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How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity

• HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
  The author writes, “You end up in a world where changing your mind becomes impossible because you've built your entire identity around being right”. Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue (e.g. pro-Ukraine to anti-Ukraine or vice versa) and still keep their following and ability to monetize it. Social media is full of parasocial relationships; followers are in love with an influencer’s personality, not their views or factual content. So, the influencer can completely change his mind about stuff, as long as he still has the engaging presentation that people have come to like. Followers are also often in love with the brand relationships that the influencers flog, because people love being told what stuff they should buy.
  • draw_down 11mo ago
    [dead]
  • volkk 11mo ago
    the words we use matter a lot. the "pro" and "anti" anything is a pretty large reason why all discourse has become so stupid sounding and talking with people about any issue is enraging. nuance is dead. the cultural zeitgeist is being controlled by algorithmic feeds that create neuroticism (i am definitely affected), general anxiety, and anger.
    • robot-wrangler 11mo ago
      My take on this is that persons are great, everyone should know a few. Groups of people on the other hand are, and always have been, genuinely pretty awful in almost every way. IMHO this is down to some really basic primate stuff that's just inevitable. Social media is a big problem because it makes it easier to create groups, and algorithms are a big problem because they essentially take all of the dynamics that would inevitably lead to conflict anyway, and accelerate them. Groups, algorithms, and conflict itself are all things that lead to wicked problems. Each one tends to spiral, where the only solution is more of the same, and if you escape one funnel then you fall into an adjacent one. Problem: Some group is against me. Solution: Create a group to bolster my strength. Problem: People are fighting. Solution: Join the fight so the fight will stop sooner. Problem: My code is too complicated to understand. Solution: More code to add logging and telemetry. Problem: Attempting to add telemetry has broken the code. Solution: Time to start a fight
      • hamasho 11mo ago
        "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it" Quote from Men in Black
    • EB-Barrington 11mo ago
      [dead]
  • pengaru 11mo ago
    People are also more isolated than ever, positioning them poorly for having robust real relationships. This makes them vulnerable to mistaking "influencers" as their friends.
    • sandinmyjoints 11mo ago
      Yeah, "You cannot be reasonable in isolation" from the article really struck me.
  • astroflection 11mo ago
    > Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue ... and still keep their following and ability to monetize it. And they asserted that they were totally right the entire time. That's how. And the sheep kept on following them.
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    • BLKNSLVR 11mo ago
      There are / were a couple of right-wing shillers that were literally paid to promote Russian talking points and they just fit it right into their schtick without blinking. Nothing on the internet is real. If it wants money or opinion or attention, consider it hostile and try to find the strings (although it's generally not worth the time to try and find the strings, just move on and do something productive instead). https://www.npr.org/2024/09/05/nx-s1-5100829/russia-election-influencers-youtube https://www.npr.org/2024/09/05/nx-s1-5100829/russia-election...
  • JohnMakin 11mo ago
    I have been a small content creator for 10 years now. I've been hampered a lot by actively discouraging these types of parasocial relationships - every now and then I'll get a gaggle of followers that spend entirely too much time on my crappy content or my personality/posts and I get extremely weirded out to the point I want to stop doing it entirely. Everyone tells me I'm doing it wrong, but I swear, 10 years ago it wasn't as much of a thing to create a cult around yourself on social media or streaming platforms. Now it's the primary monetization path. I've even gone so far to say to more than one person, "look, I like and appreciate you really like my content or my personality, but, you don't know me at all, I don't know you, and honestly, we're not friends, no matter how much you want that to be the case. That isn't to say I dislike you, but you need to be more realistic about the content you consume, and if this hurts your feelings a lot, I'm sorry, but this content probably isn't for you." Then there's the type of content creator that gets a following by being a huge jerk to their fans - I don't like that either. I just tell them to treat it like a TV show. It's not real, the character in the show doesn't know you or like you. Unfortunately for today's youth and media landscape this is an utterly foreign concept.
    • sizzle 11mo ago
      Can we like and subscribe to you? Post the link
  • alexachilles90 11mo ago
    It's more about being confident and extreme on their stance no matter what it is at that particular moment. People are attracted to personalities that are confident and says they are right all the time. Heck, personalities like that gets all the influence in the workplace too. Imagine John Doe in your office who has a solution for every problem and knows the code base like the back of their hand. You might find that they are not so right all the time (maybe 2 out of 3 times it's pure conjecture) but gosh you will go back to him for solutions the next time you run into a problem. What I am saying is that we are attracted to the extreme, the flamboyant, the controversial. Maybe it's time we prioritize critical thinking for the future generation no?
    • cal_dent 11mo ago
      I see it as the continued corporatisation of everything. I suspect that you'd be hard press to find anyone who has ever been anywhere above middle-management in a corporate organisation who doesnt see, and chuckles at, the similarities in the worst places they've worked and this: "Where admitting uncertainty is social suicide. Where every conversation is a performance for your tribe rather than an actual exchange of ideas. You lose the ability to solve problems that don't fit neatly into your ideological framework, which turns out to be most important problems" Politics is the obvious one to see this effect in action but it's bled into so many facet of society now because society is one giant grey areas but our mediums don't like greys. The medium continues to be the message.
      • lmm 11mo ago
        That's not corporatisation, it's basic human tribalism. If anything one of the the best things about corporations is that they can sometimes escape that kind of culture.
        • cal_dent 11mo ago
          Sure but fwiw in 30 odd years in large corps, I’ve never come across any corp that doesn’t succumb to a sanitised form of basic tribalism
• rsynnott 11mo ago
  > But exposing yourself to articulate versions of positions you oppose does something valuable: it makes you realize that intelligent people can disagree with you without being monsters or morons. The idea that being articulate implies intelligence and/or sanity is very common, but really a bit weird. You can find plenty of articulate defences of, say, flat earth theory.
  • lazide 11mo ago
    However, there are fewer articulate (and internally consistent) defenses of flat earth theory, than say… particle physics. In my experience. Plenty of timecube style ones, however.
    • rsynnott 11mo ago
      That's true, but if you want one, you can find one. If you've conditioned yourself to think that articulate==credible, then sometimes it only takes one.
    • whatshisface 11mo ago
      Yes, and this is not just due to the intelligence of the "believers" but due to the fact that describing 2=2=2 in a self-consistent way only takes understanding it while describing 2=2=3 in a way that appears self-consistent requires a true rhetorical genius.
