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* even if you see the lies and the danger they represent, you have every right to decouple that from relative risk assessment and to take vaccines despite the sales job.</br>Most good things are oversold, perversely incentivized, and have disguised risks and costs to them.
* even if you see the lies and the danger they represent, you have every right to decouple that from relative risk assessment and to take vaccines despite the sales job.</br>Most good things are oversold, perversely incentivized, and have disguised risks and costs to them.
* the size of the lying you can spot isn’t necessarily the size of what is being smuggled.</br>It’s ok to vaccinate, even if vaccines are at times needlessly & foolishly oversold with ham-fisted sanctimony and authoritarian bullshit that makes you puke. Separate issues.
* the size of the lying you can spot isn’t necessarily the size of what is being smuggled.</br>It’s ok to vaccinate, even if vaccines are at times needlessly & foolishly oversold with ham-fisted sanctimony and authoritarian bullshit that makes you puke. Separate issues.
* if you want to talk about Ivermectin vs vaccines, don’t ''ever'' pull that “Horse DeWormer” shaming idiocy if you want independent people to vaccinate. You just look like hate filled idiots. Our precious vaccines come from self experimentation.</br>Pro-Vaccine IS Pro-Puss.</br>🙏
* if you want to talk about Ivermectin vs vaccines, don’t ''ever'' pull that “Horse DeWormer” shaming idiocy if you want independent people to vaccinate. You just look like hate filled idiots. Our precious vaccines come from self experimentation.</br>Pro-Vaccine IS Pro-Pus.</br>🙏
* There never really was an IDW. But whatever there was isn't in such bad shape. There are real divisions in the group to be sure, but most of them aren't so severe. Including, in my opinion, Bret & Sam. So far it's limited to one topic. Not perfect, but not too bad either..
* There never really was an IDW. But whatever there was isn't in such bad shape. There are real divisions in the group to be sure, but most of them aren't so severe. Including, in my opinion, Bret & Sam. So far it's limited to one topic. Not perfect, but not too bad either..
* Stop looking for no-brainer summations.
* Stop looking for no-brainer summations.

Revision as of 04:38, 4 December 2025

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Chronological List of Morals from X

2009

  • Bad Theory is overblown. Good theory is a remaining threat to orderly science. But if you fear disruption, run the malware. Thx.

2010

  • Inability to put your $%#* pants on leads to Klein 4-group multiplication table. Go failure.

2017

  • When a scientist removes talk of softness/ethics from discussion, you can't infer he/she isn't laser focused on grace/ethics/decency.

2018

  • There are many glass ceilings. If you’ve hit one, know there are others.
  • it’s the wise & kind G-ds we make that fail us.

2019

  • Nuance can flip everything.
  • don’t screw yourself out of magic.
  • Never go full neurotypical.
  • Don’t give up on each other easily. Social media is weird. Lunch where possible.

2020

  • remember whoever it turns out was behind Epstein, it wasn’t “The Americans” or “the Jews”. US Jews were also both outspoken & tiptoeing around this mess for 15Yrs. Epstein was an obvious cancer. But cancers are treatable. It is the US press misdirection that’s metastatic.
  • don’t be afraid to be more disagreeable for your kids with schools, hospitals and other instutions. You may be treated by the instution as a crazy person. But deep down they know why you are doing it and they respect your love for your family. And your children deserve it.
  • you aren’t losing your mind just because you‘re the only one who remembers or believes something. You may be crazy, but that isn’t a legitimate argument on its own. The 🌎 can still seem to forget things in the age of Google & you may be one of the only ones who remember.
  • if you are saying something disruptive, It may be that relentless accounts personally attacking you semi-anonymously are motivated by simple self-preservation of an institution:
  • just because someone is trying to sell you something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider it.
  • Institutions are doing you a favor by whittling down the set of possible heroes. Ask yourself:
    FEAR: who frightens me?
    UNCERTAINTY: who is unpredictable?
    DOUBT: who lives under a cloud of questions particularly with respect to motive.
    Then ask: is there a FUD campaign?
  • Even a total scoundrel may at times have something valuable to say. When someone tells you: “You should never listen to anything that person says! Don’t listen. Not a good look!” that is the dead giveaway. There is no soul on earth who that fits. Not a single one.
  • Learn to notice accounts that overuse ridicule. An account that overuses LMAO, ROTFL, meh, ha ha, loser, etc, etc, is trying to bypass your rational mind to get at your evolutionary programming to avoid expulsion from society.
    Learn to notice the strategy working, and laugh. 🙏
  • We appear to be caught in loops of our own creation. If so, conventional moves will continue to produce this cycling around the drain. It is time to consider more exotic moves to pull ourselves out.
    We can no longer afford to fill the world w/ sheep, NPCs & followers.
    🙏
  • However you voted, I have no right to judge you on your vote.
    Be generous of spirit. Let’s come back together and not waste another four years getting farther away from our best selves by arguing like fools while the CCP and others rivals watch us undo ourselves fighting.
  • Don't fall for this when someone like Trump celebrates victory prematurely. This is a well known technique that preys on people not wanting to go backwards and have to undo things. Like Maradona, Trump may see it as just part of the game working on very agreeable people...
  • disbelieve both.

2021

  • There is a large group of obsessional hater accounts that make names for themselves by 'protecting' you from folks you know well who are critical of institutions and who have put 1000s of hours of their thoughts into the public arena. Don't be fooled by would-be saviors.
  • A little Feynman is a dangerous thing.
  • we should synthesize a new ruler (numeraire) XXX to measure USD/XXX & BTC/XXX separately as institutions tied most directly to USD may strongly co-move in ways that disguise the dangers when a (mis)managed USD ultimately becomes the main story. Don’t let the Dollar hide.
  • Always Meet Your Heroes. Just choose them wisely.
  • if you take UFOs seriously but not the risk of new physics, you aren’t thinking clearly.
    Just think about it. 🙏
  • whoever constructs CPI and GDP numbers in a dynamic economy is in a position to fake higher growth and lower inflation if they are also in a position to stop the field from debating methodological advances that would restrict the freedom to make up index number recipes. 🙏
  • Numeraire is an illusion. They are all just reference frames, and none of them have the properties of a fixed Aether. In a dynamic world the search for a fixed store-of-value is a quixotic quest destined for failure. Crypto is the post-Newtonian money, showing us this.
  • get us US scientists our own US UAP data. Now.
  • Gauge Theory fixes this intellectual corruption problem of economic imperialism, and #btc, blockchains and Crypto can help.
  • take care of the innovators you task to make you wealthy & secure. Particularly the heterodox leaders that won’t always get along with others. Then get out of the way w the social engineering. Share the STEM benefits with your NATO allies before giving them to your rivals.
  • even if you see the lies and the danger they represent, you have every right to decouple that from relative risk assessment and to take vaccines despite the sales job.
    Most good things are oversold, perversely incentivized, and have disguised risks and costs to them.
  • the size of the lying you can spot isn’t necessarily the size of what is being smuggled.
    It’s ok to vaccinate, even if vaccines are at times needlessly & foolishly oversold with ham-fisted sanctimony and authoritarian bullshit that makes you puke. Separate issues.
  • if you want to talk about Ivermectin vs vaccines, don’t ever pull that “Horse DeWormer” shaming idiocy if you want independent people to vaccinate. You just look like hate filled idiots. Our precious vaccines come from self experimentation.
    Pro-Vaccine IS Pro-Pus.
    🙏
  • There never really was an IDW. But whatever there was isn't in such bad shape. There are real divisions in the group to be sure, but most of them aren't so severe. Including, in my opinion, Bret & Sam. So far it's limited to one topic. Not perfect, but not too bad either..
  • Stop looking for no-brainer summations.
  • much of this 'ambiguity' is serving the few.
  • there’s (almost) no diversity on Earth. We are all in one giant experiment now with shared fate. Whatever happens in Vegas (or Wuhan or Chernobyl
) won’t stay there anymore.
    It is past time to diversify off this sphere before it’s too late.
  • Scientists are central to a modern nation on every level. Only a 3rd rate kleptocracy chisels on compensation and insulation of STEM professionals. The deliberate use by NSF of PRC labor (student and otherwise) to hold down US wages is an advanced form of academic madness.
  • you have a right to demand what economists are actually measuring as Cost-Of-Living W/O abuse for asking.
  • Kids >>> S & M.

2022

  • Never sell your soul for a tote-bag and Carl Kasell’s voice on your home answering machine message.
  • it’s really really really hard to fake a field. Economic Index Numbers like CPI are not real numbers. They are naturally group-valued FIELDS that would be nearly impossible to fake and manipulate.
    The entire subject is off. Peer review won’t help. 🙏
  • if you want a better model of Trump Supporters try this one: they prefer idiosyncratic lying/spin/distortion by a gadfly as an antidote to coordinated credentialed institutional polished lying with amazing production values. Further, they don’t think anyone offers truth.
    That.🙏
  • When you want to know why dissenting democrats are all over Right wing media, it is largely about blackballing all those who would disassemble the house narrative and strategies of the institutions. Legacy media is by and for institutions now. That’s why it seems insane.
  • I’d be rather careful exchanging a correct and permanently defensible ethical position for a transient optical victory using illegal aliens as pawns against a cynical opponent that will likely adapt to a new opportunity to play the immigration optics game right back atcha.
  • The COVID narrative was the GIN. The destruction of all credentialed dissenters was the DISC. Now you know.
  • be very careful celebrating success that you don’t understand for its own sake.
  • If you enjoy the pain from hurting other named people, you are generally going to find a way to explain that what you are doing is for the good of the world. That is, every sadist can find an excuse between “This is normal.” and “I do it for society. Thank me later.”
  • Excuses work because they muddy the water of abuse. The above excuses are appropriated from contexts where they make sense. But most internet critics are nothing of the kind. A criticism helps us course-correct. A stalker doesn’t want you to improve. They want anguish.
  • A lot of what is visible on Twitter hides behavior offsite, and even offline. An apparent Twitter critic may be real-life stalker/sadist. There‘s no way to understand what is happening to public figures like @elonmusk by just looking at Twitter. This is just surface.
  • Many people on Twitter feel that the very rich on the site have so much money that they never need to worry about anything. This is close to being the dumbest idea ever.
    Remember: Any billionaire with a child they love is vulnerable to any psycho with an opportunity.
  • Free speech is about restraining ourselves w/ culture so that we don’t need rules to tell us what we can say. It’s NOT a free-for-all for sadists. Free speech would NEVER develop in a culture in which Mores were not strong, shared and effective in prohibiting sociopathy.
    If you want to be a critic, a journalist, a comedian, or even a troll, develop a code of ethics. Don’t hybridize w/ abuse. Check in w/ yourself as to whether you’re really working out abuse, rage, envy or status issues. Try to minimize unnecessary damage to others.

2023

  • pay attention to things that have not yet become concrete. Normal people, for reasons that remain opaque, cannot consider outcomes that have never before happened.
  • China already knows what we are doing by and large. American science is built on a model: they supply highly reliable workers, we supply our asymmetric scientific advantages born of our freedom. Don’t hate the PRC and their students. The US is always giving away the store.
  • Protect less or succeed more. 🙏
  • Think carefully whether you wish to think carefully. It may be a serious mistake. There is good reason to think we will not think carefully until there is a spectacular close call. And even then it may not be enough. Stare at reality at your own peril. And good luck.
  • Sketchy culture leave the impression that the science is sketchy. NO!! It’s the culture not the theory that is ‘sketch’. That is why we need to call out the unethical behavior that is undermining support and understanding of fundamental physics.

2024

  • Don't be an ass.
  • Universities are neither fully failed in 2024, nor successful. There is serious rot that is growing and eating away at them, but there are still many good researchers and scholars trapped inside, who are being driven to silence, in order to hold onto their remaining zone of scholarship and research “autonomy”.
  • those with the clearest Schelling points need to get a room and have one debate, so that the rest of us with less clarity can book a stadium and have a second discussion. But we need to stop mixing up the two explorations.
    This wasn’t about abortion after all. It was about political clarity: its benefits, its dangers and its inability to represent the majority of us who lack it.
  • Learn how to be a responsible conspiracy theorist. There are no lizard people. But there are sure a lot of back channels and algorithms you know nothing about.
  • The problem holding us back from a Theory of everything is Classical, and not Quantum. The quantum comes as desert after classical compatibility. It’s not the main issue. A red herring that throws us off following the scent. It’s a distraction that should have fooled almost no one who was thinking for his or her self.

2025

  • you can't just fire people and break things with a government and a nuclear superpower with many non-market functions the way in which you can with a for-profit company you just bought. You can somewhat. But there are limits to the analogy.
  • The private sector isn't magic. You can't just give the private sector final say on whatever is valuable. You can do that only if the thing in question is in the category of standard goods and services. But it doesn't work for an entire category of well known market failures. Like basic research in science.
  • beware analogies when playing with thermonuclear military capabilities. There is no real intuition pump. Doesn’t exist.
  • focus on the cover story. Not the memes. Go after the press first. Figure out exactly who is stopping the fund from being dissected. Focus on the non reporting. This is what Anti-Interesting is all about. Use it.
  • Not everyone is an ignorant idiot just because they think your community is 40+ years stalled groupthinking this exact way. I don’t think you are ignorant or stupid. I don’t think you are pseudoscientists. Or grifters. Or any of that. I just think you are wrong in your total approach. That’s just science. The quantum gravity crowd has demanded a victory parade for 40+ years over all other approaches while it fails to launch year after year after year. That is not science. I’m sorry. I don’t make that rule.
  • Physics when done well and right, is very very dangerous after all. And I want us to get back to doing physics that will go way beyond Einstein. Even the kind that goes boom:đŸ’„

On X

2009

Moral: Bad Theory is overblown. Good theory is a remaining threat to orderly science. But if you fear disruption, run the malware. Thx.

7:44 AM · Nov 12, 2009

2010

5YO finds 2 distinct groups of order 4!
Moral: Inability to put your $%#* pants on leads to Klein 4-group multiplication table. Go failure.

3:20 PM · Aug 27, 2010

2017

Old tweet rerun: Can (arguably) the world's most emotional 8 chord, chord progression really be generated by a cold dispassionate algorithm? https://t.co/P3e7FLKjao

4:53 PM · Sep 26, 2017

Moral: When a scientist removes talk of softness/ethics from discussion, you can't infer he/she isn't laser focused on grace/ethics/decency.

5:00 PM · Sep 26, 2017

2018

Try to imagine being an echidna or platypus and as actual egg laying mammals, not even being able to land the sought-after “Easter Mascot” account, being edged out by a f@&$ing rabbit.

