4 ms·

Anyone check in on Ezra?

by Avicebron 4mo ago

x3n0ph3n3 4mo ago
[flagged]
- pasquinelli 4mo ago
  a cabal isn't a social club.
  - lazide 4mo ago
    Isn’t it literally one though?
    - blurbleblurble 4mo ago
      I've always considered it to be some marriage of convenience moreso than some kind of formal thing. And at any rate arguing over whether there's an explicit cabal or not very badly misses the point.
      - lazide 4mo ago
        I just thought it was a weird point, since by definition a cabal is a type of social club (even if all social clubs are not, of course, cabals). It would be like if we were talking about the invasion of some country by tanks, and someone started saying ‘and tanks aren’t some kind of vehicle’. Like huh?
- ceejayoz 4mo ago
  Plenty of people who hate each other manage to form orgs. Stalin and his cronies. The Nazis. The Trump White House. Back stabbing abounds.
- throwaway27448 4mo ago
  The narcissism of small differences
- ahazred8ta 4mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:There%27s_no_cabal.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:There%27s_no_cabal.png No such thing.
ddxv 4mo ago
"Enough people have asked me about the Peter Thiel-Dialog story that I think it's worth saying what it is, or at least what I saw it to be. So: –Dialog is a conference. I went once in 2018 and once in 2022. No one ever asked me to keep it or my presence a secret. –My understanding was Thiel was one of its founders but no longer involved by the time I went. I never saw or talked to him in connection with Dialog. –Nor did I see the other names I’ve heard mentioned, like Ted Cruz or Elon Musk or Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Jared Kushner. Dialog was not sold to me as a bunch of big names, which is part of why I went. I don’t need to go to a conference to hear what Ted Cruz thinks. –You could be a Dialog member, but I wasn’t. I don’t think joining got you much except guaranteed invitations to future Dialogs. There were occasional dinners and webinars, but I never went to one. I would not have described it as a secret or a society. –The panels were largely self-organized, so people would propose panels and hold them. I went to one on being a working parent and another on whether crypto had any real use cases and another on how to accelerate scientific breakthroughs. You’d usually have 8 or 10 people in a room. It was all very TED-talk adjacent. –In 2018, I found it very optimistic, with an idealistic hacker-ish vibe. In 2022, I found the conversations and vibe more curdled and resentful. I didn’t enjoy it, and I didn’t go back. (That did prove a pretty good signal of where tech’s politics were going though, maybe I should’ve paid more attention.) .... " first half of his comment about it from X
- JeremyNT 4mo ago
  Link: https://xcancel.com/ezraklein/status/2068479476309151771 https://xcancel.com/ezraklein/status/2068479476309151771

Anyone check in on Ezra?

x3n0ph3n3 4mo ago

[flagged]

pasquinelli 4mo ago
a cabal isn't a social club.
- lazide 4mo ago
  Isn’t it literally one though?
  - blurbleblurble 4mo ago
    I've always considered it to be some marriage of convenience moreso than some kind of formal thing. And at any rate arguing over whether there's an explicit cabal or not very badly misses the point.
    - lazide 4mo ago
      I just thought it was a weird point, since by definition a cabal is a type of social club (even if all social clubs are not, of course, cabals). It would be like if we were talking about the invasion of some country by tanks, and someone started saying ‘and tanks aren’t some kind of vehicle’. Like huh?
ceejayoz 4mo ago
Plenty of people who hate each other manage to form orgs. Stalin and his cronies. The Nazis. The Trump White House. Back stabbing abounds.
throwaway27448 4mo ago
The narcissism of small differences
ahazred8ta 4mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:There%27s_no_cabal.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:There%27s_no_cabal.png No such thing.

ddxv 4mo ago

"Enough people have asked me about the Peter Thiel-Dialog story that I think it's worth saying what it is, or at least what I saw it to be. So: –Dialog is a conference. I went once in 2018 and once in 2022. No one ever asked me to keep it or my presence a secret. –My understanding was Thiel was one of its founders but no longer involved by the time I went. I never saw or talked to him in connection with Dialog. –Nor did I see the other names I’ve heard mentioned, like Ted Cruz or Elon Musk or Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Jared Kushner. Dialog was not sold to me as a bunch of big names, which is part of why I went. I don’t need to go to a conference to hear what Ted Cruz thinks. –You could be a Dialog member, but I wasn’t. I don’t think joining got you much except guaranteed invitations to future Dialogs. There were occasional dinners and webinars, but I never went to one. I would not have described it as a secret or a society. –The panels were largely self-organized, so people would propose panels and hold them. I went to one on being a working parent and another on whether crypto had any real use cases and another on how to accelerate scientific breakthroughs. You’d usually have 8 or 10 people in a room. It was all very TED-talk adjacent. –In 2018, I found it very optimistic, with an idealistic hacker-ish vibe. In 2022, I found the conversations and vibe more curdled and resentful. I didn’t enjoy it, and I didn’t go back. (That did prove a pretty good signal of where tech’s politics were going though, maybe I should’ve paid more attention.) .... " first half of his comment about it from X

JeremyNT 4mo ago
Link: https://xcancel.com/ezraklein/status/2068479476309151771 https://xcancel.com/ezraklein/status/2068479476309151771