The Gathering Storm: The Future Doesn’t Include You

 

This will be a series of conversations having to do with worrying things on the horizon.

Silicon Valley is speaking. They are speaking loudly.

Youtube is now censoring based upon the opinion of extremists leftist groups who call everybody to the right of stalin is alt-right, rayciss, misogynist, etc.

Styx at one point made a video claiming to be a satanist and talks regularly about his spiritual travels in the occult. So he is concerned about religious conversation, he wants to argue against islam (and formerly christianity) and spread the word of paganism. But that will get you disinvited and maybe shadowbanned by AI.

Here is a popular physiologist who had his account locked without warning or explanation. So this isn’t an overstatement.

You might be saying, that this is only going to come for the really out there people come on. Remember Ben Shapiro is not far removed from the most alt of the alt right.

(seriously, this is from what i understand is Richard Spencer’s position about america, so…. do you think AI and some liberals already not and increasingly less sympathetic to Israel is going to be interested in your nuance)

Patreon has removed a few right of center activists for not violating their ToS, while making outright lies to justify it.

You can find the CEO’s explanation else where and Lauren’s response to his explanation. I am not going to link to him because his mendacity is over the top.

Conservatives are fighting the last war. The public forum of the future will be denied to you.

The problem with the typical argument is to go create something new; the problems with this is highlighted here: slatestarcodex

The important highlight of the conservative ghetto is perfectly written as:

The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.

To circle back to the beginning, he is being called a crypto-conservative because he doesn’t think the current situation or state of the left is healthy. So are other lefties like Tim Pool, David Rubin and Carl Benjamin (Sargon).

At some point “conservatives” are going to have to decide if “muh principlz” is a suicide pact. Down the road of separating the national information system is just going to further isolation and lead to violence. It isn’t just that conservative principles that will get pushed into the shadows, the violence in the streets is only going to get worse. Trump is the least of our problems.

But Zuckerburg said nice sounding things to Glenn Beck.

Seriously, this is the biggest problem facing the right today.  If we don’t like how I wrote it, I hope an editor picks it up plagiarizes me to the hilt and gets it out there.

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  1. Richard Finlay Inactive
    Richard Finlay
    @RichardFinlay

    Guruforhire: At some point “conservatives” are going to have to decide if “muh principlz” is a suicide pact.

    Death with dignity.

    • #1
  2. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    A question Scott Adams posed some months back, and which I repeated here, was this: should we regulate Twitter (and thus other large-enough social media platforms) as a public utility?  Are they powerful enough and intrusive enough such that they rise to the level of monopolies that must be broken up?

    • #2
  3. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    skipsul (View Comment):
    A question Scott Adams posed some months back, and which I repeated here, was this: should we regulate Twitter (and thus other large-enough social media platforms) as a public utility? Are they powerful enough and intrusive enough such that they rise to the level of monopolies that must be broken up?

    I am not sure.  There is no good answer here.  The muh principlez answer is going to lead to increasing alienation and violence.  But freedom of speech and freedom of association are also goods in and of themselves.  Only trade offs here.

    I think it would be better if they had to face just how much their lack of corporate diversity was actively harmful to america and the larger western world and decided to incorporate some more diverse opinion onto the “trust and safety” teams.

    Maybe hold the threat of regulating them as public utilities out there so that investment firms demand changes.

    I think a good solid toothless congressional inquiry might do the trick.

    • #3
  4. Chuck Enfield Inactive
    Chuck Enfield
    @ChuckEnfield

    skipsul (View Comment):
    A question Scott Adams posed some months back, and which I repeated here, was this: should we regulate Twitter (and thus other large-enough social media platforms) as a public utility? Are they powerful enough and intrusive enough such that they rise to the level of monopolies that must be broken up?

    But they’re not monopolies.  They only seem to have undo market power because of network effects, but who wants a social media site that doesn’t benefit from network effects?  If we can’t have dominant social media players we devalue the internet.  There are no principlz we can compromise that won’t make things worse in the long run.  Win the culture war or get used to the results of losing the culture war – them’s the options.

    • #4
  5. Underground Conservative Inactive
    Underground Conservative
    @UndergroundConservative

    Jordan Peterson got his Google and YouTube accounts shut down today. He got it back with no explanation. I’m sure it was a shot over the bow and a test to see the reaction.

