Aarros

Already as children, we are taught basic lessons of what is good. Things like honesty, kindness, wisdom, reason, keeping your word, being polite, getting along with others. Seeking to improve yourself, your community, your country, seeking to improve humankind itself. Most of us try our best.

People who claim Russia should be appeased in case we use nukes never explain why they think the world is a better place now the use of nuclear blackmail is a legitimate tool of statecraft. They never even stop to ponder the question. /

One thing I find endlessly funny about the rise of AI is that it has revealed that there is a large number of people who believe that the reason they wrote essays at school or university is their teachers were desperately waiting for them to provide a definite answer to “Lear: what’s up with him?”

It's hilarious that Huang things not knowing his address, zip-code and phone number are a mark of how he is cognitively off-loading to technology and Klein doesn't seem to press him that what he's actually obviously doing is using the fact that he's rich to off-load onto other humans.

If you’re not potty trained by now you don’t get to be in the pool with the rest of us and we’re not gonna have a civilized debate about it while the water fills up with your filth.

In my lifetime, I've seen segments of society lose trust in evolutionary biology, climate science, and vaccines. None of this was due to anything scientists did. All of it was because non-scientists perceived some advantage (political, cultural, financial) in attacking science's credibility.

Everyone gets fooled sometimes, but if you credulously post an image or video that people reply to tell you is fake/AI-generated and you leave it up anyway (because “it’s still funny” or whatever) you’re making the misinformation problem worse and will be blocked immediately.

Unfortunately, there is no contradiction here. As @vladvexler.bsky.social points out, post-truth politicians are going to change their stance on the climate in the coming years, and they will use it as a new frontier of criticism against centrist technocrats who haven't solved the problem.

I have noticed that people who think of themselves as very smart are particularly susceptible because the flattery algorithms reinforce what they already believe to be true, so they fail to view them with appropriate skepticism, and instead imagine that they have special insights.

Honestly, the great crisis of our society is the unwillingness of institutions to inflict consequences. Impeach the president, fire the sex pests, expel cheating students, excommunicate an unrepentant heretic, prosecute the war criminals. Believe in your institution enough to enforce its rules.

textbook sanewashing

Anyone who has supported Ukraine throughout the last 4 years already knows what Jacobin is. In the communities that raise money for Ukraine and support volunteers, that magazine and the people who write for it, are at this point seen as a part of the propaganda wing of the enemy forces.

1. "Here's an extreme idea. We're platforming it, so that people can watch out." 2. "This idea is gaining traction. We're publishing an op-ed in favour, for balance." 3. "This idea is popular now. Why does the left refuse to consider it?"

Imagine claiming to be a Star Trek fan while expressing disdain for at least 90% of what Star Trek is (and always has been)

this is unironically the best case for punitive taxation there are arguments about fairness and freedom and whatever else but at the end of the day it is self-evidently far too dangerous for society as a whole for anyone to have that much money, the end

Over $70 billion burned on the metaverse. Europe’s single biggest disadvantage versus the US in tech is not regulation, a lack of innovation or “grit”. It’s the fact we are not sitting on the kind of entrenched cash piles (owed to past success) that mean that this isn’t a bankruptcy event.

If I said that some of your favorite VCs lacked the ability to introspect, and that they spent close to zero time thinking about how their actions had negative impacts on the world? You'd probably say that I was being unfair, by practically calling them psychopaths. They say this about themselves!

"I got my PhD by writing prompts instead of doing research, I'm winning" got some bad news, there still no jobs and now you also know nothing

I am so tired of so many people constantly siding with very obvious, insane, deep evil at every opportunity.

University is not a business, students are not customers, education is not a product, researchers are not salespeople.

Can't now find it but there's a classic old tweet which said something like "Every time we're on the verge of achieving class consciousness in America a CIA sleeper agent activates and, their eyes glowing red, they just tweet out "John Brown was a white saviour"" and I think about it often.

Palantir’s founder is pro-Russian. Ukraine should not work with Palantir

If we ever believed in any higher principles like justice, freedom, reason, rationality, fairness, equality, even politeness, all the positive qualities and principles that Trump and his kind entirely lack, then now is moment that we stop tolerating the replusive, deranged evil that they represent.

Or Russia. Not a coincidence that dissidents from authoritarian nations and reporters that covered those places have been waving their arms over what the Trump White House has been doing since 2017 while most US opposition and media have been sedately concerned. It’s not confusing to us at all.

Venezuela should de-escalate by trading land for peace, pledge neutrality and now choose a leader Donald approves of. That's how it was supposed to work when we do this to our neighbors.

an annoying thing about realists insisting they're the no-nonsense reality-based group is that few of their predictions have been based in reality

Trump demands concessions from Ukraine. Putin rejects the proposal anyway. Trump demands concessions from Ukraine. Putin rejects the proposal anyway. Trump demands concessions from Ukraine. Putin rejects the proposal anyway. Stuck in a Groundhog bog.

True. But this theater is getting tiresome, and I am not sure it's working for Europe. Perhaps it's time to make it clear to Trump that there are no negotiations instead of leading him to think that there are—and in the process fooling a lot of Europeans into believing that peace is close.

Helpful reminder that both Kyiv and its European partners can safely ignore Trump's pushes for a bad peace deal.