Moral: There are *many* glass ceilings. If you’ve hit one, know there are others. #HappyEaster

7:37 PM · Apr 1, 2018


A century ago, my great-uncle Sasha was killed serving at the very end of WWI. The simple pointless loss of a sibling, kicked my great grandma Mary from Orthodox Judaism into atheism, altering everything in my family’s arc.

Moral: it’s the wise & kind G-ds we make that fail us.

11:31 PM · Nov 11, 2018

@EstherOfReilly When we make G-d in man’s image he generally becomes a character who is too simple, caring and comprehensible to survive repeated contact with random events. The G-d concepts that survive best tend to be less comprehensible and more dialectical.

11:47 PM · Nov 11, 2018

@JasonVerhoek @Cernovich I don't know why you would say that. I wouldn't. I would say that dying at the very tail end, just before its end felt pointless.

1:04 AM · Nov 12, 2018

@EstherOfReilly That’s what‘s so interesting about such a turning away from Judaism. I don’t see any indication that the Jewish concept of an Old Testament G-d would be simply loving, attentive, protective & kind. It’s the recent softening of Deities that make G-ds seem so uncaring or impotent.

5:07 PM · Nov 12, 2018

2019

Many are asking me for clarification. In Romance languages the ‘C’ Letter/Sound is associated with ‘Hot’ and the first tweet was located in Italy. But English speakers *reliably* make a leap that ‘C’ means cold which is *exactly* the reverse.

Moral: Nuance can flip *everything*.

6:49 PM · Jun 11, 2019

1/ Nuance v Activism on Twitter.

What Nuance-Twitter Says: https://t.co/bL3mPkuDIj

ERW-X-post-1138489581932646400-D8y6PLAVUAAujx1.jpg
4:54 PM · Jun 11, 2019


Some folks believe in angels. They have magic in their lives.

But if you fancy you‘re too scientific/rational for that “woo woo stuff”, you‘re still stuck with “Exotic Spheres.” Well...What are they doing there?

Moral: don’t screw yourself out of magic.

https://nilesjohnson.net/seven-manifolds.html

8:02 PM · Sep 4, 2019

People are weeping over an invisible issue.

There are so many families out there who don’t even realize that stopping educators from abusing non neurotypical kids with learning differences is their top voting issue. Why? Because no one has stood up to teachers for them. Ever.

9:41 PM · Oct 10, 2019

@NormanGYoung Sure. Or Creative. Or Next-Level. Whatever you like.

But if you want to go full neurotypical, call them misbehaved and undisciplined.

Moral: Never go full neurotypical.

9:46 PM · Oct 10, 2019


So Xeni trashed me on Twitter this morning. Blocked me. But we have followed each other for years.

I called her up. Turns out we are on more or less the same side of the issue! All is good.

Moral: Don’t give up on each other easily. Social media is weird. Lunch where possible.

4:55 PM · Dec 17, 2019

@xeni Good morning to you too Xeni! Thanks for hanging in there with me.

4:57 PM · Dec 17, 2019

@xeni You still have the cactus. Have a great one today. Here’s the bread we discussed. It’s amazing.

https://t.co/DLIwlDF09d

5:00 PM · Dec 17, 2019

2020

I’ve spent a lot of time on this. The story here is not Epstein or Maxwell. It‘s the bizarre mission of our US press to misdirect us. The questions were always the same:

Epstein 'madam' Ghislaine Maxwell 'is a foreign spy hiding in Israel' https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7843659/Ghislaine-Maxwell-reportedly-foreign-spy-hiding-Israel.html via @MailOnline

ERW-X-post-1212785538098286592.jpg
5:19 PM · Jan 2, 2020

A) Can you the press seek an on-the-record official denial that Epstein was operating/trafficking attached to US and/or foreign intelligence?

B) Can the press tell us where Ghislaine’s passports were last seen at a border?

C) Is Epstein’s death a “message killing” to us all?

5:19 PM · Jan 2, 2020

D) Can you the press tell us the whereabouts of the detailed records of Epstein’s *trading* operation from “Villard House” in Manhattan?

E) If the hedge fund currency trading never took place, was the source of Epstein’s wealth the missing assets & pensions of Robert Maxwell?

5:19 PM · Jan 2, 2020

F) Why are *none* of the esteemed members of the commentariat conspicuously calling for a second Church/Pike style investigation of excesses of our intelligence communities? WTF?

G) Many famous members of the press follow this account closely. Do I not exist? You do write to me.

5:19 PM · Jan 2, 2020

H) Are you thinking, whoever the hell you are, that you can just intimidate us all? I get that you can get to anyone anywhere. Big deal. Can you get to MILLIONS of us anytime anywhere? Do you see this going away? Are we *all* afraid you‘ll call us “Alex Jones” or kill us? Really?

5:19 PM · Jan 2, 2020

And for those of you who ask why I never mentioned Israel and the Mossad publicly.. Here is your answer: I don’t connect the dots for you.

I have been on this early out of a love of the US & Israel. You deserved to know that this is not some plot of CIA, “The Jews” or Mossad.

5:19 PM · Jan 2, 2020

If this turns out to be in part an evil intelligence operation trafficking minors, it will be the responsibility of some *tiny* number of raging assholes. Maybe Saudi assholes, maybe Jewish villains and maybe evil CIA folks. Who knows. But it won’t be entire peoples at fault.

5:19 PM · Jan 2, 2020

As an ordinary US Jew who thought he spotted an OBVIOUS Intelligence operation in 2003-4, I wanted to be on the other side of this thing when it blew, so I could support the US and Israeli ICs which need to be strong & secret but non evil. So now Daily Mail has finally reported!

5:19 PM · Jan 2, 2020

Moral: remember whoever it turns out was behind Epstein, it wasn’t “The Americans” or “the Jews”. US Jews were also both outspoken & tiptoeing around this mess for 15Yrs. Epstein was an obvious cancer. But cancers are treatable. It is the US press misdirection that’s metastatic.

5:19 PM · Jan 2, 2020

Now go investigate the story! If he wasn’t an asset get the official denials. Discuss a redo of Church/Pike. If there is nothing to find, we deserve to know. Is it our damn country or not? Simple question. Is the press there to get the stories or to kill them? Get this over with!

5:19 PM · Jan 2, 2020


Moral: don’t be afraid to be more disagreeable for your kids with schools, hospitals and other instutions. You may be treated by the instution as a crazy person. But deep down they know why you are doing it and they respect your love for your family. And your children deserve it.

4:40 PM · Jan 6, 2020


Sometimes you think you remember something but you can’t find reference to it. No one else seems to remember it. You start to doubt yourself. Hard. “Did I invent that? Is that a figment of my imagination? Am I lying?”

This happened to me with a song. I couldn’t find it anywhere.

4:20 PM · Feb 7, 2020

In my mind, it was called “Standing on the Corner” and it was uptempo & put me in a good mood. I thought it was sung by Chris Youlden. But all references went to the Four Lads. Or Dean Martin. People would assure me that was the song. But I couldn’t accept that. That song sucked!

4:20 PM · Feb 7, 2020

Then I would be assured that our “minds play tricks”. That “Memory is a funny thing” and that “You should be happy that your imagination came up with a song you like!” All very understanding. Eventually this made me feel crazy. How could that be?!? So, many years ago, I gave up.

4:20 PM · Feb 7, 2020

How could something exist and the internet not know it? To this day I don’t think Spotify has it.

But then, I checked back in.

And there it was...and exactly as it was in my mind. Someone actually had to video a turntable playing it!

I hope you like it:

4:20 PM · Feb 7, 2020

Moral: you aren’t losing your mind just because you‘re the only one who remembers or believes something. You may be crazy, but that isn’t a legitimate argument on its own. The 🌎 can still seem to forget things in the age of Google & you may be one of the only ones who remember.

4:20 PM · Feb 7, 2020


Social media fascilitates newly frictionless flows of text.

One way to view modern outrage is that our mobs are driving the cost of discussing off-narrative reality in public by driving *private* costs.

Threaten our fragile institutions, and the response comes back personal.

4:23 AM · Feb 18, 2020

That’s actually very weird. Why would pointing out a problem w/ a political party, tech platform or newspaper earn a response about individual appearance or personal moral fitness? Yet that is what happens. Allege a problem in political economy, you get your dress sense insulted.

4:23 AM · Feb 18, 2020

Weirdly, it’s like GM digging for dirt on Ralph Nader back in the day.

Moral: if you are saying something disruptive, It may be that relentless accounts personally attacking you semi-anonymously are motivated by simple self-preservation of an institution: https://www.marketplace.org/story/2018/09/28/ralph-nader-recalls-life-under-gm-surveillance

4:23 AM · Feb 18, 2020

Are you disgruntled? Controversial? Gritting? Pwned? Cancelled? Dunning-Kruger?

Are semi anonymous accounts ROTFL at you? Do you get a lot of hate that looks suspiciously similar? All at once? Consider that not all of it is real. There are very few tricks left that can stop you.

4:28 AM · Feb 18, 2020


[This tweet is unsolicited and uncompensated.]

I would never have bought this Theragun percussive therapy device had they not sponsored The Portal. I didn’t even appreciate it until I started feeling deep muscle pain. Now I’m living on it and using no pain reliever medication.

ERW-X-post-1260418086705852416-EX3nkY1UYAA1f6P.jpg
3:54 AM · May 13, 2020

So I feel pretty great about this product paying our bills at The Portal.

Thank you @theragun! The last 4 days would have been brutal, or I‘d have ended up drugging my pain.🙏

[Moral: just because someone is trying to sell you something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider it.]

3:54 AM · May 13, 2020


We don’t empower living heroes with the ability to challenge institutions.

We allow for individuals tied to institutions. We allow collective heroism (e.g. crews of astronauts are neither individual nor unaffiliated). But Lindbergh taught them the danger.

And so we now destroy.

9:40 PM · Sep 10, 2020

Most of my real heroes now appear before me as scoundrels. They are mired in smears, whisper campaigns, impoverished by boycotts, cancelled, beset by campaigns to discredit everything they do, say, or even observe.

That isn’t an accident. It is reputation warfare known as F.U.D.

9:40 PM · Sep 10, 2020

Moral: Institutions are doing you a favor by whittling down the set of possible heroes. Ask yourself:

FEAR: who frightens me?

UNCERTAINTY: who is unpredictable?

DOUBT: who lives under a cloud of questions particularly with respect to motive.

Then ask: is there a FUD campaign?

9:40 PM · Sep 10, 2020

Even a *total* scoundrel may at times have something valuable to say. When someone tells you: “You should *never* listen to *anything* that person says! Don’t listen. Not a good look!” that is the dead giveaway. There is no soul on earth who that fits. Not a single one.

Lastly:

9:40 PM · Sep 10, 2020

Learn to notice accounts that overuse ridicule. An account that overuses LMAO, ROTFL, meh, ha ha, loser, etc, etc, is trying to bypass your rational mind to get at your evolutionary programming to avoid expulsion from society.

Learn to notice the strategy working, and laugh. 🙏

9:40 PM · Sep 10, 2020


While Loops & Resource Leaks.

These mindless death spirals are found in nature. They have nothing to do with coding computers but are an ever present danger of filling the world with humans robbed of agency and the capacity to dissent from hive logic.

5:14 PM · Oct 13, 2020

It’s difficult to explain to practical folks or Market and/or Democracy fundamentalists, that what you build into the rules will not necessarily remotely produce what you thought you‘d get. All coders/biologists, unlike politicians/voters, know this:

5:14 PM · Oct 13, 2020

Neglecting political economy, capture of media/institutions, market failure, inequality, danger of critical theory, structural inequality, gerontocracy, academic freedom, scientific independence, etc as if these are negligible, dooms us to chase each other around an “ant mill”.

5:14 PM · Oct 13, 2020

Moral: We appear to be caught in loops of our own creation. If so, conventional moves will continue to produce this cycling around the drain. It is time to consider more exotic moves to pull ourselves out.

We can no longer afford to fill the world w/ sheep, NPCs & followers. 🙏

5:14 PM · Oct 13, 2020


Of the four names on the major tickets, I guess I might have rank ordered them:

I) Biden
II) Pence
III) Trump
IV) Harris

Where I guess this tells me that I want to take a pass on having Harris or Trump be the ones to lead us into the future. I’d rather a place holder for now.

7:40 PM · Nov 3, 2020

Trump is far more gifted than any of the others & has done many good things. And many many bad things. Both of which I predicted given his outsider status.

But he has also deliberately divided us and has done so as part of his means of ascension. And that division is cancerous.

7:40 PM · Nov 3, 2020

With that said, I could vote for neither Biden/Harris nor Trump/Pence in good conscience given the luxury of living in a Blue State. So I voted to communicate my non acceptance of this choice. In a swing state I’d have voted Biden.

Which is to say I couldn’t figure it out.

7:40 PM · Nov 3, 2020

Moral: However you voted, I have no right to judge you on your vote.

Be generous of spirit. Let’s come back together and not waste another four years getting farther away from our best selves by arguing like fools while the CCP and others rivals watch us undo ourselves fighting.

7:40 PM · Nov 3, 2020

P.S. If you care to, give your own rank ordering of the four names and a few words as to what it tells you about your reasoning? 🙏

7:48 PM · Nov 3, 2020


If you want to understand Trump declaring victory, it's important to understand this was pioneered in 1986 by Diego Maradona.

Maradona realized that if he could get his teammates to celebrate his illegal #HandOfGod world-cup goal, referees wouldn't have the "huevos" to undo it.

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11:11 PM · Nov 4, 2020

Like Trump, Maradona was extremely gifted and with very 'flexible' ethics. He learned this as a kid & saw what he did as cunning, not cheating. In other words: if you can get referees to cover for you, it's part of the 'meta-game' to manipulate the refs.

11:11 PM · Nov 4, 2020

Moral: Don't fall for this when someone like Trump celebrates victory prematurely. This is a well known technique that preys on people not wanting to go backwards and have to undo things. Like Maradona, Trump may see it as just part of the game working on very agreeable people...

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11:11 PM · Nov 4, 2020


@GadSaad @SamHarrisOrg @BretWeinstein Gad: I myself have committed the ultimate sin. I work with someone who supported Trump in 2016. Worse still, I must admit that my employer is an actual friend of mine. Also: I applauded the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Moral: Save yourself brother! They are onto me. Run!

9:54 PM · Nov 7, 2020


Trump didn’t build-the-wall & get Mexico to Pay for it as he said he would.

Trump didn’t get routed in 2016 as our institutional voices said he would.

