domain:alexepstein.substack.com
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5hr ago
It's not just political subs. Reddit is a web of lies, misrepresentation, shills, fraud, and trolling. Believe me I wish it weren't the case. I mean I have a long train commute.
TIRM
5hr ago
Geeze. You weren't kidding about neoliberal being hysterical today. They're in rare form. I expect this from /r/politics and their ilk. I thought neoliberal thought they were high brow.
DirtyWaterHotDog
5hr ago
It seems she and her husband converted to Hinduism.
She was raised Hindu. You can't convert to Hinduism. No Indian would be able to explain what that even means. Pagans are flexible. The Indian "far-right" (RSS) routinely suggest that Indian minorities are religious chimeras, calling them Muslim-Hindus or Christian-Hindus. The data backs their claims. A majority of Indian Christians & Muslims believe in karma & a plurality believe in reincarnation. For Hindus, the lines between lines between culture & religion are blurry, with very few consensus beliefs.
Push comes to shove, I'd say Hinduism is about:
- Karma (Actions have consequences)
- Dharma (Sanctity of the duties you've signed up for + abiding by a personal moral code)
- Rebirth till Moksha (Less worldly desires is better. Ends up as a general tree-hugger syndrome)
- General neutrality of the divine. (The system exists for all. No special cut out for devout believers.)
Contrary to popular belief, vegetarianism & non-violence are relatively modern (20th century) ideas and part of Nehru/Gandhi's 20th century Vishwa-guru (teacher to the world) propaganda. Other than a small subsection of Brahmins & Jains (over-represented in the US diaspora), the rest don't put either idea on a pedestal.
All this to say, I'd caution against imposing Abrahamic models onto Pagan religions. American Hinduism is closer to ACX-Rationalism than the sort of conservative thought that is ascribed to India's rural Hindi heartland.
That aside, what's her reason for opposing gay marriage? I know Christians and Muslims have a scriptural disgust for it. I'd like to know where young Tulsi's strong opposition to it comes from.
TIRM
5hr ago
"nah, it just feels wrong"
Perfectly justifiable. If you prefer: "My priors of this being true are so enormously low and a single extreme outlier poll is such a small unit of evidence, so I refuse to significantly update my belief regarding this. The likelihood that a single poll is wrong is far greater than the likelihood that my entire understanding of the electorate is this far off. By far greatest likelihood is a one-off polling error. Miniscule likelihood it is correct and I am demented and detached from reality in my understanding of Trump's support."
Luckily our brains have excellent heuristics that approximate all this. So at a glance you can easily say "Smollett is a liar, no way that happened" or "Nah, that poll is just wrong". And you sound jivey talking about priors and weights of evidence if you simply state the obvious likelihood delivered to you by the sophisticated mechanisms in your brain.
Relevant: Dominic Cummings complaints about the UK government and its clownish bureaucracy
For the first year of Gove’s time in the DfE (May 2010 – spring 2011), ministers were up until the early hours proofreading officials’ drafts of letters and rejecting about nine out of ten because of errors with basic facts, spelling, or grammar. When I got embroiled in rows about this in Q1 2011, some MPs had been sent no reply for six months. Despite several complaints to senior officials, nothing happened, shoulders were shrugged – ‘cuts, we need more resource, lack of core skills, all very difficult’ and so on.
The problem with Western governments isn't that they literally can't find people who know how to spell, or fix lifts, or avoid idiotic wars.
There are plenty of smart people in government and even more who are theoretically available. The whole institutional structure doesn't prioritize doing things correctly. As a collective, they pursue vibes of what they think might be popular amongst their peers (see Team Kamala's decision of why not to go on Rogan). They try to strengthen the power and control of their class and subdue any threats (this is their highest shared priority). They try to deflect all bad outcomes away from themselves. And they like to plot and play politics, diverting national resources for their own internal factional interests. That's how they rise up the ranks.
The key thing isn't scrapping programs or reducing spending but changing the whole incentive structure and culture so that stupid programs aren't initiated and wasteful spending doesn't emerge in the first place. Politicians and officials must not feel safe going 'let's invade this country for made-up reasons' and creating a mess. They must not feel safe wrecking national industries. In the private sector, if you wreck and blunder you end up sinking your company and getting removed from the leadership pool. Ideally you're sifted out through competition before you get into any high-ranking positions. You can't really wriggle out of that (though some manage it).
In the public sector, it's very difficult for even the most effective wreckers to completely destroy a country. Competition between states is quite limited in most places. Responsibility is so diffuse they can lay blame elsewhere. The culture gets more corrupt under the lesser competitive pressure.
