aurum

She roasted him on Ukraine. Maybe her best moment. Trump was Trump. He couldn’t stop yelling about borders, WW3 and blaming the democrats for everything under the sun. More fake election nonsense. I think overall people will perceive that Kamala won. Fact-check: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/fact-checking-kamala-harris-donald-trumps-1st-presidential/story?id=113567997

Part 2. More discussion on democracy, nihilism, philosophical elitism and critiques of modernity. Strauss was a fascinating and sophisticated thinker: https://chatgpt.com/share/d1986517-5f93-44e3-9729-259fef634c4d

I wanted to share a conversation I had with ChatGPT about a relatively unknown philosopher, Leo Strauss. Originally I had intended to have a conversation about neoconservatism. But when GPT explained that Strauss was a key influential figure in that movement, I ended up going down a rabbit hole exploring his views. What I find fascinating about Strauss is that I believe he presents a Steel Man critique of moral relativism, liberalism and many other modern ideologies. If you can't successfully argue against Leo Strauss' ideas, then your political philosophy is probably weak. He is not some right-wing demogague. He is worth integrating into your perspective. This also ties nicely with anyone studying Post-Modernism. Here is the link to the conversation: https://chatgpt.com/share/3a639ac8-1835-49a9-9125-b8609e0d57d1 What's also interesting is that despite the fact that Strauss is not a right-wing demogague, his ideas were taken up by neoconservatives and used to justify policies like the Iraq War. Ironically, Strauss himself understood that ideology is often abused for the sake of political gain. But apparently his followers didn't read that part .

Leo's latest blog post featured a video about the realities political messaging. It's quite disturbing in some ways, and I wanted to lay down some thoughts about it. First, let's start by acknowledging the obvious truth that Rick Wilson is right. Politics is largely about optics and messaging, not policy and truthfulness. Just watching the ads for The Lincoln Project is like a masterclass in how to persuade voters. It works. Second, it's great that Rick is using his skills of messaging and persuasion to help democrats push back against right-wing bullshit. I agree that's what is definitely needed, and democrats tend to be bad at this. But at what cost? What is the cost of this "they go low, we go low" strategy? For example, Rick argues that if Republicans start accusing you of supporting something crazy like critical race theory, then you should punch back by accusing them of being racist. Don't go into the facts. Don't stick to the issue. Just score points. Again, this does work. And when you're dealing with someone like Trump, that is probably the best strategy. But at the same time, this constantly manipulation of people's perspective in many ways IS the deeper problem. Deeper than any single political position or policy. It's the degradation of the epistemic commons. Our shared, collective sense-making Even when you degrade the commons for the "good guys", you're still degrading the commons. People become dumber and less able to make sense of the world in an accurate way. How can we possibly ever expect to have intelligent political discourse as a society when people act this way? How can we expect to have conscious leaders when what is incentivized is manipulation? I suppose in my fantasy world, I would love for people to be able to just talk like mature adults about policy without having to resort to flinging mud at each other. I would love if being the best politician wasn't about who could manipulate the best but who was actually able to best lead. But obviously we are not mature, developed or intelligent enough for that. So here we are.

Yes, you might not label your experience if you grew up all alone since you wouldn't have language. Nonetheless, experience exists and is Truth. This is what Patterson is getting at, and what Thaddeus seemingly just does not grok.

Only true if you consider the exoteric and not the esoteric, mystic branches. There do exist more sophisticated versions of Christianity / Judaism.

We just had one of these threads. Stop consuming manosphere garbage. This stuff feeds into and amplifies all your male biases and whatever pain you have around women. Very toxic. Notice how badly you want all this to be true.

This talking point by manosphere dudes is such a double standard. Just because you can marry a poor girl doesn’t mean your love is any less conditional. Conditional love is just what humans do.

Survival and bullshit go hand in hand. It doesn't matter if leftists are "right" when truth is antithetical to survival. That they don't understand this is why they are naive and not realistic.

