#the ability of the internet to miss the point of the least subtle material imaginable never ceases to amaze

[omercifulheaves]

Folks, nothing has cracked me up lately like the fact that after weeks of discourse about the film that boiled down to -- both figuratively and, god help us, literally -- “Oppenheimer should have had a scene where he looked at the camera and said “Nukes bad...” ...I finally watched Oppenheimer and it does, in fact, have a scene where he looks at the camera and says “Nukes bad.”

[bambamramfan]

Good SSC post on the “Intellectual Dark Web.” Specifically:

In my own experience, my blog posts promoting orthodox opinions are generally ignored; my blog posts promoting controversial opinions go viral and win me lots of praise. I assume this is because my orthodox blog posts are trying to outcompete the people at Vox (highly-polished, Ivy-League-educated mutants grown in vats by a DARPA project to engineer the perfect thinkpiece writer), and my controversial blog posts are trying to outcompete three randos with blogs that consistently confuse “there” and “their”. Winning one competition is much easier than winning the other – and the prize for winning either is “the attention of about 50% of the population”.

and

I worry that this conversation is being conducted mostly by media personalities who write controversial takes for a living. They work for ideologically-aligned publications, and everyone knows that a few crazies hating and harassing you is a common part of the job. If you didn’t propose the death penalty for abortion and then get a job at The Atlantic, you’ll probably be fine.

Out in the rest of the world, if a rando on social media calls your company, tells them you’re a Nazi, and links them to an out-of-context dossier of all the worst things you ever wrote, that dossier is going straight to a humorless 60-year-old HR drone whose job is minimizing the risk of PR blowups, and who has never heard of Twitter except as a vague legend of a place where everything is terrible all the time. So if you write for a webzine, consider that you may have no idea how silenced or living-in-fear anyone else is or isn’t, and that you may be the wrong person to speculate about it.

Out in the rest of the world, if someone sends you a death threat, you might not be such an experienced consumer of Internet vitriol that you know it usually doesn’t pan out. You might not be so thick-skinned that “Go to hell, you fucking Nazi scum�� no longer has any effect on you. You might not live in an bubble of intellectualism where people appreciate subtle positions. You might have friends and family who are very nice people but somewhat literal-minded, who have heard that only rapists oppose feminism so many times that they have no ability to create a mental category for someone who opposes feminism but isn’t pro-rape. And you might not really relish the idea of having to have a conversation with your sweet elderly great-aunt about how no, you really don’t think raping people is good. Seriously, imagine having to explain any of what you write on the Internet to your sweet elderly great-aunt, and now imagine it’s something that society has spent years telling her is equivalent to rape apologism.

(my father recently implied I had brought dishonor upon our family by getting quoted approvingly in National Review. I am 90% sure he was joking, but only 90%.)

Or maybe I’m wrong about this. Part of how silencing works is that nobody really knows how strong it is or isn’t. I had a patient who agonized for years over whether to come out to his family, only to have his parents say “Yes, obviously” when he finally got up the nerve. The point, is Sam Harris no longer has to worry about any of these things. So if your line of reasoning is “well, Sam Harris seems to do pretty well for himself, so I guess you can’t get in trouble for being controversial”, I don’t know what to tell you.

Though in an essay with 6 main points and many sub points, I disagree with at least something. He points to the real threats and harassment these celebrities get as “see they really are silenced.” As readers of this blog know, I find focus on those material attacks as a kind of fetishistic rallying flag that we use to interpret the actual source of discomfort, namely the feeling that we CAN be attacked and no one will protect us, because we are unloved and unwanted.

Anyway, while Scott would not disagree, this post misses the capitalist element - namely, supply and demand.

The question is not “why do these celebrities feel silenced?” Celebrities and profiitable movement leaders will simply say whatever other people want to hear and pay attention to - even if they aren’t cynically changing their message around this, they will rise and fall based on this logic. The IDW leader who best gives voice to the multitudes is the one that will be the most famous and profitable, not the one who is closest to their own personal vision.

