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The New Coffee Room

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  3. What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?

What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General Discussion
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  • HoraceH Offline
    HoraceH Offline
    Horace
    wrote on last edited by
    #133

    Good ol' "one of the smartest people in the world" Eric Weinstein, in a recent conversation. One claim he makes that resonated, is that AI which can do all our jobs, breaks capitalism. Which is sort of a big deal.

    I do wish he wouldn't dye his hair. It's ridiculous.

    Link to video

    Education is extremely important.

    1 Reply Last reply
    • HoraceH Offline
      HoraceH Offline
      Horace
      wrote on last edited by Horace
      #134

      I listened to one of Jon's favorites, Advisory Opinions, about the recent court rulings. For context, the hosts are deep into the legal weeds, and are basically centrists, but almost certainly vote Democrat for POTUS in every election. At least they're adult enough not to outwardly hate the right.

      I didn't hear any mention of the newest justice's opinions. I guess nobody really wants to publicly confront the depth of stupidity and disingenuousness Biden has selected onto the court. They were more comfortable taking on Kagain, where they couldn't make any sense of Kagan's claim that "scotus has, for the first time, given constitutional protection for the denial of service to protected classes". Given her strong history of advocacy for free speech, the about face on that issue in her dissent was transparently political.

      They made no mention of any political disingenuousness on the part of any "conservative" judge. My take is, that "conservative", when describing supreme court justices, only means "committed to the constitution, and legal precedent". Which is literally their job. It's no wonder that they are less likely to need to twist into knots in the process of doing their jobs.

      Education is extremely important.

      1 Reply Last reply
      • HoraceH Offline
        HoraceH Offline
        Horace
        wrote on last edited by Horace
        #135

        To cleanse my palate of relative reason from Advisory Opinions, I listened to another supreme court commentary podcast, called Strict Scrutiny. I think it's the more popular one. It's hosted by three progressive female law professors. The episode I listened to was called "Loan Forgiveness Bad, Bigotry Good". I didn't find the conversation to be fair and balanced. Three angry women. I guess it's cool to be angry, as long as you're not a conservative white male. One of them was having difficulty concentrating because she was about to go to a Taylor Swift concert. These girls were straight out of central casting.

        No attempt made to understand or relate to the majority opinions on any of these rulings. Just an outraged conversation about how evil the conservative justices are, and how difficult it is to live in the country they totally control.

        Education is extremely important.

        1 Reply Last reply
        • JonJ Offline
          JonJ Offline
          Jon
          wrote on last edited by Jon
          #136

          Horace - Sarah Isgur was president of FedSoc at Harvard Law, worked for Romney campaign and then Fiorona. She joined the Trump administration as Spokesperson for Attorney General Sessions. She knows TF out of DoJ and their practices. She’s married to the former Solicitor General of Texas who took the job right after Ted Cruz.

          David French is a former president of FIRE, spent years litigating campus free speech issues and working for national pro life and religious freedom organizations as an attorney. He was at National Review for years before co-founding Dispatch Media.

          Neither like Trump.

          HoraceH 1 Reply Last reply
          • JonJ Jon

            Horace - Sarah Isgur was president of FedSoc at Harvard Law, worked for Romney campaign and then Fiorona. She joined the Trump administration as Spokesperson for Attorney General Sessions. She knows TF out of DoJ and their practices. She’s married to the former Solicitor General of Texas who took the job right after Ted Cruz.

            David French is a former president of FIRE, spent years litigating campus free speech issues and working for national pro life and religious freedom organizations as an attorney. He was at National Review for years before co-founding Dispatch Media.

            Neither like Trump.

            HoraceH Offline
            HoraceH Offline
            Horace
            wrote on last edited by
            #137

            @Jon said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

            Horace - Sarah Isgur was president of FedSoc at Harvard Law, worked for Romney campaign and then Fiorona. She joined the Trump administration as Spokesperson for Attorney General Sessions. She knows TF out of DoJ and their practices. She’s married to the former Solicitor General of Texas who took the job right after Ted Cruz.

            David French is a former president of FIRE, spent years litigating campus free speech issues and working for national pro life and religious freedom organizations as an attorney. He was at National Review for years before co-founding Dispatch Media.

            Neither like Trump.

            Thanks for that surgical refutation of the least meaningful part of my post. Say jon, how about your thoughts on the liberal members of the court and their dissents? You follow this stuff and you're very smart, I would have thought maybe you'd have a thought or two. You seem eager to giggle at Clarence Thomas when he hangs with rich people, but you've been silent about these rulings. Still collecting your thoughts?

            Education is extremely important.

            1 Reply Last reply
            • JonJ Offline
              JonJ Offline
              Jon
              wrote on last edited by
              #138

              It’s like 250 pages that came out the day before I went on vacation.