Trump didn’t “lock-her-up”.

Our Media misled its believers into believing in a “Blue Wave” mirage.

Moral: disbelieve *both*.

11:44 PM · Nov 18, 2020

2021

Many of you will recall that "The Science Femme" was very angry at me for being a fraud and that she was in my field and knew I was full of shit.

Well, she was a he. And he wasn't in my field. And he was a fraud.

3:38 AM · Jan 3, 2021

Moral: There is a *large* group of obsessional hater accounts that make names for themselves by 'protecting' you from folks you know well who are critical of institutions and who have put 1000s of hours of their thoughts into the public arena. Don't be fooled by would-be saviors.

3:38 AM · Jan 3, 2021


“Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize.” -Richard P Feynman

Moral: A little Feynman is a dangerous thing.

3:44 PM · Mar 13, 2021


This is the problem with valuations universally using USD or other managed fiat currencies as Numeraire. Put simply, you have 2 effects. One is the measurement of a rigid ruler (BTC) by a rubber ruler (USD), the second is the fear of rubber rulers leading to demand for rigid one.

2:59 PM · Mar 16, 2021

If the USD went hyperinflationary this would clearer: we shouldn’t be using a fiat currency as our ruler because it is subject to mismanagement by central banking. Visa and MasterCard are tied to a manipulated ruler doing two things: measuring things and driving BTC demand.

2:59 PM · Mar 16, 2021

The question about Gold is a good one. But, more broadly, should we be synthesizing a numeraire from a basket of fairly Rigid rulers that doesn’t include USD? We say “stocks surged across the board today” when we really mean “Our centrally managed USD ruler plummeted today.”

2:59 PM · Mar 16, 2021

We can’t use BTC for numeraire if we want to measure it: BTC/BTC will never move. But we can have a basket of precious metals, crypto & even CHF if we want to see USD & BTC moving separately. I just want to move away from having the USD as ruler as it is subject to seigniorage

2:59 PM · Mar 16, 2021

To sum up: the big story is that USD/USD is the problem. We put the dollar in our blind spot. It is moving around violently, but it makes everything else that doesn’t co-move with it look violent. The fact that so much co-moves w our crazy rubber ruler drives demand for XAU,BTC.

2:59 PM · Mar 16, 2021

Moral: we should synthesize a new ruler (numeraire) XXX to measure USD/XXX & BTC/XXX separately as institutions tied most directly to USD may strongly co move in ways that disguise the dangers when a (mis)managed USD ultimately becomes the main story. Don’t let the Dollar hide.

2:59 PM · Mar 16, 2021

[Note: I say Ruler because if I say ‘Gauge’ the online BTC community freaks out and thinks it’s under attack from outsider “shitcoiners”. Which it isn’t. But whatever. Toxic fun. They are convinced they don’t speak prose and that BTC & USD aren’t gauges. And hey: Number go up...]

3:13 PM · Mar 16, 2021


Just interviewed @PJORourke after reading him avidly since the 1980s. Wow. Probably the conservative thinker who has had the most influence getting me to see both logic & decency on the Right using more sympathetic eyes.

Moral: Always Meet Your Heroes. Just choose them wisely.

10:10 PM · Mar 25, 2021


One of the things my trolls like to point to is outrageous claims.

One of my most *outrageous* is that my joint work on a 2nd Marginal Revolution for economics was scuttled by the Harvard Department of Economics Boskin Commissioners.

Yet it’s admitted:

https://ritholtz.com/2010/01/why-michael-boskin-deserves-our-contempt/

Greg-Mankiw-CPI-Boskin-Ey8mtHXVoAMUYqS.jpg
4:12 PM · Apr 14, 2021

It’s kind of an interesting puzzle. Why is it that a Harvard Professor (Mankiw) can say the truth which is that this was a conspiracy to cut entitlements. But the only two people who can CALCULATE a COLA for changing tastes are crazy for saying their work was deliberately buried?

4:12 PM · Apr 14, 2021

In any event, I stand by my claim. The Boskin Commission was organized by Moynihan and Packwood to deliberately break the CPI in a precise amount to avoid the US paying 1 trillion dollars over 10 years.

And I promise you no leading economist will call bullshit to debate this.

4:12 PM · Apr 14, 2021

On of the reasons is that one of the commissioners bragged about this being the motivation behind the scenes.

Okay. So why can’t we have gauge theoretic economics reevaluated? Everyone admits this is what happened. Why continue to bury the advance?

I dunno. But it’s amazing!

4:12 PM · Apr 14, 2021

The moral of the story to me is this:

We can’t have outside folks calculating and theorizing while the inside economists are fudging and cooking the books.

And calling me crazy won’t change a thing when this is finally understood. It’s simply institutional academic malpractice.

4:12 PM · Apr 14, 2021


At this point, the story I am tracking isn’t “Little Green Men”. It is “Officials inexplicably change course on UFO narrative”.

Also, the story about “Technology never before seen.” Would make more sense with “Technology” replaced by “Physics”.

1:59 PM · Apr 22, 2021

High level government officials have given UAPs credibility, but it's still pretty hard for an outsider to analyze the evidence objectively. It's all video footage and testimony. We need much stronger evidence to form any real opinion on UFOs being extraterrestrial or not.

12:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

The US/Europe seriously diverted attention from doing real theoretical physics almost 40 years ago in 1984 to explore physics inspired mathematics. Did China/Iran/Russia/Israel? I don’t know.

But I can tell you this: no one in government is appropriately focused on new physics.

1:59 PM · Apr 22, 2021

Imagine in 1900 some “crank” told you about thermonuclear weapons. Would you listen or laugh? Well, they’d be only 5 decades away with no aliens necessary. And powered flight hadn’t happened yet!

That’s how powerful a “new physics” advantage is. We’re behaving like lunatics.

1:59 PM · Apr 22, 2021

Any time ANYONE at least 1/2-way viable says something weird or kooky or interesting (Wolfram, Lisi, etc.) the cost of a Department of Energy 1hr phone call is negligible. Almost no one with that background says anything like this. Maybe less than 1 such PhD “lunatic” per year.

1:59 PM · Apr 22, 2021

Do I think Wolfram, Lisi, Kaku, Smolin, Klee Irwin, Sarfatti, Woit/Penrose etc are right or on the doorstep of new physics? No! But It’s also totally irrelevant to the security risk.

It wouldn’t matter to me at all. I would check in with all of them: the cost is zero. The risk?

1:59 PM · Apr 22, 2021

The thing I like least about Geometric Unity is not being able to know what it would unlock if true, any more than Einstein and Bohr understood Lise Meitner, Stan Ulam & Edward Teller’s weaponization of New Physics.

We are talking about UFOs while not worrying about New Physics.

1:59 PM · Apr 22, 2021

Think about the g-2 muon anomaly. Have you heard as much about that suggesting the possibility of New Physics from high precision (rather than high energy) as you have about the TicTac UAP?

Similarly, how often do you hear about UAP technology rather than physics issues. Right??

1:59 PM · Apr 22, 2021

I have no idea what to make of the change in the UAP narrative. What I can tell you with certainty is that for such an ENORMOUS change in the narrative there is no sane explanation for the DOE not to be talking new physics risks and taking every one of the few claims seriously.

1:59 PM · Apr 22, 2021

As we saw over & over in the 20th century, any small change in physics can change everything almost overnight. From A-Bombs to Semiconductors.

The handful of PhD level claims are of negligible cost to investigate & dismiss compared to a single fighter jet.

DOE lost the plot.

1:59 PM · Apr 22, 2021

Enough! Let’s get back to UFOs and space opera so we don’t have to worry about China & Iran making a breakthrough on a white board in some lab we can’t see.

Moral: if you take UFOs seriously but not the risk of new physics, you aren’t thinking clearly.

Just think about it. 🙏

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1:59 PM · Apr 22, 2021


I’d propose total reassessment of the National Physics program.

Much greater autonomy for theorists.
*Much* higher salaries.
Much greater *diversity* of approaches.
More high precision work.
Fewer graduate programs.
Physics = economic/security priority.
Admit String Thy failure.

4:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

I see now you had a tweetstorm on this, rather than a single tweet. You're right, the physics of UFOs would be world changing, for good and for bad. What do you propose? Somehow keeping the tech within the US gov/military? Eventually it will leak out. Then what? No good solutions

2:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

We need to hire people who will upset the living hell out of the people doing the hiring.

We need to put fundamental physics theory in receivership. No theory lead advance in fundamental physics for almost 50 years, yet no soul searching about who lost physics?? Are we kidding?

4:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

It’s time to stop listening to the same voices as if they hadn’t failed. This is a national priority, not a cult of personality for a STEM generation that had their time..and then ate their own young across every field. Is no one following what we did to destroy our own capacity?

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4:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

Or should we do yet more 2D Yang Mills on irrelevant groups in non physical signatures? Squarks/Sleptons? Ha!

Let’s say it clearly as everyone young is terrified to say it: the baby boomer theorists were successful as geometers while avoiding actual physics over entire careers.

4:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

By mumbling “Quantum Gravity” every 2 minutes as a mantra and recasting actual High Energy Physics as “Phenomenology” they mis-educated an entire generation to think “toy physics” was real physics. It’s unbelievable.

Toy physics is real geometry & topology. But it ain’t physics.

4:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

Real physics:

A) Works with dimension 4.
B) Works with SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1).
C) Uses observed quantum numbers.
D) Accepts Lorentzian Signature.
E) Focuses on 3 Generation.

There is *Nothing* wrong with toy models now and then. But we are talking *entire careers* playing with toys.

4:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

We tell people who are basically mathematicians that they’re physicists.

Well, they aren’t. Physicists say things about the world. And those things *need* to be potentially wrong to qualify as physics.

We have a culture of people who can’t *afford* error. So they just do math.

4:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

Also, to be a fundamental physicist you really should be telling us what we now have wrong. Every advance partially recovers the one before it but also invalidates it, telling us where to look for error. We’ve made hidden assumptions so you have to tell your elders they goofed.

4:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

Well, young people can’t say that to elders who hold their academic lives in the palms of their hands. That’s why young/iconoclast physicists need FU salaries.

Elder “You should work on AdS/CFT or ‘BH information’ if you want to get a job.”

Young Colleague: “How does NO sound?”

4:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

When I say “There are only two true generations of Fermions.” I’m potentially wrong.

When I listed quantum numbers of the remaining particles, I’m potentially wrong.

As when I claimed Pati-Salam is a maximal compact subgroup of the normal bundle of metrics.

That’s not a bug.

4:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

Yet you can’t do this in academic depts.

Moral: we destroyed our ability to self-police. Peer review won’t work. We need to go back to doing physics. What’s holding us back may not be physics but the political economy of academic labor, citation, reputation & attribution.🙏

4:06 PM · Apr 22, 2021

One last thought. If there aren’t very compelling UAF revelations coming our way, I’d redirect our interest in aliens towards terrestrial physics done by humans. If there were such revelations, then I’d *still* look to physics before tech, as đŸ‘œ *still* implies new physics to me.

4:16 PM · Apr 22, 2021


Claim: when it comes to inflation and growth, Economists don’t even understand the theory of their *own* price and quantity indices mathematically:

6:26 PM · May 12, 2021

WILD IDEA: Maybe the economists don't actually understand what is going on right now? https://x.com/disclosetv/sta/disclosetv/status/1392488787838742536

6:26 PM · May 12, 2021

The problem of inflation index calculation has not been adequately updated since Ragnar Frisch destroyed Irving Fisher’s attempt to axiomatize economic indices following the last great advances of F. Divisia and A. KonĂŒs on continuous and welfare indices respectively.

6:26 PM · May 12, 2021

Economists are holding their own field back by retaining their freedom to just cook up any revised index they want.

It’s as if physicists retained the right to define temperature differently every year based on a closed door meeting and manufactured new thermometers thereafter.

6:26 PM · May 12, 2021

If you’re going to push us all to move to “true” “economic” indices & chain them to reflect dynamic actors (or to disguise true inflation!), you would end up chaining ordinal preferences. And you can’t do that without gauge theory because it is a problem in parallel transport.

6:26 PM · May 12, 2021

Watch the US CPI revisions and methodology going forward. People who like to print money tend to want to change their definition of inflation and therefore don’t like anyone taking away freedom to make up methodologies to suit their political objectives involving wealth transfer.

6:26 PM · May 12, 2021

Moral: whoever constructs CPI and GDP numbers in a dynamic economy is in a position to fake higher growth and lower inflation if they are also in a position to stop the field from debating methodological advances that would restrict the freedom to make up index number recipes. 🙏

6:27 PM · May 12, 2021


The interaction between money being a “Store of Value” and “Medium of Exchange” doesn’t say what to make of something that is not inflated away but which is also not exchange rate-stable.

I wonder: is crypto novel enough to simply break our aging concept of money itself?

1:34 AM · May 20, 2021

ConsumerPrices/Fiat/Crypto are vertices of a triangle. I can imagine Fiat being long term price-stable while subject to inflation and Crypto non-inflationary, but exchange-unstable. In essence exchange-volatility & price-inflatability can be separable threats to “Store of Value”.

1:34 AM · May 20, 2021

Imagine you were in a regular hyperinflation with a fiat currency & all prices smoothly went up around a regular trend line in one currency. Priced in a 2nd currency however, they bounced around violently but with no trend up or down. There’d be no full “store of value” possible.

1:34 AM · May 20, 2021

This may be misguided, but it’s one reason I’m not put off crypto. Maybe crypto means to break money itself through such a triangle w/ Fiat & consumer prices revealing that simplistic stores-of-value are an illusion.

Maybe this is a true relativity theory, only now for markets.

1:34 AM · May 20, 2021

One Moral: Numeraire is an illusion. They are all just reference frames, and none of them have the properties of a fixed Aether. In a dynamic world the search for a fixed store-of-value is a quixotic quest destined for failure. Crypto is the post-Newtonian money, showing us this.

1:34 AM · May 20, 2021


25000 of you answered. Almost 3 in 4 of you believe either that UFOs are a deliberate fabrication of the government and/or Next Generation US Tech, or from some previously unknown advanced civilization.

About 1 in 4 say the US is just incompetent (in error or being leapfrogged).

2:47 PM · Jun 9, 2021

UFO / UAP Poll:

2:55 AM · Jun 6, 2021

The poll ran for 3 days to decrease selection bias. It was stable from early on in the response patterns.

Over 2/5 of you have already gone to some form of alien explanation.

Even at this crude level I find this fascinating having run several of these Twitter polls in the past.

