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I dunno if he’s far-right MAGA but these red flags are all far right talking points. No one who understands modern economics wants to bring back the gold stand

I dunno if he’s far-right MAGA but these red flags are all far right talking points. No one who understands modern economics wants to bring back the gold standard. Seems like geohot should stick to jail breaking iPhones and mocking programmers and CTF challenges… and maybe read a few more books and attend some lectures if he wants to continue deepening his understanding of economics and political science.

dijit 2y ago
I really hate this idea of "far-right talking points" and "far-left talking points". It immediately frames questions as "us vs them", if there's a talking point you hear come up frequently and it's easily dissolved: learn how to dissolve it. The fewer people walking around with incorrect ideas about things the better we all are. If people rebuff you, maybe they had a point the whole time? If they change the subject or resort to ad hominems, then it's clear to everyone listening that the talking point was bogus. You might not change the persons mind, but it can help others.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  No, it's a useful framing. I might have time for reading an interesting take on economics. I can learn from that, even if I don't agree with the overall position. (That was one of the beauties of HN 10 years ago - you learned from people you disagreed with. You could even wind up upvoting posts you disagreed with, because they had an interesting point that made you think.) If something is a collection of far-right or far-left talking points, I don't have time for it. Either way, it's too little reality and too much zealotry, propaganda, and shilling. I don't have time or patience to wade through it and dissect all the problems and issues and just general falseness of it all. Now, that framing can be used as a general pejorative ("I don't like that"), or even as an attack from the other side (far-left labels normalcy as far-right, far right definitely labels normalcy as far-left). But, honestly given, it's useful to know something is far-right or far-left, just to avoid wasting my time and sanity.
- zero_shift 2y ago
  We have a limited amount of attention to give and trust to offer, so we filter ideas with heuristics. One of the heuristics is that if someone says something very left-field, does not qualify why it falls out of consensus, and it appears the same as arguments made by politically motivated actors, we trust it a lot less. Especially when that person has no expertise in the area and is mostly famous for a completely different thing.
  - dijit 2y ago
    Ignorance is never the right call. Ignorance just leads to further polarisation, and honestly, we've got to be close to a breaking point soon.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
  > I really hate this idea of "far-right talking points" and "far-left talking points". You might hate the idea, but it's actually an excellent characterisation of how ideas spread in a polarised environment. If you ever try engaging with both extremes over a long period of time eventually you'll notice that both of them repeat the same narrow set of ideas and sound bites over and over again. It's like these people train themselves in having arguments by repeating the arguments they read about. If you spend enough time with these people you can play a game with yourself, which is to try and map out the set of existing arguments and try and predict if you say X what will the person respond.
desumeku 2y ago
> No one who understands modern economics wants to bring back the gold standard Except, of course, Miseans.
- agentultra 2y ago
  The Ludwig von Mises & Rockwell Miseans? They want to bring back a whole lot of other bad ideas too [0]. Hence the red flag. [0] https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/neo-confederates/ https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/neo-confederates...
  - desumeku 2y ago
    Did you seriously just try and conflate austrian economics with racism?
    - agentultra 2y ago
      Me, personally? No. I didn't have to do anything. Mises did it himself. Rockwell, Koch, Blumbert, Ron Paul, etc co-opted it and amplified it. Mises did it to his own ideology. He was often employed by the Hapsburgs. Otto von Hapsburg was a sponsor of the Mises institute. His writings and ideas remain fringe because it comes with the baggage of racial politics and the monarchy stuff. Modern libertarian anarchists that still follow the Austrian school may reject some of those parts but the radical organizations that have co-opted it certainly haven't... and guess who's in power right now in the US? Besides, the Praxeological arguments and system haven't held up. The field moved on to empiricism. Mises isn't often remembered for those arguments. It's generally the other stuff people seem to dig up. It's still a fringe theory and will probably remain that way. Update: gold standard/gold-hoarding is strongly associated with radical right-wing extremists, hence red-flag. OP says, "diversity is our strength," which is encouraging... but gold standard stuff, even if simplistic ("gold real, debt imaginary"), is still a red-flag.
      - desumeku 2y ago
        It's all a fringe theory, until it isn't.