  • corpMaverick 11mo ago
    Not all the flat earthers are true believers. Some are there just for the attention or other motives.
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
  • dylan604 11mo ago
    Even with the number of articulate examples like this are far out numbered by the number of inarticulate arguments that the rule still has merit. Exceptions do not make the rule bad.
• lazide 11mo ago
  The challenge is that short-term incentives can easily lead to long-term problems, as the short-term min/maxing can leave you stuck in a particular global minimum, with no clear way out.
  • Arainach 11mo ago
    >the short-term min/maxing can leave you stuck in a particular global minimum, with no clear way out. Short term min/maxing leaves you in a local maximum (the opposite of what you said)
    • lazide 11mo ago
      Local maximum != global maximum (usually). I said global minimum, which can easily happen if you end up at local maximum, but you’ll never know unless you randomly search elsewhere (and potentially end up even lower).
      • Arainach 11mo ago
        A local maximum by definition cannot be a global minimum. A local maximum has to be higher than things around it, which are part of the global space.
        • lazide 11mo ago
          Fair point. However, the local maximum doesn’t have to be far from the global minimum. If the global maximum is 10, minimum is 1, you could easily end up in a region with local maximum 2, minimum 1.
• lkey 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  • ajkjk 11mo ago
    Really nothing in the article implied that whatsoever? It's not even about that if you actively try to read between the lines. Like--"liberal as a slur" is just a daily experience of american life these days, irrespective of the details of any of your personal relationships.
    • lkey 11mo ago
      > a daily experience of american life You people call you 'liberal as a slur' in real life out in the world? Regardless, projecting your narrow experiences onto 'american life' writ large is not a sound starting point for any conversation. It is the pairing of the term 'manufacturing consent' with "'liberal' as a slur" (from the left, not right) that evokes the genocide. One of the primary consents manufactured in the Biden years was for exactly that. Likewise for calls to eternal slow-walked 'nuance', instead of straightforward calls for ending the gifting of weapons to the belligerent, as has been done in living memory. There's no 'conspiracy' (per the author) at all, Biden officials are already writing memoirs about it.
      • kentm 11mo ago
        Likely not to their face, but I’ve absolutely had tons of people use it when talking to me as a slur for other people. Because they assumed I was like minded. It’s absolutely used as a slur in conversation, yes. I mean you have the Republican President of the United States publicly calling Democrats evil. People like to pretend their party (Democrats and Republicans alike) generally adheres to decency and decorum even though they demonstrably do not, but it’s especially rich for Republicans to act like they’re the party of decency in politics when they’re falling in lockstep with Donald Trump
      • ajkjk 11mo ago
        > You people call you 'liberal as a slur' in real life out in the world? I see it online... everyday? Especially if I go back to the places I used to enjoy but have had to learn to avoid. And yes, anytime I interact with friends' parents, people in my hometown, etc, it's pretty ubiquitously used as a slur. Occasionally ironically since we're a few years past peak mind-virus (I'd like to think), but, yes, all the time. I think they were listing two unassociated examples of the "people getting radical and weird" phenomenon in that list, not pairing them. I took "manufactured consent" as referring to the Trumpish "mainstream media is all lies" stance. Seems like you invented the israel connection out of thin air. Maybe you know something about the author, but, it wasn't in the article.
• micromacrofoot 11mo ago
  A lot of this goes away when you stop spending so much time on social media, which is a very poor reflection of "reality." Part of the problem is that there are a number of people who can't really look away, because they've built their livelihoods on it. Traditional media in many ways has come to rely on it too. Unfortunate mistake. Prominent figures on social media change their minds all the time, but they'll re-sculpt their reality around the basis that they were always right anyway. Just take a look at how the story around the Epstein files changes with the way the wind blows. It feels very familiar to the "Narcissist's Prayer."
  • bwfan123 11mo ago
    from the article. > The returns on reasonableness have almost entirely collapsed If you measure returns by others' approval, then you are doomed as the world is fickle. Unfortunately, as a writer or journalist you are forced to depend on approval of others. The alternative is to sculpt a framework or scorecard largely independent of what others think - but this is hard, as we are social creatures.
    • micromacrofoot 11mo ago
      > as a writer or journalist you are forced to depend on approval of others and sometimes the disapproval of others, as we've seen with the sort of rage-baiting headlines many blogs, social media accounts, and even traditional media outlets, are writing and the thing is... this approval/disapproval reaction isn't elicited to necessarily build coalitions, make friends, or change minds, it's often built to sell eyes-on-ads which is a completely perverse incentive that has eaten the mainstream internet
    • VintageRobot 11mo ago
      There is a large number of people that appreciate being told the truth. That model actually works better over the long term. Grifting (which is what is often seen on social media platforms by many of the personalities) can give you large rewards quickly however you are always at risk at being found out. Once they are exposed, it is often usually over for them.
  • 11mo ago
• charlesabarnes 11mo ago
  I think disengaging from social media is a big part of this. These advertiser and engagement fueled algorithms promote all of the insane takes as well. You find much more fulfillment engaging with people locally or people in your close circles.
  • AndrewKemendo 11mo ago
    I’m not on social media unless you consider HN social media (I don’t) and the world is still totally as insane as it was before the internet. For your average city person: The food you’re offered is sugar + preservatives, the water is either non-existent (Tehran) or poisoned with fracking gas (Flint), almost all local communities have collapsed into extreme versions of themselves, the rich and poor still don’t mingle, men fear women and women want nothing to do with men, there is no upside to having a family or children. I just spoke at a HBS event in DC last night about robotics and on one side of the room were people starting AI companion services and in the other side people were saying AI was causing the rise of Tradwives. It was like looking at 50 “deer in headlights” when explaining how thoroughly they have already integrated third party algorithmic logic into their decision processes - and are totally unaware of it. The real world is absurd and getting less coherent with more information available. Humans aren’t biologically equipped for the world we collectively built.
    • volkk 11mo ago
      > there is no upside to having a family or children what exactly does this even mean?