2:47 PM · Jun 9, 2021

The poll was intended to force people to make a definite guess:

There is nothing real there (lying or incompetence)

There is something there (US tech)

There is something there (Adversaries).

There is something there (Aliens)

More characters would have helped, but not much.

2:47 PM · Jun 9, 2021

But here is what I find fascinating: if 2/5 of us think this is Aliens, and 3/4 of us think the US is *baldly* lying on a matter of grave security, in possession of out of this world tech, or are being visited by advanced alien civilizations
and UAP is still not the top story.

2:47 PM · Jun 9, 2021

I personally have no idea what’s going on. If I believe in my country then it is most likely aliens. If I disbelieve my country we are engaged in a lie that will soon collapse and destroy our trust and credibility even more.

Moral: get us US scientists our own US UAP data. Now.

2:47 PM · Jun 9, 2021

CPI is broken. Why?

Think of CPI as a gauge like a thermometer. You can’t have politically motivated folks making your thermometers or they can change the design to cover up climate change. Likewise you can’t have economists changing the gauge to disguise the effect of printing.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

A crypto native CPI governed on the blockchain to create a decentralized stablecoin people can rely on to keep their standard of living the same across time. A true alternative to fiat rather than a speculative investment asset like most other coins.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

The economists can’t yet compute a dynamic Cost-Of-Living-Adjustment or COLA or “Chained Changing Preference Ordinal Welfare Konus Index” to be perfectly pedantic. Not because it doesn’t exist. But because they don’t have the math and don’t want to lose their finger on the scale.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

We must take CPI away from those who wish to back out a political agenda of printing money, raising our taxes by indexed tax brackets and slashing our indexed social security & Medicare.

Economics can’t construct dynamic economic gauges like CPI/GDP until it learns gauge thy.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

But more importantly, we have a culture that economics literally trumpets (and I swear I am not making this up) “Economic Imperialism”. It is “we know math and you don’t”-culture.

No. They don’t know their own math. I will debate any high ranking economist on this point.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

It’s time to reveal that economics, far from embracing math or having physics envy, is deliberately avoiding solutions to old problems so that it can make up new gauges for CPI/GDP at will while telling the rest of the soft sciences “We know your field better because we do math.”

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

No. Economics is an avoiding gauge theory, connections, Lie Groups, etc so it can retain its political relevance as an expert consultancy. I’m with the crypto folks on this. Our economy must be protected from Seigniorage (printing money) and CPI tampering (e.g. Boskin Commission).

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

CPI should not
MUST NOT
be adjustable to disguise inflation. It needs to be protected from the FED diluting the power of money and the BLS being free to disguise the effects by changing the method of construction.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

End the forced wealth transfers of central bankers covering up their own failures with “Relief”, “Easing”, “Stimulous”, “Rescues”, “Toxic Asset Purchases”, and other bailouts of our incompetent financial overlords.

We must protect CPI from economists disguising wealth dilution.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

P.S. before you remind me how arrogant this sounds, keep in mind, that I am willing to debate this publicly with any leading economist eager to defend the central bankers and triumphalist theorists openly bragging about their math. Read this, and be sick:

https://nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w7300/w7300.pdf

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

Moral: Gauge Theory fixes this intellectual corruption problem of economic imperialism, and #btc, blockchains and Crytpo can help.

6:59 AM · Jun 15, 2021


Then listen closely.

A) You stop giving CEO’s an ear when they whine about labor shortages. Cut off the visas.

B) You *spend* on STEM R&D. Sky-High Compensation w High Standards.

C) You purge *everything* that says “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” anywhere close to a STEM kid.

https://x.com/steve10mo1966/status/1415036117187969029

1:02 AM · Jul 14, 2021

D) Kick the CCP out of US labs. Make them do their own scientific research, as to do it well requires freedom. Force CCP towards freedom through science & STEM rather than letting them pick the fruits of our freedom to challenge and question orthodoxy.

E) Hire our own heterodox.

1:02 AM · Jul 14, 2021

F) Incentivize the leadership of our most critical institutions to promote people who won’t play well with others who are captured by groupthink. Earmark money to promote those who won’t easily get along with co-workers when their co-workers are standing in the way of progress.

1:02 AM · Jul 14, 2021

More or less we have to kickstart the American dream. And to do that requires a public spirited elite.

We need to purge ourselves of our fake elite. We are coming to hate fake experts.

We need real ones who are well paid. By us. Not by some revolving door baksheesh arrangement.

1:02 AM · Jul 14, 2021

But I was cheering when Blake said one income. Because raising kids is about the most important job in the world. And if we are going to get rich enough to do it we need innovators worried about their next family vacation, not how to find two adjunct positions in adjacent states.

1:02 AM · Jul 14, 2021

Moral: take care of the innovators you task to make you wealthy & secure. Particularly the heterodox leaders that won’t always get along with others. Then get out of the way w the social engineering. Share the STEM benefits with your NATO allies before giving them to your rivals.

1:02 AM · Jul 14, 2021


I appreciate this. I don’t know how to call this for anyone other than myself.

My sense is that we all differ on what to make of the errors & even lies of our authorities.

To some it’s evidence of a great conspiracy. To others it’s just a normal feature of PR. To me? It ranges.

5:34 PM · Aug 2, 2021

But if you can see the lies on the surface, you are not obligated to avoid the vaccines.

Perhaps that is my message. I know I’m being pushed to take a vaccine that is being oversold. But I knowingly buy and use products all-the-time that are oversold by people pressuring me.

5:34 PM · Aug 2, 2021

Do you eat food that ADM and Monsanto touch? I do. Do I ingest things into my body when I don’t know all the ingredients? All the time.

Seeing the risks of the vaccine, the risks of COVID and the risks of alternative treatment, I chose vaccine. What should you do?

5:34 PM · Aug 2, 2021

What I did was to plug my ears to the sales pitch.

As I said, I took a vaccine whose safety was oversold to stop a disease whose lethality is real but also oversold, at some risk that my vaccine may additionally represent risks that I don’t understand. I’m not privy to any plan.

5:34 PM · Aug 2, 2021

What I urge you to do is decouple the fact that you are being lied to at one level from the safety issue.

If someone told you that seatbelts absolutely don’t kill people, they are not truthful. But you still likely wear one. If someone tells you vaccines **are** safe, then what?

5:34 PM · Aug 2, 2021

This wins me friends with no one. But know that you can see all the lies, distortions and perverse incentives, and still take the vaccine based on the data available today. If there were more and better data, I might take an alternative. But I didn’t see that emerging in time.

5:34 PM · Aug 2, 2021

My best guess is that we’re being lied to and sometimes in significant ways, but that the lies are still not as deep as our worst fears on the vaccines.

I don’t like Build Back Better as a creepy one-world Davos mantra. But I don’t think the vaccines are part of a worldwide con.

5:34 PM · Aug 2, 2021

It’s not that I don’t fear the Tuskegee medical experiment paradigm. It’s that I don’t think the lies are as deep as our worst fears.

I could be wrong. And I see that. But I don’t want ability to spot the lies to proxy for your own relative safety assessment. They are distinct.

5:34 PM · Aug 2, 2021

I see that there are oversimplifications, censorship & coercion. I hate it, as you know. But I don’t take it as PROOF of evil plans.

Leaders would tell you it’s risk & we expect you to do your part.

We have these people instead. So they lie as a matter of “just doing our job.”

5:34 PM · Aug 2, 2021

Moral: even if you see the lies and the danger they represent, you have every right to decouple that from relative risk assessment and to take vaccines despite the sales job.

Most good things are oversold, perversely incentivized, and have disguised risks and costs to them.

5:34 PM · Aug 2, 2021

Wish I could do better. But I can’t figure it out for myself and my own family. So I did the best I could as a non-expert without insider access.

So
Good luck. Hope you can do a bit better. Sincerely.

👍

5:34 PM · Aug 2, 2021


Sam Harris in an impossible situation.

Let’s begin with the impossible message: “The obviously not very trustworthy institutions are likely far more trustworthy than you think.”

A probably true but impossible and thankless point to make to those who (accurately) feel betrayed.

11:00 PM · Aug 8, 2021

Next impossible point: “We may find out *ex post* that the vaccines are more dangerous long term than anyone imagines or than COVID. But, *ex ante*, you should still vaccinate based on current info.”

This is a point that can’t be made at scale. Ex post wins over practical minds.

11:00 PM · Aug 8, 2021

Then there is the “Ivermectin isn’t even widely available.” point.

Then there is the “cost of Covid” relative risk point.

And so on.

And all without lashing out personally at @BretWeinstein and @HeatherEHeying beyond the issue of judgment in a life and death situation.

11:00 PM · Aug 8, 2021

For better and worse, both Sam and Bret are working out of a common desire to say something to give people good direction. They both have different things they see most clearly and also different weights on the meanings and truth values of various claims.

Is there any way out?

11:00 PM · Aug 8, 2021

Well, it *has* come to this. My big disagreement w @BretWeinstein is how he has structured his point. Trying to sort this out, I saw a much less clear picture. I don’t want to say he’s wrong on substance b/c I don’t know. But the clarity he sees isn’t clear to me as a non expert.

11:00 PM · Aug 8, 2021

I see government, industry and public health push out massive simplifications, distortions and even lies to hide small and large issues alike. You can have an aircraft carrier size lie that is used to hide 1 reefer and flask of moonshine. Or it can be used to smuggle Tanks/bombs.

11:00 PM · Aug 8, 2021

I don’t know what to make of the public health and newsmedia screw ups. They are beyond preposterous.

But my best guess is that the institutional lies used as vehicles often hide much smaller payloads than one might naively guess. And my **guess** is that this is true here too.

11:00 PM · Aug 8, 2021

The whole thing makes me sad though. Because of errors in leadership by Fauci, Trump, CNN, MSNBC, Biden, The Lancet, etc we’re being needlessly divided from each other.

Love both @SamHarrisOrg & @BretWeinstein. But perhaps there’s nothing to do without reform of our leadership.

11:00 PM · Aug 8, 2021

Simple Moral: the size of the lying you can spot isn’t necessarily the size of what is being smuggled.

It’s ok to vaccinate, even if vaccines are at times needlessly & foolishly oversold with ham-fisted sanctimony and authoritarian bullshit that makes you puke. Separate issues.

11:00 PM · Aug 8, 2021

This will again win few friends. It’s pretty hopeless & thankless from here on out. But I encourage @BretWeinstein and @SamHarrisOrg to let it go. I wouldn’t say that if I saw a way forward. But I admit I’m feeling pretty hopeless over all this.

I’m not smart enough for this. 🙏

11:00 PM · Aug 8, 2021


Now, what was media saying about vaccines vs “Anti-Vaxxer Lunatic Horse Dewormer Snakeoil”?

Forgive me: I was lost in a moment just refreshing my medical history.

https://t.co/UV0wbovWLw

8:04 PM · Sep 3, 2021

Moral: if you want to talk about Ivermectin vs vaccines, don’t **ever** pull that “Horse DeWormer” shaming idiocy if you want independent people to vaccinate. You just look like hate filled idiots. Our precious vaccines come from self experimentation.

Pro-Vaccine IS Pro-Puss. 🙏

8:04 PM · Sep 3, 2021

[Brought to you by a pro-Vaxxer who has not taken Ivermectin and who is not an MD and refuses to give medical advice. This is about the inane use of shame in public health by affiliated media, and *not* about relative therapeutic efficacy and risk.]

8:11 PM · Sep 3, 2021
  • Pus not Puss.

But let’s be honest, your not hear for the spelling and typos. ;-)

8:15 PM · Sep 3, 2021


I listened. It made me think.

I view Sam not wanting to talk to Bret as less significant than many of you, including @joerogan. I think Sam is confused by Bret (which is normal) but worries that working out the issues in public/private could end up in public as a health threat.

12:13 AM · Oct 18, 2021

I don't think @SamHarrisOrg sees @BretWeinstein as a flat earther in any general sense.

Likewise, while I've said that Bret's point is mis-structured, most of his point was that the vaccine/COVID discussion is being managed to avoid legitimate complicating issues around vaccine.

12:13 AM · Oct 18, 2021

So while I didn't understand where Bret got his clarity from on Ivermectin, VAERS and Pharma incentives, I certainly understood that we appeared to be weirdly avoiding a scientific discussion around data collection, comparative efficacy, long-term risks in novel situations, etc.

12:13 AM · Oct 18, 2021

But all that isn't the point of this thread. It was to say this, many of us are not fighting with anyone in this group. People may be disappointed in me, but there isn't one person in the IDW (cough, cough) universe that I am not eager to talk to. Most of us have held together.

12:13 AM · Oct 18, 2021

I am always happy to talk with @MaajidNawaz, @SamHarrisOrg, @bariweiss, @BretWeinstein, @jordanbpeterson, @DrDebraSoh, @HeatherEHeying, @CHSommers, @DouglasKMurray, @RubinReport, @joerogan, @MsMelChen, @clairlemon, @ConceptualJames, @michaelshermer, etc. Even if THEY are pissed.

12:13 AM · Oct 18, 2021

So @ShellenbergerMD, be of good cheer. Not all are fighting. There *are* real tensions in this group, but most of us are happy to be in touch with each other. We have ups and downs and disappointments. But the divisions have been exaggerated by an internet that fetishizes drama.

12:13 AM · Oct 18, 2021

I do think @joerogan was right in what he said however. I have never seen people of both good charachter and mind so bizarrely divided by intellectual disputes as we all are in 2021. But that is why I think it is inspiring that the greater IDW isn't more divided. It's not so bad.

12:13 AM · Oct 18, 2021

As for Bret and Sam...I thought the right thing to do is to give it time. Sam is still more of a believer in the system than Bret. Bret is more sweeping in his critique. But I am happy to help Joe or anyone else in resolving this so it doesn't send the message that 'all is lost.'

12:13 AM · Oct 18, 2021

For the most part, most people in this space are open to working out most of their differences most of the time.

But the internet gossip machine wants catfights. I just don't know why that beats calling a friend up to say "I am having trouble with what you said."

12:13 AM · Oct 18, 2021

Moral: There never really was an IDW. But whatever there was isn't in such bad shape. There are real divisions in the group to be sure, but most of them aren't so severe. Including, in my opinion, Bret & Sam. So far it's limited to one topic. Not perfect, but not too bad either..

12:13 AM · Oct 18, 2021


Burn it all the F down. All tax is theft. Exit > Voice. Just put it on a blockchain bro. No Justice, No Peace. No Big Deal: It’s China’s turn. But those mean tweets. Forth turning ma dude. “Orange man Bad” right? But Jan 6th!