I get what you’re saying. Guys can definitely be try-hard, and that is cringey. They’re trying to find their confidence because they know that’s what women want. But I would argue there is still competition, regardless of how much core confidence a guy has developed. Dating just is competitive by nature. And it’s actually going through that competition where a lot of guys gain a deeper core confidence. If you can survive in the jungle, a guy will feel a different way about themselves.

I’ve been giving Kyle a bit more credit lately. I think his perspective is maturing.

You make good points. A lot of dating is about sifting through compatibility, which naturally will only happen with certain people. In that sense, we could think of dating not as competition but as a positive-sum matching process. I'll just say this though. In the time In the time I've spent in "meat locker" environments like night clubs, bars, college parties etc, there is a lot of competition. Getting sex is no joke for some of these guys. They can be ruthless, and I want guys reading this to be ready for that. Especially if you are a bit more naive and think everyone is just going to be really nice to you. For example, getting into a "social scuffle" with another guy where you are trying to punk each other over a woman. These happen all the time. Or guys setting up elaborate social circles and events that basically guarantee women around them. And then even once you are in a long-term relationship with a woman, it's not over. My experience of having an attractive partner is that it's like walking around with a giant bag of money in a dangerous neighborhood. Guys are going to hit on her, even if they know you are with her. And if you're really not careful, it might even be your close friends. it's a jungle out there sometimes. A bunch of animals fighting over mates. Side note: I don't think it's just men who are competing. Women compete as well, but it tends to look different.

I imagine it would be challenging. Most women are going to want to date someone on their level.

It's definitely a male projection. Women obviously don't see it as rewarding. At the same time, I don't think it's totally unreasonable that men see that way. They are actually competing with other men. Dating is somewhat of a zero-sum game.

Humans already don’t think for themselves.

Dude I know you are new here, but we are not going to help you with this. What you are doing goes against all the values of this place. Just let your ex go. She wants to be with someone else, it's over. Take the pain and move on.

What I'm trying to get at is that it's both. They clash /compete and they work together. Let's use your example of skepticism vs open-mindedness. These are dichotomies that we could integrate, such that my skepticism supports my open-mindedness and my open-mindedness supports my skepticism. Both are important psychological functions. And all dichotomies ultimately are distinctions that must collapse if we thoroughly investigate them. ^I think this is what you are highlighting.^ I am indeed highlighting more of the "balance" side of things. Where there are actual tradeoffs between open-mindedness and skepticism. No one is going to be perfectly balanced in this way, and their personality will have tradeoffs depending on their particular disposition towards open-mindedness or skepticism. "Competing / working together" is itself a dichotomy that must collapse. So yes, there is a degree in which sense-making and pragmatism integrate together. I personally like to conceptualize that integration as part of SD Tier 2. But there is also a hierarchy of prioritization, and sense-making is on the bottom at Tier 1. Tier 1 is unable to deeply care about sense-making because it is too wrapped up in survival and its particular agenda. I actually think we are in total agreement here. Indeed, I was one of those brainy, gifted kids who had an easier time at school than many others. And that's just the start of the list of unearned advantages I've had. This is why I don't expect most people to care about Conscious Politics in our lifetime. And why I am very selective about who I have these kind of conversations with. Most people are not going to get there, and that's fine. I talk about this with a small minority of people, such as yourself, who are at the leading edge of cognitive development. Totally with you on this. One learns to keep their mouth shut I don't really care how you label yourself, I care about how your mind functions. Is your mind ideologically progressive? Or ideologically conservative? Or ideologically anything? If so, you're probably not engaging in Tier 2, Conscious Politics. But yes, you can use labels pragmatically. And yes, you can decide you like certain policies more than others. I am not neutral on policy.

Absolutely important field. You get to think big picture about society. This was my favorite part about economics when I was in college. Honestly I think this is a great move for you. It tailors great with Leo’s work and obviously is more of a match for your interests / talents.

Demonstrate you understand the left before you attempt to change their mind.

You just made like 20+ points in a row demonstrating you don't understand the left.

