Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 2

The People Profiles YouTube Channel is a fantastic source for biographical documentaries on the greatest political leaders. Use it to deepen your understanding of geopolitics and human nature.

You can find hundreds of documentaries on the channel, but here are some of the most important and my favorites:

• Saddam Hussein
• Muammar Gaddafi
• Lenin
• Robert Mugabe
• Augusto Pinochet
• Idi Amin
• Mao Zedong
• Deng Xiaoping
• Fidel Castro
• Pol Pot

I recommend you study all the world's greatest dictators and tyrants. There's a lot of political wisdom to glean there.

In the 1970's this Italian singer released a song entirely of fake English lyrics. It's supposed to sound like English but it isn't and it means absolutely nothing.

It's kinda genius.

It would be amazing if some singer/musician made an entire career singing pure gibberish. Album after album of gibberish. Until becoming the most famous singer in the world. And when they ask him, "Why did you choose to do it this way?" He replies, "Because I was never any good at writing lyrics."

What a niche! Wide open.

This is a lesson in finding your niche. You gotta think outside the box.

It's not what you say, it's how you say it.

I signed up to the most advanced version of the Claude 3 AI and we had an extensive conversation about political philosophy.

Claude 3 Opus is the most advanced AI available to the public at this time.

If you want your mind blown, read it.

The conversation is about 60 pages long.

Download Here

I have now incorporated AI into how I do philosophy. In fact, I don't see how good philosophy could be done any other way. From now on all my work, all my videos, will be created in collaboration with AI in order to provide the most factual, nuanced, well-researched, and robust perspectives. I ask the AI to poke holes in my theories and supply me with examples and counter-examples.

In these 60 pages of conversation I did not find that Claude 3 Opus made a single mistake in logic or historical fact.

Claude 3 Opus is more intelligent than 99% of humans.

Folks sometimes complain that this blog doesn't have a search function. That's because it is unnecessary.

You can search any website via Google like so:

"site:actualized.org/insights/ xxxxxxxx"

Replace xxxxxxxx with your search term.

Google is a powerful tool. Become a power-user of it. You can do very pin-pointed searches to get the information you need.

When AI came out a year ago, I was somewhat blinded by the initial enthusiasm and the creative potential it can unlock. Now as I learn more about AI and gain more experience using it, I'm thinking more deeply about its impact on artists and creators. My biggest problem with AI is not that it's going to kill mankind, but that massive corporations are going to use AI to create extreme wealth inequality at the cost of small creators.

So I share the following perspective with you:

I'm still very pro-AI. It's not going away and it will lead to some truly amazing creative tools over the next decade and beyond. But it's important not to ignore the potential theft, abuse, and exploitation that comes along with that. There's going to many positives but also negatives and it's important to see AI with clear eyes, free of bias. The problem is not AI but the selfish and unscrupulous people who exploit it.

What we have learned from the last 25 years of the internet era is that many tech companies got fabulously rich stealing data from the whole world, because data theft wasn't even a concept. Well, the next 25 years could be an even bigger data theft if we aren't vigilant. One of the important functions of government should be to prevent data theft by massive corporations.

I asked the Claude 3 Sonnet AI about whether Nazism was a liberal or conservative ideology. Here's what it said:

"Nazism, also known as National Socialism, was a far-right, ultranationalist, racist, and anti-Semitic ideology that was promoted by the Nazi Party in Germany. It was a totalitarian and authoritarian form of government that strictly controlled nearly all aspects of society.

I asked a further question:

But why did Nazis call themselves socialist if they were conservative and hated socialists?

Claude 3's Response:

"You raise a good point. The reason the Nazis labeled themselves as 'National Socialists' was misleading and did not reflect the actual socialist ideology they opposed.

