nice job completing that thing I don't understand.

And thanks for the congrats! I just learned it from you that we won gold in that lol. I had no idea.

I'm gonna go back to watching season 4 of Mad Men now. Holy cow what a great season

so i've noticed

That's not what I was talking about (and I assume you know that).

I was talking about something far more serious: crazy or unhinged people with megaphones. People like Donald Trump, for example, who have an outsized impact and are sufficiently convincing with their lies/mistruths to do serious damage with their protected free speech. There are other people I'd add to that list, people who are responsible for things like the flat-earthers, anti-vaxers, etc... people who have managed to convince other people that provable science isn't true. Some (probably many) religious figures would fall into that category for me, yet another protected group (in their case, doubly protected).

I wish I could shut those people up (or at least reduce their impacts), but I have no idea how you would do so without opening Pandora's box: in those cases, it might create the ability for the government (for example) to silence reasonable dissenting opinions, and those reasonable opinions often have value, and need to be heard even if they are proven incorrect in the long run (this is, IMO, the main value/point of free speech).

those people have always been around, btw. They just didn't have social media. Also, the media has become ratings-driven so giving voices to fringe is really good for ratings/money

I think once the media started REPORTING on tweets, we started going down a hill pretty fast.

Some important person was being interviewed once and the reporter/interviewer shifted to a tweet that a viewer just sent in, and the person was like, "what are you doing? who cares? Why does that matter? You can actually just do your job if you want and ask me tough questions, or things that you think are relevant and, dare I say, important". That's not verbatim and it happened years ago, but I wish i could remember who that was. It's such a Jordan Peterson move but it wasn't him.

Hence the use of the emote next time i'll just post the word (joke)...but then the joke would have to be funny to others

EDIT: so due to the tropical storm that hit Florida being named Debbie..there's been a flood of memes like the following:

Honestly, Twitter is perhaps the most damaging thing that was ever done to public discourse. Imagine needing to debate the reasons for Women's Suffrage in 280 characters or less, while people are responding with nonsense like: "They've always been in the kitchen, they should stay there," or "they'll just vote like their husbands tell them to," and angry people are replying to those posts with one word responses like "bigot" or "fascist."

You can only say the most superficial things in that kind of space. You can't provide nuance. But nuance is often the most important part of any debate, or discussion.

Instead we get:

DEI PRESIDENT BAD

and

ORANGE MAN BAD

I can't even describe the problem, intelligently/usefully, in under 280 characters.

And yes, BB... the moment that twitter became a source for valid political discourse, it put a real hamper on actually valid discourse.

Political memes are even worse.

The problem, DP, is that I don't think you were making a joke. I think this was one of the (many, many, many) posts that becomes a joke the moment I take it seriously, or respond in any way. I don't think your intent was to make me laugh, and in case you were actually wondering, no you did not make me laugh.

_______________________________

The whole concept of Debbie does Florida, on the other hand, is **** hilarious - in case you were wondering about that one instead.

Twitter is clearly a platform that was never intended to be used for conversations. I’m not even sure it’s a good platform for statements. I think the original intent was for people just to post what’s on their minds as simplistic as possible

But now people take tweets as official statements and stances on issues, with zero nuance. It’s a super dangerous evolution of what it was never intended to do. Like when airplanes were designed, you weren’t supposed to fly them into buildings. It feels like people have hijacked Twitter and now repeatedly fly things into buildings

Who is this Paterson guy?

Sorry BB, your post is being rejected because it used too many characters. lol.

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On a more serious note: yeah, I think you're right. Honestly though, I think the biggest issue is that those discussions are fully public. I think it might be very different (and far less damaging) if you could only see things posted by the people you actively follow, but, of course, that company would be worthless, relative to Twitter.

____________________________

@Cucho: I think you would hate him, but maybe not. BB and I both like him, not so much for all of his points of view (because I certainly don't agree with everything he says, and I bet BB agrees with less), but rather for how he communicates those points of view. He's extremely articulate, and very gifted at making complex ideas easy to digest. I wish I had a tenth of his talent.

The name is Jordan Peterson, you should look him up sometime. But don't watch reactions to his statements, check out the original statements first, IMO. Because he is absolutely a victim of people twisting his words to make him look worse than he is, intended to be, or worse than he could ever even consider thinking.

I don’t think you would like him, Cucho. He will remind you of DJ somewhat in his practical and intelligent approach to issues that normally have tons of emotion attached to them



Edit: I wrote this post before seeing DJ’s post which just makes it so good


Edit2: Cucho, if you’re gonna Look into him, please try to ignore or don’t read LABELS that have been placed on him. The media does this a lot. They use adjectives that don’t accurately reflect him or his views and those labels and adjectives then colour the way you perceive his views, which they shouldn’t

You should ideally be able to listen to him across a variety of interviews (where he fleshes out his ideas fully, and not soundbites. ) after that you should be able to form a view on him, as I have

I suspect DJ and I have similar impressions of him


If nothing else, I find him most impressive on several levels. One of which is w
That he’s completely open and willing to change his stance and view on things if shown that he might be wrong

I know of almost no one like that in the public eye

Lol, internet high fives all around.

Edit: it occurs to me that Cucho may have actually meant "Paterson..."

In which case: he's that moody dude from Twilight.

Sounds like a big investment of time... I think I will skip it.

Yeah learning is tedious, I don’t blame you actually

Btw I think it was someone here, Timh I think, that turned me onto him in the first place

Yeah, both BB and I, probably, think he's too politically incompatible with your viewpoints.

Probably the only time I'd really recommend him to you, and this would be very rare, is when I think you're way off on something, AND I think he explained why best.

That would be a rare moment indeed, because you are not generally sufficiently off on things for me to be able to pinpoint a solid argument against your viewpoint, AND have the serendipity that he, meaning Peterson, explained it best.

WHAT A BORING POST


Also, worst use of serendipity I’ve ever seen.

I've got your serendipity right here.

He sounds less and less interesting now.

Yeah I don’t think what is interesting about him would be interesting to most people.

What I personally find really differentiated about him is his unafraid way of weaponizing intelligence to win arguments, move any type of smaller conversation into a much bigger and deeper one, talk about issues with the most important points instead of the popular ones. He also doesn’t get emotional which basically everyone else does when talking about anything difficult.

Never ever does he say the « easy » thing to win a point or for a sexy sound bite. He won’t lower himself to that type of discourse.

I just find him very brave

—-

He got very famous for going on some BBC interview with this interviewer, Kathy or something. She basically wanted to push forward the narrative about him and challenge his views. So he bravely goes on the show. She asks him questions, he answers and rebuffs her assumptions, then she says almost each time « so what you’re saying is… » and then says something that wasn’t at all what he just said

This goes on for a long time

It’s a fun watch… well maybe not that fun

But this was my favourite moment from it:




——

I just tuned into Olympics and they’re having a dance competition for a gold medal, what is going on

Idk if I turned you on to him, but I know we’ve talked about him briefly here before.

His old stuff is brilliant - his university lectures posted to YouTube and the series on biblical stories interpreted thru a psychological lens are gold. I dig the hell out of Jungian stuff (Tool, hero’s journey, etc etc) and I was a biiiiggg fan of Robert Anton Wilson in my late teens and 20s.

I found Petersons work to be in the same vein but centered around building purpose and meaning rather than embracing nihilism. He was like a yang to RAW’s yin. 2 sides of same coin.

But then the culture war pressures and near death experience from benzo addiction recovery ruined his brain. He’s basically a crank now and it deeply saddens me. His old work is still good tho