North Carolina, USA
Joined March 2008
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Oddly enough, this is what I had on my bingo card.
xitter.cf/datarepublican/status/…
xitter.cf/nayibbukele/status/211…
Muchos mensajes, análisis y comentarios como este, asegurando que las pandillas de Haití no son como las de El Salvador; que son sanguinarias, que están fuertemente armadas, que nadie ha podido vencerlas, que todas las misiones han fracasado, que estamos cayendo en una trampa, que no sabemos a lo que nos enfrentamos, que será nuestra ruina, que vamos camino a nuestro Waterloo.
Pero cuando Dios nos conceda la victoria, los mismos que hoy dicen todo eso cambiarán su discurso. Dirán que siempre fue fácil, que cualquiera podía hacerlo, que las pandillas de Haití no eran tan peligrosas como se pensaba.
En fin, nunca los hemos escuchado y no vamos a empezar ahora.
Todos los que se han enlistado son creyentes y hemos encomendado esta misión a Dios, mientras que las pandillas de Haití son satánicas y es de conocimiento público que hacen sacrificios humanos.
Dios nos concederá la victoria. El Creador del Universo está con nosotros.
Deuteronomio 28:7
“Jehová derrotará a tus enemigos que se levantaren contra ti; por un camino saldrán contra ti, y por siete caminos huirán de delante de ti”.
Jordan Hall retweeted
There will be a catastrophic social transformation.
The only question is when and under what conditions - eg upon whom. I’d prefer to take it now and consciously so that we can deal with it and hand something real and alive to our children and grandchildren.
Or we can ape the generations before us and burden the young and unborn.
Men also, of course, have the concept of *dishonorable* enemy. This is where things get interesting.
When I say that women lack the concept of an honorable enemy, this is what I’m talking about.
Obviously a lot of the Democrats’ new vindictiveness is Trump derangement, but the Great Feminization is part of the story, too.
Men understand that the other guy is a professional just like me, and we should have an open fight by fair rules and both go home at the end of the day.
For women, conflict isn’t over until the other side is gone and they never have to talk to them again.
Men believe in hierarchy, so a fight is about establishing dominance within the hierarchy and making the other guy subordinate.
Women don’t, everything is egalitarian and consensus-driven, so if you do get conflict, the only possible outcome is total exclusion from the group.
It makes sense that the Democratic Party is abandoning old-fashioned ideas about honorable conflict as it becomes more dominated by women.
Jordan Hall retweeted
Jordan, I’m grateful for the thought you’ve given this discussion. You’ve highlighted several flaws in my thinking and where I poorly articulated my critique. After giving this considerably more thought, I recognize that I conflated two separate criticisms, weakening both. Allow me to clarify.
1. Roadster for Me, Poverty for Thee
My argument is not Elon = Bad or Tesla = Bad because they created a car that isn’t cool. I think the Roadster is phenomenal. What SpaceX has accomplished is absolutely mind-boggling. My disappointment is not in the objectively impressive engineering feats accomplished by these teams.
I agree that Elon and his engineers should be free to pursue their ambitions.
Despite the objectively “cool” engineering of the Roadster, it’s hard to get excited about a trillionaire presenting a toy for millionaires while my friends can’t afford houses, I skip unaffordable medical treatment, and my president has launched yet another war in the Middle East while asking for $1.5T to continue waging it.
To the unwashed masses hanging on by a thread, technological advancements like the Roadster can be viewed as another example of “the system” neglecting its citizens and leaving the individual behind. To me, that’s not cool!
I recognize Tesla isn’t responsible for these problems, but the spectacle illustrates the disconnect between our extraordinary technological capabilities and the material well-being of ordinary Americans.
2. Political Economy, Public Investment, Private Wealth
The state shapes economic outcomes through the “rules of the game”: taxes, subsidies, bailouts, trade barriers, etc. As Charlie Munger said, “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”
Tesla is a good example of how public investment in private enterprise can create substantial social good. They’ve benefited from over $20B in government support, the $7,500 EV tax credit, and a $465M federal loan in 2010. I consider EVs a public good, and Tesla has made meaningful contributions to society.
However, this raises broader questions about how we allocate our national resources and who benefits from those investments.
China has demonstrated how enormous public investment in infrastructure and industrial development can contribute to lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. Meanwhile, our government has spent trillions on warfare while healthcare, housing, education, and infrastructure remain neglected.
Whenever politicians propose investments in public goods, the deficit hawks appear. Yet whenever we need ships, bombs, bailouts, or tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy, there’s always money for it.
Musk has subsequently used that wealth to influence the political system, spending roughly $250M supporting Trump’s reelection and reportedly $275M supporting Republicans in the midterms. He then joined an administration exercising authority over agencies affecting his business interests.
Tesla illustrates both the enormous potential of public investment and the danger of allowing its benefits to become concentrated in the hands of individuals who can subsequently wield disproportionate political power.
Returning to my original criticism:
I don’t begrudge Tesla its achievements or its engineers their ambitions. I recognize the public good the company has accomplished, and I shouldn’t have conflated that with my reaction to the Roadster unveiling.
Technological progress is worth celebrating, but I think we should be much more interested in whether that progress translates into improved human well-being and broadly shared prosperity.
Thank you for the opportunity to clarify my points and hopefully contribute productively to the conversation.
Wait. I think I realized something. That many (most?) people take David vs Goliath to be an underdog story.
David wasn’t the underdog. To those who could not see reality clearly he looked not only to be an underdog but an absurd, unserious, joke. Like a child challenging Mike Tyson to eight rounds.
