The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I recently found a simple (albeit tedious) way to dramatically improve my experience of using Twitter, to filter out the specific topics which I hate, and I want to share this method.
It's simple: just keep identifying key words which you associate with below-average tweets being shown to you (according to your personal standards), and then keep adding those words to your muted words list. (Not just key words from top-level tweets, but also key words you associate with mediocre reply tweets as well).
This is mathematically guaranteed to make your life better, as long as those key words really are commonly found in your least-favorite tweets.
I have tried repeatedly letting Twitter know about specific tweets which I am not interested in, and over time it helps, but Twitter's algorithm seems to be very determined to "push" certain kinds of tweets (probably because those tweets are associated with higher overall engagement). The only absolute way to block these tweets is to block every single plausible unique word associated with those types of tweets.
To mute words on desktop browser, go to: Home > 3 dots (...) > Settings & Support > Settings & Privacy > Privacy & Safety > Mute & Block > Muted Words > "+"
Or set up a bookmark directing to https://twitter.com/settings/muted_keywords
(In the app it is a similar sequence of steps.)
Then decide how long you want to mute the word. (I usually mute words forever.) If you want to block a phrase, use quotation marks "". You can also choose to not mute tweets which are replying to your own tweets.
I know it's tedious to do this, but it will save you from reading thousands of awful tweets. It pays for itself in a massive way.
Also, Twitter will tell you which reply tweets have been muted, and you can display them if you want, to double-check that you are in fact muting tweets which aren't worth reading.
This is my list of muted words so far, in case you also want to block any of the tweets with these words, or just to see what this might look like. (One annoying aspect is that you have to mute literally every single permutation of certain words and topics.)
Muted words:
"#thread" savetonotion @savetonotion @threadreaderapp threadreaderapp @rattibha @readwise readwise "action shooter" fps santos shit insurrection j6 "gaming session" "ass up" rattibha unroll "my dude" misgender misgendering "biological woman" "biological female" TERF "gender critical" mutilate mutilation "biological male" "biological man" demons demon cucked cuck carroll doge "bitcoin prize" "exclusive content" puberty transitioning transition chevy "sexual harassment" "michael obama" michelle "IRA" hexican Litecoin cryptocurrency crypto bitcoin dysphoric dysphoria cdc flu "identifies as" pedo "minor attracted" pedophile "turning points" "charlie kirk" "vaccineinjuries" "vaccineinjured" "vaccineinjury" "james cameron" mtg "january6" "january 6" "jan6" "january 6th" avatar "sexual orientation" lindell pillow mypillow espn football basketball nba nfl crapper lgbwithoutthet fauci gates schwab WEF vaccines mrna gender tran troon trans covid vax unvaccinated vaccine "prince harry" markle incel trump impeachment impeached impeach hamlin damar aella Andrew Tate Kari Lake kari Kari's tates Tate's "Tate" Cobratate cobra tate "andrew tate" "andrewtate" repukkklican Hitler nazi "p e l o s i" nigga nigger "n word" hammering hammered hammers hammer bolsonaro bolsanaro lula qanon "piece of shit" truss underwear catturd2 catturd "name is david" berkeley nudist "body counts" "body count" "jake paul" prostitute's prostitute depape's depape "peter mccullough" ligma "gave the order" pelosi's pelosi vagina penis paul pelosi "paul pelosi" wordle shapecel wordcel autogolpe
One might think I was a liberal from reading this list, but actually I am a (mostly) conservative who is just tired of certain topics and would prefer to see other things now.
Also, some of these words do sometimes show up in great tweets, but not often enough for me to put up with all the worse tweets which contain those words.
I hope this is helpful!
I loled at your choice of words
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RLHF for social media.
Exactly!
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I'd like to say that I'm confused.
My Twitter feed is nowhere near as degenerate as yours must be, if you feel the need to roll out such filters. After I've broken it in, mine seems better than even curated Reddit at finding things I might enjoy!
