ArjinFerman's profile

ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 13hr ago · Edited 13hr ago

If you burn billions of dollars trying to deliver something no one even bothers trying to make, then it can very easily prove fatal. It doesn' matter that the competition didn't try to beat him to the Cybertruck, or Semi, or Optimus, if these things are nothing but massive money sinkholes. Also, pretty sure that strictly speaking, Waymo beat him to the Cybercab / Robotaxi.

If you mess it up bad enough, it can even overturn your prior success. If Starship doesn't work out, and the competitors catch up to Falcon in the meantime, that's still pretty fatal for SpaceX.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 15hr ago

I don't know what more you'd want.

He told you: an acknowledgment that lab leak was the likely origin of COVID according to various western governments' own assesments. We're not talking about virologist speculations in the early stages of the pandemic. The passage you quoted is a perfect example of Scott doing exactly of what he's being accused of.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 1d ago

I understand not remembering who specifically said it, but why are you acting like the idea is out there that you're literally unable to come up with a motive for it?

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 6d ago

they're saying they use the same illiberal tactics as the woke

Do the illiberal tactics include trying to scare away Joe Rogan and other people with big platforms from having conversations with certain people? Do they include lumping in people you don't like with nazis? Do they include complaints about online abuse when people start commenting on how you're being ridiculous?

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 6d ago

This is the meaning of "woke" that is then applied to "the woke right" when it begins engaging in similar anti-free-speech behavior for partisan gains.

There's a slight problem here, because from my point of view the ~~Jedi are evil~~ "anti-woke" are the ones doing this. Trivially: who's the one whinging to Joe Rogan that he shouldn't have so many people with [insert opinion] on?

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 6d ago

"Matt Walsh posts Swastika on Timeline" is not a controversy that someone generally wants to be involved in.

On the other hand, if the sharks smell blood, they'll rip you to shreds. "Never apologize" has been the standard advice by people who observed these controversies with any amount of care, right-wing or otherwise.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 6d ago

The problem here is that the definition of Fascism is functionally non-liberal, Right Wing.

In the broad popular imagination, it might be, but fascism is a distinctly modernist/progressive ideology, and vast swathes of the Dissident Right have no love for modernity.

But the point is that poking the eye of the Boomer Consensus with edgy stuff like does not mean Walsh is arguing for Nazism.

A distinctly shortsighted tactic, that ruins the discourse for anyone trying to take things seriously, including those on the DR.

It's just flaunting a disrespect for norms enforced by Conservatives and Woke alike.

Why not just make jokes about cheddar cheese like other normies?

In fact that would be my criticism of Walsh, he's trying to have a foot in both camps.

I'd imagine that someone as high up on the influencer ladder as he is, would know it's not a game that you can play sustainably.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 6d ago

I do because it propagates a dangerous misconception about what 'woke' means.

Well, I'd be worried about this more if I thought the tame came about as a result of a genuine misconception. When I'm worried this is used to shut out my ideas, I prefer to play the reverse of the "Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand" card, and say "ok, I'm woke right, now address my arguments". It cuts to the chase, puts the ball in their court, and arguably actually lowers the chances of any misconceptions being spread.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 6d ago

If it was unintentional he would at minimum delete the tweet, and probably send another tweet apologizing and insisting it was a mistake.

That makes no sense. Why would he do that if it was unintentional?

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 6d ago · Edited 6d ago

The Dissident Right is bigger now than the alt-right ever was in its heyday in terms of engagement with ideas and content and influence.

Yes, but the Dissident Right is a broader category than the Alt Right. I have the feeling you're implying that the Boomer Consensus is anti-fascist, therefore the Dissident Right is fascist or fashy, whereas I would say it's merely anti- or non- liberal.

But both the Woke and Peterson will be scandalized by the DR critique of those values and the DR's rejection of this Boomer moral paradigm which they all pretend is centuries old but only goes back to, like the 60s at the earliest.

My post already got way too long, but I was considering a whole section comparing and contrasting the recent Triggernometry interviews with Deborah Frances and Lily Phillips, with a conversation between Konstantin Kissin and Benjamin Boyce. The first one is a bit stand-offish but Kisin and Foster are defensive if not apologetic, quick to assure that "we certainly don't hold that [insert right-wing opinion]". The second one is friendly and the tone is nearly giddy. Sure they ask some critical questions, but it's hardly what I'd call confrontational. This is in stark contrast to the conversation with Boyce, which is agrressive with a constant tone of moral outrage, for the high crime of thinking that maybe Churchill wasn't a good guy. Call me crazy, but I think people believing Deborah Frances' brand of feminism, and Philipsesque OnlyFans prostitutes have done far more damage to society than people with an axe to grind against Churchill, but it's the latter that get the moral outrage.