And there are lots of people who feel silenced by the progressive left right now. They are to some degree right, and some degree wrong, but boy do they feel it. And so leaders who speak to that, will get quite a following.

To defeat the IDW you can’t just cut off one head of the hydra and hope it doesn’t grow back. You need to actually address why those hundreds of thousands of donors and podcast listeners feel a great deal of anxiety that only the IDW is giving voice to.

The institutions of the socialjusticesphere have so fair completely and willfully failed at that.

[marmartinis]

Is it worth writing a book about?

Chapter 1

Who decided we had to get jobs anyway? Like literally, who decided we should spend our youthful years “searching” for the right thing to do for the rest of our lives? Endless hours making our way to the “top” trying to be successful, even if it’s in "our own way” (snowflake alert). I can’t possibly fathom a life without this sort of drive or determination that was drilled into me from a young age. But it just feels wrong. There has to be something else, I’ve always believed that. After observing the world and all of it’s chaos and the attempts that have been made to circumvent it, suppress it, solve the chaos. They don’t work. I know I can’t be alone in the feeling there is something more to be had out of life, a different “ladder" if you will. But what is it? What could possibly be better than being a billionaire or a physiological biochemist with tenure, or an animal shrink? I have an idea but it takes work and I’m not sure how to describe it, so here goes.

Problems

1)I am not an atheist, I am not evangelical. I am not universalist. I AM human. I have been given “gifts" of humanity. The opportunities of five senses: Sight, smell, touch, taste. That is it. Humans are human because of these five things. Animals have the same capacities as we do, thought they lack a… certain something. To be human is amazing yet we have made it so complicated over the years. What is actually a simple thing, OBSERVATION, has become a rat gambit. We are all searching for things but we can’t agree on one, at least not as a whole. We’ve been divided over years into categories, sub categories and sub-sub categories. Being human is not a spread sheet or a box diagram. Human is Observation and processing. It is seeing an obstacle and overcoming it. Being human is grabbing (insert food) and feeling the (insert food) into your mouth with the subtle smell of (insert food) filling your nose. Yeah, those are your five senses, it doesn’t matter who you are, you eat in some form.

2)I’m tired of god. I hate god. I hate the very existence of the word, but it is necessary. Human’s need a reason to be human, so why not have an ultimate one, something that our observations can tell us, just from being in our surroundings. Something greater than ourselves had to make this wondrous place. This earth we live on supports us all, feeds us, keeps us warm. The word HUMAN has made us blind to this. We don’t think about the Earth as our home. Humans simply think about their house as home, the house keeps you warm, keeps you safe, sheltered. But what would your home be without the earth, without the space around the earth to keep you safe? There wouldn’t be a home, there wouldn’t be our existence. I miss God in the purest form, a higher being that is perfection. I’m also scared of that god, he was spiteful, could be angry, he was…human?. After all, we were created in his image. But the Scripts are just “books”. Created by man. I understand these thoughts of humanity are strongly heretical, but I feel it is important for you to understand me. To understand my thought for our future. So just take a step back and read for longer than 30 seconds at a time.

3)We need jobs to give to people. There are simply not enough JOBS to employ the whole world. Humans have devastated the simplicity of BEING human. 7 BILLION people (actually more, insert your google search), how could we possibly employ them all. I know not everyone wants to work in a call center, not everyone wants to be a CEO and not everyone wants to pick potatoes in a field all day, not everyone can do these things. While all humans have been given observation, our abilities to actually utilize the tools that have come along with it are varied to say the least. To be human is no longer the equal that it once was. Human was being all in it together, we had our earth to provide for us and each other for the rest. We had each other to observe safety, hunger, NEEDS. Knowledge isn’t something that you are born with (queue the google links) it is something we gain through observation. You observe a book before and while you read it, even if it is just to flip through the pages or read the tittle. You observe a web link or a person’s profile on Facebook. You are human. Human is OBSERVATION AND CORRELATION. Humans need to be educated to a minimum level to function in current society.