But for those with eyes to see, David was hands of God. If you could see reality clearly the matchup was as absurd in the other direction. Like Hulk Hogan challenging a hurricane to a wrestling match.
This is not a story about gritty or virtuous underdogs (or cocky, over confident or unworthy bullies), it is a story about the nature of reality.
I don’t like the thing you like, I want the thing *I* like - even though they are not mutually exclusive or really related in any way.
Sitting in a room in Santa Fe with a half dozen Nobel prize winning economists, the heads of several banks and funds and a guy who was one of the biggest players in CMOs.
Noticing two things:
- the people in the room were saying things that completely contradicted the official story (and were worse)
- the people in the room had no idea what was going on and were terrified
I expect that this can’t stop at social security. As far as I can tell, the boomers will fight to the death on this one. Which means either the Millennial/GenX+Z alliance either capitulates or goes all the way to entirely pillaging the boomers.
The former is the most likely, but I’d not write of the latter. I’ve seen perfectly reasonable, even gentle souls move to a level of racism, misogyny, anti semitism, anti Islamism or what have you over the past decade or so that would make a Victorian dizzy.
$100Tn is a lot of wealth to pillage and the radicalization is clearly already building.
As far as I can tell, the logic is thus:
* Repentance and redemption are available only whilst alive.
* Therefore if we end the life of someone for any reason the major consequence is that we terminate their ability to repent and be saved in eternity.
* God and God alone provides forgiveness of sin. Earthly justice is only locally relevant.
* A redeemed soul in eternity is worth infinity. A damned soul in eternity “costs” infinity.
* If even a single soul who would have been executed is saved while in prison - that is worth roughly infinity.
Thus the death penalty, by ending possibility of repentance and redemption, must be abolished.
Particularly when we have effective means (prison) of preventing harm to others (local justice).
Is this the basic logic?
I just turned 55 - which puts me in an interesting position on this conversation. I got my AARP card in the mail and I am, in fact, retired (I think). Which means that I’m not paying into SS anymore. I’ve paid all I’ll ever pay.
And it will be seven years before I get to take anything out. So I’m also not getting any thing for a decent while.
Right in the middle - more or less.
I would not vote to kill social security, as such. But I would make participation optional. Anyone who wants to pay in can participate per normal and earn out their retirement payments.
But anyone who doesn’t can stop paying - at the price of course that they would also not earn any benefit when they retire.
Personally, under the current program, I do not expect to ever collect a check. I have long assumed that it was just money wasted, just another in a long line of bad choices produced by our governance, and when I look at the trajectory of our governance I see no reason to revise that view.
There is a major distinction between “a striver” and “grit”. As far as I can tell the confusion of this discussion lies precisely at this distinction.
A striver deploys grit in service, ultimately, of fear (or if you prefer, ego). But grit is properly brought in service of love and great passion.
Do you work and struggle in order to realize some greatness of heart? Or do you grind (life) in order to establish a position superior to others?
If we dig a bit deeper, it might be that “you do not study for the spelling bee” is an intuitive way of saying “you don’t game the system.” Grit is pointed at reality; striving is pointed at our measures and models. But the heart is the key, I think.
“You don’t study for the spelling bee” is a deep and important aspect of American culture. I was at a baseball game discussing some young players with a buddy one time and he said to me offhandedly, “hard work is fine, but nothing beats talent.”
Americans have this sort of sense that there’s something a little off about working really hard to get good at something that you’re not naturally good at. You’re never really going to be on the same level as the guy who has a natural talent. We have room in our hearts for scrappy little guys who work hard, but we are by default suspicious of grinders and strivers.
If you were really meant to do it, then you’d be naturally good at it. You sign your kids up for little league, but you don’t take it too seriously unless they show remarkable early talent.
Yes, this sounds sort of ridiculous if you take it too literally. No, nobody is saying that there’s any kind of practical test for this or that anybody should be excluded because we found out that they secretly studied too hard.
But this is a part of American culture. And if you can’t understand it, then that just marks you out as foreign to that culture to an even greater degree.
Jordan Hall retweeted
“You don’t study for the spelling bee” is a deep and important aspect of American culture. I was at a baseball game discussing some young players with a buddy one time and he said to me offhandedly, “hard work is fine, but nothing beats talent.”
Americans have this sort of sense that there’s something a little off about working really hard to get good at something that you’re not naturally good at. You’re never really going to be on the same level as the guy who has a natural talent. We have room in our hearts for scrappy little guys who work hard, but we are by default suspicious of grinders and strivers.
If you were really meant to do it, then you’d be naturally good at it. You sign your kids up for little league, but you don’t take it too seriously unless they show remarkable early talent.
Yes, this sounds sort of ridiculous if you take it too literally. No, nobody is saying that there’s any kind of practical test for this or that anybody should be excluded because we found out that they secretly studied too hard.
But this is a part of American culture. And if you can’t understand it, then that just marks you out as foreign to that culture to an even greater degree.
This is the AI risk. And discipleship Is the only answer.
we will soon be facing one of the biggest, and most controversial, problems of humanity: most people are not really conscious and need someone, or something, to tell them what to do.
even with unlimited intelligence and agency, the average normie / npc / midwit left entirely to his own devices will not become some self-actualized übermensch happily thriving in abundance.
he will let himself wither away watching youtube shorts, jerking off, eating garbage and letting the world hijack his dopamine circuits until there is almost nothing left and he will keep complaining.
without anyone telling him what to do, what’s left is an animal following the path of least resistance from one stimulus to the next.