I realize I was possibly overly vague about the specific ways I admire you, vectors along which I would welcome tips from you at any time, if you cared to share them-
-You seem to be more perceptive & appreciative of a wider array of cultures, than most
-You seem to be less limited by any conventional forms of identity, and more open to transformation
-You seem quite smart, and you're a very good writer
-You seem quite friendly and happy
Tips always welcome! I am sure I am not the only person here who appreciates your influence a lot.
I'd chalk this down to being a very atypical India who is quite unhappy in India. If you don't like your native culture, you can't help but try and find out more about others.
Now, over the years, I've become less of a West-aboo, especially give the rise of Wokism. I can appreciate the aspects of it I care to nurture, like liberalism; while also appreciating certain aspects of my own. Extended families, more interest in academic performance, the optional fallback of arranged marriages, all of these are things I now appreciate. But the best part of the West, and why I'm moving there, is that you have a great deal more freedom to import your own cultural mores in addition to the local ones, as opposed to cultures that are more insistent on conformity.
I've been a transhumanist ever since I was a child reading sci-fi.
Ever since I realized the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel
There's no solution for me to share here, either you are simply highly open-minded and unattached to your current form, or you aren't. You could try psychedelics if you want to try and boost your openness to experience, but that has its own risks and downsides like becoming more susceptible to woo. As a doctor, while I consider the human body as a marvel, I can also see it as the machine it is, with obvious design flaws.
Thank you! I pride myself on my writing, and being significantly smarter than average, even if it's gauche to celebrate the latter. I've never taken an explicit IQ test, but based on standarized tests, I should be at least 99th percentile in terms of IQ, or ~130, which is also around what I got the times I solved Ravens Progressive Matrices (a very large component of modern IQ testing) online or with an app. Still wish I was smarter though, and while my mom was great at art and by dad at math, when it was my turn the both canceled out, leaving me a 99.999th percentile Wordcel haha
Unfortunately, there's no real way, easy or hard, to significantly boost your intelligence at all; and humans have been trying for a good while. Of course, if you're a Mottizen, you're already a cut above average.
If you want your kids to be smart, suppress the urge to marry hot bimbos, and choose a smart partner. Rich dudes who marry trophy wives with an empty display case in their skulls are doing their kids a disservice.
As for writing, well, once again largely immutable, but with significant effort, you can improve to a degree. Additionally, writing a lot will obviously improve your quality and output. Now, you can also use GPT-4 as a writing aid, albeit for me it's often not worth the hindrance since I still think I can write better than it can if I care to.
I do my best to be nice to people until they give me good reason otherwise, be it online or IRL. This can be improved with practice, though my parents inculcated a great deal of politeness in me, and in my adulthood I've noticed you can get quite far by being kind and considerate.
Unfortunately, I am anything but happy IRL, even if my efforts to be more expressive and enthusiastic than most give that impression. I'm pretty depressed, to the point that I'm mostly just holding on till I can find a definitive cure, perhaps ketamine therapy in the UK, or electroconvulsive therapy, albeit the latter scares me due to memory loss.
Still, I do try to be nice, and mostly avoid descending into bitterness in my interpersonal relationships.
We are very lucky to have you in the West! I hope you will always be well-treated.
I dislike the lack of nuance most Westerners bring to immigration. Every person is different. There are some native Westerners I wish we would kick out, and some immigrants I would bribe to bring in. But almost nobody else wants to take things on a completely case-by-case basis.
Maybe we are both grass-is-always-greener-on-the-other-side types. I don't like the USA very much, but I hope it will do well for the sake of my loved ones. And for the sake of my Indian friends, I hope India will do well, too!
Powerful words!
Nice perspective :).
It shouldn't be considered gauche, IMO. A lot of high-IQ people aren't actually smart enough to celebrate it, because if it were more celebrated, it would change the culture towards encouraging people to develop their intelligence more. This would benefit society at large, and it would especially benefit the high-IQ types.
This seems to be one of many perverse tradeoffs I have observed with high IQ. High IQ people should by a narrow theory be utterly dominant, especially in an age like ours, and yet they aren't, for a variety of strange reasons like this self-abnegating tendency (including having so few children, although perhaps in the future that won't matter).