      • AndrewKemendo 11mo ago
        Search: Gen Z explains why they don’t want a family and kids All are rational arguments https://youtu.be/fHpgIvuETx0?si=zWIqJvQMeDcSD223 https://youtu.be/fHpgIvuETx0?si=zWIqJvQMeDcSD223
        • volkk 11mo ago
• heisgone 11mo ago
  >A third began using the word "liberal" as if it was a personality disorder rather than loose coalitions of sometimes contradictory beliefs. I'm a long time Jon Stewart fan and if I'm being honest, looked at the "other side" as if it was a bunch of retarded people isn't new and predate 2016. No doubt Trump and social media got conservative to embrace condescending and extreme rhetoric and pushed it to another level but let's not pretend they invented anything.
• hexator 11mo ago
  Not sure what the point of this is other than to complain about being out of touch with the world. Too many people think "diversifying your information" means subscribing to whatever drivel they find on substack instead of, you know, following a diverse set of _actual journalists_.
  • HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
    Over the last many years, newspapers have slashed actual journalists in a number of areas: investigative reporting, arts, local news. A lot of those actual journalists have moved to Substack in order to maintain some kind of career writing about the subject they love. For me, the tragedy of Substack isn’t that it consists of purely unserious people. It’s that fine journalists go there because, with the death of open-web blogging, there’s a feeling that there is no where else to go. And then, once there, they start to pick up all kinds of bad behaviors that both Substack the for-profit corporate owner and its culture of writers and commenters encourage.
    • hexator 11mo ago
      That's true, the point I was making was that it's about you decide to trust with sending you news not just the outlet. The problem is that many people who are rightfully distrustful of traditional media end up following cranks. And Substack seems to be the place where the cranks hang out.
• BugsJustFindMe 11mo ago
  I have a hard time taking this kind of enlightened-centrist both-sides gruel very seriously. Calling every strong position "extreme" is a classic sleight-of-hand maneuver by people who want to mask their own wrong-side-of-history beliefs that they know they should feel ashamed of expressing. Yes, yes, look for truth beyond labeled groups, but pretending that the "sides" are equal is some utterly moronic "Fair and Balanced" bullshit. > it makes you realize that intelligent people can disagree with you without being monsters or morons. Many issues really do have a bright dividing line. I mean, for fuck's sake, there are people who are currently fighting against releasing the Epstein files, documents that clearly incriminate pedophilic rape and sex trafficking. > One friend became “convinced” that every major news story was manufactured consent. I think the author here doesn't actually understand what manufactured consent is, because believing otherwise demonstrates media illiteracy. Talking about our extreme filter bubbles (community/information homogeneity) in one breath and then denying the pervasiveness of manufactured consent in the next is otherwise a perfect demonstration of Gell-Mann amnesia.
  • ToucanLoucan 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    • AlexandrB 11mo ago
      > Transpeople are the people they say they are. Let's just poke this one a little bit. Does this standard apply to all people or just trans people? Why or why not? Do you think this[1] individual is who they say they are? Why or why not? [1] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-extremist-trans-neo-nazi-gender-law-v2/a-73779265 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-extremist-trans-neo-nazi-gende...
      • ToucanLoucan 11mo ago
        > Does this standard apply to all people or just trans people? All. > Why or why not? Because the self as a concept only exists within the mind of the individual and it's sole source for determination is what that individual says. It's non-falsifiable so taking people at their word is simply the only option. > Do you think this[1] individual is who they say they are? Sure. There are shitty transpeople too. > Why or why not? See above. And if you're asking how you prevent that person from being a threat to other people in the prison, well, there's a lot to unpack there. For immediate solutions, solitary confinement. I don't like it as a policy but the neo-nazi movement is openly male-supremacist and this person, woman or not, is a threat to other women. If she wants to be sent to a women's prison it's the prison's duty to see that incarceration pass with as few incidents as possible, so the only logical path forward is isolation from other inmates. For broader solutions: the fact that we segregate prisons along sex lines is going to always be a problem for trans offenders, but I also understand why that segregation exists and it's obvious. If we assume those same risks are valid, then any transwoman in a woman's prison is a threat, and any transmasculine person in a men's prison is threatened, and nonbinary folk are going to be all kinds of lost in that system. So, logically, we should expand the range of available prison facilities to account for this. Transwomen would go to a transwoman's prison, which would be identical to a woman's prison, apart from not having ciswomen in it, and vice-versa. And I guess you'd also need enby-jails too. Though if you want my personal opinion, I think there's a much easier solution to this particular offender, and it's the same solution I'd prescribe for any Nazi, regardless of their gender identity.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• josefritzishere 11mo ago
  Being reasonable is basicaly the core requirement of civilization. If your culture is incapable of tolerance or variation it's also incapable of growth. It gets locked in a cyclical purity test and collapse.
• paganel 11mo ago
  > One friend became “convinced” that every major news story was manufactured consent Where's the lie in that? Hasn't this lady read her Gramsci? Seems like she didn't. > Tech writer (Wired, TIME, TNW), angel investor, CMO I see now, for sure she hasn't read her Gramsci.
  • hexator 11mo ago
    This person doesn't seem aware of their contradictions in both complaining about people not following diverse viewpoints and also downright dismissing any amount of self-reflection that might be coming from people to their left.
• mock-possum 11mo ago
  > The writer who says "this issue has nuance and I can see valid concerns on multiple sides" gets a pat on the head and zero retweets. Because I think at this point ‘both sides ism’ Is easily recognizable as a dead end rhetorical strategy. At best it’s an ignorant position, at worst it’s low effort engagement bait / concern trolling that actively sabotages progress.
  • MarkusQ 11mo ago
    The phrase/concept "both side ism" is a very clever bait and switch that, so far as I can tell, was designed to marginalize/discredit people who are trying to actually engage with the issues (instead of just toxically emoting), and it was avidly adopted and weaponized as such. By both sides.
    • array_key_first 11mo ago
      No, moderatism or centrism is legitimately a fallacy. The idea or intuition that, given two endpoints, the most correct position is one in the middle, is a fallacy. It depends entirely on the endpoints. For example: the three fifths compromise. Turns out, bad. The correct answer was emancipation all along, and the 'centrist' answer was just bad. Because, well, one of the endpoints was slavery. If you 'halfway' slavery, that's still bad. There's no merits or 'well what about's when it comes to slavery. That doesn't mean centrists or moderates are wrong - they're often right. But it DOES mean that just taking a middle of the road approach isn't reasonable. You need to actually understand why you're doing that, and why the middle makes the most sense. In some parts of the world, right now, as in right now right now, the 'both sides' argument is pro-genocide. In the past it's been pro-slavery, pro-colonialism, pro-holocaust, whatever. Plenty of really bad stuff. So, you can't hide behind 'both sides'. You need to justify WHY 'both sides' and why in the middle is best for this particular case.
