrovascular accident. The title should be "brain injury causes brain damage".

It makes sense if you think about it. Alcohol is a potent GABA receptor agonist, and will increase the amount of GABA in your brain. GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter.

As soon as GABA wears off, it’s like a clamp being removed from the neurons. In alcoholics this becomes so extreme the neurons die off due to excitotoxicity (caused by upregulation of NMDA receptors).

All that being said, there are better ways to enhance cognition. Like exercise. The conclusion should be “think harder when you’re drunk, as it will boost your baseline cognition” ;-)

I agree but in order to have a “better society” governed by the “better angels of our nature”, you essentially need a bully. You need an entity that does all of the morally “bad” things.

Fundamentally, civilization is about control. The control is codified and accepted only because there is a certain amount of inhumanity that is required for it. I would argue that killing comes naturally to humans, and other acts of similar cruelty.

Morality and ethics are learned behaviors that are distilled from societal mores. If "thou shall not kill" or some equivalent in another religion didn't exist, for example, I'd argue killing would be natural in society, and nobody would question it. That is why certain tribal and indigenous peoples performed human sacrifices and had various rituals involving bloodsport. To those tribesmen, killing is not something abnormal within the tribe. Why would killing someone from another tribe matter to them?

All the Muslim majority nations are silent on this matter. It shows how hypocritical they are.

> For starters, being deplatformed from major online players today would have serious consequences. Although it's true that these platforms are "private property," the entire society has become too reliant on them to be seen that way. I think it's dangerous when platforms function like a public utility and is yet allowed to do whatever it wants because it's technically private property. If platforms want to censor, there should be at least more oversight than what we have today.

In this instance, it’s a public company and one particular game. Some companies don’t allow you to wall hack or use aim assistants. Others will allow you to use hacked clients, like Minecraft anarchy servers. It should be up to the company to moderate, as you sign a TOS agreement with them when signing up or purchasing their game.

Government oversight is not needed here, because it’s a contract between an individual and a corporate entity.

It does. If I worked at a Japanese company, I would learn Japanese. I would respect the culture of the country I emigrated to. Otherwise, why would I live there?

It would be highly unusual to run meetings like standup where nobody else spoke the language two people were talking in. It’s different if they’re talking outside of a meeting.

I parsed the comment as his manager playing favorites by speaking in a language the team doesn’t understand or isn’t fluent in.

> “[There will be a promise of] all kinds of goodies and paradise on earth to destabilize your economy, to eliminate the principle of free-market competition, and to put a big brother government in Washington, D.C., with benevolent dictators who’ll promise lots of things. Never mind if the promises are fulfilled or not.”

Yuri Bezmenov is almost prophetic, given that he was speaking of our current era in the early 80s. He predicted the decline of the United States way before anyone else.

It also depends if you can tolerate living with your parents. My one living parent is driving my sister nuts, for instance.

I think I see legitimacy as being inextricably tied to the monopoly on violence. That is to say, the monopoly on violence is not only sufficient for legitimacy, it is necessary.

> The medieval king, for example, certainly didn’t hold a monopoly on violence.

He did indirectly, through the concept of divine right. This power was so immense, that a single king could wage war against an entire religion, as in the Crusades. If that isn't monopoly on violence, I don't know what is.

What you’re missing is that violence itself is an enforcement of state power. There is a reason why people carry weapons in CHAZ. In a power vacuum, the group that has the most weapons will be the de facto ruler of the area. For instance, Somalia does have a formal government, but without violence such a state does not exist in reality. Another way to phrase it is, in the words of Bret Weinstein, police brutality is a feature, not a bug.

It’s particularly applicable to startups that burn through a bunch of cash and then exit for a pittance.