Simplified Twitter solutions to it all, as a graphic:

ERW-X-post-1450495273667424256-FCExw6zVIAIiIkP.jpg
4:13 PM · Oct 19, 2021

Fantasize all you want, but when you are done, you will still have to save or found institutions that are not this extractive, dishonest, sociopathic, and incompetent.

Don’t believe it? Spend a month without using any institutions.

Moral: Stop looking for no-brainer summations.

4:13 PM · Oct 19, 2021


Things I don't believe we can't conclusively resolve:

A) COVID's origin.

B) The Jeffrey Epstein story.

C) UAP.

D) JFK assassination.

E) Vegas Shooting.

F) Extent of 'Democracy Fortifying' in 2020.

G) Efficacy of Non-Vaccines.

H) Mysterious WEF 'Build Back Better' mantra.

7:17 PM · Oct 23, 2021

I) Negative impacts of Trade known to have been suppressed.

J) Adulteration of BLS CPI measure of inflation.

K) Negative economic impacts of Immigration.

L) Sudden spike in fake 'Objective Third Party Fact Checking'.

M) Sudden "Diversity Equity Inclusion" explosion.

7:17 PM · Oct 23, 2021

Q) Joe Biden's state of cognitive decline.

R) Nature of MSNBC campagin against Andrew Yang.

S) Nature of Dean Scream, Anti-Ron Paul and other interference in democracy by Mainstream media News.

T) Impact of loss of mandatory retirement on young people seeking work.

U) Rex84.

7:17 PM · Oct 23, 2021

V) Collusion between National Academy and National Science foundation division of Policy Research and Analysis to fake demographic crisis in mid 1980s.

W) Lack on anyone building the significant & desperately needed new non-profit institutions despite skyhigh wealth inequality.

7:17 PM · Oct 23, 2021

X) Loss of Academic Freedom across the board in Academe.

Y) Loss of the Lancet and other publications as trusted non-political sources of fact.

Z) The true nature of @EcoHealthNYC w its relationship to @doddtra & Dr A. Fauci.

Moral: much of this 'ambiguity' is serving the few.

7:17 PM · Oct 23, 2021

A last point: I don't know what happened in most all of these (the NSF & BLS stories being exceptions). I really don't. The quality of my guesses is not particularly high. The quality of my suspicions as to what IS resolvable has been *considerably* higher, at least historically.

7:49 PM · Oct 23, 2021


St Helena. Still Covid free.

Moral: there’s (almost) no diversity on Earth. We are all in one giant experiment now with shared fate. Whatever happens in Vegas (or Wuhan or Chernobyl
) won’t stay there anymore.

It is past time to diversify off this sphere before it’s too late.

7:58 AM · Nov 1, 2021

And for those new to this issue I don’t mean Mars. And I don’t mean let’s stop caring about earth.

If we don’t solve post-Einstein physics we aren’t likely going anywhere good. And even if we do, there’s no guarantee it helps.

Take care of earth, but look for the exit. Now.

8:25 AM · Nov 1, 2021


The research university system would start to collapse. And we would at last be forced to conclude that using PRC labor to try to intimidate America’s STEW force into accepting *scraps* to enrich everyone else is probably about the dumbest thing we do as a nation.

Close to it.

5:57 PM · Nov 2, 2021

American universities and research institutes say the U.S.’s dominance in science and technology could be undermined by toughened U.S. visa requirements that are squeezing the flow of talent from China. https://www.wsj.com/world/china/visa-restrictions-on-chinese-students-endanger-u-s-innovation-edge-universities-say-11635856001

5:57 PM · Nov 2, 2021

This is a market. Let’s get this much needed pain to our universities/STEM employers. That’s how this works. Our STEM employers need pain to stop lying & to stop helping our strategic rivals play us like a fiddle. How do we get them as much pain as we can, as quickly as possible?

5:57 PM · Nov 2, 2021

Moral: Scientists are central to a modern nation on every level. Only a 3rd rate kleptocracy chisels on compensation and insulation of STEM professionals. The deliberate use by NSF of PRC labor (student and otherwise) to hold down US wages is an advanced form of academic madness.

5:58 PM · Nov 2, 2021

*STEM

5:59 PM · Nov 2, 2021


@clairlemon @babydontshirtme @BretWeinstein When good people fall into these battles I am always inclined to remember the moral i got from Othello:

Look for Iago.

8:35 AM · Nov 10, 2021


Surprise.

[Word to the wise: watch very very carefully how your CPI is constructed. You have the right to know EXACTLY how it is constructed.]

5:26 PM · Nov 30, 2021

NEW: Powell says it's time to retire the word "transitory" regarding inflation https://www.bloomberg.com/news/live-blog/2021-11-29/powell-and-yellen-in-the-senate-kwkw102n

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3:41 AM · Nov 30, 2021

It’s hard to imagine how confused Economics is. Imagine you work for the @BLS_gov and you have to admit that your agency claims to compute our Inflation within a Cost-Of-Living framework, but doesn’t maintain the central ingredient needed to compute or even impute Cost-Of-Living.

5:26 PM · Nov 30, 2021

There are no preference maps, chained CPI employs a superlative Tornqvist formula to account for substitution. The documents introducing the chained CPI do a better job outlining the methodological and theoretical structures than I could.(https://bls.gov/cpi/additional-resources/chained-cpi-introduction.pdf)

10:24 PM · Nov 6, 2021

Follow the thread back from here. This is where the conversation ends. #EconTwitter may tell you terrible things about me.

Maybe. Or maybe they don’t have a theory that works and they refuse to admit it while transferring billions through CPI releases.

5:26 PM · Nov 30, 2021

Wait. Slow down.

Did you just say that BLS is claiming to work within a Cost of Living framework which *requires* preference maps *definitionally*, but
words fail me
has no preference maps? At all??

I must not be understanding. Chaining Tornqvist indexes isn’t an answer here.

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10:17 PM · Nov 6, 2021

You cannot keep mumbling Economic word salad forever “Modified Laspeyres
core inflation
Lowe generalization of the Laspeyres
Chained Tornqvist with revisions
chain drift
superlative index approximates flexible functional form
”

5:26 PM · Nov 30, 2021

Tastes change. Cost-Of-Living inflation is about tastes. If tastes evolve in time, the economists’ COL framework disintegrates. That is: there is NO theory. #EconTwitter can tell you I don’t get it.

It is THEY who don’t get it. They can’t escape it. It’s in their own literature.

ERW-X-post-1465734110681321472-FFdVZ6YVUAQYY9k.jpg
5:26 PM · Nov 30, 2021

What you are seeing reported as Inflation is not coming from a well grounded theory. It is coming from human beings making policy level judgements as if they were merely making technical adjustments to a technical time series devoid of values about who should benefit or suffer.

5:26 PM · Nov 30, 2021

Moral: you have a right to know what’s in your food and how your pharmaceuticals were tested. You have a right to ask your surgeon what she plans to do during an operation.

You have a right to demand what economists are actually measuring as Cost-Of-Living W/O abuse for asking.

5:28 PM · Nov 30, 2021

And, no, the answers to these questions are NOT in the BLS handbook on CPI methodology. I’ve looked.

5:30 PM · Nov 30, 2021


So this just appears now!?! And what do we learn? That if "Sources and Methods" of the Intelligence Community might be compromised, prosecutors regularly decline to push for full prosecution EVEN IN THE CASE OF SEXUAL ABUSE of minors and INFANTS.

Bingo: Follow the Silence.

ERW-X-post-1466299741898035201-FFlMFKvVUAMTsju.png ERW-X-post-1466299741898035201-FFlNjjQVcAUrpt7.png
6:54 AM · Dec 2, 2021

I have spent a decade, literally, collecting hundreds of IG reports from the CIA via #FOIA. I've filed 13 requests and sued the agency 3 times since 2012. When @a_cormier_ & I started to review these docs earlier this year we spotted a disturbing pattern

9:34 PM · Dec 1, 2021

We have an undisclosed program; there's some kind of 'understanding' that we don't understand. I very well understand why we don't casually compromise "Sources & Methods". But trafficking kids is NOT casual business. Nor is USING them as part of 'Sources & Methods' for kompromat.

6:54 AM · Dec 2, 2021

One question now creates 2 teams:

Team A) 'Sources & Methods' are above child trafficking in importance.

Team B) Child Trafficking is above any exemption for our 'Sources & Methods'.

I believe that if Epstein needed to use kids for S&M as Kompromat, we lost our plot entirely.

6:54 AM · Dec 2, 2021

Seriously, I am not being naive here. If we have to abuse children to gain security for the country, maybe we don't have the right to a nation? If our intelligence community is so pathetic...look you get the idea. If the US isn't protecting kids from our own IC, we aren't the US.

6:54 AM · Dec 2, 2021

I understand we may occassionally have to fell a monster overseas. I understand that sometimes there's a ticking time bomb and 'extraordinary methods' are needed. I understand that we must surveil people or engage in illegal acts while undercover.

But you-can't-use-kids. Period.

6:54 AM · Dec 2, 2021

Is there some GIANT understanding involving our journalists & news desks that when the IC says 'Sources & Methods' we all just say 'Ok. Anything you say boys.' Like, for example with @arobach being shut down on Epstein:

Abuse of Kids > Sources & Methods

6:54 AM · Dec 2, 2021

Notice how everything adds up if there's a giant understanding that Sources & Methods trump everything protecting innocent children? You just say 'Sources & Methods are at risk'. Explains Acosta, Robach, Veritas, etc. Boom: No more Epstein mysteries. It's all 'Sources & Methods'.

6:54 AM · Dec 2, 2021

Q: Why no discussion of Villard House records?
A: Sources & Methods.

Q: Why no investigation of Epstein's Hedge Fund's trading partners & brokerage?
A: Sources & Methods.

Q: Why do editors claim no one cares about Epstein?
A: Sources & Methods.

Q: Project Veritas?
A: S&M.

6:54 AM · Dec 2, 2021

Q: Why report Epstein was a disgraced Financier when no one seems to have traded with him?
A: Sources & Methods.

Q: Why so little interest in covering Ghislaine relative to Kyle Rittenhouse?
A: Sources & Methods.

Q: Why did no one ask where GM last crossed a border?
A: S & M.

6:54 AM · Dec 2, 2021

Moral: Our kids cant vote. We bring them into the world totally dependent on us. If we have a country that deserves an Intelligence Service, we have a right to know that kids are 100% OFF LIMITS as regards 'Sources & Methods' by the IC of us or our allies. Period. Kids >>> S & M.

6:54 AM · Dec 2, 2021

P.S. And...I appear to be back to being throttled more agressively after several threads were throttled less agressively or not at all by twitter.

At least at first on this thread. We will see whether that continues. CC'ing @lexfridman @benshapiro @jordanbpeterson @SamHarrisOrg

7:02 AM · Dec 2, 2021


A different wrong idea the Internet loves: “True scientists are humble”.

Typically Newton’s quote to Hooke is invoked “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

Ahem. Great scientists are all over the map on this. Nowhere close to always humble.

3:26 PM · Dec 15, 2021

Great minds have made fun of this through the years.

There is an old story that the great Sidney Coleman once walked into the Harvard Physics department office and said “If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I am surrounded by midgets.”

Scientists aren’t simple.

3:26 PM · Dec 15, 2021

Most successful scientists are combinations of arrogant ambitious people, together with humble self-critical people.

But the Internet can’t be bothered with that complexity. So it traffics in a crazy idea: if you aren’t always humble you aren’t a scientist.

Which is bananas


3:26 PM · Dec 15, 2021

Feynman wasn’t simply an arrogant prick. He was “Schodinger’s Prick” if you will. Sometimes an insufferable bully. Sometimes a humble teacher. Generally a show-off. Sometimes a supporter of others. At times a saboteur.

Moral: simple statements about science are generally false.

3:26 PM · Dec 15, 2021

But most *simple* humility in science is false humility. That said, we are all humbled by nature, and sometimes by our peers. But most have to be at least a bit arrogant to survive abusive colleagues. So it is uncommon to find someone who is always humble. And yet, they do exist.

3:26 PM · Dec 15, 2021

2022

I know of no well resourced individual interested in leading an attempt to save our institutions from current leadership. No one I know is studying why seemingly disjoint institutions (e.g. @splcenter, @ACLU, @nytimes, @UCBerkeley, @MSNBC, @NIH, @sciam, etc.) would act as one.

10:41 PM · Jan 17, 2022

In short, anyone who could credibly even attempt to save these structures (or even allow us to understand their rapid collective demise by studying the slide without needing to seek funding or approval) is acting as if this isn't interesting or a priority...or they approve of it.

10:41 PM · Jan 17, 2022

I don't know how to interpret this, but there are a very large number of folks without those levels of resources who have tried and paid dearly. Yet, I am aware of no mega check that has ever been written to allow them to know the freedom of dissent enjoyed by the ultrawealthy.

10:41 PM · Jan 17, 2022

The entire idea of academic freedom was to free one class of people from "Sinclair's Prison". How do you make a scientist or an academician immunized from having her or his paycheck depend on whether she/he evidences understanding of an inconvenient truth power wants buried?

10:41 PM · Jan 17, 2022

We don't have such people anymore. We need to get rid of modern "accountability" and all those other words that give people a gooey feeling they are doing the right thing. We need our truth apparatus immunized from the market as we had it before. Yet no one works on this issue.

10:41 PM · Jan 17, 2022

Moral: markets may still be functioning, but wealth is not. The world of folks having their reputations systematically destroyed by trying to opennly call for defense of our institutions and their values against our current suicidal leadership & the on-line hordes is unsupported.

10:41 PM · Jan 17, 2022

I'm not calling for support here. I am pointing out something much more interesting. No one wealthy...as in no one who owns a large private jet and above...finds this something worth doing. *ALL* of our wealthy have given up on our shared institutions. And I found that striking.

10:41 PM · Jan 17, 2022

Maybe the wealthy are just super smart & have an escape plan. If so, I haven't heard it. Call it a hunch, but watching the collapse in institutional trust, I don't think this is going to end well for anyone, including the ultra wealthy. It's one planet connected by an atmosphere.

10:41 PM · Jan 17, 2022


My my. What a “quick and devastating published takedown.” Well done @npr. Good dog. Good boy.

Moral: Never sell your soul for a tote-bag and Carl Kasell’s voice on your home answering machine message.

1:06 AM · Jan 22, 2022


I understand that CPI is 7.5%.

Different question. Look at the spread.

Tell me how we got 7.5%? Do you have any idea what 7.5% means?

Now listen to who repeats this number.

If they said 7.57348977% ± 0.0000003% you would be laughing.