      • MarkusQ 11mo ago
        So you just did a Mote and Bailey. The initial claim was that "anyone rejecting both extremes is automatically wrong"; I pointed out that this was a weaponized defense being used by both sides to hide their BS, and instead of responding to that, you refuted the similar sounding but unrelated claim (which hadn't been made) that "the truth is somewhere in the middle". Saying that both sides are peddling absolute bollocks is not, in any way, a claim that we'd be better off with some sort of average of the two. Both sides are mostly full of it, full stop.
• oytis 11mo ago
  I don't quite get the connection between the premise and the conclusion. Sure, influencers get rewarded by social media algorithms for polarising content, but most people are not influencers.
  • wnevets 11mo ago
    > but most people are not influencers. they either get elected or appointment to the government
  • korse 11mo ago
    >most people are not influencers. Perhaps, but many are. They just don't have much reach or don't use a digital platform.
  • JKCalhoun 11mo ago
    And the influenced are rewarded by the influencer that is validating their polarized views. You also might be putting too fine a point on "influencer". A relative of mine on Facebook might be a kind of "influencer"—at least with regard to his small cadre of family and friends that follow him.
    • oytis 11mo ago
      You can look at it it this way, but why your small circle of family and friends would reward polarizing opinions? If anything, I have seen people losing real life relationships by not knowing when to stop in online arguments
      • JKCalhoun 11mo ago
        That's for sure. Sure think a lot less of some members of my family and a coworker or two thanks to SM (can we just call it SM?).
  • parpfish 11mo ago
    i found it weird that this person has multiple friends that were able to "make bank" by having polarizing opinions. i know a ton of folks with polarizing opinions and none of them are monetizing it. what kind of world is this author living in where their social circle includes so many influencers that are cashing in on social media?
• biophysboy 11mo ago
  The main issue for me is the size of our platforms. If the owner of a platform tries to enforce a set of virtues, it will always be seen as censorship by a fraction of its users. That fraction will increase as the user base increases, as the alternatives diminish, and as the owners govern with more impunity. I personally think these loud users are immature, disrespectful, anonymous cowards, but my opinions are irrelevant — the important thing is that large platforms are politically unstable. The solution to this is to fragment the internet. Unfortunately, this is incompatible with the information economies of scale that underpin the US economy. In my opinion, our insanity is an externality of the information sector, much like obesity for staple goods or carbon dioxide for energy. I don’t agree with these individualized how-to guides. I can turn my phone off and go outside, but I still have to live in a world informed by social-media sentiment.
  • baxuz 11mo ago
    Nah, the solution is deanonymization. People with no shame, and with strong anti-social tendencies should not be given a safe space.
    • EdgeExplorer 11mo ago
      Facebook has a real name policy and is a prime example of internet-fueled insanity. Why does deanonymization not help Facebook be a more positive place?
      • piker 11mo ago
        Because Facebook monetizes the engagement of its formerly reasonable users by selling that engagement to spam bot farms?
      • biophysboy 11mo ago
        To tie it to my own view, I don’t think deanonymization has any effect if the name is meaningless to 99.9% of the community. For every person fired for posts, there are 10000 others who are not.
• jjk166 11mo ago
  The real grift has been in echo chambers changing peoples vocabulary such that we can use the same words but talk right past eachother, allowing extremely moderate positions to be reframed as extreme and making what ought to be minor disagreements unresolvable. People making an "I can see both sides" argument are completely missing the point - the issue is that most people can't see both sides, and even when they go out of their way to look at the other side's argument, they come away even more convinced that the other side's argument is dumb because it is dumb, if it is assumed everyone is speaking the same language. People haven't all suddenly become insane, or dumb, or unreasonable; we've just taken for granted that people geographically close to us using the same vocabulary would mean the same things, and thus we never developed the skills to translate between people who are in fact living in wildly different worlds possibly in the same household. And much of this is by design - pointing out how dumb someone else is, and complaining about the burden of dealing with these dumb people, takes so much less effort than actually doing the work to build consensus and make changes.
  • stronglikedan 11mo ago
    one of the first steps in any color revolution is changing the language to confuse everyone, so it's not surprising that it's so common
  • welcome_dragon 11mo ago
    Exactly correct on echo chambers. I say my opinion on something and I hear the exact same responses from pro people and the exact same responses from con people. Everyone hears it. Repeating the same words someone else does to make yourn point makes me think the other person isn't capable of considering they might be wrong. I disagree with saying "I can see both sides". That's another echo chamber. If I say I can reasonably see both sides of an issue, one side calls me an idiot and uneducated and suc h and the other goes straw man and how I'm a communist and/or Hitler. No. I can see why side A thinks the way they do and side B thinks the way they do. I'm not talking about hot topics either. I'm really starting to just want to get away from all society and/or just never have more than surface level conversations with people.
  • disambiguation 11mo ago
• pksebben 11mo ago
  If all your relationships fail in the same manner, it is likely that the problem is you. > One friend became “convinced” that every major news story was manufactured consent. Another started treating political disagreement as evidence of moral corruption. A third began using the word "liberal" as if it was a personality disorder rather than loose coalitions of sometimes contradictory beliefs. Manufactured consent is a real thing, with mounting evidence that it's becoming increasingly prevalent. The ownership structures around major news outlets are worrisome and what many considered 'reliable' for years are now showing seriously problematic habits (like genocide erasure - lookin' at you, NYT.) Liberalism has come under completely valid scrutiny as we've seen fiscal policies implemented by Clinton and Obama blow up in our faces. No, we don't think Reaganomics is anything but a grift, but many of us see the grift in NAFTA and the ACA and Gramm-Leach-Bliley and have begun to question the honesty of centrist liberal economic policies because we are seeing them fail catastrophically. > The incentive gradient was clear: sanity was expensive, and extremism paid dividends. Author is doing something subtle here - without making a defense or interrogation of the statement, they are saying "Not being liberal / centrist is extremism, and thus invalid". I call bullshit. I have not profited or benefited from my "extreme" leftist views. If anything, I take a risk every time I talk about them out in the open. My comment history is going to be visible to all future employers. Should the government continue it's rightward slide I'll have a target painted on my back that I put there. I don't believe the things I believe because it's convenient, I believe them because in my estimation, we are operating on a set of failed systems and it's important that we fix them because they present a real and present danger. We have Trump because Biden was utterly incapable of facing the actual problems people are having with the economic prosperity gap. If you don't address the actual hardship in people's lives, you leave the door open for a huckster to make those promises for you. Most will take the unreliable promise of a better tomorrow over being lied to about whether they even have a problem. You don't need a PhD in economics to know that whatever the GDP might be you're still broke and you can't afford to feed your kids.