    • #5
  6. Gumby Mark Coolidge
    Gumby Mark
    @GumbyMark

    Thanks for the link to the Slate Star Codex piece.  I read it frequently but had missed that one.

    • #6
  7. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    One thing we didn’t need was President Obama hauling the social media execs into his office and encouraging them to do this.

    • #7
  8. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    I wonder if it would be possible to enact laws at various levels of government that would prohibit those levels of government from interacting with the public through social media that discriminate on the basis of political views.

    For example, our county road commission does a great job of letting people in the county know where roadwork is being done, when it is scheduled, where ditches are being mowed, etc. And how do they disseminate this information?  Through Facebook, which leaves me out.  And it’s a conservative Republican commissioner who is doing all this great work. I would love for him to make this information available on their web site in a form in which I can get it via an RSS feed, but to use Facebook? That just encourages the beast.

    • #8
  9. Chuck Enfield Inactive
    Chuck Enfield
    @ChuckEnfield

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    I would love for him to make this information available on their web site in a form in which I can get it via an RSS feed, but to use Facebook? That just encourages the beast.

    Yeah,I’m not on Facebook either, but I get why they use it.  It’s just too easy.  In some ways it’s what we claim to want from government – it’s efficient and takes advantage of the private sector.

    • #9
  10. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Very scary. And did you see the short video of the guy who kept trying to “Like” a Trump tweet on Twitter, but it wouldn’t let him? Every time he clicked, the heart would fill in for a second and then go empty again. He demonstrated it over and over. The biggest problem we have is that these people will never be convinced of the harm they’re doing because they feel righteous doing it.

    • #10
  11. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    RightAngles (View Comment):
    Very scary. And did you see the short video of the guy who kept trying to “Like” a Trump tweet on Twitter, but it wouldn’t let him? Every time he clicked, the heart would fill in for a second and then go empty again. He demonstrated it over and over. The biggest problem we have is that these people will never be convinced of the harm they’re doing because they feel righteous doing it.

    Lol.  I’m too tired to look up the CS Lewis quote you want here.

    • #11
  12. Valiuth Member
    Valiuth
    @Valiuth

    Yes, clearly the answer is to create a government agency that will administer social media and guarantee fairness. Maybe we can have a fairness court too.

    • #12
  13. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    Good topic, and definitely not an easy question.

    Guruforhire (View Comment):
    The muh principlez answer is going to lead to increasing alienation and violence.

    I’m not convinced here. You might be making the CBO error of not scoring dynamically, but assuming that trends will simply continue on their current superficial trajectory. I think there’s a real possibility that a great deal of the current situation will self-correct.

    The Achilles heel of the “everyone to the right of my super-SJW worldview is a bigot” attitude is that it quickly eats its own tail. Even now in Silicon Valley, successful liberals and liberal-leaning companies are under constant attack by the SJW crowd for being too white/male/straight/privileged, while their kids in private schools watch the token minority in their class get better grades and into better colleges despite slacking off more.

    At some point soon, the left is going to have to put the brakes on its own SJW crowd and come to terms with the fact that some inequality of outcomes will always exist without making everyone a bigot. They’ll still hate the right, but it will be much harder to impose blanket bans.

     

    • #13
  14. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    I also think the hegemony of platforms like YouTube and Facebook is self-limiting.

    One of the unusual features of the software/internet platform world is that one product almost always attains a near-unbreakable monopoly in its niche….until it suddenly self-implodes.

    i.e. remember MySpace?

    To go back to Silicon Valley: even the kids of Facebook employees now prefer to use other social media platforms than Facebook. We certainly seemed to have reached – and passed – peak Twitter (thank God).

    I would prefer to not impose common carrier codes on platforms like YouTube and Facebook for the simple reason that it enshrines them as the market leaders. Left to their own devices, I think their market share will decline organically, allowing new, more open platforms to take their place.

    • #14
  15. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Some clever well financed conservatives have to create better alternatives.  Once we decide to regulate it with “fairness” it’s over.  Only freedom under simple clear laws can manage the coming storms.   Of course we can do some things.  School choice can occur at the state level and may have to begin with right to work laws.