We should be laughing, not nodding.

4:28 PM · Feb 10, 2022

Price increases over last year (CPI report)
Used Cars: +40.5%
Gasoline: +40.0%
Gas Utilities: +23.9%
Meats/Fish/Eggs: +12.2%
New Cars: +12.2%
Electricity: +10.7%
Overall CPI: +7.5%
Food at home: +7.4%
Food away from home: +6.4%
Transportation: +5.6%
Apparel: +5.3%
Shelter: +4.4%

1:35 PM · Feb 10, 2022

Monthly Reminder Moral: it’s really really really hard to fake a field. Economic Index Numbers like CPI are not real numbers. They are naturally group-valued *FIELDS* that would be nearly impossible to fake and manipulate.

The *entire* subject is off. Peer review won’t help. 🙏

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4:37 PM · Feb 10, 2022


I think this isn’t right.

We have a world where institutions BLATANTLY lie in the vague direction of the truth to make the truth
uh
punchier. More viral.

Some people, upon detecting the lies (e.g. “Climate modeling is settled science”), decide there’s no truth in it *at all*.

7:04 PM · Apr 6, 2022

🔮On the Republican Party: “Because of Trump’s fanaticism, the worshipful base of the Republican Party barely regards climate change as a serious problem. That’s a death warrant to the species.”

2:03 PM · Apr 6, 2022

Many believe there is no chance COVID was Zoonotic because we are lying about the lab by saying it has to be Zoonotic. But we don’t know.

Many people are convinced Ivermectin is a total COVID solution since we’re obviously lying about human medicine as Horse Dewormer. It isn’t.

7:22 PM · Apr 6, 2022

No one knows if Epstein killed himself. We just know our papers aren’t aggressively reporting that story. So many assume Epstein’s death is fake or an obvious hit. Because it could be either, but our lame institutions don’t dare ask even the easy questions. So we lurch to oppose.

7:22 PM · Apr 6, 2022

Many people don’t believe that Russia/Ukraine is a threat or even real because they can see the obvious daily spin. But it is a huge threat and an atrocity. We’re just lying and spinning parts of it.

They don’t believe the Fed has ANY function because it does do some bad stuff.

7:22 PM · Apr 6, 2022

Moral: if you want a better model of Trump Supporters try this one: they prefer idiosyncratic lying/spin/distortion by a gadfly as an antidote to coordinated credentialed institutional polished lying with amazing production values. Further, they don’t think *anyone* offers truth.

7:22 PM · Apr 6, 2022

But they will react to spin and hype as if there is ZERO substance behind it if that spin and hype are coordinated across multiple venues, institutions & talking heads.

They aren’t principally embracing Trump or idiocy. They are rejecting obvious coordination of hype.

That.🙏

7:22 PM · Apr 6, 2022

One example, offered freely and without my asking:

7:29 PM · Apr 6, 2022

That would be me. A lifetime studying science but have never spent one second looking into climate change. Too many experiences with the left's consensus herd. Don't care about Ukraine, either. Anything they're all in on I ignore.

7:14 PM · Apr 6, 2022


The city of Aix-en-Provence is not without an architectural


ERW-X-post-1550088653757730820-FYMFaaJWAAE oa1.jpg
12:01 PM · Jul 21, 2022


sense of humor.

ERW-X-post-1550088659600396291-FYMFa6-XEAAwa1m.jpg
12:01 PM · Jul 21, 2022


but then in Aix, once you see one AIX or X reference, you start seeing things everywhere that may or not be real.

ERW-X-post-1550088666810294273-FYMFbLWWIAAbVEp.jpg ERW-X-post-1550088666810294273-FYMFbLYXoAE7yvv.jpg ERW-X-post-1550088666810294273-FYMFbLYXkAEw3mg.jpg
12:01 PM · Jul 21, 2022

This is a simple model of what goes wrong in most models of “conspiracy theorizing”. I don’t know how to say that the building pictured is almost certainly an “architectural conspiracy” to spell AIX while the gate is not. I have no idea about the crossed metal beams.

ERW-X-post-1550088666810294273-FYMFbLYXkAEw3mg.jpg ERW-X-post-1550088676356538370-FYMFbtoX0AEaEyd.jpg ERW-X-post-1550088676356538370-FYMFbtsXEAImMpm.jpg
12:01 PM · Jul 21, 2022

Moral: some people seem to see meaning & pattern everywhere. Others seem to demand proof because they believe that it’s all likely our imaginations. Don’t be like those groups of people.

Take on the true burden of trying to sort out what is real but hidden vs what is imagined.🙏

12:01 PM · Jul 21, 2022


Dear @paulkrugman:

How about going further:

A) Why were so many other folks right about inflation?

B) Admit we pretend to calculate “cost of living” inflation as a NUMBER when it is a FIELD on preference space and must be reported as such to be real?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/paul-krugman-inflation.html

8:01 PM · Jul 23, 2022

This is how the government typically reports inflation to the public: https://t.co/ck3p8kQd9Y

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8:07 PM · Jul 23, 2022

This is how NOAA tracks weather. We are all habituated to higher levels of complexity. Why not inflation? In this analogy points on the map would be different preference systems w/ different inflation measurements.

Why are economists *pretending* to do Cost-Of-Living analysis? https://t.co/bGwhc25ogj

ERW-X-post-1550936924264665089-FYYI6YvUUAAWL-Y.jpg
8:12 PM · Jul 23, 2022

Moral: Massaging a single number is easy. Massaging a preference field is a lot harder.

“Cost of Living” is a Field on preference space. We don’t calculate preferences, taste change or real substitution effects. AT ALL. We are lying about inflation as a Cost Of Living framework.

8:18 PM · Jul 23, 2022


About 1 in 10 of the 10,000 > respondents openly acknowledge that they enjoy immiserating others often or daily on the internet.

We cannot make progress in an environment that induces this percentage of humans to delight in making others fellow humans suffer on a regular basis.

8:09 PM · Aug 17, 2022

I enjoy causing other people misery on the internet.

ERW-X-poll-1559619801777000454.jpg
7:15 PM · Aug 16, 2022

Moral: we’re now normalizing full on actual sociopathy and psychopathic behavior as if it were some normal schadenfreude or return of costs to bad actors as we careen mindlessly towards actual physical violence from both right and left. Because in this environment, it’s meh.

8:15 PM · Aug 17, 2022


Moral: I’m getting depressingly good at the block button. Not because I don’t value real critique. But because the negative comments generally aren’t really reasoned critique. If you are confused, here is a simple rule of thumb: critique is generally constructive feedback. Thx.

10:34 PM · Aug 22, 2022


1/n Have you wondered why folks you previously thought of as Left of Center, are appearing on @TuckerCarlson, @EpochTimes, @theblaze, etc.?

It’s effectively the story behind this tweet. Before 2011, outfits like @npr were left leaning news services. About 10yrs ago that changed.

5:01 AM · Aug 24, 2022

I used to talk to folks at @cnn, @npr, @washingtonpost etc all the time on inflation, physics, immigration, science policy, etc. Then, mysteriously reporters slowly started complaining about the situation at work much more. It seemed like we went from news with spin to narrative.

5:05 AM · Aug 24, 2022

Narrative driven news was the @nytimes special brand. On the one hand it *was* written with lively prose. On the other hand, I hated the idea that the narrative arc was constructed to fit facts that sometimes hadn’t even happened yet.

This idea of narrative beyond spin took off.

5:09 AM · Aug 24, 2022

Reporters started warning me:

“We’re hiring kids who don’t believe in objective factual reporting.”

“We’re being pushed to be on Twitter.”

“Editors aren’t letting our best stories through as much.”

“I can’t use you any more if you aren’t going to play ball. It sucks. Sorry.”

5:14 AM · Aug 24, 2022

I can probably figure out the last time a reporter called me up trying to understand a story as opposed to trying to get grist for a gotcha piece. But it seems like years ago.

So what happened? Many democrats tried to go back to @NPR etc., but found a door slammed in their face.

5:19 AM · Aug 24, 2022

Eventually we took the hint. Journalism at prestige legacy media properties was changing. News desks were dropping stories entirely that didn’t fit house narratives. They weren’t forced to report them and spin them. They would just spike a story that previously would be a scoop.

5:22 AM · Aug 24, 2022

And this lead to a question: “If @FoxNews is willing to run and spin a story that @nytimes or @cnn is pretending doesn’t exist, do I go on that channel?”

Now at first you think “Why would left leaning media push smart left leaning academicians to the Right?” But then you get it.

5:28 AM · Aug 24, 2022

So you’ll see the following tweet: “If you want to know who Prof. ABC **really** is, look at where she chooses to appear!”

But the good doctor ABC isn’t making this choice. She is choosing not to be silenced by media that stopped reporting and started defending news narratives.

5:32 AM · Aug 24, 2022

So expect more & more ordinary dissenting Professors, Physicians, Economists, Technologists to show up on Right of center platforms.

They aren’t making the choice you are being led to believe they are. Ask instead “Why did you CHOOSE @Fox over @NPR?”

And then you’ll learn why.

5:36 AM · Aug 24, 2022

The last piece of diabolical BS is you will hear this “Boo hoo. People with enormous platforms whine about being cancelled or silenced. Go cry to your millions of listeners.”

Not the point. Institutions can ignore almost any individuals with large followings, but not big media.

5:39 AM · Aug 24, 2022

The point of cancellation is making sure that you have to go on @joerogan to spread reasoned dissent. If you could really do it through legacy media it would FORCE hearings. It would force disclosures. It would force resignations. But experts can’t get the needed access anymore.

5:43 AM · Aug 24, 2022

MORAL: When you want to know why dissenting democrats are all over Right wing media, it is largely about blackballing all those who would disassemble the house narrative and strategies of the institutions. Legacy media is by and *for* institutions now. That’s why it seems insane.

5:46 AM · Aug 24, 2022

Don’t fall for the “Dr. XYZ went on the EPOCH TIMES!!” It’s a trick. Learn it.

Instead ask: “Why didn’t you go on @MSNBC, @npr, @nytimes, @cnn instead.

And brace yourself for the answer.

Thanks!

End

🙏

5:49 AM · Aug 24, 2022


I caution Republican friends from popping their corks too early. Imagine a Democratic multibillionaire pays to resettle 1000s of illegal immigrants in “Operation Alfombra de Bienvenida.”

Playing political chess w human beings as pawns is going to keep escalating. And backfiring.

2:21 PM · Sep 16, 2022

I agree that a key is to return costs to any and all who cynically weaponize immigration. But Democrats do not in any way have the monopoly here. Republican employers can be wretched trying to flood labor markets to destroy fellow citizens’ positions at the bargaining table.

2:30 PM · Sep 16, 2022

Moral: I’d be rather careful exchanging a correct and permanently defensible ethical position for a transient optical victory using illegal aliens as pawns against a cynical opponent that will likely adapt to a new opportunity to play the immigration optics game right back atcha.

2:40 PM · Sep 16, 2022

Note Added: it’s amazing to read bot-like responses that somehow now see what I wrote as towing a Democratic Party line. I’m writing as a human who is a reluctant restrictionist against 2 political parties weaponizing the best traditions of US openness.

Read-More-Carefully.🙏

2:58 PM · Sep 16, 2022


Washington DC lawmakers make rules to restrict what USG units may do. Units almost always work around the letter of the law to thwart that intent when intent would negatively affect their ability to perform. Examples of this are everywhere.

This leads to DC “Workaround culture.”

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

I’ve noticed that outsiders are of two minds about this.

A) That’s outrageous!
B) That’s totally normal.

Some examples.

RULE: USG can’t spy on US citizens.
WORKAROUND: Get Allies to spy on your citizens.

RULE: No offensive Bioweapons.
W-A: Do convertible ‘defensive’ research.

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

RULE: No importing ordinary labor for jobs Citizens can do.
W-A: Reclassify aliens as extraordinary or “students.”

Etc.

Then we come to this moment: Science, Emergency Use Authorization, and Nuremberg rules against forced medical interventions. Or:

“Science vs TheScience(tm)”

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

More or less Washington DC wants to force
and I mean FORCE
us all to vaccinate using unapproved drugs. This could be for our benefit or not. But they can’t do it under the letter of the law. So they do what is TOTALLY NORMAL to people who work in DC. They workaround the rules.

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

This Workaround requires a narrative that says many things:

A) Vaccines are costless & safe.
B) There is NO benefit to any other therapeutic, necessitating vaccines.
C) The virus CANNOT be from a lab working around the Geneva & Biological Weapons Conventions.
D) No forced jabs.

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

E) Anyone who so much as *questions* any of the above is a despicable anti-science fringe charlatan crackpot psychopath who must be publicly reputationally incinerated w/ a quick & devastating takedown of racist pseudoscience conspiracy thy beliefs as this is Life&Death.

Ahem.

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

And to this we see both reactions as before. But on *steroids* this time.

A) You unspeakably freedom hating evil godless tyrannical medical traitors of pure satanic evil.

B) Hello? It’s just Public Health. Read “Nudge”, chill out & grow up. Drama-Queen much? It’s not personal.

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

Quite honestly I have a particular hatred for Public Health and other DC professionals that prevent smart non-DC science folks from asking obvious seminar questions in the middle of such broad narrative campaigns via reputation tarnishing. Hatred is probably too mild a word here.

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

But I do know what I’m looking at: a massive pre-internet style *workaround* Gated Institutional Narrative campaign (or GIN). This is exactly the Distributed Idea Suppression Complex or DISC that I introduced long before COVID.

And it is as close to evil as anything I know. Why?

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

First of all, because it destroys science’s hard won credibility.

Fauci/Collins/Baric/Daszak don’t share Bioweapons workaround information. Which Is ‘normal.’

But they MASSIVELY worked to destroy their colleagues like @DrJBhattacharya of Stanford who were doing actual science.

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12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

If you screw up this badly with millions DEAD, you don’t get to keep your secrecy. Or your grants/program. Or your workaround. You have to lose. You have to disclose. You don’t get to stay secret. Too many dead. Don’t like that?

Tough luck sweetheart: Picture the bodies stacked.

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12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

I still don’t know why Daszak/Fauci/Collins are lying. I get that it is a workaround. But what I don’t understand is why we are continuing without hearings. I grew up with hearings into Watergate, Iran Contra, Domestic terror by FBI, etc. This world with no hearings is new.

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

So my point is this: Science needs hearings and REHABILITATION of those who were destroyed by this unholy workaround, likely of the Geneva and Biological Weapons Conventions via “Nudge” coercion to evade Nuremberg restrictions in name only. It’s pitchfork time in science. Enough.