  • spencerflem 11mo ago
    Totally agreed with all points. Thanks for writing it up so elegantly
  • 11mo ago
• maclombardi 11mo ago
  It's easier said than done. I simply observe everything and try not to react unless I absolutely need to. This summer I started to write my thoughts an observations. Maybe you will find it helpful. https://www.immaculateconstellation.info/the-middle-path-a-measured-approach-to-awakening/ https://www.immaculateconstellation.info/the-middle-path-a-m...
• photochemsyn 11mo ago
  The author might want to admit that 'moderate reasonable' positions are also branded and incentivized, and can lead to lucrative jobs in the corporate media and think tank worlds and even in the social media influencer space. What really smells bad here is the 'stupid and insane' theme - everyone who disagrees with my moderate position is living in stupid-world or lacks sanity is itself an extremist fundamentalist position held by many so-called centrists and institutional bureaucrats whose impartiality is questionable as they are economic beneficiaries of the status quo. Relatedly, extremist positions arise from extreme conditions - a well-paid experienced factory employee who loses their job due to the corporation outsourcing manufacturing to India will likely adopt an extreme position of opposition to shareholder or venture capital control of corporate decisions, and start advocating for worker control of corporations. Does that make them stupid and insane? Or is that just the spin the shareholders and venture capitalists are trying to put on their reasonable moderate position about sharing wealth and power in a more democratic fashion?
• cjfd 11mo ago
  Nobody can vouch for their own sanity. Attempting to do so only make you sound insane. Incentives to be insane? Sure, but.... it is timing the stock market of ideas. Some will get rich but most will not. And sanity either has to return or insanity will destroy many lives and the society in which it is allowed free reign. In any case if you promoted insanity when sanity returns and people regain their ability to have a memory you may reap what you seeded.
  • johnisgood 11mo ago
    > Nobody can vouch for their own sanity. Attempting to do so only make you sound insane. Exactly, and if people deem you to be insane, you cannot do anything about that. They will find reasons for why what you are saying is out of your insanity. There is a great movie about a woman being held against her own will at the locked up psychiatric ward and it explores this.
• Bukhmanizer 11mo ago
  As a long time proponent of reasonable-ism I disagree with a lot of this. The assumption that a lot of our problems stem from 2 sides just seeing an issue differently is just nonsense in this day and age. The big Problem, is that one side has slid heavily into authoritarianism, and the other side is completely ill-equipped to fight it. On any particular issue, the right will say whatever gets them more Power, and the left will bring out some sort of philosophy professor to try and pick apart the nuances of the conversation.
  • hughdangus 11mo ago
    [dead]
  • spencerflem 11mo ago
    For real. Honestly, the idea that all people are good and caring and just see things differently is the comforting lie. I really really want to believe it. You get to feel happy about humanity, smarter than all the hysterical people, etc, It took so so so much evil from the Republicans to convince me that they are Not a reasonable side, do Not warrant any consideration, and that people who follow them Are morally corrupt.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • scuff3d 11mo ago
    I was thinking about this while reading the article. 15 years ago I prided myself on actively searching out opposing views and engaging with them. I still do that in the small scale, talking with coworkers or friends who have opposing views, but where the fuck can you find any reasonable conservative commentators these days. What are the most prominent voices? People like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder? They don't have an intellectually honest bone in their body. How the hell can you even get a balanced view in terms of news/media you consume when one side is dominated by lunatics and bad actors.
    • disgruntledphd2 11mo ago
• resonanormal 11mo ago
  We are at this point where we need to “Turn on, tune in, drop out” again. This mass media circus of social media and influencers doesn’t help anyone except their own self centred interests. Fair to say this is easier in Europe where we don’t have the propaganda firehose but I think it’s time to switch off US friends
  • robot-wrangler 11mo ago
    There's some truth to this because "Culture is not your friend, man." Ironically though it really needs update, maybe more like turn off, tune out, rise up?
  • stronglikedan 11mo ago
    > this is easier in Europe where we don’t have the propaganda firehose quite ironic, given that we're talking about cognitive dissonance amongst other things
• alksdjf89243 11mo ago
  The article is an indictment on hackernews itself. I'm sure that won't be well received here, because of what the article says, specifically: "Start by diversifying your information diet in ways that feel actively uncomfortable." There is almost no diversity of thought here, simply due to the algorithm. The basis of acceptance is agreeing with the main ideology here. When the algorithm of the platform is to banish those who disagree, tribal unity is the outcome. The algorithm doesn't allow disagreement. The algorithm is wrong and part of the algorithm is to disallow commenting on the algorithm.
• jrochkind1 11mo ago
  This comments section is so full of examples illustrating what the OP is critiquing that it's depressing.
• cs702 11mo ago
  More succinctly: The Nash equilibrium of public discourse on social media is extremism and polarization ... ... because for each individual, the way to get more clicks and influence is by becoming more extreme and polarizing. Sigh.
  • spencerflem 11mo ago
    Idk, I’m a big critic of social media (don’t use any but hacker news). Really do think it has lots and lots of problems. But what’s polarized me isnt that. It’s just reading regular news and caring about the world.
  • robot-wrangler 11mo ago
    Exactly, so about that, there's good news and bad news. Epistemic and mean field game theory is eventually going to be well understood stuff and define better alternatives very, very specifically. After we understand our past completely AND can predict our future, we'll know exactly what to fix and how, but unfortunately nothing whatsoever will change anyway. Probably someone will weaponize it to actually make things worse! Cold comfort to be sure, but I personally will still sleep easier after I know exactly why we are doomed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U1-OmAICpU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U1-OmAICpU
• avhception 11mo ago
  Trying to talk reason to multiple sides makes you an outcast.