These are problems that can be solved because we as Humans have created them. We can all observe their causes, and the effects that they are having on our current society as a whole. Religion has shattered our common causes, education has divided our ability to understand each other, and the work we do has separated us in yet another way. If you can find a person that does the same job as you, is of the same theology and can keep up with you at “Scattergories”… it must be love. But come back to OBSERVATION and CORRELATION. That is all you have done your entire life. But one cannot simply rely on their own self to observe the world around them. It goes back to the beginning of human time, even if it was imaged, we had each other to help in needs. We as a world are currently fractured by our problems and refuse to help a certain people based on our observation of them. We’ve observed another religion we don’t agree with, we’ve observed a lifestyle we don’t agree with we’ve observed, and decided to disagree. To be human we decided, is in a book because life cannot be simple it has to be thought out, complicated, dehumanized. As a human, and by being observant, i’ve found a favorite object in time. It’s a boat. It is a ship. It isn’t large by today’s standard, but at the start of ITS LIFE, it was large, but not the largest. It was fast. The ship is called the S.S. United States. It was launched in 1951 and took the home the fastest ocean lines ribband in the world! It was amazing. It was America. News reals, papers books and parties, All something to do with the SS United States were a buzz. It was a symbol of American prosperity and ingenuity, might and force. The United States succeeded in it’s message. But like the SS United States herself, America moved fast. The ship was soon forgotten and became neglected, much like our once powerful gift of observation. This one thing that our entire country helped build (your /great/grand parent’s tax dollars at work folks…WAR) was tossed aside, forgotten and left to decay. It sounds a little like the infrastructure from the same period, and the thoughts and ideals of an era as well.

How have we as humans allowed ourselves to be manipulated by each other up to this point and yet we are all okay with it? I just don’t understand. But I am going to describe how to fix it and stop rambling. I hope you have kept reading and can follow along.

Solution

To build a giant object is extremely complicated and expensive. I want to go for a GIANT space faring pumpkin, but yeah. Not going to happen. But what WE can do is just as complex yet achievable. I want to build a network. A giant one. A network to connect the masses. But here is the thing. It already exists in one form and we are complacent, we only want better when it is advertised to us, there goes that observation thing again. So, I am going to tell you how much better the NEW NETWORK will be. The new network will be optical. I am going to say FIBER OPTICAL only because it is the only material I can think of that can move the data we want and the power we need at the same time, without degrading in a terrible manner over a period of decades. Copper corrodes, wireless can be unreliable and spotty in the current state it isn’t fun to use all the time either. The networks we use to communicate with each other are as divided as we are, but they weren’t always that way. There was a time when that phone that only your grandma has was the same as her neighbors, and the neighbor that lived on the other side of the world. The very phone itself was owned by the same company. At the time it was black and had a rotary dial. The federal government deemed this not good for the society the company was serving and forced a selloff (very, very abbreviated example but you are gonna google anyway). The thing is though, it took that giant effort of that company to make the NETWORK of telephones WORK together. We need that again. This time the government needs to back the revolution in communication for the 21st century. The GOVERNMENT needs to pour funds into a GIANT infrastructure project that will be OUR legacy, but we cannot let it be something that the human’s of our future can just let rot, so why not have them rely on it like we do our freeways?

The network we build has to FAST (like fast fast) reliable, upgradable and failsafe. All things that we current take for granted until the power goes out.  don't you hate that when it happens, cell phone doesn’t work, internet doesn’t work not even your “GASP” refrigerator works. You know what does work… That crappy phone tied to the wall with a rotary dial. The point is we cannot trust a company who has the sole purpose of making money and selling you stuff. Why would a company put effort into making something so good it will last for YEARS if they have investors to impress? So give them reason to do it. Get the government to give them cash for every stage of the project that gets completed by their company, but only once the project is finished. That’s right, hold a BILLION dollar pay our for the end game. And what if any company could sign up for the opportunity at these credits, then later sell them to another, it’s all Monopoly money anyway and a company always loves the opportunity to make some more. Just a thought.