I mostly agree with you, yet I also think it's strange and can't really be true... How is it that we can change our muscular strength so much, but our intelligence so little??? What evolutionary purpose does that serve?
Not only does it seem so hard to improve overall intelligence, it seems quite hard to even change our type of intelligence.
Haha, amusing advice, and probably good advice!
I would need the help a lot more than you do, so I will try it :).
Good for you & for everyone else.
Oh no! I truly wouldn't have guessed that. I am so sorry.
I was once very depressed for many years, over a decade ago. Eventually, with enough changes to diet, sleep, exercise, beliefs, and social circles, I became much happier (but barely any smarter, which frustrates me).
My general suggestion is to keep trying new things, but to first maximize your trials with safe and highly varied experiments.
Only once you have tried all of the safe herbs, supplements, diets, beliefs, meditations, sleep aids, exercises, sunlight exposure, hobbies, people, environments, etc., should you try something like ECT, IMO. (Although maybe ECT has been improved since the version used by a highly intelligent friend of mine, which had a horrible long-term effect on her mind and didn't even make her feel any better.)
(Maybe ketamine, especially starting with a low dose, might be quite safe, I never researched it. But it seems like a weird idea to use an anesthetic to become a better person.)
Also, my experience is that lots of 0.1%-3% improvements will add up to a huge and resilient overall improvement. Small improvements really are enough, and a more diverse set of experiments and solutions yields far more self-awareness.
Unless I have a severe accident, I doubt I could ever be severely depressed again. For other people, if their pill stops working they are SOL, and they won't understand themselves any better than they did before.
That is admirable. It shows you still have fight in you, and standards.
Thank you!
On the topic of why intelligence isn't easy or even merely difficult to improve:
Unlike larger muscles, more intelligence didn't have any inherent downsides in the ancestral environment. Today, smarter people are more likely to end up in dysgenic IQ shredders like cities, or simply have less children, but that wasn't really the case before.
If you go from being a normal dude to being absolutely jacked, your basal metabolic rate can go from like 2500 to 4000, which is absolutely massive. That's even leaving aside exercise. In earlier times, when we weren't effectively post scarcity for calories, if being twice as strong didn't allow you to get literally twice as much food, you're going to starve to death while a scrawny dude might scrape by.
Thus, our bodies are programmed such that they refuse to hold onto to extra muscle unless it's being both actively used and well fed.
On the other hand, both Einstein and a village idiot have nigh identical brains that born burn 20 watts regardless of whether they're deriving E=mc^2, or going ooga booga.
In genetics, there's strong evidence that intelligence is a consequence of health, that every deleterious mutation decreases intelligence and there are very few mutations that increase it. The greater the mutational load, the lower the IQ. If you had an cloning machine that could create an individual who had the literal average of everyone's genes, they'd likely be significantly smarter than the average person because the errors would be canceled put.
(Brain size is a component, but that's the gist of it)
Since intelligence is so useful, there have been strong evolutionary pressures to increase it, such that the low hanging fruit has been long plucked by evolution itself. Most pharmaceutical aids are simply tradeoffs, such as Adderall increasing focus but decreasing creativity.
IQ scores can be increased by practise or education, but only to a small degree. That's because IQ, while a very good proxy got intelligence, is still a proxy that can be gamed. But the gains are limited, you can't take a 100 IQ person and get them to score 140 no matter how much you train them, and I doubt they could make 120 either. So in practise and reality, intelligence is largely immutable after birth.
Thank you for probably the most informative reply comment I've ever gotten online!
These reasons satisfactorily explain to me why it is so hard to become more intelligent, thank you.
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That is true.
If you are fairly well-off (say, a doctor or techbro) but also very unattractive, how might you do this while making reasonably sure that the kids are raised in an OK environment...no abusive shitbaggery, plus basic food, shelter, and medical care. I don't know about the route of importing a wife...that might work, but again, she's disgusted by you (for good reason!) and is only with you for $$$ and a green card. Maybe the husband's going to be a decent human being to the stepchildren. Maybe not; I've heard some stories.