              I am curious about Kagan and Sotomayor’s dissents (if Kagan wrote one) on Harvard for a variety of reasons. I’m curious if they even acknowledged the invidious discrimination against Asians and if so what they said about it.

              1 Reply Last reply
              • taiwan_girlT Offline
                taiwan_girlT Offline
                taiwan_girl
                wrote on last edited by
                #139

                Finished a BBC podcast called "The Lazarus Heist"

                "In 2016 North Korean hackers planned a $1bn raid on Bangladesh's national bank and came within an inch of success - it was only by a fluke that all but $81m of the transfers were halted, report Geoff White and Jean H Lee. But how did one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries train a team of elite cyber-criminals?"

                https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvg9/episodes/downloads

                1 Reply Last reply
                • HoraceH Offline
                  HoraceH Offline
                  Horace
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #140

                  Lex Fridman spoke to Yuval Noah Harari, author of the smash hit book Sapiens. This one was 2:44 in length.

                  Link to video

                  Lex positioned this one right after an interview with Netanyahu, to hear from the opposition. Harari's opposition is mostly about slippery slopes into a religious dictatorship.

                  Harari believes in the power of stories to shape humanity. His main example was fiat currency, which he claims is meaningless except for the story we are told that it's valuable. Which is a stupid point. Fiat currency is valuable by agreement, enforced by the credible threat of violence from the government that prints it. Stories have nothing to do with it. Harari needs to find a better example of the power of stories.

                  They also discussed 'public intellectual' mainstays about artificial intelligence and consciousness. They both admitted that consciousness cannot be determined anyway, and only has to be assumed to exist in others. Yuval claimed we don't believe livestock are conscious. Another stupid point. I guess almost everybody assumes livestock has some consciousness. Harari is preoccupied with suffering, and minimizing it. He thinks that if an AI can suffer, it's definitely conscious. He appeared to think that made a meaningful point. Which it doesn't. It only begs the question of consciousness. You can no more determine true suffering than you can determine true consciousness.

                  Anyway, it's good to get the other side of the Israel thing, even if there wasn't that much to chew on.

                  Education is extremely important.

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  • bachophileB Offline
                    bachophileB Offline
                    bachophile
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #141

                    I take it you prefer bibi?

                    I think he could outpoll trump and desantis if he was running for President.

                    But me, I’ve known him thirty years. I’ve had enough

                    HoraceH 1 Reply Last reply
                    • bachophileB bachophile

                      I take it you prefer bibi?

                      I think he could outpoll trump and desantis if he was running for President.

                      But me, I’ve known him thirty years. I’ve had enough

                      HoraceH Offline
                      HoraceH Offline
                      Horace
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #142

                      @bachophile said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

                      I take it you prefer bibi?

                      I think he could outpoll trump and desantis if he was running for President.

                      But me, I’ve known him thirty years. I’ve had enough

                      I prefer neither. Just watching from a distance and trying to make sense of both sides.

                      Education is extremely important.

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      • bachophileB Offline
                        bachophileB Offline
                        bachophile
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #143

                        Well, u know me. The most sensible person around.

                        1 Reply Last reply
                        • JonJ Offline
                          JonJ Offline
                          Jon
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #144

                          In last week’s Econtalk podcast, Russ Roberts interviewed Marc Andreesen on the future of AI.

                          It’s the optimistic take you rarely hear. Worth checking out.

                          Andreesen has a bird’s eye view on developments in the area, since he’s the cofounder of Andreesen-Horowitz he hears pitches basically every day from the extremely smart people with new ideas in the field.

                          George KG 1 Reply Last reply
                          • HoraceH Offline
                            HoraceH Offline
                            Horace
                            wrote on last edited by Horace
                            #145

                            Lex Fridman talks to a Palestinian who he considers to be a good representative for that side of the Israel/Palestine conflict:

                            Link to video

                            The terms he puts it in, are surprisingly simple. Americans tend to think of the conflict as super complicated and impossible to form an informed judgment on, but this guy's framing would contradict that. It's just a matter of people being kicked out of their homes by largely European and secular jews, after WW2. It's been retconned as a religious conflict, but this guy rejects that. The religious Jews and Palestinians had been coexisting in that area relatively peacefully, until the largely secular european jews forced their way in.

                            He finds it particularly hypocritical of Westerners to so passionately defend the rights of Ukrainians, while ignoring Palestinians with the same claim to have been invaded and imperialized.

                            I would assume that the Yuval Noah Harari types, or more generally the westernized leftist Israelis, would side with this Palestinian in his framing of the conflict. But I'm not sure.

                            Education is extremely important.