dijit 2y ago

I really hate this idea of "far-right talking points" and "far-left talking points". It immediately frames questions as "us vs them", if there's a talking point you hear come up frequently and it's easily dissolved: learn how to dissolve it. The fewer people walking around with incorrect ideas about things the better we all are. If people rebuff you, maybe they had a point the whole time? If they change the subject or resort to ad hominems, then it's clear to everyone listening that the talking point was bogus. You might not change the persons mind, but it can help others.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
No, it's a useful framing. I might have time for reading an interesting take on economics. I can learn from that, even if I don't agree with the overall position. (That was one of the beauties of HN 10 years ago - you learned from people you disagreed with. You could even wind up upvoting posts you disagreed with, because they had an interesting point that made you think.) If something is a collection of far-right or far-left talking points, I don't have time for it. Either way, it's too little reality and too much zealotry, propaganda, and shilling. I don't have time or patience to wade through it and dissect all the problems and issues and just general falseness of it all. Now, that framing can be used as a general pejorative ("I don't like that"), or even as an attack from the other side (far-left labels normalcy as far-right, far right definitely labels normalcy as far-left). But, honestly given, it's useful to know something is far-right or far-left, just to avoid wasting my time and sanity.
zero_shift 2y ago
We have a limited amount of attention to give and trust to offer, so we filter ideas with heuristics. One of the heuristics is that if someone says something very left-field, does not qualify why it falls out of consensus, and it appears the same as arguments made by politically motivated actors, we trust it a lot less. Especially when that person has no expertise in the area and is mostly famous for a completely different thing.
- dijit 2y ago
  Ignorance is never the right call. Ignorance just leads to further polarisation, and honestly, we've got to be close to a breaking point soon.
jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
> I really hate this idea of "far-right talking points" and "far-left talking points". You might hate the idea, but it's actually an excellent characterisation of how ideas spread in a polarised environment. If you ever try engaging with both extremes over a long period of time eventually you'll notice that both of them repeat the same narrow set of ideas and sound bites over and over again. It's like these people train themselves in having arguments by repeating the arguments they read about. If you spend enough time with these people you can play a game with yourself, which is to try and map out the set of existing arguments and try and predict if you say X what will the person respond.

desumeku 2y ago

> No one who understands modern economics wants to bring back the gold standard Except, of course, Miseans.

agentultra 2y ago
The Ludwig von Mises & Rockwell Miseans? They want to bring back a whole lot of other bad ideas too [0]. Hence the red flag. [0] https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/neo-confederates/ https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/neo-confederates...
- desumeku 2y ago
  Did you seriously just try and conflate austrian economics with racism?
  - agentultra 2y ago
    Me, personally? No. I didn't have to do anything. Mises did it himself. Rockwell, Koch, Blumbert, Ron Paul, etc co-opted it and amplified it. Mises did it to his own ideology. He was often employed by the Hapsburgs. Otto von Hapsburg was a sponsor of the Mises institute. His writings and ideas remain fringe because it comes with the baggage of racial politics and the monarchy stuff. Modern libertarian anarchists that still follow the Austrian school may reject some of those parts but the radical organizations that have co-opted it certainly haven't... and guess who's in power right now in the US? Besides, the Praxeological arguments and system haven't held up. The field moved on to empiricism. Mises isn't often remembered for those arguments. It's generally the other stuff people seem to dig up. It's still a fringe theory and will probably remain that way. Update: gold standard/gold-hoarding is strongly associated with radical right-wing extremists, hence red-flag. OP says, "diversity is our strength," which is encouraging... but gold standard stuff, even if simplistic ("gold real, debt imaginary"), is still a red-flag.
    - desumeku 2y ago
      It's all a fringe theory, until it isn't.