I have no idea what specific combination of events made you so intensely self-loathing and nihilistic.
Since you're a med student, just know that you're going well past the LD-50 of black pills, and to no good end. There is such a thing as overcorrection away from normie stupidity.
Even if you're very unattractive, it's still exceedingly unlikely that your spouse would be outright abusive to your kids. You'd have to pretty bloody unlucky, and in any relationship of reasonable length, you're likely to be able to filter out the psychos youeelr before they baby trap you.
The "maybe, maybe not" mindset is pointlessly helpless when perhaps fewer than 5% of all people are abusive to their kids, and maybe sub 1% for outright damaging.
Also, women are simply not as motivated by looks alone as men are, a strong provider looks eminently more desirable once they're past the fuck around phase in their early 30s.
I get it, you drew the short straw on looks, height, and being remarkably autistic. Even then, if you're intelligent and hard working, you can compensate a great deal with money.
Maybe your mail order wife isn't head over heels in love with you, but in all likelihood she's going to be content, and if you have kids, unlikely to abuse them, because most people don't abuse their biological offspring.
I am not sure about that. I think I'd be divorced at best and get my throat slit for life insurance money or something at worst. I don't blame her for that and am even mostly okay with that... if she's a decent mom, provides basic food shelter and medical care with her ill-gotten gains, and doesn't look the other way if her new boyfriend rapes the kids. I think it is relatively unlikely but fairly possible that my spouse might be an abusive shitbag to the kids…but more likely that she divorces my disgusting ass when the ink is dry on the green card, gets with another dude, and that dude is abusive to the stepkids. Kinda sucks for your kids to be raped by Mom’s new boyfriend while you can’t do shit about it.
As far as content: people can habituate to quite a lot, but I think that the absolute best outcome is that she is only mildly disgusted by me, loves our kids, and is with me because I send a bunch of money to her desperately impoverished family of origin. I don’t know much about alimony…say I’m earning $250k after taxes, could she potentially get $150k of that as alimony and child support? Maybe she endures being with me because she is devoutly religious or something and admires that I’m basically a cash cow for her family? Like…I don’t see a damn bit of value I’d provide that a smelly ATM can’t. At that point I’m basically livestock on legs, being milked for cash and either put out to pasture (where I had better cough up that milk and lots of it, or go to prison) or slaughtered (if it’s not too dangerous, and I’m worth it as meat).
No, most women are not like this. My argument is essentially garbage IN, garbage OUT: you fish with dogshit bait, you get shit results.
I know someone whose mother tried to fucking kill them when they were ten. Their father? A 5'4" special forces officer. Height can be that brutal if you aren't also rich, part of a religious community, or lucky.
As far as nihilism and self-loathing: I’ll cop (somewhat) to the second. As for the first: being very unattractive often leads to that. As can large changes in appearance, in either direction. Still. My interpretation is that people, in thinking that I can have a relationship, have faith in me to turn shit into sugar. To have a good (or at least decent) family in the midst of tragedy, to be a good father and husband while dealing with the fallout of a wife in and out of some kind of institution or other. That is a lot of faith to have in a person: be a good father and husband while dealing with What’s Eating Gilbert Grape-tier shit. I’ve seen it happen…one of my medschool classmates had a background like that.
You say this as if 5'4" men's wives usually attempt to kill their kids. That's such a rare occurrence that you're doing an incredible amount of reaching just to connect the two factors.
5'4" men are either remarkable, very lucky, or they decide where they want the ambulances. I've only once seen a 5'4" man with a woman that was sane and not morbidly obese. He was a future neurosurgeon with enough charisma for a career in politics.
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This could still work for you, too! You could check if any key words correlate with your less-favorite tweets, and even though those words might be a lot "nicer" than the words in my list, muting those words should still improve your feed!