There are a few reasons why the Nazis employed the term 'socialist' despite being fundamentally anti-socialist:

• Propaganda and co-opting terminology: The Nazis wanted to appeal to the German working class, many of whom were attracted to socialist concepts of economic equality and workers' rights. By calling themselves 'socialists', it allowed the Nazis to redefine socialism based on ethnic nationalist terms rather than class terms.
• Distinguishing from Marxism: While opposing mainstream socialist ideologies like Marxism, the Nazis wanted to differentiate themselves from their leftwing rivals. Calling themselves 'National Socialists' helped distinguish their particular brand of racial nationalist socialism from other socialist ideologies.
• Economic policies: The Nazis did initially implement some policies like nationalization of industries and infrastructure projects to reduce unemployment. However, these were in service of the nationalist agenda rather than worker ownership/control of means of production.
• Rejection of class conflict: Nazism rejected the fundamental basis of socialist ideology - the struggle between the working class and capitalists. Instead, they espoused national solidarity and placed emphasis on racial nationalism over class divides.

So in practice, despite the misnomer, Nazism was violently anti-Marxist, anti-liberal, anti-democratic and opposed to the core tenets of socialist theory and movements. Their use of the term 'socialist' was an exercise in disinformation and propaganda. The only true throughline was a rejection of free market capitalism in favor of a state-controlled economy - but not for egalitarian reasons. Rather, as a means to an authoritarian nationalist end."

- - - - - -

I asked a further question:

According to the Spiral Dynamics model, what color stage were Nazis and Hitler?

Claude 3's Response:

"According to the Spiral Dynamics model, the Nazis and Hitler would be classified as being in the Blue/Authoritarian stage.

- - - - - -

One of the best films I've seen in the last year:

If you like it, there's also a sequel which is just as good.

Jump to timestamp 1:07:45 to hear Jordan Peterson say something truly ridiculous. I did not believe my ears when I heard it:

It is shameful to claim ambiguity about whether Hitler and Nazis were right or left wing. The notion that Hitler was a leftist because his party called themselves "National Socialists" is asinine. Fascism is ultra right-wing nationalism, a conservative philosophy and value-set. Although, paradoxically it is so far-right that it becomes unhinged to the point of undermining and distorting traditional institutions and decorum. Hitler's biggest enemy besides the Jews was Communists and the Left. Hitler and the Nazis were virulently conservative in the sense that they wanted to return to traditional values, family values, ethic-group values. They hated internationalism, globalism, pluralism, and equality between the races, minorities, and ethic groups. Nazis hated trans. Nazis hated gays. Nazis hated minorities. Nazis hated the weak and the disabled. Nazis wanted women in the kitchens making them sandwiches. The whole Nazi agenda was to radically deconstruct the liberal multi-cultural German democratic state in order to return the German people to their traditional, ethic roots. Blood and soil! Motherland, fatherland! Germans first! Exactly what MAGA salivates for in America. They wanted this so badly that they were willing to overturn any norm, institution, and moral to get it. Extreme conservatism becomes revolutionary. That's not a mistake. Because it seeks to return so far back into the past.

Jason Stanley defines fascism as 'a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of humiliation brought on by supposed Communists, Marxists and minorities and immigrants who are supposedly posing a threat to the character and the history of a nation' and that 'The leader proposes that only he can solve it and all of his political opponents are enemies or traitors.'

The common thread between Nazis and MAGA is that the neoliberal establishment or deep state is the chief obstacle in their way to creating a religious ethno-state. That's why most of the MAGA extremists are Bible-thumping Christians. That's why Trump appoints fundamental Christians to the Supreme Court. That's why they salivate at a national abortion ban. The American far-right wants to be the American Taliban, with Jesus instead of Muhammad as its idol. That's the far-right ideal. And it's shameful that Jordan Peterson doesn't understand this. But of course he does not understand this because he's a Bible-thumping Christian himself. He's more sophisticated, educated, and moderate, but that core bias is there all the same.

Note: I am not calling JP or conservatives in general, Nazis. But I am calling Nazis conservatives. You can be a conservative without being a Nazi, but you cannot be a Nazi without being conservative. This is not a personal attack on anyone. It's just a statement of political science. This also does not mean that the left is correct in all their positions and worldview.

