Has anyone checked for kernels of corn growing behind their ears?

• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn

Bit of philosophy of science is a useful bit of immunization against Rationalist bullshit. Maybe not on its own, but it helps.

As someone who made decent money off that site back in the day, fuck Steemit. Realizing that my earnings came from Korean folks losing their life savings turned me against crypto for life.

I absolutely get the "I'd be a good billionaire" fantasy, it's something I've indulged in every now and then- but for me, it's really more a personal agency fantasy, just one of many ways I like to imagine having the power to single-handedly make the world better. But... in the end, they ARE fantasies, are just cathartic games for me to play when I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed by the world's bullshit. (And they usually involve giving the money away, hah.) No one should actually have that much individual power. Definitely not me, lol.

It's the people who defend the exploitative systems that make billionaires possible, for the sake of that fantasy, who really irk me. They've genuinely convinced themselves, on some level, that it's possible to, as you said, keep the billions without being a leech on society. That there's somehow a chance they could really be that billionaire personally, or even that they're actually temporarily embarrassed billionaires.

I've spent way too many pages of my books making fun of utilitarians to stop now lol.

Even Peven Stinker, friend and defender of Jeffrey Epstein, is coming out against EA? Wow.

Goddamnit I wish I'd intended that pun

Yeah, there's absolutely a place for arguments that aren't full-bore "capitalism is evil, forward the revolution!" Some people need to be eased into that space, and articles like this, that show how fundamentally stupid and terrible Musk and company are, are a great way to get people to start asking HOW dingbats like that got power. And it's not the longest journey from there to questioning whether something is wrong with the system itself.

(There are failure states, of course- namely, reinforcing the neoliberal idea that if you just put better people in charge of a system, it will work better. But that's a question of execution, not of tactical validity.)

Somehow, I doubt there's many other sneerers in Hanoi, but you never know...

Oh heck yeah new Dan Olson

The full book is well worth the read, imho.

Solid post, already shared this a few times.