To take a less contemporary example, consider Admiral Yi of Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi_Sun-sin
He was an incredible leader on the battlefield but he was constantly getting imprisoned, tortured and demoted by his jealous rivals and nervous superiors. The Korean governance culture was inferior, it squandered enormous amounts of talent. We can see a similar kind of suppression (albeit much less severe) on Musk under the old regime, despite him clearly being an incredible strength for America. Presumably his European equivalent got suffocated before he even got started.
That's what needs to be changed, the entire mindset. This is very hard to do, creating good institutions in the first place needed hundreds and hundreds of years of bloody wars in Europe. Maybe we could try introducing fearsome anti-corruption commissions and merit-based promotions like they have in China. But even then, there are problems with people gaming the rules: 'if the mayor is fired when a disaster kills 36 people, then all disasters will be reported as killing 35'. That example may not be specifically true but it gives a general impression.
Only a clear and inescapable need for true performance can really get it done. I don't know how to achieve this, apart from warfare or international races to achieve a certain goal.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
5hr ago
By comparison, I still remember when Trump's nickname for Rubio was "Little Marco."
Yeah, that one's going to stick around to the end of his career.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
5hr ago
she was ponderously slow to realize Assad was an asshole, and remained skeptical that he used chemical weapons after.
Assad is an asshole, but my understanding is that the evidence he used chemical weapons is actually quite weak and possibly false intelligence. And it's not like the US and her allies and the international community more broadly have never lied about Middle Eastern dictatorships doing bad things for propaganda.
But it has been a long while since I've looked into this all.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
5hr ago
I mean, that's been the general pattern with so many others Trump converts previously, why would it change?
That's just people, every day we negatively polarize just a little bit more into being a complete magatard or a woke zealot.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
6hr ago
Sure, but voters are bad at punishing politicians for specific transgressions in the best of times. If Desantis really wanted to snub Trump he could likely get away with it if he staged it correctly, and didn't go too far like nominating a Democrat. That's not to say that that's likely to happen, just that it's a possibility, which is part of why it's implausible that Trump has some 4D plan in his head. It's far more likely that one of Trump's advisors put Rubio's name forward, Trump went "oh yeah, that guy, he's alright, he didn't vote to impeach me" and that was it.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
6hr ago
On further thought I take that back, a good college try at devising a "system" that prevents (reads: delays as long as possible) the inevitable corruption is a noble endeavor and I'm sorry for discouraging it.
Quantumfreakonomics
6hr ago
I'd be an asshole too if I had to defend my country from ISIS, Turkey, The United States, and Israel all at the same time.
Goodguy
6hr ago
I think the Democrats unleashed the most massive wave of bot and shill astroturfing that they ever have before onto Reddit in the last year or so. I have heard a theory that seems very plausible to me, which is that one of their main astroturf focuses has been to put political posts up on relatively obscure subreddits and then massively upvote them using automated or semi-automated means to drive them to the front page. https://old.reddit.com/r/houstonwade/ is often presented as an example of this theory, and if you take a look at it it seems to check out.
The astroturfing combined with years of censorship having driven out most political dissent means that a large fraction of the political discourse on Reddit in the last few months has consisted of waves of bot and shill astroturfing slamming into the minds of people who are already mentally prepared to believe in wild pro-Democrat political theories.
Reddit is almost done as a political discussion space. Even /r/politicaldiscussion, which was maybe like 70% pro-Democrat a few years ago, is now more like 90% pro-Democrat. /r/moderatepolitics is still holding out but I don't know for how much longer. The dirtbag and socialist left on places like /r/stupidpol and /r/redscarepod is still being tolerated but again, I do not know for how much longer given that they criticize mainstream Democrats almost as much as Republicans do.
I don't know if trying to turn Reddit from 95% pro-Democrat to 99% pro-Democrat was worth what the Democrats invested in it, but it might be. Such astoturfing campaigns are not necessarily very expensive, and in a close election they well might swing it.
X has also been full of astroturfing, and still is for that matter. But in the case of X, the astroturfing is coming through from both sides, rather than almost entirely from the Democrats like on Reddit. I don't know if Republicans didn't bother to invest much into astroturfing Reddit or if it's just that their attempts got foiled by censorship, but on X their astroturfing attempts seem to have decent penetration.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
6hr ago
Because I'm not a hypocrite? I don't really think it needs a justification to be willing to apply rules consistently, or to be willing to suffer the negative consequences of a rule because you believe it's a good rule overall.
SophisticatedHillbilly
6hr ago
Machine operator is a pretty basic role. If you’ve ever used a 3d printer and had to deal with leveling the bad, clearing stuck plastic, verifying that prints are proceeding correctly etc. it’s basically that but with bigger machines.