Any chance there was of me supporting Trump in 2024 evoporated with all the fake stolen election nonsense and Jan 6. He is forever disqualified from being president again as far as I am concerned because of that. I really could just end my argument there. Nothing else needs to be said.

That’s not quite how I see it. Lex is just openminded. Openmindedness comes with tradeoffs, the main one being that you might open your mind to something you shouldn’t. Which is exactly why people are close-minded. What you are really saying is “Lex should be more close-minded”.

Great. Reading through our conversation again, I think the biggest sticking point for us is about sacrificing pragmatic political outcomes in favor of non-tangible sense-making victories. You see this as a lack of integration between pragmatism and sense-making, and which can lead to very dangerous situations when it comes to autocrats and bad faith actors who would take advantage of this. In addition, you don't see the general populace as interested in deep sense-making, which makes advocating for it somewhat pointless. I would argue my perspective is more nuanced than that. I'm certainly not advocating for abandoning pragmatism entirely. That wouldn't even be possible and would be a very silly position to take. But I DO think there are trade-offs, and I'm trying to point to those trade-offs here. And of course the biggest trade-off is that your sense-making will suffer. This idea of "integration" is very tricky. Integration does not mean there won't be trade-offs. I can integrate sense-making and pragmatism such that they work together, but not 100%. That's an important difference. Call it whatever you want, but the reason I bring up SD Tier 2 is because you can go meta in your sense-making to the entire political game. Such that you are no longer identify as a progressive, a conservative, a centrist, a meta-modernist or anything else. You are not on the political map anymore. And this will deeply improve your sense-making, such that you see things very few people will see. But, you cannot get to this place through sheer pragmatism. You will have to surrender more and more of your political ideology, which of course is tied to your particular survival agenda. This is what makes it so challenging. Why would anyone do this, especially if it's going to hurt their particular survival agenda? That's a good question. First off, I don't expect most people to do what I'm describing. On this we are in agreement. Most people are just going to continue to engage in pragmatic politics that suit their limited political agenda. So I don't think we are in danger of losing that. I only talk about this on the forum because of the goals of this place. I'm going to assume most people here are interested in Conscious Politics and sense-making. That's kind of Actualized.org's whole purpose. It's to shoot for something higher. Second, sense-making can enhance your agenda and the overall health of the political sphere. There is a meta-problem happening where everyone pursuing their limited political agenda actually degrades the whole. So it's not strictly the case that sense-making is dangerous and doesn't lead to positive outcomes. But I don't want to make any guarantees about results in order to maintain the purity of the sense-making process. Seeking specific results is what distorts this process, rather than going where the truth leads you. This is the value of detachment. We also have to understand that our political sphere is currently mostly dominated by falsehood. Gaining power in such a system means going along with falsehood, not sense-making. So I don't make guarantees about gaining political power either, although it might be possible depending on the circumstances. This doesn't mean you have to just capitulate to bad faith actors either. I see the goal as keeping your mind capital Neutral, not lowercase neutral. Lowercase natural is essentially just trying to not take a side, whereas capital Neutral evaluates things in a multi-perspectival way and then makes distinctions between what is more or less true. Hopefully this clears things up.

Leo made a good point about non-confrontational interviewing being a valid style. A guy like Larry King is not an investigative journalist. He’s not there to evaluate the accuracy of all his guest’s claims and challenge them. His guests bring a narrative and a perspective, and his skillset is getting people to open up about what that is and showing it to the audience as it is. He’s not even really qualified to do anything else. Of course there are also downsides to this approach. In this case with Lex, I don’t like it because I already know what Trump is about and I know the BS he will push. But that is my political bias, my pre-existing knowledge bias, my bias for sense-making and even my bias for communication style, which tends to lean a bit more confrontational. And I want to be mindful of that. You could argue social media needs stricter moderation guidelines if a U.S presidential candidate is going to be interviewed on their platform. Maybe a compromise would be that independent fact-checking would be done and provided for the viewers.

If Lex wants to be Larry King, fine. I suppose that’s just not how I interpreted the goal of his podcast.