I wade into some culture war waters, and those tend to be foul, or foul-adjacent enough for the Twitter algorithm to assume that I am interested in this kind of stuff. I am very glad to learn that other people aren't being subjected to the same stuff I have indirectly subjected myself to.
Also, I (truly) believe that you are a better person than me, dear self_made_human, so it doesn't surprise me that your feed is better than my feed :D. Do you have a Twitter account you feel comfortable sharing? I could see who you are following.
Actually, since I am feeling "carpe diemish" and might have a bit of your attention- do you have any tips on becoming a more evolved and self-made human? :) (No worries if you don't feel like answering such a big question asked by a lurker, haha.)
The people who say flattery won't get you anywhere are lying, so I'm mostly happy to comply ;)
I do have a twitter account, but the issue is that it's entangled with my IRL name, which I'd rather not associate with my other online persona. It wouldn't even be of much use to you, since I mostly lurk.
That said, these are the accounts I follow:
Soren Iverson
@soren_iverson
New ideas daily. Contact: hello@soreniverson.com Twitter subscribers get exclusive ideas ✨
prerat
@prerationalist
social media influencee
gaut
@0xgaut
@alongsidefi
— Tweets that won't put you to sleep
near
@nearcyan
somehow, I keep ending up in the AGI timeline
😈
@deepfates
conceptual artist
Jim Fan
@DrJimFan
@NVIDIA
AI Scientist.
@Stanford
PhD. Building multimodal generalist agents. Sharing hot ideas & deep dives! NeurIPS Best Paper: MineDojo. Ex-
@OpenAI
,
@GoogleAI
@goth
@goth600
ACCELERATE, THIS.
Ethan Mollick
@emollick
Professor
@Wharton
studying innovation & startups and (now) AI. Democratizing business education with games. Substack: https://oneusefulthing.substack.com
janus
@repligate
🔄Bing Orchestrator🔁 🌐🎰🌐🎰🎰🌐🎰🌐 💻💻💻💻💻💻💻💻 ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ 🎮🔤🔀🌎🗣🚪👥🔎 Tweets can be accessed via Bing chat 🔑
roon
@tszzl
spice must flow
ToughSF
@ToughSf
Matterbeam. Author of the ToughSF blog. Original SuperNerd. Kurzgesagt Team Duck. Discord http://discord.gg/MzSjtqw
depths of wikipedia
@depthsofwiki
I am
@anniierau
and I also run
@internetdepths
!
James Miller
@JimDMiller
Smith College economist. Author Singularity Rising, Game Theory at Work. JD Stanford, PhD U of Chicago. AGI alignment, free speech, free markets.
Fascinating
@fasc1nate
Posting interesting science, gadgets, history, art, and more.
Stonetoss Comics
@stone_toss
@FlurksNFT
Rob Miles
@robertskmiles
Explaining AI Alignment to anyone who'll stand still for long enough, on YouTube and Discord. Music, movies, microcode, and high-speed pizza delivery
Zero HP Lovecraft 🦅🐍
@0x49fa98
Let no one reduce us to the status of ascetics. There is no pleasure more complex than that of thought.
Flick
@Flick06484765
https://boosty.to/dimetrius http://patreon.com/flick
Alexander Kruel
@XiXiDu
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality” ― Seneca
KEITH BLAST
@keithjohnstack
I just want to play video games. No commissions or interviews. he/him
Zvi Mowshowitz
@TheZvi
Blogger world modeling, now mostly AI and AI x-risk, at Don't Worry About the Vase (http://thezvi.wordpress.com or SS), founding Balsa Research to fix policy.
Stanford AI Lab
@StanfordAILab
The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), a leading #AI lab since 1963 shares its latest AI news, research, and more! ⛵️🤖
DeepLearning.AI
@DeepLearningAI_
Gain the knowledge and skills for an AI career.
Bryan Caplan
@bryan_caplan
GMU econ prof, NYT bestseller, father of 4, author of Myth of the Rational Voter, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, Case Against Education, and Open Borders.