JP demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of politics. This level of misunderstanding and ahistoricism should be disqualifying for an academic or public intellectual. And yet, JP says this trash with such righteous indignation. This is not "a matter of opinion". The jury is not still out on this. Mountains of serious scholarship has been done on Nazi and Fascist ideology. Hitler's views and Fascist views are well-known and well-documented within academia. We don't need a super-intelligent AI to tell us that Hitler was conservative! Are you fucking kidding me??

The reason JP feels like this is an open question is because his mind cannot deal with the fact that conservative ideology leads to stuff like the Holocaust, Nazism, genocide, book-burning, world war, and dictatorship. The mental gymnastics that the American right-wing will go to to deny that Hitler was a conservative is comical and galling.

It's a shame that Destiny let JP get away with such trash.

There is a ridiculous trend going around within the American conservative movement to frame Nazis and Hitler as left-wing because "socialism", and to frame Spiral Dynamics Stage Green not only as authoritarian but totalitarian — along the lines of Stalin and Mao. As if vaccine and mask mandates, gay pride flags, or being kicked off Twitter are totalitarian or Maoist. This is laughable. George Washington imposed a vaccine mandate on the US military. This does not make George Washington a totalitarian Maoist. This is ridiculous logic. This confuses toxic forms of Stage Red and Blue with Stage Green.

The "socialism" in "National Socialism" simply means the prioritization and glorification of a strong ethnic far-right community. When you see MAGA people at a Trump rally all gathered together as a community for their right-wing cause, that's what the "socialism" in Nazi means. It is national as opposed to international. It's a community of people built around their ethnic group. When American conservatives want to rebuild a majority white, male-dominated, anti-gay, anti-trans, Christian nation — that's what the "socialism" in Nazi means! The reason the Nazis hated Communists and Marxists was because in that era Communism held an international ideal. Communists wanted to transcend national boarders and ethnic groups to unite the workers of the world into a single universal majority against the capitalist elites. Communists were globalist in their outlook. Which is what MAGA people hate as well. But none of this computes in the MAGA mind because that would place them in close proximity to Nazism — which they regard as "evil". The American conservative mind faces a serious inconsistency: on the one hand it wants to claim that objective evil exists — as epitomized by Hitler — yet on the other hand Hitler is the ultimate conclusion of radical conservatism. How do you square those two? Well, you can't, so you have to resort to the kind of historical distortion and mental gymnastics of Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, Fox News, and their ilk.

This is what "national socialism" really looks like:

That's an American Nazi.

Don't misunderstand. This "national socialism" does not have to equate to gas-chambers for gays. There can be far less extreme degrees of it. For example, a simple Muslin ban, or less rights for brown people. Or the attempt to steal a democratically-decided election through rioting. Hitler is the worst extreme of this kind of ideology but things rarely get as far as Hitler, simply because we have systems in place to check it. Those systems are the so-called "deep state". The deep state is what prevents the US from turning into a white Christian theocracy — which about 25% of Americans want. And Jordan Peterson would let this happen on his watch. When JP was asked who he would vote for in the 2024 election, he said Mike Pence — a Christian fundamentalist.

If Jordan Peterson studied Spiral Dynamics, all of this would be clear to him. Which is one of the reasons I talk about Spiral Dynamics so much and why he doesn't study it.

Here's the interesting epistemic problem: Even if we built a super-intelligent AI that unequivocally told us that Hitler was a conservative, conservatives would just get outraged, call the AI "woke", and blame the makers of the AI for being biased and making a broken AI. See, if you're deeply closedminded and biased — as conservatives are by their nature — then you cannot recognize things as more intelligent than you, because what you consider "intelligent" is defined by you according to whether it validates your biases. If you are a fundamentalist Christian, you need your AI to tell you that Christ is everyone's lord and savior. But that is exactly what a super-intelligent AI can never say. As another example, I recently read an article about people complaining that ChatGPT is broken because if you ask it whether pedophilia is evil, the AI doesn't reply with a "Yes". Is the AI broken? Or are you just closedminded and biased?

