Illustration: Holding Opposing Ideas in One’s Mind Simultaneously

Entertaining conversation illustrating this quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “[T]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." As Bill Maher argues, McDonalds tastes good even though it it not healthy food. BOTH of these things are true. Same thing for ice cream and many other foods. Most important these days, we can love other people even though we disagree strongly with some of their beliefs and opinions. Really.

But in modern times, many people are not admitting to things they know to be true because it is not approved by their respective tribes. We need to stop allowing emotions and social pressure to prevent us from saying things we know to be true. Only then will we be able to have meaningful conversations with each other.

As I've written repeatedly, embracing membership in a tribe reduces one's IQ by 50 points.

Additional note: I think Casey Means is courageous and brilliant. I highly recommend her new book, Good Energy.

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What it is Like to Start Seeing the Progressive Left for What it is.

Fascinating video. This woman recently started seeing the DNC and progressive left for what they are. She describes the experience of scales falling from her eyes.

I created a transcript of her 3-minute video:

I feel like I have a unique perspective with this whole election thing. Because I used to be very, very far left, like I was one of the people having a fucking mental breakdown in 2016 when he won, right? And I didn't even like him up until six months ago, when it became very obvious that they were staging a coup and tried to assassinate him. And then some shit started clicking. So I'm still very new to this whole side of things. But the thing is, when I was very far left, like, radically far left, I thought I knew what was going on. I genuinely believed I was informed. I thought I knew better than everybody else, and that's what these people think, too. And the thing is I would get so triggered and so angry when people would question me because I didn't actually know what the hell I was talking about. I thought I did, but really I didn't actually know any policies. I didn't actually know any politics. All I actually knew was what I had seen online, in mainstream media, and because everybody was saying, I just assumed it had to be right, right. And I think where a lot of this comes from is like, people just don't want to be wrong. Like, it's humbling and it's embarrassing to acknowledge that you were wrong or that you didn't know as much as you thought you did, but I would get so defensive and fly off the handle when and whenever somebody would question me, because I didn't actually have any talking points, and the talking points I did have were inaccurate.

But I didn't want to be wrong so I just kept fucking regurgitating. I just kept echoing the same shit that I was hearing over and over again, and that's what people are still doing. And I I don't blame them. I'm not mad at them, because really, I mean, if you're only exposed to that, then that's what you're gonna believe.

But it's crazy to be on the other side of it for this election and see just how misinformed people are, and they will argue with you, and I won't have a card, because they will argue with you till they're blue in the face because they are just so convinced that they're right, and I was one of those people, and the fear they're feeling is very real. I'm not invalidating the fear. I'm just it's just that the fear is not founded in anything factualbecause it's not the things that they're scared about. It's not going to happen. It didn't happen last time, it's not going to happen this time.

And it's just it's so crazy. It's like being the sober person at a party full of drunk people.

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About Love Blindness

Biologist Steve Stewart-Williams:

When male fruit flies are courting females and close to mating, they become so fixated on the task at hand that they often fail to spot approaching predators. The phenomenon is known as love blindness.

I can think of some intriguing hypotheticals!

I subscribe to Stewart-Williams and highly recommend it. It is titled the Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter.

Here are two more of the tidbits he offers this week:

A large, longitudinal study found no evidence that violent videogames make people more aggressive or less empathetic. Playing violent videogames is correlated with aggression. However, rather than violent videogames making people aggressive, people who are already aggressive gravitate to violent videogames. [Link.]

According to a fascinating new paper, people tend to assume they have all the information they need to reach a conclusion or make a decision. In a preregistered experiment, participants who were given only half the available information were just as confident in their decisions as those who were given all of it. The authors dubbed this the illusion of information adequacy.

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About Our Societal Death Spiral . . .

Gad Saad writes:

A fundamental question that I ask people when I'm gauging their intellectual honesty is to describe for me what the evidence would need to look like in order for them to alter a given position that they hold. With that in mind, is there any reality that would cause the West to snap out of its parasitic ideological rapture and implement the necessary cataclysmic auto-corrective measures? If yes, we must still have some hope to hold on to. If not, it is going to be a painful death spiral.

Let's start by trying to convince people to use basic induction to convince them that A = A. That would be a good start. It's the basis for the Rule of Law.

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George Carlin’s Position on People and Groups

The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don’t belong; it doesn’t include me, and it never has. No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.

George Carlin, Preface to "3 x Carlin" (2008)

Continue ReadingGeorge Carlin’s Position on People and Groups