I believe he knew what he was doing.

Well, I certainly hope you're wrong. If you want to argue for nazism, argue for nazism, don't hide behind this "hee hee, I'm just a silly edgelord" bullshit. This sort of behavior is about the only thing that would justify the anti-"woke right" freak out, in my mind.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 6d ago · Edited 6d ago

What ancient Internet history can tell us about the rise of the Woke Right

A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of the Woke Right! We've discussed it before ourselves, opinion range from "it's an op" to "there might be something to it", but one way or the other, a decent chunk of the anti-woke coalition it's an issue that needs to be addressed.

Recently Douglas Murray went on Joe Rogan and had a conversation with Dave Smith about, among other things, the responsibility of influencers with huge platforms to the public. Smith and Rogan took the familiar position of "muh marketplace of ideas", while Murray believes that people with so much influence should be a bit more selective, because exposing the public to bad ideas will lead to some part of the audience uncritically adopting them.

The conversation made huge waves and sparked a massive discussion, articles by Konstantin Kisin, tweet storms by James Lindsay, follow up conversation between Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, between Peterson and Lindsay, and more recently between Tucker Carlson and Dave Smith. In short, though not all of them might put it in the same terms, some on the anti-woke side fear that following Trump's victory the right "got it's mojo back" and now some of it's more extreme ideas are entering the mainstream discourse, so the centrist liberals want to prevent the "pendulum swinging back"...

...and all I can think is "I've seen it all before"...

First as a farce...

Let me take you back to the year of our lord 2017. It wasn't that long ago, and yet the vibe of the time was so different it almost feels like it was all a dream. Back then the way to make money on big SocMeds was to clown on Social Justice, so everybody and their dog had to have a cartoon character Youtube channel deboonking Buzzfeed. The situation was so dire for SJs that any video trying to put their position forward would yield and endless stream of critical responses which, to add insult to injury, would end up filling the recommended feed of the original pro-SJ video. Trump has also just entered office for the first time, so in that atmosphere it felt like anti-woke liberalism is unstoppable. And then a few things happened:

The Killroy Conference

With so much online hype in the air, a person going by the name "BasedMama" decided to take the anti-SJW phenomenon to the next level, and host an IRL event. I still unironically think this was a great idea, even now the Dissident Right regularly talks about the importance of real-world organising, and with a guest list consisting of massive influencers from Tim Pool to Sargon of Akkad, the event had the potential to be a huge success. I can't point to anything specific now, but I distinctly remember the SJWs genuinely unnerved by the prospect of it taking place...

...but luckily for them it crashed and burned at an astonishing pace. First, the invited guests started complaining about demands to sign NDA's and non-compete contracts. The smaller ones went along with it, but the bigger ones, many no strangers to the conference circuit, said they're having none of it. Tim Pool publically dropped out with a video to his fans, explaining why he's not going to be at the event. The organizers' attempts at damage control only exasperated the backlash, causing even more guests to drop out. It even turned out that the guest list announced during the crowdfunding campaign was a "fake it 'till you make it" thing and some of the big names never actually signed on.

More relevant to what I want to discuss here: the whole event was marketed as a "free speech" conference, so naturally it attracted the attention of "witches": HBDers, Alt-Righters, and others with ideas rejected by polite society, and as it turned out, by the organizers themselves, who were on record expressing sympathy for the ideas of Social Justice, just thought that their current iteration went too far. That's all perfectly valid as far as I'm concerned, no one is entitled to a slot at a conference, but the usual way to handle this sort of issue is to say "you're welcome to come, but golly gee, we ran out of time/space to host any more speakers/panels", but BasedMama et. al. decided to handle it in the worst possible way: announce the witches will have their panels to get the crowdfunding / ticket money of their audiences, and only then say "oopsie, we ran out of slots". What's worse, people quickly joined the dots and realized that it's only people with a specific kind of views that there seems to be no time for. The "free speech" event was quickly seen for a sham, and all except for the most diehard supporters dropped out. An event that could have plausibly attracted thousands ended up get 20-40 attendants, from what I recall.

KrautAndTea's crusade against the Alt-Right

Back in the online world the youtuber KrautAndTea decided it's time to balance out his usual dunking on feminists and Muslim-immigration-enjoyers with dunking on the more extreme elements on the right. He started accusing various B-List youtubers of being cryptonazis, of trying to lure people in with relatively inoffensive critiques of society, and then radicalizing them into the Alt-Right. Also, with videos like "The Alt-Right is too Dumb for Genetics (and Maths)" and "The Alt-Right is too Dumb for Genetics and Physiology", he decided to take on the Big Kahuna - HBD, or what was then going by as Race Realism.