I found some commentary on /r/moderatepolitics where she's criticised for being pro-Russian (so of course a Russian agent) and pro-Assad (because apparently she visited Syria and had an opportunistic meeting with Assad; after which she was a 'skeptic' of Assad using chemical weapons on his own people). There was some speculation on reddit that the senate wouldn't confirm her DNI appointment for the above reasons. She apparently also backed conversion therapy when she was younger. I haven't fact checked or done a deep dive on any of this. I'm just providing a hook for people to start their own research.
I'm actually a big fan of Tulsi after seeing her several times on Rogan (Transcript). She is against the MIC, the deep state (unelected bureaucrats) and forever wars. I was disappointed that she didn't get SecDef and worried that she would be sidelined, but my confidence was restored with the DNI selection. She's unironically what I would like to see as a female president.
I don't know how 2028 primaries will turn out, but I'd expect Rubio, Vance and Gabbard to compete. Vance and Gabbard seemed to get along very well on the campaign trail (Vance being an (ex)marine and Gabbard being Reserve Army).
Edit: Adding some links. Atlantic article doing some character assassination here.
gattsuru
6hr ago
Most of the opposition is going to point at her record on Syria -- she was ponderously slow to realize Assad was an asshole, and remained skeptical that he used chemical weapons after . She cites the Iraq War as cause, and that's fair to an extent, but it's an odd thing to bring to the DNI. I dunno whether to read it as a (figurative) bomb-thrower that'll root through some of the various agencies' more corrupt bits or at least throw some chaos into the various whisper campaigns, or just something she really wanted and Trump was willing to give her.
Some of that's just a tendency for conservative hawks to treat anyone remotely skeptical of their institutions as deadly poison, but even in the self-described neocon circles that wouldn't have cared about other spheres are really concerned on this one -- there was a minor news cycle when she mentioned demanding a ceasefire around Ukrainian that was mostly noteworthy for Romney calling it treason. Same from the places Democrats have been hawks. Which... may or may not be persuasive to you.
She shares a bit of crystal healer woo with RFK, though that probably matters less at here than any other cabinet position. She's also separately a social conservative on a lot of stuff (gays, trans people, abortion, DEI), though that's mostly a separate deal.
From the Blue Tribe-specific stuff, it's a little more boring: she pushed against Clinton getting the 2016 nomination, and hasn't treated Trump or January 6th as The Worst Thing Ever, and is not pro-LGBT.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
6hr ago
But why?
SubstackNecron
6hr ago
feds stop putting roadblocks in front of them
If/When the Dems regain power, especially if MAGA dies fully with Trump, what do you think is going to happen to them long term? My guess is imprisonment or just thrown off a building depending on the fallout of a Trump administration.
While I see and understand the throughline of her appeal to the Gribbler faction, I don't see or understand what earns her crank-hood.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
6hr ago
She's followed quite a similar arc that RFK Jr. has, initially being a Democrat but being very out of step with any major faction. She also has a big thing for conspiracies, like claiming the Syrian gas attack was a false-flag by the British, or being very worried about "biolabs" in Ukraine that Putin was using as fodder for innuendo that the US was creating a supervirus to mass-murder Slavs. The Gribble faction loves stuff like this.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6hr ago
Isn’t “welder” likely to be a union shop, too? And I’m not even sure what qualifies one as a “machine operator.”
zeke5123a
6hr ago
It is functionally the same. Ad hominem in the classic sense is “your argument is bad because you are a bad person.”
There was zero intent to engage with the concept that Tulsi is good or bad pick Instead, the poster just said “she is a crank.” It is functionally the same—not addressing the issue and instead basically name calling.
Funny enough the poster claimed I was engaging in ad hominem. Instead, I was pointing out that the poster’s judgement isn’t great—especially when it comes to political topics. So read most charitably his comments re Tulsi amounted to “trust my judgement.” So bringing up his bad judgement is directly addressing his argument. He couldn’t handle it and decided to throw a fit and block me.
MaximumCuddles
6hr ago
r/neoliberal on suicide watch rn.
I know, reddit. But they are so confident that she’s a Russian agent. What’s the deal with that? Is it just normal radlib demoralized Russia hysteria? It seems deeper than that.
On a related note; I’ve been on Reddit a lot in the last week, mostly out of morbid curiosity. I had stayed away for probably 12-18 months, and it’s terrible. A much worse echo chamber than I remember, and it was incredibly bad before. Good god.
You and the other so-called 'partisan hacks' don't get to say you're right because a coin came up heads despite a poll saying it had a 60% chance to come up tails. The fact that you 'correctly predicted' an event has little inherent bearing on whether your reasoning was correct.
I'm incredibly tired of hearing this talking point. Did you correctly predict the election map in 2020? in 2016? Do you have a better record overall than the pollsters you critiscize? What reason do I have to believe that you are not a broken clock that is right twice a day?
On the other hand, you're fine to critiscize OP calling someone a crank with no substantive reasoning.
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