Now, Can you imagine an earthquake, flood or some other catastrophe where you can still use your phone as long as it has a charge and you’re close to town? It would be pretty handy in an state of emergency. So why can’t we do this? The infrastructure isn’t there. We have to create it from scratch it is hard work and expensive and we have other things to do like, order mystery boxes off of eBay. We need to re-build miles of freeway, upgrade rail lines and work towards greener power delivery. We need a way to charge all these electric vehicles we are going to be buying (google search) so why not really go for the gold and do it all at once. If the underlying structure of a superfast is built to last and upgradeable there would be no reason to forget about it, except when it starts getting taken for granted like the backroad to your hometown. I’m not talking full scale power delivery for your entire home. Just a little box that sits on a shelf that connects you to your outside world. You know, this network already almost exists but it isn’t built to last, and it isn’t built to have redundancy except where it is required by law (google search). Cellular signals don’t all come from satellites, they actually use fiber cable to connect cell towers that only have a few miles reach together, it is how they hand you off to that tower that switches you to roaming, or drops your call. Now imagine if all those boxes in everyone’s house also supplied you a signal. Complete redundancy. Together with a progress in fission and hydrogen power the network could be clean as well (eyebrow raise). And could you imagine all those jobs in the construction and administration industries that would be created, there would be a job for every skill level, and plenty of pay to be had.

To be human is to observe the world around us in its simplest form. From grabbing a sweet juicy fruit and almost smelling its sweetness before it even reaches your lips, to feeling that warmth on your face when you walk indoors on a cold day, we observe our world around us. We are ALL longing to be part of something and I feel we should all be remember in some form or another even if it is a distant memory handed from your great grandmother to you. I want us to build the United States, but better than its past self. It is what our country was founded for, the betterment of a society. It doesn’t matter what religion you are, we all exist, and we exist together. So why not make it a great one and one we are proud to pass on to our next little existers? Why can’t we put America to work on the United States as a whole and put the profiteers on the back burner for a few decades (it’s a GIANT project). I love the possibilities that the internet has provided to us. A simple way to gather our information. A faster way to communicate (sometimes), and the ability to be heard in a world full of so much disorder. I believe everyone should have equal access to common space knowledge. But when simple guided facts such as the shape of the very planet we live on are starting to come into question, it stifles my vision. It subjugates my philosophy on life just for a while. We seriously are rehashing recycled material from hundreds of years ago, and now we can all read about it thanks to this wonderful human creation. But, humans in our observation have a tendency to be fickle to new ideas, the internet, in being so vast and open has made it easy for us to become shut off, like we are living in our own little islands of the internet. We aren’t really encouraged to seek out new areas unless it is to sell us on some item we don’t need or some thought we already agree with in a different font with a few more ads.

I feel we are just being studied to see how we are adapting to this new information overload we are all experiencing. I’m fascinated by it. Well I guess I should be done. I guess there wasn’t a books worth of ideas anyway. I could go into to details of the various funding methods that could be used ( you seriously didn’t think I would write all of this with only one idea?) to make this project a reality. I COULD insert google links and citation of books. I’m not going to do that though. In my heart I know that this a good idea, but I don’t feel it is attainable. I am jaded in my own observance of the reality I was handed. I’m gong to go smoke another cigarette and listen to the bats chirp. I’m tired of this existence, but I don’t want it to end. I want to see the future because I do hope that even if my idea isn’t realized, I hope that in some way or another we can find a way to do what we do best. OBSERVE ourselves from outside OUR ship called earth. I want us to go to space. I want us to use our cultural capital from the past to build our future. I want to experience the thrill of being proud to be human in our existence, however it was created.

Goodnight.