What he did not take into account, however, was the possibility that the academic establishment sold him a bill of goods, and the actual science is much more on the HBDers' side than he expected... Various Alt-Right youtubers like Alt-Hype and JF Gariepy proceeded to take turns taking the piss out of him, and pointing out each and every way he was wrong. The familiar dynamic of critical responses appearing, and becoming more popular than the original "deboonking" video was now unleashed on Kraut. It did not go well for him. He ended up crashing out, got caught red-handed coordinating to flag Alt-Right videos, and coming up with some convoluted Discord schemes to humiliate his opponents. Long story short, he ended up having to take a hiatus from the internet, and to rebrand upon comeback.

The Candid Saga

Back before anyone really heard of influencer marketing, an amazing new app took the internet by storm - Candid, an online forum promising to host uncensored anonymous conversations. All your favorite youtubers were shilling it. It was the Raid, Shadow Legends of online forums... until it was all taken down by a single autistic NEET...

A youtuber going by HarmfulOpinions decided to take a deeper look at the app, and quickly found out that rather than being uncensored, Candid's moderation was powered by a woke AI. What is now accepted as a fact of life was enough to spark a massive controversy back then, not only against the company, but against the influencers that failed to do their due diligence before shilling a product. The CEO's attempts at damage control were hilariously inept, and only resulted in the hole being dug deeper, but more to the point, starved for cash in the wake of the Adpocalypse, the anti-SJW influencers decided to circle the wagons around Candid. Some realized they backed the wrong horse, and exited gracefully, but others tried using their superior numbers (both in terms of videos and their reach) to discredit HarmfulOpinions and paint him as a conspiracy theorist.

This too did not go well. Candid collapsed as a company, and the influencers involved in shilling it to the bitter end took a massive hit to their credibility.

If you want a glimpse into the past as I saw it, you can watch Mister Metokur's Tales of Trout, and the archive of Harmful Opinions' Candid series. I don't know if I actually recommend them unless you really have nothing better to do. I used to find them hilarious, but they just don't land the same way anymore. I will say they are interesting as a time capsule, and Harmful's videos in particular feels like a sign of things to come - scammy Indian CEO's, AI training to surveil and censor dissidents, conspiracy theories that are, in hindsight, naive to not believe in - that series has it all!

There was more to the story than these 3 events, of course, but those are the broad strokes of what I remember. The end result was pretty much a total collapse of the Youtube anti-SJW sphere, and gave rise to another trend called "Internet Bloodsports", aiming to center authenticity and direct confrontations over fake politeness and highschool Mean Girls games, but ended in whoring yourself out for superchats and brandishing firearms on the streets of Florida, while singing what might as well have been Kanye's latest hit.

More importantly, it was followed by the rise of BreadTube and nearly a decade of darkness, as far as internet discourse is concerned.

...then as a tragedy?

Now, it may seem like I'm putting all the blame on the left-liberal faction of the anti-woke / anti-SJW sphere, and as much as I have issues with them, I want to give them their due. Kraut was right about cryptonazis luring people in with more inoffensive stuff. We regularly see it happen right here on the Motte, with that dude that keeps nuking his accounts, so Douglas' Murray's "be careful what you're watering" argument is not wrong.

I’ve also seen enough crowds being manipulated that I can even understand his sudden turn towards trusting the experts, especially if you keep the previous argument in mind. The antidote to bad speech might be more speech, and sunlight might be the best disinfectant, but if there are crypto-authoritarians on the loose, who have no qualms about presenting themselves dishonestly, they might be able to win the crowd over long enough to take political control, and shut off all opposition. This is essentially what the woke left did, and it’s what some are afraid the woke right might pull off as well.

The problem is that the entire legitimacy of liberalism rests on the free exchange of ideas. This is especially true for the anti-woke ones, as they spent the last 8 years fending off accusation of Nazism themselves, and begging for a seat at the table. If they want to shut off the secretive and the dishonest that’s fair enough (though I will have question about Murray's quiet mumbling when his support for a new war in Iran was brought up), but they have an obligation to directly confront the open and the honest, even if they find their views disgusting.

I don’t mind being called “woke right”, if you can actually address my ideas head-on. I’ve said it before - it’s perfectly natural for liberals to attack me with all their vigor, because I oppose their fundamental values. It would be sad and disappointing if this didn’t illicit the kind of visceral reaction they are showing. However, I do mind being called “woke right” if it’s just a way to shut me out of a conversation, by slapping a scary label on me.

Actually, forget about me minding anything, the argument I’m trying to make here is that it will be a disaster for the liberals, if they keep trying to win by gatekeeping. It will be like training an AI on it's own output. A reasonable concern about about the pendulum swinging too far back, will end in declaring that wanting the economy to serve the people is fascist, finding racism in ham sandwitches, and deranged theories about angel summoners. And if you position yourself as an expert and spend all this time complaining about all these clowns hiding behind comedy when confronted on their takes about serious issues, maybe come up with a better argument then "people love talking about Paul Wolfowitz because his name starts with a nasty animal, and he's Jewish".

