They are digital opium. And then you look up from your game console several years later and you realize that you threw a big chunk of your life away. You could have been working on your real life. I know of several relationships that were distressed or destroyed because the guy couldn't or wouldn't walk away from video games.
It is critically important for you to watch this one-hour video, "The Verdict," Hosted by Senator Ted Cruz. If you are thinking "Why the fuck would I want to see any show hosted by Ted Cruz, you are a big part of the problem, because on this show (released July 23) Cruz has reached far from his comfort zone, inviting Eric Weinstein as a guest. If you are worried about the future of the United States, I guarantee that you have an hour for this.
I follow Eric Weinstein on Twitter and on the "Dark Web" because he is consistently brilliant. I found this video on Weinstein's Twitter feed. I didn't quite know what to expect if you put Eric in the same room as Ted Cruz, but it was riveting, and I respect Cruz for giving Weinstein lots of space to present ideas that are highly critical of both the left and the right. The resulting conversation was not out of any typical political playbook and it offers promising new ways to conceptualize intransigent national conundrums.
Topics included the abject failure of both political parties. The rise of the Maoists on the Left. The fact that the moderates of the two dominant parties need to jettison their extremes and come together. "WTF happened in 1971?" The fact that "rent-seeking" (the practice by which the source of one's wealth is non-productive) has destroyed national growth; the resulting economic stress is exposing social pathogens that have always been around, but they are now more visible. The modern media as Shakespeare's character of Iago, poisoning our national dialogue at every turn. "Russell Conjugations" (referencing Bertrand Russell). Our failure to practice "Critical Feelings" (as opposed to critical thinking) ("Most of our feelings are not OUR feelings, but feelings that we inherit through daily programming, convincing us that those people that think differently than us are evil." The failures of universities. The lies about immigration that are a cover-up to a scheme to exchange citizenship for free university labor. That a successful national response to COVID-19 should have been a "layup," and what this failure says about us (our entire leadership class of both parties is "unworkable").
[Ted Cruz]: How do we get from Othello to midsummer night's dream?
[Eric Weinstein]:
The key issue is that we have to start talking about our own failures. What I hope you've heard is that I'm willing to call out the Left, the right, and the libertarian. The libertarian problem is that it doesn't work to pretend that we're all atomistic. We see that with respect to contagion and masks and the like. Arnold Kling has this beautiful description. He says that you have three Groups: progressives conservatives and Libertarians. Libertarians are animated principally by hating coercion, progressives are animated principally by hating oppression, and conservatives are principally animated by needless loss of hard-won traditions and gains over past generations. The answer is that any sensible person should want to make sure that they're optimizing among the three, and not to become part of a simplistic situation whereby they so hate coercion or so hate oppression that they lose sight of the entire picture and therefore lose the plot of the American Project.
How to become an award-winning Woke all-star author instantly, and why the success of this pranking-seeming project is a terrible thing for civil rights in America. Special Honor to physicist Alan Sokal for pioneering this approach to pouring sunshine on nonsense. James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose did the hard work to make this happen.
Based on the protests raging on the streets, one might mistakenly think that there is only Black viewpoint and that it is represented by the purported political aims of Black Lives Matter.
Brett Weinstein is an evolutionary biologist who, on his DarkHorse Podcast, has made a habit of doing deep dives into thorny topics. On this episode, Weinstein hosts a roundtable with seven highly accomplished Black writers and intellectuals. If you like good-natured self-critical discussions where the facts matter and where the participants actively seek to learn from each other, you are going to find this two-hour discussion fascinating. I found myself taking notes throughout and having my faith in humanity restored as this lively discussion unfolded.
I love these images. The father of a girl who donated her heart is offered the chance to hear his daughter's heart again. Try to imagine someone seeing this video 100 years ago, wondering how the this story could be possibly be true. When I saw the stethoscope come out, that when I started feeling emotionally flooded by this video.
Bill Conner of Wisconsin rode his bicycle 2600 miles across the country to honor his daughter and raise awareness about the importance of organ, eye and tissue donation. Bill’s daughter, Abbey, died in January of 2017. She was an organ donor. On Father’s Day 2017, Bill heard his daughter’s heart beat again. After biking 1400 miles through several states, Conner stopped in Ventress, Louisiana to meet his daughter’s heart recipient, Loumonth Jack, Jr
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