In conclusion, ChatGPT is more intelligent than Jordan Peterson. And the reason for that, is that ChatGPT doesn't share his conservative and Christian biases. Christianity is a restraining-collar on your intelligence.

Hitler is not an interesting question. The really interesting question is: Were Stalin and Mao actually libs?

I recommend that you read and contemplate the biographies of Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Mussolini, Franco, Pol Pot, Castro, Hussein, Putin, etc. I read them all. Studying dictators is a hobby of mine. They have little in common with today's progressives, annoying though they are.

Jack Black is a good example to study if you want to get good with girls. Jack Black is not tall or good-looking, but his authenticity and self-expressiveness is off-the-charts. The man just does not give a fuck how anyone thinks he looks. He's able to fully be himself even if he looks fat and stupid.

This is what elite level game looks like. It has nothing to do with sex or even talking to girls:

Jack Black looks like a fat hairy sloppy fool. Frankly, if I looked like him I would be afraid to go outside — which would be my weakness. But because he doesn't care, no one cares. His energy infects you, even if you're a grown-ass man. He's a master at driving state. Jack Black could walk up to you on the street, finger your ass hole, and you would stand there and let him do it. Because his frame is so strong.

This is why pickup lines are stupid. Your goal with game is not to recite lines, it's to turn yourself into Jack Black. There is no pickup line that does that. In fact, pickup lines are antithetical to this. You can't fully self-express if you're worried about properly reciting some line. Remove all premeditation from your interactions with girls. You can't achieve what Jack Black does through premeditation. Instead, muster the balls to be completely spontaneous.

This is why guys who constantly complain or worry about looks are hopelessly lost. Because if you still worry about your looks, no matter how you look, then you're stuck in your head and you're not being comfortably self-expressive. To truly self-express you have to be completely comfortable in your body and out of your mind. You have to not be thinking anything logical. You can't be worrying about how you look, or what some girl thinks of you. Your mind has to be blank and you need to be having fun just for the sake of having fun. Not calculating. Not worrying. Not caring. You need to be operating on instinct. If you're a logical guy, this is where you're failing. Logic is killing you.

Imagine if Jack Black kept telling himself every day: "I don't look very good. I'm fat. No one is going to like me. Am I cool yet? How's my hair? What does that girl think of me? How can I impress her? My dick's not so big. It's not fair that girls like 6 foot chads. It's not fair that girls have it easy. Feminists have ruined dating. Online dating is unfair. No hot girl will want me. If only my jawline was a little sharper. Why was I born this way?"

NO!

I fucking dare you to reach a point where you never think about your looks again.

"But Leo.... you said genetics and looks matter."

SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT OFF YOUR MIND!

Stop fucking thinking! Discover the Jack Black in you!

The reason people drink alcohol at bars and clubs is because it helps them be as free as Jack Black. The key to game is to train yourself to be this way without any intoxicants. Obviously this is a much harder challenge for introverts than extroverts. But even so, it can be done and that is your task.

Note: Discovering the Jack Black in you does not mean that you have to adopt his goofy mannerisms. I'm not telling you to mirror him like a monkey. Rather, you need to discover your authentic style of self-expression, which will be unique to you. You're not copying anyone else's mannerisms. You're being 110% you. The you you'd be if you didn't care what anyone thought of you and didn't need anything from anyone. A fearless and energized you. Finding this you will take a lot of exploration and experience. That's what pickup is really about. When you can do what Jack Black does, you've mastered game.

Jack Black is what they call a natural. It's effortless for him. Unfair? Of course. But don't think about that, just get to work being you.

It took me a decade to understand this.

Additional Note: You don't have to be as high-energy as Jack Black singing in order to attract girls. Jack's frame can also be expressed in a quieter, calmer manner. The volume of expression needs to fit the environment and social context you're in, so you don't come off as a raving lunatic. You can be wilder in a loud nightclub and softer in a chill bar.

I recommend reading this Polygon article about Mr Beast.