I reversed Marx' famous quip, because it's all fun and games when the story involves cartoon avatars, and characters with names like BasedMama and KrautAndTea, but when I see Conservative Inc. playing the same "you are wrong, and dumb for believing this" game that Kraut did, the same "we're for free speech, but you shouldn't be given such a big platform" game that Killroy did, and the same whisper networks that would try to psy-op you into believing someone's an insane conspiracy theorist now coordinating to make "Woke Right" a thing, I don't really feel like laughing. I've seen how the story involving a bunch of online autists ends, so when I see these dynamics play out on the scale of Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, I get a bit nervous.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 7d ago

1970s-2023, I'd say. Your safe and prosperous world is a product of an overall competent policy. Just continuing and improving on Biden's program could have been enough. See the success of CHIPS act, for example.

I'm in a funny position where I mostly agree with you on China, but it's precisely because I mostly disagree with you about the competence of the previous regime (which hasn't even been soundly defeated yet). The period in question seems to be that of an obvious decline, the CHIPS act has a cool name, but much like it's European counterparts, I haven't really seen many tangible results of it. Quite frankly, to the extent the American economy is any good, it seems like the only reason for that is that the supposedly competent regime did not have total control, and had it's initiatives constantly frustrated, otherwise the US would look like Canada.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 7d ago

Yeah, you may have a better chance of getting that cute girl to talk to you if you ask her in the real world rather than like her profile on a dating app, but in the real world chances are you aren't going to cross paths.

I don't see how this makes any other point than that the apps spoiled you as much as the women.

In the real world there isn't a seemingly bottomless well of single women advertising their availability

Single women absolutely were advertising their availability. There not being a "bottomless well" effect is exactly what made it better than today.

I doubt there are many people who had a ton of game pre-app and are now getting nothing but crickets.

Do you think the complaints are about the top 1% with a ton of game?

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 8d ago

Yes, as we all know all complaints of decadence and corruption are frivolous. No society has ever gone into decline. No empire has ever fallen. Things only stay the same or improve.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 8d ago

I did finally start optimizing those DB queries, but didn't get a lot of tinkering time last week.

How are things on your side @Southkraut?

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 8d ago

Hard to say if that will work, though; teaching students how to think seems to be one of those things that people in education have been trying to do for ever

I'm not sure I buy it. "Teaching how to think" may have been a self-congratulatory justification for a while, but people in the past weren't that shy about teaching morals.

Not gonna lie, I do find the idea appealing, but these days I wonder if it's even possible. The whole idea just smells like the pretense of neutrality that liberals emanate, as long as they have ways of ensuring they will always win the argument.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 8d ago

I'm saying that the truly "average driver" as reflected in accident statistics does not really exist.

Sure, but I don't see why there needs to be. There's an X amount miles driven by humans, there's a Y amount of miles driven by AI, if y/$accideents >= x/$accidents then AI is "better than the average driver" even if there's no such individual person to benchmark against.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 9d ago · Edited 8d ago

Getting hazed by some bullshit class that everyone has to take is actually an important transformative experience.

If this is the point of those classes, shouldn't progressives be forced to write about why capitalism is awesome, and racism (against non-whites) is good, actually? Why do you think certain people get to swim in a sea of affirmation for their creed?

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 9d ago · Edited 9d ago

I asked ChatGPT to help me drop a bomb on Reddit that would cause a civil war

It's a fun essay, but this idea is never going to work. Few people parse ideas on their own terms. Most people constantly asses whether an idea will get you into trouble with your ingroup or not, so they'll instantly identify this as a hostile meme, and reject it out of hand.

Think of it this way: if feminists could hold their nose and get into an alliance with Muslim immigrants (to the point Julie Bindel was reeing about fascists when Tommy Robinson backed her on the Rotheram rape gangs fiasco), what makes you think any tension between anticapitalism and rainbow sexualities would cause a civil war?

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 9d ago

Ok, are you actually saying FSD is as safe as a human driver right now, or are you just pointing out reasons why being as safe doesn't necessarily mean wide scale adoption? The former is an interesting conversation, but the latter strikes men a zero stakes one about angels dancing on a pin.

Same question @jkf.

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ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 9d ago

Is full self driving more dangerous per mile than having a human drive?

I'm pretty sure it is, yes. Provably beating the average human, or even reaching the same level would be a huge milestone that Elon would be shouting from every roof. That ancient rationalist prophecy about truck drivers getting replaced by AI would have already come true.