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            • HoraceH Offline
                              HoraceH Offline
                              Horace
                              wrote on last edited by Horace
                              #146

                              Excellent conversation with the ever-reliable Jonathan Haidt, on Megan Daum's podcast:

                              Link to video

                              They discuss the psychology brought on by the internet, and the differences between boys and girls and generational cohorts in that regard.

                              One of my favorite points Haidt makes is to remind everybody that anger is not a negative emotion, unless it's a frustrated anger. If it's righteous anger, shared within a group, it's essentially a joyous emotion.

                              Education is extremely important.

                              George KG 1 Reply Last reply
                              • HoraceH Horace

                                Excellent conversation with the ever-reliable Jonathan Haidt, on Megan Daum's podcast:

                                Link to video

                                They discuss the psychology brought on by the internet, and the differences between boys and girls and generational cohorts in that regard.

                                One of my favorite points Haidt makes is to remind everybody that anger is not a negative emotion, unless it's a frustrated anger. If it's righteous anger, shared within a group, it's essentially a joyous emotion.

                                George KG Offline
                                George KG Offline
                                George K
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #147

                                @Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

                                If it's righteous anger, shared within a group, it's essentially a joyous emotion.

                                image.jpeg

                                "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08

                                The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                • jon-nycJ Online
                                  jon-nycJ Online
                                  jon-nyc
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #148

                                  Or the Tucker Carlson show.

                                  Only non-witches get due process.

                                  • Cotton Mather, Salem Massachusetts, 1692
                                  1 Reply Last reply
                                  • HoraceH Offline
                                    HoraceH Offline
                                    Horace
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #149

                                    Coleman Hughes interviewed the authors of this book:

                                    alt text

                                    Their thesis is fine, in that it boils down to a truism about how humans participate in groupthink for social advantage within tribes, and principle plays a minimal role. Hardly an original thesis, but it is among the true ideas that most of us could stand to remind ourselves of. But the authors take it too far, both in the podcast and in the book itself, by claiming that ideology has literally nothing to do with anything. They mostly accomplish this through anecdote and history-mining. If a party known today for one idea, was once known for the opposite, their thesis is proven. The fundamental ideological difference of big government vs small government, for instance, is claimed to be nonsensical, since GWB and Trump expanded the government, yet "conservatives" didn't "flee the GOP" (whatever that means. Flee where?) over that. Or the GOP tends to want to fund the military and the police, which means they are for the expansion of government. Lazy, anecdote based proofs of nothing in particular, based on framings of ideology that imply one idea at a time must reign supreme in a person's mind, to the exclusion of any other ideas. They accuse the American public of being blatantly stupid, then build a case against blatant stupidity. But few people are so blinkered as they describe. I do agree that most people are more consumed with socially advantageous groupthink than they realize.

                                    Education is extremely important.

                                    HoraceH 1 Reply Last reply
                                    • RainmanR Offline
                                      RainmanR Offline
                                      Rainman
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #150

                                      Thoughtful and interesting post, Horace.
                                      Thanks!
                                      But for the average person, where is the "social advantage" and how is it manifested? That's J. Peterson's word I guess I stole it.

                                      HoraceH 1 Reply Last reply
                                      • RainmanR Rainman

                                        Thoughtful and interesting post, Horace.
                                        Thanks!
                                        But for the average person, where is the "social advantage" and how is it manifested? That's J. Peterson's word I guess I stole it.

                                        HoraceH Offline
                                        HoraceH Offline
                                        Horace
                                        wrote on last edited by Horace
                                        #151

                                        @Rainman said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

                                        Thoughtful and interesting post, Horace.
                                        Thanks!
                                        But for the average person, where is the "social advantage" and how is it manifested? That's J. Peterson's word I guess I stole it.

                                        One blatant advantage is the process of social climbing at work. In a large company, unless you're willing to parrot convincingly some extremely arguable 'diversity and inclusion' ideas, you have a hard ceiling on your potential advancement. That's one example of any number. Friends are important in myriad ways, and friendships among adults at school or work, are inevitably transactional. If you want to be friends in high status circles these days, it is best to express certain tribal ideas, upon which, from objective, non-tribal perspectives, reasonable people can easily disagree.

                                        Education is extremely important.

                                        1 Reply Last reply
                                        • RainmanR Offline
                                          RainmanR Offline
                                          Rainman
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #152

                                          That makes sense, thanks. But there are "friends" and then there are real friends. I am answering my own question as I think about it. I like your word "transactional" as it explains a lot in, "transactional friends" at work or at school. Not sure if I might be derailing this thread.
                                          I do find it extraordinary how so many of you or y'all listen to podcasts, music, read, and work at the piano and fit all your respective activities into one normal day!

                                          HoraceH 1 Reply Last reply
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