    • #15
  16. Ekosj Member
    Ekosj
    @Ekosj

    Let’s face it.   While we were congratulating ourselves for winning the economics  and foreign policy wars of the 80’s and early 90’s we lost the culture wars.    This is only the first step.    It will not be too long before many of the beliefs that conservatives and libertarians hold dear will be considered evidence of mental illness.   We’ll be lumped in with the rest of the sociopaths.

    • #16
  17. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Styx makes a lot of solid predictions for such an “interesting” man. I watch him because his outsider observations keep being right. I watched this last night and I think this is something we have to watch for.

    The Left is at war with us. They want to shut us all down.

    • #17
  18. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    Ekosj (View Comment):
    Let’s face it. While we were congratulating ourselves for winning the economics and foreign policy wars of the 80’s and early 90’s we lost the culture wars. This is only the first step. It will not be too long before many of the beliefs that conservatives and libertarians hold dear will be considered evidence of mental illness. We’ll be lumped in with the rest of the sociopaths.

    This is the correct amount of doom.

    • #18
  19. Majestyk Member
    Majestyk
    @Majestyk

    Sam Harris is leaving Patreon because he’s concerned about the stability of his business model and that it could be arbitrarily shut down.

    • #19
  20. Mike H Inactive
    Mike H
    @MikeH

    So, which principles are we sacrificing for what good so great that makes them worth sacrificing? An open ended call for sacrificing principles because bad things are happening seems… problematic.

    If there are times where the status quo ante principles break down, shouldn’t those times and the response be well defined, and really, part of the principles themselves?

    • #20
  21. Ekosj Member
    Ekosj
    @Ekosj

    RightAngles (View Comment):
    Very scary. And did you see the short video of the guy who kept trying to “Like” a Trump tweet on Twitter, but it wouldn’t let him? Every time he clicked, the heart would fill in for a second and then go empty again. He demonstrated it over and over. The biggest problem we have is that these people will never be convinced of the harm they’re doing because they feel righteous doing it.

    Reminded me of a CS Lewis quote-

    “It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

    • #21
  22. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Mike H (View Comment):
    So, which principles are we sacrificing for what good so great that makes them worth sacrificing? An open ended call for sacrificing principles because bad things are happening seems… problematic.

    If there are times where the status quo ante principles break down, shouldn’t those times and the response be well defined, and really, part of the principles themselves?

    I hope your principles keep you warm at night when they take back the Congress and White House, which you’re helping them do, and stack the Supreme Court with a bunch of transsexuals and lesbian Muslims. If you look at the big picture, I hope you’ll see what needs to be done in the moment. And what really matters in the long run.

    • #22
  23. Mike H Inactive
    Mike H
    @MikeH

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Mike H (View Comment):
    So, which principles are we sacrificing for what good so great that makes them worth sacrificing? An open ended call for sacrificing principles because bad things are happening seems… problematic.

    If there are times where the status quo ante principles break down, shouldn’t those times and the response be well defined, and really, part of the principles themselves?

    I hope your principles keep you warm at night when they take back the Congress and White House, which you’re helping them do, and stack the Supreme Court with a bunch of transsexuals and lesbian Muslims. If you look at the big picture, I hope you’ll see what needs to be done in the moment. And what really matters in the long run.

    This makes zero sense. I don’t even know how to respond to this. Did I stumble away from Ricochet? Vague allusions to doing something that’s apparently obvious if you just look at the “big picture?” What does that even mean?

    “They” are going to take back Congress and the White House eventually no matter what we do, and it’s pretty obvious they’re not going to be in a conciliatory mood after Trump. It’s not like anything is getting done right now anyway, which is definitely better than things getting worse, but it would be better if something more positive would happen in this short window than one good judge.

    I’m still not clear about which normally valid principles we should be ready to violate when the time arises. I’m open to this being possible if someone will just help me out.

    • #23
  24. Mike LaRoche Inactive
    Mike LaRoche
    @MikeLaRoche

    Mike H (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Mike H (View Comment):
    So, which principles are we sacrificing for what good so great that makes them worth sacrificing? An open ended call for sacrificing principles because bad things are happening seems… problematic.