Scott Alexander
@slatestarcodex
I have a place where I say complicated things about philosophy and science. That place is my blog. This is where I make terrible puns.
Paul Graham
@paulg
Robin Hanson
@robinhanson
Let’s skip witty repartee & discuss fundamental questions. Views are mine, not GMU’s or Virginia’s. Books: http://ageofem.com, http://elephantinthebrain.com
Google DeepMind
@DeepMind
We’re a team of scientists, engineers, ethicists and more, committed to solving intelligence, to advance science and benefit humanity.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
@ESYudkowsky
Ours is the era of inadequate AI alignment theory. Any other facts about this era are relatively unimportant, but sometimes I tweet about them anyway.
Of these merry band of misfits, ZeroHPLovecraft is by far the biggest Culture Warrior, and while I don't endorse the vast majority of his views, he's almost always very funny in a mean way. There's a lot of shitposting in there, so caveat emptor.
In terms of being a better, more self-actualized person, I doubt I'm the best person to be giving you advice. Am I doing anything special to be the way I am? Not that I can tell. The best advice I can give you is-
A) Take performance enhancing drugs, medical science will almost certainly be good enough to undo most of the damage if you aren't a retard about it. Since I have ADHD myself, it's not really negotiable if I have to worry about academics.
B) Read shit tons. Of course, given that you're a denizen of The Motte, you too likely have a crippling insight porn addiction, and your life might actually become better if you suddenly develop illiteracy and need to focus on IRL matters.
If there's any specific aspect about my persona you want to know more about, feel free to ask. Who doesn't like talking about themselves?
Thank you very much for sharing your follows, and I understand your desire to preserve free-spirited anonymity :).
Those are a great list of follows. I follow most of them already. I will add the remaining ones, too.
Yes, I also have "crippling insight porn addiction", but there's "insight", and then there's.... INSIGHT. I would guess you have more of the latter, than most purveyors of "insight" have.
What were some of your favorite sources of INSIGHT? Favorite books or websites or... whatever.
What "performance-enhancing drugs" have helped you the most overall? I apologize if you've already written about this before and I missed it. I am doing better recently with repeated small dosings of nutritional yeast and NALT (for the dopamine boost). But I like to try new things!
I mentioned "aspects of your persona" in my other reply comment to you.
Let's see, the most obvious suggestions are ones you likely already know, such as Scott, LessWrong etc.
For keeping up with scientific advances, I highly recommend Quanta Magazine, it manages the rare feat of being very high quality and in-depth, while also being approachable for laymen. Unlike typical popsci sites, they don't dumb things down.
Other substacks I quite like are Emil Kirkegard and Richard Hanania, they cover quite a bit of thoughtcrime surrounding HBD.
Zvi Moshowitz is a good follow on LW, Twitter or his own substack.
Matt Lakeman covers loads of stuff on his, from interesting ethnographies to geography and science.
In terms of performance enhancing drugs, stimulants are great, assuming you can get a prescription. If you work out, creatine is cheap and also surprisingly effective with a degree of scientific validation most PEDs can't compare to, while being entirely legal.
Thank you, I will check out Quanta, and thank you for reminding me about Matt Lakeman :). (The others I already followed, luckily... convergent interests!)
Creatine makes me feel irritable, and it's the most ADHD I ever get, which is weird, since it does't seem to have that effect on most other people. I just literally can't seem to control my attention when I use creatine, and my working memory becomes terrible.
And because it doesn't seem to affect other people that way, I can't copy other peoples' research on what to do to balance out the negative side effects. I love the increase in physical stamina from creatine, and the positive effects of more exercise do help somewhat.
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Depends on what spaces you hang out at.
In the past, the folks I followed on twitter were mostly in the Software industry. It was not a fun experience to find out that most of the well known and influential folks in the industry who I once looked up to would unplatform me if I ever tried to add some nuance into the whole spiel.
I very much had to filter out any culture war relevant topics or keywords from my feed to restrict it to the technical content embedded between the rants and snide remarks.
Now most of them are off to Mastodon and my twitter feed is healthier for it.
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