  • welcome_dragon 11mo ago
    Lol case in point: me trying to have a reasonable discussion about property taxes going up 66% in one year. I thought people might argue that this could put an unfair burden on poor families or fixed income families, or maybe some reason to justify or not. Nope. Lots of name calling, trying to dox me, ad hominem attacks on everyone from multiple sides. I'm convinced that anonymity (or, more correctly, perceived anonymity) makes some people act in ways they never would face to face. Eh this probably makes me a "Boomer" but I've seen it for years. Basically everyone's a troll now.
    • johnisgood 11mo ago
      I am 31 years old. Same experiences. You have to find the right audience. For me, it was particular IRC channels where they were still quite reasonable.
• VintageRobot 11mo ago
  > The friend who saw conspiracies everywhere built a following. Then an audience. Then a 7-figure income stream. That person is almost certainly a grifter. If I was dishonest enough to do it, I would to. It isn't that difficult if you are reasonably articulate, look reasonably tidy and can upload a 20 minute video once day to get an audience. A lot of these people are simply choosing a "side" and then repeating the talking points. There are people that make 10-20k a month just reading the news and many of them aren't even good at doing that.
• ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
  > One friend became “convinced” that every major news story was manufactured consent. Another started treating political disagreement as evidence of moral corruption. A third began using the word "liberal" as if it was a personality disorder rather than loose coalitions of sometimes contradictory beliefs. Uh.... The vast majority of new stories from major outlets ARE manufactured consent.
  • uniq7 11mo ago
    What does "manufactured consent" mean? I thought consent is a synonym of agreement or willingness. If so, what do they mean with "manufactured agreement" exactly? I don't live in USA and English is not my mother language, so maybe I'm missing some alternative urban definition for this expression?
    • ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
      I understand what you're saying. But people who use the expression "manufactured consent" know that it comes from Chomsky and use it in the same sense as Chomsky did. It refers to the idea that the only debate that the media allows is that which doesn't challenge any actual power. Furthermore that expression also refers to the fact that this is achieved without anyone having to explicitly coerse the media. The individuals in it self-select to support with the agenda. You're allowed to be a revolutionary, but no one in the media will give you a job because they're all benefiting from the status quo and don't want to rock and boat. For example, the left media hypes the democrats and the right media hypes the republicans. You're encouraged to debate which is better, because it doesn't actually change anything. But if there's a candidate that says "corporations have too much power and are using to exploit labour", both sides of the media will attack them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
      • uniq7 11mo ago
        Thanks! I didn't know that expression came from Chomsky, now it makes total sense.
• zombiwoof 11mo ago
  [dead]
• giva 11mo ago
  > You get certainty in an uncertain world. You get a community that will defend you. You get a simple heuristic for navigating complex issues. This is what faith used to provide. I say this as a not religious person: Maybe societies really need something like religion to channel irrationality?
  • danielbln 11mo ago
    We've been trying religion for as long there have been humans. Tends to suffer from the same shortcomings: very easy to subvert and abuse by adversial agents (grifters, sociopaths, etc) and increases in-group/out-group thinking. We need something new.
    • giva 11mo ago
      But the point is, that's the same happening right now without religion. At least, with organized religion, you have someone accountable. Again, this come from someone without a religious affiliation.
• eboynyc32 11mo ago
  Who is the arbitrator of what’s right?
• BrenBarn 11mo ago
  This article is advice for individuals on how to resist the societal incentives to embrace insanity. But what I'm really interested in is advice for how to fix our society so it doesn't incentivize insanity.
  • conqrr 11mo ago
    Reminds me of seatbelts on airplane, put them first before trying to help others.
    • johnisgood 11mo ago
      How do you help others if you physically restrain yourself from doing so though? I can imagine some help but it severely limits the help you can provide and needed, depending on the situation.
  • throwawayqqq11 11mo ago
    Scepticism taught in schools. Demonstrate manipulation on kids and conclude that even educated, intelligent minds can get entangled when they let their guard down. > We talk a lot about polarization as if it were a disease that infected society, but we’re missing a key data point: polarization is a growth hack, and it works. Unfortunately the article does not explain how it works and without a problem definition, you cant reach a solution. IMO it certainly behaves like a disease. I consider identity politics as one vector how a mind virus can take over the hosts higher order reasoning. There are certainly other vectors (cognitive biases) but IP is definetly the biggest driving factor behind todays polarization. Calling others "liberals" is primarily a signal to label an outgroup. On what political side do you see more symbols like flags, stickers, memes, etc? Entire news cycle narratives can get deprived of meaning and act as the most recent symbol, individuals can use to signal their group membership. Any counter argument against such a holy cow gets viciously attacked or ignored because to some degree, this counter argument is an actual attack on yourself, your identitiy. Admitting errors is no big deal when nothing is at stake. The opposite example would be a very religious person loosing faith with an adrenaline rush (sweat, shiver, high heart rate, flat respiration), when the body prepares a fight or flight response because a strong, non-ignorable and contradicting thought crossed its mind. And on what political side do you see more intelligence and broader empathy? More cognitive flexibility? Around 2000, the internet was considered a new "printing press 2.0" for making information widely accessible. This analogy fits very well, because the first ever western book to be printed was the f'ing bible.
• grodes 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  • appguy 11mo ago
    There’s plenty of wisdom in the Bible. The book of Proverbs resonates with me the most.
  • o11c 11mo ago
    Note that "feeds" is a confusing word choice; I immediately thought of something RSS-like which often links to long-form content. For news, my rule is to check major headlines at most once a day (often less in practice), so I am at least vaguely aware what people are talking about. Doing it this way makes it clear how ... banal? ... most clickbait is. Something local might be useful; if they mention something national it's probably actually semi-important. Though, if you can't change anything about it, is it really? If reading the Bible, I strongly suggest starting with Matthew 5 and continuing from there, not too fast (maybe one chapter per week, so you can stop and think about it). This gets straight to the mindset, as opposed to the handful of protrusions that make it to the pop-culture version. [I have a lot more I could say about how to read the Bible, but it's no use posting it again unless someone is interested.] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205&version=NKJV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205&ver...