    If there are times where the status quo ante principles break down, shouldn’t those times and the response be well defined, and really, part of the principles themselves?

    I hope your principles keep you warm at night when they take back the Congress and White House, which you’re helping them do, and stack the Supreme Court with a bunch of transsexuals and lesbian Muslims. If you look at the big picture, I hope you’ll see what needs to be done in the moment. And what really matters in the long run.

    This makes zero sense. I don’t even know how to respond to this. Did I stumble away from Ricochet? Vague allusions to doing something that’s apparently obvious if you just look at the “big picture?” What does that even mean?

    “They” are going to take back Congress and the White House eventually no matter what we do, and it’s pretty obvious they’re not going to be in a conciliatory mood after Trump. It’s not like anything is getting done right now anyway, which is definitely better than things getting worse, but it would be better if something more positive would happen in this short window than one good judge.

    I’m still not clear about which normally valid principles we should be ready to violate when the time arises. I’m open to this being possible if someone will just help me out.

    There is plenty getting done; you just don’t agree with it.

    • #24
  25. Mike H Inactive
    Mike H
    @MikeH

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):

    Mike H (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Mike H (View Comment):
    So, which principles are we sacrificing for what good so great that makes them worth sacrificing? An open ended call for sacrificing principles because bad things are happening seems… problematic.

    If there are times where the status quo ante principles break down, shouldn’t those times and the response be well defined, and really, part of the principles themselves?

    I hope your principles keep you warm at night when they take back the Congress and White House, which you’re helping them do, and stack the Supreme Court with a bunch of transsexuals and lesbian Muslims. If you look at the big picture, I hope you’ll see what needs to be done in the moment. And what really matters in the long run.

    This makes zero sense. I don’t even know how to respond to this. Did I stumble away from Ricochet? Vague allusions to doing something that’s apparently obvious if you just look at the “big picture?” What does that even mean?

    “They” are going to take back Congress and the White House eventually no matter what we do, and it’s pretty obvious they’re not going to be in a conciliatory mood after Trump. It’s not like anything is getting done right now anyway, which is definitely better than things getting worse, but it would be better if something more positive would happen in this short window than one good judge.

    I’m still not clear about which normally valid principles we should be ready to violate when the time arises. I’m open to this being possible if someone will just help me out.

    There is plenty getting done; you just don’t agree with it.

    What exactly do I not agree with? My point was the Republicans have almost the maximum amount of power that they can reasonably hope for and not even incremental legislation has been passed. Trump does things by fiat? Great, but those will be reversed the second there’s not a Republican in the Oval Office.

    • #25
  26. DocJay Inactive
    DocJay
    @DocJay

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    One thing we didn’t need was President Obama hauling the social media execs into his office and encouraging them to do this.

    The origin of this issue.  Self-important progressives.

    • #26
  27. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

     

    Mike H (View Comment):
    I’m still not clear about which normally valid principles we should be ready to violate when the time arises. I’m open to this being possible if someone will just help me out.

    If someone describes your normally valid principles as “muh principlez” then they are stupid and should be discarded.

     

    • #27
  28. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    DocJay (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    One thing we didn’t need was President Obama hauling the social media execs into his office and encouraging them to do this.

    The origin of this issue. Self-important progressives.

    In Germany.

    • #28
  29. Steve C. Member
    Steve C.
    @user_531302

    I think it’s right to have this discussion. I also think it’s important to keep in mind that “no tree grows to the sky”.

    I expect most of us remember when the national conversation was dominated by three TV networks. Right up to the point when it wasn’t. Maybe some remember growing up in a major metropolitan area with the daily newspapers delivered each morning and evening.

    These things do change. In the interim, let’s talk about what can be done. I for one think the first and best course of action is Mockery of the Highest Order.

    If you strike my account down, I will create more aliases than you can possibly imagine!

     

     

    • #29
  30. Mike H Inactive
    Mike H
    @MikeH

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Mike H (View Comment):
    I’m still not clear about which normally valid principles we should be ready to violate when the time arises. I’m open to this being possible if someone will just help me out.

    If someone describes your normally valid principles as “muh principlez” then they are stupid and should be discarded.

    That may be so, but what better way to point that out than probing them with logic?

    • #30
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