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

Also, trying this out to see if @elonmusk is really in charge.

MORAL: The COVID narrative was the GIN. The destruction of all credentialed dissenters was the DISC. Now you know.

[Welcome Elon. Thank you. How can we help? Good luck & please please don’t cock it up. ;-)] 🙏

12:09 PM · Oct 28, 2022

[Result: Throttling still on. Red meat tweet after 20 minutes on an under 700K account. I meant what I wrote, but it was also a test. I know from years on the platform; that’s not possible when people are this rightfully upset.]

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12:34 PM · Oct 28, 2022


I don’t think there is any history of my ever commenting on @SBF_FTX.

It is because I never deeply understood what was going on when it was explained to me. I’m not going to lie: I felt dumb.

Moral: be very careful celebrating success that you don’t understand for its own sake.

4:31 PM · Nov 12, 2022

2) I'm really sorry, again, that we ended up here.

Hopefully things can find a way to recover. Hopefully this can bring some amount of transparency, trust, and governance to them.

Ultimately hopefully it can be better for customers.

4:31 PM · Nov 12, 2022

Other things that made/make me feel dumb:

Bernie Madoff’s Returns
COVID origin questions = Racism
Fauci
Hilary’s Inevitability
Quantum Gravity
Jeffrey Epstein’s CCY trading Claims
CPI Construction
UFO/UAP
Chinese Graduate Students in STEM
Open Borders
Defund The Police
DEI
NIH

4:46 PM · Nov 12, 2022


This is a bigger conversation. There is a lot of behavior on Twitter that is intended to intimidate people that hides behind pro-social rationalizations.

Tell me if you’ve heard the following excuses for *truly* antisocial posting:

A) It’s perfectly legal.
B) It’s just a joke!

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

What should the consequence of doxxing someone’s real-time, exact location be? Assume your child is at that location, as mine was.

5:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022

C) The public has a right to know!
D) The person targeted is successful so it’s not a problem.
E) The data is publicly available.
F) I’m just shitposting.
G) Oh, he’s an edge-lord.
H) She had it coming.
I) We give our targets a chance to respond.
J) He brought the issue up first.

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

K) She just has such a punchable face.
L) I don’t view commies as people.
M) I don’t view the AltRight as human.
N) First day on the internet?
O) No justice, no peace.
P) Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette.
Q) Anyone who posts under their real name deserves what’s coming.

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

R) Libtards are such whining crybabies.
S) I’m a critic!
T) I’m saving the public from charlatans.
U) Well, my audience liked it.
V) Famous people are asking for it.
W) I’m a journalist.
X) Chapelle is way worse than I am.
Y) I’m just a small account.
Z) It’s fun.

Ok. Now what?

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

The 1st thing to say is that a lot of those excuses are being used to cover up intentionally interpersonally destructive behavior. That is, folks who WANT to hurt others are generally on the look out for how they can hurt people and NOT pay the social price of being a psychopath.

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

MORAL I: If you enjoy the pain from hurting other named people, you are generally going to find a way to explain that what you are doing is for the good of the world. That is, *every* sadist can find an excuse between “This is normal.” and “I do it for society. Thank me later.”

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

How can you tell the difference between a psychopath and say a true comedian, journalist, etc? Psychopaths do not attempt to minimize damage to families. Regular folks try to target institutions before named individuals. They regularly attempt to give others generosity of spirit.

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

MORAL II: Excuses work because they muddy the water of abuse. The above excuses are appropriated from contexts where they make sense. But most internet critics are nothing of the kind. A criticism helps us course-correct. A stalker doesn’t want you to improve. They want anguish.

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

MORAL III: A lot of what is visible on Twitter hides behavior offsite, and even offline. An apparent Twitter critic may be real-life stalker/sadist. There‘s no way to understand what is happening to public figures like @elonmusk by just looking at Twitter. This is just surface.

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

MORAL IV: Many people on Twitter feel that the very rich on the site have so much money that they never need to worry about anything. This is close to being the dumbest idea ever.

Remember: Any billionaire with a child they love is vulnerable to any psycho with an opportunity.

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

MORAL V: Free speech is about restraining ourselves w/ culture so that we don’t need rules to tell us what we can say. It’s NOT a free-for-all for sadists. Free speech would NEVER develop in a culture in which Mores were not strong, shared and effective in prohibiting sociopathy.

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

FINAL MORAL: If you want to be a critic, a journalist, a comedian, or even a troll, develop a code of ethics. Don’t hybridize w/ abuse Check in w/ yourself as to whether you’re really working out abuse, rage, envy or status issues. Try to minimize unnecessary damage to others.

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

My thoughts anyway. Eager to hear yours. 🙏

Shabbat Shalom to one and all.

5:33 AM · Dec 17, 2022

2023

Only a few years ago “AI safety” was a fringe topic outside East Bay futurists.

Moral: pay attention to things that have not yet become concrete. Normal people, for reasons that remain opaque, cannot consider outcomes that have never before happened.

cc: @ESYudkowsky

7:53 AM · Feb 3, 2023


“Graduate Students in STEM” is mostly a euphemism for America’s dirt cheap scientific workforce. Everyone in Science knows this by the way & admits it behind closed doors. Everyone.

[We lie in public just to save millions FYI.]

Now let’s talk about that overflight by a balloon.

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6:02 PM · Feb 6, 2023

Moral: China already knows what we are doing by and large. American science is built on a model: they supply highly reliable workers, we supply our asymmetric scientific advantages born of our freedom. Don’t hate the PRC and their students. The US is always giving away the store.

6:04 PM · Feb 6, 2023


Imagine if it were leaked that COVID came from an NIH grant: “This-has-no-business-being-in-the-public-domain.”

Or if Epstein were foreign intelligence operating with tacit approval of the US IC: “This-is-not-intended-for-public-consumption.”

Capisce?

https://x.com/Badbydefault/status/1645631029825224706

4:01 AM · Apr 11, 2023

My point: you public servants have protected AND failed too much. You smear *every* one of us who merely trips over your mile-wide trail of incompetent statecraft from Bagram to Wuhan that passes through 71st St Manhattan & east of Dayton.

MORAL: Protect less or succeed more. 🙏

4:01 AM · Apr 11, 2023


You aren’t getting it. We have been in @sapinker’s bubble for 70 years since late 1952 early 1953.

You are simply finding the first conversation that proves to you that none of us (myself very much included) are truly thinking. What is beginning to happen is inconceivable.

12:22 AM · May 14, 2023

Let me put it this way. Consider that where we are drives everyone who starts to get it totally mad from the perspective of normal people. Several examples:

Edward Teller (Fusion)
@ESYudkowsky (AI)
Jim Watson (DNA)

If you start to realize where we really are you become warped.

12:22 AM · May 14, 2023

So the reason you are having these conversations is that you are talking to defense mechanisms. You are talking to people choosing a form of sanity (social sanity) over reality.

And there is no monastic group yet looking at what is headed our way. Why is that? It’s so dumb.

12:22 AM · May 14, 2023

Simply put, the central mystery is the non-use of H bombs and genetic engineered plague for the 70 years we have had such insight into god like power. @sapinker’s illusion of you will. Why worry? Things just get better. And better.

To really understand this moment is to go mad.

12:22 AM · May 14, 2023

We haven’t seen swarms of facial recognition attack drones. Or engineered targeted plagues. Or H bomb use. Or climate calamity. Or total Market implosions. Etc. Etc. So it will simply not happen because it hasn’t.

I don’t know what to tell you. You are often a careful thinker.

12:22 AM · May 14, 2023

Moral: Think carefully whether you wish to think carefully. It may be a serious mistake. There is good reason to think we will not think carefully until there is a spectacular close call. And even then it may not be enough. Stare at reality at your own peril. And good luck.

12:22 AM · May 14, 2023


I don’t get this at all. Dark matter is not sketchy. Neutrinos as extremely light electrically neutral leptons are *almost* dark.

People ask me what I hate about String Theory and Quantum Gravity culture. It is this. The endless ST/QG propaganda and smearing of critics makes it look like Dark Matter, Grand Unified Theory, Supersymmetry, Dark Energy, extra dimensions, etc. are all part of a Bullshit offensive of speculative nonsense.

I have been extremely harsh because this culture has left an impression with non-researchers that all of high energy particle physics theory is ‘sketch’. Bullshit. One tiny group of people with an unusual scientific ethics of both overselling unsuccessful ideas and bad mouthing rival colleagues doesn’t have the right to destroy the credibility of this amazing community.

Even Supersymmetry and String Theory aren’t Sketch
Let alone dark matter and dark energy. And I am among the longest standing public critics wiling to say that string theory and quantum gravity are totally failing as solid physics programs.

MORAL: Sketchy culture leave the impression that the science is sketchy. NO!! It’s the *culture* not the *theory* that is ‘sketch’. That is why we need to call out the unethical behavior that is undermining support and understanding of fundamental physics.

🙏

4:08 AM · Jul 19, 2023

2024

You aren't signed up for Democracy if you think government should be dismantled each time you lose, yet must be revered whenever you win. That's just being an ass.

This court may be accused of overstepping. As the Warren court was once. Think about it.

Moral: Don't be an ass.

4:52 PM · Mar 2, 2024


Is immigration simply “good”? Why are we not more alarmed about its impact?

———-

I saw the Harvard Economist George Borjas years ago. He was about to retire.

“I love your work.” I said sadly. “Are you going to miss doing research?”

“No! Not at all.” he said unexpectedly.

“Wow!” I exclaimed. “How can that be?”

“You see,” he said in Cuban accented English, “I spent my entire life trying to make one simple point to my academic colleagues. And I must accept now, at the end, that I have simply failed. And, at just one point!”

“You mean
” I began.

“Yes: immigration also has negative effects in addition to the positive ones
just like everything else in this world.”

There was a *long* silence. And then, at the same moment, we both started laughing. I don’t know why exactly. It was as if we both realized there was nothing else to do. The career was ending, and we both knew exactly what had happened.

———————-

Academe when it comes to immigration, economic indices, Neo-Darwinism, String Theory, Neo-classical economics, etc. is no longer an academic environment.

This is not true for many subjects that are continuing to function: effective field theory, machine learning, algebraic geometry, etc. would be examples.

MORAL: Universities are neither fully failed in 2024, nor successful. There is serious rot that is growing and eating away at them, but there are stillmany good researchers and scholars trapped inside, who are being driven to silence, in order to hold onto their remaining zone of scholarship and research “autonomy”.

I was in the economics department at Harvard for a while. During that time I had many bizarre conversations about free trade, free migration, stable preferences, etc. I would point out that the field’s policy recommendations to lawmakers simply did NOT follow from the field’s methodology. It was as if the field was often going backwards from what it knew it had to conclude if it wanted to weild power in Washington, rather than forward from scholarship.

You could go to a microeconomics seminar that had nothing to do with policy and everything would be scholarly.

Then you would go to a seminar in Macro or Labor economics and it would be essentially a competition between professors in Cambridge MA who were desperate for influence in Washington, trying to reach conclusions that would change the lives of all Americans.

Academe isn’t dead yet
but we aren’t removing the cancer either. We are just letting it go untreated.

6:16 PM · Jul 26, 2024


A “GET A ROOM” theory of political Schelling point polarization.

What I think I learned from this poll:

A) The pure Pro-Life and Pro-Choice positions (I.e. “Life begins at conception” vs “my body, my choice”) with their perfect clarity, were only held by 1/3 of respondents when lumped together.

B) The 2/3 of respondents whose position on abortion changes as the fertilized egg develops into a baby are mostly cowed into silence in the comments by the perfect clarity held by the minority.

C) Those respondents who believed that a fertilized egg and a baby about to be born have equal rights, discourage and inhibit (both intentionally and passively) the pure abortion rights and the “things change over pregnancy” respondents from joining the conversation.

D) This mirrors my experience. I am in the 2/3 group and am forced to caucus with the “My body, my choice. Full stop” crowd who do not represent my position in the slightest.

E) This feels almost EXACTLY the same as every other polarizing issue:

Immigration
Firearms
Ukraine
Gaza
Gender
J6
Religious terror
Democracy
Free markets
Taxation
Crypto
Vaccination
Free speech
Redistribution
Science, TheScience, Pseudo-Science
Etc

In all of these there are clear positions that likely do not attract the majority, but where the majority is forced to caucus with the clear position that at least vaguely more resembles their own.

This reinterprets Yeats:

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

Here it is the clear and not the worst that are full of passionate intensity, because they have a “Schelling Point”

Those of us with inferior Schelling points can admit that openly. My position on abortion for example depends on embryology and situational context. That is not as good of a Schelling point as conception or birth. I admit that.

But the quality of my Schelling point is not the quality of my position. I think I have a superior position at my inferior Schelling point than either pro-life or pro-choice.

My dream is that those with perfect Schelling points should have one conversation and the rest of us should have another. Otherwise we never get to the debates that would depolarize us.

So just as I say to the “Open Borders” vs “Closed Borders” people or the “Ban all guns” vs “Personal Nukes at Walmart”: get a room kids.

We need to split these conversations apart. I don’t want to caucus and discuss with pure pro-choice, open borders, and All weapons in private hands groups anymore. I want to cede the clarity arguments. “Your Schelling point wins
congratulations. It is better than mine.”

So that is it. I think I’ve had it with clarity.

MORAL: those with the clearest Schelling points need to get a room and have one debate, so that the rest of us with less clarity can book a stadium and have a second discussion. But we need to stop mixing up the two explorations.

This wasn’t about abortion after all. It was about political clarity: its benefits, its dangers and its inability to represent the majority of us who lack it.

Thanks for your time. As always. 🙏

4:16 PM · Aug 12, 2024


There is an old suite of ideas from a different time:

What appears to be coordinated is actually emergent.

What appears to be malice is actually incompetence.

What appears to be a pattern is generally random.

What appears to be doable outside of markets isn’t worth attempting because it can’t be coordinated and/or it is against human nature and/or has too many unintended consequences. ——

When enough people were educated to believe that suite as a sign of membership in the sophisticated elite, it then became possible to weaponize those ideas because they all shared a hidden feature: enervation.

People too sophisticated to believe in conspiracies, blame, patterns or the possibility of change will not only tend to do nothing, but they will tend to ensure that nothing can be coordinated around them except by narrow self interest. Which means markets/commerce/business is the only thing left.

In this clip, “Is Google trying to influence the 2024 election.” Chris is struggling to point out that it doesn’t require a conspiracy. Of course that is true.