    • taejavu 11mo ago
      Consider me interested
      • o11c 11mo ago
        Okay, so apparently HN has a comment size limit. Normally I customize this a bit based on exactly where my audience is coming from, and sometimes what question was asked. For HN I guess I'll assume someone who is aware of the pop-culture version of Christianity (which honestly describes a lot of people who went to church as a kid), not an active Christian, dabbling a bit in philosophy, and capable of understanding big words. (Technically, "The Bible" is plural meaning many books. But in English we usually treat it as a single book despite using "the book of X" for its componentse) The Bible is not a novel, and it is a grave mistake to try to read it like one. The Bible is also not a textbook, though that's closer. If we treat it as a philosophy book, I'd say the core theme would be "What is sin, what does that imply, and what can we do about it?", though this is often implicit, and much of the book is in the form of negative answers. I expect that if a reader doesn't ultimately "get" the mindset behind this question, the Bible will never make sense, never see it as anything more than arbitrary rules interspersed with random supernatural events. Yet, I also don't think approaching the Bible from this big-picture perspective is particularly useful - certainly, many people who read it are not into philosophy (as we now mean the word) at all. Rather, the Bible is food. You need to eat it regularly or you'll starve, and you need to give it time to digest or you will expel it without it taking effect. Like food, you should have a variety; some parts are not meant to be taken alone, while a few favorite superfoods you could in fact survive on if you had to. Some parts are low-density and some are high-density. ===== The "Sermon on the Mount" in chapters 5 through 7 of Matthew is some of the highest-density content in the Bible, and (orthogonally) is designed for immediate practical use. It's even possible to spend a whole week studying a single verse for some of it (and ~3 verses per week for the rest), though I do not recommend this for newcomers. Even if you are missing 99% of the point and have no idea what you are doing, you can still get something out of these chapters if you're taking them at a rate of one chapter per week. A rate of one chapter per week is sustainable throughout the gospels and several other frequently-read books; for some other books, maybe 5 chapters per week is appropriate. Note however that chapter size varies quite a bit (~15 and ~50 are common) and chapters are not in the original (so if you're doing this alone, feel free to split or merge chapters even if the density is right, and consider verses from the adjacent chapters for context). For the "per week", at least in the high-density parts, I suggest reading the whole thing one day, then on later days focusing on a few verses that jumped out at you, and keep them in your thoughts as you go out for your daily life. From Matthew 8 onward, the content density isn't as extreme but it's still pretty high, and by now you're starting to get your feet under you. For a first read, I actually recommend finishing Matthew without ever going back to the first 4 chapters (not that you can't, I just don't have a good place for them), then reading Luke (which includes an even more extended start than Matthew has), Acts (the explicit sequel to Luke), and John (the gospel according to, not the epistles of) in that order. At one chapter per week, this will take about 2 years (note that part of the reason for this order is because some people might not think they want to commit to that). After this, start poking around well-known books or parts thereof (see below), then come back to do Mark. After this it's open season. At some point, learn to use margin references to discover new chapters to study. As a rule, in any given year, you should spend half your time in the gospels (which is common but sloppy shorthand for "the gospel according to {Matthew,Mark,Luke,John}"; strictly speaking "gospel" refers to "this is Jesus, the accessible and reliable solution for sin"), though not necessarily going chapter-by-chapter like the first time. When you eventually start reading the more difficult or low-density-food books, I suggest alternating on a more frequent basis, like every other week. Or, quite possibly if you're still here, you might be doing two independent study lines the same week - perhaps one assigned for a group, the other chosen by you personally. Some good books to consider reading, but only after Acts (and in my plan also John) include: Ruth, Jonah, the first half of Daniel, any of the short epistles (some specifically suggest James). There are also many scattered famous chapters in other books but I keep failing to make a list thereof. You will usually find references to these in the margin so don't be afraid to follow them (I'd suggest gradually ramping up how often you do this as you go through your second or third gospel), just don't get distracted from going through the gospels until you've finished them all at least once. Hebrews 11, however, is remembered for being a chapter that many of the margin references are made from. Note that the Bible is in part sorted by similarity. As a result, it is often a bad idea to go from one book to the adjacent books. This is particularly notable for Kings/Chronicles (two retellings of the same events) and several of Paul's epistles (same advice written to different people), but also applies within the Psalms (and Proverbs/Ecclesiastes, but they're shorter). Some books that can be a bit of a slog, and/or with little food content in parts, yet are somewhat reliant on sequencing: Genesis through Joshua, Ruth through Nehemiah, and the two epistles to the Corinthians (other numbered epistles are more independent). To be clear, there absolutely are even large portions therein that are both easy to read and profitable, but you should still approach them with deliberation. Some books to avoid for a while: Judges (full of negative examples), Job (much dreary philosophy which is immediately rejected), arguably Ecclesiastes (but other people like it), Song of Songs/Solomon, all of the prophets except sometimes when excerpted (Isaiah in particular is commonly cited), arguably Romans (I personally don't find nearly as hard as Hebrews, but others disagree), Hebrews (but chapter 11 is very notable to read on its own), Revelation (so many people go insane after reading it, it's not even funny). This is not the only way to read the Bible, and certainly there are other good ways, but I do have reasons for my particular choices especially for someone with no foundation.
• didgetmaster 11mo ago
  When I go to the polling place to cast my vote for the candidate of my choice; I am often holding my nose and voting for the one who I think will do the least damage. I often wonder why sane, rational problem solvers are not on the ballot. Then I realize that our system often rewards the attention seekers rather than pragmatic leaders. Those who quietly get the work done are not invited on talk shows or podcasts. The don't have rallies and make the evening news. All the oxygen in the room is sucked in by the performance artists, who often say outlandish things but rarely get anything productive done.
  • int_19h 11mo ago
    This is true outside politics, as well. Or rather, more precisely, any organization has some amount of internal politics, and the larger and more bureaucratic it is, the more politics dominates over utilitarianism. Nation-states and their governments are on the far end of that spectrum, obviously, but it also applies equally to large corporations etc. And the thing about it is that it doesn't just reward attention seeking. It rewards the entire spectrum of sociopathic behavior - making promises you don't intend to keep, picking associated based on loyalty rather than merit, walking on people's heads if that's what it takes to get higher etc. It's a system that positively selects for sociopathy in elites, whether they are politicians or CEOs. And thus that is what we get. People like Donald Trump and Elon Musk are extreme examples of what such selection can produce, but I don't think it's a qualitative change compared to the "good old times"; rather, it's the logical end result of the gradual evolution.
