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The group chats that changed America

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Re: The group chats that changed America

#3

Post by mindslight »

So like, is knowing someone who knows someone in these chats the key to getting your family out of the concentration camp, just like knowing someone who knows someone who works at Google is the key to getting your account unlocked?

Post facto, it seems given the monster that these people have actually unleashed and empowered, the preemptive negative reactions to what they had been saying in public were actually pretty fucking justified. And I say this with the perspective of someone who generally believes in open debate, hates cancel culture, and who was reading Yarvin as he was writing under the Moldbug nym and found much of his analysis compelling. But it always struck me that Yarvin came to the exact wrong conclusion wanting to run thermodynamics backwards. Even Urbit, I had thought there was something novel and universal there, until I realized it was actually just describing another Java 1.0 dressed up in fancy equations and four-letter words. Like sure, if you could travel back in time and make all computing equipment run Urbit, Java, or Rust that sure would make a lot of things easy. Except in the real world, other languages already exist and have anchoring utility that is likely to keep them existing.

I keep pondering a steelmanning of this idea of the Elite Jewish Conspiracy, pushing this radical acceptance of non-traditional lifestyles onto our society through various distributed leadership positions. I think that needed to get more mainstream treatment - stepping back and looking at it impartially, does this not seem an awful lot like what one would expect as counterbalance to the cultural memory of the Shoah? An attempt to prevent such an utter industrial-scale waste of human life and potential in the name of uniformity from ever happening again? And maybe the right answer is that we needed to get past its cloying overreactions, incorporate it into our baseline society, and move forward - instead of giving in to the simpleheaded authoritarian powermongers promising to simplify the world for us if only we hand them the power with a mandate to destroy.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#4

Post by dang »

mindslight wrote: post #3

So like, is knowing someone who knows someone in these chats the key to getting your family out of the concentration camp, just like knowing someone who knows someone who works at Google is the key to getting your account unlocked? Post facto, it seems given the monster that these people have actually unleashed and empowered, the preemptive negative reactions to what they had been saying in public were actually prett…

Edit: I think I misread the comment somewhat—sorry. I've restored it, and will autocollapse this moderation bit.

---

> getting your family out of the concentration camp

Could you please not take HN threads straight into flamewar hell like this? We're trying for something quite different here, and it's way too aggressive to kick off a thread with rhetoric like that.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#6

Post by mindslight »

dang wrote: post #4
mindslight wrote: post #3

So like, is knowing someone who knows someone in these chats the key to getting your family out of the concentration camp, just like knowing someone who knows someone who works at Google is the key to getting your account unlocked? Post facto, it seems given the monster that these people have actually unleashed and empowered, the preemptive negative reactions to what they had been saying in public were actually prett…

Edit: I think I misread the comment somewhat—sorry. I've restored it, and will autocollapse this moderation bit. --- > getting your family out of the concentration camp Could you please not take HN threads straight into flamewar hell like this? We're trying for something quite different here, and it's way too aggressive to kick off a thread with rhetoric like that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombina…

It's a straightforward reference that shouldn't be controversial to anyone looking to substantively discuss what is happening to our society. I know there are a lot of true believers and bots that want to shout down uncomfortable truths which makes for flamewar, but if we let that prevent good faith discussion then we might as well throw in the towel because that reality distortion field isn't going away.

I thought the rest of my comment was insightful as well, despite having to trade in some inflammatory terms. We're apparently at a time of pulling on these threads that had remained unpulled. The only way forward is to hash these uncomfortable ideas out in the open. Because as the article describes, they're certainly getting pulled on in less public forums where other uncomfortable truths have an easier time remaining unvisited.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#10

Post by e40 »

dang wrote: post #4
mindslight wrote: post #3

So like, is knowing someone who knows someone in these chats the key to getting your family out of the concentration camp, just like knowing someone who knows someone who works at Google is the key to getting your account unlocked? Post facto, it seems given the monster that these people have actually unleashed and empowered, the preemptive negative reactions to what they had been saying in public were actually prett…

Edit: I think I misread the comment somewhat—sorry. I've restored it, and will autocollapse this moderation bit. --- > getting your family out of the concentration camp Could you please not take HN threads straight into flamewar hell like this? We're trying for something quite different here, and it's way too aggressive to kick off a thread with rhetoric like that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombina…

I don’t think I have ever disagreed with you dang, except in this case. The comment seemed thoughtful to me.
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