But it is much more helpful to notice that if you have a portfolio of explanations and with allocations to emergence vs coordination, it would be insane to have a zero allocation to conspiracy.

Moral: Learn how to be a responsible conspiracy theorist. There are no lizard people. But there are sure a lot of back channels and algorithms you know nothing about.

NOTE: Zuckerberg’s letter pointing to such a coordination in an earlier election appeared after this was taped. So


4:20 PM · Aug 27, 2024


For some reasons that have never been explained or justified leaders in physics started making the claim that GR *was* also a gauge theory. This was done by claiming that general coordinate invariance in the form of the diffeomorphism group is a kind of Gauge Transformation. Which it clearly is not.

This is absurd. Gauge transformations move the fibers and are defined not to move space time where as diffeomorphisms move space time directly.

So: why claim that GR is a kind of gauge theory? The only payoff I see is that this allows us to pretend that the SM vs GR incompatibility is classical vs quantum where it is staring us in the face that it is instead contraction-based (GR) vs Gauge Transformed (SM).

The only reason this is at all controversial is that the people saying it were thought to be the leaders 40 years ago.

That didn’t work out. We have 40 years lost as a result.

But the truth is anyone can see the incompatibility between gravity and gauge theory if they are not being told that gravity is a special kind of gauge theory. Which it absolutely is not as formulated by Grossman, Einstein and Hilbert.

Moral: The problem holding us back from a Theory of everything is **Classical**, and not Quantum. The quantum comes as desert after classical compatibility. It’s not the main issue. A red hearing that throws us off following the scent. It’s a distraction that should have fooled almost no one who was thinking for his or her self.

9:14 PM · Sep 13, 2024

2025

@VivekGRamaswamy Moral: When it comes to mathematics let’s go to the top & take on the French!

We can do this. Nothing is impossible.

En Garde. đŸ’Ș đŸ€ș đŸ‡«đŸ‡· đŸ‡ș🇾

🙏

4:11 PM · Jan 31, 2025


America: Our system isn't working!

Tech Support: Have you tried switching it off & on again?

America: That solved some of the problem. But not all. The screen flickers a bit.

Tech Support: Well, that sounds like malware. Then it is time to reformat your hard drive with a DoD wipe to be sure.

America: Wait. What?

Tech Support: Don't worry. I'll do it remotely....and...done! How is it now?

America: Uh. That seems to have stopped the malware issue. Thank you! But now I can't find my family photos.

Tech Support: So glad it worked! We did it: Together! Bye.

America: Wait! How do I *unformat* my hard drive?

Tech Support [Recording]: Thank you for calling Tech Support. Sorry. We are now busy assisting other satisfied customers. Please continue to hold.

America: Hello? Hello?


Moral: you can't just fire people and break things with a government and a nuclear superpower with many non-market functions the way in which you can with a for-profit company you just bought. You can somewhat. But there are limits to the analogy.

I like the idea of cleaning house. I like the idea of moving fast. I even like the idea of doing *severe* violence to the cancer in our system. Maybe even too much.

But at some point you realize you can't just sew back everything you just hacked to pieces. Not everything is reversable with money.

Word to the wise: Real science is easy to destory and very hard to rebuild when you are trying to destroy TheScienceℱ.

11:15 AM · Feb 17, 2025


Science is technically a "public good" which means it has twin characteristics that make markets unable to price it.

You can use the Pythagorean Theorem an arbitrary number of times with out 'wearing it out' (i.e. it is inexhaustible). And no one can stop the next person from learning it once it is known (i.e. it is inexcludible).

Anything that is both inexhaustible and inexcludable *cannot* command a price that equals its value. Thus it becomes a market failure...i.e. even a knowledgable free market zealot knows that it has to be supported off market.

We don't even let scientists profit from intellectual property rights to their discoveries. We PROHIBIT IT.

To decide that the private sector should sort out science is actually a repudiation of competent free market economics which is very clear about such market failures of price to equal value. Science has a high value and a nearly zero price. Hence we support it historically at a high level.

Thus I must respectfully must disagree with my old friend John here. Which is an infrequent occurance.

Moral: The private sector isn't magic. You can't just give the private sector final say on whatever is valuable. You can do that only if the thing in question is in the category of standard goods and services. But it doesn't work for an entire category of well known market failures. Like basic research in science.

7:58 AM · Feb 27, 2025


Business has many similarities to statecraft.

As does family.

As does programming with event handling.

As does poker.

As does sports.

Etc.

——

Moral: beware analogies when playing with thermonuclear military capabilities.

There is no real intuition pump. Doesn’t exist.

8:12 PM · Apr 10, 2025


I think many of you made a huge mistake about the “Client List”. About “Lolita Express”. About “Pedophile Island.” That is, if the goal was to use Epstein to get justice, and put an end to this abuse of children and civilians by the sickest members of the world’s ICs.

You had fun with memes. And you let an IC sponsored pedophile get away. We were supposed to be pushing the press:

“Why don’t you ask **any** truly detailed questions about a supposed multi billion dollar FX hedge fund that may not have existed at all?” That was
and is
the first order of business.

We can’t know exactly what he did, where and when.

But there is no way to fake this hedge fund. Either he had an enormous fund or he didn’t. We can get all the details if he did. Or push as to why they don’t exist.

I don’t know if he killed himself. I don’t even know if he is dead. I don’t know if there is “the Epstein client list”.

The thing we know best is that he claimed to manage a multibillion dollar fund that ***cannot*** be hidden. Where are its records and employees?????????” Why does the press avoid reporting on this fund like the plague???? It was headquartered at Villard House for Christ sake. Madison Avenue. Who liquidated it? Who worked there? wtf?

This manager to this mystery fund is like a captain who supposedly has one of the world’s largest mega yachts
that somehow isn’t registered or flagged. It leaves no wake. No shipyard built it or serviced it. It has no crew. No harbor master has ever seen it.

“It’s so quiet that Lockheed asked to study it. It’s said to be made of optically neural superconducting ice crystals that form only from the tears of virgin sea lions cooled to absolute zero so it can’t be seen. He brilliantly purchased a Bugis Prahu Charter that was grandfathered in before the 1609 Mare Liberum was in force so that he alone may sail the seas without ever communicating with other vessels or harbors. It is said that his carbon fiber anchor and chain stretched to the bottom of the Challenger Deep so that he didn’t need to approach the shore for years on end.”

C’mon.

The key was that he wasn’t a “disgraced financier”. He was a construct fitted with a mysterious poorly drawn backstory. And that construct probably belonged to several Allied nation states:

“He’s so brilliant that he only accepts people who surrender total control of their wealth under power of attorney. He is closed to anyone who doesn’t have 1 Billion dollars minimum. In fact: his investor list is so discreet, and is said to be so secretive and closely guarded that he has only one known client.”

Did you not realize that outside investors are a liability to a cover story or front? Beware any super secretive fund that has a story why they dont want family office or institutional money. This is not the only one btw.

Hence
the exclusivity.

Why was he obsessed by Gravity? He was almost certainly a front used for funding edgy science, information gathering, control, etc away from normal channels.

It wasn’t one thing. He wasn’t a creepy front company
he was a mall filled with different business providing different goods and services. It wasn’t all about raping kids. Some collection of people invested something like 9 figures in creating a weird 11-12 figure fairy tale via leverage. And it was used for a lot of things. It was called Jeffrey Epstein.

Moral: focus on the cover story. Not the memes. Go after the press first. Figure out exactly who is stopping the fund from being dissected. Focus on the non reporting.

This is what Anti-Interesting is all about. Use it.

One man’s opinion. 🙏

Last edited 6:29 PM · Jul 12, 2025


Ran an @X poll. Here were the results:

12:27 AM · Sep 1, 2025

MORAL: No one wants @WSJ-Style Open Border Utopianism. Mass immigration *as it is currently configured* is an “Elite Program” that no one actually wants. It’s bananas.

[And by “Elite” I mean the social engineers who killed off the actual elite hoping no one would notice.] https://t.co/3aKJdDQhf3

12:27 AM · Sep 1, 2025


Fascinating exchange gentlemen
so odd.

Why don’t you also bring up the metaplectic correction and point out that I don’t mention that?

Or ordering considerations of classical operators?

That would allow you both to cast even more (unsupported) aspersions.

In truth you are not making a deep point. You are making the quantum supremacy point that we should take classical limits of quantum systems. Not naively quantize classical theories
like we used to do when we were succeeding.

Yet the Standard Model stubbornly remains a classical field theory that got quantized. Mysteriously dodging near certain death on all sides. What are the odds!!

Well, there might be deep classical reasons for that improbable outcome that escape the quantum supremacists. I mean
it’s just possible.

MORAL: Not everyone is an ignorant idiot just because they think your community is 40+ years stalled groupthinking this exact way. I don’t think you are ignorant or stupid. I don’t think you are pseudoscientists. Or grifters. Or any of that. I just think you are wrong in your total approach. That’s just science. The quantum gravity crowd has demanded a victory parade for 40+ years over all other approaches while it fails to launch year after year after year. That is not science. I’m sorry. I don’t make that rule.

MORAL II: You might want to bring up polarization independence and the difficulty of proving (projective) flatness in the polarization discussion, if you want to be even more condescending. You might also laugh to yourselves that the classical hadron and lepton sectors don’t even separately quantize! I don’t know why this doesn’t occur to you. And finally, you might want to assert that I am ignorant of Groenewold–van Hove and have a chuckle about that too. Just a suggestion.

Have fun. And good day, gentlemen. Keep up the high standards and good work.

2:56 PM · Sep 6, 2025

Buddy, we're not doing "quantum supremacy". But if you wanna quantise a classical theory you must work for it. You don't get to yell "self-quantising" and call it a day

You must check topological conditions & choose/prove independence of polarisation & the prequantum line bundle

3:23 PM · Sep 6, 2025

Which is both INCREDIBLE and difficult as it stands. Yes? No? I mean I think I get this.

Like it’s almost a miracle that it works at all:

ERW-X-post-1964351563553526194-G0LHVjDa0AAZgcS.jpg
3:34 PM · Sep 6, 2025

Now you're getting it! :)

And not only difficult but often simply false. Many classical phase spaces dont admit prequantum line bundles. Others don't have a unique one

And the choice of polarisation can be the difference between a finite- and infinite-dimensional Hilbert space!

3:43 PM · Sep 6, 2025

“Buddy”

“Now you're getting it! :)”

You guys are just so full of yourselves. What are you
in your 20s? Born around AdS/CFT? Am I your problem student finally coming along to “get it”?

You think I can’t understand you! Right? Like you are my teacher or something. Adorable.

I forget what this community is like. You do realize you are still playing with toy models working a million miles away from actual laboratory physics?

Take a look out your window Tim: No quarks. No neutrinos. No generations. You are on the train to NERPH (Not Even Remotely Physics). You just don’t know it. Before long you will leave for a job so you can buy a house or retire without ever having made contact with physical reality. As a physics person. Wake up.

You’re not even in spacetime Tim. You are likely playing with Riemann surfaces. Your “Higgs Fields” are often valued in the adjoint bundles. Your metrics are often Euclidean signature. Your SUSY is likely unsupported by any LHC superpartners. Etc. Etc.

You actually think I don’t get it because if I did “get it” I would certainly agree with you.

Like I can’t read what you wrote here or I wouldn’t be saying these things:

ERW-X-post-1964360623992811644-G0LPk3SbUAUniIa.jpg
4:10 PM · Sep 6, 2025

If those two little interjections are enough to set you off like this, you really need to get your temper in check lmao

Remember, champ: brevity is the soul of wit

4:20 PM · Sep 6, 2025

Yet your “Physics” thesis is 153 pages.

Take care, slugger. https://t.co/LMn2in0Bzf

ERW-X-post-1964363983403831632-G0LSofMaMAAnmJb.jpg
4:24 PM · Sep 6, 2025


Yes.

I think the US almost certainly has at least one fake UFO program. A decoy.

Think of that decoy as putting out bad information to confuse adversaries. But what does it due to our own scientists?

Now imagine a post relativistic gravitational theory group PRTG here on earth. You would imagine that our own government would be working with that PRTG. Because that group is trying to figure out if we are trapped here, the last thing you want to do is to have the f****ng decoy program polluting our own understanding.

I think the morons in our decoy program forgot to bring in their own PRTGs. Because to a PRTG, UFOs
.real NHI craft
.would be key data. And fake craft is just feeding your own scientists poison and polluting their own understanding.

So we don’t have ANY top tier PRTG in this game. That’s what makes me think there is only a fake UFO decoy program. OTOH


7:09 AM · Nov 30, 2025

Can you explain your thoughts a little better?

Have you put any thought into what’s actually going on specifically in the null hypothesis case? What’s this all for? It’s not clear to me at all that there is any sensibility in either direction.

2:27 AM · Nov 30, 2025

Continued
.on the other hand it sure looks like in the 1950s we set up two cut outs and created “The Golden Age Of General Relativity”.

And then in the wake of Howard Morland and John Aristotle Phillips, it kinda looks like we stagnated and soft sunsetted real open research in fundamental physics with a preposterous story about String Theory and Quantum Gravity. Which makes no sense to anyone honest after 40 years of failure.

So that is pretty odd. Scientists don’t shoot down new ideas for 40 years to protect one known not to work. That isn’t how science works.

So that opens the question, is there a second secret physics program (like a Manhattan Project for Gravity 2.0) and perhaps a second UFO program. A non decoy. And while I see no direct evidence of NHI craft, we do have a mystery as to why the U.S. would destroy its own commanding advantage in fundamental Physics over string theory and its obvious failure. It just doesn’t pass the laugh test.

The only thing I can wonder about is if we figured a bit of new physics out that lead to new Manhattan Project-level secrecy around all fundamental physics. Maybe 50 high ranking people (e.g. @SecRubio ) aren’t lying with the skill of Pacino and Brando. đŸ€·â€â™€ïž.

Something is way off. We aren’t doing physics in the open any more. And we aren’t asking our own people for help. So you would be crazy not to wonder
WTAF?

This is, unfortunately, consistent with a second Manhattan project on Gravity. This is exactly how secret science works. For example: We stagnated chain reaction research outside los Alamos and continued doing successful physics inside the compound.

Well, the first part of this is true today. We are dead in the water in university level fundamental physics beyond GR and the SM. The second part is unknown. Is there a place where you can get paid to succeed at physics rather than paid to do things which are known not to work? I just don’t know.

Moral: Physics when done well and right, is very very dangerous after all. And I want us to get back to doing physics that will go way beyond Einstein.

Even the kind that goes boom:đŸ’„

🙏

7:09 AM · Nov 30, 2025

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