• BLKNSLVR 11mo ago
  We need 'unfluencers'. The problem is that it would just be the same few message repeated ad nauseum: - Treat it all like it's trying to sell you something - Think for yourself - Nothing is as simple as it seems - One person does not represent an entire race/country/group (ie. anecdata is not truth) etc. As they say, however, a lie can travel the world twice before the truth has tied its shoe laces.
  • wslh 11mo ago
    There is a critical problem with influencers: once they build a large audience, they often feel compelled to stick to the same message, even if they later realize it's wrong, because influence itself becomes a business and a source of power.
    • BLKNSLVR 11mo ago
      I think Unfluencers can be consistent because they're not taking a position. But that also means it's unprofitable, so why do it? Which, in itself, is an interesting commentary on Influencers.
• Havoc 11mo ago
  Really should have mentioned algorithmic feeds too. They’re imo one of the biggest contributors to this. Diversify your sources is a good start but without algos are a gravity well of sorts too - it pulls you into echo chambers - that are stronger than manual attempts to select diversity
• eisbaw 11mo ago
  > You get certainty in an uncertain world. You get a community that will defend you. You get a simple heuristic for navigating complex issues. Like religion
  • wslh 11mo ago
    Religion artifacts exists in part for organizing communities. For example, The Ten Commandments were revolutionary and short.
    • int_19h 11mo ago
      Too short, clearly, given that a large patch was issued almost immediately.
• refurb 11mo ago
  The irony of an article that talks about beliefs being fed by internet content, then suggests using internet content to address it. Turtles all the way down.
• d4rkn0d3z 11mo ago
  Here is a program for avoiding insanity: 1) Always listen to your rational adversary, repeat their arguments back to them to their satisfaction rather than in caricature. 2) List facts; states of affairs that are not in dispute. Adduce no fact in isolation. 3) Form the strongest version of your rational counterparts' argument. 4) Apply reason faithfully to analyze. 5) Lather rinse repeat. It seems the above is the best humans have every been able to do, it is child's play that we somehow forgot, maybe because we labelled it as something obscure like "the scientific method" or "legal process". I think this is as simple as "follow your nose".
• andyferris 11mo ago
  This is a very interesting article. I'm not 100% convinced every influencer _feels_ trapped in a world of their own making - but it's correct that truth this day is suffering a bit of a "tragedy of the commons" problem. > The world will keep offering you bad trades, will keep rewarding positions you know are too simple to be true. Here's a story. I'd guess there's at least a few HN folk with a similar tale. I'm not a real believer in cryptocurrency, in its current popular form at least. Actual value would be delivered by fast transaction rates at (very) high speed, high assurance, and some kind of oversight or ability to reverse transactions (you can choose your cutoff anywhere from "convicted criminal behavior" to "I disputed a transaction on my Visa/Mastercard just because I could" but ultimately society and the law needs to be an effective backstop of the system). Yet I was introduced to the bitcoin paper sometime near its release by a PhD officemate, and was a specialist in high performance and GPU computing at the time, and resolved to go home and spend a few hours mining a coin, but instead I just chilled out when I got home. I could literally have hundreds of coins right now (or equivalent cash). For years I could have chosen to join the bandwagen, but resolved not to. Currently my parents are profiting - go figure. So yeah the world offers some interesting trades from time to time! In any case I found the article meaningful. I'm glad I live outside the US and its current polarization, but I feel we have the same problem growing here. Hopefully we all learn to deal with it and sort out our differences.
• abixb 11mo ago
  Switching a Japanese dumbphone (Kyocera) was the best thing I ever did. Eliminating your smartphone (as inconvenient and life altering as it may be -- you'll need to figure out a path) is probably the single most effective thing you can do to get into the top 1-10%... of people with properly functioning cognition.
• acqbu 11mo ago
  No VPN allowed, why?
• johnsmith1840 11mo ago
  I view social media through this lens now. https://youtu.be/fuFlMtZmvY0?si=Jwtky2w0j41u4zLP https://youtu.be/fuFlMtZmvY0?si=Jwtky2w0j41u4zLP It's less that we are in echo chambers and more of being completly flooded with too many opinions. Avacados == liberal Steaks == conservative The point I take is that the only way to prevent this is decrease the amount of information you recieve not increase. If you constantly read extreme opinions everywhere your brain cannot process it and therefore starts dropping everything into really big buckets. The more sides you read the bigger your buckets becomes. Sure you're less informed but I don't think humans were designed to grok the entire world's information either.
• mediumsmart 11mo ago
  Arno Gruen the insanity of normality
• PeterStuer 11mo ago
  "Remember: the world only rewards insanity because we're measuring the wrong timeframe." Unfortunatly for many, HR lives in that "wrong timeframe", so you keep your more sane opinions bottled up.
• nobodywillobsrv 11mo ago
  The piece denies the existence of problems though. It starts of with enragment and denailism. The piece is the polarization. "Diversify your information" in no way cancels single events and single counter examples. The idea that ingesting more diversified information will bring back the lives of dead children and delete what people have done and said is ludicrous. The problem is that a certain kind of "intellectual" does not understand how constantly pivoting or turning to statistical aggregates to avoid the discussion around a single intervention is basically a vector of attack on a system. To stay sane, one must parse data. Literally attempt to gather data from the government. Literally take notes tracking the incoherence of the media narratives. But then you will find that merely describing reality is enough to trigger certain types of people now into frothing mania. If you think you are intelligent you MUST realize that social media is going to do importance sampling on the things they find usefull to the business. The defense against importance sampling is to abandon experiential aggregates entirely and focus on factless truths like incoherent, or single examplars that are enough to prove your point or raise a grievance. Focus on counter-examples. Focus on definitti style incoherence. Live in the meta.
• badenglish 11mo ago
  The sheep-people were suddenly given freedom of choice, and they immediately rushed to choose their own shepherd. This is where the enormous amount of trust in cheaftans, national leaders, and other autocrats came from. This explains the outbreak of fascism and the cult of force. Previously, parasites on society had to compete for resources among themselves. Now they can draw them directly. In other words, the existing system of "checks and balances" has collapsed, and there is no new one yet.
• firmretention 11mo ago
  I'm so sick and tired of reading AI slop.