The Thiel antichrist thing was a reverse Streisand effect to block out the idea from the internet that he himself is the antichrist.

That idea is now ungoogleable

doesn't the antichrist say he's not the antichrist?

Historically the RAM industry has done the opposite (ramped up production aggressively due to high prices) only for that production to all come online during a glut.

This process can be fatal for a company as your expensive fixed investment hits a demand cycle that can turn overnight.

So it’s not about being a moustache twirling villain and conniving to keep prices high, it’s just not responsible or sensible to ramp up production massively based on a temporary AI bubble that could pop at any moment

A lot of people take pride in not being able to understand CSS despite it not being that complicated.

I’ve never understood that but for some reason it is a thing

A lot of people also took a lot of pride in not knowing their editors very well, and just the very basics of git. It's no wonder LLMs are so popular.

Most people don't actually like the taste of alcoholic drinks when they first try them as a teenager.

The reason you like the taste of beer is in large part because your brain has learned to associate that taste with good things happening (the alcohol feeling).

Same with coffee, it's bitter, objectively should taste bad, but you learn to like it.

It's the same process

> The reason you like the taste of beer is in large part because your brain has learned to associate that taste with good things happening (the alcohol feeling).

Explain the popularity of non-alcoholic beer.

> Same with coffee, it's bitter, objectively should taste bad

Many fruits, vegetables, and foods (cheeses, unsweetened chocolate) are naturally bitter and widely enjoyed, even though they don't give you a high.

People also enjoy bitter caffeine-free herbal teas.

> Most people don't actually like the taste of alcoholic drinks when they first try them as a teenager.

Many children don't like vegetables either. Adults more often do. Our tastes change as we grow older.

Countries can have different ethnicities, political parties and religions.

But if Ukraine became prosperous and democratic it would make Putin look bad. Think West Germany against East Germany.

Yes but that's sort of a different argument.

My point is the 1991 borders are somewhat arbitrary: they were originally internal administrative divisions inside a larger centralised state.

They don't necessarily represent a natural long term international border, and attaching huge moral significance to the specific strokes of a Soviet bureaucrat's pen is strange

Many borders are arbitrary. The moral significance results when nations go full 1900 with land grabbing invasion and all that psuedohistorical ethnic bullshit. I urge you to read the soviet propaganda for the winter war or that of the nazis and the Sudetendeutschen. It is not distinguishable from the drivel that Putin spouts.

They're not really getting a leg up though, it will bite them later in life.

Young adults are less competent and resilient than ever for exactly this reason

The story of Israel is both poetic in a weird way and also profoundly depressing.

A state founded to protect a group of people from national socialism ends up... implementing national socialism itself 70 years later.

I guess we'll see if it also ends in the same way

The story of Palestine is also weird and profoundly depressing, a group supporting the national socialists in world war 2 and still pretty much supporting national socialism 70 years later. Good consistent track record there.

You're not allowed to talk about Jewish xenophobia.

Guys like Ben Gvir and Smotrich talk pretty openly about it all the time, people just don't want to listen for some reason.

They're not and never have been our friends, they detest us

The data in the UK says GDP goes up, GDP per capita and salaries go down (which is exactly what you'd expect to happen from first principles...).

So the trade is your country gets (sort of) richer overall and the elites get richer while the average person gets poorer.

If you're okay with that outcome, then yes no need to worry about the data!

"He has toothache" or "he has a toothache" are both correct (and mean exactly the same thing), but "he has the toothache" is just wrong, at least in modern English (in the sense that no native speaker would say that)

Yes I have ruled out stupidity in the past but I am actually starting to reconsider.

For example consider FTX: Sam Bankman Fried by all accounts was not stupid in the sense of lacking IQ or mental sharpness, quite the opposite.

However the way he ran FTX the company was very stupid and almost inevitably lead to huge problems.

And also... of course he was another effective altruist cult member. It's almost like that belief system directly causes bad decision making

The older I get the more I realize the deep wisdom in the simple words of Forrest Gump, ‘Stupid is as stupid does.’

One of the most corrosive effects that money has on society is that it can shelter people from the consequences of their stupidity.

People can luck into a shitload of shelter for their poor choices whether through inheritance or random chance of their actions and then don’t ever have to face consequences proportional to their stupid actions.

Or someone can start out smart and then suffer cognitive decline that is at first imperceptible until they become kookier and kookier until they’re blathering on about the antichrist and some people still take them seriously because they’re blinded by money.

The end result is a society where stupid people are surrounded by stupid people riding their coattails and everyone becomes confused about what smart and smart action actually is.