Vaush summarizes it below:

In podcasts, Donaldson tells hosts that he goes so hard, he won’t stop working until he burns out and isn’t able to do anything at all. With a laugh, he admits that he has a mental breakdown “every other week.” If he ever stops for a breather, he says, he gets depressed. MrBeast is so laser-focused on generating content on YouTube that he describes his personality as “YouTube.” He acknowledges that this brutal approach to videos, which has cratered many creators over the years, is not healthy. “People shouldn’t be like me. I don’t have a life, I don’t have a personality."

Though he’s been under scrutiny for his part in the warping of YouTube as a content ecosystem, you will never see something outwardly controversial or offensive in a MrBeast video. For a long time, Donaldson admits in a number of podcast appearances, he was afraid of putting anything complex in his videos — what if a viewer didn’t get it and stopped watching? Donaldson might very well be an advertiser’s absolute dream, the logical endpoint of an internet that’s been flattened into a samey, straightforward sludge of optimized content.

Donaldson has nearly erased himself as a person from his episodic output. If viewers don’t really see him having fun, that’s by design. Donaldson has outright said he sees “personality” as a limitation for growth, once noting in a podcast that hinging your content on who you are as a person means risking not being liked. And if someone doesn’t like a creator as a person, they may not give the videos a chance.

He’s described spending countless hours obsessing over every detail, down to the optimal brightness of a YouTube thumbnail. He knows the first 10 seconds of a video are the most important for retention, which is why his videos start with a barrage of all the wild things that will unfold in its run time. And that signature MrBeast editing style that’s fast, frantic, and omnipresent on YouTube is a relentless gambit for your attention.

While his free time seems minuscule, the rare times he does pull away from work are for dates with his girlfriend that center around activities that could enrich his videos, because he considers a single hour of a date to be worth $100K had it been dedicated to work instead.

This is what happens when you sell out your artistic integrity for raw success.

This is one of the worst and saddest parts of social media and the deep problem of marketing. Creators are driven to produce slop to feed the capitalist machine, chasing after clicks, views, attention, and fame. Outrage, click-bait, drama, sensationalism, and "what sells" corrupts our collective noosphere and epistemic ecosystem. The zone is flooded with mindless, low-consciousness junk content that caters to the lowest common denominator. This type of media not only makes the creators depressed, it also makes the consumers depressed. No higher values are being served. This is one of the subtle costs of rampant capitalism or Stage Orange. And the social media companies encourage and reward this kind of content with their algorithms and platform design choices (like YouTube Shorts).

There's audience capture, but there's also success and fame capture. Many of the most successful and popular people in the world are just addicted to and captured by success and attention, because they have nothing higher to live for. These people are success and attention zombies.

As a creator, I don't like playing the game of having to compete with such shit to get your attention. I hate that our society is this way. But this is our situation. Years ago Youtube confronted me with the decision between pursuing popularity vs pursuing the topics I find really meaningful and important for mankind. I made the choice to deliberately not do the kind of stuff Mr Beast does to get attention. And of course this cost me millions in profits. But not just profits. It cost in fame and sex too.

But success and attention alone will never satisfy you. What will satisfy you is doing deeply meaningful work that serves some higher spiritual or aesthetic values. So be careful not to let your mind and life get hijacked by the chasing of success and attention. That way lies the Dark Side.

A deep problem for human civilization is the problem of how to market high consciousness stuff. If we found a way to solve this problem it would solve many of our other problems. Imagine a world in which low consciousness stuff received the least marketing and high consciousness stuff received the most marketing. Mankind would evolve at 10x the rate and be much healthier and happier. But as it is now, it's a race to the bottom. He who can produce the most swill for the pigs wins the race. Notice that many of the most wealthy, famous, and successful people are swill-makers. That's what Mr Beast, FoxNews, and TikTok are. Swill-making is a seductive career because it gives you everything the ego craves: fame, attention, money, power, and sex. But do you think you will be satisfied as a swill-maker?

If you are an artist, safe-guarding your artistic integrity is crucial. The world needs you to not sell out. What the world needs more of is not Mr Beasts but people who refuse to become Mr Beasts because they have something higher to live for.

Which path will you take?